"Because persons with NPD already distort reality, as seen in their characteristic grandiosity, they may also develop delusions in response to extreme stressors relating to threats to their self-image. They may come to believe that those who attempt to "thwart" them are at the opposite extreme from themselves, that is, as grossly malevolent and intent on their destruction. Millon and Davis see this persecutory thinking as, "the last-ditch effort to protect the grandiose self from total collapse and establish continuity between pathological narcissism and paranoid and delusional disorders. . . . paranoid symptoms represent a defensive adaptation to a hostile environment that threatens the narcissist at a fundamental level. The paranoid quality may be expressed through a belief that others are conspiring to deprive these individuals of their sense of specialness or somehow cheat them out of a momentous accomplishment, a testament to their brilliance . . . . The difference between believing that others are envious of you and believing that others are actively trying to undo you sometimes becomes rather thin as stressors mount."11