Narcissist-mas: How to spot one this season.

Christmas...the great revealer of who people really are. There is something about the holidays where grinches and gaslighters find their normal camouflage difficult to don. Perhaps because the festive season is ostensibly about the core values of love, tradition and unadulterated joy, toxic personality types in particular, find themselves sorely lacking the opportunity to grab the kind of attention, admiration and entitlement they so desperately crave.

It could also be the sheer loving proximity of one extended family under a single roof. It's all a challenge. The housework, the cooking, even the concept of a family bathroom, can create an environment where the fairy lights shine brightly, on the behavioural dynamics we manage to ignore for the rest of the year. For some of us, that twinkly spotlight includes one of the most challenging personalities to navigate: The Narcissist. That person for whom Christmas is not about the season; It's all about the stage.

Author and social behaviourist Brené Brown, describes narcissism as “the shame-based fear of being ordinary.” That one sentence is the absolute advent window through which we see and understand everything that follows. A narcissist is neither centrally confident, nor substantially self-assured. They are not the bold, charismatic personality they often pretend to be. They are people who have built an entire emotional, ivory tower around never being wrong, never being criticised, never being seen as anything other than exceptional. Their behaviours - deflecting blame, demanding admiration, rewriting the narrative, reacting instead of relating - are the performances of the deeply unhappy.

Unfortunately, Christmas is a rich soil for the Narcissist. Filled with the very things that activate their armour: attention, tradition, nostalgia, heightened emotion, family roles, expectations, gifting, and performance. When most of us are preoccupied with recreating connection - perhaps with family and friends we simply don't see often enough - a narcissist will try to create a narrative of their own importance to the proceedings. Through power plays and shenanigans, they will quickly position to pull the season towards themselves.

Though difficult to navigate, narcisissists are easy enough to spot. Their gifts, for example, are rarely simple offerings, regulation wrapped. They come tied with expectation, ribboned with commentary - always thoughtful, ever subtly transactional. Comparisons will also heavy the tone around the Christmas tree, designed only to diminish the joy of both gift giving and receiving. "Oh..I got one of those last year but it broke after a day..." or "I was thinking of giving you those earrings but they looked so cheap on the website...". Backhanded, candid, underhanded slapdowns.

The practised narcissist will often perform exaggerated acts of self-sacrifice, vocally volunteering to undertake tasks that no one requested, only to later air the associated difficulties or the procedural stress around setting the table or stirring the gravy as carefully planned resentments - proof of their importance to the success of the day. When things become all Christmassy and peaceful, and the turkey dinner ticks along like a festive Swiss watch, they may choose to create a sudden emotional disruption - a conversational controversy or sudden change of subject, a previously undisclosed allergy to asparagus - because drama returns them to the centre of the celebrations.

OK... so let's do something a bit "demanding" here. We have named the harm, we have identified the toxic behaviours - at least some of them - and we probably all resonate with some experience of being pulled into the frosty orbit of a Christmas narcissist.

Let's try to be really twinkly, cosy and candle-lit and attempt to see narcissism through a lens of compassion, rather than finger-pointy frustration. If we choose to practice empathy around the Narcissist, it shouldn't weaken our boundaries, it should make them stronger.

Narcissism is rarely rooted in malice. It grows from deep, un-healed shame. These persoanlity types don't inflate themselves because they think they and all their experiences are just really interesting, slash, extraordinary - they do so because they are absolutely terrified of being "seen" as either humdrum or inadequate. Their demands around attention and admiration are the weapons with which they fight the fear of unworthiness. They avoid the courage and the trust required to be truly vulnerable, becasue they are so afraid of rejection. Their oft-pathetic patterns of behaviour are nothing more than a sad-ass shield, built around a pretty deep wound.

This kind of compassion does not require closeness. It does not mean we have to hug the narcissist or hold them closer this Christmas. It shouldn't mean we have to endure their bullshit behaviour like we are on some 1990's, Japanese game show. There is no need to sacrifice our own festive wellbeing to understand someone else’s pain, by becoming a seasonal psychotherapist.

Compassion here, just means acknowledging the human behind the behaviour while still protecting ourselves from the impact of their nonsence. It is agreeing to hold the woollen thread of “I get your story, but I'm not going to allow you to damage mine.” This perspective doesn’t excuse the narcissist; it frees us from them. It liberates us from internalising any of their crappy conduct which might make us choose to question our own sanity. It discharges us from believing their chaos reflects our worth.

Understanding someone’s wounds does not mean you have to sit beside them while they swing their tinsel-covered bat of Mid-winter malice. Understanding a person’s behaviour doesn’t mean we have to stick around to get smacked in the mouth. You might not meet one this Christmas. I know I will... And I will allow myself the grace of stepping away when I feel the heat of that stove of selfishness. I will take my moment of quiet, protect my peace and remember that there are going to be no narcissists in my Nativity scene this year.