It’s not uncommon to hear “narcissism” and “narcissist” used to casually describe people who:

• Seem vain and self-centered
• Seem to care only about themselves
• Demand attention, admiration, and respect
• Exaggerate achievements
• Manipulate others for their own purposes

While these traits are all associated with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), people with just a few of these traits may not necessarily meet criteria for diagnosis. What’s more, other significant characteristics of narcissism are less recognizable, so they aren’t always associated with the condition.

It’s generally a good idea to avoid labeling people with mental health diagnoses when you don’t have a full picture of their mental health. In other words, someone’s diagnosis is typically between them and their therapist or psychologist, unless they choose to share that diagnosis. But it is true that people with traits of narcissism generally show a mask of superiority and arrogance to the world. They may seem full of themselves, demand appreciation from others, and appear to have high self-esteem. But an inner core of insecurity often lies behind this mask.

Narcissism and Insecurity

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), people with NPD almost always have a fragile sense of self-esteem. Because of this, they spend a lot of time thinking about how others perceive them and how well they’re doing in life. This insecurity contributes to the continuous demand for admiration associated with NPD.

Many people with narcissism struggle with pervasive feelings of insecurity underneath the outward superiority and entitlement they present to the world.

Many people with narcissism struggle with pervasive feelings of insecurity underneath the outward superiority and entitlement they present to the world. But this experience may be most commonly associated with covert, or vulnerable narcissism. Many people with this subtype of narcissism do show outward signs of sensitivity to criticism and insecurity. This insecurity, often tied to the concept of being less than perfect, can contribute to mental health concerns such as stress, anxiety, or depression.

This insecurity can manifest as difficulty accepting criticism, or anything seen as criticism, since critiques can trigger feelings of vulnerability. Someone with narcissism may, for example, take constructive advice from a supervisor as a personal attack and react angrily. They might offer a reply laced with contempt or derision or they make a passive-aggressive or mocking comment. This reaction, lashing out in response to a slight, can humiliate or reject the person offering the critique. People with NPD generally do this to help relieve the potential threat to their self-esteem.

NPD is a complex personality disorder that involves feelings of insecurity, but insecurity is not only linked to narcissism. It’s not uncommon to feel insecure or struggle with moments (or longer periods) of low self-esteem, even if you have no mental health diagnosis at all. One way to differentiate narcissistic insecurity involves looking at the person’s response to perceived criticism or other threats. Responding with aggression, rage, or passive-aggression could suggest narcissism, though this isn’t a definitive diagnostic tool.

Narcissism, Insecurity, and Relationships

Maintaining a relationship with someone who has NPD can be difficult, especially without support from a mental health professional. Many people living with narcissistic traits may have had a parent with NPD, experienced insecure attachment as a child, or have other attachment issues. It’s also not uncommon for people living with NPD to experience depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, or abuse substances. These can all cause relationship difficulties, though dealing with the main traits of narcissism may pose the greatest challenge.

People with narcissism generally need a lot of admiration and approval, since receiving this admiration may help combat the underlying insecurity. But because NPD typically involves a lack of empathy, they usually don’t offer much in the way of reciprocation. This is one key reason why people living with NPD are usually labeled “toxic.” They need their romantic partners to praise them, listen to them talk about their feelings and topics of personal interest, and demand devotion and regard. They might talk about their envy for others or project those feelings by talking about how others envy them.

This can be draining for romantic partners and family members of people with narcissism, particularly as people with NPD may also express insecurity by accusing partners of being unfaithful, not caring about them enough, or not doing enough for them. They might use emotional abuse tactics, including gaslighting, to try and control partners so they’ll remain in the relationship and continue offering admiration and regard.

These attitudes and attacks can cause a lot of emotional pain. They can also lead to feelings of insecurity in anyone involved with a person with NPD:

• Frequent negativity and derision can have a significant impact on self-esteem.
• Gaslighting can cause doubts about what’s really true and make the person affected feel as if they’re in the wrong.

Are ‘Narcissists’ Insecure?

Existing research on narcissism suggests people with NPD do tend to feel insecure, whether they display this insecurity outwardly or not. Insecurity may provoke many of the problematic behaviors associated with narcissism. Both a 2015 article looking at the diagnostic challenges of narcissism and a 2017 review examining the connection between narcissism and behavior on social network sites like Facebook suggest insecurity is more often seen in people with vulnerable narcissism, who might present as humble or reserved and tend to put themselves down.

