Narcissistic Personality Disorder – HelpGuide.org Narcissism …
Narcissism: 5 Signs to Help You Spot Narcissistic Behavior
This Article below was the one that made the “light bulb” moment for me and what I was going through. It was given to me by someone in one of the groups I did to help with anxiety and social situations.
By this point, I was so scared of being out in public that I would throw up even with the thought of leaving my apt. Not only was I afraid of verbal attacks, but I was also at this point afraid of physical attacks from the smearing websites online. That fear is not easy to deal with but this article did help quite a bit.
It took reading it a few times, but I saw the actions of my Bullies in this article and I thought I would share it so you can see it too.
Narcissists Write The Story And They Always Play The Victim
People with narcissistic tendencies also have destructive social tendencies that impact everyone around them. If you have these types of people around you, conflict will always follow them and will always impact, you.
Narcissists are some of the most toxic people around and they always play the victim and manipulate everyone around them.
The real world just doesn’t exist for them as reality means facing the truth and that is something they simply can’t do.
To cope with life, they delude themselves that their own reality is the real one and real life as we know it doesn’t exist.
Should the ‘real reality’ be forced upon them the wild stories they come out with to try and manipulate and compensate can be at best extreme.
First the lies:
Healthy, normal mindful people deal with life as it unfolds and face what life challenges them with and they take responsibility for their actions.
Narcissists are incapable of doing this. They will blame everyone one else for what is wrong in life, it is never their fault.
Narcissists have this deep need to be right about everything, and this is where the wild stories and lies come into play. They single out people who they know will listen and believe what they say and accept ‘their version of the truth’ and they will use their loyalty to feed their lies.
As they are the author of the story, they cast themselves as the good person, the one who fights for everyone, when the reality is they are the ones causing the wrongdoing and inflicting pain on their victims.
Then comes projection:
Narcissists always use projection, its how they manipulate situations. A great example of this is they will tell you someone has been spreading lies about them, when you hear that, know that for sure it’s the narcissists who have done this not the person they have claimed is doing so.
They will claim a loved one has been cheating on them, nope not the case. What has happened is the narcissist has cheated but is lying by saying the loved one has.
They project so that they can plant the first seeds of doubts and lies. They love playing the wronged loved one and you will often hear them say “Look what they have done to me, all I did was love them”.
When dealing with a narcissist it is wise to reverse what they tell you back onto them, that way you will be getting some semblance of truth.
Building the story is next:
The narcissist always will feed you bits of their story at their own pace and a time of their choosing. It is almost like watching a movie unfold before you and you won’t get to see the whole story until the last few minutes, they do this for dramatic effect and to gain your sympathy.
They are bullies, it’s as simple as that! They seek out victims that can be manipulated and bullied into what they want. Should a victim fight back them they step up their game plan and they are very dangerous people.
The story will then be that the victim bullied the narcissist, made their life a living hell, they will deny any aggressive behavior, they will often say the victim is being too sensitive, telling lies and are attention seeking, does any of this sound familiar?
Character assassination the end is in sight:
Should the lies and projection fail and in effect the victim at this stage has beaten the narcissist, then the narcissist will up their game plan.
The victim is no longer under the narcissist’s control and they hate that, so they will commence their smear campaign, they often use slander, triangulation and character assassination.
It is at this time that the wildest of stories are told, family and friends can receive emails, text messages from the narcissist giving intimate details about you, some have even been known to post online or send to friends and relatives intimate pictures, photoshop their victims image onto porn sites and movies, thankfully the law has tightened up with regards to this and prosecutions but its too late the damage has been done.
The patterns:
All narcissists act this way, it’s a case of same way, different story. Once you’ve encountered a narcissist and survived you can tell one very easily, but if you should get taken in again, don’t blame yourself they are masters of their craft.
Narcissist can and do slip through the barriers, if that happens rebuild your barriers, set new boundaries and move on with your head held high, you have done nothing wrong.
I am honored to know many survivors of these toxic people, some have recovered and like myself work on helping survivors, others are still working on their recovery.
Just know there are more of us out here than you think, look for us, we will be the ones shining the beacon of light, showing you the way to hope and recovery.
