Transcription
Welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics. If you find this video to be interesting or helpful, please like it and subscribe to my channel. Oh, this is Dr. Grande.
Today's question asks if I can talk about the characteristics of a narcissistic rage. And another question I received here is, how can we differentiate narcissistic rage from regular rage? So, I'll answer this question by looking at the nine characteristics of narcissistic rage.
So, first, I'll start with narcissism. I'll just cover this briefly. The construct of narcissism, we see here, it's a personality trait characterized by being antagonistic, self-centered, entitled, and requiring admiration. Narcissism is fairly common. It runs on a continuum, so somebody can have no narcissism or very little, all the way up to a pathological level, so a level that interferes with functioning, an extreme level of narcissism. Sometimes this can be diagnosed as a mental disorder called narcissistic personality disorder.
Now, there are two types of narcissism: grandiose and vulnerable. And the way we think about it is, no matter which type somebody primarily has, they can move back and forth between the types. With the grandiose type, we see characteristics like being socially dominant, extroverted, arrogant, and resistant to criticism. This last one is going to be fairly important for talking about narcissistic rage. Grandiose is also called overt narcissism.
Vulnerable narcissism has characteristics like having a lot of shame, resentfulness, mistrust, and being hypersensitive to criticism. It's sometimes referred to as covert narcissism.
So, what is narcissistic rage? Well, this is an anger that we observe frequently with people who are highly narcissistic, including many of those who have narcissistic personality disorder. It has both reactive and instrumental components. So, what do I mean by this? Well, in the moment, when a narcissist is criticized or whatever triggers the reaction, we see that the anger is sudden, irrational, disproportionate to the level of criticism, and may involve physical gestures or even aggression. So, that's the reactive component. But then, after this, we see recurrent anger outbursts and a desire to get revenge that can really last a long time. This is the instrumental part. So, we have this immediate reactive impulse, and then we have kind of a long-term impulse. So, reactive and instrumental.
Now, the reason narcissistic rage happens is because narcissism is essentially the creation of a false self to protect an insecure self. So, the false self is the belief that the narcissist has that they are important, special, a person who is entitled to all types of things, a very valuable person by any measure. The fragile sense of self, sometimes called the fragile ego, is that part of the narcissist that recognizes that they are not special. It's insecurity, a sense of vulnerability. It's too painful to directly confront. So, the false self, or the false persona, must stay in place to protect the ego from this horrible pain. So, if the narcissist is criticized, that challenges the narcissism, that protective part. The narcissist compensates for the criticism through rage. Rage allows the narcissist to keep that false self in place, to maintain their own self-deception. The only person a narcissist really needs to deceive is themselves. They try to deceive others, but again, they only need to lie to themselves, and of course, they need to believe those lies.
So, let's take a look at the nine characteristics of narcissistic rage.
Number one: It is typically triggered by criticism. I mentioned this before, and we see certain types of criticism that tend to evoke this rage more so than others. We see criticisms about somebody's personality, like if they have a lack of caring to them, if that part is criticized, or their arrogance is criticized, if they're criticized for being condescending, for lying, being selfish, being greedy. All those could trigger narcissistic rage. And in work settings, we often see leaders or managers who are narcissistic be triggered by being accused of not doing any work, by not being hands-on enough, like leaders who try to delegate everything and don't really get involved in any direct work. We see this criticism in work settings has taken as a challenge to their authority, right? So, that can bring about narcissistic rage.
Number two: We see that the rage results in hatred. It's remembered forever. The narcissist tends to hold a grudge, and they presume the criticism was personal. Along with this, they demand a retraction, recompense for the criticism, revenge. They want the critic to pay for what they did.
The third characteristic of narcissistic rage: It happens even when the criticism was fair, when the criticism was worded lightly, when it was made in jest, like if somebody is teasing a narcissist. We also see that when other people who are in the same group as the narcissist are criticized in the same way, like say, in a work setting, all the people who do one job are criticized, and the narcissist is in that group. The narcissist will take personal offense at that criticism, even though it was directed to the entire group. So, they are angry because they were criticized, but they're not angry on behalf of the other people in that group.
So, moving on to number four: We see that the rage occurs even when the narcissist has a good argument to make. So, the narcissist really bypasses any potential good argument in favor of rage and personal attacks. So, the rage is rambling and it misses valid counterpoints.
This point reminds me of an example from years ago. I was doing consulting to this company that had multiple sites, and they had someone employed there who may have been a narcissist. My job wasn't to diagnose anybody there, but there were certain narcissistic characteristics with this person. And they really had this job where they did various tasks. They did a lot of cleaning and maintenance, but they also drove this delivery van, and they would move stuff back and forth between the sites. So, his internal deliveries only, they weren't going to the outside other companies. And when this employee would back the delivery van up to this building, the van never really sat between the lines straight. So, the van always seemed to be between the lines, but crooked, right? And the people with the site used to kind of tease the employee about this. It wasn't really mean-spirited, just saying he didn't know how to back up, he wasn't a good driver. And he really went kind of way over the top in his response. He would make fun of them in response in this narcissistic rage. He would criticize really a lot of different things about them, their choice of clothing, their work performance, building, anything he could get ahold of. And it seemed really disproportionate to just being accused of not backing up straight.
