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It was after another blowout argument with his wife that Lee Hammock first googled narcissist.

Their fights were frequent and explosive. He hated his warehouse job. He thought he was meant for more. He was fit, good-looking, and still in his 30s; maybe he should be an actor, he said. When she interjected that most actors don’t earn much, Hammock became indignant.
“You think I’m pathetic,” he retorted. “You think I’m one of these just average-ass people.” Conversations about his goals implicitly involved an assessment of his prospects, which was agitating. In another argument, he blamed his lack of career focus on the workload created by their infant son. Before storming out, she called him a narcissist.

Alone in their North Carolina home, he scrolled through his phone, hunting for a bit of information to refute her. But search results showed criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, a condition marked by unreasonably high self-importance, pathological need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. These resonated with Hammock, hard.

“It explained so much for me, the entirety of my life,” he says. He sensed there was something abnormal about his sensitivity to criticism, the inadequacy of his emotional reaction to others, and his ever-present discontent about jobs and social status.

NPD has been listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since its third edition, in 1980. But more recently, the narcissist has become a villain of personal and political narratives, a slimy creature that can only feign humanity, at least in the popular imagination. The elation of Hammock’s epiphany died down as he continued to scroll and click. There were few resources for narcissists, but many Facebook groups for their self-identified victims.

“I go into these groups, and it’s just people saying, ‘Narcissists are evil, leave them immediately, they need to be on a registry,’ all kinds of stuff like that,” says Hammock. “I’m going through all that and I’m like, ‘Oh, hell no, why would I want to be attached to that?’ ”

Hammock, now a 40-year-old father of three, was already making comedy videos for TikTok. After he started therapy and was formally diagnosed, he made narcissism his online brand. He has since gathered more than 2 million followers across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok with his videos that give an insider’s view on narcissism.

He is one in a cohort of self-described “self-aware” narcissists with an ask that may sound rich: consider their perspective. On social media, through podcasts and self-published memoirs, on subreddits and Facebook groups, they lay out their thought processes, which may be prickly and uncomfortable for a non-narcissist to take in. But they rarely resemble the cold-blooded antagonists seen on other posts and forums that unscientifically deploy the narcissist label. As alarming as it has been made to seem, clinical narcissism is not rare: An estimated 6.2 percent of Americans are diagnosable with NPD. Hammock and his ilk are pushing back against a wave of disdain for the last psychological condition that it’s still acceptable to deem totally damning to someone’s character.

Google searches for narcissism spiked after the first election of Donald Trump in 2016. They’ve reached new heights over the last three years, with searches for “narcissistic abuse” trending in parallel. These searches often lead one to Facebook groups with names like Narcissist Awareness and Expose the Narcissist With the Truth where members share stories of cheating partners and abusive parents and trade lists of warning signs and short maxims like “to preserve one’s mental health, one must abandon the narcissist.” The Wikipedia category for “people with narcissistic personality disorder” is stuffed with famous murderers, alongside Nick Cannon, a recent diagnosee.

Social media–savvy psychologists and life coaches have created a cottage industry of warding off and healing from narcissists. Former clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula has written three books on the subject and has 2 million YouTube subscribers who tune in for videos on outsmarting and abandoning narcissists.

Her view, common in these circles, is that narcissists lay on superficial charm to ensnare others and then break them. She said in a TEDx talk, “You slowly become inured to their lack of empathy, their tantrums, their rage, their insults and their entitlement, their lies and their challenges to your reality. Their insulting words slowly become your self-talk.” Durvasula, who did not respond to an interview request, does not think narcissists can change.

And then there is Trump. When his character defects are blamed on narcissism, the trait becomes a root cause of political chaos, democratic erosion, and the whole anxious and queasy feeling of the last 10 years. His political success supposedly demonstrates the potency and force of narcissistic charm. Elon Musk might be a narcissist, too.

