Image by @sophie.nva via Twenty20

by: E.B. Johnson

Spotting the self-absorbed people in our lives isn’t always easy, but it is necessary. These are the types of people who put themselves and their comfort above anyone and anything else. While we can’t (and don’t always want to) eliminate every self-centered person in our lives, it’s important that we protect ourselves from the more negative aspects of our relationships with them.

Do you have someone in your life that is completely obsessed with themselves? Do they always talk about themselves or always insist on having their own way? While we all have the right to live a life that is entirely of our making, having stable relationships with others requires that we sometimes compromise and learn how to prioritize their needs alongside — and even before — our own when the time calls for it.

The fine line between healthy and self-absorbed.

Loving ourselves is a skill that’s imperative to master for a happy and healthy life. Putting ourselves first, likewise, is a skill which is important to have in our lifelong wellbeing tool kit. There’s a fine line, though, between someone who has a healthy valuing of self and some who is totally self-absorbed. Self-centered people can be toxic and dangerous when it comes to building stable relationships in which we feel seen and valued.

We have to have the courage and know-how to spot these self-absorbed people in our lives. We have to safeguard ourselves from their selfish attacks and ensure that we’re protecting our mental and physical peace from their manipulations.

These selfish individuals are everywhere around us. They are our friends, our family members, and even the partners we are supposed to love most in the world. Once we accept the undeniable signs that they are who they are, we have to accept it. Then we have to take whatever action we can to put up walls around the happiness and the stability that we are attempting to build for ourselves. If you give a self-absorbed person the keys to your life, be prepared for them to wreck it in the moment that it suits them.

Undeniable signs of a self-absorbed person.

When it comes to the self-absorbed person, everything is about them. They can’t see the big picture because they can only see their point of view. They take advantage of the people they are supposed to love, because it means they get what they want. Selfish people are toxic, but spotting them isn’t always easy to do. It requires radical acceptance and a certain level of understanding and know-how.

Failing to see the big picture

The self-absorbed person is faced inward. They can only focus on their own narrow point of view and they can only process and understand their own needs and emotions. For this reason, they fail to see the big picture and they fail to see how to value their relationships with other people. This causes them to miss out on a lot, and it also prevents any major strides in emotional awareness.

Taking advantage

Is there someone in your life who always seems to take a lot of time or energy from you? Are you always waiting on them? Or sacrificing financial and material resources for them? Selfish people will do anything they have to in order to get their way. This includes taking advantage of people who love them and pushing them beyond their physical and emotional limits.

Image-guarding at all costs

Self-absorbed people are easy liars, especially when it comes to guarding their image or the perception that other people have of them. They often want to be seen in a certain way, and that way is often perfect and without flaw. Selfish people have big egos and in order to protect those egos they have to control the narrative about themselves (or the way in which others choose to see them). They’ll even go as far as lying and cheating those closest to them.

Overplaying the hand

One of the most common ways in which you can spot a selfish person is by their tendency to brag about themselves. They overplay their hands a lot. They talk a bigger game and make it seem like they have more than what they can actually offer. To this type of person, it’s easy to make all their achievements seem more important than they really are. Again, their egos get fed and their insecurities get masked by this behavior.

Reckless confidence

Looking for another sign of the self-absorbed person? Look for a sense of reckless confidence. This is a borderline dangerous belief in self which leads to all kinds of dramas and oversteps. The self-absorbed person with this type of confidence is one who is proud to tell others how to live their lives, and proud to insult them if it means making themselves look good or feel better. Rarely do they expect a negative reaction, because they’re so self-involved.

Struggle with empathy

Empathy is such an important quality to develop, and it allows us to connect with others on deeper and far more productive levels. To be empathetic, though, we have to understand and feel the emotions of others. The selfish person struggles here. In general, they can lack compassion when it suits. Often, they struggle to understand that the same emotions they struggle with also cause other people to suffer in similar ways.

No give-and-take

All relationships require a certain level of give and take. We have to be there for one another in order to maintain balance and keep ourselves connected. This creates patterns of support and prioritization that allow us to gather on the same page. This doesn’t usually work for the selfish person, though. For them, they demand to take from those around them all the time. There’s very little “give” and very little compromise on their end of things.

Shallow relationships

Because the self-absorbed person is incapable of giving or extending beyond the bounds of their own needs, they create superficial and often short-lived relationships that are volatile. These relationships are one-sided or otherwise off-balance relationships. They only focus on happy things, meaning one or both parties run at the first sign of hardship or danger. It’s impossible to connect on any real level, because the self-obsessed person is too busy thinking and talking about themselves.

How to deal with the self-centered people in your life.

Once you’ve spotted a selfish or self-centered person in your life, there are steps you have to take to protect yourself and your wellbeing. You need to become a master of setting better boundaries, and you need to be honest about where you are in this process. Then, you can reinstate your sense of integrity and remove the attention factor from the equation. Don’t take things personally. After all, their outlook is a reflection on them — not you.

1. Take full stock of where you’re at

Repair or changing the relationships we share with others is a journey which first requires that we take full stock of where we’re at. Before we can move forward, we have to take a look around and figure out what’s missing and what needs to be fixed. You need to admit how your life is being impacted by this self-centered person, and then you can actively work to correct it.

