How To Spot A Narcissist In Five Easy Steps

An unexpected letter turned up one day, with an official ‘Signed For’ stamp, and my name and address written in shaky handwriting.

I had no idea what it could be but, as I pulled the letter out of the envelope, my intrigue turned to shock. The opening paragraph reads:

Re: Letter of Intent

Dear Sally,

I am writing to inform you of my intention to commence public denouncement against your actions, and to make a formal complaint to the financial ombudsman, calling for an investigation into fraud.

Let’s just say that my breath seemed to have all but left me and my heart stood still in that moment.

The letter went on to list my wrongdoings, including ‘breaching a contract in law’, possibly ‘embezzling her investments’, and causing her ‘severe psychological and financial detriment’. She then went on to demand a large sum of money, otherwise, she would carry out her threats through the legal system, as well as drumming up support in our local community from other people who may have been deceived by me.

This lady was someone who I had once considered a friend, and whom I had helped with cryptocurrency investments — at her request, I must add. What became apparent over the couple of years that I helped her, was that she not only had no idea what she was doing, but appeared to have no desire to actually deal with it. So, over the time I was involved with her, she palmed more and more of the basic tasks onto me, giving me her passwords, and asking me to hold or access funds for her, in the hope that the investments didn’t get lost.

Once the involvement became too trying for both of us, we settled upon investments that she had asked me to hold for her, and I relinquished access to accounts with the remaining investments.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t handle the responsibility and lost a large amount of the funds.

My initial response

At first, I was in shock. Shock and fear are human instincts that, tracing back to our caveman ancestors, are the basis for our fight or flight instinct.

Fight or flight directs all of our available energy fending off the immediate danger, which was extremely handy in the days of coming face to face with sabre-toothed tigers. However, it fails to serve us in many modern-day scenarios, because it consumes all our ability to think rationally and clearly.

And that was me completely. I thought I had a genuine threat staring me in the face, and had no idea how to respond.

However, as I calmed down, with the help of a friend who happened to be there on the day — a friend who has spent years working in the area of mental health — I began to realize the truth of the matter. It took most of the following twenty-four hours to dissect her words and claims, but the more I did, the more I realized the depth of the narcissistic personality being revealed.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder is described by www.helpguide.org as follows:

Narcissistic personality disorder involves a pattern of self-centered, arrogant thinking and behavior, a lack of empathy and consideration for other people, and an excessive need for admiration. Others often describe people with NPD as cocky, manipulative, selfish, patronizing, and demanding.

And…

People with narcissistic personality disorder are extremely resistant to changing their behavior, even when it’s causing them problems. Their tendency is to turn the blame on to others.

The following list describes the main points of reference in her letter, and traits by which anyone should be able to spot narcissistic motives:

1. She used manipulative wording to initially send me into fight or flight mode.

The tactics of a narcissist are designed to make one feel severely weakened and block one’s ability to think rationally. In a close relationship, this can be used to such a magnitude that the victim never has the opportunity to reflect and see the situation for what it is.

This is often referred to as gaslighting.

Although in the case of the letter, there wasn’t the intimacy that prevented rational thought, my instinct had been to shove the letter in a drawer and refuse to answer, on the basis that she had already, during our involvement with one another, sucked so much of my precious energy and time that I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of sucking anymore.

While I didn’t really believe that she had a case, her tactics were likely to get me to pay her off or do nothing, in which case she would then carry out her threats to get at me further.

Thankfully, my friend, and others that I consulted, encouraged me to respond with factual refutations of her claims. This encouraged me to go deeper and see just how deep her attempts to fool me went.

2. She used threats that not only involved legal investigation, but also threatened my personal friendships.

One of the most common ways in which a narcissist will frighten a victim is threatening to destroy their relationships and/or smear their name publicly.

Had this been a letter that had really been constructed under the guidance of a lawyer (as she claimed), that kind of threat would not have been either advised or allowed.

3. She made claims that were clearly lies.

A narcissist’s most obvious trait is that they lie unashamedly in order to get what they want.

In this case, there are way too many lies to list, but some that spring to mind are: the dates she gave; the details of the contract, stating that I had agreed to solely manage the investments, and that she had a paper trail of evidence to back her claims. This, of course, was the biggest lie, because I had plenty of evidence to prove otherwise.

