The amount of neglect and attending to Elliot’s emotions kind of astounded me. He’s clearly very afraid and traumatized in an abnormal way and yet they don’t do anything to help him or sit him down and help him work through or understand his emotions or help him with social skills. Once again, I went through very similar things as a child. There was a pattern of me being forced to just do things when I was already super afraid and wasn’t ready and of course it resulting in humiliation and I wasn’t given guidance. I really feel for this.

I think Elliot’s mentally young age made these traumas hit a lot harder and caused a lot more damage. As I said, this all eventually culminated in utter lack of empathy for humanity. And of course, he didn’t have a healthy ego or any identity to be able to take blows healthily. I always say that the reason why rejection hits cluster bs so hard and shatters them so deeply -while other kids have trauma but don’t escalate to such extremes - is BECAUSE there’s no foundation to the self, you only exist through the eyes of others and you already have early traumas that made the world seem way too scary and made you feel fundamentally worthless -to your core. It’s also understated how hard it is to know how to navigate the world without a self-concept, you don’t know how to feel seen or safe unless you’re able to constantly analyze and control your environment and stay “on top”. Elliot had trouble analyzing and navigating his environment, which would’ve caused his fear to be tenfold and his need for control to eventually increase to malignant levels.

Once again relate so deeply. My parents would take me to all these fancy places and all I would want to do is go back into fantasy and write or draw my characters. It was like I couldn’t feel safe or real or alive if I wasn’t able to be in that world.

I think there was a split in Elliot‘s psyche here. His body grew up, but his mind got left behind, and that caused trauma.

If someone could’ve treated his PTSD…

I so deeply relate it’s insane… I had an incident like this happen whenever I had to present in front of class in middle and high school and people would straight up tell me that I was shaking. It was like all my vulnerabilities were being put on display, and I was being stripped down to my core in front of everyone who was superior to me. Like holy shit… I relate so deeply to Elliot because this is the way my narcissism manifested where I majorly remained very shy and inhibited. I really envied confidence and charm, but no one guided me socially either so I didn’t know how to actually make it come across. By the time I tried, I’d already had so much humiliation happen to me that my fears were amplified tenfold and it was very hard to hide.

It’s really sad and unfortunate that Elliot’s social skills were never treated, because it could have helped him actually gain positive attention. He didn’t have enough social skills or guidance to understand how to even mirror to cope, or what would be required to achieve a positive reaction. Because of the way he continued to act, a way that he felt trapped into, he gained so much more severe repeated humiliations, which clearly chipped away at his tether to any warmth, empathy, or innocence inside that would be left. Similarly, I was failed by the mental health system like Elliot. I even went to therapy as a kid, but my therapist was shit at helping me integrate socially and didn’t address or even recognize the deeper identity issues and emptiness that was causing me to lack “stuff to say.” I wasn’t able to recognize my issues at all to even communicate them, but that wasn’t my responsibility as a child and I should’ve been accurately spotted and helped. No one seemed to actually address or even understand my issues and I felt very failed by that, and in immense distress because I was left to watch everyone else living life getting adored. I was starving watching my life pass me by, with no idea how participate or be seen.

This is the first sign of him acting out in a bitter or antisocial manner being reinforced, as it is the only time someone showed him any attention. This is what he reverts to in college as well, and it sets up a pattern for him. We underestimate how huge pattern reinforcement can have an effect on someone as they’re growing up. For example when I acted out and pretended I was crazy, that was one of the only times people would give me attention. this led to having a very bizarre relationship with my mental health diagnoses later in life where I would use them for attention and to feel rare, special, or significantly broken.

Once again, his social issues stopped him from being able to get any identity stability off a positive charming mask. I relate so much because I acted out in high school. I was always the super goofy kid, and people would make me the butt of jokes or have the more nuanced and admiring connections towards others in the group, but at least I was a part of something or paid attention to. But that humiliation stuck with me as well. I also acted out “episodes” to try and get people to notice or care about me but that may be a more borderline mixed state.

