“Narcissist”: a word we reach for too quickly

Saturday morning, coffee with a friend. She is telling you about her ex: he forgot her birthday, talked only about his job at dinners, never knew how to apologise. Then she leans back and sums up: “Basically, a total narcissist.” You nod. At the next table someone is describing their boss with the same word. That evening you open a video on your phone called “Seven signs you’re living with a narcissist” and find you know at least five of them: in your sister, in a colleague, a little in yourself.

The word “narcissist” is everywhere today. We use it for the person who hurt us, the person who annoys us, and the person who simply likes taking photographs of themselves too much. When one word covers all three, it is worth asking whether it still says anything.

In this post I think through how a clinical term became an everyday label, how selfishness, immaturity and a personality disorder differ, and why a label, even when it brings relief, rarely helps you in a relationship. Not in order to defend anyone, but because more precise language serves you first of all.

How a professional term became an everyday label

In the Greek myth, Narcissus is a young man who falls in love with his reflection in the water. Psychoanalysis borrowed the name more than a hundred years ago to describe how a person regulates their sense of worth. The diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder entered the American diagnostic manual in 1980. For a long time the word stayed in consulting rooms and professional books.

Then it moved into popular books, forums and social media, where short videos offer lists of signs. In 2016 the Australian psychologist Nick Haslam described a phenomenon he called “concept creep”: terms such as trauma, abuse or mental disorder gradually come to include milder and more everyday experiences. He did not write about narcissism specifically, but the mechanism is recognisable. A word that once meant a rare and severe pattern starts to mean “someone I find selfish”.

Does this have a good side? It does. People who lived for years in a relationship where they were humiliated and had their reality rewritten found words for their experience through this material for the first time. I will come back to that. The downside is that a word meaning everything no longer separates what is irritating from what is dangerous.

How much disorder there really is

Judging by conversations, you would conclude that every third ex-partner has narcissistic personality disorder. The data say otherwise. The DSM-5 manual summarises that studies in the general population have found a prevalence of between 0 and 6.2 per cent. The upper figure comes from a large American study by Stinson and colleagues (2008) and refers to lifetime prevalence; other studies have found considerably lower rates. The range itself tells you the disorder is hard to measure. It also tells you that, either way, we are talking about a minority.

Another widespread claim is that narcissism is on the rise and that younger generations are more narcissistic than earlier ones. That, too, is less solid than it sounds. In 2008 Jean Twenge and colleagues reported that American students’ scores on a questionnaire of narcissistic traits had risen over the decades. In 2017 Eunike Wetzel and colleagues, using data from several universities, found the opposite: a slight decline. The field is not agreed on this.

Narcissistic traits are something other than the disorder. Everyone has some, some people have more, and they are usually more pronounced in the young than later in life. That everyone actually needs a certain amount of narcissism is something I write about in “Am I a narcissist?” What the question says about you.

Selfishness, immaturity, disorder: three different things

When we say “narcissist”, we usually mean one of three things that look alike from the outside but call for different responses.

Selfishness is behaviour in a situation. Someone chose themselves when they could have thought of you: took the last piece, decided on the holiday without you, forgot to ask how you were. We all act selfishly, more often when tired, under pressure or frightened. What matters is what happens after you tell them. If they can hear it, feel awkward and act differently next time, it is behaviour, not character.

Immaturity is a missing skill. Some people never learned to take criticism, wait their turn, apologise, or bear someone else’s distress without turning the conversation to themselves. They take offence at a remark and go quiet at your success. This is tiring, but it is a developmental matter: with years, experience and effort the skills can be learned. Behind a confident front there is often a good deal of fragility, which I describe in Overconfidence: when trusting yourself is a defence.

A personality disorder is a rigid, lasting pattern. It shows in most relationships, has been there since early adulthood, hardly changes with circumstances, and causes serious harm to the person or to those around them. In narcissistic personality disorder, grandiosity, a need for admiration and a lack of empathy are in the foreground. It is a diagnosis. It is made by a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist after an assessment, not by an acquaintance after three stories.