4. She demanded a large sum of money to stop her from taking action.

In the long run, a narcissist always has an end goal. In this case, it was to get me to pay her off.

I noted that her current address was still the one that she has been trying to sell for around a year. It’s possible that desperation for money made her believe that she could get some this way.

In the letter, she told me that she had hired a cryptocurrency forensic expert (also most probably a lie), who told her that cryptocurrency had increased by 450% since she had made her initial investment (how does an expert come up with a blanket figure like that?). However, she decided to settle on demanding her original investment plus a profit of 350%, to be conservative. How generous of her.

She came up with the final amount owed as the GBP equivalent of $6,000. However, she never gave any details of original investments, in order to show how she came to that sum, which is usually what one does when asking for payment for something.

The fact that the only money that she actually gave me was around $250 — in cash with no receipt supplied, I might add — makes this sum extremely questionable.

5. She could not accept responsibility for her own actions and had to hold someone else to account.

A narcissist will never let someone potentially come off better than them.

In this case, she refused to accept me leaving her to take care of her own investments, resulting in her losing them, and was adamant to make me pay, in one way or another.

Now, I just need to give a little more background here. I had refused to take on any more for her for several reasons: she had become mistrustful and accusing during the time I had helped her; I had done hours of work for her (also including building a website, for which I paid the hosting costs) and never received a penny in return, and with the lockdowns, my three kids at home, a father that I needed to support, and a demanding coaching business, I didn’t want to also stretch myself further to give unpaid support to unappreciative supposed grownups.

However, while ending the expected level of support had been a mutual agreement, and I still offered support and guidance through messenger and sending video tutorials, my refusal to take hours out of my time to sit with her, eventually only served to absolutely infuriate her.

Despite it having been months since our last contact, she clearly wanted revenge and was willing to go all out to get it.

Am I too trusting?

I am a trusting person, it has to be said. Perhaps too trusting, but I also feel that having an openness about my character is one of the traits that makes me approachable to many.

With most people, this is not an issue, since they don’t take advantage of this openness. But there have been a few who have abused it.

On this occasion, it was extreme.

Valuable lessons to embody from this…

I don’t believe that being mistrustful or distant is the answer to keeping one safe from becoming an easy target for a narcissist. However, I know that I didn’t create clear enough, or well-enough communicated boundaries.

I had stated a few rules — one major one being that I would not liquidate her cryptocurrencies on her behalf at all, and that would be entirely her responsibility. However, as we never had our agreement rules or boundaries written or recorded anywhere, she forgot this pretty quickly and started asking me to sell this or that for her, because she needed the money. I never did, although I did buy her out of some investments.

I also kept saying ‘yes’ to doing things that she asked, despite it never being what I had originally agreed to, so the terms of our agreement became completely unclear. I did these things for her, simply because it became more and more apparent over time that she would lose her investments immediately without my help and intervention.

This was the ‘rescuer’ in me surfacing (and exactly the archetype that narcissists prey on). And, while it was never my job to rescue her, I already felt that I was in too deep, and the only one who could keep her investments afloat.

Self-awareness and self-worth are key

Remaining self-aware when someone keeps pushing boundaries is vital. Had I been more self-aware at the point at which she began pushing the boundaries of our agreement, I could have nipped it in the bud. Being on the narcissistic spectrum, she probably wouldn’t have liked it then, but we probably wouldn’t be dealing with this now.

Understanding our self-worth is also vital at times like this. I did more and more for her, yet was never paid for my time spent, because I believed that she appreciated it, and there was an understanding that I would get a payoff from her profits. Again, this was the perfect tool for a narcissist to use — dangle a carrot and then turn the failure to keep following the carrot back on me.

But, like anyone, I deserved more. At the very least, I deserved a fee for my time, which she often said she would give me, but never did, and I never pushed her to.

No one needs to work like that, and I am very reluctant to give my time for free these days.

Final words

I have plenty more to share on the subject of protecting oneself from narcissistic abuse. But that will be for another article.

For now, I hope what I have shared has been of value to anyone else who may be dealing with narcissistic abuse. Do feel free to reach out to me if you feel the need for support with this.

In peace…

Sally XOX

First published at Medium.com