I am almost 99% sure that Elliot drew from Anakin Skywalker to create his “dark ideal self” when he unfortunately went to harm all those people. It’s really tragic because I don’t think Elliot was would have been as sadistic or detached if he hadn’t eventually set his ideal (false) self as Anakin or other dark characters. I think that type of false self was the only one he felt he could access consistently to provide a stable feeling of control, identity, superiority, and safety that wouldn’t be destroyed- it was way less complicated than having to reinforce his existence by being socially successful, which he couldn’t seem to navigate. It’s easier and less vulnerable to feed off power than to feed off of a positive public perception.

I relate to this so much… Every time I would go to school, I would just dissociate and wait to go back home into fantasy. I stopped caring about how I presented, but during that time I racked up so many humiliations and the more humiliations I racked up, the more intensely I dissociated away into fantasy, away from ever having to be “me, the failed pathetic emptiness” that was constantly getting replaced, overlooked, laughed at. It felt initially like fantasy must’ve softened the blow of the humiliation but those things stuck with me and when I finally “returned” to reality to try and succeed socially and become my own perfect character, everything I did was based on avoiding ever being “that humiliated figure” ever again.

This EXACT pattern happened to me with fantasy. Reality became too difficult to control, too daunting, too confusing to feel safe in. So I lived for coming home from school just to go and live vicariously through my fantasy world. My characters were perfect god-like being, admired, powerful. It was the only identity I had, the only thing I cared about. I wasn’t interested in hobbies or the world, the only thing I cared about or had to share was my character characters. I definitely input my inner desires and wants and ideal self into those characters so when I dreamed of how someday I would become a famous filmmaker and everyone would love my characters, I vicariously felt seen and adored.

This mirrors the way I immersed in fantasy when I was growing up- a world where I could live vicariously through powerful, perfect, adored characters with full identities and exciting lives, while reality felt confusing, scary, and humiliating. I feel like Elliot and I had a similar problem understanding how to navigate the world enough to get an outcome that made us feel seen or adored- so the NPD manifested through fantasy.

Elliot’s fragmentation is clear here. He has a part of him that is a frozen child and is traumatized by seeing this. Another part of him, his body, is at the age where it would react with arousal. This probably added to him feeling even less safe in a world he couldn’t process or understand, where he was supposed to feel excited or desirous like everyone else but doesn’t.

Note that Elliot once again mentions a world of fairness- but even when he was in elementary school his life revolved around getting accepted and adored by the other kids. The reason he felt it was fair was because he felt he could succeed and that he understood the rules and how to stay in control of everything.

Subtle proof of social difficulties knowing how to start and keep relationships. I wonder what he understood about how he’d need to share about his life (even if he made up hobbies and opinions) or show interest in others and empathize with them and make them feel good (even superficially.) When you have no core self or interests or opinions (besides how to be adored) it can be really tough to know what to even show or be to attract others, but he didn’t seem to know how to start mirroring others to have something impressive to show and then be confident in it enough to seek being looked at.

“How dare you have more confidence than me, when you’re clearly (inferior standard).” It’s a threat- what if even the normal or “below average” people are better than me? “If someone I deem lesser can be confident and charming and get somewhere socially, what does that say about me?” Oh there’s also the fear of losing control over validation: “what if the structure of what I think is superior vs inferior isn’t real…how will I ever be able to stand out? For me to feel superior, others must stay “in their place.” If I can’t feel superior I can’t stand out, if I can’t stand out against others I won’t be seen- if I’m not seen I crumble into nothingness- if I don’t stand out i cease to exist. For someone with NPD, standing out is how we feel real or alive. Without superiority, it feel like you dissolve into irrelevance or invisibility- a fate equal with psychological death.

Add- his inability to see this and then devalue Oren as well. “He isn’t even that cool. I would be way better to hang out with but the fact they can’t see that is because they’re both losers.” Elliot would need a foundation of grandiosity formed way younger to believe it, because he’d have traits others praised to back ip his belief that he’d be better.

