How Some Narcissists See Other People
(People as tools, threats, mirrors, or competitors)
- “If people know that you care about them, they’re going to use that.”
- “If they don’t know that you care, they’ll keep chasing you — and that gives you the upper hand.”
- “You’re not important enough for me to enjoy hurting you.”
- “They’re all so stupid.”
- “How could they possibly understand me?”
- “People are dramatic and performative.”
- “They’re trying to make it about themselves.”
People are experienced primarily as sources of admiration, valued for the validation they provide rather than for mutual connection. They are also perceived as threats to status, capable of undermining one’s sense of superiority or exposing vulnerability. Others are often viewed as objects who will exploit weakness if it is revealed, rather than as safe or trustworthy relational partners. Emotional expression is interpreted not as sincerity, but as manipulation or performance designed to gain advantage or attention. Other people are therefore seen as fundamentally inferior, unserious, or lacking depth, rather than as equals. Empathy, in this framework, is understood as something people enact or display strategically, not as a genuine internal experience. The core mindset is: “People aren’t relating, they’re positioning.”
How Some Narcissists See Themselves
(Grandiosity + self-contempt coexisting)
- “I hate myself, but I’m better than everybody else.”
- “I’m smarter, more attractive, more charismatic.”
- “I am better, how could they understand me?”
- “There has never been a time I felt an ounce of self-love.”
- “I am broken and defective.”
- “Everything feels like an act.”
Underlying these patterns are a set of core beliefs in which worth is understood as comparative rather than intrinsic, measured only in relation to others rather than experienced as something inherent. Self-esteem is not felt internally but must be won through achievement, recognition, or dominance. Identity is constructed as a performance to be evaluated by others, rather than as a lived, internal experience. Within this framework, the self is organised in rigid extremes: it is experienced either as superior and admired, or as worthless and despised, with little capacity to hold a stable sense of self in between. The core mindset is: “If I’m not exceptional, I’m nothing.”
How Some Narcissists Experience Relationships
(Control, distance, idealization, devaluation)
- “Showing affection is humiliating.”
- “Dependency is shameful.”
- “Love is like a carrot on a stick.”
- “If someone sees me weak, they’ll take advantage of me.”
- “I blew the relationship up.”
- “They were beneath me.”
- “I need them to be my equal or superior, otherwise why bother?”
The relational patterns illustrated here follow a familiar narcissistic cycle. Relationships often begin with idealisation, in which another person is experienced as perfect, equal in status, or superior in a way that reflects positively on the self. This idealisation is fragile and can collapse rapidly when confronted with external opinion or ordinary human imperfection, leading to devaluation. When closeness threatens to expose vulnerability, withdrawal becomes the preferred strategy, as emotional distance is experienced as a way of preserving power and control. In many cases, relationships are ultimately destroyed pre-emptively, ended before the individual can be seen as weak, dependent, or emotionally exposed. At the core of these patterns lies the belief that closeness itself is dangerous or: “Closeness equals danger.”
How Some Narcissists Understand Vulnerability
(Weakness = annihilation risk)
- “Being admired is more important than being genuine.”
- “I literally can’t be genuine.”
- “Vulnerability is humiliating.”
- “I hated that she saw me weak and pathetic.”
- “I never brought it up again.”
Implicit within these dynamics is the belief that vulnerability hands power to others and places the self at risk of exploitation. To be seen fully is experienced not as intimacy, but as exposure, carrying the expectation of judgement, use, or eventual discard. As a result, authentic emotional expression is perceived as a threat to the carefully constructed self, endangering the identity that has been built to maintain control, status, and psychological survival. The core mindset is: “If you see the real me, you’ll destroy me.”
Some Narcissistic View of Empathy
(Cognitive empathy without emotional resonance)
- “I know it’s sad, I just can’t feel anything.”
- “I can recognize emotions, I just can’t connect to them.”
Within this belief system, emotions are understood as objective facts rather than lived experiences, something to be recognised cognitively rather than felt internally. Empathy functions in an informational capacity, allowing an awareness of what others are feeling without facilitating emotional connection or shared experience. Consequently, other people’s pain remains abstract and conceptual, acknowledged in theory but not felt or emotionally resonated with in practice. The core mindset here is: “I understand emotions, I don’t experience them.”
Narcissistic Relationship to Power & Status
(Hierarchy obsession)
- “I couldn’t tolerate being at the bottom.”
- “I’d rather lose my house than be humiliated.”
- “I won’t do work beneath me.”
- “I need to be at the top.”
