Unravelling their confusing communication

If you've had a close relationship with a narcissistic individual, you’ll have noticed their communication style is unusual…in ways which are difficult to pinpoint. 

So let's crack this open!

Typical Communication

People generally communicate for a range of reasons: 

• To build and maintain relationships with others

• To share information, ideas or updates with others

• To express emotions and convey feelings

• To solve problems, resolve conflict and address issues

• To seek advice, discuss options and make decisions

• To learn and educate

• To socialise and connect through small talk, sharing stories and bonding with others

There's usually an alignment between the tone, behaviour and reason for communicating - this gives off an authentic vibe.

Narcissistic communication

It's not always obvious that narcissistic types have a different communication style in the beginning, because they’re usually motivated to be attentive towards you, initially. 

In the ‘getting to know you’ phase, they need to gather crucial information about you (hopes, dreams, vulnerabilities) so they can figure out how to make you a permanent fixture in their life. During this process, they can usually manage to act respectfully and share conversation time.

This initial phase doesn't last long and the following communication behaviours will soon show up:

• Patronising comments and tone (pretending to be kind while acting superior)

• Condescending comments and tone (not pretending to be kind while acting superior)

• Lecturing, talking at you, dominating conversations - because they're self-centred and they've now got the information they need from you, there's not much point in listening to you, most of the time…

• Repetition, often repeating the same stories or reiterating messages - this is used to convince you of things (a tactic used by politicians, religious leaders and sales people), or to simply control ‘air time’

What about their reasons for communicating? 

According to Prof. Sam Vaknin, the 4 primary communication goals of narcissists are:

1. Impression management - to impress you and to manage your image of them

2. Self-elevation - supporting their grandiosity and self-created fantasy world

3. Manipulation - to get you to do what they want, have you cater to them them   

4. Confabulation - this will need a whole post of its own, but it's about filling in their own memory gaps with explanations of what probably happened, or to explain away their behaviour… They basically have their own made up storyline which they confuse for factual information. It's not intentional on their part, but it's certainly confusing!

If you start paying closer attention to the ‘why’ behind their communication rather than the words they're using, you'll soon become more aware of their increasingly transparent motivations, enabling you to respond in ways which preserve your autonomy, power and sanity.