Narcissists crave praise, whether they show it or not. It is their fuel, their lifeline, their reason for existing. But here’s where it gets interesting: when you lay it on just a little too thick, they don’t just accept it; they escalate it. At first, they soak it up, nodding along and feeling like they’re finally being seen as the superior beings they think they are. But then they start to get carried away. If you tell them they’re the most intelligent person you’ve ever met, instead of brushing it off like a normal person would, they start going into grandiosity. They might tell you they could have been running the country by now if they had chosen a different career, or claim that their IQ is higher than Einstein’s. They begin sharing stories of how people have always looked up to them, how they were born special, and how they just know things most people don’t. Suddenly, they don’t sound like a confident, successful person anymore; they sound delusional. They are revealing their desperate need to be seen as larger than life, and that right there is their real self. See, narcissists cannot help but overextend when they feel admired; they can’t stop themselves from taking it too far because their hunger for praise is never satisfied. So all you have to do is give them a little push, and they will do the rest.
Number Four: The Mild Criticism Test.
Narcissists cannot handle even the smallest hint of criticism; you know that, don’t you? They don’t see it as feedback; they see it as an attack on their very identity. A normal person, if you correct them on something small, will probably say, “Oh, oops, thanks for catching that.” But a narcissist? That’s a different story. Tell them they misspelled a word in an email, and they will either flat-out deny it or argue that it’s actually an alternative spelling. Can you believe that? Tell them they got a date wrong in a story, and they’ll swear you are mistaken. Mention that their restaurant recommendation wasn’t as great as they hyped it up to be, and suddenly you are the problem for being negative all the time. They can’t just say, “Oh, my bad”; they have to rewrite reality so that they’re always right. In doing so, they expose how fragile their ego is. A tiny piece of criticism is all it takes to make them spiral into defensiveness, denial, and sometimes even outright rage. They may start attacking you, flipping the script and making you feel like you did something wrong just for pointing out a harmless mistake or an obvious truth. And that is when you see the deep insecurity underneath all that bravado.
Having this will make it hard for narcissists to replace you
Number Five: The Empathy Test.
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