When I was consulting a psychologist about dealing with a relative who is a clinical narcissist, he said, “Every bit of praise, attention, and reinforcement makes a narcissist’s problem worse. Her personality is a deep, dark hole, and every time you give her attention, you make the hole deeper.”
I was thinking about this when I saw the footage of a “Pride event” at the White House. After the sniveling, gushing attention, praise and exaltation the invitees received from POTUS, they weren’t satisfied. To the contrary, they felt worse. Their need grew so big that they had to roll out their huge fake naked breasts and surgery scars and parade them right their at the WH.
The more you give to narcissists, the more deprived they feel. Attention, praise and kindness enrage them. Recognition and adulation make them rabid because every instance of praise is a reminder that it’s not working. The hole is still there.
Narcissists look to others to fill their inner emptiness. But it’s impossible. Their personality is the emptiness, the whole, the vacuum. Nothing is ever enough. To the contrary, more is less to them.
Clarissa's Blog 
That is a very interesting insight!
LikeLike
To be fair to Biden, the people involved in that video were just a few of those in attendance and they have all been banned from future visits to the White House due to inappropriate behavior.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m sure that Biden had only the kindest intentions of being nice to a marginalized group. The problem is that he never thought about the nature of the marginalized group in question and why it’s marginalized in the first place. These weren’t accidentally bad attendees. This would have happened with any attendees. We aren’t talking about, say, gay people who want to be left alone to live their lives in peace. We are talking about a sexual paraphilia that is exhibitionist in nature. It’s all about “presenting” which doesn’t work without an audience. Being gay or bisexual works amazingly well without an audience. But being trans doesn’t. It’s all about the gaze of others. All of them. Everybody has to play or it doesn’t work. This was doomed to lead to the flapping of breasts. It always does.
LikeLike
“Every bit of praise, attention, and reinforcement makes a narcissist’s problem worse”
I think this is true of a lot of performers… I remember an interview with a pop singer who’d spent her youth dream of crowds screaming her name…. when it happened the reaction was “I thought it would be louder…”
LikeLike
Robin Williams.
Never could figure out why people thought he was funny. All I could ever see was someone so desperate for attention that he was like an emotional black hole.
LikeLike
“Robin Williams”
Or Madonna… an important culture figure (I’m completely serious) in her day and rather than bow out gracefully she’s still hungry for the spotlightt and degrading herself in ever more grotesque ways in search of attention.
LikeLike
Aye. Somebody needs to send out the memo that graceful ageing is back in style, go find examples of celebrities not getting “procedures” done, letting their hair go gray naturally, and celebrating a light work schedule and grandchildren in their golden years or something, and do a media blitz on it. Soft lighting, rolling landscapes, multi-page spreads in Vanity Fair. Make being an ageing celebrity about… I dunno. Swimming, horseback riding, and forest restoration projects. Hobby farms. Charity work.
Audrey Hepburn had the right idea.
Stop paying attention to the gargoyles.
LikeLike
@methylethyl – I have always hated Robin Williams. I always attributed it to him having zero ability to do subtlety, but painfully desperate for attention is perhaps a better way to put it. The one role of his that I didn’t hate was Jumanji, but there he’s playing a man who has been isolated from other humans since childhood, so being over the top and “off” sort of works for the character.
@Cliff – I totally agree about Madonna. Love her or hate her, she was incredibly relevant from 1983 until the mid-1990s. And then she just lost her edge and everything she’s done since then has been kind of boring and embarrassing. People still show up for her concerts because they have nostalgic feelings about the stuff from the 80s and early 90s, but the best thing she could have done for her legacy would have been shifting into semi-retirement in the late 90s.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So did you get any useful guidance for how to handle clinical narcissists?
LikeLike