How (and Why) Did I Find Out About Narcissism?

It all started with the Fyre Festival…

Fyre Festival is a Netflix documentary about an international pop music festival that promised to be a kind of “luxurious Woodstock”. The festival ended in resounding failure, mainly due to the reckless decisions of the event organiser, Billy McFarland.

Not only did the event not happen, but the entire backstage mess was thoroughly documented by cameras from start to finish. I must have watched this documentary more than ten times; it’s unbelievable. I teach a commentary session about it in my management classes.

It’s baffling how companies and professionals with a wealth of experience in the industry, international mega bands, advertising agencies, top models, and the international press all got entangled in this catastrophe.

Anyone with a minimum understanding of planning knows there was no way that that festival could be well-organised in such a short time. How did no one realise this before? How did Billy manage to convince so many experienced people otherwise?

Then they released The Tinder Swindler. And my head got messed up.

This documentary tells the story of a con artist who lived a luxurious life, extracting money from people in several countries. Most of them were women he seduced on Tinder.

In the case of the women, he claimed to be a billionaire diamond dealer. However, since he was under “death threats”, the con artist claimed that using his bank accounts would reveal his location to his “powerful enemies”.

So, he asked for cash. The victims gave him money, even at the cost of massive loans. One of the women got into debt for 250 thousand dollars because of him!

I don’t want to blame the victims of either of the two documentaries in any way. Although I disagree with these people’s criteria for choosing a good match or business partner, there’s no denying that they are intelligent and present themselves as experienced professionals.

So how come these victims, especially in the case of the Tinder documentary, didn’t ask themselves basic questions? For example…

If the billionaire can’t access his bank account, why doesn’t he ask his wealthy father for money? Or his millionaire friends? If he trades diamonds, why doesn’t he sell some and get cash?

He’s a billionaire and doesn’t have a secret pocket in a mattress, a false wall, a safe, whatever. Isn’t there anything where he hides a few wads of bills for emergencies? We even have some change in our pockets when our credit card fails.

None of this made any sense, and I couldn’t stop watching The Tinder Swindler over and over again.

One day, my husband came home, and I was there in the thousandth endless session of this doc. Then Beto said: “Ana, are you aware that The Tinder Swindler is your new Fyre Festival?”

Yes, I was. But I couldn’t stop watching. I needed to understand what was happening there. I wanted explanations that made some sense to me.

A Frightening Insight: Why is This Topic Attracting my Attention?

So, I started searching the web for texts and videos analysing this documentary and the psychological profile of the Tinder Swindler. That’s when the results of the Internet searches introduced me, for the first time outside the Greek mythological context, to the word “narcissism”.

As I was consuming content about narcissism, in a particular video, a “switch” turned on in my head.

I’ll explain further. After all, I need to be fair to the people who have been in my life, since I will be addressing all forms of narcissistic abuse here on the blog from today on. Let’s start with what I didn’t identify with.

What Abuses in Toxic Relationships Have I NOT Experienced?

As far as I can remember…

I have never been financially scammed, lent money, or got into debt to cover anyone’s expenses, whether professional, personal, or intimate.

I lost money, for example, because I had to give up opportunities and projects to escape toxic people or situations. It is an indirect way of losing money. But I have never spent money that I already had in my account in this context.

In fact, it is pretty common in academic, intellectual, and cultural circles for the most abusive people to be powerful, rich, and notorious. So, they usually want another type of supply from their victims, not money.

I have dated very little in my life and have never been cheated on in any relationship. Correction: not that I know of. I have never had to end a relationship because of cheating. It is something I would not accept. I don’t give second chances in this case.

Monogamy is difficult for everyone. If I can handle it, the person I am with has to. I have no interest whatsoever in open relationships. And I would not tolerate the disrespect of my trust that a betrayal represents.

I have never been spanked without my consent. Have I ever given my consent? Actually… yes! Stay tuned to the blog because, in this series on narcissism, I will tell in graphic detail one of these occasions. Of course, it is not at all what the reader imagined. This is a blog that at least tries to be elegant. We are not on OnlyFans. But I could not resist the pleasure of imagining the look of astonishment on your face when you read this sentence!

Rephrasing what I meant: I cannot picture myself living in an environment (domestic, professional, familial, etc.) where there is physical violence. And I have always had difficulty understanding why many people submit to friends and bosses who throw objects at them. Or partners who insult, beat or sexually violate them.

Before, I confess that deep down, I thought many victims were complicit. By staying with their abusers, they would be volunteering for the abuse.

Now, after everything I’ve read about psychopathy, narcissism and toxic relationships, I see that it’s not that simple. I completely understand why many victims are unable to free themselves, especially in the case of domestic violence.

In addition to men being physically stronger than women, at least in the overwhelming majority of cases, and the fact that we live in societies permeated by patriarchal values, there is a whole process of psychological coercion involved in this plot. It doesn’t happen overnight; psychological abuse is intense and gradual.

