Generally speaking, although the spectrum of destructive narcissism is broad, there are three types of narcissists when it comes to narcissistic personality disorder. What I mean by spectrum is that a destructive narcissist personality pattern will manifest in varying degrees from one individual to another. The first type is the grandiose narcissist that everyone can easily notice. These people are boastful about their accomplishments and have quite an unrealistic superiority complex and even a god-like complex. They’ll go around telling everybody how great they are, etc. The second type is the malignant narcissist, who is pretty much like the first type but on steroids. These narcissists tend to become violent and threatening and have no problem stalking you to intimidate you into doing what they want.

The third type, the most dangerous, is the covert passive-aggressive narcissist. These narcissists will speak about their struggles with depression or not feeling good about themselves openly and appear to be victims of people, places, and things they want to appear like victims. They may often say they’re sick so people can feel sorry for them or complain about how the world isn’t fair and how they don’t get what they want. Initially, the passive-aggressive covert narcissist may appear reserved, meek, shy, modest, charming, or like the nicest person to other people. But the reality is that these individuals are socially awkward, and you will come to see this with time. The covert narcissist will often use withholding behavior to emotionally manipulate and attempt to control others. That includes friendships and family relationships, not just romantic.

They’ll appear to be very private to the point of hiding and keeping secrets. They will hold their cards unnecessarily close to their chest, and the things that one would typically share within a close personal friendship or any genuine relationship in the spirit of simply being honest and forthright will be hidden from you for no apparent reason. This shows how insecure and shame-based they are because knowing something you don’t gives them a false sense of power and superiority. With very few exceptions, they prefer to keep family and friends at a safe distance because this reduces the likelihood of being found out for the frauds they actually are.

Most of their relationships can be characterized as terribly superficial. Attempting to genuinely connect with a covert narcissist while they hide and lie so much will leave you with an uneasy feeling in your gut because there is nothing of real substance to connect with in the first place. These covert passive-aggressive narcissists are neither authentic nor genuine, although they sure put on a good act. Give them enough time, and you’ll soon find out how disingenuous they actually are, and it won’t be long before you realize their words and actions rarely align.

It’s one of your first clues when attempting to authentically relate with a covert narcissist. You can try as hard as you can, but the reality is that there is nothing of real substance to connect with while in the presence of these individuals. They hide people, places, things, and of course, their past and any responsibility of their own that led to the demise of other relationships. For those of you who are highly empathic and intuitive, this tendency they have to be so superficial and secretive is your first red flag when dealing with such individuals. Also, beneath the mask and false persona, they want to believe they’re better than everyone else and therefore feel entitled to behave however they like. They never worry about the negative effects of their appalling choices and behavior on others. They feel they can do whatever they want and believe that somehow they’re above having to experience actual consequences.

Learn To Recognize The Covert Narcissists In Your Life

Before going any further, I want to cover some of the characteristics that are central to the pattern of covert passive-aggressive narcissism. Most certainly, they are not conducive to a satisfying and gratifying life, nor healthiness. Their need to be in control, their attitude of self-absorption and entitlement, their need to be superior, lack of empathy, delusional thinking, alternate reality, and harsh defensiveness are rather contrary to conducing a healthy and happy life. Hopefully, as you begin to awaken to how these individuals operate in society or within family and social circles, you can recognize them more quickly and learn to stay away for your own benefit.

• They have no self
• They have silent rage and hoovering. 
• They have constant criticism over other people’s accomplishments, jealousy, and envy
• They project their own negative traits & issues onto you
• Their words don’t match their actions
• They are emotionally disconnected
• They have flying monkeys 
• They take credit for your ideas
• They withhold praise and recognition
• They sabotage birthdays, vacations, holidays, and meaningful dates
• They belittle you and think they can teach you lessons
• They’re emotionally immature
• They are a dizzying conversationalist to make it easy to get sucked in 
• They create drama
• They’re not protective, and they create stories in their head
• They have no desire to actually know you
• They use control and manipulation
• They can be a class a jerk
• Lack of conscience or remorse for their actions

