← The Little Shaman: On Narcissists & Toxic Personalities
The Little Shaman: On Narcissists & Toxic Personalities
Episode 294: The Anatomy Of Aggression In Narcissists
00:30:07
In this episode, The Little Shaman discusses aggression in relationships and entanglements with n...
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Hey everybody, it's Shaman Sister Sin and you are listening to the Meditations and More podcast brought to you by littleshaman.org that's me, the little shaman. Today, I wanted to talk to you about something. Virtually everybody who deals with narcissists deals with at some point, and that is the aggression that seems to be inherent in this personality type. Aggression is being defined here as any behavior intended to cause harm or pain, though it often occurs with anger. It's important to remember not to conflate anger and aggression. Aggression can occur when somebody is not angry. They might also become aggressive when they feel powerless, frustrated. Defensive aggression is also often driven by the desire to dominate. Narcissists in particular want to win everything all the time. From an interaction with the mailman to a high stakes corporate buyout. They want to win everything and aggression is one of the ways that they try to do that. It's one of the reasons many of them are good at it. It's also often one of the reasons many of them end up losing everything in the end. Aggression in people with high levels of narcissism has been well documented in a meta analysis of more than 400 studies that included over 120,000 participants. It's a huge sample size found that high levels of narcissism are linked to a 21% increase in aggression and an 18% increase in violence. This held true across all ages, all genders, all regions. It held true regardless of the type of narcissistic presentation such as vulnerable versus grandiose, and though it was higher when there was an obvious provocation involved, there was still a significant increase even when there was not an obvious provocation involved. The link between high levels of narcissism and high levels of aggression was observed regarding all forms of aggression, including attacking innocent bystanders and both functions of aggression hot blooded reactive emotional types of aggression and cold blooded calculated planned types of aggression. Violent criminal offenders have long been known to show higher levels of narcissism than the general community. And perhaps most troubling, pathological levels of narcissism are not necessary to see an increased tendency toward aggression. Higher levels of aggression are observed before narcissism gets to the pathological stage. This means that even if somebody doesn't qualify for a diagnosis of npd, the fact that they are scoring higher in narcissism than, for example, the average person means you will see that link with higher levels of aggression. Not surprisingly, the analysis also found that narcissists are thin skinned, have fragile egos and self esteem and tend to be the most aggressive when they feel attacked or provoked in some way. Though as we said, they are also significantly more likely to attack other people with no provocation then the general public is likely to do that. And they are also more likely to attack people who have nothing to do with the situation. As you can see, people with high levels of narcissism in their personality tend to be more aggressive. There may be no place in life where this is more apparent than in more intimate types of relationships of some kind. Whatever they are, whether it's family, a partner, any other close relationship, the level of aggression most people deal with when dealing with narcissists is high, even extreme. The majority of their problematic behaviors are aggressive in nature in some way. This holds true even if they're not actively aggressive behaviors such as screaming or throwing things or issuing threats to people. Passive aggressive behavior is still aggression. It's often aggression pretending to be something else, but that does not change what it is. Things like gossiping, spreading rumors, smear campaigns, these are all forms of aggression. Things like silent treatment, ghosting, weaponized incompetence are aggression as well. These are things that are being done intentionally to inflict harm or pain on the other person or to punish them in some way. That's aggression. It happens because the person is angry or feels like they have been slighted in some way, or they need to exert control, they're attempting to punish or hurt you in return. And these are the kinds of things. And by the way, not all ghosting, of course is the result of aggression, but a lot of it is, especially ghosting by narcissists. That is done to control the situation. But why are narcissists so aggressive? As listeners of this show know, we have held for a decade here exactly what the studies found, that narcissists are fragile, that they cannot tolerate anything that disrupts their image of themselves and or makes them feel shame in any way. They'll either react against the person or the thing that they feel did that to them, or they will displace it onto whoever is around them. This is why we should take the unprovoked category in the previously mentioned analysis with a grain of salt. By the way, they are likely referring to a sort of like one to one situation like Bob called me a bad name so I punched him in the eye regarding provocation and you know it is. But also a guy who gets in an argument with his wife and then goes down and runs over a bunch of people, people that he doesn't even know who are in a parade. If any of you remember, that was also provoked, just not by those people. Right. To be honest, knowing what we know about