How to Spot a Covert Narcissist: The Subtle Signs of Hidden Hostility

The most difficult to identify are covert (closet) narcissists.

This is due to the fact that they don’t overtly display any grandiosity, self-exaltation, or self-deification.

You can be sure that they are just as grandiose, self-exalted, and self-deified as any other kind of narcissist. However, unlike other forms of narcissism, which behave as an open show, covert narcissism acts more like a filthy little secret.

However, there is one characteristic that all narcissists have that makes it simple to identify hidden narcissists.

Hatred is the root of all narcissists.

It is much simpler as a result.

Because if you know what to look for, you can see the telltale indications of hate.

Hatred cannot exist without the want to degrade.

For this reason, all narcissists like pulling others down, demeaning, humiliating, betraying, backstabbing, maliciously talking about, hurting, and joyfully inflicting physical, mental, or emotional harm on them. They act in this way out of hate.

Therefore, the hostility of covert narcissists is no less than that of other types of narcissism. Certain forms of narcissism are really co-morbid. Therefore, having a covert malignant narcissist — someone cunning and very clandestine, yet extremely malevolent and destructive — is not out of the question. Different forms of narcissism have ambiguous definitions. When given a captive audience, a covert might become an exhibitionist narcissist. Under the correct conditions, I have seen narcissists who seem quiet and restrained burst into spectacular showmanship.

Let’s go back to the subject. How can one identify hidden narcissists?

Search for

An emotional propensity toward animosity

Forced degradation

To finish the image, we only need one more point.

How can one degrade?

The other kinds are considerably easy to identify since they break down in an open manner. The reason covert narcissists are so hard to identify is because they tend to decline in private.

Therefore, the key to identifying them is to educate ourselves on the degrading strategies used by the covert narcissist.

Those who are covert narcissists often degrade by

weaponized turning off weaponized letting you down

And that’s all. Disappointing you and turning off are essentially the same thing. They fall short of your expectations for humaneness, decency, politeness, and compassion because they do so willfully and consciously.

refusing to

Absence

Not doing it, not realizing, being too busy, abruptly vanishing, or being too foolish to act appropriately

being very ineffective at critical moments, whether via deafness, blindness, muteness, incapacity, illness, distraction, or anything else that serves the

Therefore, failing to be decent is the particular kind of degradation that the covert narcissist displays. Since they don’t really do anything, it’s quite covert. In actuality, they do harm by doing nothing. Under the correct conditions, doing nothing may do great harm. For instance

failing to pay for the items they steal as they leave the shop, abandoning you when someone rudely taunts you, ignoring everyone, and failing to return pleasantries when you have company over (no prior altercation to set it off)

failing to contact to cancel a vacation you had planned together, leaving you waiting for them at the airport just before you go (costing you the hotel deposit, the airline ticket, etc.)

not saying sorry after hurting you and failing to wash their hands before handling your meal

Let’s summarize. Covert narcissists operate in this manner.

They are rife with covert, irrational hostility.

They always feel the need to disparage others.

Their main source of deterioration is the covert breach of trust, which results in ongoing disappointment.

Disappointment is thus the indicator you should watch for. Since it is the most evident aspect of points 1, 2, and 3. It is difficult to identify covert hostility, and it is easier but still difficult to identify a desire to degrade, but it is impossible to avoid feeling disappointed when you are let down, deceived, or cheated out of receiving the proper treatment.

Don’t brush off your disappointment. The first clue that you may be dealing with a secret narcissist is your dissatisfaction.

Every narcissistic conduct is willful, purposeful, and intentional. They intentionally use disappointment as a weapon.

You may be quite positive that you are dealing with a secret narcissist if you experience chronic disappointment.

You deserve to be treated fairly. People who are covert narcissists willfully defraud you of that.

5 But in accordance with your hardness and your [a]impenitent heart you are [b]treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,

6 who “will render to each one according to his deeds”:

7 eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality;

8 but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness — indignation and wrath,

9 tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the [c]Greek;

10 but glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

11 For there is no partiality with God.

Bible Gateway passage: Romans 2 — New King James Version

13 “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness

And his [a]chambers by injustice,

Who uses his neighbor’s service without wages

And gives him nothing for his work,

Bible Gateway passage: Jeremiah 22:13 — New King James Version

18 He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who seeks the glory of the One who sent Him is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him.

Bible Gateway passage: John 7:18 — New King James Version

15 ‘You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor.

Bible Gateway passage: Leviticus 19:15 — New King James Version

9 The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders,

10 and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

11 And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie,

12 that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Bible Gateway passage: 2 Thessalonians 2 — New King James Version

11 If a son asks for [a]bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?

12 Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

Bible Gateway passage: Luke 11:11–13 — New King James Version

Request bread from a covert narcissist, and you’ll receive nothing but a stone.

Request fish from a covert narcissist, and you’ll receive a serpent instead.

Request an egg from a covert narcissist, and you’ll receive a scorpion instead.

These represent tactics of manipulation, turning your expectations against you, and employing a strategic disengagement from what is fundamentally right.