Those are some traits to help you understand the covert-passive aggressive narcissist. You have to understand that self is a crucial concept in understanding, interpreting, and predicting the outcomes of interpersonal relationships, intimate relationships, and even our workplace. The covert narcissist has a very weak, diffused, unclear, and disturbed sense of self. In other words, they have no self. These individuals are defined in psychology as dark personalities and are included in the Cluster B personality disorders as well as the dark triad personalities with psychopathy, narcissism, and extreme manipulativeness, also known as Machiavellianism. From a spiritual perspective, these are soulless beings. Learning about these people and their dark traits is crucial for you to be able to predict their behaviors and avoid destructive, defiant, impulsive, and reckless people that damage you, your children, society, and intimate relationships.

Now, I want to elaborate a bit further on their flying monkeys, so you don’t feel so hopeless or lost when dealing with one in your life. Flying monkeys are the people that enable their behavior even when it’s wrong. It’s a triangulation move from the covert narcissist of using people to line up with them against you. What these covert narcissists are great at is triangulating family members against each other. They will use flying monkeys to get them on their side to think that they are such a wonderful person. Therefore if you cross them, then there must definitely be something wrong with you because they’re so wonderful. So they get to believe their flying monkeys all their lies about how horrible and crazy you and other family members or friends are instead. They will want to be viewed and treated by everyone in the family as if they are genuinely superior to everyone else. They are skilled and pathological liars, and you cannot trust one single word that comes out of their mouths.

If you have these highly disturbed individuals with severe destructive personality disorders in your family, immediate or non-immediate, you have to consider every single interaction with them as a methodical and calculated setup, especially if they’ve made you their target. You have to remember that anytime there hasn’t been any kind of discord or trauma between you, your siblings, friends, or family members before, look to the newest member of the family because chances are, that will be where the answers you seek are located. If these individuals with such personality disorders won’t get their way, they will become the victim. Nobody is better at victimhood than them. If their presence, cruelty, and intimidation don’t work on you, they will become the victim, and they are highly successful at making others, especially their flying monkeys, feel sorry and pity for them. There is no level they are unwilling to exploit. They will fight dirty, are calculating as they come, and are all about getting what they want and winning. Ultimately these individuals are dangerous and will cause catastrophic damage to you and the people you love.

Covert passive-aggressive narcissists can be grossly insensitive and cold-hearted jerks, but if you’re in some kind of pain, they will say you must have brought it upon yourself. These individuals are simply not connected to reality, will never take accountability for what they do and who they are, and lack the ability to connect with other individuals on a heart level. Anything that does not suit their narrative they will dismiss as not real. They lack any ability for introspection or self-reflection. They fail to see that a lot of their darkness is of their own making, but they’d rather shift the blame onto you. It is never their fault but yours. They don’t understand that they re-create their own hell and shape their reality by their delusional ways of thinking and their own state of being. You have to remember that one of their defining factors is their lack of empathy. They can only pretend to understand or practice love, respect, care, compassion, and concern.

Once you’re in their presence long enough and know them well enough, you’ll have plenty of proof of just how unloving, uncaring, and insincere they really are. They are compulsive liars, and the tragic part of all this is that they believe their own lies. They like to act quickly without thinking anything through. They think they have the upper hand by being reckless with you and your emotions and are completely oblivious to how everyone can see their bad intentions, ill will, ludicrous and immature behavior. They are fundamentally fake and phony people who do not appreciate, sincerely care about, or love anyone, not even their own children. They’ll talk a good talk, but a closer look at their choices and lack of actions based on love, care, and compassion will show you everything you need to know about who and what kind of individual you are dealing with.

The Covert Narcissist’s Need To Feel Superior No Matter The Cost

As far as they’re concerned, they’re above others and feel entitled to behave however they please, so they will disappoint, disregard, and disrespect you all day long. But you have no right whatsoever to have a legitimate feeling response to their bullshit nevermind hold them accountable for what they’ve been up to. They certainly don’t live by the same values that most people bring and stand for in this world, such as intimacy, connectedness, kindness, acceptance, civility, encouragement, respect, honor, love, and peace. These grossly insensitive passive-aggressive covert narcissists have damaged souls, and most are beyond any form of reformation even if they undergo therapy. Because fundamentally, they fail to take that first step and admit that perhaps they might be the root and cause of all their problems, drama, dysfunction, pain, and grief in their lives.

