If you always look at the cake you’ll never see the flour.
In order to see the flour, you must be able to look past the product and its density.
Seeing panic within a narcissist is not much different. Yeah, there they are, a product of their own over-inflated, ugly ego. But where’s the panic that they’re made up of?
Because let’s be brutal here – narcissists aren’t made of love and compassion!
If you want to see the panic inside, you have to know what really makes a narcissist panic inside.
I will give you a little disclaimer:
It’s pretty laughable.
Red Alert!
Oh my God. We have a Code P situation going on.
No I don’t mean I need to find the nearest bathroom, I am talking about:
PANIC!
The air changes, doesn’t it? It fills with a thickness that can take your breath away, and it’s all coming from the narcissist.
They’re panicking and trying hard to hide the feeling, so what happens typically is some form of steam will eject from their ears as they try to hold it in.
Okay, I obviously don’t mean real steam, but I do mean real energy shifts take place.
When that inner panic button is pressed inside the narcissist, only they will know what that feels like. We have to deal with what that looks like for the rest of us.
From that, our own feelings stir.
Seeing a Narcissist Panic
Once you really recognize the narcissist is panicking, you will know straight away.
Cutting through the following extra layers of emotion and presentation will become easier and easier.
For now, let me break it down for you.
Panic looks like:
Rage
I mean real rage. Suddenly, all control the narcissist usually thrives on having is taken away.
They hate this change – it means they are at the mercy of something or someone.
Rage can be blaming you, shouting, intimidating, threatening, accusing, projecting, spreading lies about you – whatever it takes to produce results that hide their panic.
Panic is a weakness to them! They can’t be seen to be flustered!
Being overly friendly
They have some damage control to do if they need to get out of their problem quickly.
This could look like making a mistake at work, and needing a day or two to hide all evidence.
If they have to be sickly sweet to somebody for that to happen, they will.
Block
They block the people they feel panicked by because they feel threatened.
Their masculinity or femininity has been called upon, and so they have no other option but to block, hoping the issue then resolves itself.
Where Does The Panic Come From?
Most narcissistic panic comes from losing control.
I’ll tell you a true story of a friend who has a narcissistic father and older brother. I’ll call her Sasha.
Sasha had been no contact with her father and brother for several years.
She had sent a few messages to her father only when there was damage or faults to the house he still owned with her mother (he lived in an apartment across town, which they also jointly owned and were going through separation).
One day, the boiler broke in Sasha’s mum’s house. No hot water. No heating.
She called on her still-husband – a plumber – to come take a look. He did, and said he “fixed it,” only for it to break completely the next day.
Sasha’s mum went to look at the boiler, only to realize that it had a water leak.
The wall was damp and moldy – it was a hazard. Whenever she knew her dad was out of town, Sasha let her son stay at the house, as did both her brothers.
Some had respiratory issues, and it could have been dangerous, so she texted her father to tell him how negligent he was.
Before she knew it, Sasha’s mum had received a text from her father that wasn’t nice at all, followed by an enraged phone call from her older brother.
He threatened Sasha via their mum with a restraining order, and told their mum what a narcissist Sasha was, wishing she was dead for daring to text and blame their father.
Sasha had no contact with either of them, and in the past year only sent two texts to her father if something in the house was hazardous.
Every time, her father would call the brother and lay on the drama. Together, they worked each other’s anger up, and the threats to Sasha came in thick and fast.
Hearing this story brought me to several conclusions.
Sasha’s Father and brother were narcissists. They exuded the classic signs of inner weakness and insecurity, and hid these traits by overasserting their masculinity by using threats.
Her brother in particular was weak, and should have spoken up about the damage.
Instead, Sasha did, and it likely made her otherwise masculine brother feel inadequate. So he took it out on Sasha.
He panicked. So did her father. Their shoddy work over time was non-existent, and the boiler was purposely neglected.
And now people know about that.
So, what do they do?
They project.
Losing You/Losing Supply
If a narcissist feels like they’re losing you, the panic will come from the correct assumption that they won’t have anywhere to source their supply.
Losing you means losing what they’ve gotten used to over time, and now they will have to find a replacement – and fast.
Panic stations!
The cycle of abuse is ending – and you’re ending it. They try and try to keep you, to no avail.
This is the main reason why narcissists panic on the inside. They are never prepared for this.
They’re always under the assumption that you’re going to stay around and be the obedient victim they carve you out to be, but life doesn’t always work out the way you think it will.
As soon as you start doing these things, the narcissist will hit panic:
- Developing new friendships
- Starting a new job
- Finding a new hobby
- Getting out and about more
- Reaching out to family and friends for days out
- Caring less and less about what they think
- Not listening to them when they yell at you
- Not paying any attention to their silent treatment
What are you doing?
How dare you try to live your life!
When Panic Is All On The Inside
Narcissists tend to hide panic because it is another way to hide reality – something they’re very used to.
If what other people can’t see isn’t being picked up on, then it doesn’t exist.
Except it does exist. And it exists in other ways that isn’t ‘panic.
