When a Narcissist Loses Control

Narcissists do not only need to be in control. They feel entitled to dominate others and every situation.

A perceived loss of control threatens their sense of self and their grandiose façade. The reaction is extreme.

Not being in control may elicit feelings of shame and embarrassment, which are converted into anger or narcissistic rage. Thus, the outcome of losing control is narcissistic rage in its various forms.

Narcissists believe they are inherently superior. So they tend to acquire the status and control they want and need through arrogance and self-promotion (e.g., showing off or being overly extroverted).

If self-promotion does not work, they will establish or reestablish control through derogating others.

They might put others down, lie, bully, or resort to other forms of verbal and physical aggression (narcissistic rage).

Narcissistic rage is malicious, out-of-control, and disproportionate anger. It seeks revenge and destruction by any means possible.

It is the result of a narcissist feeling their entitled and grandiose self-image (including their position of power) has been challenged.

Here’s how narcissistic rage can manifest as a result of losing control:

Narcissistic Rage

The outrage a narcissist may experience when they feel they no longer have control over you may spark a furious outburst.

They attempt to reestablish their control through aggression and force.

Narcissistic rage is an intense, aggressive reaction to a perceived threat to a narcissist’s self-esteem or self-worth.

Often triggered by criticism or perceived slights, it can manifest as sudden outbursts, passive-aggression, or vindictive behavior.

The reaction ranges from subtle to explosive. The motive is usually the same: deep-seated insecurity about self-worth. Two broad forms stand out:

• Overt Aggression: Yelling, screaming, insults, name-calling, and sometimes physical aggression, often with extreme defensiveness and blame. In extreme cases, threats of retaliation and scheming for revenge.
• Passive Aggression: The silent treatment, sarcasm, sulking, or withdrawing from contact. This leaves you uncertain and anxious, so you may apologize or cater to the narcissist, restoring their sense of control.

Suppose you do not admire their new outfit, do not seem excited by their stories, or do not rise to their attempts at provoking you. They might feel their power is slipping away.

In response, they might launch a verbal attack on you like shouting, insulting, and threatening you.

One participant in a small interview study of people in relationships with narcissistic partners (Green & Charles, 2019) recalled:

The minute I stood up against him or he felt he was losing control he would get aggressive and violent . . . once we were arguing and he knew he was losing the argument so he grabbed the iron, held it two inches from my face and said “I will burn you and nobody will ever look at you again.”

Participant in Green & Charles (2019)

Or suppose you tell them you are leaving the relationship. They would perceive this as a challenge to their dominance, and they might throw and break things or physically attack you.

What Research Says About Narcissistic Aggression

Researchers have now tested these ideas at scale. Du, Miller, and Lynam (2022) pooled 118 studies in a preregistered meta-analysis of narcissism and aggression. Narcissism overall showed a moderate positive link with aggression.

The link depended on the type of narcissism. Vulnerable narcissism, the insecure and easily shamed form, was strongly linked to reactive and general aggression.

The trait of antagonism predicted all three types of aggression studied: general, proactive, and reactive. Agentic extraversion predicted less aggression. It is the assertive, outgoing side of narcissism.

Théberge and Gamache (2023) tested a core idea from the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut, who coined the term narcissistic rage: that shame drives it. In their study, 399 participants completed self-report measures of narcissistic grandiosity, narcissistic vulnerability, borderline traits, shame, and aggression.

Shame explained the link between aggression and the more fragile traits, narcissistic vulnerability and borderline traits. Grandiosity predicted aggression directly. Shame was not involved.

Both studies point the same way. The insecure, shame-prone form of narcissism is where the aggression risk concentrates.

Smear Campaign

A smear campaign is a calculated attack on your reputation, image, self-esteem, and sense of reality.

The narcissist spreads rumors and lies and spills your secrets to make you look bad and get other people on their side.

Challenge their dominance, and they feel entitled to “destroy” you. The same applies if they feel you are no longer under their control, for example when you question or confront them.