They are very shamed based on how they think, which is a very deep part of their personal history and will project the shame that they carry within to you and others, and unfortunately, even their children. These individuals almost certainly will show symptoms of more than one mental disorder and can be very detrimental to your own mental health when in their company. These people will groom you and other individuals and have absolutely no remorse for their actions. You have to be extremely careful when you notice how far their mental disorder can go. I have personally witnessed people with narcissistic personality disorders show signs of schizophrenia and sociopathy.

The passive-aggressive covert narcissist has a strong inclination toward anger, just like all other narcissists, when you fail to give them what they want, or in other terms, when you fail to give them the supply that they need. I will elaborate on what that means further in this post. They will play the victim when you no longer give them what they need and feel that it is right for them to punish you. That is how they reason. The only difference with the covert passive-aggressive narcissist is that you won’t see them yelling or raging or being aggressive like the overt narcissist because they think it will leave them vulnerable and look stupid.

This is why they use passive-aggressive communication and passive-aggressive anger as their weapon of choice. The cruelty behind them is that they want to make sure that you hurt and create as much discomfort as possible so that you know who has the upper hand. They want to make you look foolish by playing all their little games in the least vulnerable way so that they can look and feel superior at all times. In their mind, they always win. All this cruelty that drives them to have such a need for superiority regardless of the cost actually shows they are compensating for their own inadequacy, so it is imperative that you learn not to take anything they say or do personally. You have to keep in mind that their projections simply tell on themselves, such as their true character, traits, what they’re up to and how they feel. You simply play as a mirror triggering and reflecting back their own subconscious and disowned shadow aspects, so it has nothing to do with you but everything to do with them and their need to unload their burdens on you.

When They Make You A Target

They will often get fixated with their target and continue to do things to hurt them. And if you’re wondering why it’s simply because everything about you and everything they lack while they see you and your traits, your success, and even your potential success hurt their ego. It’s a weird fixation because they can idolize you in many ways, but they will also hurt you and do passive-aggressive things. It’s a very strange world of insanity that you just got to get yourself out of as fast as possible. And if you can’t, you definitely want to create stronger and very strict boundaries because narcissists don’t respect boundaries. You’re supposed to respect theirs, but they don’t have to respect yours. In their passive-aggressiveness, these narcissists are basically saying that they don’t deem you worthy of their collaboration. 

These people will push, push, and push you and others and fail to realize that that is just asking for trouble. You don’t continuously try and push people when they say no or put up boundaries. That is simply abusive. They love toying and messing with you by creating emotional or mental turmoil and couldn’t care less about your relationship with them or if it’s damaged or how it may create dysfunction with other people close to you. In fact, they like making other people see you in a bad light or as damaged goods. They use passive-aggressiveness because they think it allows them to have control with the least amount of vulnerability and make no mistake that it is a chosen strategy. Ultimately, these individuals simply want to see you hurt.

When dealing with a passive-aggressive narcissist, you’ll begin to notice these little things that you know are not right and meant to do something to you. But if you tell other people about it, they’ll say; well, that doesn’t seem so bad, or maybe it was a mistake because they’re so nice. The passive-aggressive narcissist is also a master of gaslighting, and they’ll do it in very subtle ways. For example, they’ll do something completely contrary to what you asked or agreed, and when you call them out on it, they’ll say something like; Oh well, I thought you said that that was okay. But you know that never happened. So, they gaslight you and try to shame you or make you feel like you’re crazy. If you have become their target, and when you tell other people about it, they’ll say it must have been inadvertent because they appear so nice.

