Why would a narcissist fake sickness?

Answer 1

My father had a stroke and acted as if he coul not do anything anymore. He refused to practice, refused all activities. Stupid enough (I did not know he was a N) I hired nurses to take care of him. Silly me! He was the master of his own universe, including his own personnel and when I asked him to do his excercises he told everybody I was a treat to him, talked about parent abuse etc. I was thrown out of the family as a result of his lies and the nurses believed him, not me. Something that did not help either was that my sister also is a N (I did not know that either). Before his stroke my father was living alone in a filthy house, after his stoke he became the King and his servants.... Quite rewarding, I should say! Now he is in a nursing home and pretents he is insane. Nobody believes me if I tell them he is just pretending. And the nurses feed him, and nurture him.... Even faking dementia is rewarding. But then: aren't they 5 year olds? Because the world revolves around the "self" and the impact of lies on "others" doesn't register in their conscience. What an interesting question... They are manupulative and compulsive liars. They will tell you this to draw you in when they feel like they are losing control. It's an easy way to get attention without doing something. It's also an easy way to get an excuse to get out of something they don't want to do. I would take this a bit further and say that I actually thing narcissists may be capable of making themselves sick. Mine could whip himself into a real frenzy and create symptoms in himself or make any existing illness or pain much worse. If someone challenged that he was sick, he'd make himself sick real fast! They also tend to be very accident-prone. I guess this is because they don't pay attention and are thinking about themselves all the time. So I've been told. The one I knew used to space out with a regularity that you could set your watch by. I'd count to 10 any time he picked something up, and then I'd hear a crash. He'd have spaced out and dropped the thing. If he managed to catch it, he'd boast about how quick he was and how alert. I don't think the accident-prone thing is so much about getting attention, but I'm sure a narcissists find a way to use it for that purpose once the accident happens!