Do narcissists know they hurt you?

hi everyone it's dr romini welcome back to this youtube channel that takes on a whole plethora of issues about narcissistic relationships and narcissism in general today we're going to take on a pretty interesting question that many people emailed in which is do narcissists know that they hurt you now before i answer that question i always invite you please hit the bell hit the subscribe button join us on this channel but now i'm going to move on to the bigger question do narcissists know that they hurt you now this is a question that i get from so many people i get it from emails i get it from clients i get it in group sessions i do so what will happen for a person is a narcissistic person hurts them but what the person who's been hurt wants to know do they know does this narcissistic person know that they hurt me now i guess the first thing i often want to know is like what is your motivation for wanting to know this okay so one of the things that might be driving you is wanting to know is the narcissist doing this intentionally are they actually sitting down with the intention of hurting me or number two is the narcissist so clueless that they have no idea that they're hurting me and here's what's interesting the answer is actually a little of both in a subset of cases yeah they set out to hurt you and that is often quite punitive so when you might see a narcissist intentionally setting out to hurt someone is for example when they're on the defensive they might want to lash out at you for some sort of perceived slight or for your feedback or a critique you gave them or because you didn't complement them the right way at those times when they feel slighted in some ways now that can come out either through a passive aggressive barb or directly they do set out to hurt you and more than anything it is punitive it's a way in a way in a way they're trying to make you feel as bad as they just felt a minute ago but they're not in touch with that it sort of sets the scales right for them and it almost gives them that sense of justice that they always feel like they desperately need it almost like they feel better now that they've done something to you so that you feel bad because they're already feeling bad but i gotta tell you in more cases narcissists are just really careless they say what they want they do what they want they have very little care very little regard for how their words or their actions will impact you i'm going to be telling you they just don't care and there are a few ingredients that sort of come together here to help you understand that first and always is there a lack of empathy they just don't take into account the feelings of other people and they also have very little self-reflective capacity they don't stop to think about how their behavior or their words might impact somebody else the second thing to pay attention to is their impulsivity and they will often use their impulsivity as an excuse they'll use it as an excuse when they want something or they want to say something or they want to do something they just do it or they say it they don't think they just do or say or take what they want now as you can imagine their impulsivity can often get them into a bit of trouble and it can be very painful their impulsivity can mean that they say things are that are hurtful they engage in dismissive insults they may lie you might see infidelity physical acting out including violence driving very erratically spending money that they don't have expressing rage but as a rule narcissists act first and ask for apologies later and sadly because most people give them absolution let them off the hook they keep behaving badly it's one of the key ways the world enables them they let them get away with all their impulsivity now the third piece is their entitlement remember they don't believe the rules apply to them and they're actually very hypocritical they hold other people's feet to the fire about the rules they just don't follow the rules themselves so as a result what it might mean is that you might make a passing comment that they don't like and that they feel that when you say that it's completely unacceptable but if they make the same error if they say something that they feel that they they know wasn't right then they'll say uh i'm just a human being sometimes i make mistakes entitlement means no rules for them but the right for them to do as they want and that can be angering now fourth is their arrogance and their contempt their arrogance that somehow they are above all of the demands of intimacy in a human relationship and their contempt for the sensitive and the emotional parts of human relationships what's interesting about narcissists these you know again they've been called the disagreeable extroverts they like human relationships to the degree that they're able to get narcissistic supply and validation and the conveniences that other people bring to their life or the profit or the sex or other things that they want or need but they really don't like the messy business of having to deal actually deal with people and their emotional worlds so now when we break it down into all these sort of sub-components of narcissism you can see how all of this together means that they may not set out to hurt you they just don't care enough to think about whether their behavior actually will hurt you and after they do hurt you they don't really care that they did hurt you and all of that can really leave you feeling a bit confused if they didn't mean to hurt you then maybe it isn't that big a deal that's something for you to consider now certainly if you are in a relationship with someone who intentionally sets out to hurt you that is something that starts careening into more of a sadistic realm that somebody actually gets off and harming you it's easier to get your head around the idea that someone intentionally hurting you is a bad thing and even get your head around the idea that maybe you need to get out