What confuses a narcissist?

(Answered on Quora by Ula Douglas)

In short, your NT emotional response. They cannot relate to it at all, just like you cannot relate to their way of thinking.

This is the longer answer —

Narcissistic emotional response is “turned inwards” and relates only to self. You, however, are preoccupied with how it relates to you and them, that’s why there are so many questions here from people about how they think or feel, and not one coming from narcissists regarding how you do, aside from blaming you for lacking empathy towards them and stigmatizing mental illness, or attacking you for assumed “emotional weakness” and “whining”. Really, even after reading all the accounts, the truth about how their disorder affects others, escapes them.

People wouldn’t be stigmatizing NPD unless it affected them negatively, which it does, unfortunately.

When Narcissists write about how the disorder affects them in negative ways, people upvote the honesty. Are your responses upvoted for their honesty? No, unless you write how you view yourself as a codependent (no offense to codependents) who needs to dig deeper into your broken self and “take responsibility” for your own abuse. Now, such honesty is relatable. Otherwise, your accounts are “whining and bitching”, or simply “fake news”. Try saying that you’re just a regular person. No, that cannot be! There must be something wrong with you to have put up with abuse. Is that really so? I beg to differ. Perhaps people just loved them. I won’t apologize for that.

But love is something narcissists don’t “get”. It’s one of the things that puzzles them, therefore demanding to be explained in terms of a mental anomaly.

Moving on.

There are a few exceptions to these neverending debates, notably from diagnosed narcissists who have come a long way in therapy and faced the fact that they have hurt people before.

You see, most Narcissists you have met in your lives have it all figured out. After all, grandiosity is one of the listed criteria for the official clinical diagnosis. They view themselves as superior to you, which is delusional. Instead of thinking “I lack in emotional response, which is regrettable as it precludes me from relating well to others”, they think “I’m superior because I’m unencumbered by emotions I never felt and don’t really want. I will do as I please, and there is nothing you can do about it, because I’m so much better at manipulating you than you are at manipulating me.”

In fact, only truly malignant narcissists are good at manipulation, at least that’s what people report. They manage to manipulate people who love them for years.

The one I dated was the “vulnerable” kind who wasn’t that good at it. Sure he succeeded when he used sex or pity, but that’s about it. That’s common among non-narcissists. And sure, I take full responsibility for feeding his compulsion. That’s long in the past, but it occurred. Still, I hardly feel grateful for him exploiting my feelings of love and pity. The fact remains that he was doing it all with a cold heart and ill intent. As soon as I understood this, I started to lose feelings for him. I could no longer love someone who lacked basic humaneness, or believe he had any, anymore. By the time of the infamous “discard” , I was disappointed rather than heartbroken.

He had no clue as to what I felt. I cannot begin to tell you how many times he asked me to explain my emotions to him. They puzzled him and, at times, made him really insecure. It was strange to witness. We are so used to our expressed emotions being understood by others. You don’t have to tell a person, “You made me angry, so what I say to you next would be expressing that anger”, or “I feel like being humorous and telling you a joke now. Ok, here goes…” No. You simply express anger, or tell a joke, and another person understands your intentions.

Narcissists tend to misinterpret your emotions. It’s hard to deal with, frankly, because it’s fairly easy for almost everyone else to understand them. So much is lost in translation.

Confusion breeds resentment, so being confused and misunderstanding your emotions triggers “devaluation”, to use our forum’s vernacular. You seem like too much to a narc at some point, with your questions and demands and pleas, and it’s puzzling… and oh so boring, too (sarcasm).