A few days ago, in one of my more optimistic moments, I made a video about what happens when two narcissists meet each other. And even worse, what happens when a narcissist comes across a psychopath.
Don't ask, just go there and watch the video.
But this brought on an avalanche, a tsunami of comments, direct messages, emails and carrier pigeons asking me what happens when a covert narcissist comes across another covert narcissist.
What happens when they cross paths.
This is the topic of today's video.
My name is Sam Vaknin, I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, a former visiting professor of psychology and currently on the faculty of CIAPS.
What happens when two covert narcissists cross paths, if not swords?
Start with a problem.
While an overt narcissist can easily recognize another overt narcissist, both overt narcissists and covert narcissists are very bad at recognizing other covert narcissists.
Covert narcissists are, you guessed it, covert. They're covert. They're under the radar. They're stealthy. They're surreptitious. They're hidden in a cult.
Covert narcissists rarely appear to be narcissists. They pretend to be empathic, nice, kind and compassionate. They often pose as victims, victims of other narcissists, for example.
So it's very difficult to identify, recognize and then act when you come across a covert narcissist.
And overt narcissists have no advantage when it comes to detecting covert narcissists.
This is the first problem.
Consequently, when an overt narcissist comes across a covert narcissist, the covert narcissist usually becomes the overt narcissist source of supply.
Covert narcissists are very Machiavellian. They know which buttons to push. They know to provide the narcissist with grade A narcissistic supply. And the overt narcissist becomes addicted and dependent upon the covert narcissist.
The situation is very different when two covert narcissists team up.
As I said, the covert narcissist enhances, amplifies, magnifies, buttresses the grandiosity of the overt narcissist. The covert narcissist encourages the cognitive distortions of the overt grandiose narcissist, the classic narcissist.
Covert narcissist provides the overt narcissist with narcissistic supply, which is essentially a drug. The overt narcissist is a junkie. The covert narcissist is the pusher.
But when the covert narcissist comes across another covert narcissist, what they trade between them, the coinage, the means of exchange is not grandiosity, it's victimhood.
Covert narcissists affirm each other's essential goodness and victimhood.
In other words, if when two covert narcissists meet each other, come across each other, cross paths, find themselves in the same environment, need to communicate somehow.
What they do is they affirm, they confirm each other's alleged or ostensible goodness.
You're a good person. You're impeccable. You're angelic. You're perfect.
It's a form of affection.
And so the covert affirm each other's affection and they also sustain and support each other's self-perception as helpless, accidental victims of other malevolent people, especially overt narcissists and psychopaths.
So the covert would signal to each other, virtual signal.
So covert engage in virtual signaling.
The covert would signal to each other.
We are good people. We are victims of bad people. We did nothing wrong. We did not contribute to our predicament. We are helpless. We are childlike. We are the collateral damage of the narcissist. We are the byproducts of the narcissist's compulsive need to obtain supply or the psychopath's premeditated malice.
Victimhood is a key component in the disturbed identity of the covert narcissist. It's perhaps the only feature that never wavers and never changes.
And so, whereas a covert would provide the overt narcissist, the grandiose narcissist with affirmations and confirmation and adulation and admiration and buttress the overt narcissist's self-image, self-perception, grandiose, inflated self-image and self-perception.
When two coverts meet, they don't display grandiosity because coverts are, you guessed it, covert.
When they display, it's victim.
But the victimhood of covert is grandiose.
So by enhancing each other's victimhood, by affirming each other's victimhood, by trading victimhood stories, by trauma dumping on each other and so on and so forth, what the covert do, they become more and more grandiose as victims.
Their victimhood becomes the locus of their grandiosity.
I am the number one victim, no one has ever been victimized like me and no one has ever come across an abuser worse than mine.
And of course, you can see this in forums of covert narcissists, also known as empaths.
So this is the first thing.
The second thing is that gradually one of the two coverts assumes the roles of an overt narcissist who begins to dominate the interaction of the relationship.
I call it pseudo overt narcissist.
So when two covert meet, collaborate, interact, collude, conspire, cooperate, when two covert are in the same space, one of them gradually becomes grandiose overt, while the other one becomes submissive, obsequious, fawning.
And so the pseudo overt narcissist, the erstwhile covert, acts the role of the overt narcissist.
He becomes more and more grandiose, more and more ostentatious, more and more demanding, more and more addicted to narcissistic supply, which in this case is channeled via victimhood and virtue signaling or competitive victimhood it's called.
Whereas the other covert in the interaction would assume the role of a supplier with obeisance, submissiveness, which is conspicuous, emphasized.
So they develop a kind of cult, kind of ritualized private religion of two, where one of them is the cult leader, the deity, the god figure, the godhead. The other one is the worshiper and they engage in rituals which become more and more compulsive over time, more and more rigid.
Ultimately though, two coverts can no more fit together, can no more coexist and co-survive than two overts.
In my previous video I made clear to you that when two overt grandiose narcissists meet or interact, it's going to lead to a god awful conflict, an eruption, a mess, one upmanship, an attempt to outdo the other, to be more, to be the best, to win and so on.
So competition.
Two overts, two grandiose narcissists engage almost exclusively in competition in order to establish supremacy, hierarchy, superiority so as to support the cognitive distortion of grandiosity.
When two coverts meet, it's a race to the bottom, not a race up but a race down.
Who is more victim, who has been more subjugated and subdued and tortured and molested and maltreated and abused and so on and so forth.
So it's a race to the bottom.
But at some stage this also leads to friction and conflict and hatred and arguments and externalized aggression.
And so they end up exploding exactly as a pair of overt or grandiose narcissists would, a pair of covert narcissists explode at each other. They end up being at each other's throats.
There is no long term coexistence of same type narcissist.
Somatic and somatic, cerebral and cerebral, overt and overt, covert and covert cannot survive for long within a structured relationship, interpersonal relationship of any kind.
Only opposite types can and do survive.
A somatic with a cerebral, a covert with an overt.
But never the twin shall meet if they are of the same type.
Okay, I hope I clarified this one for you and I wish you an overt, pleasant day with covert undertones of pleasure.