But here's kind of my point with this particular component of narcissism, missing valid counterpoints. I was curious about why he always seemed to back in crooked into the space. And the day that I would visit that site, it was about once every two weeks, did seem to line up with the diaries, make a lot of deliveries. So, I saw him do this quite a few times. So, one time I went out when the van was parked there, and I noticed that the line was straight with the wheels on the passenger side, but it was closer on the driver's side to the front and farther away in the back. Like the lines were crooked, not his parking was crooked. So, I took a tape measure and I confirmed that that one of the lines appeared to be perpendicular to the building and the other line was crooked. So, I went to him, I said, you know, they've been criticizing you about your parking job here, but the lines are actually crooked. So, that's what's going on. It's not the driving skill that's really an issue. So, that's kind of like this valid counterpoint that he just completely missed. He went off and criticized them, he was angry, and he had a valid point to make. He wasn't actually backing up in an incorrect way.
So, an interesting twist with the story is later on, it was about two weeks later, I talked to him about, I said, did you mention that the lines were crooked and that your driving was actually okay? As it turns out, as I mentioned before, he did a lot of different jobs there. Well, he painted the lines, right? So, it turns out, I guess it was his fault, but it wasn't bad driving. He's the one who painted that line, so that wasn't straight. So, kind of an unexpected twist there with that example.
Now, in a situation like this, though, if this guy hadn't appeared the lines, you can see how it'd be challenging for a narcissist to come with a valid complaint, a valid counterpoint, because they already went into a rage. So, because he was angry and it kind of made everybody mad, if he did bring his valid point forward, they may have just said, look, this is just you being mad and angry, and they may not have listened to his argument. So, this failure to make a good case for oneself when you're criticized, this can really have this effect of people not believing you later on.
Now, the fifth point here is, because of the rage, the narcissist does miss valuable feedback. So, essentially, the rage blocks any type of learning. The rage and the result of the rage leaves the narcissist more confident. It kind of proves to them that they're right all along. People are jealous of me. People just don't understand how great I am. And again, with that type of mentality, they're not really gonna learn from any feedback.
Item number six is that the rage causes more criticism. So, somebody's criticized and they have this raised narcissistic rage, that can lead to more criticism, which leads to more rage. So, really, it can create a vicious cycle of criticism and rage. When we look at situations involving narcissism that did escalate to violence, this is something we often see. It was a back and forth. It wasn't just one comment that led to rage and violence, although that could happen. It usually tends to be this cycle, and neither side gives it up. So, we see the rage, we see the criticism back and forth, and again, sometimes it ends badly.
Number seven: We see when this rage occurs, the narcissist tries to gain allies to get people to agree with them that the critic was really the problem. So, just by getting agreement like this, just this alone can help the narcissist, the protective barrier back over that fragile sense of self. So, they're always really seeking somebody to take their side, to appreciate how badly they were treated. And at some point, because these people that the narcissist approaches are afraid of narcissists, they could use this as an opportunity to build a relationship with the narcissist and may even become what we sometimes refer to as flying monkeys. That's a reference from The Wizard of Oz. So, that means they will essentially become agents of the narcissist. So, it's interesting because the narcissist more or less recruits these agents, sometimes anyway, because of the narcissistic rage. So, they have this rage in response to criticism and they go out and look for allies, and then they use those people, they manipulate those people to do their work for them, of criticizing that original critic.
The eighth characteristic of narcissistic rage: We see the insulted narcissist is always on the offense and never on the defense. Typically, when a person is criticized, they defend themselves or they accept some or all of the criticism. But the narcissist goes on the offense, they attack, which is actually an incredibly effective defense. It sidesteps that original criticism and attacks the character of the critic. So, they introduce criticisms of their own that distract away from the original feedback about them. Sometimes this is referred to as one of the genius components of narcissism, but it's really not based on intellect. It's just the way the narcissist functions. The narcissist needs to protect themselves, and this is how they do it.
So, moving on to number nine: This is the last characteristic I'll cover here of narcissistic rage. We see the rage happens in or contributes to a vulnerable state. I mentioned before that a lot of times narcissists fluctuate between grandiose and vulnerable states, between those two types of narcissism. And with the grandiose, of course, we have a resistance to criticism. So, somebody shouldn't go into a rage because they're criticized, if they have grandiose characteristics. But the vulnerable, we see a hypersensitivity to criticism. So, it makes more sense that somebody would go into a rage with that type of narcissism. So, this fluctuation between these two types of narcissism really kind of makes sense. We think about how those types work. Somebody would really need to be moving toward a vulnerable state in order to have the rage.
So, can somebody with grandiose narcissism ever go into a rage? Absolutely, they could. But in a sense, it's really a manifestation of a vulnerable state. The criticism can activate a vulnerable part and help move that person from grandiose to vulnerable. When the rage is over, and any thoughts of revenge or anything that is over, the narcissist will move back to the grandiose state. So, the grandiose state is not necessarily written in stone. If somebody is a perfect grandiose narcissist, you know what I mean by that is they have a level of grandiosity that never moves over to vulnerable, then in theory, they would have no narcissistic rage as we think about it, because all criticisms would be deflected. And we rarely see this happen. So, this really tells us again that narcissism is on a continuum in terms of severity, but also in terms of type. Every narcissist is somewhere between vulnerable and grandiose, and it would be unlikely that somebody would be a hundred percent one type or the other.
So, those are the nine characteristics of narcissistic rage. I know whenever I talk about topics like this, there'll be a lot of different opinions, people who agree with me and disagree with me and have other thoughts and examples from their own lives. Please put those opinions and thoughts in the comment section. They always generate a really interesting dialogue. As always, I hope you found this description of narcissistic rage to be interesting. Thanks for watching.