Maybe that person you hate isn’t a narcissist

Have we moved on from calling everyone we dislike a narcissist? For while you couldn’t move for people calling their ex/mum/sister a narc or stumbling across a stranger online (without any formal qualifications) listing the ten red flags to spot in one. A narcissist was a selfish person, a mean person, a manipulative person but also just a person you felt didn’t hug you enough, a person who broke up with you and hurt your feelings. It sometimes felt like it became a neat way to dismiss someone as fundamentally broken - much like mad has always been for women. Maybe that’s why the trend for throwing the word around has quietened down somewhat, or maybe TikTok just moved on to something else like diagnosing everyone with rickets. 

I’d say about 95% of the people who were labelled narcissists during the craze wouldn’t receive an official diagnosis - the real estimate is up to 6% of the population - but obviously people can have narcissistic traits which is a small but important difference. Narcissistic traits can arguably be found in most of us - arrogance, a lack of empathy sometimes, being envious of others, a need for attention blah blah blah. So far so human (or maybe I’m a narc). In labelling someone a narcissist rather than as someone who behaved badly on occasion, you’ve decided to see everything through that lens. That’s confirmation bias right there and they’ll find it very hard to do anything to change your mind. Also, sometimes people are just dicks. “You can be mentally ill and a cunt” my mother once said, quite perceptively I thought (thankfully not about me but also maybe sometimes about me). I think we’re too damn quick to say someone has a condition when they’ve just got some old-fashioned unappealing traits. In looking for the narc we overlook some really terrible people who deserve more condemnation merely for existing. Here are my top worst five: 

The person who looks over your shoulder at a party to see if there’s someone more important to talk to behind you. Married to someone fairly well known, I get this quite a lot and I always write down their name in a mental notebook I possess which is called "Isabella's list of nemeses who will never be forgiven or forgotten.” It’s imaginary and legally binding. My first publisher was the inaugural name after a truly comic initial introduction where he gave me about eight seconds of his time before allowing his eyes to surf over my head and lock eyes with my husband. “Ahh Greg,” he said with almost breathless pleasure, “something something cricket something.” With this sports bonding man move, I was cut out of the conversation entirely. It didn’t matter that I’d just written a bestselling book for his company nor that Greg was signed with a different publishing house. In this man’s eyes, my husband was more important/fun/tall and I might as well have been roadkill on the way to meeting him. My mother has a list of these people too, including two very famous national broadcasters who did the surf look while she was in the middle of talking. Both men are failing health wise now and I don’t want to say that’s because they’re on her list but I can’t rule it out. It’s usually men who surf but not always. There’s a woman I’ve known for decades now who does it every single fucking time I see her. I’m always braced for it, I know it’s coming and yet it's still a fresh body blow when it happens. The most recent head on collision was last month when I saw her at a party and waved, hoping to avoid an actual conversation which would guarantee the surfing look. But no, she came over to me! A tiny part of my soul wondered if this time it was going to be different, if this time we were going to have a fulfilling conversation which wouldn’t leave me feeling like a potato rotting in a corner. 30 seconds in she looked over my shoulder, spotted someone less lumpen and pathetic and cut me off mid sentence to go and talk to them. I mean it, she literally just walked off. If it wasn’t so devastatingly brutal I’d almost be admiring. Kim Cattrall once said she didn’t want to be in a situation for even for an hour where she wasn’t enjoying herself. This woman won’t do one minute. That’s boundaries. 

If you’re enjoying reading this piece, please consider subscribing. It’s £4 a month and allows me to write four times a month.