of this relationship and sadly even when you know that they may be intentionally trying to hurt you you may still stay in the relationship and that's a different conversation but it is a little easier to say okay they're intentionally hurting me this is not okay i may need to get out however because so often in narcissistic relationships the reason they do hurtful things is really their carelessness and their impulsivity the more that is the more likely backstory of their hurtful behavior does that change things for you does it really matter to you if it is intentional listen give you a stupid example if someone hand slips i don't know they're doing something and they end up slapping you across the face really hard just because they slipped now obviously you may interpret it differently if it was an accident but that slap hurts and if they keep making that slip and keep slapping you across the face and it's always accidental i wonder how long you're going to put up with that and i wonder how long you're going to be willing to say yeah this isn't okay in relationships yes people make mistakes all the time in our relationships we say things that could be hurtful and that are hurtful and in healthy relationships you catch it you catch yourself when you do or say those things and you take responsibility and you apologize genuinely and hope that the other person accepts it and most most importantly you don't repeat that hurtful behavior now with a person who's narcissistic even if and that's a big if that they catch their behavior they probably won't uh in fact the only way they may understand that they behaved badly is because you or someone else said something like oh i'm sorry is that a problem if they don't see it if they don't identify it yourself i'm sorry themselves then it is a very low likelihood that they're going to apologize they're more likely to either a blame you for their behavior b blame someone else or some other situation in their life for their behavior oh i'm working so hard defend or rationalize their behavior or gaslight you and tell you that you are overreacting or being too sensitive or even better yet they may do a combination of all of these things so even if you make the courageous step of calling their behavior out as hurtful not only are they not likely to take responsibility for it they are also extremely unlikely to apologize for it and completely unlikely to change it so let's go back to the original question do they know they hurt you maybe sometimes they may see the expression on your face their insecure core doesn't want to take responsibility and because they don't want to view themselves as the person who does hurty things their more likely response is gaslighting or deflection taking responsibility for bad behavior is overwhelming and it can result in shame for them now so this this next part is going to be of little solace to you i'm going to as on a probability basis i'm going to tell you now they probably do know they hurt you but they don't like how that makes them feel so they don't own it and they don't address it and this is what i mean when i say narcissists rarely change it doesn't matter if they think they have changed if it doesn't translate into behavioral change then no they didn't if someone's like no i see i do i see that i do these things that hurt you but then they keep doing them that's not changing and because of their deeply ingrained lack of empathy and entitlement and arrogance and contempt and impulsivity the odds of changing them are pretty close to zero so you may wonder what would happen if you explain to them very clearly that they hurt you or they hurts or or that maybe even that someone else explains to them that they hurt you they just don't care and as i said plan on a gaslight deflection rationalization invalidation response from them so in that way you just get more hurt on top of the original hurt when it comes down to brass tacks yeah they might know they hurt you yeah they may see the hurt in your face but they will almost never take responsibility they may as narcissists do issue an empty apology but even that may not be very likely and i can promise you this they are very unlikely to change that behavior so you can plan on it happening again and what's painful is that means you're forever on this carousel with narcissists carelessly or intentionally hurting you over and over again so whether they know they hurt you or not it's not going to stop and based on that it really is on your shoulders it's your responsibility to make the choice that is best for you does it matter if they know they hurt you or not if they keep doing it it's a bit of a philosophical question and some people say well if they didn't mean to hurt me then is it that bad so the question i really am going to put to you then is maybe they didn't mean to hurt you but once they find out they hurt they hurt you they don't care they hurt you what are you gonna do with that it's often difficult to infer other people's motivations and especially in the case of narcissism they're often not very transparent about their intentions and motivations because they themselves aren't actually in touch with them they're very willing to make assumptions about other people's motivations and assume oftentimes you are insulting them letting them down making fun of them or whatever but it's always a risky game we play when we do it so whether or not they intended to or not probably matters less than the fact that they did and that after they do their unwillingness to care about it or take responsibility that's the point that you need to think about it from i hope this gives you some clarification on that question thanks again for tuning in as always please join this hit that subscribe button hit that notification bell join us and thanks again as always for tuning in

Channel: DoctorRamani

Views: 493,899

Rating: 4.9588127 out of 5

Keywords: yt:cc=on

Id: VxvXmnWVcvU

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 18 2020