They both have nothing to really be confident about. It’s all a lie.

You might think that the psychopath has all the self-esteem in the world. And because of that, they might not care about their public image as much as the narcissist does. It’s true, they don’t, but for other reasons.

First of all, a psychopath is certain about how bad they really are. They don’t need your opinion to confirm that. In addition, they want their delusion to remain intact, and that’s why any input or feedback from you is not welcome, because it might distort their delusional perspective of themselves. They are superior, and perfect in every way imaginable, and you don’t get to touch that bubble. Any attempt to touch it could lead to its destruction. They don’t want that to happen. To the eye of the inexperienced observer, that might come across as extreme self-confidence, high and solid self concept, and total lack of insecurity about anything there is that has anything to do with them or how great they really are. But, despite the lack of all of the above being extremely obvious to the experienced observer, perhaps to a highly mind-blowing level, the presence of another underlying explanation for this phenomenon is enough in itself to pull you like magnet in the direction of a totally different, albeit extremely opposing explanation.

It appears that what we’re dealing with here is encountering all the different alternatives or results that you can get. If it is possible to exist and be differentiated and distinct, it will take place. It’s just a statistical probability. What else could be there that didn’t already exist?

Trying to explain it in terms of a normal person who got subjected to trauma until they became like that doesn’t work and will always fail, because that’s not what happened, and that doesn’t explain anything. They are not formed, they just happened. They exist, because these are all the possibilities that can exist or take place. What else can you expect to exist that didn’t already show up, exactly as you predicted it to be like?

This explains the vast inconsistencies that we can find across all descriptions of what certain types of abusive people look or can look like and how they behave. They have a lot in common, but expecting every type to stick to its own type no matter what is absurd to say the least, not to mention, impractical. One can be borderline and do everything that you can only expect from a person with antisocial personality disorder, without them being antisocial or having antisocial personality disorder at all, because all variants can exist, and they probably actually do. We don’t have to abolish or dissolve distinctions altogether between different types of presentations or disorders and assume they are all one big personality or post traumatic disorder, in order to find no inconsistencies or contradictions, because we can always understand that what we’re dealing with is just or only a variant or a variation of the same disorder, because what can exist, will probably do at some point. We don’t have to think there’s no such thing as a female psychopath because it turns out that borderline females are all antisocial or sociopaths. They are just borderline with extreme potential for outbursts of violent behavior. They still don’t qualify for being a full-blown sociopath, antisocial, or psychopath. A fallacy of that nature has been committed by the best of us in psychology and psychiatry. They don’t think like each other, and they don’t approach the world the same way. They may exhibit the same external behavior, but what lies beneath the surface is entirely and totally different, it’s almost a scientific crime to put them under the same type, category, or disorder.

For example, there’s a difference between someone who is being abusive because they lack control over themselves or their behavior, and one that has no problem with controlling themselves to an extent that they can never feel bad no matter what they do to you. The first could be a borderline, the second, definitely a primary psychopath.

If you give the psychopath feedback, this might mess with whatever delusion they have about themselves. In the face of that, a psychopath blocks all sorts of feedback or input they get from anybody, because they are so bad there’s a very high probability that whatever feedback you give them will destroy their delusional, excessive, fake, over-inflated self-esteem, self-confidence, self concept, and grandiose image. This is what makes it seem unshakable to the outsider. It is not a greater degree of self-esteem or confidence than that which a narcissist seems to possess that a narcissist typically has. The narcissist just builds their fake confidence and grandiose delusions about themselves through external supply they gather from others like an addict. They build their false, fake, and delusional self from false evidence first. According to the amount of recent evidence that can enlarge and maintain their delusion, that they garner and collect from everybody they consider to be a source of supply, they will feel good about themselves. So their confidence is contingent upon what you think of them, for how long you thought so, and how many people thought the same. The difference is that if they run out of supply, they will feel worse about themselves. So they chase supply like an addict just to exist, because they can’t sustain their delusion without that kind of supply. They both have the same problem of insecurity. I am here to argue that of the two, the psychopath is the most insecure. In order to maintain such a grandiose delusion about themselves despite being so low in reality when it comes to self-esteem, self-confidence, self-image, and self-concept, they have to not listen to what you have to say. These things are so low, no amount of supply can help lift it above a minimum threshold or level that can sustain such delusions. Anything will expose the reality about them. Everything will serve as proof that they’re lying to themselves and others. Everything will expose to them how bad and horrible they really are in every way imaginable, and they know it. Since they can’t maintain such a delusion through any distorted or twisted interpretation of whatever feedback, input, opinion, or supply they can get from others and from the external world, they cannot afford to rely upon such sources or sorts of supply to maintain or sustain anything. They sustain their grandiose delusions about themselves through, ironically enough, internal validation. This is the epitome of falsely validating yourself exclusively from within. Even if your beliefs about yourself are infinitely delusional, they potentially can still remain forever, unshakable.

Nevertheless, a narcissist doesn’t make do with whatever supply they can get because they are any better. A narcissist doesn’t have less insecurity about themselves than that of a sociopath, or a psychopath, necessarily.

Remember, they are just what happened to exist. Those who are okay with misinterpreting feedback that doesn’t necessarily mean anything positive about them as solid proof that they are the best there is, become narcissists. Those who question evidence like there’s no tomorrow, as part of how they regularly abuse others, will use that pseudo skeptical self-doubt poison that they use against others to abuse them further, against themselves as well, because they use it to make themselves think that they are smart or to look smart in front of others. And since they use their rules too strictly, even if they backfire against them or hurt them, they will use that against themselves as well. It is what they think makes them special, so they cannot afford to not use it against themselves, even if it did them more harm than good.

Which makes them forever be dissatisfied with whatever evidence you give them to feed into their superiority or grandiose narrative or delusions.

The end result or final conclusion they have about themselves is the same, absolute vacuum, and they both escape it, bypass it, deny it, or run away from it, through building massive delusional castles around it. They just do so through different methods or mechanisms. One is okay with adding insult to injury, lies upon lies to justify other lies, extending the delusional space or aspect of their fantasy, false narrative, delusional beliefs, and psychosis to the evidence or feedback itself that they receive from other people or to their interpretation of said feedback, not just to the final conclusion about themselves, which is having a grandiose delusion about themselves that has nothing to do with reality, and so they thought that moving mountains in order to make what others said or did means they’re so great and special, is a good use of their time and energy, no matter how preoccupied they become with it or obsessive about it, to the extent that to them supply that fuels and feeds into their false narrative has become identical to addiction and substance abuse, whilst the other one, the psychopath, is too critical and skeptical to get their hands dirty and do the trick of trying so hard to change, alter, or tamper with the evidence to make it suit the narrative or match their false beliefs or delusions they hold or have about themselves, so they choose alternative methods to maintain or sustain such delusions, that have nothing to do with what others think of them, perhaps because they noticed that nothing can change that kind of belief, because the truth about them is that bad, or always worse than that of the narcissist, or they are too skeptical and critical, or they don’t want their delusion to be dependent or contingent upon supply that they can only get from others, which makes it not so practical, or they just are unable to misinterpret the feedback they get from others to suit their false narrative.

Anyhow, they are not as confident as you think they are. They either harbor the same amount of insecurity as that held or harbored by a narcissist, or worse, that is, they are even more insecure, which makes whatever supply they can get from others for that purpose, utterly and perpetually, useless.