narcissists, I don't really like the provocation, delineation being made here. I understand how they mean it and like why they're differentiating. But at the same time, it just, it really just goes to show you how much of this really is in a narcissist's head. That even in the absence of a clear or identifiable provocation, they still behave with disproportionate aggression toward other people. And they typically feel provoked anyway. Regardless, it's essential to their psychological framework to be able to justify their aggressive punitive behavior. So they absolutely believe they've been provoked. They have to. This justification is very important to the narcissistic personality structure because aggression is very important to the narcissistic. Narcissistic personality structure. Without being able to justify their behavior in some way, they couldn't engage in the level of aggression that is necessary to regulate themselves and get what they're trying to get out of this. Narcissists are unstable personalities. They're not able to regulate their emotions, their self esteem, their identities, really anything. Discharging aggression onto other people is one of the key ways that they do that. And in order to achieve what they need from that, they have to be able to justify their aggressive behavior. If they couldn't do that, the behavior would create shame and discomfort rather than alleviating it, which would be the opposite of like what they're trying to do. So justifying the behavior is extremely important. I have stated multiple times on this channel that you really can make an argument that even more than lack of empathy, the ability to justify behavior is a bigger factor in abuse and atrocity than anything. And what we're talking about is exactly why justifying this behavior is very important, because it resolves the cognitive dissonance that would occur if someone is thinking of themselves as a good person, but also doing these things that good people don't do. So how do you resolve that cognitive dissonance? By justifying the behavior. That's how. This can be done in different ways. One of the most common things you see in narcissists is blame shifting. This is essentially the idea that you deserve it, you caused this somehow. You provoked a narcissist, you harmed them, you dismissed them, you disrespected them, you made them look dumb, or you humiliated them, you made them feel bad, you did something to them and now they're justified in coming back at you aggressively. This is why we often say on this channel that they are behaving in self defense, because in their mind that's what they have turned it into. It's important to realize that you might not always know what this thing you supposedly did was. There was a case a couple years ago, the details escape me, unfortunately, where a woman killed her upstairs neighbors because they were a happy couple. Like that was her whole reason. The reason she gave for killing them was essentially, if I'm not happy, why should they be? The Son of Sam serial killer, David Berkowitz had a similar motive for the murders that he committed also as well. So you might not know how you have offended or upset the narcissist. This is unfortunately very common. You could have simply not shown the appropriate amount of reaction in the appropriate way that this person had it in their heads how you should. You could have said something two weeks ago or two years ago that they now believe is harmful or rude for some reason. You could have violated any one of the hundreds of ever changing rules regarding how you're required to treat them so that they never have to be uncomfortable or inconvenienced or feel less than the most important thing on earth. You could have literally done anything or nothing. The point of this is not that you actually did or didn't do anything. That's what justification is for. A tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny. Or as the predator says to the prey in the Russian distillation of this fable, my need to eat is guilty enough of yours. The point of this then is that you are now a safe target of their aggression. Most narcissists don't simply randomly attack. They can. But as we were just discussing, the need for justification is very strong in their psychological structure. The need to be not the bad guy is paramount in the majority of these personalities. So attacking someone unjustified tends to be avoided. This is not to say that you will think it's justified, only that they can somehow tell themselves that it is. That's all that matters. Another way narcissists justify their aggression toward other people is through shame dumping as a way of dehumanization. This is when they take the shame that they are feeling and then they put that on you. Now you're the bad one. Now you're the toxic waste. Now you're the abuser, or the liar, or the cheater, or the phony or the otherwise whatever horrible person. We often see extreme variations of this in serial killers who refer to their victims as human garbage or imply that victims have it coming somehow because of something dangerous they were already doing, like hitchhiking or engaging in sex work. This is perhaps best seen in what is known as denial of the victim. That is a form of denial where a person attempts to justify or erase wrongdoing to another person by saying it basically doesn't matter what they did to the victim because the victim is not worthy of better treatment anyway. Essentially the idea here is that you're a bad person, so nothing bad can be done to you that would like, matter. In the movie seven, this is the killer's justification for his crimes. He does not believe he has harmed innocent people whatsoever. When the police suggest that, he