What Makes Someone a Narcissist: Trauma, Core Wound & the Fight Response

Written by Roland Bal

Trauma and narcissism are, unfortunately, much more closely linked than we might think.

There are certainly no excuses for abuse. It might be helpful, though, for you to understand some of the reasons why someone might become an abuser.

Your character was shaped by the experiences you went through, the support or lack of support you received, and the duration of those experiences.

You made choices out of survival to deal with the challenges that were present in your life. Those choices decided your direction and outlook on life, and in many ways shaped your character.

How Childhood Trauma Creates a Narcissist — And Can It Change?

Your characteristics aren't set in stone. Your patterns, which are set in motion early in life, do seem to be hardwired and they take considerable time to loosen up, rewire, and to disidentify from.

At the time of the abuse, the choices you made were more necessities than conscious decisions; nonetheless, they influenced your direction in life.

Your character was shaped by the experiences you went through, the support or lack of support you received, and the duration of those experiences.

For example, if you grow up with a verbally and physically abusive mom or dad and your way of dealing with this was to avoid conflict (flight) and anticipate your parent's moods (please) in order to keep the peace, that will contribute to an overall lack of boundaries, suppressed anger, and likely a continuance of seeking approval from others into adult life. Moreover, as long as the trauma related to your past has not been worked through, your patterns will stay in place.

The patterns that a narcissist falls into are a very different category from those described above, though trauma is still the main ingredient.

Where someone who develops a fawn response learns to people-please and suppress their own needs, someone who develops a fight response goes in the opposite direction. They learn to dominate, control, and overpower as a way to never feel vulnerable again. This is how childhood trauma creates a narcissist — not through choice, but through a nervous system that locked into fight mode as its primary survival strategy. The fawn response and the fight response are two sides of the same coin, both born from the same wound, but expressed in radically different ways.

Narcissism in Society: How Narcissists Are Created and Rewarded

There are many ways of looking at trauma and narcissism. Both from a personal point of view — of what the individual went through — and from a collective point of view — of what is transpiring in society on the whole.

Narcissism is widely promoted and encouraged, unfortunately. The values of society are to look up to those who are successful, ambitious, and can dominate others. Regardless of our reasoning, our animal instincts of the alpha male or alpha female still prevail.

What this profoundly ingrained and biologically hardwired mindset does is that it encourages narcissism, conflict, being selfish, and having disregard for others.

What might start out as a mild form of narcissism in an individual can grow out of proportion in an environment which nurtures it. For example, the many corporations, academic environments, and team sports cultures that have a dog-eat-dog mentality.

If a faulty pattern goes unchecked and even gets applauded, the self-righteousness and sense of accomplishment of a narcissistic individual is further enhanced.

Why Narcissists Need Control and Dominance: The Wound of Inadequacy

This brings us to the driving force of a narcissist and how unresolved trauma leads to narcissism.

Regardless of whether the trauma was neglect or abuse, whether it was mild or severe, a narcissist can be born. The main driving force of narcissists is feeling inadequate, incompetent, and not worthy. Their sole occupation in life is to prove to themselves and to others that they are worthy, adequate and competent.

This strive and ambition are what makes narcissists very clever, elusive, and accomplished people. They are always on the lookout to gain dominance, control, and a sense of achievement, regardless of whether they hurt others in the process. As long as they can hold onto their sense of being special, competent, and in control, their self-indulgent narcissism can thereby continue to cover up their wound — their initial self-image of lack of confidence, inadequacy, and incompetence.

Considering how unresolved trauma leads to narcissism, it is not hard to imagine how narcissists can become psychopaths in positions of power. Narcissists are rewarded by society through prestige, power, and money.

Are Narcissists Traumatized?

In short — yes. Narcissists are traumatized, though they will rarely if ever admit it. Their entire identity is built on making sure no one, including themselves, ever sees the wound underneath.

Unlike someone with a fawn response who feels their pain openly and often, a narcissist has buried their trauma under layers of control, achievement, and dominance. The nervous system is still running on survival, but the fight response masks it so well that it looks like confidence, ambition, or even success.

This is what makes narcissism and the fight response so difficult to recognize and so destructive in relationships. The narcissist genuinely believes they are in control. They do not see their behavior as a survival pattern — they see it as who they are. And because society rewards that pattern, there is very little incentive for them to look inward.

For those on the receiving end — often people stuck in a fawn response — understanding this dynamic can be the beginning of breaking free from narcissistic abuse. Not to excuse the narcissist's behavior, but to finally see clearly what you are dealing with and why your own patterns keep pulling you back in.