Yes! Narcissists are nice.
If you think this answer is paradoxical, then you’d be right. Situationships with Dark Personalities (people on the narcissism spectrum of personality disorders) are riddled with paradoxes! Narcissists have learnt over time to develop a charming, sophisticated public persona. Often, they don’t just appear as ‘normal nice’. But as everything you ever admired, respected and liked in a person. Unbelievably ‘nice’!
This is how targets get hooked. It’s also why targets aren’t believed if they ever try to expose the narcissist. Narcissists are nice. Dark Personalities tend to occupy positions of privilege, power and authority. It is only the people closest to them who get to experience the dark underbelly of their personalities. That underbelly looks like parasitic and predatory behaviours and usually includes pathological deception.
Dark Personalities (narcissists) rely on their ability to charm everyone to get what they want out of life – usually status, money, adulation and/or power and control over others. They can work out how other people ‘tick’ more easily than most of us. They target people who can supply them with what they want: a home; a household servant; a promotion; publicity; a trophy partner; money or free stuff.
Some people can spot the fake. But Dark Personalities are known to have the ability to fool trained professionals – criminologists, forensic psychologists, justice professionals. So, if you’ve been groomed, used and disposed of (pushed out of a job, academia or your own home) by a narcissist, please don’t beat yourself up for failing to see the red flags at the start! These people are the ultimate con-artists.
Judging another person’s character as ‘safe’ or ‘genuine’ when they are, in fact, a predatory person can simply be the result of believing in the good at the heart of every human. Many wisdom traditions teach this, and the bad news about these characters simply doesn’t reach us until it’s too late. Awakening can be painful. These gaps in our personal wisdom profile might include a few obstacles that we can change, including:
Tolerance for boundary-violation
People who grew up in families where their needs or boundaries were perpetually overlooked can adapt by ignoring transgressions full stop. Keeping the peace in the face of intolerable behaviour gets normalised. Letting oneself be pushed around, scapegoated or used as a doormat can become a conditioned automatic response. Ask yourself, is this me? How do you recognise boundary violations in your own life?
Lack of forethought about character
Nowadays, such things as shared humour, shared likes or hobbies (say, hiking or art), shared aspirations (say, wanting to travel) count for compatibility. Right? But think about it – a manipulative person could easily fake all those things once they know a bit about you. Far better to notice if a person doesn’t lie, doesn’t steal, has empathy for others, is rational and responsible rather than self-aggrandising and risk-taking.
Rationalisations for cruel or maladaptive behaviour
It’s so easy to assume a person didn’t mean it when they dissed the waiter, a junior staffer or the homeless person. In fact, just about any unadmirable human behaviour can easily be dismissed if we also let ourselves off the hook for it. Many targets think they’ve done their due diligence on selecting a partner or workplace by asking around or reading reviews. But given the narcissist’s tendencies to be seen as ‘nice’ and their ability to re-write history to reverse the narrative, you really can’t trust their reputation.
Wishful Thinking
This falls into the category of common self-deception. This is a belief that something will happen based on our wanting it to happen, rather than likelihood or possibility. We tend to think others think like us. We make assumptions about someone’s character or values, based on shared belonging to a social group or workplace. More people than is reasonable are socialised to believe that if they give enough love, care and understanding to someone, they can change that person.
Toxic Positivity or Pollyanna Syndrome
The term, “Pollyanna Syndrome” was first adopted by the psychology community in the 1960s to describe excessive optimism in the face of difficulties. It is not a clinical diagnosis. The term came from novels written by Eleanor Hodgman Porter about a girl who always looks on the bright side of things, at the expense of realism. Nowadays, we might use the term, “toxic positivity” to describe the same thing. The author notes that these qualities are sometimes also attributed to people previously said to have Asperger’s Syndrome (a person on the Autism Spectrum).
In narcissistic abuse recovery, getting our own beliefs and behaviours right is our best defence against being targeted again. Narcissists are nice. Once over the shock of being betrayed by someone we trusted, the journey forward can become about trust with caution.
“Be cautious whom you trust. — Don’t easily trust anyone on this earth because there are all kinds.” ― Bruce Lee.
Written by:
Nicki Paull
References:
Hanson, L., & Baker, D. L. (2017). Corporate psychopaths in public agencies. Journal of Public Management, 21-41.
https://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/context/jpmsp/article/1048/viewcontent/three.pdf
Latecki, B. (2017). Pollyanna syndrome in psychotherapy-or Pseudotherapy. Counseling, consoling or counterfeiting? European Psychiatry, 41(S1), s777-s778. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2017.01.1474
Re-writing Pollyanna: towards a rethinking of representations of Asperger’s in fiction [Doctoral dissertation]. (2018). https://theses.gla.ac.uk/8970/
Wai, M., & Tiliopoulos, N. (2012). The affective and cognitive empathic nature of the dark triad of personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 52(7), 794-799. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.01.008
