The 7 Needs of Narcissists (Explained)

Narcissistic people have various needs, and none of them are psychologically healthy. Most of them are oriented towards domination and use them in order to be the center of attention.

They can be captivating and then list in all kinds of detail the many flaws that you, yes, you have. They are not going to recognize that they are imperfect at all, although in the depths of their being that is what stings them the most.

We can say that the needs of narcissists they are quite varied. We are going to comment on them below not only with the purpose of knowing them, but so that they also serve us to identify those narcissistic people in our environment who feed on attention at the expense of our Health.

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What is the narcissistic personality?

The needs of narcissistic people constitute a whole set of practices that are seriously harmful to their immediate environment. Their way of being makes them comparable to true predators, only that unlike sharks, lions or tyrannosaurs rex in nature, narcissists do so within human societies, looking for victims of which take advantage. They do not care about the context or the circumstance, they only care about being

the center of attention or admiration of others, even if that means hurting other people.

But despite the fact that we can well resemble them with predators, they differ from those in nature because, while an animal We can come wild or it already suggests a certain danger to us, narcissists are still people whose first impression does not cause us fear any. They are very skilled individuals when it comes to captivating, being very pleasant at first, extroverted and knowing how to connect deeply with people. They are people who would not pass through the head of the emptiness, instability and damage that is inside them.

Fortunately, psychologists do know what they are like, and we can have intuition, at least slightly, when we are in front of one. We know that narcissists carry out behaviors that are within a spectrum, moving between prosocial and antisocial behaviors. That is, they can do good things for others, especially at the beginning of the relationship, and then they can do the worst of the worst, causing harm.

This behavioral ambivalence is what confuses their victims so much, of which narcissists undoubtedly take advantage: “How am I treating you badly? Do you not remember how much I have done for you? "," You are the selfish one! You are the one who mistreats me! " and so we could continue ad perpetuum.

Regardless of how they dominate and attract attention, one thing should be clear to us: they are deeply unhappy people. Narcissists are very self-conscious about who they are, and really wish they were better, adept at absolutely any skill and well-endowed at whatever comes to mind. They want to be perfect, but they know that they are not and, far from accepting their weaknesses and contrasting them with their strengths, prefer to look for the weaknesses of others in order to exaggerate them and feel that, despite everything, they are above the the rest.

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What are the needs of narcissistic people?

There are several needs of narcissistic people, and all of them help us to understand that they are generally not happy people. Those who show this type of personality tend to experience continuous psychological discomfort, immersed in constant conflicts with their relatives, which translates into having unhealthy social relationships that do not stop deteriorate.

This deterioration in their relationships further increases their needs for attention, external validation, and domination. Because of this, they progressively enter a vicious circle whose result is always the same: disagreements and loneliness. Even the most unconditional person in the social circle, be it his mother, father, siblings or friends, have a limit, especially if they have been constantly subjected to the cruel treatment of the narcissist.

He ends up losing his relationships and returns to loneliness, where he realizes that he is nobody without other people to exploit. This causes him an increasing discomfort, a deterioration in his health that ends up motivating him to engage in risky behaviors, such as addictions.

Next we will see in depth what the needs of narcissistic personalities are. We have already noted that some of them may even seem paradoxical to us.

1. Love and admiration

The narcissist needs a constant supply of admiration, validation, and approval. He needs everyone who is part of his social circle to be close to him or her, such as family, friends, partner, co-workers... They crave with much intensity to be the focus of attention in every situation, achieving it thanks to the fact that his behavior, with bombastic and extroverted gestures, passes with difficulty unnoticed.

They want to be loved and admired, but they do not reciprocate. We could say that they use the principle "I ask a lot and I give little." They demand a lot of attention, care and admiration, but they never return it properly. The closest thing to it, in case something is returned, is a harmful love, lacking in empathy and without reciprocity.

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2. Trust your way

Another of the needs of narcissistic people is misrepresent, interpret in their own way, trust. When we first meet them, they will make us believe that they are the people who can be trusted, the perfect ones to turn to at any time. They will convince us that no one understands us better than they do, causing us to fall into their web of difficult escape.

The irony is that they they will not trust us or anyone. They need to put emotional distance, being cold from the emotional point of view and distrustful. In fact, this is one of the fundamental characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder.

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3. Need for control

Control implies having the feeling of power. Having one or more people under your control to reinforce your identity, based on the idea that the more people you have under your influence, the more important it is. This obsession to control others, to take the helm in every circumstance, is actually a way of camouflaging their low self-esteem.

