3. Reverse shift responses.
The third way to spot a lying narcissist is by looking for reverse shift responses. So, if you have a narcissist in your life, you are familiar with shift responses, which are ways to shift the conversation. So you might say, “Well, I had such a great day,” and you’re ready to tell the person all about it. And they jump in and say, “I had a great day too,” and then they essentially hijack the conversation, and you never get back to where you were.
The reverse shift response is when they shift the conversation to you. And this is so telling when you are dealing with a narcissist, and they can’t seem to get enough of talking about you, and they have all these questions about what was going on with you. Pay attention to that unless they’re actively idealizing you. This is a red flag. When you get down to the root of it, what they’re doing most likely is trying to avoid talking about whatever it was that you wanted to talk about.
Recommended: Healing from Hidden Abuse: A Journey Through the Stages of Recovery from Psychological Abuse.
4. Exaggeration
The fourth way to spot a lying narcissist is exaggeration. And this one is one that you’ve probably experienced before. Some people rely on it more than others. And now I want to say, especially if it is a little bit out of character, or if somebody doesn’t always exaggerate, pay attention when they do. The reason why people exaggerate when they’re lying is because they are of the belief that if something is so ridiculous, that it must be true. That you’re going to believe it because why would I make up this elaborate story if I was gonna lie?
And the other reason people might exaggerate when they’re lying is to distract from the subject. So when you exaggerate, there’s a lot more to your story, and there’s a lot of spin-off conversations that could happen. So it adds a little bit more meat to what you’re talking about, which can distract from the topic at hand.
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