When they can no longer control you, they try to control how others see you.
The narcissists smear campaigns are one of the most challenging things to go through for any survivor of narcissistic abuse when you’ve lived through all the lies, manipulation, pain and trauma. Finally breaking free, trying your best to heal and recover, and the narcissist comes after you with hit after hit, you’re in the battle of your life to move forward and create a new life, to leave the past behind and learn how to let it go. While the narcissist keeps coming back to torture our minds with further mental warfare.
The smear campaign is when a narcissist wants to destroy you any way they can when they can no longer control you, they will try and control how others see you, through exaggeration, twisting the story of what they did to you, you did to them, lies, slander, spreading rumours and more.
What to look out for when the narcissists are trying to pull off their manipulative smear campaigns.
Friends and family, a narcissist throughout the relationship, will most like try and get your friends on their side before they discard, or if they cotton on to the fact you might be taking a stand, and you might leave. (They might pull out all the stops of pity plays to prevent you from leaving if they haven’t another target lined up. ) they will up their smear campaigns behind your back, they might have already isolated you from loved ones, they might have it so that you have isolated yourself due to the narcissists’ attitude, arguments, triangulation and plain old nasty behaviour towards you whenever you saw any of those people you loved, they might tell your friends and family that they are worried about you, that they think you’re depressed, or they might have picked fights while you were out together in front of friends and family, so you reacted in front of your friends and family, and the narcissist can add to the false narrative they are about to tell of you, from the perceptions the narcissist has planted in those around you minds, calculatedly leading them to believe that the narcissists’ story’s and lies are truth. The triangulation, they will have most likely smeared your friends and family to you through triangulation by claiming your friends and family don’t care about you to you, that the narcissist is the only one that genuinely cares about you, that your friends and family don’t love you, don’t want to see you happy, they have ulterior motives towards you and the narcissist can apparently read people. The narcissist is the only one who truly cares for you, at the same time, while telling you these lies, they were trying their best to paint you in a bad light to your own friends and family, they’ll be telling friends and family all your secrets, vulnerabilities and insecurities yet twisting them to paint you in a bad light, or they’ll just make stuff up. Anything they can to divide and conquer, gain their army of flying monkeys and enablers.
Your work, they’ll either find ways to stop you from working while you are together, either by not helping with childcare, informing you that they’ll take care of you. Yet, they barely leave you enough money to live on, so you become financially dependent on them, making it harder to leave. Or they’ll not work, drain your financial resources, most narcissistic people use financial abuse against their targets, if you work, they will make snide comments about your co-workers, your boss to you, to create a hostile environment at work for you, as you begin to doubt those people you work with. Some even go to the extent of calling your workplace sometimes under the false pretences of helping you. Others, in obvious ways of trying to destroy you, might be obvious to you what they are doing, might not be so obvious to your work.
With your neighbours, we all know what a narcissist can be like inside the home. Yet, outside they might be charming all those neighbours into thinking how wonderful they are and how negative you are. Some will also be trying to move in with a single neighbour just to cut you a little deeper.
If you get a new partner, some ex narcissists I’ve been known to date your new partner’s ex, narrate their own story and cause conflict over any children involved.
Children, if you have children together, most narcissists do not co-parent. They counter parent, any game or stunt they can pull to get at you. They don’t care for the damage they cause to the children’s minds so long as they are getting to you. Letting the children down, not collecting when supposed to, dropping late, hair cuts, toxic words to them about you, walking away from children then reappearing when it meets their needs, showing children with gifts and affection one minute dropping them the next, taking the children away from you. There is no end of games they play with children while they know it bothers you.
The new partners, they’ll be painting you out to be the crazy, depressed, abusive one and trying to provoke you any way they can do your actions match their stories, and they gain sympathy.
Court. A favourite smear tactic game of a narcissist is further Emotional and financial abuse through the court system. Excessive divorce proceedings or child custody arrangements, always breaking court orders, using whatever they can against you, lies, exaggerations, smear campaigns to sink you.
Most narcissists not all can and will get as many enablers and flying monkeys to help with the smear campaigns and try to bring you down to your knees.
How best to handle the smear campaigns.
1. Give no reactions and no responses. If people come asking you, they want to gossip, just let them know. “They’re my past, the truth always out eventually.” And leave it be.
2. If your friends ask, not the narcissists or the flying monkeys, your friends, tell the truth to them. People who say things like. “It takes two to tango.” Etc they are naive to teach them if they don’t want to be taught, they are not the people you want to associate yourself with.
3. Block them and their friends and family on everything, go no contact with all if you have children, set up a new email or use Facebook messenger, its got a great ignore button, so you still get messages and can communicate about children, but your not getting constant messages from them, you can look when you’re calm and know what they say you will only respond to if needed, only communicate about the children.
4. If information is still getting to the narcissist about you of your life, tell each of those you believe it could be a different thing you’re doing now and see which the narcissist finds out about. Your Judas is caught block and delete.
5. Give no reactions. They want you to look crazy and psycho, especially to their new target, so it matches their stories, retreat, rethink and only respond if you must, you may want to defend yourself, remember that’s playing into the narcissists’ hands, the best response is no response, they only twist everything to work against you, write out your anger and pain, then destroy it. You do not need to convince the narcissist who you are or their flying monkeys. It’s just keeping you trapped in their way of living negatively for longer.
6. Remember you can not control what the narcissist does, you can not control what the narcissists flying monkeys thinks of you, just work on talking to yourself kindly, those who judge have their own insecurities, those who cling to gossip have their own faults, don’t blame the flying monkeys, most are under the narcissists’ spell, with the narcissists poison infecting them like a virus, they are being manipulated just like you once were, do not judge them, just leave them be.
7. Talking to those who’ve lived it, who understand you and can reassure you. Write down the reality of it all and stick to the real reality, the truth.
What can you do for yourself?
We all experience bad experiences in life. Learn and grow from them, use them to learn what you can do about it, talk with those who’ve lived it, take the advice that suits you. Leave the advice that doesn’t suit you.
It’s ok to have one of those days, one of those weeks. It’s ok to feel the pain. It’s ok to feel like everything is against you, it’s ok to feel like you can not get out of bed, it’s ok. It’s what makes us human. We have feelings we hurt. It’s also ok to hit that point when you think no more negativity, no more self-pity. What can I do about this? How can I use this to serve me? It’s ok that no matter what you’ve been through to start smiling again, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, or it didn’t hurt. It means you’re ready to let it go and begin to grow.
Stop letting the situations happening around you get into you. Not easy to start. It gets easier. If you drink poison, it’s going to shut down your body. If you let it inside, it’s going to take you down. If you leave it on the outside, it’s not going to get you. Grow through it, don’t let it go through you.
Take the negativity out of your thoughts, out of your attitude, out of your mindset, you are now in control of how you think and feel for yourself, start creating those thoughts that work for you, it’s a learning curve, it’s possible, don’t give in, we don’t give in on learning how to walk or talk as children, so don’t give in learning how to take back control of your thinking now, yes steps backwards are allowed understand and go again.
If you want to feel depressed right now, how easy is it to feel depressed? What did you do? What did you think about? That’s how easy it is to be happy right now, stand tall, smile, find something that makes you laugh, think of things that make you happy.
You no longer want to be involved with any negative people, those people who want to bring you down, those who tell you, you’re not good enough, you’ll never be anything without me, no one will love you, no one cares for you, you can not do that, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, you’d never be anything. And all the other hurtful spiteful things they do, to plant seeds of self-doubt within your mind, those people have their problems. They’re passing themselves into you, cut those thoughts out, those are their thoughts, not yours, don’t allow what people say or do to you define you, prove them wrong, get up and go again anyway, the best revenge is to use that pain for massive success in your own personal life, whatever that success is for you. You can, and you will. Anything is possible for you if you try, then once you try to keep on trying until you achieve your dream. You are wiser, you are stronger, you are powerful, and you are special, create that inner happiness within you, then give the best of you to only those who deserve you. You’ve got to let go of what’s behind you, take the lesson with you and reach out for the good that’s in front of you. Find and surround yourself with those who build you up, who believe in you, who give you the strength to do what right for you.
Leave behind those thoughts of how bad it was, what they did to you, how they hurt you, what they are trying to do now, how unbelievable they are, you can now recognise they are not for you and just how unbelievable they are, don’t let their stunts and games shock you. Find the predictability in their hurtful negative behaviour and laugh about it. I know this isn’t easy with the hideous hurtful games they play, have a cry, let it out, get angry and release that anger by using it to drive you forward to achieving something for you, not them, then find your Sense of humour whatever that is, they want you hurt, they want you in pain, that’s why they do what they do, they wouldn’t be doing it if they wanted you happy, so find your happiness, I only had this last week sorting some court things, I didn’t want to go over the past again, I’ve got better things to do, but it had to be done, I hit blocks, challenges and obstacles. When I hit those, I found my own laughter, I’m not one for this word, those who want to use it I’m not against them that is for them, yet when the shoe fits, I changed when writing court documents from applicant to applicunt to make me smile, childish yes, that laughter and smile in my face from my childish behaviour shifted my energy, my focus, my state of mind, brought me straight back out of the pain from the past, into the present and the much-needed outcome for the future, I’m not saying do this I’m saying do what works for you. Let’s just hope I don’t make the mistake of sending the inappropriate one to the court.
There’s a massive difference between a narcissistic person’s negative childish tantrum style behaviour and you releasing your inner child to laugh.
When we are feeling sorry for ourselves and angry, it’s not moving us forward. It’s pulling us backwards. When you find yourself being pulled back, use that to launch yourself forward.
Work on forgiveness for yourself, forgiving yourself for not knowing what you didn’t understand, for accepting things you now know you should never have accepted. Don’t focus on the should have, would have, could have. Focus on what you can do for yourself now. Let the baggage of the past go. It weighs your mind down, release it, fire it to the sun and watch it burn away, lighten your load, lighten your mind to make way for the happier side of life.
Don’t focus on what happens to you. Focus on what actions you can take, what you can do about it for yourself. It’s your mind, your thoughts and your life. Start living it for yourself.
Bad times only last if we allow them to. We have a choice to let it go and find our light.
Jk Rowling ” happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban.
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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.
No contact and the silent treatment.