They need to control you, to become their puppet, to feel happy for a minimum moment, believing that this is the right way to become someone important. If they do not achieve it, if they do not achieve admiration and domination over other people, they feel that they are not nobody, who are not worth the most absolute, being aware of their many insecurities and low esteem. This is why we say that they are predators, since they need others to have self-esteem and their own identity.

4. Need to lie

They lie more than they talk. You could say that lying is their mother tongue. Narcissists they will try to make us believe in their infinite virtues, trying to convince us that, being by his side, only good and incredible things are going to happen to us. They will promise us a splendid life by their side, believing that they emit a kind of halo of good fortune and whoever is close to them will enjoy their triumph.

However, that triumph means nothing if it is based on imaginations, dreams, wonders and castles in the air, so light and weak that they disappear with the breath of common sense. But, although everything is made up, narcissists come to believe their own falsehoods, they turn their most absurd and surreal lies into reality, at least on the stage of their mind. It is useless to try to argue about your ravings if you are unprofessional.

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5. Creation of fantastic stories

The creation of fantastic stories and their profitability is a necessity that goes one step beyond lies. It is a characteristic of narcissists to create an image of themselves, assume it and, later, try to hide it from their prey. Who said fantasy couldn't be marketed? These people, men and women, are true merchants of fantasy, of a dazzling story with which to survive and climb positions, gain influence.

In order to take advantage of their deceptions, they do not hesitate to crossing what for many mortals would be a sacred line, an impregnable limit: ethics and respect. It does not matter if false information is spread, very harmful to other people or that it incurs serious displays of disrespect. Who are they going to respect if they think others are worth less than they are? They are unscrupulous and this can even lead to criminal acts. After all, since they think they are above others, sometimes they feel that the law does not go with them.

6. Hiding your weaknesses

As long as you make sure that their story that they are above the rest is convincing, that they are better than others and that For this reason they have the right to trample them and constantly draw their attention, narcissists are experts in hiding their weaknesses. Their insecurity, low self-esteem, fear of loneliness, frustration... there are many negative emotions that, in the form of silent self-criticism, go through his mind, being aware of all of them, facts that would ruin his fantasies.

They don't want their weaknesses to be known. If it is already difficult for him to suffer them inside, it will be more difficult for him to suffer them from the outside. They are people who feel empty, and it could be said that their harmful, predatory, disrespectful to people who say they love are actually a coping mechanism to their discomfort psychological. They are so self-conscious that, to feel better, they need to detect complexes, faults and weaknesses in others, exaggerate their importance and feel that others are worse than them.

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7. They are never to blame

The narcissist is aware, at least to some degree, that he is not perfect, although he will never admit it. This implies that in case of making a mistake, far from assuming its consequences, it will pin them on to others. They are never to blame, if something bad has happened it has to be the fault of other people, accusing them of having it done on purpose or simply because since they are not as perfect as they are, it was a matter of time before they did wrong.

Dating a narcissist is synonymous with him blaming us all the time for the bad things that have happened in the relationship. Working with him means that the day a project is not delivered on time or an incorrect report has been made, the blame falls on us. Whatever they do and whatever you do, they are always the victims of your bad deeds or of the incompetence of others. We could say that they are experts in throwing balls out, even if this implies destroying the self-esteem and feelings of others.

Final reflection

Seeing all these needs of narcissists, putting up with one of them can be psychologically very draining. Surely, while you were reading all of them, someone who meets any of these characteristics has come to mind and, with a bit of luck, it is a person whom you can remove yourself from your life without too much complication, such as a co-worker with whom you hardly interact or a colleague from college who likes to be the center of attention. If you walk away from them, their influence has no effect.

Things get complicated when that narcissistic person is closer, like a "friend" or a family member. It is essential to know how to recognize these types of people, because the only thing that they will bring us if we do not put a little distance with them is discomfort and suffering. It sounds cruel, but it is. Even if she is a family member or someone who has apparently done a lot for us, if her way of being involves trampling on our rights as individuals, it is best to keep her well away.

Of course, putting distance is not easy. It may hurt us and we may even look like the bad guys in the movie, but we must prioritize our mental health and not laugh at it thanks or satisfy the selfish and cruel needs of a person who, as we said, is still a social predator. It is not convenient for us to have close to us a person so self-conscious that, far from improving or accepting her defects, he looks for them in others to do harm. His way of meeting her needs is just another form of abuse. You have to avoid the claws of these predators to be happy.