I always wonder what Kevin McAlister would have done if he were an 8 year old narcissist being left home alone at Christmas instead of the sweet kid he was.
We would have watched a 90 minute movie of him just pacing the house muttering words of negativity instead of the fun stuff he got up to.
But that’s narcissists all over. Leave them home alone for longer than a few minutes, and they genuinely struggle.
That’s because they’ve got nothing but themselves for company, and trust me, there are 7 reasons why they hate that.
That’s what we are getting into today, so let’s see if we can make narcissists make more sense!
#1 Facing up to reality
Being home alone leaves any of us wide open to so much reality. Why? Because being alone induces thought.
Those thoughts can easily become overthinking, and that’s where your mind can become ruffled by extensions of the truth – truths that already scare us.
For the most part, we’re okay with that. I think we all know not to get stuck in our heads too much, but narcissists will just not go there. They can’t, it’s such a dangerous place to reside.
If you think about it, a narcissist has a lot of reality to face up to. They don’t have many real friends.
They aren’t as popular as they think they are. They aren’t as successful as they wish they could be.
They are deeply insecure and loathe who they see in the mirror. They aren’t perfect. They don’t find joy in doing anything, or just being.
It’s the kind of reality that feels like searing pain to narcissists, so being home alone without you to bug and abuse, they really don’t like it.
#2 FOMO
What’s going on without me?
What am I missing out on?
Who is getting into trouble that I am not aware of?
Is my partner out there cheating on me?
Believe it or not, narcissists want and need to be involved in everything that’s going on.
They feel disgruntled if they aren’t a part of lunch time drinks, or evening dinners on the balcony by the beach with family or friends.
They will genuinely feel as though their nose has been put out of joint if they aren’t invited somewhere to be a part of something.
With that in mind, fearing missing out on the latest dynamics will leave them on the back foot. After all, those are the very dynamics they try to control on a daily basis.
#3 Not getting the latest gossip
Which leads pretty nicely into reason number three – narcissists need all of the gossip all of the time.
Without it, they shrink into this pit of inexistence. After all, they have to know the latest so they can do two things…
Judge and spread.
Once gossip hits the ears of a narcissist, they will spend a good amount of time deciding how they feel about it.
In their mind this looks like shifting pieces on a chessboard around. “This person can go here because that’s what I think of them and now I can bring this person to the front after what I heard.”
Once those pieces are in place, the narcissist will spread that gossip but in ways that don’t make them look like a childish chatterbox at all.
They will spread gossip acting out of love, care or concern. To the right people, they may get a little grittier.
#4 Not being able to spread the latest gossip
Not being able to spread gossip hurts a narcissist. They kind of treat it like news to the right people, and gossip to others.
It’s a clever shift that allows any kind of audience to be pulled in by whatever the narcissist has to say.
Bumping into pillars of society will see the narcissist more likely spread gossip more seriously, pulling away from the narrative that they’re just talking behind somebody’s back.
They will level with anybody they can, after all, we are talking about some of the finest actors out there.
If they’re stuck home alone, they’ve got nobody to do that with. They won’t intentionally hit the local social places – coffee shops, the bar, the store – in the hope of bumping into someone just to pass news (gossip) onto.
If they’re not a working motion in the gossip cog, they consider themselves to not be a thought in other people’s minds.
#5 Boredom
Get a hobby, am I right? Learn to do something, or take a class, or paint, draw, write, build Lego, even!
Narcissists don’t sit at home and have the forethought to get up and do something, anything, so they instead sit at home bored.
Even those who watch TV all day will still admit to having a day of boredom just because they didn’t have it in them to do anything more productive.
Isn’t it interesting that a person so keen to get all up in somebody else’s business all the time still cannot get up in their own business when they need to?
#6 They hate their own company
Narcissists will make your life hell because it makes their own lives a lot less miserable.
That’s why they intend on making you feel so bad. They want you to feel like they do.
They’re constantly looking for ways to surround themselves with stimuli, whether that’s being out and about at the best stores, sitting in the most expensive places to eat, and seeing as many people as they can.
The second all of that is stripped away, they become faced with the reality of themselves.
They hate who they are, and hiding that person becomes more problematic when there’s no other distraction.
Sitting home alone is a prime example of how the narcissist will suddenly have to realize who they are as their own company.
Put it this way, if you are trying to actively avoid the narcissist, I think they will be wanting to do the same underneath all that bravado!
#7 No people: no supply
When you are around a narcissist, you will unknowingly be giving them supply without even knowing what that really means.
For example, a reaction, or how you are being triangulated against somebody you had a good rapport with.
When the narcissist is alone, there is no way for them to gain any supply. It’s impossible when there’s nobody to extract that from, so being alone is the worst thing.
Supply makes the narcissist feel on top of the world. In the same way your favorite song might do that to you, or cooking your favorite dish, seeing a good friend, watching the sun rise, smell the newly fallen rain on the ground; it’s all joy.
The narcissist cannot do any of that. They don’t know or trust themselves enough to be able to be that vulnerable.
So they steal it from you.
They steal it from anybody they can.
And when home alone, it makes any kind of supply shift simply not possible.
And narcissists aren’t so good at running on empty like that. They need company like they need air to breathe.
