The lies from a narcissist to keep their behaviour hidden.
Emotions are a strong feelings we have depending on our mood, circumstances or relationship with another.
Our feelings are a physical or emotional state of awareness.
Our instincts are a natural or intuitive way of thinking.
When in a relationship with a narcissist they will downplay our emotional feelings, deny or let us know something is wrong within how we feel to escape accountability for how they behave.
We often end up losing sight of their behaviour or their intent, as it becomes hidden by the phrases they use to distract us from what they’re doing, by getting us to focus on our feelings, by making out that in some way our feelings are wrong, when our feelings are not wrong, they are normal everyday feelings that all people have, those negative feelings which we can all have, just become heightened around a narcissist as our feelings are trying to protect us from their behaviour. However, their gaslighting often confuses us into believing our feelings are at fault and not their toxic behaviour.
Narcissists use many covert manipulation methods to distract those around them from the truth. They even lie through omission, the whole “I never lied. I just didn’t tell you.”. However, very rare you’d even hear a narcissist say this, as often they wouldn’t tell you, then if you were to find out, they still wouldn’t tell you, they would deflect and pass the blame onto you, even when you catch them red-handed it’ll be a case of ”Why are you looking through my things? How can you, of all people, not trust me? You know it’s wrong to spy on people, don’t you? Why have you looked through my phone? Don’t you trust me? This is nothing to do with what I haven’t done. This is your trust issues. This is why I don’t tell you anything. It’s your trust issues, you can not handle the truth. You should go work on those when you’ve worked on your trust issues. You need to work on why you’re looking through my things. This isn’t my problem. You owe me an apology.” Then they might top it off by falling silent on you or something to those effects.
So you’re the one left over analysing and questioning everything about your thoughts, feelings or behaviour and doing your best to make it up to them, believing you’re at fault. You are not to blame, abuse is abuse, and there is no excuse.
A narcissist often uses things like intrigue; they enjoy engaging in secret activities; they are very hypocritical and have double standards as they wouldn’t like something done to them. However, they’ll happily do it to others when they know others might disagree with them and make a choice that doesn’t suit the narcissist, therefore they covertly, underhand and often hidden do what they want to do, without care for how they affect those around them, that vagueness that intrigue, actually arouses curiosity in us a desire to know the truth, a need feel understood and a need to understand what’s happening, yet instead of thinking ” This person gives me bad vibes.” we believe that we can just go and ask them, because if someone asked us why we were working late, we would tell them, those with nothing to hide, have no reason to hide the truth. However, as they’re so manipulative, we are the ones left questioning our feelings and not their behaviour.
Often what a narcissist says is far from what they mean; these are some of the more common phrases they say to manipulate us or a variation of how they say it. To distract us from the truth, so we start to question ourselves, and when we begin to question ourselves, they have the upper hand as they have us by our emotions being under their control. By them passing the blame onto us, this can end up making us feel we are the cause of all the issues within the relationship.
We own our actions, our reactions, as we take responsibility for our behaviour, as we see other points of view, we end up questioning ourselves. They will not be held responsible or take responsibility for their own behaviour; to them, whatever is right in their life is down to them, and whatever is wrong is someone else’s fault, they lack the empathy to care for others feelings or the cognitive reflection to see where they could be to blame.
People on the narcissist personality disorder spectrum are very envious, egotistical, entitled people and expect others to give them everything they want. Without giving anything back, they are very hard to spot in society, as they are the masters of manipulation. They are masters of words and lies; the lies they tell, they often believe themselves. They use it so well that even when the actions don’t match their words. We doubt our thoughts and our feelings and questions ourselves.
The phrases they tell people and what they truly mean.
When they say,” It’s all your fault.” ”I only did this because of you.”
They’re just trying to distract you from whatever they’ve done, they want to pass all the blame over to you so that they can escape accountability, and you work harder to clean up after them.
When they say, “ I love you.”
They are just using the word love to control you. They love the attention you give them. They love how you try to help them, how you try to fix any issues they are having, they love how you try to please them, they love how you take responsibility for anything negative they do, they love how you try to fix any issues in the relationship they have caused, they love how they can control you, them saying “I love you.” It is to distract us from those very hurtful toxic behaviours that shows us they don’t love us; if someone was to tell us they hate us and treat us bad, we know where we stand with them. They’re not for us, for someone to say they love us, tell us that we’re to blame when they treat us wrong, offer those intermittent play nice when we try to make it up to them and lie about their toxic behaviour, lie about our feelings is a very confusing place to be, especially when we don’t understand it.
When they say, “It’s not all about you.”
They mean. It’s all about them. They can not handle you being the centre of attention. If you ever mention your needs, they’ll make you feel guilty and ashamed for having these normal needs. They mean they’re more important than you, so we end up questioning if we are being unreasonable, demanding or selfish. They will tell us we are, to get out of doing anything for us, so we try to do more for them to keep them happy, hoping they’ll bring back those intermittent play nice stages.
When they say, “ You have trust issues.”
This is to distract you from whatever they’ve done to cause your valid feelings to mistrust them. They want us to doubt and question our normal feelings and not their hurtful behaviour.
When they say, “You are so jealous and insecure.”
Again to distract you from whatever they’ve done to cause you to possibly feel insecure, we don’t feel insecure for no reason, yet they don’t want us to know the reason, as that might mean we make a choice that doesn’t serve the narcissists best interests. They want us to doubt our instincts so they can carry on doing whatever it is that’s causing our instincts to speak up.
When they say, “We are just friends.”