goes on this rage filled rant about how calling them innocent has to be a joke and proceeds to tear each one of them down. Ending with only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. This tracks with how narcissists tend to view the world in binary terms. Black or white, you're either bad or you're good. And if you have ever done anything wrong, you can never be good. This is very likely why so many narcissists will not admit to having done anything wrong, ever. They believe it is a stain on a person forever, never to be overcome, never to be escaped. And they can't tolerate tolerate that. Who could? Many of them will even say stuff like that. They'll say things like, well, you're not some innocent lamb, when they have no other reason to justify their behavior, or when they can't get around the truth of what they've done. As if the very fact that you have ever done anything wrong in your entire life means it's justified to mistreat you forever. And make no mistake, this is quite possibly what they actually do think. It's certainly how they behave. Doing this helps narcissists regulate themselves. They do it to feel better. To put it very simply, it stops the shame and the instability from causing a narcissistic collapse. I'm not bad. You are. I'm not stupid or crazy or a failure or a liar or whatever the other thing you are. And now that we have established that, you will be punished for making me feel bad. This not only cements this narrative in the narcissist's head. Me good, you bad. It enables them to get rid of those feelings. They quite literally give them to you. Now they're your problem. Now you feel bad and Sad and crazy and like a failure. As we discussed in Stop Trying to be the Good Guy with narcissists, since they are defined by the binary way they view the world, this tilts the scales back into their direction. If you're sad, they're not. If you're bad, they're not. If you're crazy or confused or upset, they're not. They can now see themselves as the opposite of whatever they're saying you are, and they can offload their bad feelings onto you. They can also regain a feeling of control and power because they're punishing you for your crimes. If you didn't commit the crimes, they're punishing somebody, somebody's getting punished. In psychology, this is called kicking the cat. It refers to displaced aggression where a person either cannot or will not confront who they're truly upset with. So they take it out on a safe target. Like if a kid gets yelled at by his parents, so then he goes outside and kicks the cat. The cat didn't do anything wrong, but the child cannot do anything to the parents, so he takes his mat out on the cat. This is common with dealing with narcissists, who tend to be cowards, as we usually see with bullies and cowards. Narcissists don't want a fight they could lose. They often don't really want to fight at all. They want dominance. They want the dopamine and adrenaline of taking their rage and aggression out on somebody safe who either cannot fight back or will not. This is a dangerous habit to get into because though it creates a reinforcement loop where taking anger and aggression out on safe targets is seen as an effective way to feel better fast, it doesn't actually resolve the act actual problem. It's a false sense of relief, which means the anger and the aggression continue to need to be vented, which results in this behavior happening over and over and over again. Their ability to justify, which is due to their ability to accept literally anything as a reason to rationalize their behavior, sets the stage for more permanent abusive personality traits and behavior because it circumvents any moral or ethical compass that might check this behavior. They are granting themselves a moral license to behave aggressively, to behave abusively. It can also lead to the development of what is called a hostile attribution bias, where blaming others has become so normalized and integrity so eroded. Aggression is seen as the go to way to take out stress and to do all these things and deal with problems. The narcissist or whoever the other aggressor begins to see every action from the victim as a provocation. They may attribute hostility to everything the victim says or does and can become legitimately unable to process neutral or positive information about the victim. Sometimes we call this splitting you black, which results in the narcissist feeling a constant need to defend themselves against these imaginary attacks. This results in aggression. How could it not? Adding to this problem is the fact that narcissists often have low interoception. Interoception is the ability to perceive and interpret signals from inside your body. This is how we're able to be aware of our emotions, among other things. A person with low interoception might not feel an emotion until it's overwhelming, like not hearing somebody knock on the door until they're pounding, and then they eventually kick it in because you didn't answer it. Because of this, narcissists typically cannot take the steps other people would take to calm themselves down. To them, it seems like they're fine one minute and then they're just exploding the next minute. They actually were not fine. But because they have low interoception, they don't actually realize that their rage or their fear or frustration, whatever, had been building up, but they don't truly recognize that they believe that the thing that triggered their rage is the thing that they're upset about. This is why they so often magnify small things into massive issues, or assign these horrific motives to people's actions, or make one isolated thing into something that happens constantly. Well, you just do this all the time. They