Katherine Fabrizio MA, a licensed professional counselor in Raleigh, North Carolina, helps people who were raised by narcissistic parents heal. She explains, “At their core, the person with narcissistic personality disorder is deeply insecure. They feel unworthy, ashamed, and empty. They hide this emptiness from themselves and others with a set of defenses that act as a storefront. The cover-up story they tell themselves and others constitutes those defenses, which are designed to artificially fill them up—all while hiding the fact that they feel truly empty.”

It’s important to recognize that although people with narcissism may struggle with unwanted emotions and experiences that cause distress, these feelings don’t excuse their behavior. Insecurity can be hard to face, but it’s possible to work through this, along with any other emotional or mental health challenges like anxiety, without emotional abuse or other problematic behaviors.

If you often feel insecure, working with a therapist can help you overcome this mindset and develop a greater sense of personal empowerment. If you struggle to recognize or understand the feelings of others, or if you tend to lie or manipulate others to get your needs met, you may want to reach out to a therapist who can help you learn new ways of relating to others so you learn how to meet your own needs and support the people in your life.

Anxiety and insecurity can result from setting too-high standards for yourself or wanting to achieve things that aren’t realistic. But in either case, a therapist can help you recognize your capabilities and potential for success so you can set more achievable goals for yourself.

References:

1. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fifth edition. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association.
2. Caligor, E., Levy, K. N., & Yeomans, F. E. (2015, April 30). Narcissistic personality disorder: Diagnostic and clinical challenges. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 172(5). Retrieved from https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2014.14060723?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed&
3. Dickinson, K. A., & Pincus, A. L. (2003). Interpersonal analysis of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. Journal of Personality Disorders, 17(3), 188-207. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8db5/d181e5ec85fd61de162d3c43e70611eaf4a4.pdf
4. Gnambs, T., & Appel, M. (2017, February 7). Narcissism and social networking behavior: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality, 86(2), 200-212. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopy.12305
5. Jauk, E., Weigle, E., Lehmann, K., Benedek, M., & Neubauer, A. C. (2017). The relationship between grandiose and vulnerable (hypersensitive) narcissism. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1600. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01600
6. Narcissistic personality disorder treatment. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bridgestorecovery.com/narcissistic-personality-disorder/narcissistic-personality-disorder-treatment

Dear GoodTherapy.org,

I have been with my boyfriend for going on three years. A couple of months ago, he said he thought it would be “healthy” for us to be able to have access to each other’s phones. He wants to be able to read my text messages whenever he wants and says he’s okay with me reading his too.

I thought this request was odd, to say the least. I told a couple of friends about it and they also said it was weird. Neither one has an “open phone” policy with their partners. They think it speaks to trust issues on his part.

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We don’t have a history of infidelity, so that can’t be it. I’ve never betrayed him in any real sense. The only thing I can even think of that created any sort of weirdness in our relationship was when I got hit on at a friend’s wedding. That was about six months ago, and while I did accept a friend request from the guy on Facebook, we have only exchanged a couple of comments on public posts. Friendly, but nothing racy. My boyfriend mentioned our interactions once but not in a way that would suggest he felt threatened or insecure. Anyway, I asked him if that had anything to do with his request and he said no.

So I’m not sure what’s going on, but I don’t like knowing my boyfriend insists on seeing my messages. To avoid giving him cause for alarm, I told him I’m fine sharing. We keep our phones unlocked now and he is free to look at mine whenever he wants. Though I’ve never witnessed him doing it, I know he does. I have never looked at his. I just don’t feel a need.

What do you think is happening here? Am I going about this the right way? Should I insist on a boundary? —Open-Ended

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Dear Open-Ended,

Thanks for writing in. I, too, have some concerns about this “open phone” policy and understand your reluctance, which I encourage you to pay more attention to. Before expounding, however, I’m going to briefly discuss what, exactly, a “boundary” is, in my clinical experience, since the term gets thrown around a lot while meanings differ.

Since I like to work from a point of view I call “emotional mindfulness”—and what are love and intimacy if not emotion-based experiences?—I think of a boundary as an inflection point beyond which one will suffer in an unacceptable way. This point of departure most often concerns a specific behavior which causes a person a level of distress or suffering they are not able or willing to tolerate.

It is, in other words, a way of warding off a negative emotional experience, which is why it’s so important such things be discussed in a relationship with as open a mind and heart as possible—even or especially when they don’t “make sense” or conflict with our own way of viewing things. Concrete statements can be debated, while feelings remain indisputably personal: “here is how someone ought to behave in a situation” versus “this is what upsets or hurts or feels positive about this.”

