What is a Covert Narcissist?

Brad R Banks
8 min readNov 28, 2023

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A Covert Narcissist (ACTS) to be charming, charismatic, seductive, exciting, honest, loving, compassionate, caring, and engaging. You can fall in love with their charming side and be destroyed by their dark side in the blink of an eye. They are mean, miserable, dishonest & evil people on the inside.

A Covert Narcissist can be very difficult to spot at first due to the false goodness that they project onto everyone around them. They do not care or love you even though they pretend otherwise.

SEEK & DESTROY:

It all starts with Excessive Flattery and Love Bombing and can continue throughout their relationships. The love bombing stage is particularly strong to gain control over you and take control over your emotions, feelings & heart. Their words of love mean nothing, they don’t know what love is and they only care about themselves. Their idea of love is a tool to gain control and nothing else.

She would Love Bomb me daily with multiple texts, and messages on FB for everyone to see, I love you notes around the home, in my truck, and in my wallet. Every time I would see these notes it would put a huge smile on my face and made me feel so good inside. Love Bombing is a form of psychological manipulation.

Narcissists have impaired & a undeveloped self-worth. They think and function differently from good and well-intentioned people. They behave the way they do because of the way their brain is wired, the way they were treated by someone in their past, or the way they were raised. Dysfunction is all they know, and they strive for it, it is what makes them tick.

Confidence in one’s self-worth & self-esteem as a human being is a precious resource and generally a highly positive factor in life. It is correlated with achievement, good relationships, and satisfaction. A narcissist has no self-esteem except when it comes to their fake self-worth.

They are miserable thoughtless people on the inside and seek to hurt & destroy the ones that love them unconditionally. There is nothing you can do or say to please them or make them happy, and nothing is ever enough.

Normalcy, true love, honesty, and loyalty are never sought after. A Narcissist will flip things around, making people believe that they’re the ones being abused to make themselves feel better about who they really are, rather than it being the other way around. Their whole life is nothing but deception, fantasy, and chocked full of lies.

They will sabotage every relationship they are in on purpose; this gives them a sense of power to stroke their low self-esteem, emptiness, and cold heart. They will blame you for things that happened in their past and you weren’t even around or even knew they existed at the time.

Narcissists feel entitled to get what they want from others regardless of their poor behavior. Their sense of entitlement masks their inner shame, self-worth, and severe insecurities. They are miserable people who can’t stand to see themselves or other people happy in any way.

Real love requires empathy, compassion, feelings, loyalty, honesty, respect, and a deep knowledge of the one we care for. A Narcissist will disregard all of these traits that are required for true love and growth without a second thought about who they hurt in their journey for conquest & control.

They suffer from profound emptiness, powerlessness, and lack of meaning or self-worth. They crave power and must control their environment at all times, the people around them, their vulnerable feelings, fear, shame of who they are, or the sadness & hatred that they have created within themselves. Self-destruction is all they know.

Underneath their façade is severe toxic shame. This shame makes a narcissist feel insecure and inadequate, to say the least. To compensate for feeling inferior, they maintain an attitude of superiority that they have projected upon themselves.

They will also use sickness to gain sympathy from everyone around them for attention.

When the dark side comes out of them they will act entitled, exploitative, rude, disrespectful, arrogant, aggressive, cold, competitive, selfish, inconsistent with their words & actions, obnoxious, cruel, self-centered, out of control, vindictive, cause fights for no reason, don’t make any sense when they talk, & will never apologize for what they do. Apologizing is beneath them and it will never happen. They’re known for their game-playing and constant confusion. Sacrificing for a loved one isn’t in their playbook.

The Narcissists’ ability to respond emotionally and express appropriate care, compassion, and genuine concern is significantly impaired due to their lack of self-worth and unjustified hatred.

Their relationships are a one-way street because other people are considered inferior and not respected. They don’t recognize their behavior as hypocritical because they feel superior, entitled, and special. They have two sets of rules, a set of rules for them & a set of rules for everyone else, and use them at will. Do as I say not as I do mentality.

Gaslighting is a form of emotional and psychological abuse that narcissists use often out of their playbook. Gaslighting is a classic abuse of power & a form of bullying at its best. It’s a manipulative power game that they use deliberately to control an individual or control a situation. It is their go-to to confuse any issues they are confronted with. Facts are not considered and misused out of order to gain further control & confusion.

