People hear the word narcissist and immediately picture someone who loves control, loves power, loves watching other people struggle.
That is not me.
I grew up reading people to survive. I learned to track moods, tones, tiny changes in energy. I learned to notice the thing no one was saying.
If you drop those traits into Google with no context, you get hit with every narcissist checklist on the planet.
Confident. Intense. Draws attention. Can dominate a room. Always in the center of something.
On the surface, sure. I can look like that.
Inside, it is different. I am the one who cannot turn my awareness off. I notice too much. I connect dots without trying. I see through fake kindness long before anyone else does.
That is not a hunger for power. That is a nervous system that has been on live surveillance duty since childhood.
So what happens?
I walk into a group and my presence shifts the energy. People gravitate toward me because I am clear and honest. The unspoken stuff in the room gets louder.
The current leader feels that shift and panics a little. Instead of facing their own insecurity, they pin it on me.
Suddenly I am "too much." I am "taking over." I am "making everything about me."
They will do it quietly at first. Little comments. Pulled back support. Side conversations that do not include me.
Then, when I finally say something out loud, when I call the manipulation or the hypocrisy or the weird shift everyone ignored, the whole story gets flipped.
"See. She is dramatic." "See. She is confrontational." "See. She is the problem."
It is easy to slap the narcissist label on the loud one if nobody wants to talk about the power games happening underneath.
Here is the difference that Google cannot see.
A narcissist asks: "How can I use this situation to feed me?"
A pattern reader asks: "Why is this situation making my stomach hurt. What is off here. Who is being hurt and who is pretending everything is fine?"
My intensity is not about supply. It is about truth.
Yes, I can be loud when something is unjust. Yes, I can look confrontational when I am done being used. Yes, I have a strong sense of self now because it took everything in me to build it.
That does not make me a predator. It makes me a mirror with a mouth.
If you see yourself in this, hear me.
You are not automatically a narcissist just because you are magnetic, observant, or unwilling to lie for comfort. You might simply be the one who refuses to keep playing along.
Your work is not to shrink into a version of you that never threatens insecure people. Your work is to keep your heart clean, your intent honest, and your boundaries strong, so your power does not get twisted into a story you know is not true.
You are allowed to be big and aware and vocal without apologizing for existing.
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