What is narcissism? Experts reveal the key hallmarks of personality disorder – As Jada Pinkett-Smith is accused of lacking empathy for spilling details of her fractured marriage
Mental health experts have revealed the key signs of narcissism to look out for – as they urged people not to throw the term around lightly.
Social media has been awash this week with claims that Jada Pinkett Smith has shown a lack of empathy and a fitness to uphold her own reputation at the expense of Will Smith, with some even accusing her of being ‘a narcissist’ who ‘ruined’ her husband.
Jessica MacNair, a licensed therapist experienced in working with narcissists, told DailyMail.com that the term is thrown around too lightly in today’s society, adding that a true narcissistic personality must meet strict criteria written by psychologists .
Jada’s bombshell revelation at a press briefing for her new memoir was that she and her husband had been secretly separated for seven years – despite maintaining a facade of unity to the public.
Alana Carvalho, a specialist in personality disorders in New York, told DailyMail.com that while portraying a role of a happily married family woman does not in itself indicate a narcissistic personality, ‘It is very common for people with ( narcissistic personality disorder) and narcissistic tendencies lie. keeping up appearances.’
In the days leading up to the release of her memoir Worthy, Jada Pinkett Smith revealed to the Today Show’s Hoda Kotb for the first time that she and husband Will Smith had been separated since 2016. Many saw this exclusive interview as a sign from Jada. trying to paint herself as a victim
The mark of a narcissist is a sense of grandiosity with a lack of accountability for their actions and how they affect loved ones
Therapists cautioned that having narcissistic traits does not necessarily equate to a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) diagnosis, which an estimated 0.5 percent to up to five percent of the American population has.
Jada had a difficult childhood growing up in Baltimore, surrounded by violence, marked by her mother’s heroin addiction and father’s alcoholism.
Against the backdrop of her tumultuous home life, Jada became a drug dealer when she befriended Tupac Shakur in high school before he was gunned down in the prime of his life and career.
NPD, like other personality disorders such as borderline personality disorder, has strong links to a history of trauma.
Narcissists often see themselves as a victim to play sympathy and adoration. But people who experience trauma are in fact victims.
The aftermath of trauma, whether it’s from a tumultuous childhood marked by drug abuse, or the loss of an extremely close friend to a violent attack, can make someone too emotionally fragile for criticism.
This can lead to a person building a protective shield around themselves to ward off further harm, which can often look like an inflated sense of self and an inability to empathize with others.
MacNair said: ‘There are a lot of question marks about the origin (of NPD), whether it’s intergenerational trauma, whether it’s birth trauma, whether it’s no trauma at all, whether it’s the brain. I mean, it hasn’t been studied enough for people to have a full understanding of what causes it.’
While Jada said her relationship with the late rapper was not romantic, she recently said he was her ‘soulmate’.
Jada and Tupac met as sophomores in an art high school in Baltimore and became fast friends. Jada has since called him her ‘soul mate’ but insists their relationship was never romantic
Will, for his part, expressed the level of inadequacy he felt living in Tupac’s shadow.
He wrote in his 2021 memoir that when he and Jada first got together, he was ‘tortured’ by her association with the rapper which caused him ‘the perception of myself as a coward’.
He and Jada sat down on her Red Table Talk show in 2020 when she revealed that she was also romantically involved with singer August Alsina while she and Will were separated.
Mental health professionals say, without attributing any kind of diagnosis to Jada, that the spouse of a narcissist will often experience low self-esteem and a sense of inferiority.
And many may not realize they are being manipulated, especially when the other person in the relationship has no accountability for the harm they cause.
Therapist Alana Carvalho said: ‘It’s hard to say if it was a betrayal as we don’t know the ins and outs of her family and their experience of this situation.
“That said, I have often seen people with NPD and/or narcissistic tendencies struggle to understand how their behavior has negatively affected those around them and they are unwilling to accept responsibility.”
A narcissist has several plays in their playbook. One of the most insidious among them is love bombing, which can be a way for a narcissistic person to gain control over their partner by showering them with gifts, adoration and intense affection.
The goal is to build a strong bond with the non-narcissist, making them dependent on the other for approval and validation.
But the love bombing phase in a narcissistic relationship typically gives way to more manipulative behavior such as creating distance between them to make the non-narcissist question their own self-worth.
The love bombing phase ends and welcomes in a new phase in which the narcissist begins to devalue their partner, often dismissing or verbally abusing them.
Kimberly Anderson, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Virginia, told DailyMail.com: ‘I view being in a relationship with a narcissist as being in a cult of one. They are the cult leader, we are the followers.’
Anderson added: ‘They like to bombard you, they draw you in, and once they have you, you’re their cult member and they’ll exploit you in any way they can to satisfy their need for admiration, their need for a feeding positive self-image, and their need for ultimate power and control in your relationship.’
The most notable criticism of Jada’s latest interview has been a history of coldness and the devaluation of her husband for ‘weakness’.
She told the Today Show’s Hoda Kotb: ‘By the time we got to 2016, we were just tired of trying. I think we were both still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.’
Jada said in her book: ‘It wasn’t a divorce on paper. But it was a divorce.’
The interview added fuel to an eternal fire of rumors about her marital problems with Will, which piled on the big 2020 revelation on Red Table Talk that Jada had an ‘entanglement’ with Alsina – a euphemistic term reminiscent of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s ‘conscious uncoupling’ – who was a friend of their son Jaden.
Although Alsina said Will gave him his ‘blessing’ to date Jada, Will later said: ‘I wasn’t sure I was ever going to talk to you (Jada) again. Like the fact that I’m talking to you again is a miracle… there’s just certain things you have to go through (in a marriage). I wish it could all be magic and miracles.’
Jada, for her part, said she ‘wanted to feel good’.
During the 2020 episode of her Facebook Watch show Red Table Talk LIVE, Jada told Will that she got into a ‘tangle’ with singer August Alsina (seen with Jada in 2017)
In a narcissistic partnership, a non-narcissist will often feel humiliated by their partner who, according to MacNair, “will never take accountability or ownership.”
“It’s always someone else’s fault, it’s never the person’s responsibility,” MacNair added.
The fallout from the 2022 Oscars slam heard ’round the world included speculation that something had snapped in Mr Smith, who is widely known as an easy-going, kind-hearted guy.
And then no one in the public knew that the highly publicized couple had been living separately since 2016.
Since then, she and Will have made many public statements of their love and admiration for each other, suggesting that their split was amicable.
Carvalho said: ‘Most of us have a desire to have a good reputation and to be seen positively by others.
“However, a person with NPD is more likely to lie and feel no remorse about it.”
She added: ‘There is a common ideology in psychology that those with common mental health issues are the most harmful to themselves, while those with personality disorders are the most harmful to those around them.’
NPD belongs to a family of 10 conditions that lead to long-term patterns of unhealthy thinking and behavior that distort the person’s perception of the world and their place in it.
A person with NPD has a grandiose sense of self, a loose grip on empathy and comfort with undermining others.
MacNair told DailyMail.com: ‘(In the partner we see) lower self-esteem, lower self-worth, inability to enjoy activities and live life as they did before they were in that relationship.
‘The issue is not all clinicians can see the narcissism in the narcissistic partner because they go to extreme lengths to love bomb a therapist or appear a certain way in the session and make it seem like it’s the partner with the problem is and not them with the issue.’
A narcissist is not the type of person to admit wrongdoing.
But netizens claimed that her tendency to publicly air her marital issues, sometimes portraying herself as the victim, indicated a behavior characteristic of a narcissist, a need for near-constant public attention and admiration.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Jada Pinkett Smith’s team for comment.