Thank you very much for this response and sharing your insights. I didn’t realize that negative attention can be sufficient in maintaining narcissistic supply, and that a sense of grandiosity isn’t necessarily how narcissists see themselves. This helps me understand what has until now been a perplexing pattern I’ve noticed among narcissists, which is that even compliments seem to be met with a kind of hostility… there’s one person in my life in particular who confuses me with how thoroughly he shoots down any positive feedback I give him… your insights help me understand that defensive reactions can be affected by any challenge to the narcissist’s sense of self, which can also be very negative… so in the case of the person I’m referring to it seems that my compliments threaten him and he responds by shooting them down and becoming very cold… so cold, in fact, that I refer to this person as Cold Brew… anyway, I digress; thank you for reading and responding, I appreciate your input and am glad to hear that this piece accurately reflects what you know about narcissism from inside yourself. I would love to read anything you might end up writing about this — I think it’s pretty rare to find someone who openly experiences narcissism and knows how to talk about it.