The passive-aggressive narcissist will always make excuses when you call them out on something and say something like; Oh, I didn’t realize I did that. They have no problem lying to themselves or lying to your face. They like seeing you lose your reputation, family members, or friends because of their non-cooperation. Their selfishness and cruelty show no limit. When you confront them because you’ve had enough of their games and relationship transgressions, and when they have to pay the price for their poor choices and behavior, these individuals are shocked. They can’t believe you actually figured them out. They can’t believe you have the audacity not to be fooled by their “I’m such a good human” performance. They can’t believe you have standards, limits, and boundaries. It is a form of delusional thinking on their part. They actually don’t expect to have to suffer real consequences for their transgressions.

They lack integrity and will attract people who are similar to them. They have no problem gossiping about someone and talking badly about them one day and then teaming up with them to gossip and talk badly about you the next day. The level of toxicity surrounding these people is extreme. It would be best for you to notice them right away so you can stay away from them because the truth is that you will never feel any sense of resolution with these kinds of individuals. In addition, they spend a lot of time and energy trying to hide who they really are by playing the role of hero or savior. The message they work so hard to convey is “I’m such a good, altruistic, and generous person,” when in reality, their real motivations are self-serving. In reality, their motivations have a lot more to do with manipulating and controlling your perception than actually doing anything out of genuine kindness.

The Passive-Aggressive Narcissist Female

Beware when dealing with passive-aggressive narcissistic women, especially if you’re a female yourself. Most of these women are psychopaths, meaning they are consumed with darkness and negativity and don’t want other people to be happy. If a psychopath sees someone happy or in the light, they will want to dim their light and resort to every manipulative trick they know to block them from being happy and successful. I’ve met several covert narcissistic females under different circumstances, such as in immediate and non-immediate families, in the workplace, and different social circles. Many of these women are toxic spoiled brats, and dealing with them can be extremely difficult and annoying because they are egoistic, exude arrogance, and always expect others to treat them like royalty as perhaps their parents treated them that way when they were a child. They will give high-maintenance a whole new meaning and throw tantrums when things don’t go their way. The first thing you must remember when dealing with them is to release your fantasy of them changing, evolving, or learning from their mistakes. Here’s the thing: Whether covert or overt, narcissistic people do not change. While all narcissists feel deep levels of jealousy and pathological envy, the female covert narcissist can be incredibly cruel and destructive if they get their sights on you. 

If you have something about you that they are jealous of, real or perceived, brace yourself because it will be a bumpy ride. They are real trouble makers, to say the least, have a desperate need for attention and narcissistic supply at all times, and are insanely competitive. They love to make people feel beneath them, obligated to them, insecure because of them, etc. God forbid the attention goes to you if you shine with your light, confidence, success, hard work, and self-respect; these narcissistic females will receive an injury to their ego and feel devalued, and to compensate, will abuse you verbally and emotionally, invalidate you, hurt you, disrespect you and project all their negativity. If you have a female narcissist in your friend circle, at work, and in your family that repeatedly tries to make you feel bad about yourself and unworthy, do not internalize it. No normal person would ever get a kick from abusing and humiliating another human being except the personality-disordered people.

If you are exposed long enough to these narcissistic females in the family, and if you don’t understand that everything they do to devalue you, reject you, and abandon you if you are their child, is due to their jealousy and envy, then it can and will have devastating effects on your self-esteem and self-worth. The passive-aggressive narcissistic woman will deliberately create a lot of animosity toward you. Although they may say they hope for things to change for the better, they will not act accordingly. Therefore they will keep ruining things and making them worse because there is so much going on internally with them, like competitiveness due to traits or qualities that remind them of their weaknesses.

Can The Covert Narcissist Embrace Change?

They are incapable of making lasting change within themselves to improve how they operate in relation to you or generally how they go through life and relate to the world. They are very unstable and have an extremely wounded inner child. They are very focused on taking and are unable to give. These women or men can’t receive any emotion of the feminine aspect and don’t know how to embrace receptivity and love. They have too much pride to do so because if they did, they would have to surrender to all of the hurt they never processed and other meanings they can’t handle. They will rigorously compare themselves to you and every move you make and what you have and what they don’t because it reminds them of what they lack. The passive-aggressive narcissistic woman will act in a very childish way. They have never grown up because they have severe inner wounds that prevent them from operating in a functional way. They refuse to realize how much dysfunction they create within relationships, and even though they may have a desire at times to move forward, their stubbornness and pride keep them stuck.