My sense is you and your boyfriend are somehow missing each other in this regard. On the one hand, you say, “To avoid giving him cause for alarm, I told him I’m fine sharing [phones].” Thus, after some internal deliberation and perhaps anxiety, you agreed with his request—except you are writing to me about it, indicating there remains some anxiety or reservation.

The concern I have here is that the focus has become centered on the mechanics rather than the emotional meaning of this sharing. By “meaning,” I refer to how you both think and feel about what’s happening and how it impacts the relationship. In a way, the background dilemma has been tabled, not solved.

The fact a guy hit on you at a wedding became understandably concerning for your boyfriend; this guy then “friended” you on Facebook, which you accepted. While your trusting of others isn’t a bad thing unto itself, I would hope you can see how that might have been anxious-making for your partner, perhaps due to some of his own history (just as some of yours may have impacted your decision to friend the guy and/or agree to share phones).

In all fairness, your boyfriend did not come out and discuss his concerns explicitly, which is part of the “missing each other” I mention above. He took a literal or physical approach rather than risking vulnerability in discussing it. You may have taken a similar route in agreeing to share your phone when you were hesitant, both of you bypassing the emotional risk or vulnerability so crucial to building closeness or intimacy.

I find generally that all behavior, especially when it concerns a close relationship, is a kind of communication, sometimes revealing intention that may or may not be conscious. On some level, your boyfriend’s impulse to check your phone—which will require checking and rechecking because it doesn’t address the underlying emotional problem, another reason it’s only a Band-Aid solution—is a way of saying, “I don’t trust you.”

Your decision to friend this fellow—and here I’m reaching a bit—could mean you do not like to feel constrained, for example in who you do or don’t befriend or interact with. You might believe, “I told him I’m taken, he gets it, and I’m fine with it.” Of course, your boyfriend could harbor similar sentiment about checking your phone: “I’m not suspicious of anything in particular, it’s just a way of shoring up trust and makes me feel better.” It sounds like both of you are facing common human anxieties that might, if mutually shared and understood, lead to deeper understanding and a strengthened emotional bond.

The “I’m” and “me” parts are key. It’s hard to put the “we” above “me” in any relationship, especially when we don’t get the other person’s point of view (more on that in a second), or if that POV conflicts with or appears to get in the way of our autonomy, freedom, and so forth.

I find generally that all behavior, especially when it concerns a close relationship, is a kind of communication, sometimes revealing intention that may or may not be conscious. On some level, your boyfriend’s impulse to check your phone—which will require checking and rechecking because it doesn’t address the underlying emotional problem, another reason it’s only a Band-Aid solution—is a way of saying, “I don’t trust you.”

It could also be saying, “I do trust you, but I get so anxious about this that I must have validation or confirmation. It’s hard to say no to this need to know.”

Your deciding to friend the guy at the wedding is a way of saying, “Hey, you can trust me, I’m loyal to you.” It could also be a matter of “I have a hard time saying ‘no’ as it might hurt the other person’s feelings, so it’s safer to just agree.”

Both of you overlap in saying, “Please understand this, don’t be hurt”—agreeing with the other’s behavior in a way that misses the underlying, more vulnerable anxieties or hopes for understanding. Thus, the relationship remains anxiety-laden, which is probably why you decided to write in.

In either case, you and your boyfriend have real (and understandably human) vulnerabilities around trust and betrayal. It’s worth sitting down with each other for an open conversation in which you try to hear the other person out in terms of their hopes and fears. If this feels uncomfortable, reach out to a therapist who can help facilitate things in an impartial way.

Perhaps your boyfriend was once betrayed by a partner, leading to anxiety around a repetition of this; perhaps you once said no to someone and it backfired or hurt you. In either event, I would think the solution has to come from within each of you in a shared way, rather than a physical or concrete way of controlling anxiety and postponing some stepping-outside-the-comfort-zone. We cannot avoid the need to emotionally stretch—sometimes awkwardly, uncomfortably—in the growth required for long-term intimacy.

I see this in couples counseling all the time, where one person needs to turn up the volume on their wants or needs (yourself, in this case), while the other needs to dial it down a bit in terms of intrusiveness or demand (your boyfriend)—while both partners attempt to center on the emotional vulnerabilities driving the conflict, rather than resting in an external solution. Putting the cart before the horse is something we all do, though the “horse” (i.e., the relationship) only ends up feeling blocked, restless, or cagey.

I hope this helps. Thanks again for writing!

Darren Haber, MFT, PsyD