Detecting Narcissistic Behaviour - A Checklist
Detecting Narcissistic Behaviour - A Checklist
Navigating tricky relationship dynamics and controlling behaviour at work and beyond
This piece was originally written before the December holiday season but applies all year round. If it’s that time of year again, it’s filled with holiday cheer and woes. Some might be feeling great, anxious or mixed about spending time with family, circles of friends and work parties. Or, if it’s another another day at work, here’s a checklist to help you be alert to attempts at domination, control tactics, power hoarding and good ol’ fashioned public humiliation.
The narcissism I’m speaking about is interpersonal or relational narcissism, NOT NPD or other related diagnoses that are derived from a medical model of human experience. It’s the self-protective behaviours that show up when one person is feeling unsafe or threatened, is emotionally dysregulated and react as if they need to defend their honour or their existence by controlling others and/or their environment.
The following list can help you identify when someone is trying to control you and your experience of them.
To make it easier to work with this list, take a moment to become aware of someone who you suspect or know has taken charge in your relationship with them.
Now that you have someone in mind, count the number of points you can check off this list. This will help you identify the behaviours they’re using to attempt to control, undermine, exploit or manipulate you.
Ready? Here we go!
Narcissistic Behaviour Checklist
Power differential. It doesn’t matter if you’re older, have a more senior role or more qualifications. Anyone who has the power to diminish, invalidate or devalue you is using their perceived superiority to put your down.
Parent-child dynamic. Also known as infantilisation. This applies in families, friend groups and professional relationships. You and the other are re-enacting core wounds from your upbringing to claim control and safety. This can also appear as sibling-sibling or master-servant dynamics too. Be aware of the parent you’ve had greater issues with for clues about the role this person is playing in your story.
Blaming and shaming language ie. “You made me angry.” “I’m disappointed in you.” “I’m sorry you feel that way.” especially when you say something that contradicts their ideas or takes attention away from them. This is how they assume a critical parent role even if they’re not your parent.
Superiority. They devalue or demonize you or others who don’t live up to their ideal or their expectations.
Black and white thinking. They have fixed rules about how the world works and how others should behave while never needing to hold themselves to account when they fail to walk their talk.
Self-centred. They centre their thoughts, feelings, opinions, experiences over yours and others.
Defensiveness. They get defensive if your thoughts, feelings or even experiences are different to theirs or they perceive that they’re being judged.
Gaslighting. They invalidate your experience by projecting their preferred version of your perceptions or events that occurred in your life.
Unsolicited ‘helpful’ feedback or advice. They suggest ways of doing/saying things to accommodate them, cloaked as helpfulness, without you asking for it.
Victim shaming. They blame you for other people’s shitty behaviour toward you or worse, accuse you for ‘attracting’ it. (I’m serious…some people do that).
Always right. They need to be right and seen in a specific way that affirms that they are a good person and take great offence to ANY opinion or inquiring feedback that suggests otherwise.
Perpetual attention. They must always be in the spotlight either through their greatness or victimhood.
Self-importance. They show entitlement to attention, recognition, approval or priority.
Conversation control. They move conversations away from a confronting topic to their feelings about you, challenge your perspectives and probe for personal info to find ammunition that they will weaponise against you later.
This list is not exhaustive yet lists a number of obvious to subtle behaviour traits to help you detect and plan your responses to them - so that you can break free from old patterns and create new ones.
That exercise might have felt somewhere on the affirming to confronting spectrum. Now what to do about it.