Physical or verbal abuse usually only occurs when the woman (or the most fragile person in the relationship) is completely emotionally dominated and trapped by bonds that are difficult to break: marriage, children, debts, financial dependence, business partnerships, trauma bonds, and so on. But back to my case…

Finally, I have no tolerance or patience whatsoever for people who call me names or use derogatory phrases, such as: “You’re trash”, “I’m the boss here”, “Do you know who I am?”, “Shut up and do what I say”, etc.

Of course, I’ve met abusive people. They’re everywhere. I’ve witnessed some “tantrums” in my life, unfortunately. But even before I learned about narcissism, my tolerance for this type of behaviour was generally zero. My immediate tendency is to get as far away as I can, as quickly as possible, from this type of rude person.

It doesn’t have to be at the aggressiveness I described above. All it takes is to demonstrate a lack of good values. All it takes is for them to treat me with arrogance, lack of love, harshness and disrespect for me to break off a relationship.

In many cases, I had already been practising No Contact and Gray Rock without knowing what it was about. (Don’t know what I’m talking about? Check out the series posts on narcissism to learn more about the Narc Thesaurus!)

So why did I identify so strongly with the topic of narcissism and psychopathy?

Living in Tropical Narc-Land Dominated by Lady or Gentleman Narcissists

Both at the Fyre Festival and in The Tinder Swindler docs, note that the weapon used by these abusers and scammers was not physical force, violence, or overt coercion. These victims were well-treated and seduced during almost the entire time of the abuse!

And this is how many abusers get everything they want from others, not necessarily through explicit arrogance or aggressiveness. Even more so in the academic and progressive circles, the bubble I frequent the most. Even more so in Brazil!

Brazilians are considered warm and cordial people. And Minas Gerais, the state where I live, has the reputation of being the sweetest in the country.

The fact is that Brazilian narcissists do not simply do love bombing; they do atomic love bombing or tropical love bombing, as you prefer. In short, it’s love bombing on steroids. We will have a text about this in this narcissism series.

In the case of romantic relationships, with the aggravating factor that everything happens in a paradisiacal natural setting! Dinner in a fancy restaurant, sophisticated wine, jewellery, flowers, chocolates, romantic holidays, etc. These are the basics. Many Brazilians go much further in their conquest tactics — narcissists or not.

I discovered in this process that even healthy relationships can be harmed by excessive premature romanticism. People get so immersed in the “fantasy” that they fail to identify their incompatibilities more lucidly.

Now imagine if one of them is a narcissist. The other will end up completely ignoring the red flags that usually slip through the cracks.

On the other hand, Brazilian empaths (people who have compassion and empathy for others) go beyond “people pleasing”. We cover our passion targets with love storms, and adoration. And this does not always have to do with low self-esteem or codependency. We are a joyful, gregarious and hospitable people. It is part of our culture to verbalise and demonstrate feelings more easily.

The difference between love storming and love bombing is that the victims do the former because they want to please their loved ones. And the narcissists do the latter because they want to manipulate their victims and make them emotionally dependent. Then, they leave behind the golden period of love bombing and enter the phase of abuse.

This dynamic becomes even more intense under our tropical sun. It is very common for Brazilians to bring a lot of passion, action and emotion to all their relationships. These relationships can be in-person or virtual. Professional, familial, social or intimate. It can be a love of any type: eros, philia, storge or agape.

Narcissists became obsessed with this kind of “Grade A supply”. Let’s say we have an irresistible Brazilian Wa…y of putting the people we love and admire on a pedestal. Silly jokes aside, when narcissists are involved, the cultural characteristics of my country don’t help. Quite the opposite!

Excessive devotion and passion make this game even more addictive, dangerous and challenging to abandon both for the victim and the narcissist. And when the victim is about to escape, the narcissist does something extremely generous that surprises her and keeps her on that roller coaster.

If a victim is betrayed, cursed with bad words or suffers verbal or physical aggression, it becomes obvious to identify the absurdity of the situation. It is more instinctive to get angry at the person who did it and channel this feeling to get out of the abusive cycle. I’m not saying that it’s easy to escape, not at all! But at least it is more evident that the relationship is abusive.

If someone turned to me and said, “I hate you!” or “You’re incompetent!”. Well, that wouldn’t be a red flag. It would be a pirate flag slapping me in the face. I would be unlikely to stay in any relationship with that person.

But what if their tactic is to subtly belittle the things we like and believe in, to give passive-aggressive rants disguised as constructive criticism, to fail to recognise or adequately praise us when we succeed, to sabotage our work behind the scenes, to run smear campaigns behind our backs, to magnify our mistakes, to undermine our self-confidence, to destroy our courage to start new projects?

