Can you embarrass a narcissist?

Being Humiliated Being at once grandiose and hypersensitive, narcissists have unrealistic expectations and are threatened by even small slights that others would easily brush off. Feeling embarrassed or humiliated is painful for anyone, but narcissists are especially reactive to those emotions.

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Narcissists are driven by underlying feelings of vulnerability and shame that they compensate for with self-aggrandizement. Having missed crucial developmental milestones in early childhood, including a secure sense of identity, resilient self-esteem, and an empathetic connection with others, narcissists in effect wall off their authentic self and rely on an inflated persona as a means of psycho-emotional survival.

The Top 4 Things the Narcissist Fears

1. Being Ordinary

Narcissists’ self-worth is built on the idea that they are special—more important, gifted, and deserving than others are. Children who become narcissistic internalize the belief that acceptance and love are conditional, based on adherence to the values, needs, and demands of their parents. They may have been elevated in the family hierarchy as special, and they believe that anything less than being special constitutes failure and reason for humiliation, rejection, and/or abandonment.

2. Being Vulnerable

Emotionally healthy people want to be seen for who they truly are and value intimacy with the important people in their lives. By contrast, narcissists deeply fear exposure and view the vulnerability that comes with intimacy as a threat. In a very real sense, they are strangers to themselves, working continuously to deny their vulnerabilities and repressed sense of shame by asserting control and superiority over others. The only thing more important than convincing themselves of their inflated self-importance is convincing others of it. This is because their instability of self makes them highly dependent on people’s opinions and other external measures of self-worth. Thus narcissists habitually manipulate and coerce family members, friends, colleagues, and the like into supporting, if not believing, their superior entitlement and the narrative around it.

3. Being Humiliated

Being at once grandiose and hypersensitive, narcissists have unrealistic expectations and are threatened by even small slights that others would easily brush off. Feeling embarrassed or humiliated is painful for anyone, but narcissists are especially reactive to those emotions. To avoid such feelings, narcissists may preemptively humiliate people around them to gain the upper hand. And they compulsively compete, even about insignificant things, aligning with whatever markers of status are within reach, such as being more attractive or intelligent, getting the best service or bargain, or having more accomplished children or successful friends.

4. Being Rejected

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Rejection in any form is the narcissist’s worst fear. Rejection triggers what they work each day to hide from others and from themselves: a sense of inferiority and unlovability. Narcissists experience any kind of rejection—personal, social, or professional—as intensely invalidating and destabilizing. While healthy people will pick themselves up and eventually try again after rejection, narcissists resort to all means of contorted rationalizing, hoovering, and bitter reprisal to regain a sense of control. Typically, narcissists stage their lives to play the rejecting role and will attempt to discard others before they walk away first. But if rejected, they will utilize all their tactics, from guilt trips, to grand promises and seductions, to power maneuvers, to threats and revenge. The rejected narcissistic spouse, for example, may fight for child custody not because they care about the kids but as a way to, dominate, “win,” and hurt their ex.

Pity for the Narcissist?

Narcissists’ tragic insecurity would be sympathetic if not for their insatiable demands, stunning cruelties, and harsh disregard for other people’s feelings, boundaries, and life struggles. For those of us who have narcissistic family members, feeling love and concern for them is normal. But it is vital to understand that narcissists will always put their needs above those of their family, including, most poignantly, the needs of their children.

Listen to Julie’s audio course “Understanding Narcissism” for free with code JULIE.

Julie L. Hall is the author of The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free from Hachette Books. Need support? Julie provides specialized narcissistic trauma recovery coaching to clients around the world.