The reflex to stamp on the narcissist label has falsely conflated any cruel or deceitful behavior with narcissism, says Craig Malkin, an instructor at Harvard Medical School, the author of Rethinking Narcissism, and a clinical psychologist who treats NPD.

“When people are using the term narcissist as an insult, they are really restricting their understanding to the most extreme forms … and they’re usually misapplying it as almost a standard for abusive or nasty people,” he says. “The problem is that there are plenty of abusive, nasty people who don’t have narcissistic personality disorder.” And not all narcissists are abusive, Malkin adds. “We don’t even include abuse patterns in the DSM’s official diagnosis for narcissism.”

Another key misconception is that clinical narcissists are incapable of empathy. They are capable; it is just often drowned out. “Empathy is not solid or reliable,” Malkin says. “It comes and goes depending on how driven they are to feel special. When they are extremely invested in maintaining their sense of specialness, they lose sight of the needs and feelings of others.”

Narcissists might also be more prone to antisocial behavior. A meta-analysis that pulled data from 123,000 individuals found that people with NPD are 18 percent more likely to engage in violence and 21 percent more likely to show other forms of aggression, like bullying. But bipolar and borderline personality disorders are also linked to increased propensity for violence, and clinicians see the relationship between disorders, behaviors, and other factors as complex. “There’s such a diversity among the population of people with narcissistic personality,” says Malkin. “You get people who are verging on psychopathy and you get people who are just troubled.”

The internet’s self-aware narcissists don’t argue their condition is benign, and most admit they can be difficult people. Hammock has made videos titled “5 Ways Narcissists Can’t Control Themselves” and “Why Do Narcissists REFUSE To Apologize?” But when he breaks down his thought process, there is less Machiavellian evil and more faulty perceptions and problems with impulse control.

In one video, Hammock addressed “love bombing,” a tactic of showering someone with romantic gestures early to outweigh or confuse the intention of abusive tactics later.
Like “gaslighting,” it’s a pop-psychology concept often applied to narcissists.

“Most narcissists don’t set out to destroy people who love them,” he says from that frequent soapbox of online videos, the driver’s seat of a parked car. “That is not the intent. … During the love-bombing phase, narcissists really feel connected to you. They want to be everything that you want and need because, me personally, I felt like I found my person.”

But “a switch goes off in a narcissist’s brain that disconnects them emotionally from you.” It could be something “miniscule, like they find out something about your past they didn’t like.” The sudden change in their own emotions is maddening and jolting to the narcissist.

Hammock answers audience questions and creates TikTok-ready comedy sketches, playing both partners in dialogues that show the frustration, of both parties, in conversing with a narcissist. He balances his social media presence with one-on-one coaching for people with NPD—especially men—and a career as a real estate agent (which he began after quitting the warehouse job on impulse).

He wants to show that narcissists can manage their symptoms, with help. “The point of my platform is for more men to go to therapy,” he said. “Go talk to somebody so you’re not destroying your life.”

Self-aware narcissists also say that their condition causes them pain. “Every aspect of my waking day is dominated through the lens of: How does this make me look? How does this make me feel about myself?” says Jacob Skidmore, an Ohio-based memoir author who appears in online videos as the Nameless Narcissist.

These thoughts even intrude on him when he’s reading for fun—or trying to. “I can’t genuinely enjoy it, because all I can do is think: How am I going to tell somebody else that I’m reading about this to make me sound smart?”

Skidmore, 25, had a group of friends as a teenager that accepted his moodiness, but he could never get close to anyone. “That would mean that I rely on them, and that means that’s something that they can leverage against me,” he says. Something compels him to feel like he is not just emotionally superior, but emotionally invincible.

At 19, Skidmore cheated on his girlfriend—despite it being an otherwise healthy relationship—just to demonstrate he didn’t care about her. Afterward, he started seeing a therapist. When he casually mentioned he thought he was better than all his friends, she diagnosed him with NPD.

