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Julie L Hall

Horrid and Shocking Things Narcissists Say and Do

Make a keystroke blindfolded and you’re likely to land on a mention of narcissism on the Internet. But nothing explains the shocking things narcissists are capable of better than real-life examples. Here are some doozies.

It’s All About Me

Maria had just watched her father die at the hospital the day before. They had known he was ill, but his death was sudden, surprising everyone. As Maria was accompanying her mother to her door, her mother-in-law, who lived a few houses down and was trudging by, launched into a diatribe about her car not starting. “She went off about her car problems, having to wait for AAA, and what bad luck she was having, without saying a word to us about my father. We just stood there listening for several minutes,” Maria said. “Suddenly she interrupted herself, hugged my mother and said she was sorry about things. She said nothing to me. Then she walked on ranting angrily about her car again. Mom and I just looked at each other in disbelief.”

Bad Blood

Kurt had long dealt with his narcissistic father’s harsh criticism of Kurt’s son Davie. Davie was brainy but easily distracted in school, unathletic, and going through a chubby phase. Kurt’s father regularly shamed and ridiculed his grandson. When Kurt’s wife left him, he was shattered to find out that she had been cheating on him with other men. His father learned about the affairs and suggested that Kurt’s son was not his biological child.

Kurt said, “My father told me, ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that Davie isn’t yours? Now we know he’s someone else’s boy, not related to us.’” Kurt’s father did not attempt to disown Kurt’s younger daughter, who was a good student, slim, and athletic. “I told my father that Davie is my son, no matter what,” Kurt said.

Sweet Old Lady

Lenny had heard stories about his neighbor Janine, but she appeared to be a harmless older woman with a white cloud of hair and an oxygen machine at her side. One day she began talking about a friendly squirrel that lived in her yard. Lenny, an animal lover, listened eagerly.

Janine told him, “It comes on our back deck and eats nuts from the tree there. It walks right up to my husband and me as if to say hello every morning. It seems to want us to adopt it.” Getting to the point, she then explained that they were going to kill the squirrel, either by poisoning or trapping, because it just didn’t respect their property. “I’ve had enough of them. We are so generous, and they don’t respect it. We are the ones who know how to share, and they just abuse it.”

Blame the Victim

Christine’s grandfather began raping her when she was seven years old. Her parents were often out for the night partying, leaving her under her grandfather’s “supervision.” He told her she was a “bad girl,” that what he did was her fault, and that her parents would hate her if she said anything about what she “made him do.”

In time Christine grew withdrawn and angry. Her grades dropped, and she avoided being home by spending time on the streets with other kids. Finally, during a fight with her mother she said her grandfather had been touching her and forcing her to have sex. Her mother told Christine’s father, and he accused Christine of seducing her grandfather and “ruining the family.” He kicked her out of the house, leaving her homeless at 15 years old.

Bait and Switch

Lana described her father as a seasoned psychologist with a serial history of seducing and then dumping women, some of whom were his clients and always younger and more attractive than him. “My father is and never has been a good-looking man,” Lana said, “but he has an absolute tried-and-true process with women. He listens very carefully to what they really want and need in their lives and then supports it 1,000 percent—at first.”

Lana recalled that starting when she was about 13 her father would introduce her to the new women in his life always the same way. “He’d tell me in front of her, very charmingly, that I had to love her and that she was true family, something he always implied I was not.” Lana explained that after each new conquest fell in love with her father, he would raise the price tag for his attention. “He required them to provide more adulation of him and tolerate more and more derision from him. The wonderful promise would be increasingly withheld as they became desperate,” explained Lana. “I always knew when he was about to break up a marriage or relationship. He’d say the exact same thing: ‘I wish I had known how emotionally unbalanced she was.’”

Adding Insult to Injury

Helen’s parents often fought violently and after they divorced took out restraining orders against each other. One day when Helen was about 14 and her father stopped by to pick her up from her mother’s house, her mother, Maurine, emerged with a gun and shot at both Helen and her father. She missed Helen but hit her father, who fell forward across Maurine’s property line onto her lawn, in doing so violating the restraining order.

