Who is a narcissist? Traits of a narcissist that you must not miss.

Narcissism is the excessive and obsessive self-admiration that a person has towards themselves and their physical appearance.

A narcissist is often easy to spot because their actions and beliefs easily give them away.

Wondering whether you have a narcissist in your life?

Here’s what to look out for:

Most narcissists are type A perfectionists

For many people, flaws and imperfections are a normal part of life.

If a party does not go exactly according to plan, most people have no problem kicking back and enjoying it all the same.

Not so for narcissists.

For a narcissist, if something is not perfect, then it does not count.

Narcissists seek perfection in everything that they do because they believe they are perfect and therefore, deserving of only perfection.

If you are dating a narcissist, they will demand perfection from you as far as;

how you dress,
the way you talk,
the kind of friends you keep,
the neighbourhood you live in
and just about anything.

It will be an ever-ending conquest that you are most likely going to lose.

Seeing that perfection is often so hard to come by in everyday life, narcissists often end up miserable and frustrated.

Narcissists have no sense of boundaries

Your boundaries are those guidelines that you have set to determine how your interactions will go about.

Boundaries establish what is acceptable and not acceptable in your life.

For many people, boundaries are second nature.

Normal people can acknowledge boundaries in their everyday lives.

Narcissists, on the other hand, have no time for such frivolities.

A narcissist will have no problem intruding in your personal space because they believe they have a right to be there.

They get a high from flouting social norms and rules because they believe these rules do not apply to them, and nobody can do anything about it since they are superior to everyone else anyway.

Narcissists like to feel superior and are often entitled

Normal, healthy relationships involve a reasonable amount of give and take, be they work, personal or business relationships.

Narcissists do not subscribe to this logic.

They like to do all the taking while someone else does all the giving.

They feel that they are owed the things that they demand, even when this is not the case.

Narcissist are unrelenting in their pursuit to be always right and always at the center of attention.

At the workplace, a narcissist will never take responsibility for anything that goes wrong in a team.

Whenever an issue arises, the narcissist will deflect blame from themselves and place it on another party.

After all, they believe themselves to be superior and incapable of wrongdoing.

If you are dating a narcissist, they will try and make it all about themselves.

You must eat where they want, do the things they want, and place your life on hold to make them happy.

They will have no problem doing all these things that normal people would frown upon because in their minds they are doing you a favour by dating you.

If you come across these signs of extreme self-centeredness in an individual, you are likely to be dealing with a narcissist.

Narcissists have an unquenchable thirst for control

It is important always to be ready to take charge when called upon.

This is a mark of all great leaders.

In your own life, it helps to have a healthy sense of control over various aspects.

After all, you cannot go through life drifting here and there with no sense of purpose or direction.

For narcissists, however, the need for control is more visceral they must be in control come what may.

Remember their great need for perfection?

Well, narcissists feel that they must be in control so that they can achieve this perfection.

They simply cannot trust other ‘lesser beings’ to be in control because then they will mess everything up.

A narcissistic partner will want to dictate what friends you can have, whether you should have a job or not, whether your friends can come over to your house or not, and just about every detail of your life.

At the beginning of a relationship with a narcissist, you might find you mistake this need for control for undying love and devotion.

Later on, however, you will start to feel mistrusted and suffocated, and that will mark the beginning of the end.

In the workplace, narcissists love to manage every aspect of their employees’ work.

A narcissistic supervisor will not give his juniors any room to breathe and will do everything possible to ensure that he is the one calling all the shots.

Now that you know how a narcissist looks like, you are probably wondering what the narcissist in your life is doing to control you.

The traits of a narcissist discussed in the previous section seem pretty easy to notice.
After all, how hard can it be to notice when someone is trying to control you?
The answer is that it can be very hard, especially when this person disguises their actions as simply looking out for you.
Most narcissists are usually very smart and can blend into your everyday life without calling attention to themselves.
They may also be very talented and creative, and this will usually be the charm that draws you to them.
When you are out there looking for a monster in the form of a narcissist, you might not be looking for that talented and super-creative friend who always has a solution for everything.
And yet, she might be the one narcissist in your life who is only concerned about winning regardless of who gets hurt along the way.
Besides making use of their aforementioned traits to the best of their abilities, narcissists are also very keen liars.
In a bid to be the star of every show, narcissists easily master the skill of deceit in its various forms.
Deception is the narcissist’s way of throwing you off reality so that they remain in control.
In any case, they also live in an altered reality where they are perfect, and everyone else is inferior.
Deception is, therefore, also a way for them to loop you into this unending narrative where they are the main character.