Narcissistic Personality Disorder

How to Trick a Narcissist into Confession

I call this game, "I know you are, but what am I?"

There's a very simple trick to this.

I call this game: I know you are but what am I?

This is the secret:

Narcissists project their shame.

THEREFORE, THEY TELL ON THEMSELVES ALL THE TIME.

They do it whenever they accuse you or anyone else of something.

Because what they're accusing is their truth. They’re projecting it.

EVERYTHING a narcissist accuses is confession: they can't see outside of themselves AT ALL. They have no empathy or ability to emotionally connect, so their whole lives, they've only known their own internal landscape.

And the swamps of their shames that they need to deny and judge and punish others for.

Example: I had a breakdown in my marriage and decided to leave my covert narcissist husband.

He said I was a lying, cheating whore. He told everyone that in a smear campaign. He also told people I wasn't straight: he said I was more attracted to my girlfriends than him.

I’d never lied or cheated. I was so hurt that he said that. I had no idea where the accusations that I was a lesbian came from.

Then one day I was on our computer and I found his dating profile and messages to other women...and men.

I realized that some of his male friendships were MORE THAN FRIENDS....

HE was a lying, cheating whore and closeted homosexual.

Example: I asked a malignant narcissist to meet his wife. He said he couldn’t trust her not to cheat around men or women because she’s bisexual.

Then I poked at his best friend more about their relationship, and I discovered it: he was a closeted homosexual having an affair with the malignant narcissist.

The malignant narcissist could not be trusted not to cheat around men or women because he was bisexual.

Example: I put a boundary on my narcissist sister. She told me I was jealous of her and never supported her accomplishments.

She’s never read or even said congrats to me on one of my books. I’ve published seven. She majored in the same major as me in college (much to my shock), and she told me we couldn't read each other's work because it was a competition, which I didn't understand. I think it's great that many diverse artists exist. We all have things to express. Creativity is healthy.

But once my first book got published, she never wrote another thing again.

My sister was jealous of me and never supported my accomplishments.

Example: My narcissist friend seemed very irritable after his honeymoon. I knew if I asked what was wrong, he was going to tell the truth by projecting.

He said he was angry at his best friend. He thought his friend lied about his marriage, that those were two very different people who shouldn’t be together and the whole thing was a facade.

He was lying about his marriage: it was a facade and they were two very different people shouldn’t be together. (They divorced a couple years later).

Example: I had a narcissist student who wanted to start a podcast. She said her goal was to help her generation speak their political feelings of racism, because people argue with her over hate speech, which she said was a violation of her free speech. She felt it was wrong that people were able to fight with her on social media over her beliefs with no consequences. She said students her age were uneducated, lazy, and arrogant, so she was going to educate them.

She was uneducated, lazy, and arrogant. It's wrong for her to fight with people on social media due to her racism caused by her narcissism. In desiring that people who disagree with her have consequences, she's standing against free speech.

They’ll even do this on their social media. My narcissistic stalker’s social media was full of posts warning about “toxic people” or misogynistic posts about why women are “needy, dependent, overly emotional, crazy, obsessive, or sexually reckless.”

These are not traits that define women, but traits that define narcissists, regardless of gender.

He even did it in joking memes, like this:

He was an alcoholic. (And, in my opinion, he was also a dog).

Another popular one: narcissists like to say that there is no such thing as an empath and all empaths or pwBPD are just like narcissists. They'll use terms like "toxic empathy" or "dark empath" (which they mean as an abusive empath, which they often identify as in a delusional way as they mask as their scapegoats and believe in their hero and victim complexes).

Another similar claim they make is that those who express emotions are “weak” and “stupid.”

Translation: They do not have empathy, their empathy is fake, they fear their emotions of pathological anger and jealousy make them weak or stupid, and they cannot see or understand any experience outside of their own: they can only project their own onto others as scapegoats, so everyone seems like a narcissist to them.

This is a prime example of gaslighting: they simply deny any experience other than their own is real and they believe that all people are motivated by the same abusive behavior that they are.

They don't believe that the feelings of others are real, that people can genuinely feel grief and compassion, or that people wholeheartedly believe in moral behavior.

They deny any emotional maturity more advanced than their own, as that would mean that they're lacking something or that they have a disability.

It would mean they're not PERFECT.

So they think everyone is as selfish, immature, and performative as they are.

In terms of empathy, they genuinely have no idea whatsoever what it feels like. They have never felt it, just as they never have felt guilt. These are totally foreign concepts to them, and they think it’s something everyone only performs.

Therefore, conveniently, all of their victims either do not exist or their victims deserved abuse.

But the reality is that their fantasy, grandiose self doesn't exist and they deserve consequences for their abusive behaviors.

It’s all projection. Projection is confession.

However, you can’t tell them about this game.

Just gather your information, smile, nod, slink away quietly. If you tell them about the game, they’ll go Incredible Hulk on you in a heartbeat. Grey rock them, keep your distance, and go live a happy life without toxicity.

The first rule about Fight Club…

You do not talk about Fight Club.

Let me tell you another secret:

The absolute best thing to be accused of by a narcissist is this:

BEING A LOSER.

It means YOU WON. 🏆

My memoir, This is a Story About Ghosts: A Memoir of Borderline Personality Disorder, is now available on Amazon.

For individual coaching to recover from narcissistic abuse, BPD, or sexual assault, visit https://am-champion.com

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Anne M. Champion is the author of This is a Story About Ghosts: A Memoir of Borderline Personality Disorder (KDP, 2024), Hunted Carrion: Sonnets to a Stalker (KDP, 2024), She Saints & Holy Profanities (Quarterly West, 2019), The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Book of Levitations (Trembling Pillow Press, 2019), Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her work appears in Verse Daily, diode, Tupelo Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Salamander, New South, Redivider, PANK Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a 2016 Best of the Net winner, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient. She has degrees in Behavioral Psychology and Creative Writing.