Defeating the Narcissist
So if conventional wisdom is not serving us or society well, what should we be doing to defeat narcissists? First of all we need to abandon the notion that there is a “right” thing to do. There isn’t one – only some solutions that are less bad than others. And of these, doing nothing can be the worst of all options. Quite what represents the optimal solution in your instance will depend on a wide array of factors, some known, others perhaps unclear:
- You need to be in a position of relative safety – both physical and emotional safety – before you should do anything proactive.
- You should act from positions of power and legitimacy – financial, legal, psychological and moral.
- You need to ensure that other potential victims and people at risk are also protected. This is especially the case when you have kids jointly in the mix. Very often doing something proactively to defeat the narcissist may cause a short term spike in discomfort (and possibly danger) to children, but to the benefit of their longer term safety and security. This has to be balanced with the risk of doing nothing – that enables a narcissist to manipulate, control and abuse their own children, especially as weapons with which they attack the normal loving parent, ad infinitum.
- It will help enormously if you can recruit friends to your cause – not least because the sad reality is that there are many toxic types out there, and narcs of a feather often flock together. By taking on a narc, and shining a light on their shady shit, you are also shining a light on the clique – and that can be very threatening to the flying monkeys and enablers. It is for this reason that the smear campaign picks up pace so quickly. Be prepared to take on more than just your narc.
Strategies to defeat Narcs
So depending on your specific situation, the options available to you will include some blend of the following:
- Expose them. Combat their lies with your truth. Use channels that are available and work – one-on-one conversations, letters/email/texts, posts to social media. Be prepared to hold yourself fully accountable with people (and in writing), thereby challenging the lies told by the narc and that they cannot substantiate. Don’t make allegations that you may not be able to substantiate or that they could sue you for – but you are allowed to hold an opinion, ask questions, present facts and allow other people to make judgements. Be bold, be loud.
- Use legal tools to hold them to account. Whilst many jurisdictions do not understand NPD at all, most do understand the individual forms of abuse that make up narcissistic abuse. Don’t try to use the catch-all “narcissistic abuse” moniker though – it will backfire. Go after every form of abuse that you can provide evidence for and that will appear sufficiently weighty (abuse such as gaslighting is very damaging indeed, but whilst it is major to you it can appear petty to law enforcement and the legal system who just don’t get it).
- Fight fire with fire. Become an Empath Supernova for a while. Counter their abuse with a psychological campaign that returns their “kindness”. Understand that it is tricky to defeat a narc when restrained by your high morals, and that in order to battle a just and needed war, you might have to take your gloves off and fight dirty for a while. Learn their psychological tactics that they employ to mindfuck you – and then use them back. As they smear you with lies, counter their campaign with a louder one of truth. Shine a light into their dark places and force them out of the shadows. Gaslight, bait-and-trap, and word salad them back. Humiliate and embarrass them. Force them to make errors and reveal the monster within.
- Recruit allies. Your friends and family may be the first port of call, but also consider joining forces with other victims (eg whom you’ve met online) and that might join you in your battle – especially on social media. Spar off each other to create some noise and raise the profile of NPD.
- Don’t underestimate you strength. You’ve been to hell and back – and survived. The old adage, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, has never been truer than in your case now.
- Don’t overestimate the narcopath’s strengths. They put on a good show – Dr Jekyll reigning supreme, manipulating like hell, lying like crazy (and seemingly getting away with it). But their real self, the authentic Mr Hyde, is the polar opposite – deeply self-loathing, awash with insecurities, riddled with vulnerabilities, jealous of so much, terrified of the truth about themselves. Use all of these to your advantage. Get them to compromise by managing them by consequence – be badass and don’t take the pressure off until you have got what you deserve as fair.
- Understand the concept of the balance of evil. Sometimes in life, we have to do something bad in order to prevent something worse. Cutting off someone’s leg is bad. It might be a necessity if that leg has gangrene and is going to kill it’s owner. And so it is with Narcissistic Abuse. Sometimes you have to take drastic action is order to save the day. Don’t be deterred from rising to the occasion.
Inner Healing
It should also be noted the impact of holding abusers to account on the victims. We are hard-programmed to defeat threats to our sanity and lives. We need to resolve trauma in order to mitigate Complex-PTSD, and in turn avoid life-threatening auto-immune diseases later on in life. We are programmed to belief and champion a system of justice (that in turn has systems of punishment, correction and dissuasion). These are not well-served by policies of forget and forgive. Moreover, you do no service to others by running away from problems. You do act as an exemplary role model in tackling evil head-on and holdings perpetrators of abuse to account.