Just to note.
Sam Vaknin, is a complete fraud - he has no legitimate qualifications apart from that which he bought on the internet - THIS has been disclosed by himself, personally.
As you can see/hear - he is verbally facile and is (by his own admission) probably, psychopathic himself (although I think this may be just another tactic he deploys to sell-himself and gain notoriety - either way he is a grandiose, liar ie. full of shit).
Describing Narcissists is one thing but does nothing to solve the problem when dealing with someone like this; especially a malignant Narcissist.
Narcissists are usually deeply wounded people - who are so deluded that if there is any light 'thrown' on their behaviour they will usually either submit to denial, or else begin, to blame the accuser (projecting) rather than deal with the genuine, factual realisation of how flawed they are - they are perfectionists and because of this, they fear annihilation of self; if they are 'seen' in a less than perfect light. Of course this is tragic for all involved, as we all know, nobody is perfect - it must be exhausting to put on that pretense indefinitely.
Everyone is narcissistic to some degree - it is a spectrum; a sliding scale. Psychopaths would display highly, narcissistic features in their character when being assessed (although can hide this IRL).
It is important to remember that Narcissism is healthy but when it prevents an individual from empathising with another on some, level - then is has become a problem.
If our own esteem is low we may judge others as being more narcissistic than they actually are - our judgement is relative to our own circumstance too. However, if you feel that you have been systematically, ignored or misunderstood by a caretaker or loved one, to the point where you believe they are being callous then this may signify that this person may be toxic and emotionally abusive to you.
There are many reasons why a person may behave so callously eg. addiction; mental illness/personality disorder (incl NPD); learning disabilities but whatever the reason, it does not change how isolating and damaging the consequences are to our self-esteem.
Blaming the person to excessive levels can and often does perpetuate this cycle of abuse and can lead the victim to become highly narcissistic themselves - so, best practice would be to try to separate the behaviour from the person and deal with how that impacted us, personally.
If someone who perpetrated this abuse/neglectful behaviour is significantly abusive (ie physical and/dangerously manipulative) then it can be very difficult to do the former and it's best just to deal with the trauma by building personal esteem; practicing intense, self-compassion and by seeking ongoing, quality professional help (as well as obtaining support from other various social and professional, avenues) to deal with this.
This is how healing happens.
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