Mental health experts have revealed the key signs of narcissism to look out for – as they urged people not to throw the term around lightly.
Social media was awash with allegations this week that Jada Pinkett Smith displayed lack of empathy and a fixation on maintaining her own reputation at Will Smith‘s expense, with some even accusing her of being ‘a narcissist’ who ‘ruined’ her husband.
Jessica MacNair, a license therapist with experience in working with narcissists told DailyMail.com the term is thrown around in today’s society too lightly, adding that a true narcissistic personality must satisfy strict criteria written by psychologists.
Jada’s bombshell reveal on a press blitz for her new memoir was that she and her husband had been secretly separated for seven years – despite maintaining a facade of unity to the public.
New York-based personality disorder specialist Alana Carvalho told DailyMail.com that while portraying a role of happily married family woman does not in itself point to a narcissitic personality, ‘It’s very common that people with [narcissistic personality disorder] and narcissistic tendencies would lie to keep up appearances.’
In the days leading up to the release of her memoir Worthy, Jada Pinkett Smith detailed for the first time to the Today Show’s Hoda Kotb that she and husband Will Smith had been separated since 2016. Many took this exclusive interview to be a sign of Jada attempting to paint herself as a victim
The marker of a narcissist is a sense of grandiosity with a lack of accountability for their actions and how they affect loved ones
Therapists cautioned that having narcisisstic traits does not necessarily amount to a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) diagnosis, which an estimated 0.5 percent to up to five percent of the US population has.
Jada had a troubled childhood growing up in Baltimore surrounded by violence, scarred by her mother’s heroin addiction and father’s alcoholism.
Against the backdrop of her turbulent home life, Jada grew to become a drug dealer by the time she befriended Tupac Shakur in high school before he was gunned down in the prime of his life and career.
NPD, like other personality disorders such as borderline personality disorder, has strong links to a history of trauma.
Narcissists often see themselves as a victim to play up sympathy and adoration. But people who experience trauma are in fact victims.
The after-effects of trauma, whether that be from a tempestuous childhood marked by drug abuse, or losing an extremely close friend to a violent attack, can render someone too emotionally fragile for criticism.
This can lead a person to construct a protective shield around themselves to fend off further harm which can often look like an inflated sense of self and an inability to empathize with others.
MacNair said: ‘There are a lot of question marks about the origins [of NPD], about whether it’s intergenerational trauma, whether it’s birth trauma, whether it’s not trauma at all, whether it’s the brain. I mean, it’s not studied enough for people to have a full understanding of what causes it.’
While Jada has said her relationship with the late rapper was not romantic, she recently said he was her ‘soulmate’.
Jada and Tupac met as sophomores in a Baltimore arts high school and became fast friends. Jada has since called him her ‘soulmate’ though maintains that their relationship was never romantic
Will, for his part, has voiced the level of inadequacy he felt living in Tupac’s shadow.
He wrote in his 2021 memoir that when he and Jada first got together, he was ‘tortured’ by her connection with the rapper which triggered in him ‘the perception of myself as a coward.’
He and Jada sat down on her Red Table Talk show in 2020 when she revealed that she had also been romantically involved with singer August Alsina while she and Will were separated.
Mental health professionals say, without ascribing any sort of diagnosis to Jada, that the spouse of a narcissist will often experience low self-esteem and a sense of inferiority.
And many may not realize they are being manipulated, especially when the other person in the relationship lacks accountability for the harms they cause.
Therapist Alana Carvalho said: ‘It’s hard to say if this was a betrayal given that we don’t know the ins and outs of her family and their experience of this situation.
‘That said, I often seen people with NPD and/or narcissistic tendencies that have trouble understanding how their behaviors have negatively impacted those around them and they are unwilling to take accountability.’
A narcissist has several plays in their playbook. One of the most insidious among them is love-bombing, which can be a way for a narcissistic person to exact control over their partner by showering them with gifts, adoration, and intense affection.
The goal is to build a strong bond with the non-narcissist, making them dependent on the other for approval and validation.
But the love-bombing phase in a narcissistic relationship typically gives way to more manipulative behaviors such as creating distance between them to make the non-narcissist question their own self-worth.
The love-bombing phase ends and welcomes in a new phase in which the narcissist begins to devalue their partner, often dismissing or verbally abusing them.
Kimberly Anderson, a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Virginia, told DailyMail.com: ‘I consider being in a relationship with a narcissist like being in a cult of one. They are the cult leader, we’re the followers.’
Anderson added: ‘They love bomb you, they pull you in, and once they have you, you are their cult member and they will exploit you in any way they can to feed their need for admiration, their need for a positive self image, and their need for ultimate power and control in your relationship.’
The most notable criticism of Jada’s latest interview was a history of coldness and devaluing her husband for ‘clout’.
She told the Today Show’s Hoda Kotb: ‘By the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were both still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.’
Jada said in her book: ‘It was not a divorce on paper. But it was a divorce.’
The interview added fuel to an everlasting fire of rumors about her marital troubles with Will, piling onto the major 2020 reveal on Red Table Talk that Jada had an ‘entanglement’ with Alsina – a euphemistic term reminiscent of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s ‘conscious uncoupling’ – who had been a friend of their son Jaden.
Though Alsina said Will gave him his ‘blessing’ to date Jada, Will later said: ‘I wasn’t sure I was ever going to speak to you [Jada] again. Like the fact that I’m speaking to you again is a miracle … there’s just certain things that you have to go through (in a marriage). I wish it could be all magic and miracles.’
Jada, for her part, said she ‘wanted to feel good.’
During the 2020 episode of her Facebook Watch show Red Table Talk LIVE, Jada told Will she got into an ‘entanglement’ with singer August Alsina (seen with Jada in 2017)
In a narcissistic partnership, a non-narcissist will often feel debased by their partner who, according to MacNair, will ‘never take accountability or ownership.’
‘It’s always someone else’s fault, it’s never the person’s responsibility,’ MacNair added.
The fallout from the 2022 Oscars’ slap heard ‘round the world included speculation that something broke in Mr Smith, who has generally been known as being an easy-going, good-natured guy.
And at the time, no one in the public knew that the highly-publicized couple had been living apart since 2016.
Since then, she and Will had made many public declarations of their love and admiration for each other, suggesting their separation was amicable.
Carvalho said: ‘Most of us have a desire to have a good reputation and be seen positively by others.
‘However, a person with NPD is more likely to lie and not feel any remorse for doing so.’
She added: ‘There’s an common ideology in psychology that those with general mental health issues are most harmful to themselves whereas those with personality disorders are most harmful to those around them.’
NPD belongs to a family of 10 conditions that lead to long-term patterns of unhealthy thinking and behavior that distorts the person’s perception of the world and their place in it.
A person with NPD has a grandiose sense of self, a loose grasp on empathy, and comfortability with undermining others.
MacNair told DailyMail.com: ‘[In the partner we see] lower self esteem, lower self worth, inability to enjoy activities and live life as they did prior to being in that relationship.
‘The issue is not all clinicians are able to see the narcissism in the narcissistic partner because they go to some extreme lengths to love-bomb a therapist or appear a certain way in the session and make it seem like it’s the partner with the issue and not them with the issue.’
A narcissist is not the type of person who would admit to wrongdoing.
But netizens alleged that her tendency to publicly air out her marital issues, occasionally painting herself as the victim, points to a behavior that does characterize a narcissist, a need for near constant public attention and admiration.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Jada Pinkett Smith’s team for comment.