Assess the damage this selfish person has caused in your life. Look at the sum of their behavior and their treatment of you, past, present, and future. Have they injured your self-esteem? What about your relationships with others? When self-centered people want something, they don’t care who they hurt in the process of getting it.

Be brutally honest. You may love this person very deeply, but that doesn’t change the reality of who they are or how they affect your life. Admitting that they are damaging doesn’t mean admitting to loving them any less. And it doesn’t mean you have to cut them out of your life entirely. We can co-exist with a self-absorbed person, as long as we know who we are dealing with and take the appropriate steps to protect and prioritize ourselves.

2. Set better boundaries for yourself

Boundaries are a crucial part of every relationship that we build, but they become especially important when dealing with a self-centered person. These are individuals who will push you around and take advantage if it means getting their way. Our boundaries protect us from this abuse and ensure that we get what we want and are able to maintain our own inner peace in their presence.

Spend some time on your own drawing up some boundaries for yourself. To get to these boundaries, question the behaviors you do and don’t want in your friends and loved ones. Consider what’s acceptable, and what is absolutely going to end a relationship with you. We all have “no-gos” and that’s okay.

Once you’re clear on where your limits lie, communicate those boundaries with the self-absorbed person. Explain your feelings, where you’re coming from, and why. Make it clear that your boundaries aren’t negotiable and they aren’t flexible based on the desires of other people. You set your own boundaries, and it’s up to others to respect them or get out of the picture.

3. Keep your eye on your integrity

Without a strong sense of integrity, it’s hard to get ourselves on a path that is truly aligned with our happiness. Our integrity is the crossroads at which our needs and our values meet. It’s who we are and the morals we possess. Self-absorbed people don’t care about this integrity and will demand that you shelf it in order to make them happy. We can’t do this, and we can’t bring ourselves down to their level when they throw a fit over being denied.

The first time you deny the selfish person in your life what they want, expect there to be fireworks and drama. Don’t lower yourself to their level. Stay true to who you are and know that you have a right to your perspective, and you have a right to disagree with those things which don’t align to your deep inner truths.

Be honest and respectful of yourself and them. Express yourself with dignity and civility, no matter how much they try to challenge you. Your reaction is very crucial to how the next actions play out. You can’t give the self-absorbed person the drama that they seek. If they start throwing a fit about your denial of their behavior, stay cool and remove yourself when things get hot. They want you to feed their drama so they can gain control.

4. Remove the attention factor

There is nothing that the self-absorbed person loves more than attention. They thrive on it and it feeds their sense of ego and their desire to feel important. Contrary to what you may think, this attention doesn’t always have to be positive. The self-absorbed person can find a way to boost their superiority in any situation and spin the experience to inflate their own egos. To handle them effectively, we have to remove the attention factor.

Stop feeding in to this person’s self-centered view points. You don’t have to put your opinions aside to make them comfortable. You don’t have to back down from a confrontation because their ego is on the line. Don’t let them be the center of attention in your life anymore. When they become too much to bear, find ways to walk away.

When you give a self-absorbed person attention, you justify whatever stance they’ve decided to take. If they’ve decided that you’re the bad guy, that’s the only truth they will believe (or tell others). Arguing with them doesn’t make you look better in their eyes, it justifies their original opinion in their eyes. Stop over compromising and giving yourself away to suit their comfort. Stand strong and don’t give them the attention that they crave.

5. Don’t take anything personally

Although it’s hard not to, we can’t take negative interactions with a self-absorbed individual personally. Everything they do is about them. When they wake up in the morning, they are the first person they worry about. The same applies when they go to bed at night. Understand that they these persons are incapable of seeing any other perspective and know that any negativity they throw your way is a manifestation of their own hangups.

If things become nasty when the selfish person in your life realizes that they no longer have power over you, don’t take it personally. Instead, decide to see it as a reflection of them rather than a reflection of yourself. See it as their own shortcomings and insecurities bubbling up into the light.

By detaching yourself emotionally from their behavior, you’ll be able to stay calm and focused on your own needs and how you want to move forward. You will also be better able to keep your confidence intact and see things logically and realistically for how they are. Selfish people see only their own little world, they know only their own little feelings. Leave them to it and know that their projections have little to do with you and everything to do with their hangups.

Putting it all together…

It’s important that we learn how to spot the selfish and self-absorbed people in our lives. Although they may inhabit some important spaces in our lives, they can cause some serious damage when we don’t take note and protect ourselves against them. While you don’t have to remove them from your life entirely, you do have to create some safeguards that ensure your happiness remains an equal priority alongside their own. That requires action, though, and a better setting of boundaries and standards.

Take full stock of where you’re at with the other person and be honest about their behavior and how it’s impacting them. Is everything about them? Do they cause drama when they don’t get what they want? Set better boundaries for yourself and communicate with them. Tell your friend or loved one that you’re not willing to accept their one-sided demands and tell them why. You deserve to be in a stable and equitable relationship. Keep your eye on your integrity and don’t lower yourself to their tactics. When the self-absorbed person realizes you’re no longer in the mood to go with their flow, they may lash out and try to make your life more difficult. Accept it, don’t give them the attention that they crave, and don’t take anything personally. Their poor behavior is not a reflection of you, it’s a reflection of them.