How Unprocessed Guilt Transforms into Delusion

Recently, I had someone show up to a few coaching sessions who I strongly suspected was a vulnerable malignant narcissist — one of the most dangerous forms of sociopaths. 

After a few sessions, I decided I couldn’t work with her. I’ve learned the hard way that when reflection isn’t based in reality, I can’t help, and, due to my own trauma histories, I shouldn’t be tasked to help the same types of masked, dishonest people in delusion who I had to heal from. 

Vulnerable narcissists present themselves in a state of extreme fragility and chronic VICTIMHOOD rather than grandiose ego. 

Woe is me. Everyone in the world has wronged me. I’m the unluckiest person alive is their mantra. 

Borderlines are self blamers, but we go through a lot of abuse, so an inexperienced or uninformed therapist might easily conflate a borderline to a vulnerable narcissist, especially because vulnerable narcissists don’t seem narcissistic in terms of ego, and people presume that the extreme traumas that borderlines endure at the hands of sociopaths as scapegoat children and trauma bonders in adulthood would produce permanent fragility, victimhood, and weakness--not humility and resilience that covers a deep self loathing, self-harming behaviors, and oversensitive empathy. 

When vulnerable narcissists present themselves, they seem wildly broken and weak.

But a key distinction is that borderlines will be in states of GRIEF over the losses of their toxic partners and abuses, whereas narcissists will be consumed with blame, revenge, and wallowing in a victimhood identity that nets them supply through attention and sympathy. 

Borderlines generally don’t see themselves as victims, but as mysteriously unlovable. Victimhood is something they want to transcend and not experience anymore, as they’ve been scapegoats in their toxic families since birth, so they are tired of trauma and depression. 

But narcissists FANTASIZE about victimhood. They envy victimhood. The victims they harmed most are who they design their masks after. 

This client had MANY examples of red-flag illogical and deluded thinking, but here’s a taste of one of them. 

Situation: She could not understand her college course. 

Solution: Cheat with a student in the class who does understand. 

Problem: Cheating is immoral and inauthentic=SHAME. 

Conclusion to resolve shame: The college betrayed her. Her phrase was “institutional betrayal.”

Reasoning: The coursework should have been able to be done in partners because it was hard. 

Result: Person who betrayed their institution now believes the institution betrayed her — projection of shame. Shame externalized. Anger redirected outside instead of inside. 

When pressed on this logic, her vulnerability became clear. “It’s not unusual that college degrees require both individual and collaborative work,” I said. 

Her lip trembled and she stared at me in terror. 

“Even if you had been able to do it in partners, that doesn’t mean one person do all the work and the other cheats.”

Her lip trembled and she stared at me in terror. 

This is the FREEZE trauma response in action: when someone’s shame-avoidant delusions don’t have a strong foundation in logic or reality, they may freeze in silence and terror when the logic is tested.