Why the label feels so good

If the word is so imprecise, why do we like using it so much? Because it does something we badly need in a difficult relationship.

It ends the doubt. Someone who has been told for years that they are exaggerating, imagining things, being oversensitive finds confirmation in the word “narcissist”: I wasn’t mad, something really was wrong. That relief is real and should not be underestimated.

It offers a simple explanation. It compresses a complicated story between two people into one word. We lean that way in any case: social psychology has described for decades how we tend to attribute other people’s behaviour to their character and our own to circumstances. He was late because he is inconsiderate; I was late because of the traffic.

It hands out the roles. If he is a narcissist, I am the one it happened to. Sometimes that is exactly how it is. Sometimes the picture is more complicated, and the label spares us the uncomfortable question of what each of us brought into the relationship.

It gives a sense of control. When you name something, it feels as though you have mastered it. Lists of signs promise that next time you will spot such a person on the first date.

What the label takes away

The relief has a price, though, and it shows up later.

It does not tell you what to do. “He’s a narcissist” is a verdict, not a plan. Should you stay, set a boundary, leave, look for help? The answer comes from describing what is going on, not from the name for it.

It closes down curiosity. Once a person is “a narcissist”, we read everything they do through that word. Kindness becomes manipulation, an apology a tactic, silence a punishment. Sometimes that is accurate. But if it is always accurate, we can no longer learn anything new: not about them, not about ourselves.

It ends the conversation. Said to someone’s face, the word “narcissist” is an attack on the whole person. We respond to it with defence or counter-attack, not with listening. A short example (composed, not a real person):

“You’re just a narcissist.”
“Oh, so now I’m ill as well. And you’re perfect?”
“See, even now you can’t listen.”
“Listen to what? That I’m broken?”

After four sentences nobody remembers that the conversation began with him looking at his phone all through dinner with her parents. How to steer an argument back to the point is something I write about in It is not about the dishes: what really lies underneath recurring arguments.

It harms people with the diagnosis. A personality disorder is a condition that causes suffering and for which some people seek treatment. When we use the diagnosis as an insult, we make that path harder for them. A diagnosis is a working tool for professionals, not a rating of a person’s worth, as I described in A diagnosis is a map, not a name for you: what the ICD says and what it does not.

It waters the word down for those who need it most. If everyone who runs late and likes talking about themselves is a narcissist, then the person living beside someone who has systematically humiliated and controlled them for years is no longer heard seriously enough.

Describing behaviour instead of diagnosing

The alternative is not to stay silent or to excuse everything. The alternative is to say it more precisely. A description has three parts: what happened, what it was like for you, and what you need.

So instead of “you’re a narcissist”: “When I was telling you yesterday about my conversation with the doctor, you started talking about your meeting after a minute. I felt as if it didn’t matter. I’d like you to hear me out.” Something can be done with that sentence. The other person can say “you’re right, I’m sorry”, can explain, can disagree. And their response tells you far more than any label.

The same applies when you talk about someone to a third person, or think it over alone. “My mother is a narcissist” does not help you at Sunday lunch. “My mother compares every success of mine with my sister’s, and afterwards I’m in a bad mood for two days” tells you where you need a boundary.

Even professionals do not diagnose from a distance

It is interesting that the profession does not allow itself what we do in everyday conversation without a second thought. Since 1973 the American Psychiatric Association has had an ethical rule known as the Goldwater rule: a psychiatrist does not offer a professional opinion on the mental health of a person they have not examined in person and who has not given consent. The rule came about after a magazine in 1964 asked psychiatrists whether the presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was psychologically fit for office.

The reason is simple: personality cannot be reliably assessed from stories, recordings and impressions. Diagnosing a personality disorder takes interviews, information about how the person functions in different areas and over time, sometimes psychological testing. And even then specialists do not always agree with one another.