But what happens when the narcissist’s abusive behaviour or “punishment” involves playing hot and cold, ghosting, not replying to messages or emails, giving us the “silent treatment” when we don’t say exactly what he wants to hear, sending indirect messages in meetings or posting them on social media, making promises and always finding an excuse not to keep them, don’t take a “no” for an answer, preaching one thing and doing another, not having the ability to self-criticise or receive feedback?

In these cases, it becomes much harder to realise that the dynamic that is taking place is highly toxic. But this modus operandi works best with people like me because the red flags are more veiled and mitigated with charisma, intelligence, breadcrumbs of attention, fake excuses and gaslighting.

This is how narcissists usually act in my context, not through blatant arrogance or the exercise of control and aggressive domination. But with charm, calculated manipulation and sophisticated strategy.

Narcissists and toxic people prevail in all the environments I frequent, such as academic, cultural and intellectual markets, the world of influencers and bloggers, social and religious leaders, management and productivity gurus, and the medical area, to name a few.

And it’s not me who’s saying this. It’s the statistics. For example, the discussion about mental health problems in universities has been in the leading national and international journals in the academic field for years.

The most contradictory thing is that those promoting this discussion about toxic productivity are often those who benefit most from this type of productivism. They are the ones who perpetuate narcissistic academic evaluation systems, based on parameters so perverse and unfair that they border on psychopathy. In the future, people will laugh at us for adopting such flawed systems to evaluate our production today.

But double lives and hypocrisy are trademarks of narcissistic people. In the intellectual world, there is often a disconnect between theory and practice. Between discourse and attitude. Between appearances and what happens behind the scenes.

In addition, research shows that narcissists and psychopaths are overrepresented in several professions and positions that involve public life, power and knowledge.

Finally, after reading more than twenty books on narcissism, psychopathy and work psychology, I realised that I live in a Tropical Narc-Land. Or rather, an International Narc-Land.

Narcissism is a pandemic that has been announced and is increasingly ravaging the entire world. This is putting the planet’s and humanity’s survival at risk, in addition to harming our happiness and quality of life.

The Narcissists’ Mind Games

In this Narc-Land in which I live, what is the weapon of control and power? How does narcissistic abuse occur? Through sophisticated mind games. And we play this game without even knowing we are playing. And we plunge into confusion and cognitive dissonance because of it.

The images that illustrate this series on narcissism will have chess as their theme because it is the perfect metaphor for a relationship with a narcissist. For them, life is a game. Every move they make is with the goal of seducing you, controlling you and, ultimately, taking you down when you are not a novelty. In the mind of a narcissist, he is the king (or queen). And you and I, mere pawns on his board.

Understanding the subject made me realise that all of us, including this blogger here, normalise this type of game. We trivialise contemporary narcissistic culture. And we don’t realise how terrible this is for society, companies and institutions, and our productivity.

The emotional damage caused by this type of trivialisation of narcissistic behaviour can be severe, in addition to other forms of irreversible harm in all spheres of life.

Narcissists and psychopaths are social climbers and will use others as objects to achieve their goals, without any compassion or remorse. And because they are incredibly focused on their goals, they often achieve the success they so desire.

Hence, we conclude that emotionally damaged leaders essentially built our Zeitgeist. And we cannot embrace it uncritically.

But what good is it for a person to have success, intelligence, looks, charm, money, power, status, fame, knowledge, academic titles, awards, mastery, culture, good taste or any other form of achievement if that person has no empathy, ethics, coherence, emotional balance or soft skills? If they live without love and happiness, only for appearances?

Even worse, narcissists use all the power, all the qualities (and privileges) they have not to build a better world for everyone, not to fight for causes of the common good. But to perpetuate inequalities and to conquer their personal empire at the expense of others.

The king is naked, and his crown is made of brass, not gold. It is important to realise this so that we can quickly get out of these abusive relationships and toxic environments whenever possible. Or, at the very least, deal with this type of person with more strategy and less emotion.

And, once we are emotionally free, we can work on our own residual narcissism: the traumas, distorted values, bad memories and toxic behaviours that we have acquired in these relationships.

Whether in our personal, social or professional life, this type of “lady or gentleman narc” steals at least two of the most precious things in our treasure: love and time.

We cannot get our time back. But we can win back our hearts and give them, from now on, only to those who truly deserve us, recognise our value and know how to honour and reciprocate our love.

Prepare the coffee or tea… This is what we will talk about in this long series on the subject of narcissism, psychopathy and toxic behaviours. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Notes

Acknowledgments: Alberto Nogueira Veiga, and all who gave me their precious feedback, thank you for your comments and suggestions.

Images: iStock and screenshots from Fyre Festival and The Tinder Swindler docs.

Please help me improve my English by submitting your suggestions through this contact form.

Published on my blog in Portuguese on August 26, 2024: Como (e por que) descobri sobre narcisismo?