Why do narcissists lack the empathy chip

Narcissists don't always lie they don't feel they need to because other peoples feeling don't exist for them. If anything challenges their world view, they dismiss it, it simply didn't happen. For example if they lose to someone or something does not work out

To them, there is not need to lie they truly believe it did not happen because they wont allow anything that interferes with their view of themselves.

Rosalinda Eyes

My sister is what I consider to be a narcissist. I can't believe how long it took me to realise it. I think it was mainly due to the fact that no one in our immediate family would describe her that way. I've heard her being called a drama queen, or that she's too sensitive, but she's never been called what she is, so it can make you think it's all in your head.

The traits she has are:

• impulsiveness
• gets way ahead of herself
• sulking
• tantrums
• always has to have the last word (even when she's caught red handed)
• blame shifting
• attention seeking
• very quick to take credit for herself
• not being able to take a hint (an accurate but snide remark might make me embarrassed and stop me in my tracks, but she'll just give out to you for being snide)

Below are a few things I've witnessed her doing over the years, a lot of which are quite harmless. Not all are necessarily indicative of narcissism.

She once realised that a certain song annoyed me, and I realised that she'd keep singing it more to piss me off.

She's went into my dad's phone and changed the name in his contacts list so that her number reads "'name' your lovely daughter"

Some years she'd put up the Christmas decorations way too early, but then due to being bored and impulsive she would take them down before December was out!

Another thing was after my dad had a procedure done with the foreskin of his penis, and had been keeping it hush. He'd told me, being male, and my other sister as she's a nurse. Anyway she got wind of it but still didn't know what he'd had done. She was offended that I'd been told about it, but she hadn't. She 'made' him tell her what he'd had done, and when he eventually told her, she said "ewww" with an extreme expression across her face. My dad didn't react. I told her she was being insensitive and then my dad agreed saying "you should be glad it went okay". I said she'd never do with that attitude if she was a doctor. Her come back was "believe it or not I'm actually not a doctor".

I have realised that if I am ever down on my luck that it's best to stay away from her. She can be very nasty unintentionally. Shortly after my uncle committed suicide, after he'd went down hill over 15 years. I ended up losing my job around this time. She was distant from me the next time we met because of this. At his month's mind mass when I was walking ahead of her on the way the the grave, she passed me out on the way there... wouldn't walk with me. I was distant from her too but she eventually gave in later that weekend, and wanted to speak to me about losing the job. I made the mistake of feeling that I owed her an explanation. She said "I'm worried about you", later followed by "I'm worried that you're going to end up like (my uncle)". I'm not saying it's unusual for that thought to cross someone's mind, but to say it out like that was very insensitive. That would tie into the getting ahead of herself category above.

She has no hobby, apart from her dog, cooking, and tidying the house. The last one can be a disaster. When my dad got out of hospital recently after a major operation, and when he came home (after she'd being going through old items) she'd a load of stuff out on the table ready to ask about each one... "is this to go? do we need that anymore?" etc. He said "please don't be loading this on me now". She briefly deflected, but then went straight back into it, not taking any hint whatsoever.

If ever there's a due guest over, she goes crazy tidying, even if she hates the person. And by tidying, I don't mean hoovering or mopping the floor, but rearranging and losing stuff. Other things can suffice as hobbies, such as Christmas, or whatever occasion/event is due to happen. If she happens to be preoccupied and doesn't show enthusiasm towards whatever the event is (which is natural), she'll pretend it's because that event is stupid. That makes me think of another thing... when she's being a drama queen, she can say loads of things that doesn't mean... and I'm not talking about insults... those she would mean. For example one time her friend was due to come over and she was tidying. I hadn't copped shy and at one point I'd left my water bottle on the table. She asked me to remove it giving this big spiel about how they don't "look terrible". It was funny given how messy she can be. She couldn't just say "my friend is coming over and I'm trying to tidy the place".

Speaking of tidying, she has a thing about photos. She was once arranging photos on a shelf where out portable landline phone was. I'm not entirely sure what she did, but I found the phone in the dog basket under the shelf in the morning. The cradle on wires were cut on put in the bin. The wire from the phone to the power supply went through a hole in the wall to the utility room. It seemed she didn't have the intelligence to feed the wire through in order to remove the device, so she instead cut it. She said that it fell and snapped. I mean think about it... in order to break a wire like that you'd want to tie either end to the hitches of two separate vehicles. She thought that the phone looked ugly on the shelf and didn't care about it because she never used it.

Around the house she's some other bad habits. She kind of uses the sink as a bin, and she won't be the one to pick out the strainer. She'll never replace anything once it's finished. She'll leave any packet of something she uses open, and the rest of the contents will possibly go to waste. She leaves cutlery (including large knives) drain upside-down! She doesn't rinse when she washes ware... you could potentially get suds on your glass of water. She can't peel spuds with a knife; she needs a carrot peeler.

Other annoying traits of hers are as a result of her dog:

• Takes the dog up to the bedroom... the dog will sometimes get sick up there, or end up wandering into other rooms knocking over bins.
• Picks the dog up on her shoulder while walking around the kitchen. This seems wrong as the dog could potentially be over (although not vertically over) food on the counter and hairs could fall on food with any drafts.
• Always over-feeds the dog no matter how much you tell her not to. Also, feeds the dog all sorts of food for her own amusement. If you say that she shouldn't do it, she'll say something like "but she likes it, look", or "it's affection".

