What makes covert narcissists so dangerous?

By Veronica Welles

All narcissists are dangerous, but covert narcissists invert our ideas of compassion, altruism, trust, kindness, and meekness.

We come into this world automatically believing that compassion cannot be bad, nor can someone who appears to be nice bad, and we automatically believe that meek people are just meek without any duplicity in them.

We do not come equipped to second guess appearances. So we never suspect anything hiding behind that semblance of compassion or altruism, that semblance of kindness, nor do we suspect any hidden drive to dominate or control behind that show of meekness.

But covert narcissists are not compassionate, altruistic, trustworthy, kind, nor meek. They are the opposite. But you do not see that.

And when something is the opposite of what it appears to be, it is practicing treachery.

So covert narcissists are the very epitome of treachery. And treachery is the very epitome of dangerous. What you do not see will injure you the most, because you cannot avoid it, nor prepare for it.

You expect malice and injury from an enemy, but you do not naturally expect it from a friend or parent. You cannot expect it from them. It is unnatural and unhealthy to expect malice and injury from loved ones. So with these loved ones, you drop your shield and show them your back, and if there happen to be any covert narcissists hidden amongst them, they will get treacherous access to your naked back.

Doing the things a healthy, well adjusted, trusting, loving person does with a covert narcissist is the worst thing anyone can possibly do. But you cannot know that.

The covert narcissist is Judas hiding amongst people you trust, they can accomplish what an entire army cannot, because they use the back door.

Betrayal is possibly the worst thing any human can do to another. And covert narcissists are the specialists in the art of betrayal. You might have first learnt the taste of betrayal from a covert narcissist.

But only someone you trust can betray you. The other kinds of narcissists, especially the overt and malignant, stand out too much, they are too obviously abnormal. It is easy to spot them. Only the naive will trust them. But covert narcissists will fool even seasoned narcissist spotters. Of all the types, covert narcissists require the most scrutiny for me to identify. This means that they are in possession of my token trust for the longest time of any type of narcissist.

After you’ve suffered your major experience of betrayal from your covert narcissist, you will find that you cannot naively believe anymore in any compassion, altruism, kindness and meekness that you see in people. You start second guessing every good thing you see, from anyone, even innocent genuine people. The covert narcissist has destroyed your token belief in goodness.

And what kind of world would it be if everyone cannot trust the kindness they see?

And people think you are crazy if you dare express any second guessing of someone’s apparent niceness, compassion or altruism.