When it comes to the narcissist personality disorder, someone would need at least five of the nine criteria to be classed as on the disorder.
One of these criteria is the requirement of excessive attention. They can go around many ways of getting this attention.
1. Pointing out their achievements.
2. Exaggerating achievements.
3. Fishing for compliments.
4. Only doing because they require something in return, materialistic or eternal gratitude, praise or recognition.
5. Causing conflict, drama or chaos.
6. Baiting people to gain reactions from people to blame others.
7. Cheating.
8. Lying.
9. Deceiving others.
10. Being controversial to provoke an argument, not to debate to gain reactions.
12. Complaining often.
13. Guilt-tripping others.
14. Future Faking.
15. Playing the victim.
The three main ways narcissists gain attention are.
1. Gaining positive attention.
2. Gaining sympathetic attention.
3. Gain reactive attention.
Gaining positive attention.
Love bombing to influence us to believe they’re someone they’re not.
- Excessive attention, affection and support.
- Excessive gifts.
- Excessive flattery.
- Playing your hero.
- Mirroring likes and dislikes.
- Future faking.
- Agreeing with you.
- People-pleasing to manipulate.
A narcissist will sell you an illusion of who you’d like them to be, to influence you into creating an image within your mind that they are a genuine person, they mirror and future fake, to create a belief within you that you’ve met someone why truly gets you, often believing you get them, not realising they’re selling you an illusion. Due to the narcissist’s sense of entitlement, when they don’t get their own way when their envious face is exposed to us, we can rationalise this away with the help of their gaslighting words of. “If you’d had paid me more attention, I wouldn’t go elsewhere.” “You made me angry. At least I didn’t hit you.” As we’ve seen what we believe to be the good in them when they show us their worst. They blame us and shame us. We are led to think everything is our fault—justifying their unjust behaviour, as when they treat us well, we don’t recognise it as their manipulation to exploit us. When a narcissist puts on their admiration face, it creates a false hope within us that all will be ok. We can think they’re just having a bad day. However, they’ll make us feel like we’re to blame for their bad day, as to a narcissist, nothing is ever their fault.
Narcissists treat you well to gain positive attention, so you build them up, praise them, show them gratitude, and make them feel special.
Gaining sympathetic attention.
- They don’t take responsibility. Everything is always someone else fault.
- They hold grudges.
- They complain often.
- They tell you not to trust others.
- They feel sorry for themselves.
- They are judgmental and critical of others.
When they play the victim oh so well, often while playing the hero of “after all, I did for them, and they repaid me by stealing from me.” Narcissists hold many grudges for the very things they do to others, as anything that goes wrong within that narcissist’s life is always someone else’s fault. Anyone that doesn’t agree with them to a narcissist has turned against them and isn’t to be trusted.
When you catch a narcissist cheating, they’ll never trust you again.
Narcissists play the victim to avoid taking responsibility for their behaviour, so they’re not held accountable for their actions, so there are no consequences to their actions, and they feel entitled to continue their hurtful behaviour.
Narcissistic people will play the victim in the smear campaign to discredit another’s character, so people question the victim and not the narcissist. The narcissist can gain an army of supporters, namely their enablers and flying monkeys, to help with their exploitation of others. A Narcissist will justify hurting others by blaming others. A narcissist wants to find a scapegoat to take the fall for the narcissist’s behaviour, so the narcissist doesn’t get caught for the things they do to others.
Narcissists want to shame, blame, humiliate, criticise and judge others, so they can get revenge on those who didn’t do what the narcissist wanted. Those who stand up to the narcissist.
Narcissists will cause conflict to play the hero and save people, then if someone recognises the narcissist’s games. A narcissist will play the victim. “You always blame me. You misunderstood me. Oh, I knew it would be my fault. I forgot you were perfect.”
Narcissists do very little for you, and what they did do was to exploit you, so when you don’t do what they want, they can say, “After all I’ve done for you.” To guilt-trip you into doing for them often something that goes against who you are as a person.
Gaining reactive attention.
- They intimidate.
- They invalidate.
- They cause intrigue.
- False accusations.
- They fall silent.
- They smear your name.
- They taunt you.
- They humiliate you.
- They ignore you.
- They put you down.
- They lie to you.
- They lie about you.
- They let you down.
- The break promise on you.
When a narcissist can not get positive or sympathetic attention, they will go for your reactions, so you feel bad for reacting and do your best to make it up to them for things you don’t recognise they’re doing to you.
You’re going to feel defensive around those who are offensive.
A narcissist will provoke you to get a reaction from you so that they can blame it all on you.
Narcissists will intentionally make someone angry by saying or doing things to annoy or taunt them deliberately. To hook, trap or entice someone and get someone to do what they want them to do.
One of the characteristics that would put someone on the spectrum of the disorder is arrogance and dominance; they feel entitled, which is another characteristic of the disorder to have control over others with their lack of empathy another part of the disorder they give little thought to others opinions or feelings, they will take advantage over those around them and exploit people to get their own needs met, as they want the power and dominance over those around them, they want to control, and they want to win.
A narcissist uses many manipulative mind games and manipulative tactics to take control of our lives.
A narcissist uses baiting to provoke an emotional response from us so that they can have power over our emotions and, ultimately, over our thinking so that they can further their control over us.
From our reactions which are perfectly understandable given the situation we are in, we are often left believing everything is our fault, and the narcissist will only ever tell their side of the story that they want others to know in their smear campaign against us, the one where they miss out everything they did, the one with only our reactions, it’s just further manipulation for the narcissist to play the woe is me, victim, to those around them and make you feel like you are in the wrong and need to defend yourself or apologise.
Abusers love the reactive abuse as it’s proof in their minds that the person who reacted is unstable and crazy, that the one who’s reacted is mentally ill. They will use it against you for years to come. Narcissistic people rewrite their own history, and they change the stories they tell themselves. They are never accountable, and they say so many lies they often believe their own lies and reality, and they will use reactive abuse against you for years to come.
It’s so easy to react and want to defend ourselves; it’s effortless to overlook their toxic behaviour, and make excuses for their toxic behaviour, especially when we are the ones left saying, “They’re not that bad.” ”It doesn’t happen often.” ”It was my fault because.” ”They are my parents.” ”It’s my best friend. I grew up with them.” ”who would employ me.” ”What about the children.” These are often limiting beliefs that keep us locked in a relationship we shouldn’t be in. These are lies the narcissist fed us, when we have to say, “It doesn’t happen often.” it shouldn’t happen at all.
The narcissist enjoys playing with your emotions to get their needs met. It doesn’t matter if you are right or wrong. They want to watch you going crazy trying to prove yourself to them.
How to disarm, safely distance yourself from them and stop giving them your attention. When a narcissist can no longer control your emotions, they can no longer control you.
Narcissists brainwash those around them to take control of others’ thoughts to manipulate people’s emotions to serve themselves. Once we recognise this, we can take back control of our emotions, taking control back of our thoughts, thus taking back control of our life.
Our mind controls our emotions, and we control our minds.
Click the links below to join Elizabeth Shaw – Life Coach on social media for more information on Overcoming Narcissistic Abuse.
The online courses available by Elizabeth Shaw.
For the full course.
For the free course.
Click here to sign up for the free online starter course.
To help with overcoming the trauma bond and anxiety course.
Click here for the online course to help you break the trauma bond, and those anxiety triggers.
All about the narcissist Online course.
Click here to learn more about the narcissist personality disorder.
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.
One thought on “The Three Types Of Attention Narcissists Seek, Understanding Narcissism.”