have to make the crime match the punishment. If not, it can't be justified. It would trigger shame. Also, since they believe the thing that triggered the rage is what they're actually upset about, and they are so upset, then the thing must be a big deal. This is a cognitive distortion called emotional reasoning, where a person believes their internal emotions prove something about external objects or situations. Regardless of the evidence, this situation we're discussing is actually a perfect example of emotional reasoning. If I am this upset, what you did must be horrible. This is backwards, and it's also a fallacy. A person's emotions about a situation or a thing are not proof of anything about that situation or thing in this particular context. The emotions of the narcissist are completely disconnected from the reality of this situation, and they're not even really related to it. They've been walking around a ticking time bomb for however long and have now exploded. If you try to reason with that, if you try to say, yeah, but leaving a spoon in the Sink is not a horrible crime. This only makes them angrier. You're now discounting their feelings and attacking their entire worldview. You're also trying to get away with all your dastardly deeds by lying and gaslighting and being manipulative. And you're sitting there like, dude, I just left a spoon in the sink. Narcissists treat their internal state as primary evidence for external reality. The problem with this is it isn't. They are using their emotions as a sensor for the world, but the sensor is just reflecting their own psychology and emotions back to them. A core feature of emotional reasoning is that it overrides actual evidence. Most people look at exploding into a rage tantrum that lasts for hours over a spoon in the sink and say, holy cow, that was a massive overreaction on my part. It is not that big of a deal, and it certainly was not worth all of that. Holy smokes. Narcissists look at this same situation and say that their level of rage proves that the spoon was a big deal. When narcissists get upset, their paranoia begins running wild and literally all bets are off. So not only does it prove that, it also proves whatever else they think about the situation that you did it on purpose just to upset them, that you hate them, that it's some weird secret signal that means something about them, that it happens every day, all the time, every second. This is your sneaky way of sending them a message about how you really feel about whatever crazy thing that they had to blow this up into to make it make sense that they were that upset over a damn spoon in the sink. This is one of the reasons high levels of narcissism result in elevated levels of aggression. The way their personality is structured, any negative things they experience are automatically perceived as being intentionally caused by things outside of themselves that usually translates into other people. As we saw in the meta analysis, the increase of aggression in these personalities is more than doubled with provocation. Not that anyone who has ever dealt with a narcissist needs to be told that. It's unfortunate then, that the internal landscape of narcissists tends to be so negative. They operate off of a dual core of shame and envy, making them quite possibly some of the most miserable people to walk to earth. And they blame it all on everybody else. I'm unhappy, so you must be making me unhappy. I'm scared, so you must be making me scared. I'm jealous, so you must be making me jealous. I'm shame filled. I'm awkward. I'm unsuccessful. I'm unmotivated. I can't focus. I'm bored. I failed whatever I did or am or have or think or said or feel that I don't like. You did it. You are causing it somehow. This makes narcissists angry. Of course it does. Why wouldn't it? How dare you sabotage them? How dare you do anything except exactly what they want you to do? So they react with aggression as a way to blow off steam and regulate themselves. They literally have no other coping skill or mechanism or way to do that. Many narcissists are masochistic also, and part of this process for them is to intentionally try to provoke the other person into this same punitive, raging, aggressive behavior. By doing this, they achieve the catharsis of venting rage, the power of unleashing aggression, the masochistic need to be punished, the satisfaction of not being the only bad one, the ability to view themselves as a victim because now you came at them. The self righteousness of punishing an enemy because now you did something wrong. The justification to combat any shame for themselves because now they're defending themselves. It's important to remember too that even though we're talking about intense unregulated emotions, this does not always mean the actions are going to be violent or obvious. Passive aggression is aggression. How angry does somebody have to be to give the silent treatment for weeks or even months? How angry do they have to be to smear you to other people behind your back, especially if they come smiling in your face? How angry do they have to be to be willing to sabotage themselves just to inconvenience you? How aggressive? How needing to be controlling, how needing to be dominant. This is not harmless behavior or some kind of like relationship game playing. It's hostility, it's aggression with the same motives as other types of aggression. This is whether it comes from narcissists or not. By the way, anyone engaging in passive aggressive behavior is communicating hostility and a desire to dominate and control, period. Narcissists use aggression to regulate themselves is extremely important to their psychological makeup and functioning as we have been discussing. It's