The False Persona

It’s vital to understand that narcissism is a condition of low self-esteem – although the narcissistic person may look on the outside as if they have a rather inflated sense of self-regard, on the inside they feel utterly worthless. And absolutely everything they do is geared towards not having to face how they really feel about themselves.

So, what they do is they create a false, sometimes grandiose, image to present to the outside world, and then look to external validation to prop up this image, this ‘false persona’. And this is the key to understanding the condition – everything they do is to get this external validation, including abusive behaviours towards others. In other words, they create a false image of themselves for other people to believe in so that they can believe in it themselves, so that they can deny their own intrinsically low self-esteem.