Transcription
Narcissists see themselves as being deeply empathetic, very good, kind, generous, upstanding citizens. They genuinely believe that they are good people.
And how do they maintain this false image of themselves despite the way that they actually behave and the way that they actually treat others? By actively rewriting history and employing all kinds of Olympic-level mental gymnastics to rationalize, justify, and excuse their own bad behavior. They outsource blame, accountability, gaslight, deflect, blame shift, actively rewrite history, confabulate entirely alternate realities in order to support their image of themselves that they are this great amazing person. They lie not only to others but to themselves in order to remain ego congruent; meaning that they force this false reality about the truth of their actions in order to remain in alignment with how they see themselves, which is always, when you're dealing with a narcissist, "I am a good person. I am kind. I am generous. I am deeply empathetic. I care about others."
And the process by which they justify their bad behavior is, "I would never treat someone that badly." And so if I did do something that wasn't great, they made me do it. And what I did was simply just retaliation. And they will actively, often subconsciously, confabulate a story that lines up their bad behavior as being someone else's fault. As being, "because they did that, I did this." It's not actually me. Even if it's completely fabricated, they have to remain ego congruent and rewrite the entire scene in order to remain good, kind, just, empathetic, caring, and they typically genuinely believe that.
And they typically also surround themselves with people who would highly recommend them because they act like such a great person to those people because the mask is very strong when they're trying to use others in order to reinforce the kind of person that they are and put the image out there that they are this kind, amazing, caring, generous, thoughtful person, no matter how monstrously they behave behind closed doors.
And if you're new here, I'm a narcissistic abuse educator and a narcissistic relationship recovery coach.