Self Help

Take a brief look at one type of people who tend to be unforgiving: The Narcissist.

Individuals who routinely refuse to forgive often have what is called a narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissists believe that they’re entitled to special rights and privileges, whether earned or not. They are demanding, selfish, and expect special favors without assuming reciprocal responsibilities and express surprise and anger when others do not do what they want.”

If you’re a narcissist, you may frequently feel wounded and enraged when others refuse to comply with your agenda. Your exaggerated sense of entitlement leads you to assume that people are mere instruments for your self-enhancement, placed on earth solely to serve you. Since others don’t exist to you as separate individuals with needs, desires, and feelings of their own, you’re likely to exploit them and not see how this exploitation may set up the conflict you blame them for creating.

If you recognize some of these qualities in yourself, you may be someone who is dependent on the admiration of others to keep your self-esteem afloat, and hypersensitive to anyone who threatens your sense of specialness. Any experience of degradation or personal failure may cut you so deeply that you feel not just slighted but annihilated. Rather than admit how much you need others to fill the emptiness inside you, you may devalue them and assume an air of superiority. Forgiveness is not an option for you - you have too great a sense of self importance and too little humility. Without these qualities, you’re unlikely ever to forgive.

It’s hard to forgive someone if, lacking humility, you believe that he’s totally at fault and that you’re perfect and can do no wrong. If you could accept a degree of complicity, you might respond more charitably, but that would shatter your grandiose view of yourself and ask more of you than you have to give.

When most of us feel wronged - when our sense of fairness is violated - we usually vacillate among three responses: acceptance, forgiveness, and retribution. When a narcissist feels wronged, however, he believes that his only choice is retribution. He can see no alternative but to strike back and settle the score with anyone who dares to defy his power, weaken his control, or threaten his belief in his own perfection.

The narcissist is unlikely to be affected by these words, because he’s unlikely to read them. Incapable of tolerating the discomfort of self-scrutiny or criticism, he seeks admiration, not self-knowledge. He attaches to those who flatter him and discards those who do not. People who get into therapy are often those who are desperately clinging to a narcissist, trying to be good enough, trying to apologize and make peace with someone who is chronically unrepentant and unforgiving.