Narcissism abuse in the workplace, within families, and with friends

Marcia Hylton – Is a director at Life Inspired Wellness LTD. Marcia helps women who have experienced, narcissistic and other toxic relationships in terms of abuse.

She helps women break free from the patterns of toxic relationships and helps them to create healthier new ones, particularly with themselves first and foremost, after they have been through narcissistic abuse.

Q. What is the difference between Domestic Violence and Narcissism?

Marcia: Narcissistic abuse sits under that umbrella of, domestic abuse it is more psychological and emotional rather than physical. It is almost in a subgroup of its own.

The difference as well with narcissism is it does not only happen in an intimate relationship, you can also find narcissistic abuse in the workplace, within families, and with friends.

That is what makes it slightly different from domestic abuse, which tends to happen within the home, the intimate relationship and narcissistic abuse can happen anywhere.

Intimate relationships

Q. How do you know if a family member a partner or a friend is a Narcissist?

Marcia. That is a difficult question to answer, a lot of the time we do not know. There are certain things that will show up. My area is mainly intimate relationships.  

You will notice behaviours like arrogance, self-centredness-everything is about them, and they will take no real responsibility for anything.

So even in the family dynamic and the intimate relationship dynamic the behaviour is the same.

Q. What are things to look out for in an intimate relationship?

Marcia. I can tell you from an intimate relationship perspective often you are not going to know straight away.  Most people will think of a narcissist as somebody who is loud, boastful, and selfish, those are obvious things that you can see and hear straight away, which will be quite off-putting.

That is the behaviour of overt narcissists. Or a covert narcissist does not necessarily show those traits upfront because if they did, they would not have a relationship.

However, signs to look for include blame-shifting, manipulative and controlling behaviour, demanding, selfish, silent treatments, etc. They will gaslight and are extremely sensitive to even the slightest criticism-it will be taken very badly by them.

Red Flags

Q. Can you give me some examples of red flags?

Marcia. At the beginning of a relationship, they want to speed up the relationship within a week, two weeks, or a month.

They want to be in a committed exclusive relationship with you early on. You may feel overwhelmed by the speed of everything.

You are dating this person and then they suddenly ghost you. They disappear for a week, or longer, you are not able to get in touch with them, you are left wondering what has happened.

Then they turn up again as if nothing has happened. They take a lot of your time. They will bombard you with calls and texts. You seem to have almost everything in common.

They like all the things that you like, the same music, the same food, if everything just sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

That is what you call mirroring, they will just mirror back to you the things that you like and are important to you, because they will study you like a psychology degree, and they will get to know you inside out quickly.