 What is a narcissist? This is a basic description of what a narcissist is. If you would like a more in-depth description, please check out my other videos. A narcissist is someone who has an excessive interest in themselves. They are self-absorbed. They are preoccupied with their own feelings, interests or situation. They lack empathy. They lack the ability to understand and share your feelings. They are unable to feel what you are experiencing. They can be very arrogant and grandiose. They can be impressing and imposing in appearance or style, especially potentially so. They have an exaggerated sense of their own abilities and importance. They may be preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, beauty or ideal love. They believe that they are special. They believe that they are better, greater or different from what is usual. They believe that they are unique, which is why they believe that they should only associate themselves with other special or high status people. They believe that they are the only kind of people who will understand them. They have a need for excessive admiration. They have a strong sense of entitlement. They engage in exploitative behaviour. They are envious of people or they believe that people are envious of them. When you first meet them, they can be very charming. They can come across as pleasant, attractive, agreeable and likable, but as soon as you do something they don't like, they could attack or criticize you suddenly and you may not know what you've even done wrong. They hog the conversation, which usually revolves around them telling you how great they are. They will often talk about things that they have accomplished or achieved. You will get the sense that they believe they are superior to everyone else. You will get the sense that they feel like they are smarter than everyone else. As though they already know everything they need to know and there is nothing significant you can bring to the conversation. They will often be too busy talking about themselves to even be able to listen to you. They will have limited or no interest in having a conversation about you even if you start the conversation. They will find a way to use it for their own purposes. They won't try to continue the conversation about you. They won't ask you any questions. They won't express any interest to learn more about you because they believe that they already know everything that they need to know even though they may never have a proper conversation with you and anyway they are more interested in talking about themselves. They act like they are very confident but they are actually really insecure. They need an excessive amount of admiration and praise. They will often find sneaky ways to get you to compliment them. They use you to supply their sense of self-worth. When they are not receiving enough admiration or praise they will punish everyone around them for their lack of self-confidence. The most distinctive characteristic of a narcissist is their lack of empathy. They lack the ability to understand your feelings or experiences and this may result in you feeling unheared or unseen. You feel invalidated or misunderstood. You feel like you don't even exist in the relationship because they don't have the capacity to understand your feelings or experiences. They don't care if you've had a bad day. They don't care about what you're going through. They get bored when you express something that makes you angry or upset. Their lack of empathy and understanding is the reason why most relationships or friendships with narcissists eventually fail. They might start out by teasing you or making fun of you in a playful way but it soon becomes very mean and inappropriate. They will criticise everything you do, everything you wear or eat, the people you associate with, what you do in your spare time. Everything soon becomes a problem for them. They have to lower your self-esteem so that they can increase their own. It makes them feel powerful and as though they are worth something. They will gaslight you. They will manipulate you by psychological means into doubting your memory, perception or sanity. They will lie or falsely accuse you. They will distort the truth and reality of the situation and you will start to think that it's your fault why things are going wrong. You will feel like you can't do anything right. You will find that you are apologising too often. You may think that you are being too sensitive and the narcissist may tell you that you are. You may develop anxiety and depression and you will feel like you are no longer the person that you used to be. The narcissist thinks that they are right about everything. They will only accept they fault a mistake if they see it as an opportunity to manipulate you. Otherwise, having an argument with the narcissist will feel impossible. You will feel like there is no way to argue or compromise with the narcissist because they are always right and they won't even see it as an argument or disagreement. In their minds, they are just telling you the truth. It makes you feel like they can't hear you. You feel like they won't ever understand you because they never take responsibility for what they've done wrong and they never try to compromise. When you try to end the relationship with the narcissist, they go into panic mode. They experience sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety and they will then try harder than ever before to keep you in their lives. They will love bomb you. They will tell you whatever they think you want to hear and show you whatever they think you want to see but when you show them that it's really over, they will go crazy. They will attack you verbally and sometimes even physically. They will say or do whatever they think will hurt you the most and then they will enforce Flying Monkeys and start a smear campaign. They will try to make people believe that you were the problem because a good reputation means everything to them. All they really care about is how people see them. They won't let anyone or anything interfere with their image or reputation. Thank you for watching. I hope this video resonated with you. Please like, comment, share and subscribe. Click the bell icon to receive notifications for my future videos. If you like to donate, my PayPal link is in the video description. Coaching and inquiries if you need more me and ask for more coaching at gmail.com. Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon.