I was raised by a father who had many narcissistic traits and yet in rare moments there were tender moments ofcompassion. I knew that his father had severely abused him physically and most likely he had been sexually abused by him as well.

My father's father sexually abused me in a cult based on Christianity.

When I worked as a crisis worker in alternative mental health I had some opportunities to work with full blown narcissists. Crisis counseling is not therapy. Most of the NPD clients we worked with (as a team) were charming and transparently manipulative. They were usually banned from returning to our program- mainly because they were attempting to game the system and prey on other clients in the program.

I utilized open-ended questions posed to them - nearly all men that were logically based. I asked them not to answer the question but to think about it. If they got back to me with an answer that had an appearance of depth I could take them a bit further. Eventually they disappeared or avoided me for the rest of their stay. I could feel their fear and anxieties - in a similar way that I felt my father's fears.