Inverted narcissist is not a widely known term. Below, there are some traits that explain the behavior of an inverted narcissist.
A narcissist has an overwhelming need for admiration and usually a complete lack of empathy toward others. But have you ever heard the term inverted narcissist?
Narcissistic personality disorder
Individuals with the narcissistic personality disorder often think they are a real value in the life of all or any of the people they meet. While such behavior was somewhat appropriate for a king of the 16th century, it is not for today’s people.
Individuals with the narcissistic personality disorder often experience snobbery or patronage attitudes.
As with other personality disorders, the individual must be at least 18 years old before being diagnosed. Narcissistic personality occurs mainly in men rather than women and affects around 1% of the population.
Nevertheless, narcissism will diminish its intensity with age. Many individuals experiencing few of the most extreme symptoms up to 40-50 years.
Personality disorders such as narcissism are typically diagnosed by a psychiatrist or psychologist. There are no blood tests or genetic tests used to diagnose the disorder.
Many affected people don’t receive treatment unless the disorder dramatically interferes with their personal lives, that is, when dealing with stressful situations.
The causes of this disorder are unknown. There are many theories about possible causes.
Most physicians accept an etiological biopsychosocial model – the causes are probably biological, social (how an individual interacts with family and friends) and psychological (personality and temperament of the environmentally modeled person and copied models to cope with stress).
This suggests that one factor is not responsible but the complexity of the three factors. According to research, if an individual has a personality disorder, their children will be likely to inherit it.
Risk factors:
- very sensitive temperament since birth
- excessive, unrealistic admiration that lacks balance
- excessive congratulations for good behaviors or excessive criticism for bad behaviors in childhood
- severe emotional abuse in childhood
- emotional neglect in childhood.
Ways to recognize a narcissist:
- expect others to complete their daily tasks because they feel too important to waste their time on mundane things
- they speak very rarely about their personal life, memories and dreams
- tend to show a high level of stress with the people they work with or interact with
- they feel like rules do not apply to them
- their sense of self-importance and lack of empathy makes them frequently interrupt others
- they become anxious when the subject of the conversation is about someone else and not them
- blame others for their mistakes
- short-term relationships
- attraction towards leading positions
- the need to be at the center of attention or to be admired in a social group
But what is an inverted narcissist?
Having understood how a narcissist behaves, let’s discuss the behavioral traits of an inverted narcissist and why they desire to connect with narcissists.
An inverted narcissist is someone who has a dependent personality disorder.
The dependent personality disorder is often characterized by the exaggerated need of a person to be looked after or loved. This need leads to a general behavior of obedience, dependence, and fear of separation from the person s/he depends on.
Below, there are some traits that explain the behavior of an inverted narcissist:
- has major difficulties in making decisions on everyday issues and if s/he does not receive any advice and encouragement from others, may experience episodes of anxiety.
- s/he needs others to take responsibility for most of the important aspects of life.
- has difficulty expressing their disagreement with others due to the fear of losing the support and approval (not to mention the fear of punishment).
- he or she has difficulty in starting their own projects independently or in planning their own activities. This happens due to a lack of confidence in their abilities, not because of a lack of motivation or energy.
- excessive efforts to get support and protection from others, even going to the point where they volunteer for unpleasant activities.
- s/he feels uncomfortable or helpless when alone, because of the exaggerated fear that s/he is incapable of taking care of her/himself.
- as soon as s/he ends a relationship, s/he seeks to establish another relationship that could provide support and protection.
An inverted narcissist is willing to go the extra mile in order to save their relationship/marriage. They will do it regardless of the mistreatment or abuse they may suffer; regardless of whether their desires or plans are fulfilled or not.
As a result, an inverted narcissist will intentionally seek to form a relationship with a narcissist, who can help them develop the self-identity they lack. As such, an inverted narcissist will often feel powerful and useful when they comply with the strict rules of their partner.
Causes
Similarly to the causes of narcissism, an inverted narcissist may have experienced psychological trauma or emotional neglect in childhood. This leads them to become vulnerable and insecure adults.
