For more than 600 days, Mark has been given a simple, clear path: complete the court-ordered Mental Health Evaluation and Domestic Violence Evaluation. The orders aren’t ambiguous, the requirements aren’t complicated, and the purpose isn’t to punish — it’s to protect children and chart a path toward repair. Yet he refuses. Why?

At first glance, it looks like stubborn pride, a narcissist refusing to be told what to do. But when you step back and connect the patterns, the refusal goes much deeper. Narcissism is only the surface layer — the mask. Underneath, there are troubling elements that explain why he can’t risk being evaluated.

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1. Cognitive Rigidity and Impairment

Mark doesn’t just disagree with professionals — he rewrites reality itself.

• He claimed a recognized medical disorder, ARFID, was “invented for profit” by the clinic treating his son.
• He misinterpreted genetic reports, clung to false conclusions, and couldn’t integrate corrections.
• Doctors noted he struggles to retain factual information about illness and treatment.

This isn’t just arrogance. It suggests cognitive rigidity — a mind that cannot flex or absorb new information — and possibly a deeper impairment in how he processes and applies facts.

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2. Personality Disorder Features Beyond Narcissism

Narcissism explains his denial and need for control, but other traits leak through:

• Paranoid features: suspicion that doctors, CPS, and even court orders are part of a plot against him.
• Antisocial features: lying about trivial matters (like a stolen baseball hat), refusing to pay obligations, laughing as his guest disrupted a youth basketball game.
• Borderline features: volatile relationships, wild swings between idolizing and demonizing others, and public outbursts that leave chaos in their wake.

The profile isn’t clean or contained. It’s messy, overlapping, and more dangerous than a simple narcissistic label suggests.

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3. Delusional and Psychotic-Like Thinking

Mark doesn’t just twist facts — he builds false worlds.

• He forced his son to sign a “contract” denying his diagnosis, an attempt to create and enforce an alternate reality.
• He frames boundaries, accountability, and even restraining orders as “demonic,” elevating ordinary consequences into a cosmic war.
• He presents himself as uniquely insightful, dismissing judges, doctors, and pastors alike, as if his perception overrides reality itself.

These aren’t just exaggerations — they look like delusional structures, defended against all evidence, where belief is stronger than reality.

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4. Defensive Avoidance of Exposure

And this is the heart of it: evaluations are threatening because they produce records. They strip away the ambiguity he hides behind.

• A narcissist hates exposure, but a man with paranoid distortions and delusional thinking cannot survive it.
• An evaluator would document the lies, the cognitive gaps, the paranoia, the abuse patterns.
• That report would close the door on excuses and force the court to confront what Melissa, Russ, and the boys have lived through.

Avoidance, then, isn’t laziness — it’s self-preservation. By refusing to comply, he protects the fragile construct of his self-image.

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The Bigger Picture

Mark’s refusal isn’t just about being difficult. It’s about survival of a false identity. Narcissism explains the mask — the grandiosity, the charm, the endless excuses. But the refusal tells us there’s more underneath:

• Cognitive rigidity that keeps him stuck in distorted beliefs.
• A tangle of personality disorder traits that destabilize relationships and fuel chaos.
• Delusional thinking that elevates denial into an alternate reality.

The evaluation isn’t just paperwork. It’s the one thing he cannot allow, because it would collapse the entire system he’s spent years defending.

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👉 Bottom line: Mark refuses because exposure is more terrifying to him than accountability. Narcissism is the mask. What lies beneath is far darker.