Recognising Narcissism: Navigating Relationships with Clarity and Self-Care

The word narcissist gets used a lot. It shows up online, in conversations, in breakups, in therapy. Sometimes it’s shorthand for emotional harm. Sometimes it’s a way to make sense of behaviour that feels confusing or destabilising. But as the term circulates, it often loses precision. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a specific and diagnosable mental health condition, but the traits associated with it. Traits such as grandiosity, entitlement, lack of empathy and emotional manipulation can show up in people who don't meet diagnostic criteria.

That’s how we’re using the term here. Not to label or diagnose, but to recognise relational patterns that many people encounter. Patterns that can be deeply disruptive to a person’s sense of clarity, safety, and self-worth. Naming traits is not the same as making a clinical judgement. It’s about identifying what’s happening so that something can shift.

These patterns tend to follow a familiar emotional arc. The relationship may begin with intensity: charm, attention, an overwhelming sense of connection. Over time, that intensity becomes conditional. The warmth retracts, criticism increases, the rules start to shift. You might begin to question what’s real. You may feel responsible for someone else’s volatility. You might find yourself trying harder, giving more, and getting less in return.

In therapy at Conscious Shift, we work with people who are trying to untangle these experiences. Sometimes the relationship is romantic. Other times it’s with a parent, a colleague, or a friend. What matters is not the label, but the impact. How much space does this dynamic take up in your mind? What does your body feel like in their presence? What parts of you are you shrinking to keep the peace?

One of the more difficult parts of these relationships is how they distort your sense of reality. Subtle gaslighting can lead you to question your instincts, your memory, and your right to feel what you feel. Over time, this undermines self-trust. In therapy, we often begin by establishing that what you’re noticing is real. That you’re not being too sensitive. That the discomfort is valid. Naming that is often the first step back to yourself.

Boundaries become essential. Not as a punishment, but as a way of holding onto your own clarity. These dynamics can be highly confusing. So, bounadries might mean changing the way you engage. It might mean stepping back. It might eventually mean leaving. The decision is yours. The work is about making it from a place of awareness, not survival.

These relationships can be exhausting. Chronic stress, self-doubt, low mood, disrupted sleep. The emotional toll is real. Reclaiming your energy doesn’t happen overnight. But it begins by recognising what’s happening, without sugar-coating it or taking on all the blame.

Therapy can be a space to do that work without pressure to decide too quickly. It allows time to rebuild a more stable sense of self, separate from the relational pattern. It offers language for what you’ve felt but struggled to name. And it helps you learn how to respond to manipulation not with more accommodation, but with discernment.

You don’t need a diagnosis to set a boundary. You don’t need proof to honour what your body already knows. Not all behaviour needs to be pathologised, but it can still be named.

And that naming, done gently, clearly, and with care, is where things often begin to change. Where we notice patterns, we can change them.