They could just be friends, but they’ll not tell you the whole truth to cause that intrigue, so as they are up to something, because they’ve not done something at this point, you feel bad. Yet that “just friend.” Could be a backup, and at some point, they will cross the line. By that point, you might no longer dare to speak up, or if you do, they’ll come at you with the whole “You don’t trust me?” Or if that intrigue causes you to look, even though it hurts when you find the truth, and you hope it’s a mistake, or hope they’ll apologise see the error of their ways, but no, they come at you with the blame game of. “Why are you looking through my things.” At the time, you might not have even looked just stumbled across it, yet they’ll still blame you.
They’ll often smear your name to this ‘Friend.’ Saying how controlling and toxic you are, so if you ever talk to this friend about the narcissist’s behaviour, it will just confirm to them how crazy you are.
When they say, “ You don’t have anyone to talk to about it.”You only have me.”
They mean this is because they’ve already isolated you from support, removed anyone important to you in your life. So they are only one who has power over your life now. So you only have them to turn to.
When they say, “ You’re overthinking or overreacting, it’s not a big deal.”
They mean you have perfectly normal thoughts, feelings, and reactions to their behaviour and normal reactions to their unbelievable lies. Still, they want you to doubt yourself in every way. They want to make you feel bad and guilty for doubting them.
When they say, “ You’re oversensitive.”
They mean your emotions are the problem, which makes them feel better; they love having the power to control your feelings as it makes you weaker and more susceptible to their toxic words, which gives them an advantage of your kindness and abilities to want to reach a compromise, to get on without drama, they enjoy hearing your explanations of your good intentions as they can use these against you, later on, they enjoy twisting all the blame onto you.
When they say,” I don’t have this problem with anyone else.”
This is to cause confusion within your mind, especially if it’s an ex that they’ve already smeared their name to you, made out how bad they are, so you question the fact they left that person, yet that person would do this, triangulation to break down your boundaries. When in reality, if they don’t have that problem with whoever good for them, but it’s not you, so they’ll have that problem with you, this can be confusing as you might not have had problems with others like you do with the narcissist. We can try to work problems out, when in reality some people who don’t communicate, don’t listen to reason, don’t give only take, the problem we have is being around them when we should be walking the other way, which isn’t easy to see while we’re living it.
When they say, “ I’m sorry, you feel that way.”
They’re not sorry, they’re only saying this so they can continue their toxic behaviour; they’re only ever sorry that they caught, they’ll not make a genuine apology, only a false apology in which you will be to blame for their behaviour ” I’m sorry you.”I’m sorry, but.” They’ll always find a way to turn it onto you. They don’t have the level of empathy to care for how they’ve made you feel, only how others might perceive their actions.
When they say, “You’ll never find someone like me.”
That grandiose trait of the disorder and their arrogance, the fact they feel superior, they often believe you’ll never find someone like them, and we don’t want to find someone like them, from a narcissist we learn what love isn’t so we can find what love is.
When they say,” You’re crazy.”
To distract from whatever you’ve found out they’ve done, or when you start to stand up for yourself, so you question who you are, and you’re actions over theirs, similar to when they say, “How would they feel.” When you start going no Contact with flying monkeys etc., they try to guilt-trip you into not doing so.
They use these things to get you to doubt yourself, question yourself, turn on your own thoughts and feelings, turn away from what your truths are, away from what your thoughts, feelings and instincts are telling you, to go against the truth that you can only feel and can not see, to distract you from whatever they are doing, so they can continue their hurtful ways while you work on yourself. Only those thoughts and feelings don’t go away because they carry on doing what they’re doing; we just learn to speak up less and put up with more.
When they say. “It wasn’t that bad.”
Yes, it was that bad, often it was far worse. However, they want to play down their behaviour and make out your feelings and reactions are the problem as they’re over the top, our feelings are not over the top, it’s how we feel, those who care wouldn’t want you to feel that way.
When they say, ” I was only joking.”
They say incredibly hurtful things. Then depending on how we respond, if our response is not in their favour, they’ll say, “I was only messing; can you not take a joke.” With this, they’re often testing how far they can push you and your boundaries. We’re left telling ourselves, “it was only a joke, it wasn’t that bad, they didn’t mean to do it, if only I? I’m lucky to have them, nobody would have me, I’m too sensitive, they’re only friends, they didn’t mean to do it, I’m hard to be around because I overact at time and the forgive me.” When in reality, they were being serious, it was that bad, they did mean it, nothing you can do would change it, you deserve better, you have very valid feelings, and you’re NOT crazy, you’re just around someone trying to send you that way.
These comments from a narcissist are often why, after coming out of a relationship with these people, you doubt everything around you and everyone. You feel judged, silly and stupid, and you’re scared to tell people to in case you sound crazy; you are not crazy, now is the time to rebuild yourself and cut negativity out of your life; you are not silly, crazy or stupid just because one person manipulated you, you are just loving and kind, you can heal, you can move on. You may have anxiety, and you can heal your anxiety also.
How you felt and feel are normal, these are your feelings, and you are not alone; people out there do understand and have been through similar; trust yourself again, remember who you once was; you’ve allowed your thinking and mindset to be retrained, now you need to work on you to retrain your mindset, to positive thoughts, to who you want to be, know everyone’s allowed an opinion if you don’t agree move on no harm done, you can work on yourself. The best relationship you can have is one with yourself. So work on yourself today, tell yourself you can do this, and you so will. Love you for you.
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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 Click here for BetterHelp.(Sponsored.) Where you will be matched with a licensed councillor, who specialises in recovery from this kind of abuse.
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The narcissists invalidation.
Gaslighting.