The passive-aggressive narcissistic woman will easily inflict all of their hurt on you, wanting you to feel hurt. They have no problem going behind your back to make things fall apart for you, create blockages in your life or with other people, and will deliberately annoy you to a great extent. They get the little pleasures of getting under your skin and seeing you in angst, irritable, impatient, and not making things work for you by upsetting and hurting you. What goes on in their head is; See? It works! And I’m not doing it the way those screamers do, but I’ve got you going. In their mind, they have messages that they want to send you, and their unspoken words are you’re unworthy, a nobody, or not worthy of respect. 

The passive-aggressive narcissistic woman will never admit that they fully understand their actions. Although they are more than aware of the manipulations, the trickery, and immature behavior they use to hurt you and bring you down. Still, they will deflect everything and all of their issues onto you, saying you are the problem. They can’t be honest with you nor with themselves and are unable to work on themselves. They may even greatly admire you but hate that they admire you at the same time and inflict so much pain. The only hope for the passive-aggressive narcissistic woman to finally become functional and stop causing so much dysfunction in their lives with other people, their children, or their spouse is to undergo therapy. Especially mother-daughter counseling and therapy because there may be very deep-rooted issues that stem from the relationship they had with their mother in the first place. But unfortunately, as shown in most cases, even therapy can be a waste of time for these individuals because they are pathological liars. They can cause significant damage to their children by rejecting and neglecting their most primal needs if they refuse to do any form of inner healing or inner work, which can result in psychological damage from generation to generation.

Are They Able To Reflect?

They lack the ability to introspect like most people, and their unresolved resentment and hate will greatly affect their parenting style and their children in the future. As much as you desire to have a harmonious relationship or as much as you have tried to open the lines of healing and honest communication or have a heart-to-heart conversation in hopes that they will see the light, they will immediately go into defense mode. You have to remember that your light irritates their darkness, and it is useless to engage in sincere communication with the insincere. Because of their inability to be truthful, see reality for what it is, or take any form of criticism, they will gaslight you and everyone else and have no problem ridiculing you by making you look like a bad person and a foolish person. So it would be best if you walked away as fast as possible for your own well-being; otherwise, you will be stuck in a perpetual toxic cycle of negativity and manipulation with them. You cannot fix the situation with them.

Staying in close proximity hoping that change will happen, will only keep you further stuck. Whatever the relationship may be. The idea of manipulation, gaslighting, lying, and trickery will carry on from them to keep you stuck and sad for their own benefit if you stay near them. They cannot stand people who are happy, at peace, and free because of their inability to find it themselves nor feel satiated with what they have. Their mindset goes along the lines of, if I’m miserable, then so should you. Even if they say they want you to do well, in reality, it’s only okay as long you’re not doing better than them. They are in constant competition with other people, including their partner or even their children. These passive-aggressive covert narcissistic women know no boundaries, will be extremely invasive and have no problem spying on you and your relationship. They’ll focus on your business, what you got going on with work, and other people’s business and relationships instead of focusing on themselves.

So the best advice here is to turn your back and not interact at all and, if possible, physically move away to celebrate your life on your own. The passive-aggressive narcissistic woman has to decide to work on themselves; no one can push them to do it. Healing is a choice that they can only make for themselves. Once you move away or break free from the passive-aggressive narcissistic woman, you will feel renewed, able to breathe again, celebrate your life, and no longer suffer from any stress and pain they try to continuously inflict upon you. You’ll be able to celebrate the happiness you innately possess. Do not be tempted to fix something unless someone decides to fix it. Turn your back as fast as you can and celebrate all the positivity that surrounds you and the positivity you bring into your world.

Does The Covert Narcissist See Your Value?