Elliot is very sensitive to humiliation. Instead of having the response to automatically flip it on the girl and devalue her for being rude and not “good enough” for him, an unworthy girl- HE feels on the receiving end of her power to define his worth. This could be because due to his social difficulties he doesn’t have a lot of positive social experiences of being “on the inside,” accepted, included, important and adored, and instead has several bad experiences of being left out due to not bonding too deeply with any friend group. He is also hyper-aware of being “on the outside” of the popular kids group, so he doesn’t have much backing for any grandiosity - a true belief in his superiority (which would allow him to reactively devalue the girl instead of himself). Instead, because of his negative school experiences, he is probably way more afraid that what really “true” about him is that he is the loser, and will always be. The inability to take any grandiosity from the few good experiences he had and use it to “prove” to himself he is being naturally recognized because he of course, belongs with the popular kids- and then acting confident- this failure is likely because he wasn’t overtly praised for any particular mannerism or talent when he was young- so he didn’t develop a foundation of grandiosity. All this can underlay why someone gets stuck in vulnerable narcissism.

We need to research more if this delayed transition or even being traumatized and confused by the transition is a personality disorder thing or an ASD thing.

He can’t figure out how to copy and emulate the popular boys’ social success without clear hobbies or clothes to copy. This points to a breakdown in ability to understand more nuanced social navigation which stops social success. For example, he could have realized he should get to know the popular boys way more, ask questions, mirror them, then present that way to the girls. Or create a similarly confident talented version of himself from characters or celebrities or someone of high status and show off his new traits or charm whenever girls were around. But instead he focuses on what he doesn’t have and seems confused how to even start the steps to becoming like them and how to present.

Empathy. It’s not just gone in full blown NPD. Just impaired.

That’s the high, young narc. Anyway, it felt better because with girls he didn’t have the conflict of hating the aggression of the popular boys, or the competition mixed with validation. It was pure validation of being “superior” and chosen.

1. He had no ability to understand what to do in new social situations and seemed to have a hard time adjusting or learning. He couldn’t create a successful “social mask” and it looks like his uncertainty and confusion about how to behave made his fear too overwhelming to hide it behind confident behavior. He didn’t seem to understand how to manually convey confidence to cover up shyness.
2. Reinforcing how Elliot didn’t really want a girlfriend mainly- he wanted to have the status of having a gf.

The idea that kindness, decency or “goodness” might not be what’s rewarded in life seemed to traumatize Elliot, who already viewed the world as really scary. Now it seems the world really is brutal, because it rewards brutality. Elliot took what he saw to be the “truth” about all people which is black and white thinking. It may have particularly crushed his empathy for the world and others later on, as there’s a sense of “the world and humanity is monstrous and cruel, so why should they deserve kindness or mercy.” Here we also again have a mention of “I was too young, I wasn’t ready,” indicating frozen development.

This is the foundation of the NPD thought process, trying to figure out exactly what the people living “the high life” embody that makes them so superior, then trying to to obtain it, ingrain it and mimic it.

Seems to have an inability to adjust to change and figure out new social structures in a way a more adept narcissist would, possibly due to Aspergers or lack of social guidance growing up. This lack of ability to perceive and then know how to control or navigate the environment could have caused a very deep fear considering social control is the main way he felt safe or significant as a kid.

Temperament was inherently sensitive, seemed to navigate the world with a lot of fear and felt unable to handle the unfamiliar- if he had Asperger’s this could have been worsened by it, and by not knowing what to do or how to succeed socially in new situations.

Consistently controlled humiliated and punished by a woman- deprived of living life. Possibly fed into issues with women.

1. Who knows how much he actually practiced vs these kids but no ability to rationalize that to make himself feel better- hampered cognition.
2. Easily deterred rather than becoming even more determined to best others.
3. He reacts by being crushed and withdrawing instead of shifting blame or finding flaws in others, a pattern of vulnerable NPD.

Elliot states this like it’s genuinely the way the world works for everyone, but it’s actually how he processes the structure of who’s superior vs inferior. It used to be whoever had the coolest hobby or hung out with the popular kids, and that was something Elliot felt he could dominate so he sees it as “fair” because he could win and stay comfortable, not facing his shame. But when the mark of superiority turns into whoever can get a girl, Elliot’s social issues stop him but he can’t see or accept that. To his rigid worldview, getting a girl somehow immediately unlocks everything that comes with superiority: popularity, confidence, charm, opportunity, even “truly living.” And if you don’t have a girl, you have none of those good things.

