Personality: The Narcissist and the Pain of Competition

Of course, few of us ever wish to lose at competitive events.  Loss of a contest understandably results in disappointment and dejected feelings.  After a brief while most people will move on to other activities and place the loss into the back of their minds.  As successful athletes say “You need to have a short memory”.

For the narcissist competitive losses are a different matter.  Remember, lurking beneath the mental surface of the narcissist is fear of an unspecified flaw.  The inner haunting about a vague personal defect that others might discover yields a wide array of self-centered behavior designed as a cover up.

Part of the cover up after a loss is deflection of blame.  The narcissist can rarely admit personal faults.  Instead losses are attributed to luck rather than skill of the opponent, or cheating, or illness or other external events.  For the excessively self-centered individual losses occur only because of uncontrollable actions located outside of them.   To think otherwise would be an admission of an intolerable shortcoming.  For the narcissist this would result in a festering mental wound with lasting pain.