9 Signs of Narcissistic Rage | Reactive & Instrumental Anger

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel oh this is dr. Grande today's question asks if I can talk about the characteristics of a narcissistic rage and another question I received here is how can we differentiate narcissistic rage from regular rage so I'll answer this question by looking at the nine characteristics of narcissistic rage so first I'll start with narcissism I'll just cover this briefly the construct of narcissism we see here it's a personality trait characterized by being antagonistic self-centered entitled and requiring admiration narcissism is fairly common it runs on a continuum so somebody can have no narcissism or very little all the way up to a pathological level so a level that interferes with functioning an extreme level of narcissism sometimes this can be diagnosed as a mental disorder called narcissistic personality disorder now there are two types of narcissism grandiose and vulnerable and the way we think about it is no matter which type somebody primarily has they can move back and forth between the types with the grandiose type we see characteristics like being socially dominant extroverted arrogant and resistant to criticism this last one is going to be fairly important for talking about narcissistic rage grandiose is also called overt narcissism vulnerable narcissism has characteristics like having a lot of shame resentfulness mistrust and being hypersensitive to criticism it sometimes refer to as covert narcissism so what is narcissistic rage well this is an anger that we observed frequently with people who are highly narcissistic including many of those who have narcissistic personality disorder it has both reactive and instrumental components so what do I mean by this well in the moment when a narcissist is criticized or whatever triggers the reaction we see that the anger is sudden irrational disproportionate to the level of criticism and may involve physical gestures or even aggression so that's the reactive component but then after this we see recurrent anger outbursts and a desire to get revenge that can really last a long time this is the instrumental part so we have this immediate reactive and pulse of peace and then we have kind of a long-term peace so reactive and instrumental now the reason narcissistic rage happens is because narcissism is essentially the creation of false self to protect an insecure self so the false self is the belief that the narcissist has that they are important special a person who is entitled to all types of things a very valuable person by any measure the fragile sense of self sometimes called the fragile ego is that part of the narcissist that recognizes that they are not special it's insecurity a sense of vulnerability it's too painful to directly confront so the false self or the false persona must stay in place to protect the ego from this horrible pain so in the narcissist is criticized that challenges the narcissism that protective part the narcissist compensates for the criticism through rage rage allows the narcissist to keep that false self in place to maintain their own self-deception the only person a narcissist really needs to deceive is themselves they try to deceive others but again they only need to lie to themselves and of course they need to believe those lies so let's take a look at the nine characteristics of narcissistic rage number one it is typically triggered by criticism I mentioned this before and we see certain types of criticism that tend to evoke this rage more so than others we see criticisms about somebody's personality like if they have a lack of caring to them if that part is criticized or their arrogance is criticized if they're criticized for being condescending for lying being selfish being greedy all those could trigger narcissistic rage and in work settings we often see leaders or managers who are narcissistic be triggered by being accused of not doing any work by not being hands-on enough like leaders who try to delegate everything and don't really get involved in any direct work we see this criticism in work settings has taken as a challenge to their authority right so that can bring about narcissistic rage number two we see that the rage results in hatred it's remembered forever the narcissist tends to hold a grudge and they presume the criticism was personal along with this they demand a retraction recompense for the criticism revenge they want the critic to pay for what they did the third characteristic of narcissistic rage it happens even when the criticism was fair when the criticism was worded lightly when it was made in jest like if somebody is teasing a narcissist we also see that when other people who are in the same group as the narcissist are criticized in the same way like say in a work setting all the people who do one job are criticized and the narcissist is in that group the narcissist will take personal offense that criticism even though it was directed to the entire group so they are angry because they were criticized but they're not angry on behalf of the other people in that group so moving on to number four we see that the rage occurs even when the narcissist has a good argument to make so the narcissist really bypasses any potential good argument in favor of rage and personal tax so the rage is rambling and it misses valid counter points so this point reminds me of an example from years ago I was doing consulting to this company that had multiple sites and they had someone employed there who may have been a narcissist my job wasn't to diagnose anybody there but there were certain narcissistic characteristics with this person and they really had this job where they did various tasks they did a lot of cleaning and maintenance but they also drove this delivery van and they would move stuff back and forth between the sites so his internal deliveries only they weren't going to the outside other companies and when this employee would back the livery van up to this building the van never really sat between the lines straight so the van always seemed to be between the lines but crooked right and the people with the sight used to kind of tease the employee about this it wasn't really mean-spirited just saying he didn't know how to back up he wasn't a good driver and he really went kind of way over the top in his response he would make fun of them in response in this narcissistic rage he would criticize really a lot of different things about them their choice of clothing their work performance building anything he could get ahold of and it seemed really disproportionate to just being accused of not backing up straight but here's kind of my point with this particular component of narcissism missing valid counter points I was curious about why he always seemed to back in crooked into the space and the day that I would visit that site it was about once every two weeks did seem to line up with the Diaries make a lot of delivery so I saw him do this quite a few times so one time I went out when the van was parked there and I noticed that the line was straight with the wheels on the passenger side but it was closer on the driver's side to the front and farther away in the back like the lines were crooked