Do narcissists ever secretly admire you for figuring them out when others before you havent?

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Not sure why I was asked to answer this, I don’t have a whole lot of experience with narcissism or personality disorders in general.

My experience is mainly with people with mood disorders like bipolar. Personality disorders seem to me to be far rarer and far more serious. Though a discussion with my therapist revealed that they’re actually really common. For example, she has President Trump pegged as a classic malignant narcissist.

She starts seeing the signs in some person and has to start adjusting the way she deals with them as a result of it. She says it’s really sad sometimes because once you have someone pegged as having a disorder, your mind won’t let go of it and you’ll always be dealing with “someone with a disorder.”

That got me thinking about how I personally deal with people with personality disorders. I’m normally a very reserved person, but I’m really observant when it comes to mind and stuff.

I realize now that people with personality disorders just don’t stick around in my life for long, because interacting with me is extremely demanding. I’m going to start asking revealing questions, and you’re going to feel when I’m not satisfied with the answers, even if I don’t press the issue.

I’m not skilled enough to pick out someone with a particular disorder, not at speed anyway. But now that I’ve been reading about psychopathy from people with the condition, I can pick out at least one person I’ve interacted with in the past that I’m pretty sure has it. At the time I was interacting with him, I knew something was going on with him, empathy didn’t seem to be something he had any real experience with. And I also knew I had no desire to get close to him.

So I don’t need to “see through” anybody’s disorder. I would handle a narcissist the same way I handle anyone else, be generous with my time and energy until one of my boundaries are hit, then resolve the conflict. If I lose sympathy for the person as a result of the conflict, then I disengage and let them leave my orbit. It works fine with NTs and it works fine with non-NTs.

Disengagement is what you do with someone who is making unreasonable demands on you or is acting maliciously. “Seeing through” them is engagement and only tangles you up further in a dysfunctional interaction.