When the police investigated the shooting, Helen’s father declined to press charges against his ex-wife. But when the police approached her for questioning, Maurine, knowing there were no charges against her, admitted she had shot her ex and then added that she wanted to press charges against him for violating her restraining order.

Big Faker

Helen’s mother Maurine hated not being the center of attention. At the dinner table one night when Helen and her sisters and father were talking, Maurine suddenly slipped from her chair and collapsed onto the floor, apparently unconscious. Shocked and concerned, her family rushed to her side and picked up the phone to call 911, at which time Maurine regained consciousness.

The same scenario played out a few more times at the dinner table. If the conversation shifted away from Maurine, she would dramatically drop to the floor, eliciting concern from her family. Helen said, “Pretty soon we knew that Mom’s ‘fainting spells’ were yet another one of her ploys for attention. After that we just ignored her and talked over it. She continued to fall sometimes. She’d lie there for a bit and then pretend to wake up in confusion.”

Helpful? Buy me a coffee.

Julie L. Hall is the author of The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free coming December 3, 2019, from Hachette Books. Preorder your copy now.

Need support? Julie offers specialized narcissistic abuse recovery coaching to clients around the world. 

Related Articles by Julie L. Hall

Images courtesy of J Hazard, elizaIO, Tex Texin and Incase, Creative Commons.

Categories: The Narcissist Family Files
Tags: adult children of narcissistsexamples of narcissismHorrid and Shocking Things Narcissists Say and Donarcissist mothernarcissistic father
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View Comments (37)

  • Thank you for your writing, Julie. I am getting fractionally better at spotting them. I takes me about a month now, down from 40 years.

  • I'm so sorry but Helen's mother's "fainting spells" had me rolling on the floor in laughter! It's both of hilarious and tragic.

    • I’m from a narcissistic family and so was my ex-wife. I had a stroke - although I suspect it was trauma-induced physical immobility after having confronted my narcissistic father for the first time in my life. I was in hospital having brain scans and lumbar punctures but my mother in law suddenly developed a ‘terrible virus’ at exactly the same time! This ‘virus’ confined her to her bed for the entire time I was in hospital. It also meant that a) she didn’t have to visit me in hospital or support her daughter at a time of great stress and b) it set up both her and me as ‘victims’ in need in a triangular situation where my wife was then forced to choose between her husband and her mother. She chose me, and this became the defining moment when my wife could finally see the narcissistic dynamics at work with her mother.

  • Hi Gloria. I admit I had the same reaction, and that's why I ended with that one, to kind of lighten things. It's awful but also absurdly amusing—one my "favorite" ridiculous narcissistic behaviors.

  • Here's what I consider my worst incident so far with my narc husband. The day after suffering a miscarriage, on the way home from the doctor, he wanted to stop and get himself some food from the BK drive thru. Fine. Then he wanted to stop and check out a house for sale we were interested in. Fine. After leaving this house which was in need of considerable work to be inhabitable, I expressed my concerns which of course angered him. He flew into the usual rage screaming uncontrollably while driving. When we pulled in the driveway I got out and he continued to yell as he got out. With both of us facing each other leaning into the car doors he raised his bag of uneaten food as if to throw it at me. Having reached my point of enough I said go ahead. (You know the point where you wish he would just go ahead and hit you or push you or follow through with that fist poised in front of your face to cause such reverberation that time sort of stops and the fight is over because 'look what you made me do'). So I said go ahead and he did. He threw a full bag of Burger King food at me which hit me square in the forehead and left a knot. THE DAY AFTER I LOST OUR SECOND CHILD. No, he never said he was sorry, only that I told him to go ahead. And for a minute you truly take ownership because after all, you did dare him didn't you?

    • I'm so sorry Christin. It's astounding what they're capable of, with little to no remorse. And, yeah, they train you to doubt and blame yourself against all reason.