Underlying these dynamics is a belief system in which personal worth is equated with rank and position within a hierarchy. Humiliation is experienced as more threatening than physical loss or even death, as it represents a collapse of status and self-coherence. Submission, in this framework, is not understood as flexibility or cooperation but as an annihilation of identity, rendering the self psychologically unrecognisable. The core mindset here is: “Hierarchy determines human value.”
Narcissistic Thinking About Change
(Conditional responsibility)
- “People can change, but can doesn’t mean will.”
- “Don’t expect people to change for you.”
- “You have to take people as they are.”
Beneath the surface lies a subtext in which change is only considered viable if it serves or enhances the individual’s self-image. Responsibility is approached strategically rather than morally, taken on when it offers advantage or preserves status rather than from an internalised ethical commitment. Accountability, therefore, is not assumed as a given but is negotiated, contingent on context, power dynamics, and perceived benefit. The core mindset on this one is: “I’ll change if it serves me.”
Narcissistic Use of Insight
(Insight without surrender)
A key pattern that emerges is the presence of extreme self-awareness alongside minimal emotional relinquishment. This is illustrated by a deep familiarity with diagnostic language and psychological frameworks, as well as articulate and sophisticated descriptions of personal pathology. Despite this level of insight, admiration continues to be prioritised, indicating that self-knowledge functions more as a means of self-regulation and control than as a pathway toward emotional surrender or relational change. The core mindset here is: “Understanding myself doesn’t mean giving anything up.”
Narcissistic “One-Liners” From Clients
- “If people know you care, they’ll use it.”
- “Admiration matters more than honesty.”
- “Vulnerability is humiliation.”
- “People exist to reflect me.”
- “If I’m not exceptional, I’m worthless.”
- “Distance keeps me safe.”
- “Love is leverage.”
- “Weakness invites exploitation.”
- “Other people are either assets or threats.”
- “Being ordinary is intolerable.”
When a Man Does Not Want to Change
Not every man who enters therapy is seeking transformation. Some are not looking to soften, reform, or become emotionally expressive. Some are not trying to save relationships, repair reputations, or become kinder versions of themselves. Instead, they arrive with the goal of know thy self. And many have out right told me in therapy that “I don’t want to change, but I want to understand myself.”
I wanted to write this for the man who suspects he is narcissistic, who recognises patterns of grandiosity, emotional distance, manipulation, or superiority, but does not feel motivated to relinquish them. He may not be formally diagnosed. He may actively resist diagnosis. He may even reject the moral framing of narcissism as something that must be cured. Yet something keeps pulling him toward self-examination. But how in the world do you find someone who not only understands narcissism but also does not try to change you and is not dumb enough to play games with.
In contemporary discourse, therapy is often framed as a vehicle for change: behavioural change, relational change, emotional change. But for a very specific certain type of man, particularly those with extremely high levels of narcissistic traits, this framing is not only inaccurate, it is counterproductive. Therapy, in these cases, may serve a different function altogether: awareness without obligation. I argue that therapy does not always need to aim for change in order to be meaningful, ethical, or effective. For some men, awareness itself is the work.
The Narcissistic Dilemma: Insight Without Desire
Men with narcissistic traits often possess a paradoxical combination of characteristics: high cognitive insight and low emotional motivation for change. They may understand themselves intellectually while remaining detached from the emotional consequences of their behaviour. Unlike clients who present in distress and plead for relief, these men may arrive composed, articulate, and sceptical. They may say things such as:
- “I know I’m like this.”
- “I don’t see the point in changing.”
- “This works for me.”
- “Other people are the problem.”
Crucially, this does not mean they lack suffering. Rather, their suffering is often structural rather than emotional, manifesting as chronic loneliness, boredom, rage, or a sense of emptiness that is difficult to articulate.
Traditional therapeutic goals like empathy-building, vulnerability, relational repair, can feel threatening or irrelevant to such men. When therapy is framed as a corrective process, it risks reinforcing their defensiveness or turning the therapeutic space into another arena for performance and control. With such clients I am a sparing partner as apposed to a punching bag. We are gladiators pushing the client to get bring out all of their “parts”. Sometimes our work in therapy goes a step further than understand to destruction minimisation. Clearly if the client is causing havoc and to the point of their own demise, lets look at being “strategic” and calculated in how the client moves through the world and manages relationships to minimise the cost to those around him.
Therapy as Observation, Not Intervention
For the narcissistic man who does not want to change, therapy can function less as an intervention and more as a mirror. Not a moral mirror, and not a corrective one, but an observational one. In this model, therapy becomes a place where patterns are noticed rather than challenged, named rather than dismantled. In my practise, as the therapist, I do not demand empathy, humility, or remorse. Instead, the work focuses on making the internal operating system visible.
