A Narcissist’s life is filled with anxiety. The need to alleviate these anxieties is what drives much of their behavior. They are a walking contradiction with desires to have emotional security and a need to be alone at the same time. On top of the need to alleviate themselves of anxiety, their actions are also self-esteem driven. Because he derives his sense of self-worth from the people and things in his environment, the choices he makes and the things he does reflect that. Most of the time he isn’t thinking of anyone else. He’s thinking, ‘how does this make me look,’ hurting you is usually an unfortunate repercussion he often never even considered. So in these two respects he is not really aware of his behavior.
However, we all know that if we want X to happen we must do Y to achieve the desired result. For instance, if you want a paycheck you must get up and go to work every day. If we are looking at the manipulative aspect of a Narcissist, abso-freakin-lutely he is aware that he is manipulating you. Some Narcissists are more manipulative than others, but believe me when he wants something from you, he’s going to tell you what you want hear, or do what he needs to, to get it, knowing full well, he has no intention of delivering on his promises. He wants everything on his terms and he doesn’t concern himself with how you will feel about it.
They will lie, steal and manipulate to get their next fix. Certainly they know what they are doing is wrong, but they don’t care. This not caring has been going on so long that every time they find themselves in a moral conundrum, it gets easier and easier to justify their behavior. All they concern themselves with is getting their next hit, regardless of the consequences to anyone else. In a similar fashion, all a Narcissist concerns himself with is obtaining his much needed supply. His needs outweigh all other considerations.
There is another aspect to this. Not everyone perceives right and wrong the same way. We’ve all been in situations where someone has thought that our behavior was wrong, even though upsetting someone was never our intention. What do we do in this situation? We will probably think they are over reacting and we won’t get too upset about it, or put too much thought into it. This is what a Narcissist does, they just do it on a grander scale.
Most people are guided by their conscience. They govern their actions based on their feelings and their ability to put themselves in another person’s shoes. But what happens when you have no moral compass? When you lack empathy? When you remove those abilities – what’s left?
The answer is simple … very little to nothing, that is worthwhile.