    • Christin,

      Thank you for sharing your story. I thought this must have been my partner of seven years it sounded so familiar. I had surgery for two broken fingers breaking a spill from falling off a bicycle. He insisted I ride that bicycle despite the fact I have MS and was too tired. I had surgery and afterwards he went tool shopping with me in tow. I had gallbladder surgery and he went skiing. My blood sugar hit 70 after an impromptu as usual demand he go somewhere with me. I fell over. Some EMTs tested my sugar and told him I needed food. He told me I had humiliated him by asking for help. He drove me to his house and dumped me outside of the house and drove away. He also raged and raged particularly in the car although also at other times. If I did not exactly what he said, he would randomly leave me stranded in say Seattle, etc. I finally told him I would not get into his car with him anymore. He not only had new supply (other men and women, I did not know about the men) and after seven years of dating and 29 months in his house, I got myself (with help of course) to a shelter. It is a slow road to recovery. It does happen and it will happen. Never give up.

  • This really helped me. My mother is always sicker than anyone in the family. Now at 81, yes, she is truly ill. But as a child and even an adult, she had to be the biggest victim. When I was diagnosed with MS, she made it all about her. She would tell people "I have to live for Alison." When I fractured my ankle in high school she said I was fine and it was a week before I got an x-ray. She raged at me one night in Oregon (they have moved some 18 times) about a contacts lens that was stuck in my eye. My boyfriend was with me that night. He said, "My parents don't treat me like that." She was furious I woke her up.

    I just do not think she can help being this way, or can she? Everyone says she is so sweet. But I started having night terrors about my mom once I left home. Sadly, I have encountered a string of narcs and I have reacted strongly. At this point in my life, I think I have to live with the symptoms and do my best. Lately I have been addressing the original wound. When I was a child I wrote in a diary, "When I grow up, I will not rage at my daughter and then give her gifts." But I chose not to have children for a number of reasons including the fear I would be just like her.

    • I'm so sorry Alison. Yes, as children of narcissists we tend to fall into similar patterns as adults with other narcs, making it all the more tragic. It's a long road, but you're on your way.

  • When I was 26 it was my first wedding anniversary and my husband was deployed overseas. I was depressed and isolated so i called home to speak to my mother (who was marginally better than my father). He answered the phone and I asked if mum was there. No, she is out, says he. I was so desparate for a smidgen of support that i opened my soul a crack to him. Dad, its my wedding anniversary and Tom is away, im feeling a bit down. His reply. 'youve made your bed now you must lie in it''. I was devastated. I was also extremely angry. I replied 'thats it, im not speaking with you again'. I put the phone down. The penny finally dropped of this extremely self absorbed man. That was the final in a long line of 'straws'. Next thing i get is a phone call from my cousin. ''Your dads been on the phone to me crying - hes really upset and wants you to call him'. WTF. No, never again. I was done. Ten years later i moved to the other side of the world and when he was dying he was asking for me. I could not spare the time nor the money for that vile monster

  • Right now I'm going through a divorce with a narcissist, I have so many stories to tell about what I went through with him. The first one that came to my mind, was when I just found out that I was pregnant, my very close uncle committed suicide and I wasn't allowed to cry, because the baby would be "dumb" because of it. He wouldn't stop saying (for almost 3 hours) how my mother (who didn't knew at the time that I was pregnant) was such and evil piece of $hit for telling me about it.
    He tried to destroy my self esteem, isolate me from friends and family and still tried to play the victim. Every single day I feel better and stronger, he's is still trying to control my baby boy and myself about everything.

    • My narcissistic mother too used to tell me “stop it, or I’ll give you something to really cry about.” The context of this was I’d be screaming and crying during being “smacked “, usually for some very minor issue, often I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. Her version of smacking was to pull me up by an arm so my toes barely touched the ground and then thump me multiple times, it was excruciatingly painful and unfortunately a near daily occurrence. Afterward she’d look for bruises and when she found them she’d blame me by saying if I had just taken it rather than trying to get away she wouldn’t have had to hit as hard. I am the family scapegoat and a doctor now. I’ve become estranged from her for 3 reasons. Firstly, through God’s love I know I don’t need her tacit approval to be deserving of love. Secondly, through my work I’ve learned I don’t need or deserve to put up with abuse. Thirdly, now I have children I can’t imagine how anyone could treat their own child that way.

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