The focus of key questions shifts from “How do we stop this behaviour?” to a deeper, more exploratory perspective: “What function does this behaviour serve?” “What occurs internally before and after this moment?” and “What are you protecting?” This approach honours the client’s autonomy, as it does not demand that they renounce their narcissistic traits, but rather encourages them to observe and understand those traits with clarity and insight.
Awareness as a Therapeutic Endpoint
In mainstream psychotherapy, awareness is often treated as a stepping stone, useful only insofar as it leads to change. But for some men, awareness itself is the endpoint.
Awareness means:
- Recognising when one is performing rather than relating
- Noticing when admiration is regulating self-esteem
- Identifying when distance is used to maintain power
- Understanding how shame drives grandiosity
This kind of awareness does not automatically soften behaviour. But it does introduce choice. A man who understands himself is no longer entirely ruled by unconscious compulsion. He may still choose distance over closeness. He may still choose dominance over reciprocity. But he knows what he is doing, and why. That knowledge alone alters the internal landscape.
Why Forcing Change Often Fails
Attempts to push narcissistic men toward change often backfire. Change can feel like surrender, humiliation, or loss of identity. For men whose sense of self is organised around superiority and control, being asked to change can feel existentially threatening.
Moreover, premature focus on change can:
- Increase manipulation within therapy
- Encourage pseudo-vulnerability
- Reinforce performance rather than authenticity
- Strengthen resistance
In contrast, an awareness-based approach lowers the stakes. If nothing is required of the client, defences soften naturally. Over time, moments of genuine curiosity may emerge, not because change is demanded, but because awareness makes certain patterns harder to ignore.
The Therapist’s Role: Containment, Not Conversion
In this model, the therapist is not a reformer. They are a container.
The therapist tolerates:
- Grandiosity without challenging it
- Detachment without moralising it
- Superiority without submitting to it
This does not mean collusion. It means neutrality. The therapist holds the client’s internal world without trying to reshape it prematurely. Over time, the therapeutic relationship itself becomes instructive. The client observes how they relate to the therapist, when they idealise, devalue, withdraw, test, or dominate. These relational dynamics become data, not problems to be solved.
When Awareness Quietly Becomes Change
An important paradox must be acknowledged here, while the goal of therapy may not be change, change sometimes occurs anyway. Not dramatic change. Not redemption arcs. But subtle shifts:
- Slightly less rage when criticised
- Slightly more tolerance of ambiguity
- Slightly less need to dominate every interaction
- Slightly more curiosity about others
These changes do not arise from moral pressure. They emerge organically from sustained self-observation. Awareness destabilises rigid identities over time. Yet even if change never comes, the therapy has still served its purpose.
Ethical Therapy for the Unwilling Client
There is an ethical tension in working with clients who do not want to change. But autonomy is central to ethical practice. Therapy is not a corrective institution. It is not a moral court. For the narcissistic man, therapy offers something rare, which is a space where he is neither demonised nor indulged, neither fixed nor abandoned. He is simply seen. And for some men, that is the first genuinely relational experience they have ever had.
How Male Minds Counselling Can Help Men Who Are Self Identified As Narcissistic
Not all men in therapy are seeking redemption. Some are seeking orientation, a map of their inner terrain. For the narcissistic man who does not want to change, therapy can offer exactly that: understanding without coercion, awareness without demand. And sometimes, understanding is the most radical intervention of all.
At Male Minds Counselling, I work with men who struggle with parts of themselves they find difficult to face whether it’s anger, vulnerability, or patterns of behaviour that have caused tension in relationships or at work. For me, therapy isn’t about forcing change or telling you who you should be. My focus is on helping you understand yourself clearly, honestly, and without judgment.
I work with men who may recognise dark patterns in themselves like needing control, seeking admiration, or avoiding vulnerability, but who aren’t ready or willing to “fix” them. The goal of therapy doesn’t always have to be change; sometimes it’s simply awareness. Together, we explore what drives your thoughts, behaviours, and emotions so you can see why you do what you do, how it affects others, and how you might navigate life in a way that feels more conscious and intentional.
In our sessions, I help you:
- Understand the function behind your behaviours, rather than labelling them as “good” or “bad.”
- Recognise patterns that influence your relationships, work, and self-esteem.
- Explore your internal experiences safely, without pressure to be vulnerable before you’re ready.
- Develop strategies to manage your life and relationships in ways that reduce unnecessary conflict and stress.
Therapy with me is a space to explore your mind, your choices, and your patterns, without shame, judgment, or performance. It’s a chance to be honest with yourself, gain clarity, and take control of your life on your own terms.
Cassim