Picture the scene. You are at a dinner, a family gathering, or a work event. Someone in the group, perhaps an old acquaintance, a family elder, or a colleague with a larger-than-life personality, begins telling stories about you. Embarrassing ones. The kind you would rather forget.
The narcissist who cuts others down in public
They are laughing. Others at the table are watching. And you are left sitting there, unsure whether to laugh along, disappear, or say something you might regret.
If this situation feels familiar, you are not alone. What you may have experienced is not simply rudeness or poor social skills. It can also be a deliberate power move, one that sits squarely within behavioural patterns associated with narcissism.
Why Do Narcissistic Personalities Humiliate Others?
At the heart of narcissistic behaviour lies a deep and hidden reservoir of shame.
This can seem counterintuitive. Narcissistic individuals often project confidence, entitlement, and superiority. Yet research consistently suggests that beneath the bravado and grandiosity lies chronic, unresolved shame. Much of the outward confidence functions as a defence, a way to keep that underlying vulnerability out of awareness, both for others and for themselves.
When this defensive structure feels threatened, perhaps by feeling overlooked, outperformed, or reminded of personal shortcomings, the internal discomfort can become intense. One of the quickest ways to relieve that pressure is to redirect it outward.
In practical terms, that means making someone else carry the embarrassment.
Public humiliation is an especially effective tactic. By putting another person down in front of others, the individual briefly restores their own sense of status. They appear dominant. They may even get laughs. Meanwhile, the person on the receiving end is left holding the shame that originally belonged to the aggressor.
The Past as Ammunition
This tactic works particularly well when the person has known you for a long time.
Old friends, relatives, and long-term partners, anyone who has seen you grow up or go through awkward phases, holds a mental archive of stories. None of us were at our best at seventeen, during a divorce, or after losing a job. Most people have moments from earlier years that feel embarrassing in hindsight.
Someone seeking to assert dominance knows this.
When an opportunity arises, perhaps triggered by jealousy, insecurity, or a perceived shift in social status, they may reach into that archive. They tell the story that gets a reaction. And if one anecdote does not land, they often keep going until they find one that does.
The goal is not the story itself. The goal is the audience response.
The Audience Matters More Than You Think
Public humiliation requires witnesses. Without an audience, much of the tactic’s power disappears.
The person telling the story is not only trying to make you look small. They are also trying to look larger in the eyes of those around them. Attention and validation from the group become part of the reward.
When bystanders go along, laughing, encouraging more stories, or remaining silent in ways that appear approving, the tactic succeeds on multiple levels. The target is diminished, the storyteller gains social ground, and the audience unintentionally reinforces the behaviour.
Many bystanders later feel uncomfortable about what happened. In the moment, however, social pressure often pulls people toward the dominant personality in the room.
The dynamic can shift dramatically when the audience does not participate. If people remain neutral, change the subject, or show quiet discomfort, the humiliating strategy loses much of its impact. Without validation, the person attempting the put-down often loses momentum.
Where It Shows Up
This pattern appears across many kinds of relationships.
In families, it may come from a parent or senior relative whose authority makes others reluctant to challenge them. Adult children can find themselves pulled back into old dynamics every time they return to the family environment.
In workplaces, public put-downs can become a way for managers or colleagues to assert dominance or control attention.
In intimate relationships, a partner who regularly makes demeaning remarks in social settings may be revealing something significant about the underlying power balance.
Even within friendship groups, one person may consistently single out another as the target of jokes, using embarrassment to reinforce their role as the group’s social centre.
Why It Hurts Even When You Understand It
One of the most frustrating aspects of this experience is that understanding what is happening does not necessarily make it hurt less.
The rational mind may recognise the tactic clearly. The body, however, still reacts to shame. The sudden flush of embarrassment, the tightening in the chest, and the momentary loss of words are deeply human responses.
For people who grew up in environments where humiliation was common, present-day incidents can also trigger much older emotional memories. The current embarrassment becomes layered on top of earlier experiences of being criticised, exposed, or made to feel inadequate.
Even after years of personal growth and self-reflection, one well-aimed remark in front of the wrong audience can briefly reopen those feelings.
Common reactions, such as laughing along awkwardly, freezing, confronting the person, or leaving the situation, all carry their own complications. There is rarely a perfect response in the moment that has no later consequences.
What Can Actually Help
The most important shift is often not behavioural but psychological.
The first step is recognising the dynamic for what it is: a power move rooted in another person’s insecurity, designed to shift embarrassment from them to you. Their behaviour reflects their internal struggle, not your worth.
The second step is observing the environment around you. How do others respond? Do they laugh along, or do they show signs of discomfort? The reactions of bystanders can reveal a great deal about how safe or supportive that social setting really is.
Over time, these experiences often clarify something practical. Certain individuals may simply be easier to engage with privately, if at all, rather than in group settings where an audience encourages performance.
A Final Word
Modern culture has a complicated relationship with humiliation.
Celebrity roasts, online pile-ons, and forms of entertainment built around mockery have normalised the idea that public embarrassment is harmless fun. The person who objects is labelled overly sensitive. The person who laughs along is praised for being a good sport.
Yet repeated humiliation, whether at the family table, in the workplace, or among friends, can have lasting emotional consequences.
We are not here to absorb the emotional overflow of other people’s insecurities. Recognising that truth, and responding to yourself with a measure of compassion when these moments occur, is not weakness.
It may be one of the healthiest responses available.
Lorena Olea-Bouchat is a psychologist with 20 years of experience across Europe and South America, specialising in depression, anxiety, and complex trauma in expat communities. She is the founder of Human Psychology Institute (London) and Psychology in a New Era (Portugal), working online worldwide.
Contact:
Email: psychology.in.a.new.era@gmail.com
Website: https://psychologyinanewera.carrd.co/