one of the ways that they're able to feel powerful, regain or assert dominance, regain or assert control, protect their false self image, protect their fragile self esteem, protect their fragile ego, release frustration, vent anger, receive dopamine hits, blow off steam and combat any pressure that they're under, which is usually a lot because of the way that they process things and the way they think about stuff and view the world and combat boredom. That last one might sound Strange. How does boredom lead to aggression? To put it simply, narcissists experience boredom as crushing and oppressive. It's extremely difficult for them to just sit there with themselves with no distractions. If they do that, they start thinking this can very quickly lead to a spiral into darkness and negativity that they find it difficult to get out of. To prevent this, they might pick a fight or engage in other aggressive type of behaviors designed to provoke reactions from other people. This helps them offload these negative emotions, get some attention, engage their brains, get some dopamine, validate some things, assert their fake image of themselves, assert their ego, maybe get some adrenaline, assert themselves as strong and powerful, feed their chaos addiction that they all seem to have, maybe even feel superior to somebody, hopefully feel like they won something somehow. It really does, a lot. And in many ways it requires very little real effort. Like, how hard is it to start a fight with somebody? It's not that hard. If you're dealing with a narcissist, this is what you're dealing with. Someone who feels justified using heightened or even extreme levels of aggression against other human beings in order to get what they want or feel like they need. These are people who will burn your house down because you gave them a dirty look. They are bullies. They are babies. They are weak and powerless kings and queens of nothing who nevertheless feel entitled to whatever they want whenever they want it and feel completely justified causing harm or damage to other people if this does not happen. They are terrified, angry, irresponsible, oblivious. They only care about winning, whatever that means to them. They only care about control and domination, whatever that looks like to them. By the way, manipulation can also be aggression, because manipulation is about control and domination. There's no way to successfully interact with this. Aggression does not respond to reason or diplomacy. You cannot discuss things logically with a person who believes that your every word is a crime and an attack and hostile. You cannot come to a resolution with a person who sees you as nothing more than a human punching bag for their own stress and frustration. It is you who must see yourself as more, because you are. The only way to navigate these relationships without getting constantly harmed by them is to exit them as quickly and safely as you can. People often ask me, well, what if it's my mother, my father, my sister, uncle, cousin, grandma? The answer is the same for all of these as it is for an abusive partner or anybody else. If someone is hurting you, if they harm, upset, or scare or mistreat you, get away from them as soon as you can. If you don't want it to happen anymore. And if you legitimately, legitimately cannot do that, practice the Gray Rock Method and have as little contact with them as you possibly can until that changes. Now, there's often frustration from people when they hear that, and that's understandable. But there also really is no other answer. If there was a way to force these people to act right, somebody would have found it by now. We are going on a few thousand years of existence at this point and nobody has found it yet. The reality is you cannot make somebody treat you well if they don't want to. Part of understanding these personalities and humans in general has to be understanding that there's no secret phrase or magic pill or sacred code or anything else that is going to change somebody into something they refuse to be. The person has to want to treat you decently. They have to care and think that that matters. If they don't, they're not going to. And there isn't anything you can do to change that. You just have to stay away from them once you see it. If you can't do that right now because you are forced to live with or interact with them for some reason, then just do the best you can to ignore and avoid them. Practice the Gray Rock Method and keep working toward getting away from them. Eventually, this is the best thing you can possibly do and the only truly successful outcome that there's likely to be. I hope this clears a few things up for you. As always, I look forward to your comments, questions and suggestions, so please keep those coming. I take appointments online, over the phone, via text, via messenger, via email, and through Skype and Zoom for clients worldwide. So if you're interested in speaking with me one on one, you can visit littleshaman.org to do that. I have several books in publication, so if you are interested in picking up a copy of any or all of those, you can visit littleshaman.org to do that or find them on Amazon.com I teach workshops, seminars and clinics throughout the month, so if you are interested in seeing what we are running this month, you can visit littleshaman.org to do that. And if you're interested in joining our support group with access to exclusive content, weekly support meetings, and more, we really have a fantastic group. You can visit littleshaman.org to do that as well. You have been listening to the Meditations and more podcasts brought to you by littleshaman.org that's me, little Shaman. May the Great Spirit bless you. Have a beautiful day.