The narcissist usually has two aims:

• Your Standing: They want to destroy your confidence, status, and support network. Doing so gives them a sense of control, as if they have the power to ruin or save your life.
• Your Reaction: They also want to get an emotional reaction out of you: see you cry, shout, and beg them to stop. Eliciting emotions, positive or negative, makes them feel powerful and in control.

Accounts from people close to narcissistic individuals describe this vindictiveness. One participant in a qualitative study of 436 relatives of people high in narcissistic traits (Day et al., 2020) wrote:

He is degrading to and about anyone who doesn’t agree with him and he is very vengeful to those who refuse to conform to his desires

Participant in Day et al. (2020)

Narcissistic Baiting

Narcissistic baiting refers to a narcissist provoking or triggering you to get a reaction and feel powerful.

Common baiting tactics include creating fear or panic, accusing or blaming you, awakening your curiosity, guilt-tripping, and stonewalling. Here is how four of them play out:

• Fear: If you are not responding to their calls, they might message you saying they will damage your car. This causes you to experience fear.
• Accusation: They might accuse you of cheating on them in the hope that you will defend and justify yourself.
• Curiosity: If they sense you are no longer interested, they might say they have news to share with you.
• Guilt: They might blame you for making them feel anxious and depressed, causing you to feel guilty.

Narcissistic individuals will try anything to get your attention and feel they have power over your emotions.

At first, they might try the “bait” described above. If that does not work, they might resort to more extreme measures, such as verbal abuse or smear campaigning.

Hoovering

Another way a narcissist may try to reestablish control is by “hoovering”. This manipulation tactic, named after the vacuum cleaner, aims to “suck” someone back into their life and under their control.

Hoovering can include romantic gestures and grand statements about their love for you. They may tell you exactly what you want to hear. They may also express remorse and sorrow.

This would likely cause an emotional reaction in you, especially if you had or have big feelings for them.

That is exactly what they want. Now they have your full attention, which makes them feel in control.

Playing the Victim

To reverse the roles and make you look like the perpetrator, the narcissist may play the victim.

For example, they might accuse you of abusing or lying to them, blame you for their poor mental health, or threaten to commit suicide “because of you”.

Playing the victim is often a form of gaslighting, which makes you doubt your own perception, memory, and sense of reality. The narcissist turns everything around on you.

Gaslighting and confusing other people make narcissistic people feel powerful.

Discard

In some cases, a narcissist may discard you if they feel they are losing control.

This may happen in three situations:

• No Value: They no longer see value in your relationship.
• Someone Else: They have found someone else.
• No Supply: They feel you are not providing narcissistic supply, the attention and admiration they depend on to sustain their sense of self.

They may initially attack you (e.g., call you ugly and stupid). This is a last attempt at hurting your self-esteem and feeling like the winner. Then they discard you.

You may never hear from them again. Or they might message you weeks or months later if they are bored or in need of supply.

If a narcissist discards you, as much as it may hurt your feelings, it is the best-case scenario for your mental and physical well-being. 

Accepting that can still feel impossible. As Esther Perel explains in a conversation with a caller about an abusive relationship, staying can come from a grandiosity of its own.

A person convinces themselves they are special enough to handle what is happening or to change their partner. Accepting that the relationship was a mirage is simply too painful (Perel, 2025).

Perel adds that shame can then keep people silent. The shame of staying stops people telling the friends or family who could help them leave.

Why Do Narcissists Need to Feel in Control?

An extreme need for control is a core feature of narcissism.

Narcissists need control, along with excessive attention and admiration, to get their “narcissistic supply” (Alexander et al., 2020; Grapsas et al., 2020; Zeigler-Hill & Dehaghi, 2023).

Narcissistic supply is their fuel. It allows narcissists to continue living in a fantasy of superiority, power, and brilliance.

