Attention is a pain-killer

The narcissist is a junkie.

Why? For the same reason people become addicted to drugs: it dulls the pain. What pain is the narcissist seeking deliverance from? Their pain is that of a conscience not given its due. They dodge, weave, connive, and lie to themselves, and others, constantly in order to cheat their conscience. A lie is a deliberate effort to conceal the truth. The narcissist lies because they know what the truth is. Truth is something the narcissist must fend off with all their might because truth is like the wooden stake through the heart for the vampire. They perceive truth as the enemy because it will destroy their flimsy house of cards. Always keep the thought in the back of your mind...the narcissist is aware of truth which is why she lies so much. She lies to you just as much as she lies to herself. Truth is their mortal enemy. Which is why, if you decide to embrace truth, you will have to let go of the narcissist.

We all have pain. It is the lot of humanity to have to deal with disappointments, failures in ourselves and those around us, loss, etc. So why don't we all end up like the narcissist? Is their psychic pain somehow more profound than ours? I think not. Their lack of introspection has rendered them too shallow to experience certain psychological pains to the extent that empathetic,compassionate, sensitive and introspective people can. Which brings me back to the source of their disturbance....a blighted, neglected, abused, subverted, perverted conscience.

A neglected conscience persecutes us. The defense against conscience used by the narcissist is to engage in a constant re-creation of reality in order to convince their conscience they are right, good, and justified in every way. The narcissist uses you to reflect back that false reality to them in order to make it feel real to them. As long as all their "mirrors" say back to them, "YOU are the fairest of them all", they can shut that voice of conscience down. If even one of their mirrors doesn't reflect back their false image of perfection, the conscience re surges with all the force resulting from its long repression. The narcissist goes into melt-down and is on the rampage of the crack addict looking for his next fix. Attention assuages the pain of the re-awakened conscience. Attention affirms to them that they are still god-like, they truly are grand, they are oh, so righteous. "Ooooooh, yeah, that feels sooo good" says the narcissist junkie.