As a marriage and family therapist in training I do not make diagnoses, neither of you nor of the people you tell me about. Who may is explained in Who may diagnose, who may prescribe, and who leads the process. This is not a limitation that makes the conversation poorer. To understand what is happening to you in a relationship and what you are going to do, you do not need another person’s diagnosis.

Exercise: translate the label into a description

You can do this today. You need a sheet of paper and fifteen minutes. Choose a person you have recently called, or thought of as, a narcissist.

1. Write down three concrete events that brought you to that word. As if a camera had recorded them: who said and did what, without adjectives.
2. Next to each, write what it was like for you. One word is enough: humiliated, overlooked, frightened, angry.
3. Ask yourself how often and where. Does it happen occasionally or almost always? Only with you or with others too? Has anything ever changed after you talked?
4. Next to each event, write what you need. To be listened to, an apology, for it to stop, more distance. Be honest: sometimes the answer is “to leave”.
5. Choose one sentence you can say and one thing you can do yourself, whatever their response. If you wrote “frightened” several times in step two, read the next section first.

At the end, instead of one word you have a list you can take into a conversation, to a friend or to therapy. You may find it comes down to three clumsy incidents in an otherwise good relationship. You may find it is a pattern that has lasted for years. Both are worth knowing.

Where this caution does not apply

Everything above could be read as “don’t judge, put up with it, perhaps you’re exaggerating”. That is not what I am saying, so the other side needs saying too.

For some people this word saved their sanity. Someone who lived beside a person who first put them on a pedestal and then devalued them, who denied what they had seen and heard, found a map for the first time in descriptions of narcissistic patterns. Concepts such as gaslighting and idealisation help you see what used to be fog. I am not diminishing that experience. I describe the patterns in such a relationship in Living with a narcissistic partner: the patterns that wear you down.

You do not need a diagnosis in order to leave. You do not have to prove that the other person has a disorder before you are allowed to set a boundary or go. It is enough that you are not well in the relationship and that nothing changes despite your attempts. And the reverse: even if they did have a diagnosis, it would not mean you must stay and understand.

Danger does not depend on the name. If a partner or family member intimidates you, controls your money, phone or contacts, humiliates you, threatens you or hits you, that is violence, whether or not there is a personality disorder behind it. Precise language here does not mean milder language. I describe the early signs in Early signs: how to recognise an abusive relationship at the start. In Slovenia you can call the SOS helpline for women and children who are victims of violence on 080 11 55; in immediate danger call 112 or the police on 113. Where there is violence, couples therapy is not the right form of help; safety comes first.

A description can be a weapon too. “I’m only describing your behaviour” can be said with just as much contempt as a label. Technique does not replace intention: do I want to be heard, or do I want to win?

What this means for a relationship and for therapy

In relational family therapy, the approach I am training in, the relationship is at the centre: what keeps repeating between two people, and where each of them knows that dance from. A label points our gaze at one person and at an inner world we cannot see. A description brings it back to where something can change: between the two of you, and in you.

You can come to a session with the question “is he a narcissist”. I will not give you an answer to it, but together we can look at what is happening in the relationship, what it does to you, where you know this feeling from, and what choices you have. Sessions take place in person in Ljubljana, and I also work with English-speaking clients. If there is violence in the relationship, I will help you find support that is trained for it.

What to remember

• The word “narcissist” has spread from clinical use to almost any selfish or irritating behaviour, and has lost its precision along the way.
• Narcissistic personality disorder is a diagnosis of a minority; as summarised in DSM-5, studies in the general population have found it in 0 to 6.2 per cent of people.
• Selfishness is behaviour, immaturity a missing skill, a disorder a rigid and lasting pattern. It is established by a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist after an assessment, never from a distance.
• A label brings relief but does not tell you what to do. A description (what happened, what it was like for you, what you need) does.
• You do not need someone else’s diagnosis to set a boundary or leave. If you are afraid, seek help, whatever the name.