Do Narcs know that they're behaviour is bad?

[rubixcube]

Familiarity breeds contempt is a narcissistic concept

Hazy111, that's a great, great phrase. Encapsulates so much!

[Mourning Dove]

Wow, all of these posts are resonating with me. I just joined this site and have to say I am blown away by how many people are experiencing what I am. My uPDh rages against me and his family - parents, brother, sister. But he holds down a professional job and is advancing in his career. Although, this week has been a bit different with some venting emails to co-workers. Not sure how much longer his mask will stay on at work tbh.

Also of note to me was the other night when I said something he found unfavorable and took to yelling, throwing things, and finally putting a barbell with 90 lbs of weight on his chest/neck because I clearly didn't love him. I told him I would call the police if he didn't knock it off and he immediately became almost docile and quietly said, okay, I will stop. So there's clearly some self-control available.

[Whiteheron]

Welcome Mourning Dove!
My stbx is very successful in his field. He points to that as proof he's not mentally ill (he is dx bipolar). I find he can manage pretty well as long as he is in charge and there are no emotions involved. He is very bright, intellectually. It's the rest of life he can't handle.

If there is an emotional type of issue that comes up with an employee, he likes to brag how he had to call so and so into his office and how they ended up crying but then he made it all better in the end. He was always so proud they were able to come to a resolution.  Sorry, but making your employees cry in front of you isn't what I consider a successful outcome. He just doesn't get it.

[Empie2204]

The narcissist in my life acts like this:

The first and most important thing is that all other members of our little family don´t expose our dirty loundry outside. We have broken this rule long ago because he put such a burden to us that we had to find our friendly souls to help us live such a life.
The said rule should apply to him, shouldn´t it?  But it goes like this: he allegedly doesn´t talk around, but in times of our circular discussions he didn´t care whether our neighbors heard something (and they did!) When I told him that he is too loud he always replied he didn´t care.

So, in his own concept he is always doing good, even when he is doing things that are considered bad if we do them.

There are moments when he shows he knows he does wrong things, but saying such sentences is always accompanied by:

"You say I´m  ...  a  bad father, a bully ..."

No need to say that the rest of his text is self-praise and criticism towards the rest of the world.

[Cat of the Canals]

For my uBPD mother, I was going to say no. She doesn't know or think she's behaving badly. She is always "in the right." If she is upset by something, it's her opinion that it's up to the rest of the world to change for her.

But now that I've thought about it a minute, she only behaves that way inside the family. She is 100% capable of behaving normally for appearances. Her rages are always conducted behind closed doors. She would never lose her patience like that in public.

So yeah... that makes me think she does know, on some level.

[p123]

I suppose my Dads justification is always "Im old I need your help and thats the way it is".

As such, nothing else is his problem. I need to be there and thats the end of it. If I've got other things to sort then I'd better do them and get it sorted asap so it doesnt interfere with what he wants.

[Fae Greenwood]

My uNPDh knows his behavior is bad. He used to yell at me in stores specifically to humiliate me. Anything I did to react increased his tirade. Asking him to stop, moving to another location, even leaving the store just resulted in him ramping it up. However, if I just stood there in silence with my eyes looking down, he'd run out of steam in one or two minutes. Then I would go pay for my items and leave while he acted disgusted with me for not playing his game. I quickly learned to not shop with him (it was only shopping, never going out to eat or to a park etc.) but sometimes he'd deliberately put me in the position where I'd have to go in (like he'd stop without warning to "run in for something quick" and I could sit in a car in 100° heat sometimes with our kids or go in and he'd have his fun). He had that face for me and another for church friends where he was the loving and patient husband and father. I told one of the women at church about his rages and, after thinking about it for a few days, she told me that she'd seen no sign of this in my husband and that I shouldn't lie about him.
So a few months later I was manipulated into a local store and taken into the back part which was his preferred spot for this as then he could yell at me the entire length of the building if I tried to leave. I don't remember what I said or did because it never mattered anyway but suddenly he was ramping up. About 5 seconds into his rant, just as he was getting going, the woman from church popped her head around the corner to greet us. She was visibly astonished and my husband was visibly embarrassed as he tried to reign himself in. I, on the other hand, when I realized that the woman who'd accused me of having lied about my husband was witnessing his behavior and he knew it, felt like laughing. We were all quite polite and went about our business. I then brightly chatted to my husband about how often I ran into people we knew from church and the kids' school and the scouts and the wives of his coworkers and wasn't it nice to have so many acquaintances around us. He was very quiet. (The woman asked me about it a few weeks later at church if that was what I'd been talking about. She seemed appalled at his behavior but she didn't apologize for calling me a liar.) That was about 22 years ago and I believe I've only had a handful of public almost-rages in the years since so yes, he knew then and knows now that his behavior is bad. He had always been careful to behave better around his mother and others whose good opinion he values. It took me a very long time to come to terms with the fact that I am not one of those people. If narcissists couldn't help it, they'd behave badly in front of the therapist, the police, the kid's teacher, the pastor, etc. but maintaining the facade is everything because that is what they value.
Just for fun, I'll tell you the rest. He still kept up the raging when we went out of town. I dreaded trips with him UNTIL he was ramping up in an airport making a connection when, yes, we ran into an acquaintance! I then brightly chatted about all the people he and I ran into in the most unexpected places. "Remember that restaurant in the mountains where we saw the Does? And wasn't it funny when we stopped at that campground and the Smiths ended up next to us! It's such a small world!" He's become more circumspect, though he still rages.

[Whiteheron]

maintaining the facade is everything because that is what they value.

Absolutely. When the court was watching him closely, he was the model dad and stbx. Now, he's back to his old ways. So he can be good when people are watching. He hates it, but he can do it.

I am so sorry for all of the public humiliation you had to go through. I'm glad you were able to lessen it by pointing out how frequently you run into people you know.

[1footouttadefog]

It was seeing my spouse be his old self with others that caused the wall to go up.

I realized he was choosing to mistreat me.   He coukd and can control it.  He chooses to be abusive. 

There is a wall up and many boundaries set.

[Free2Bme]

"Don't wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it."
-Mark Twain

Yes, they know it.
They do not care, UNLESS it will provide a source of gratification to them for the pain they inflict.  Then they care only enough to preserve the opportunity to inflict more pain.   
For years I thought that he could not help the way he was; nature, nurture, his PD mother, blah, blah.  However he would condemn the same behavior in another person and rationalize his own behavior.  I would also observe that he was taking pleasure in manufacturing chaos and pain.
This realization was a game changer.

[Call Me Cordelia]

If you've ever seen the sadistic smirk... they know. And they embrace it.

[Hazy111]

If you've ever seen the sadistic smirk... they know. And they embrace it.

"Dupers delight"