All that's only the least of it.

Strumms

Lots of people lack empathy to some degree or in some situations but to diagnose narcissism….

What are the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder?

Use the acronym “SPECIAL ME” to remember the nine signs of NPD. 

SPECIAL ME 

1. Sense of self-importance
2. Preoccupation with power, beauty, or success 
3. Entitled
4. Can only be around people who are important or special
5. Interpersonally exploitative for their own gain
6. Arrogant
7. Lack empathy
8. Must be admired
9. Envious of others or believe that others are envious of them

more here…. https://www.dukehealth.org/blog/9-signs-of-narcissistic-personality-disorder

If someone consistently displays at least five of the SPECIAL ME traits, they meet the diagnostic criteria for the condition…

I’m no expert and I only discovered this through research having read this thread but on reading it I almost fell off my chair…. I worked with a guy who was an asshole but he had all 9 of those characteristics….no debate about any of them.

I can lack empathy at times, only towards certain people and certain individuals whom I’m not favourably disposed towards….I’m entitled too at times, we all should be but it probably stops there…maybe.

I have worked with pure full-on narcissists, and they are incurable nightmares and forever destructive of all around them. Alcoholics display a good deal of narcissistic behaviour, but it is usually secondary to their condition. A narc will go out of their way to trouble others for absolutely no apparent rhyme or reason. I could list any number of things narc bosses did on me but more especially on colleagues as I would “return the favour”, so to speak and they were sometimes afraid of some of the consequences as I would not endure sh1t, so it tended to carry over to an easier victim as they tend to be cowardly. In fact I tended to get caught in the crossfire trying to protect colleagues.

One of the narc bosses was fired after being caught framing a colleague on CCTV. Wasn’t clever enough to recall that the CCTV existed, didn’t have the technical know-how to use it. In my experience they weren’t at all bright, just scheming, and tried to use my own better intellect to work on their behalf, and I always had to be careful to what ends they would be working. Narcs are always parasites.

People are born with areas of brains less developed than other areas, eg, some are born with superb musical ability whilst others haven’t a note in their head. Same with empathy, it varies between individuals. Also disease can damage areas of brain responsible for empathy, and one major rampage shooting criminal in USA, pre scanning era, was found to have a tumour in an area of brain that accorded to his behaviour.

Dietary deprivations, inability to absorb nutrients, addictions, viral diseases, and brain injury can to various extents affect empathy as well as all the more specifically visible things like mobility.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121360836#Comment_121360836

Im not a psychiatrist/psychologist but to me that reads like a person with Borderline Personality Disorder, which does include sone narcissistic type traits but it’s a well recognised separate syndrome & people who opt for therapy to make life better and who lend themselves to a treatment plan can thrive better and have much improved relationships. “Drama Queens” are more likely to have this, and everything is always about the self but not in a horribly intentional way. Unlike most narcissists they are not “lost causes”.

Jequ0n

They aren’t all bad and still human. It’s amazing how easily some conditions get demonised while other conditions need to be met with utmost respect.

Just because your “empathy chip”is impaired does not mean that that everyone revels in hurting others.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121361085#Comment_121361085

Or you know she is just a person with all the complexities that go with that.

Who here can say they are at the pinnacle of emotional and psychological stability? Or are you all robots with the ability to activate the appropriate response at the appropriate time?

These threads are always so ridiculous.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121363555#Comment_121363555

Some individuals stand out way way more than others when it comes to consistently dysfunctional behaviours. I can safely say I have known a small number of people who would be narcissistic to the repeated detriment to others, those individuals are not like the norm.

Maybe these threads are ridiculous but they get people posting even to disagree that the thread should exist 😉🤣

Ubbquittious

They are not missing an entire chip, it's just a bit of firmware

Sgt Hartman

It’s something to do with amygdala development in the brain. The amygdala plays a role in expressing empathy and remorse for others. I’m not entirely sure of all the details but the amygdalas of psychopaths are smaller/less developed, hence their inability to feel remorse or empathy. I read before that it was an evolutionary trait which came about during times of far fewer resources. Basically a self preservation mechanism. The amygdala in the brains of certain groups shrank over time in order to create a more selfish individual that would horde resources for themselves at the expense of their group members. This evolutionary trait still exists in modern society in the form of the modern day psychopath/narcissist.

con___manx1

If a war broke out those people lacking the empathy chip would either be informers or murders.

They will look after themselves and thats it. Its funny because in the workplace sometimes fuckers like that are in charge.

Jequ0n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121365803#Comment_121365803

Or leaders because enough dumb folk will follow

tesla_newbie

My father was a narcissist, he didn’t fly off the handle into rages , he was actually always in control of his emotions, absolutely everything all of the time was about him however, had no ability whatsoever to consider what those around him might want, especially his wife and children, he did like to put on an act for outsiders however and had a big funeral , my opinion of him has grown worse since he died twenty three years ago as I realised that not once did he ever show support to me when I needed it, on the contrary, if I pointed to unfair behaviour on the part of someone else towards me, he would side with them

he was completely law abiding and like I said wasn’t in anyway violent so presumably there are degrees of narcissism?

con___manx1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121365922#Comment_121365922

Suppose hitler didn't have the empathy chip either so you could be on to something. It was only really the Germans followed him but a few other dummies to.

Dial Hard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121360836#Comment_121360836

Notwithstanding the fact that this thread was 4 years old, do you all live together or something???