Narcissist the evil other: The below is a response to this article and others like it: How Narcissists Play the Victim and Twist the Story
In general, these articles about narcissism contain lots of projection and an incapacity to actually look at oneself. Meaning the author is not looking at themselves or so-called regular people very honestly. I don’t know any human being that doesn’t have some of the behavior they talk about.
It’s very much a spectrum and so it becomes very easy and convenient to point the finger at all the evil narcissists –who can essentially be anyone we are disagreeing with.
The secret is everybody has some narcissism within them and everybody acts this way sometimes and, yes it is a spectrum. To start splitting people up like this is a form of, yes projection, and divisiveness and quite often it is a way to demonize people we find difficult. It is not black and white.
Every perpetrator was once a victim. All human beings have both victim and perpetrator within them. It’s part of the human condition.
These sorts of articles are presented with simple black and white splitting. It’s disappointing because we continue to demonize and other our fellow human beings. Our fellow family members. As long as we continue to other and actively ostracize those with issues we find difficult we will not heal the species. There are ways of making boundaries without othering and without ostracizing– let’s find them.
When we label people in ways that demonize or pathologize people. (like all psychiatric labels, not just the characterological ones) we create a category of human being “other” than normal, regular…etc. Sorry to say but we are a messy bunch and there really is no regular or normal…we’re all wounded messes and those wounds manifest in very different ways. We need to find compassion and love for all our woundedness if we have any hope for saving our species and all the others that inhabit this earth.
Again: nasty, unpleasant people are wounded people.
We might not always want to be around them and quite often it’s wise to find ways to avoid folks who are nasty and unconscious for whatever reason. That may simply be part of taking care of ourselves. Avoiding situations that overwhelm our people skill capacities or making good boundaries is different than demonizing them.
Finding ways to understand and have compassion for everyone we encounter has become one of my main practices. I did this even as I forgave my rapist. I’m not suggesting this for anyone else. It works for me. I think that those who find forgiveness impossible are also justified.
I’m also not talking about something that I don’t have to work on. It’s also important to understand that OUR relationship to said difficult person does not speak to what is possible for that person with another human being. We have completely unique relationships with everyone we encounter. Someone we have a really bad relationship with may have other very good, positive, healthy relationships with others.
We are always one half of the dynamic of every relationship. Whenever we find ourselves in a difficult dynamic with a person we want to dismiss as a narcissist it’s helpful to remember that. That person might be fine with others or some others even if not everyone. All of this helps us ease our inflexibility and we find that more is possible that we might have first imagined.
As a social worker I came to realize that everyone is perpetrator and victim depending on circumstance. Both sides of the coin need healing. And yes, perpetrators need to be held accountable as well.
Posts on other so called characterological stuff (borderline).
more on Narcissist, the evil other
- The empath / narcissist dynamic
- Empaths, empathy, healing and relationships
- Reactivity, empathy, perpetrator and victims
- Narcissism (the plague of our times?)
What is NORMAL?
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“Clothe yourselves with love, for love is a perfect bond of union.”
Can we live by the law of love, and imitate the glue of the acorn barnacle?
Thank you, Monica.
I just wrote that it is always a pleasure to read the intelligent remarks of Monica, first thing in the morning today. A woman clearly of compassion and intellect. My mother once told me that Albert Einstein had no choice but to endure the innuendos and offenses of his other “human” counterparts, yet is responsible for possibly 90% of the modern conveniences we all use today, with his genius (theory of relativity, E=MC(2)…).
Yes, Thank you for writing this! I was also thinking that so easily labeling others shifts responsibility away from ourselves…
Very well articulated, thank you. I admire your decisiveness and clarity in writing this, while I was shifting uncomfortably at the growing number of people calling others ‘narcissists’. There are even websites and support groups for those affected! I would be far happier if there was exploration of narcissism in ourselves and others rather than simply in others.
yes, thanks for your comments
…looking inward is generally the only thing we can reliably do…imposing interpretations on others is a form of violence as far as I’m concerned. <3