This fantasy or façade of grandiosity allows them to hide their insecurities and failures from the world and even themselves.

The only way to uphold it is to get their narcissistic supply (control, admiration, and attention) from other people. Their sense of self is therefore fragile. It rests primarily on external validation.

Being in control is therefore a protective mechanism because narcissists cannot psychologically survive without their narcissistic supply.

When they sense they are losing control over a person or situation, their sense of self feels threatened. They will stop at nothing to uphold their grandiose fantasy.

Narcissism is thought to develop from growing up in an invalidating or overindulgent environment. Three routes are possible:

• Powerlessness: They may have felt powerless, which may lead to an excessive desire for power to make up for the lack of control in early life.
• Overindulgence: They may have been put on a pedestal by their caregivers, which gave them a strong belief in their specialness and superiority. They then expect the same treatment and submission from other people.
• Reinforced Dominance: They may have grown up where the need for control and power was strongly reinforced. They may have been taught that it is a “dog-eat-dog world” and that anyone not in a dominant position is worthless.

Narcissists want to remain in a position of power and avoid feeling submissive or out of control at all costs.

Kohut’s Theory of the Wounded Self

The psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut explained why a narcissist’s sense of self is so fragile. He argued that a stable self is not innate. Children build it through experiences with their caregivers (Kohut, 1971).

Kohut called a caregiver who works as an extension of the child’s own self a selfobject. Healthy development, he proposed, needs three kinds of selfobject experience:

• Mirroring: The caregiver reflects the child’s abilities and achievements with visible delight, so the child feels they matter and are capable.
• Idealization: The child sees a caregiver as powerful, wise, and safe, and feels calmed by being close to them.
• Twinship: The child senses an essential likeness with someone else. Kohut (1977) added this need later.

Suppose a caregiver is too distracted, depressed, or self-absorbed to mirror a child accurately. The child may never build a secure sense of self-worth. They may stay dependent on outside validation, or cling to an exaggerated, grandiose self-image that never matured into realistic self-esteem.

A wound to this fragile self is a narcissistic injury. Criticism, being ignored, or losing control can then feel catastrophic rather than merely uncomfortable. The threat is to a self that never fully consolidated.

Kohut (1972) coined the term narcissistic rage for a compulsive need for revenge, pursued at any cost, to undo a hurt or right a wrong.

Sources

Alexander, M. B., Gore, J., & Estep, C. (2020). How need for power explains why narcissists are antisocial. Psychological Reports, 124(3), 1335–1352. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294120926668

Day, N. J. S., Townsend, M. L., & Grenyer, B. F. S. (2020). Living with pathological narcissism: A qualitative study. Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation, 7, Article 19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40479-020-00132-8

Du, T. V., Miller, J. D., & Lynam, D. R. (2022). The relation between narcissism and aggression: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality, 90(4), 574–594. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12684

Grapsas, S., Brummelman, E., Back, M. D., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2020). The “why” and “how” of narcissism: A process model of narcissistic status pursuit. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(1), 150–172. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619873350

Green, A., & Charles, K. (2019). Voicing the victims of narcissistic partners: A qualitative analysis of responses to narcissistic injury and self-esteem regulation. SAGE Open, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019846693

Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self: A systematic approach to the psychoanalytic treatment of narcissistic personality disorders. International Universities Press.

Kohut, H. (1972). Thoughts on narcissism and narcissistic rage. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 27(1), 360–400. https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.1972.11822721

Kohut, H. (1977). The restoration of the self. International Universities Press.

Perel, E. (2025, September 8). A secret I can’t even tell my therapist | Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgtC_lbGY6U

Théberge, D., & Gamache, D. (2023). An appraisal of narcissistic rage through path modeling. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 38(1–2), 796–818. https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605221084746

Zeigler-Hill, V., & Dehaghi, A. M. B. (2023). Narcissism and psychological needs for social status, power, and belonging. Personality and Individual Differences, 210, Article 112231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2023.112231