Flying Monkeys:

Narcissists also have a small group of flying monkeys that they have control over to make themselves feel better for the wrong or hurt they have knowingly caused to other people. These flying monkeys or so-called friends are nothing more than a tool to make the Narcissists feel better about themselves for the harm they have caused. Little do most of them know they themselves are being used for the narcissist’s end game to spread roomers about you to make you look bad for the wrong the Narcissists have done to you. “They play the Victim”

These flying monkeys will side with the narcissist no matter the situation, lies, or any evidence presented to them. They pass on false information, to spread gossip, and rumors about you to help the narcissist further harass you and make themselves feel better for the wrong they have knowingly & deliberately caused you. They will discard these so-called friends or family members after they are no longer useful to them, or these flying monkeys become aware of the Narcissist’s horrific & deceptive ways.

Due to their inner emptiness, they’re never satisfied. Whatever you do for them is never enough to fill their emptiness. Narcissists exploit and drain those around them to further their agenda. They use relationships for self-enhancement and for their Narcissistic supply, even though it isn’t necessary, because the one that loved them unconditionally only had good intentions. Other people only exist to meet their selfish & self-centered needs.

The Narcissist will deny everything they are deliberately doing wrong to you, their denial distorts reality so that they can live in an inflated bubble of their own fantasy world to protect their fragile ego. They distort, rationalize, twist facts, and delude themselves to avoid anything of truth and no amount of evidence or argument can get through to them. Reality is non-existent.

Projection and blame are used often by the Narcissist that enables unacceptable feelings, thoughts, or qualities to be disowned and mentally or verbally projected onto someone else. Blame shifts responsibility so the narcissist is blameless. They will never admit to any participation in any arguments that they have unjustifiably caused for any reason, for they are never wrong.

Their narcissistic defenses are designed to protect them from seeing their flaws and to allow them to shift all the blame onto you. If everything is your fault, then they have no reason to feel guilty about hurting you. As a result, untreated narcissists do not feel guilty about abusing you because they view whatever they do to you as justified.

Due to the Narcissists’ lack of self-restraint, narcissists tend to spiral out of control, and the narcissist will find themselves in a heap of trouble at some point in their life. They don’t seem to learn from their consequences, nor do they have the ability to get control over their self-destructive behavior. And eventually, they will hit rock bottom after they have used up everyone in their life.

Once a Narcissist has chosen their victim it’s almost like the Narcissist gets tunnel vision. They are hyper-vigilant in their pursuit and will project the perfect image that their victim wants them to be. They are excessively caring, loving, and attentive at this stage. They shower their targets with attention, and compliments and it can literally sweep you off your feet.

Their victims are so caught up in all the attention and are usually thinking at this point, that they have found the soulmate they have been longing for. Their pursuer is exactly what they want in a partner. The Narcissist is mirroring what appeals to their target, and they can’t believe how lucky they are and that this catch is still single, and they found you. What they don’t know, or could ever be prepared for, is what comes next. Once your usefulness has run its course, you will be discarded abruptly and cruelly, without warning by the Narcissist.

This was the most hurtful thing I have ever had to go through in my life and the saddest thing I have ever had to watch coming from the one I loved unconditionally beyond belief. I had nothing but good intentions to make her the happiest little lady on the planet and she refused to see any of it.

I do know this; nobody will ever try as hard as I did to make her happy. I am saddened to my core knowing that I tried so damn hard and I feel like a failure. And everyone who knows me, knows I don’t just give up easily until I have found a solution.

The thing I cannot wrap my arms or mind around is, that it was all unnecessary for her to treat me this way, she had everything right in front of her to make her happy and wouldn’t accept the loving and unconditional offering before her that I offered to her every day.

I have never tried so hard in my life to make someone happy. My dreams, my heart, future plans, and my good intentions have been ripped away all for nothing or just cause.

I truly wish her well and will never forget the person that I met and fell in love with. The one she turned out to be was the worst experience I had to ever endure.

The sparkle I saw in her eyes at one point was the most wonderful & beautiful feeling I have ever felt or seen in my life and I will never forget that look in her eyes that day. I do believe that at one point she did have feelings and cared about me.

I have been shaken & humbled to my core……….

BBanks

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Brad R Banks

Single / Black Hills Professional Home Inspections LLC