The biggest misconception about narcissism, Skidmore says, is “this malice that’s attributed to it.” He knows he’s hurt people and pushed them away, but he says he doesn’t feel in control of himself, let alone other people.

Workplaces are difficult for him. He did a stint in the Army, and “fucking hated it, because that constant reminder that you’re basically bottom of the totem pole.” He also worked as a corrections officer. He liked that better, but the hypervigilance of a prison environment wore on him. He is more comfortable with gig and freelance work, including DoorDash, app development, and making social media videos.

Still, after two and a half years, Skidmore quit his YouTube channel. He couldn’t handle managing his self-image for an audience of thousands. “That’s overwhelming and distressing,” he says. He maintains a small group of friends, but for him, narcissism is lonely. “I’ve always just felt lonely because, emotionally speaking, I wouldn’t allow myself to connect to anybody, and then when the ego, the self-esteem regulation, isn’t going well, the shame aspect of it is godawful.”

On forums for people with NPD, there is a term for what Skidmore is trying to avoid—the shattering of a narcissist’s carefully built self-image, termed a “narcissistic collapse.”

Giacomo Stefanini, a diagnosed narcissist who works as a musician, music journalist, and translator in Italy, says he has veered close to a few collapses: When the Italian office of Vice.com saddled him with covering pop acts he found vapid, when a two-year sabbatical to work as a musician finished unceremoniously with his final unemployment check, when a relationship ended and he moved into a sublet room.

These downturns would create cracks in anyone’s self-esteem, but for people with NPD, the newly created cognitive dissonance between their self-image and the setback can beget a personality crisis. “You suddenly are unrecognizable, because you were someone, and then you feel like you’re no one all of a sudden,” says Stefanini.

Narcissists might get little sympathy among the Facebook groups and subreddits for victims of “narcissistic abuse,” the largest of which have hundreds of thousands of members. (In contrast, the largest Facebook groups for people diagnosed with NPD have a few thousand.)

The public Facebook group Awareness of Abuse and Narcissism has more than 294,000 members, who often speak from places of deep hurt. Every day, they post self-help content and one-off memes slamming narcissists, discuss terms like “trauma bonding” and “love bombing,” and ask for advice about troubling family members and partners.

The group is run by 55-year-old Julie Langdon, of West Essex, England. She left a 20-year relationship with a man she says displayed “coercive control,” though he was never violent. He was not diagnosed, but Langdon considers him a narcissist because he lapped up praise at a prestigious job, putting on an air that contrasted his angry fits at home. Her definition of narcissism includes “mainly, a sense of entitlement,” she says. “The person would think that they’re actually above you, that you owe them something, that you’re their slave, ultimately, but they also have a mask.”

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She benefited from an in-person support group and sought to replicate it online. She said the group’s main benefits are creating a framework to address abuse and encouraging people to leave unhealthy relationships. “I think the positive side is that [members] will support one another, because people will post about their worries about leaving.”

The clinical definition of narcissism is rarely discussed on its pages, and even Langdon thinks the term has been stretched. “I think that a lot of people just think every person that’s horrible to them is a narcissist, and that’s not the case,” she says.

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Both Hammock and Skidmore say they once resented their diagnosis being dragged into these forums. Skidmore started making content out of frustration with “what I felt was an inaccurate representation of the condition online.” But as they spent more time talking about narcissism, something happened that, in some quarters, is deemed impossible: The narcissists became more empathetic toward their detractors.

Skidmore says, “I was just kind of like, ‘Oh, these fucking people are stupid; I want to tell them what’s really up,’ and that’s evolved over time, obviously. It’s not nearly as a defiant thing anymore.”

“I used to see it as a personal attack on me,” agrees Hammock, “but as I’ve grown over the years, I realized this is people speaking from their heart, right? This is people speaking their truth about what has happened to them, what they’ve survived.”

All that self-work has paid off, Hammock says. “I’m at a place where I don’t feel as threatened, so I can understand the perspective of other people better.”

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