Now, going with this kind of fragile but charming presentation is the fact that the covert narcissist will very often be self-deprecating, but usually, there’s this underlying message that contradicts the self-deprecation. There’s an element of the self-deprecation where they clearly want you to counter it and complement them. Here’s an example for you: you go to somebody’s house, and it is spotless. In fact, you walk in, and you’re like, ‘Wow, I could never keep a house this clean.’ And the host says to you, ‘Oh, I’m not really much of a housekeeper, and I don’t really have a great design sense,’ when it’s completely clear that they focus a lot on design, and if it’s not their design sense, they paid somebody to have that design sense. But clearly, they’re looking for you to say, ‘This is such a beautiful house; you obviously have a wonderful design sense.’ No, it’s so clean; I could never keep a house as clean. So, they’re really looking for you to reinforce their ego. So, the self-deprecation is a form of manipulation.
Again, when we talk about narcissists, it’s difficult because everybody goes into that, ‘Am I a narcissist? I do that.’ But these are pervasive patterns of behavior meant to manipulate the other person to do what you want or what you think you need on a continual basis, without regard for them. So, they’re not really concerned about, ‘Oh, am I making this person coming into my home feel welcome, feel comfortable?’ It’s no; it’s like, ‘I want the admiration for what a wonderful home I have.’
Sign number three, and this one you don’t really find out until you are close to the covert narcissist or if they’re a family member, which is a difficult place to be, but the covert narcissist’s public image, the image they project in public, is totally different from what you know of the person. So, you could be—let’s say you have a friend, and you’re beginning to question, ‘Is she a covert narcissist?’ And when you’re out in public, she’ll say things in a group like, ‘I never gossip; oh, I don’t even like to listen to gossip.’ But when you get home or in a private dinner with her, she will be gossiping and putting other people down, which I think is another one of the signs we’ll come to in a little bit. But what they’ll say in public about themselves is very contradictory to who they really are. And if this is somebody that you’re really in a close relationship with, if this is a partner of yours or a parent or a sibling, it is very difficult because it’s a very isolating place to be if you are looking to your family members for support of how this person is putting you down, giving you these criticisms that are sort of mixed up with compliments but really manipulating you and not being nice. Other people don’t see it; other people will downplay what’s happening, and you really begin to feel like, ‘Huh, am I nuts? What’s wrong here?’ And that’s really one of the most damaging things of being in a relationship with a narcissist, is that we begin to question ourselves more and more, and it just eats away at our self-esteem.
11 Methods To Detect A Covert Narcissist
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