The fish mouth I’m describing is a precursor to their next attack. When you see that fish mouth on a narcissist’s face, you’re no longer talking to a partner, parent, or friend. The person you thought you knew is gone. What stands before you is a hollow human shell—a spiritless, reactive creature whose only instinct is to protect its ego at any cost. In that moment, you’re facing a predator scanning you for the softest place to bite. A normal human face moves from emotion to emotion with a kind of softness and natural transition. The fish mouth, however, is the opposite of natural; it is rigid, abrupt, and jarring.
This face belongs to someone who has no emotional flexibility and no ability to process truth, disappointment, accountability, or shame. Their mouth tightens because their entire emotional system is built like a sealed container that has no release valve. The fish mouth is the moment the pressure inside begins to leak through the cracks, and you see it. What makes it so unsettling is how childish this expression can be. If you’ve ever seen a toddler caught doing something wrong, that strange tight-lipped downward mouth expression is almost identical. This is because the narcissist’s emotional age freezes in childhood. When their reality is pierced, they don’t respond like an adult—they regress.
The fish mouth is the emotional tantrum they do not allow to manifest outwardly; their face carries the tantrum for them. It reflects the face of a wounded child trapped inside an adult body. There’s also a spiritual dimension to this expression that people feel before they can explain it. In that moment, their face appears drained, hollowed, and stripped of warmth. The tight mouth paired with the empty eyes gives the entire face an almost disconnected quality, as if the soul has taken a back seat and something colder has stepped forward. It represents the absence of a soul, an emotional void.
Witnessing This Expression
Continue reading on the next page
Sharing is caring!