Treatment
The treatment of this personality disorder is generally difficult because it takes a long time, motivation, and involvement from the patient.
As is the case with other personality disorders, inverted narcissists generally do not require treatment for the disorder itself. Rather, they ask for help when the problems in their lives become overwhelming, and they are no longer able to cope with them.
Dependent personality disorder presents an increased risk for depression or anxiety, alcohol or drug abuse, physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.
In situations where dependent personality traits cause a deterioration in the social or professional life sphere, psychological treatment is necessary and can significantly bring an inner balance.
Psychotherapy is the main treatment method and the goal of therapy is to help the person become more active and independent while learning how to form healthy relationships.
References:
This is my daughter’s problem and it’s causing her all sorts of problems. She’s been bullied for 8 years and its made the situation much worse for her, making the traits much more apparent.
I just want to add a couple of points.
1.) True, there aren’t any tests that do biological readouts on narcissist. Personally I think there should be. Because usually brain scans are done on people who suffer from mental disorders or disabilities. It’s done to confirm how and in which way the person’s brain disorder is causing symptoms of their disabilities. -Because narcissism can indeed be biological.
Meaning one can be born with narcissistic traits. And if not noticed and treated at a young age the narcissistic traits can exacerbate into a full-blown disorder when reaching into adulthood.
The reason being, located in the frontal lobe is the temporal lobe. Which is responsible for emotional cognitive behaviors. The supramarginal gyrus is the lobe responsible for empathy. The lack of empathy in narcissus is due to deformity of the superamarginal gyrus.
Another cause for a lack of empathy in narcissists is the lack of brain connectivity. When it comes to firing neurons within the temporal lobe. Disconnectivity of neurons causes disruptions of emotional cognitive function. Causing the symptoms of narcissism.
Meaning within the frontal lobe are the functions that are responsible for your basic emotions such as : happiness, sadness empathy and sympathy Etc. Strain on the brain (stress) due to emotional conflict can disrupt neural connectivity flow causing people to feel a sense of emotion called apathy.
Apathy is from what many suspect is born from severe and sometimes crippling disruptions of neurons within the supramarginal gyrus. The lobe that is responsible for empathy. As well as not only brain connective dysfunctions, but a severe stunted development of the lobe itself.
2.) Specifically, the cause for narcissism biologically_ stems from the fact there is stunted formation in the brain that would otherwise configure mature comprehension of emotions.
To further explain.
In development within the womb, disruptions were made to where it became difficult for the developing baby to fully develop functioning nerve connectors within the frontal lobe. Causing stunted maturity of the baby’s emotions when growing from infant to adult.
The human brain works like a muscle. Exercising of neuro-connections with daily activities such as critical thinking, reading, writing and other regenerative cognitive practices. Causes your brain to build upon its neurons growing its capacity of comprehension as well as thinking speed.
Lack of exercising of these neurons causes neurodegenerative cognition, meaning it basically stunts your brains growth causing your critical thinking too slowly decline.
Hence why narcissists are not rational.
Different mediums exercises different working parts of the brain. In order to comprehend love the lobe in your brain that processes that emotion needs to be in constant function and repair. Meaning logical thinking and processing of this emotion taught through human interaction.
So basically when you’re in kindergarten when you’re taught to love and share, this is a time in the human’s life when exercising of love is having connective neurons being grown and repaired. Allowing one to register emotions. When you become a child you are taught how to properly implicate those emotions through logic and reasoning.
The problem with narcissists is that they don’t have the ability to properly comprehend the feelings of emotions. Their ability to rationalize emotions are stunted due to disruptions of neuro-connections.
It is documented that one of the systems that many adults possessing narcissistic traits have it that theu behave as if they are children. Such as throwing tantrums or behaving selfishly. Is because what they were supposed to learn as children referring to comprehending emotions, they did not learn at the time when they were children. So that lack of understanding they brought into adulthood.