Unlike the narcissist who does everything with a hidden agenda, if you are an honest individual with no hidden agenda or an empath who is very nurturing and giving, or even prone to people-pleasing because you operate on a moral basis of lifting each other up instead of tearing each other down, you have to be extremely careful when dealing with these types of narcissists. The best advice here is to take your power back and never overextend yourself with these kinds of individuals or any other individuals for that matter. Because it will certainly not change your dynamic with them for the better, but on the contrary, they will continue to exploit their power, take advantage of your good nature, mistake your kindness and moral values of being good to others as a weakness, and will project their own naiveness, ignorance, and narrow-mindedness on you.

Your value to a passive-aggressive narcissist is the only value you bring to them because they need an endless amount of narcissistic supply. And the supply they need is whatever thing of value you can bring to them. It may be compliments, attention, making them feel or look good, helping them with their problems, financial help, a higher boost in status, etc. But if you take that value away from the narcissist, your value is gone too. It doesn’t matter if you’re their friend, family member, co-worker, lover, etc.

You have to remember that as they watch and observe you, the covert passive-aggressive narcissist always wonders if they’re winning or losing. The only thing they’re worried about is if you will give them what they want and if you will fall under their sphere of influence and do things as they wish you to do. If you are married to a covert narcissist or are in the process of waking up to who they truly are, brace yourself because you will realize that the rage that they throw at you for absolutely no reason, the always playing the victim card that they pull in order to feed off of your empathy, the never happy, always paranoid, always resentful, always frustrated, always jealous of you and others, and always bored with you, their partner, their friends, their job, their hobbies and themselves is truly a life of hell. I would highly recommend if you recognize the truth of who this person actually is to have enough self-respect to walk away from them; otherwise, the damage they will continue to cause you and your children, if you have any, will be irreparable. They will only, and only think for themselves and hurt everyone around them in the process. Nothing you’ll ever do will be good enough.

If you were raised by a parent with narcissistic personality disorder and haven’t awakened to any of the truths about their true character and their abuse, then it is very likely that you will walk straight into a marriage with a covert narcissist and repeat the same life drama. And here’s why. The narcissistic parent will undermine and leave their children hollow of their own needs, desires, drives, and persona and put their needs first. So the child then learns to prioritize the needs of others and, unfortunately, not just any other person but another tyrant. Their understanding of love becomes an unhealthy need to be of service to others, abandon one’s own needs and desires, self-negate, and self-sacrifice. It breeds a slave-like mentality of looking for a master to serve at the expense of never knowing yourself. Betraying yourself and the people you love for the narcissist, suffering from chronic depression, and dissociative identity disorder, where one loses their sense of self and identity, are only a few consequences you’ll reap. You’ll never be fully present in the human you are and the human you were always meant to be. It is indeed a tragic consequence, and if you are a survivor of narcissistic abuse and have fought yourself out of the darkness and come out on the other side, then my heart goes out to you, and I wholeheartedly support and applaud you for your strength.

To conclude this post, I want to remind you that the passive-aggressive covert narcissist has a real strong need to always be in control. They will always exert dominance over you and the lives of other people, even their elders. Always have to be the center of attention and are very entitled in how they engage with other individuals. Suppose you are ending a relationship with a covert narcissist or any narcissist for that matter. In that case, they will want to get you first, especially because you may know things about them that would make them vulnerable. They will want to make a lot of noise and completely go bonkers because they will want to make everybody think that you’re the bad one. They will lie and cheat, so you have to be ready that whatever you say or do will be manipulated.

The passive-aggressive narcissist is the most fragile of narcissistic personalities. They are like the bully on the playground that when you fight back, will run away. You cannot rationalize or reason with these people. It’s like talking to a wall. They lack empathy toward you and are capable of doing things that hurt and harm people without taking into account other people’s emotions and feelings. All they care about is how they feel. So you have to create enough strategy and leverage to get them to the point where they are willing to back down and run away and find another target, especially if you’re going to confront them or no longer give them any supply, then it’s time to move on as far as they’re concerned.