An individual with narcissistic personality disorder has a hair line trigger to any criticism real or imagined, and cannot be ‘wrong’. This creates a highly abusive situation for a person in a narcissistic relationship, because the narcissistic personality will perform outrageous abusive crimes and will take no responsibility for his or her actions.
According to the narcissist, he or she is above reproach and it is always someone else’s fault. The narcissist will use all sorts of malicious weapons to avoid taking responsibility and apologising, including adamantly and righteously denying any wrong doing, using lies as weapons to distract, citing that he or she did apologise when no credible apology was forthcoming, projecting by reaching into past unrelated incidents to use any slight he or she can muster against the other person, or by creating abandonment or threats to abusively make the other person back down or take on the fault instead.
When trying to get a narcissist to be accountable for painful, abusive and pathological acts, hooking into being abused is certain, and accountability from the narcissistic personality impossible. If trying to make a narcissist take responsibility and say ‘sorry’, the harder you try the harder the narcissist will hit back. Non-narcissistic individuals who possess a conscience are no match for the conscienceless narcissist. Be very aware that if he or she is cornered, the narcissist is more likely to devalue and discard you, exit the relationship, and abandon ‘loving you’ rather than be accountable and risk injuring his or her false self.
Be very aware that if and when the narcissist does take responsibility and apologise it will be for one of two reasons. The first is because a severe enough narcissistic injury has occurred that the narcissistic personality will hit rock bottom and the false self (which needs energy to hold up) disappears and the ‘real’ person emerges.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that is time will remain, because as soon as the narcissist resumes enough relief (energy) to reinstate the false self, up it will come again. This is when a person with narcissistic personality disorder will discredit the therapist and his or her spouse or partner will be shattered, realising the sincerity was short-lived, and the nasty non-accountable person has returned.
The second reason a narcissistic personality will ‘act’ accountable is when no other option is left to secure or retain narcissistic supply. This generally happens when the person who has been the source of narcissistic supply gains enough strength to leave and stay away, and cannot be hooked back into thenarcissisticrelationship any other way. Once the individual is hooked again, thenarcissistic personality will return, but usually in an even more punishing form, to ‘pay back’ theindividual for having enough strength to leave in the first place.
The narcissistic personality relies on the creation of a grandiose ‘false self’, a version that the narcissist perceives as ‘special’ and ‘unique’. To have this false self threatened as not being omnipotent feels like emotional annihilation, and the narcissists will expend all energy or use any arsenal to defend his or her false self.