The reason being the lack of connecting neurons makes it difficult for the part of the brain that comprehends emotions to be exercised, therefore slowing down and even stunting the growth within a narcissist.
Narcissists are apathetic due to an in capability to comprehend why they should care for other people. This is due to their inability to comprehend emotions. Other noting signs are the inability to think rationally by considering emotions. Meaning they do things as if they do not care because it does not affect them emotionally. The inability to comprehend emotions is due to the lack of neuron connectivity within their temporal lobe which is a lack of regenerative neurons within their superamarginal gyrus.
3.) The cause for narcissism that is NOT_biological. Is mainly due to stress. Stress can be induced on to the brain in many different formulations. A collective number of formulations are what is needed in order to create a narcissist , rather than be born a narcissist.
I stated in the post above. Bullying can cause a person to develop narcissistic traits.
The reason being is due the stress and strain on brain causing neural connectivity to be disruptived. Disruptions of it causes apathy. Apathy is emotion that is produced when one’s own emotions is conflicted through depression.
The major symptom of depression is apathy. The reason why people lack motivation when they become depressed is due to an inability to care. In order for a human to muster up love, compassion, empathy, sympathy, joy and even sadness is due to the connectivities of neurons within the temporal lobe.
Strain put on the temporal lobe through bullying, being overworked combined with a lack of sleep can put people in a depressive and selfish state. The selfishness from their depression is what causes people to show a lack of remorse for their actions.
4.) What can also turn someone into a narcissist is severe levels of abuse. Bullying may develop mild forms of narcissistic traits but when bullying turns into abuse. That’s when it can turn someone into a full bloom narcissist.
Many inflictions of abuse can disrupt someone’s emotional comprehension, especially if the person themself lacks the natural ability to reason through their emotions. Continuous and strain inflictions worsens that person’s capacity to be rational.
[It’s why so many teenagers make irrational decisions. Its because of the stress of being a teenager. Not to mention a teenager’s brain is still in the process of development. The critical thinking of an adult doesn’t fully set in a person’s brain until adulthood is established. Depending on the sex, your brain isn’t fully grown if you’re women until you are at least 26 and Men 25.
Meaning you don’t become a full-blown adult until your body has fully developed and it isn’t until you have reached well into your twenties.]
The irrational ability of humans come from immature developments of the brain. Some Humans do mature faster than others and their ability to think critically and maturely does arrive at early ages. Those who unfortunately suffer from disfunctions within their brains that causes stunted growth, unfortunately are likely to make irational decisions.
Inflictions on one’s emotion through abuse causes a person to enter a deep state of depression causing apathy. The apathy stops a person from being motivated to critically think through constructive emotional behavior. (again, as seen in teenagers). So the rationalizing of one’s emotion becomes skewed turning that person into a narcissist
A ack of regenerative neurons due to lack of healthy and constructive huma interaction. (Basically that person does not work the emotional part of the brain like a muscle healthily.)
Turning the person into a double standard, close minded, nonsensical, backward thinking, hyper-emotional, and or even an indifferent malignant narcissist.
Lastly and I probably should have led with this. The technical term is covert narcissist not invert narcissist. Invert is descriptive definition of coversion. Conversion means to covertly AKA not openly or widely, display one’s narcissistic traits.
Covert narcissists are people who would only hoover and ensnared a small group of Associates to leech on. Be it emotionally or financially and even both.
These narcissists are introverts hence the definition covert narcissist or a relative term closed, referring to a small space being concealed.
Opposite of a covert narcissist is an overt narcissist. A relative term being open meaming a space that is is not closed off.
While the covert narcissist would be more comfortable ensnaring and or manipulating a small group of people. An overt narcissist expands its levels of victims to a wide variety of people and expresses it openly.
Dear Imana’s cave,
I do find most of your “explanations” not-explaining at all.
Do you have any academic degree, or just a “common sense”-guided “interest” in this Subject Area and related Topics?
I am a 60-year-old Nuclear Medicine physician, just in case.
And I do know.
And it seems to me that you do not.
Damn… That sounds like me :/