When I met my previous boyfriend I thought I’d found The One. He was highly intelligent, articulate, wealthy and successful. Vulnerable, a grieving Widower whose Wife had died suddenly, a doting Dad and Grandad, interested in spirituality, personal growth and longing for love. That was his mask at least and the persona he wore to suck me in.

He was, in fact, a pathological liar living a double life. I was love bombed, gaslit, cheated on, devalued, raged at and discarded on a regular cycle – not that I realised this at the time because abuse begins covertly and leaves you so confused you don’t know what day of the week it is. I never thought an intelligent, confident woman like me would be sucked in to an abusive relationship at my age, but my ex had spent 60 years honing his craft and he was really good at it. He lacked empathy, conscience, morals or integrity. All the things which make us fully human. He was a vulnerable narcissist.

He’s not the first narcissist I’ve come into contact with. They were in my family, I married one, I’ve worked with them and played with them. They are everywhere and there’s nothing a narcissist likes more than kind, giving, trusting and loving people because we are so easy to manipulate. They are drawn to highly empathic people like me with the velocity of a heat seeking missile.

Mark Vicente is a film maker and cult survivor/whistleblower. Cults are always run by narcissists and Mark has spent 5 years making a docu-film about narcissism, which is now available for rent. It is well worth a look.

Rent & watch The Narcissist’s Playbook here

When I first started watching the film I rolled my eyes. It was discussing how narcissists are the product of awful childhoods and it almost implied that one should feel sorry for these people. I’m glad I stuck with it, however, because the film unfolded into a much more accurate depiction of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, although I still feel the information was too light on the genetic components and brain abnormalities which have been found in people with NPD and highly narcissistic traits. As many as 60% of the population had trauma in their childhoods and we didn’t go on to develop NPD – there is much, much more than childhood adversity at play, not least because not all narcissists had abusive childhoods.

There is a big twist in the film, although I personally saw it coming. I can’t say any more or it will give the story away.

The film ends with the words that the world is becoming more and more narcissistic and we all need to learn about narcissist traits so we are aware of the red flags. When I met my ex I’d never heard of NPD and it was only Googling his bizarre, cruel and cold behaviour that I came across it. Light bulbs exploded in my brain like a firework display and I could then see all the other people in my life who had been narcissistic. Once you know about the behaviour, which is eerily similar no matter what type of narcissist you’re dealing with, you see them everywhere.

I’d hoped to include the trailer for the film here, but there is no code to embed it in my post so I unfortunately can’t. Instead I’m including an interview conducted by Mark Vicente with Dr Ramani, a psychologist and the most popular online speaker about NPD. Knowledge is power.