not his parking was crooked so I took a tape measure and I confirmed that that one of the lines appeared to be perpendicular to the building and the other line was crooked so I went to him I said you know they've been criticizing you about your parking job here but the lines are actually crooked so that's what's going on it's not the driving skill that's really an issue so that's kind of like this valid counterpoint that he just completely missed he went off and criticized them he was angry and he had a valid point to make he wasn't actually backing up in an incorrect way so an interesting twist with the story is later on it was about two weeks later I talked to him about I said did you mention that the lines were crooked and that your driving was actually ok as it turns out as I mentioned before he did a lot of different jobs there well he painted the lines right so it turns out I guess it was his fault but it wasn't bad driving he's the one who painted that line so that wasn't straight so kind of a unexpected twist there with that example now in a situation like this though if this guy hadn't appeared the lines you can see how it'd be challenging for a narcissist to come with a valid complaint a valid counterpoint because they already went into a rage so because he was angry and it kind of made everybody mad if he did bring his valid point forward they may have just said look this is just you being mad and angry and they may not have listened to his argument so this failure to make a good case for oneself when you're criticized this can really have this effect of people not believing you later on it now the fifth point here is because of the rage the narcissist does miss valuable feedback so essentially the rage blocks any type of learning the rage and the result of the rage leaves the narcissist more confident it kind of proves to them that they're right all along people are jealous of me people just don't understand how great I am and again with that type of mentality they're not really gonna learn from any feedback item number six is that the rage causes more criticism so somebody's criticized and they have this raised narcissistic rage that can lead to more criticism which leads to more rage so really it can create a vicious cycle of criticism and rage when we look at situations involving narcissism that did escalate to violence this is something we often see it was a back and forth it wasn't just one comment that led to rage and violence although that could happen it usually tends to be this cycle and neither side gives it up so we see the rage we see the criticism back and forth and again sometimes it ends badly number seven we see when this range occurs the narcissist tries to gain allies to get people to agree with them that the critic was really the problem so just by getting agreement like this just this alone can help the narcissist the protective barrier back over that fragile sense of self so they're always really seeking somebody to take their side to appreciate how badly they were treated and at some point because these people that the narcissist approaches are afraid of narcissists they could use this as an opportunity to build a relationship with the narcissist and may even become what we sometimes refer to as flying monkeys that's a reference from The Wizard of Oz so that means they will essentially become agents of the narcissist so it's interesting because the narcissist more or less recruits these agents sometimes anyway because of the narcissistic rage so they have this rage in response to criticism and they go out and look for allies and then they use those people they manipulate those people to do their work for them of criticizing that original critic the eighth characteristic of narcissistic rage we see the insulted narcissist is always on the offense and never on the defense typically when a person is criticized they defend themselves or they accept some or all of the criticism but the narcissist goes on the offense they attack which is actually an incredibly effective defense it sidesteps that original criticism and attacks the character of the critic so they introduce criticisms of their own that distract away from the original feedback about them sometimes this is referred to as one of the genius components of narcissism but it's really not based on intellect it's just the way the narcissist functions the narcissist needs to protect themselves and this is how they do it so moving on the number nine this is the last characteristic I'll cover here of narcissistic rage we see the rage happens in or contributes to a vulnerable state I mentioned before that a lot of times narcissists fluctuate between grandiose and vulnerable states between those two types of narcissism and with the grandiose of course we have a resistance to criticism so somebody shouldn't go into a rage because they're criticized that they have grandiose characteristics but the vulnerable we see a hyper sensitivity to criticism so it makes more sense that somebody would go into a rage with that type of narcissism so this fluctuation between these two types of narcissism really kind of makes sense we think about how those types work somebody would really need to be moving toward a vulnerable state in order to have the rage so can somebody with grandiose narcissism ever go into a rage absolutely they could but in a sense it's really a manifestation of a vulnerable state the criticism can activate a vulnerable part and help move that person from grandiose to vulnerable when the rage is over and any thoughts of revenge or anything that is over the narcissist we'll move back to the grandiose state so the grandiose state is not necessarily written in stone if somebody is a perfect grandiose narcissist know what I mean by that is they have a level of grandiosity that never moves over to vulnerable than in theory they would have no narcissistic rage as we think about it because all criticisms would be deflected and we rarely see this happen so this really tells us again that narcissism is on a continuum in terms of severity but also in terms of type every narcissist is somewhere between vulnerable and grandiose and it would be unlikely that somebody would be a hundred percent one type or the other so those are the nine characteristics of narcissistic rage I know whenever I talk about topics like this there'll be a lot of different opinions people who agree with me and disagree with me and have other thoughts and examples from their own lives please put those opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate a really interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this description of narcissistic rage to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 378,115

Keywords: Narcissistic rage, narcissistic anger, narcissistic frustration, reactive, instrumental, reactive anger, instrumental anger, Narcissism, narcissist, narcissistic thoughts, narcissistic personality disorder, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, grandiosity, arrogance, jealousy, sense of entitlement, identity disturbance, emotional dysregulation, paranoia, dissociation, anger, mental health, counseling

Id: BAcKAkVAEOs

Length: 15min 3sec (903 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 27 2019