Number 1: They are grandiose and entitled, but they don’t display these characteristics directly.
While an overt narcissist may shamelessly assume on a conscious level that the people around them will inevitably recognize their inherent greatness and superiority over other people, a covert narcissist will be more likely to resort to other means, such as false modesty and subtle suggestions, to obtain the same kind of recognition and attention. The key difference is that the covert narcissist will employ less obvious strategies to achieve this goal.
Number 2: They react to failure with shame, anger, blame-shifting, and a sense of powerlessness.
Covert narcissists are not very adept at accepting failure of any kind since it reminds them of their imperfection, and they are forced to accept their limitations and inadequacies. They are not capable of coping with the resulting shame, anger, and feelings of powerlessness and of properly regulating their emotions. Their shame is a direct result of the discrepancy between the capabilities and capacity they believe they possess and their inability to achieve a desired goal.
To protect their ego, they tend to blame external factors for their failure, essentially, they shift the blame to those external factors other people and circumstances which is followed by their projection of anger toward those factors, which they perceive as a threat to their fragile belief system about themselves.
Number 3: They are shy, introverted, neurotic, and socially inhibited.
Neuroticism refers to a person’s proneness to negative emotionality, which is one of the covert narcissist’s key characteristics. A large body of research has also confirmed that covert narcissists tend to be introverted and shy, as well as display significant social inhibition. This means that they are not very likely to attend gatherings with many people and assertively communicate with them, but will be preemptively contemptuous of people in a given social setting. The reason for this is that, in such social contexts, especially in larger social circles, they may feel that their inadequacies may be exposed, which would discredit their self-perception as perfect.
On the other hand, when the covert narcissist feels that people may recognize his or her manipulative behavior, they will harbor contempt for those people in advance for two reasons: number one, to discredit those people’s opinion, and number two, to diminish those people’s qualities and achievements, which the narcissist perceives as a threat to their sense of self-worth.
You may also want to read this:
Words That Destroy a Narcissist
9 Secrets ALL Narcissists Keep
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