Detecting Narcissistic Behaviour - A Checklist

Navigating tricky relationship dynamics during the holiday season & beyond.

It’s that time of year again filled with holiday cheer and woes. Some might be feeling great, anxious or mixed about spending time with family, circles of friends and work parties. Here’s a checklist to help you be alert to attempts at domination, control tactics, power hoarding and good ol’ fashioned public humiliation.

The narcissism I’m speaking about is relational narcissism, NOT NPD or other related diagnoses that are derived from a medical model of human experience. It’s the self-protective behaviours that show up when one person is feeling unsafe or threatened, is emotionally dysregulated and react as if they need to defend their honour or their existence by controlling others and/or their environment.

The following list can help you identify when someone is trying to control you and your experience of the them.

To make it easier to work with this list, take a moment to become aware of someone who you suspect or know has taken charge in your relationship with them.

Now that you have someone in mind, count the number of points you can check off this list. This will help you identify the behaviours they’re using to attempt to control, undermine, exploit or manipulate you.

Ready? Here we go!

Narcissistic Behaviour Checklist

1. Power differential. It doesn’t matter if you’re older, have a more senior role or more qualifications. Anyone who has the power to diminish, invalidate or devalue you is using their perceived superiority to put your down.

2. Parent-child dynamic. Also known as infantilisation. This applies in families, friend groups and professional relationships. You and the other are re-enacting core wounds from your upbringing to claim control and safety. This can also appear as sibling-sibling or master-servant dynamics too. Be aware of the parent you’ve had greater issues with for clues about the role this person is playing in your story.

3. Blaming and shaming language ie. “You made me angry.” “I’m disappointed in you.” “I’m sorry you feel that way.” especially when you say something that contradicts their ideas or takes attention away from them. This is how they assume a critical parent role even if they’re not your parent.

4. Superiority. They devalue or demonize you or others who don’t live up to their ideal or their expectations.

5. Black and white thinking. They have fixed rules about how the world works and how others should behave while never needing to hold themselves to account when they fail to walk their talk.

6. Self-centred. They centre their thoughts, feelings, opinions, experiences over yours and others.

7. Defensiveness. They get defensive if your thoughts, feelings or even experiences are different to theirs or they perceive that they’re being judged.

8. Gaslighting. They invalidate your experience by projecting their preferred version of your perceptions or events that occurred in your life.

9. Victim shaming. They blame you for other people’s shitty behaviour toward you or worse, accuse you for ‘attracting’ it. (I’m serious…some people do that).

10. Always right. They need to be right and seen in a specific way that affirms that they are a good person and take great offence to ANY opinion or inquiring feedback that suggests otherwise.

11. Perpetual attention. They must always be in the spotlight either through their greatness or victimhood.

12. Self-importance. They show entitlement to attention, recognition, approval or priority.

13. Conversation control. They move conversations away from a confronting topic to their feelings about you, challenge your perspectives and probe for personal info to find ammunition that they will weaponise against you later.

This list is not exhaustive yet lists a number of obvious to subtle behaviour traits to help you detect and plan your responses to them - so that you can break free from old patterns and create new ones.

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That exercise might have felt somewhere on the affirming to confronting spectrum. Now what to do about it.

There are two areas you can work on that will increase your access to peace.

Ego Management (the inner work)

• Know yourself and your beliefs and values. If you’re ok with them then you won’t need others to approve of them…even your parents.

• Self-restraint. Refrain from needing to be right or for a right/wrong dichotomy to exist (within reason & depending on the subject). You know what’s true to you and make that be enough. You will need to anchor to this when they try to provoke you. Taking slow deep breaths can help with this.

• Realistic, not idealistic expectations. Check your expectations of them and yourself. Consider eliminating any expectation of them doing anything differently than the data you’ve collected about their behaviour. Are they realistic or idealistic?

• Accept them as they are. They won’t change unless they want to and are motivated and supported to make change happen. You’re the only one in control of your perceptions, expectations and responses to them.

• Make space to acknowledge and fully feel. It’s likely you’ll feel sad, grief, resentment and any other emotion about the loss of a fantasy or hope that they could ever change. Repeat.

Response Strategies (the outer work)

1. Withdraw any emotional investment in their ability to ‘see’ or value you beyond being a resource to that person. They will not provide you with the validation you seek from them. Accept that they are not going to be interested in you or your perspective regardless of how much you want them to.

2. Notice something positive about them. Look for something you can appreciate about them and be genuine otherwise you’ll hate yourself. ie. “This sounds really important to you.” “I can see how much you care about being organised/detailed/planned/ready/validated.”

3. Affirm that their beliefs are true to them. You don’t need to agree with them and you also don’t need to publicly disagree with them. Choose to help them feel seen, heard & validated even if you disagree with their opinion. You can reflect back to them what is true to them. Don’t try to be right, attempt to correct them or believe you can show them the way, unless they ask for your perspective.

4. Let them be in the spotlight. When you feel secure and confident in yourself, you won’t need to be the brightest person in the room. Be ok with them continuing to have all the ideas and knowledge. Don’t expect them to see you, or be capable of seeing you despite their education level, professional title or role in the family.

5. Stay on the surface with them. Focus conversations on superficial topics and tasks to avoid discussing anything of a personal nature. Do this while still being pleasant and friendly. Keep the conversation short and purposeful.

6. Gray Rock method. A person who provokes you is trying to get you angry, defensive, upset, emotional (so they can use that against you). They need drama. Refrain from showing an emotional response and give answers that express curiosity. “That’s interesting.” “Ok” “Thanks for sharing.” You will need to do a mix of affirming and gray rock before you fully transition into gray rock to ease into a new relating habit.

Have a trusted support to debrief with after your encounter with that person. Make sure this person has a track record of being able to help you feel seen, validate your experience and remind you of your goodness and resilience.

If you would like to hear a more nuanced dissection of some of these points, check out this Clubhouse replay of our room Navigating Narcissistic Behaviour moderated by phenomenal keynote speaker, writer & acclaimed mental health professional Nidhi Tewari LCSW.

Thanks for reading, supporting and sharing,

Nathalie Martinek, PhD

The Narcissism Hacker