Bipolar Me

Gaslighting was the most recent trend in pop psych. Now it’s narcissism. I even wrote a post called “Is It Narcissism or Gaslighting?” Just recently, I’ve seen posts titled “Why Are Narcissists So Cold Hearted?” “5 Clear Signs You’ve Beaten Your Narcissist,” “Narcissists Hate These 5 Weird Tricks,” “The Narcissist’s Game of Twisted Loyalties,” and “How Narcissists Disconnect from Reality and Logic.”

So, why are gaslighting and narcissism so “popular,” at least for writers and those who have a personal experience they attribute to people with those conditions?

First, let’s acknowledge that the two conditions have certain similarities. Narcissists and gaslighters both tend to have large egos and look down on their victims. Both can be users and abusers. Both use techniques that create learned helplessness, the state in which the victim doesn’t know how to appease their partner. They both rely on intermittent reinforcement, where they go back and forth between solicitous love and breaking down their victim.

Many of the techniques they use are the same. They will isolate their intended victim from friends and family. The abuser will limit their ability to act independently by limiting their finances and outside activities such as work. They will trap their victims in a net that impairs their ability to envision a means of escape.

The difference comes with the ultimate result. The person who is abused by a narcissist gets used to the abuse. They doubt their ability to appease the narcissist—because there is no way to do it. The narcissist escalates the abuse, often from psychological and verbal abuse to physical abuse. The victim is often unable to leave because of fear of further abuse, whether to themselves, their children, or even their pets. They are chained to their abuser by believing that the abuse is evidence of love and that it’s their own fault.

The gaslighter’s specialty is making the victim doubt their own sanity. They will deny things that actually happened. They will say that their victim isn’t remembering things correctly. They will say the gaslit person is upset over nothing. They may even be blatant: “You’re crazy. You need to have your head examined.” One gaslighter I knew agreed to go to couples therapy, then made a big show of presenting his partner as the “sick” one and casting himself as a sympathetic helper.

Another difference is that narcissism is an actual psychiatric diagnosis (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), while gaslighting isn’t. Some therapists work with narcissists and their victims though, as with any personality disorder, improvement is not very likely. Gaslighting is not a “diagnosis” but rather a pattern of behavior. The victim recognizes and diagnoses themself: “I have been gaslit.”

That may be one thing that made the term “gaslighting” so popular. It didn’t require seeing a therapist to identify it, though, of course, you could well need a therapist to untangle the aftereffects.

Narcissists, however, are often “diagnosed” by the layperson. They identify someone who has hurt them in whatever way as a narcissist. Most of them don’t have access to the DSM to compare an abuser’s behavior to the actual criteria for diagnosis. Narcissism is classed in a category of personality disorders that feature “dramatic, emotional, or erratic features.” The Manual lists nine criteria for a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder: grandiosity, fantasies, specialness, need for admiration, entitlement, exploitation, lack of empathy, envy, and arrogance, which are relatively stable over time and pervasive. The layperson may see only entitlement, exploitation, and lack of empathy, while not realizing that a narcissist’s traits also include fantasies and envy.

What the layperson identifies as a narcissist is sometimes just a garden-variety abuser or jerk who doesn’t have a personality disorder. Not all abusers are narcissists, and not all narcissists are abusers. Some narcissists do very well in life, becoming successful business leaders and prominent public figures. Their narcissistic tendencies are interpreted as positive attributes like drive or aspiration rather than entitlement or grandiosity.

So, back to the original question: Why is “narcissist” the go-to, trendy label for troublesome partners or bosses? It is possible they truly are narcissists and would be diagnosed as such by a psychiatrist. But it’s more likely that the supposed narcissist merely has the perception that they are better than their partners, whom they see as deserving bad treatment. It’s a common enough problem in society. But attributing a psychiatric diagnosis to them elevates them to a degree that ignores the harm an ordinary person with bad qualities can do.

It’s more dramatic to think that you’re the victim of a person who has NPD than to realize that you are being abused by a regular person who just doesn’t care about you and your feelings.