Do narcissists remember all the lies they tell?

A lot if the time the lies are more delusions than lies. A lie is a deliberate falsehood, something one believes to be false but presents as true. Often narcissists present as true things they really believe to be true, but are actually false.

For example, narcissists believe they are

• Special, more deserving than others, highly entitled
• Victims, mistreated and misunderstood by others
• Not at fault

Not being at fault is so important to narcissists, they’ll do anything to avoid the shame involved, including projection (accusing you of being guilty of the thing they did), denial, gaslighting (That’s your perspective), and many more. The offloading if the shame is so all consuming for the narcissist, what actually happened in whatever given incident is involved, is not important to them. They really do believe you’re to blame, not them, and their efforts are expended in that direction, not in the direction of being concerned about what actually happened.

In the cases where they are actually lying—presenting things as false they actually know are true (or vice versa), this will simply become yet another thing they cannot accept responsibility for, because they cannot perceive themselves as being at fault, so they will project, deny, gaslight, and use many other defense mechanisms (anything that might work) to offload the shame, so they won’t be able to remember their lies any better than any other if their misdeeds, because they don’t perceive their behavior in this light.

To summarize, much of the time narcissists are perceived as lying, they are not lying, but expressing viewpoints they actually hold, even though these may be patently false. They won’t remember these “lies,” because they never perceived them as lies in the first place.

When they do actually lie, their self deception will not allow them to perceive the lie in it’s true light, as a misdeed, and won’t remember that either.