I’m not sure what this “slower development” is, the intense discomfort and fear around developmentally entering middle school- but I experienced the same as Elliot so wanted to make a note of it. Elliot mentions it several times. Could it be connected to NPD and the frozen child that didn’t “mature” normally, becoming traumatized at suddenly transitioning to adulthood? Or is it connected to another developmental similarity we share?

Lack of understanding how to connect socially, even superficially it seems. Lack of understanding how to develop a successful “mask” and succeed socially in any meaningful way. Pattern of trying things based on looks and not understanding why it doesn’t turn out. Low social awareness?

This is so relatable to me. He wanted to be the cool kid of his group and gain admiration from those beneath him (his friends) but felt too invisible or threatened actually having to stand out against the “cool kids.”

Notice how everything he does in his life is centered around gaining admiration. He spends hours on something he doesn’t care about just to achieve an external presentation.

He says it was truly his passion but it’s not- he’s just now imagining another narcissistic fantasy. :(

Lack of consistent “no’s” and boundaries lead to reinforcement of entitlement. “Maybe if I throw a fit it can get me what I want just like last time.” I also experienced inconsistent boundaries growing up and it definitely led me to believe if I could portray myself just right I could get my way.

Breeding ground for entitlement. I had this experience as well growing up.

There’s always a hint of the true self even in the most severe cases

Mirroring to gain narcissistic supply

Interests seem to have always been dictated by how he’ll be perceived. No hint of any passions so far, indicating that early disconnect from true self.

Beginning of an inability to understand that it’s social presentation that mostly gains someone popularity, assumes it must be the clothes or hair. Once again a lack of social guidance is indicated.

Idealization of the popular kids. I also developed this awareness around his age and responded similarly.

Consistent feeling that everyone chooses him last, no understanding of social dynamics to process why or adjust- this would grow shame deeply.

Instead of teaching child social skills and giving practice, does everything for them. This could easily have crippled him.

Feelings of repeated abandonment and betrayal with no way to escape it- dreading being trapped in abusive and unsafe household repeatedly with no ability to leave. Controlled at both households, lack of protection/safety from mother, losing control socially. Could eventually cause a shift from a BPD presentation focused on acceptance and approval to an NPD presentation focused on control and admiration.

Seems to be a lack of understanding on why a growing girl would rather play with another girl and how socially, it had nothing to do with worth or personal rejection. Possibly, Elliot had no one who explained this to him or guided him socially.

We can already see an emerging pattern of Elliot not knowing how to assert himself socially to get a desired outcome and sulking or withdrawing rather than adjusting and developing his approach. Jealousy might tie to an early borderline presentation depending on the root of the jealousy and how centered it was on James’ approval.

Already we see his main interests in life being completely shaped by how he comes across and his status. Hours just for that reason is excessive and points to an overly strong obsession with presentation and an idea of what makes you superior versus inferior.

Once again Elliot had a hyper-fixation on how he comes across and starts to notice when others seem “superior.”

Even though Elliot Rodger describes his early childhood as ideal and there’s no obvious sign of pathology, something was likely brewing beneath the surface because of how sudden his pathology exploded in middle school. His obsessive focus on earning validation—like the “green card” for perfect behavior- and blaming others for failures already suggests an early reliance on external achievements to feel worthy. This fragile self seemed masked by how well he did in simple, structured environments where the rules were clear and social success was straightforward. He could ignore deeper insecurities because the systems around him allowed him to thrive. However, when the social dynamics of middle school demanded more complex identity formation, like charisma, confidence, and individuality- his pathology surfaced abruptly. This sudden shift suggests something early we may never know had already caused Elliot to form a false self. His problems were hidden until middle school because he could do well in his current environment, which didn’t call for much an identity to succeed in connecting to others. He could just play and keep friends. Notice how already his focus was always on fitting in and doing well socially.