Five Signs of a Vulnerable Narcissist

The vulnerable narcissist can be difficult to detect. Like a covert narcissist or one who hides his or her tendencies behind a façade of good behavior while undermining others, the vulnerable narcissist has his or her own façade. As the name suggests, the vulnerable narcissist hides behind a façade of weakness. The other two types are easier to detect. After all, a grandiose narcissist is always tooting his own horn and a malignant one has a mean streak a mile wide.

My first run-in with a vulnerable narcissist was actually a literary one. C.S. Lewis describes one in his book, The Screwtape Letters, very effectively as the mother of the main character. She holds her son in an emotional prison, making querulous demands and requiring constant support. The line I always think of is where she says, “All I want is some weak tea and a bit of toast.” Now Lewis isn’t writing about a vulnerable narcissist; he is writing about gluttony. But her complaint has all the earmarks of vulnerable narcissism. She acts as the consummate victim in her dealings with her son.

It can be tempting to ascribe more innocent motives to the vulnerable narcissist, but make no mistake. Their goal is control of you as a supply to boost their fragile self-esteem. Their methods just are different than other narcissists who make a show of no weakness. For this kind of toxic person, weakness is their currency.  I think of the poem, Siren Song, Read Siren Song here, by Margaret Atwood. If you remember your Western Civ class in college, you may remember that Odysseus sailed past the island of the Sirens lashed to the mast of his ship. Apparently, no one could resist their call. For Atwood, the cry of the Sirens is Save me! Only you can help me! No proper co-dependent could resist such a request!

So if you have someone who demands constant attention or who drains you dry on a regular basis, you may be dealing with such an individual. So in no particular order, here are the major signs of a vulnerable narcissist:

1: Everything revolves around their feelings.

Because a vulnerable narcissist is often quite sensitive, they pull everyone around them into their suffering orbit. Every conversation is about them and their terrible suffering. If you attempt to bring up some of your own emotions, attention is quickly diverted back to their far more important emotional life. All conversations revolve around them.

A caveat to this is that sometimes we do become human whirlpools sucking in the emotional energy around us. This happens after trauma and is a stage in healing. The vulnerable narcissist never moves past this. A normal person feels self-conscious about taking up all of the conversational time. Not so the VN.

2: The vulnerable narcissist is chronically under-appreciated.

While the grandiose and malignant narcissists see themselves as perfect and naturally assume that everyone else sees them thusly, the VN is a bit different. They do see themselves as perfect; however, nobody appreciates the true flawless gems that they are.  The constant cry of any narcissist is that the cruel world has cheated them. For the VN, they have not been given the recognition they are clearly due!

3: The vulnerable narcissist is chronically depressed.

The VN has a lot of mood swings. Many of them center around the fact that the life they live, the surroundings in which they live, and the people in that life fail to live up to their high standards. They often live in a fantasy world in which everything is supposed to go their way and everyone is supposed to give them what they want. When this inevitably fails to manifest, the vulnerable narcissist is plunged into a deep depression. Nothing ever goes their way and nobody ever gives them their due, at least in their minds. Everyone and everything conspires to let them down. No wonder they end up depressed.

4: The VN typically withdraws from relationship.

Whereas other types of narcissists require relationships as supply, the vulnerable narcissist often becomes intensely introverted. Their reasoning is that no one ever really lives up to their standards. Relationships prove a disappointment to them and so they often live in a fantasy world where they create the perfect friend, woman, or man. Of course, no real person can live up to an imaginary standard so they tend to be alone, singing their song of chronic disappointment with the human race.

Another unfortunate result of this withdrawal is that the VN will often abruptly terminate relationships. If you get ghosted, you might find that if you look closely, you were on the receiving end of vulnerable narcissism. Let them go! And on another note, if you try to befriend someone bitter and introverted, make sure you have good boundaries. Otherwise, you may find yourself trying to save a VN who is only too glad to have in his or her clutches. For a while, at least. And also, check yourself for codependent tendencies. Tell yourself (as I tell myself) There is only one Savior and I am not it.

5: Unlike their counterparts, the VN is not charming.

Remember the popular kids in high school? Some of them were popular because they were mean. They rarely deigned to speak with anyone outside their clique. It was precisely this exclusivity that made them seem desirable. Well, this is a trick the VN uses to draw people towards him or her. Unlike the other forms of narcissism which come across as charming and suave, this virulent type of narcissism uses snobbery and condescension to draw people in. Those victims with low self-esteem are often drawn to the aloof VN. If they can earn the friendship of someone hard to get, then maybe they are worth something.

Because of the withdrawn nature of the vulnerable narcissist, their trolling grounds are often on the internet. As a faith blogger, I occasionally draw harshly critical comments from people who don’t realize that I am on to them. They usually let me know how I am letting God down, misusing the Bible, and/or am clearly destined for hell. Religious people are sometimes this way. They dish out harsh criticism without having the relationship or the love necessary to correct others. And they block anyone whose opinion differs from theirs, primarily because the VN is always right and everyone else is always wrong.

Just like any kind of narcissism, we all can have tendencies without having the full personality disorder. But like the other forms that we are more familiar with, it would serve us well to remember that some people are best avoided at all costs. I think of the term equally yoked. In a sermon I once heard, the pastor informed us that it was the weak animal that killed the stronger one by slow strangulation. Why yoke yourself with someone whose moral and emotional weakness will slowly destroy you? Don’t cast your pearls before swine. As the Bible says in Acts 5:38:  So my advice is, leave these men alone. Let them go.

Five Signs of a Covert Narcissist: Judas Iscariot