Narcissists will flatter you. Pay close attention to how they use flattery and not compliments; they use this tactic during the idealisation stages. They find out your needs, wants and desires, either from checking your social media, or talking to others to find information about you. What feels like those deep heart to hearts, in the beginning, they are just gathering all the information they need about you, first to hook you in, then to use your insecurities to exploit you. They will flatter you, give you constant attention, plan a fake future with you. They will love everything you do and hate everything you hate. Once you are hooked on that constant attention, they’ll slowly take it away to make you work harder to get it again. They will get you to tell them all your secrets, so they can further manipulate you by one day using those very secrets against you any way they can.
They fish for compliments. They need to boost their self-esteem to help them keep their inflated ego going. They will fish for compliments from family, friends, coworkers, children, and anybody they can and social media to keep their false selves and egos going. It’s more evident with an overt narcissist, but a covert does this, also.
They will set the environment. They will provoke you to get a reaction from you, so they can blame everything on you, play the victim or use the silent treatment to get you to do things you wouldn’t otherwise do, gaslighting you so you are no longer sure of reality, often leaning on them for a reality check. They will create a topic or an atmosphere to provoke other emotional responses; they always have a hidden agenda.
Sometimes in these situations, you have to keep diaries so you can go back to check events, and ask yourself, are they my feelings, or are they passing theirs onto me?
They will gossip about everybody, often trying to get others to gossip with them, so they can go to the other and let them know everything you said about them, triangulation and the divide and conquer technique. Hence, others only trust in the narcissist’s lies and distance themselves from friends that may not have said anything in the first place or reacted to what the narcissist told them you’d said, even though the narcissist was the one who said it. They also want to gain as much information about others to one day use against them. They will twist the story, so the gossip was all you, even if they were the ones doing the talking. As well as triangulation, they will also use jealousy, as narcissists are extremely envious and jealous people. So they may go all out complimenting others in front of you. Especially about things you feel insecure about within yourself. If you question them, you’ll get the. “You’re too sensitive.” “you’re overacting.” “You’re insecure.” “You’ve got trust issues.” “You’re jealous.” They will undermine you in front of others, and they have probably already smeared you to others. Yet if you praise another about an achievement in front of a narcissist, they will take offence to this and seek to punish you.
They will use your emotions to get their own way. Narcissists will bargain with you and pity play to get you to do things you don’t want to or to make you feel guilty. They may compare you with someone else who has done something to try and break down your boundaries or say things like. “If you loved me, you would.” Or “Remember when I did this for you.” Or “You owe me because of that thing I did just for you.” This is all guilt-tripping you and the narcissist projection to either make you not feel as good as others, so you conform to their demands, or make you feel like you owe them.
They will guilt trip you in passive-aggressive ways to get you to break down your boundaries. By bargaining, gaslighting and projecting, creating arguments about what you should have done or could have done better for the narcissist, and then blaming it all on you.
They will either talk you out of doing something or talk you into doing something, and they will make out they know you better than you know yourself and explain through manipulation why you should or should not do something like that. “You’d never do that.” Or the bargaining method of “if you loved me, you would.”
They will play the victim, the covert narcissist, more than the overt, but depending on the situation and what they can gain from someone attention-wise by playing the victim card, most narcissists’ will use this tactic at some point. This gets your compassion, sympathetic attention, your empathy, as you can put yourself in others’ shoes, so you want to reach out and protect and help them any way you can, which will lead you to lose who you indeed are over time. The narcissist will then play victim to others for how crazy you are and how they’re doing all they can to help you.
They will promise you things, and then they don’t deliver, to give you false hope of something that’s never going to be. If you dare to question them, they’ll try to provoke a reaction from you, for which they can then blame your reactions for why they didn’t do it.
When using false promises, they will also use it to manipulate you more and leave you even more confused about reality with them. “I never said I’d do that; you must be imagining things.” Or the. “I did it last month for you. Do you not remember?” Of course, you don’t, as they never did, slowly but surely leaving you doubting yourself more and more.
The hoover, when they try to suck you back in, stalking you, reaching out to friends and family, missed calls, messages, the false apology. All because the new person isn’t working out as well as they first hopped, don’t get your hopes up, they will try to discard the new by leaving the door open so that they can triangulate you both, so you both work harder, to win the narcissist’s affection.
My best advice when they try this. Let them go. They are not worthy of you. They are not good enough for you; you can do so much better to save yourself, lose your pride and your ego, and pity the fool that ends up with a manipulative twit that’s just using them like they used you. Let them go. Also, keep true to yourself. If that person one day needs help to recover, remember just how horrendous their relationship was, that they just got sucked into a twisted relationship of lies, drama and manipulation, be kind to others who didn’t know any better and help them recover, if they ever ask you, even if you just point them in the direction of support groups, as you will get to a happier place. You will be a better person for it. You’ll no longer hold any resentment, and you’ll not wish that ex on your worst enemy, who also happens to be that ex.
The narcissist cycle.
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The narcissists counter-parenting.
Elizabeth Shaw is not a Doctor or a therapist. She is a mother of five, a blogger, a survivor of narcissistic abuse, and a life coach, She always recommends you get the support you feel comfortable and happy with. Finding the right support for you. Elizabeth has partnered with BetterHelp (Sponsored.) where you will be matched with a licensed councillor, who specialises in recovery from this kind of abuse.
Staying ahead of the narcissist’s games.
