Narcissistic people use many different mind games to get their needs met by you, often by gaslighting you. Gaslighting causes psychological trauma to our minds. The gaslighter creates a false narrative which distorts our reality, gets us questioning our experience, our thoughts and our feeling, and leaves us second guessing ourselves through the narcissists blame-shifting, where we are led to believe by the narcissist that we are the sole problem and the narcissist does no wrong, through the narcissist’s projection, which is a mixture of the narcissist blame-shifting and gaslighting, whereby the narcissist will project all their faults, flaws, failings, insecurities and mistakes over to us, leaving us full of self-doubt, and second-guessing ourselves.
This can lead to brain fog, where we genuinely believe we are the problem and we are going crazy. The narcissist’s mind games often leave us living in fear not only of the narcissist but also of ourselves, fear of doing or saying the wrong thing, fear of being misunderstood, and fear of not being enough. Obligation, feeling Indebted and obligated to serve the narcissist’s needs, often forgetting about our own, feeling obliged to help the narcissist out, and guilt, feeling guilty for doing everyday things that many people do, feeling like we’re letting them down, feeling like we’re hurting their feelings if we don’t do as they please.
Five manipulative ways a narcissist will confuse you to get their needs met by you.
1. Flattery insincere compliments and praise.
A narcissist will come at you with those insincere compliments. They will come at you with “ you look nice today.” they will say things such as “you look really good today.” right before they ask something of you, be it asking you to do something for them, or asking if you mind if they go somewhere, even though they promised to do something with you, future faking, where they promise you something to get their needs met in the present. Once their needs are met, they find a way of getting out of that promise they once made to you, usually done in a manner that makes you feel bad if you were to try and hold them accountable. They butter you up with insincere compliments right before they pull the rug from beneath you and let you down again. However, by trying to hold them accountable, they’ll accuse you of being “selfish.” or claim you’re “always making it about you.” so again, you feel bad, and they continue to hurt you.
With their insincere flattery, they might promise to do something for you that you don’t enjoy doing. If you do something for them that they don’t enjoy, however, once you have done it for them, they let you down, yet they do it in a manner of. “You do it far better than I would. Would you mind? I’m really tired.” so you feel obligated to do it for them. They stroke your ego to get out of doing things for you. At the same time, you slowly find yourself doing everything for them, call them out, and they’ll twist it to “if you loved me, you would.” to get you feeling bad for not doing for them, the very things they’re unwilling to do for you.
2. Coercion, threats, blackmail, intimidation.
A narcissist will ask something of you that perhaps you feel uncomfortable in doing, lying for them, covering for them. When you say no, this criticises the narcissist’s sense of entitlement, and they seek to punish you, so they might overtly, directly threaten you. “If you don’t, I will.” so if you don’t do action A, they will take action B, which will cause you pain. However, A can cause you pain. Or the covert indirect of “what if.” then something bad, yet again call them out, they’ll claim to be joking, or state you’re overreacting, to make you feel paranoid.
Intimidation, they might covertly just stand in the doorway, blocking the doorway, so you feel uncomfortable. They might just get in your space, not say or do anything directly intimidating, just get in your face. Or overtly, directly, stand over you, shout at you. To place fear within you to do as they say, call them out, they’ll claim you’re in the wrong, overthinking or paranoid.
Blackmail, most people have made mistakes, done things they’re not proud of, confided in those they’re close to, a narcissistic person will feel no shame in using your secrets against you, they’ll ask something from you, you say no, they’ll come at you with. “What if your family knew.” they’re going to put you in a compromising position to get their needs met by you as they lack the empathy to care for you.
3. The silent treatment.
When one person has hurt another person, the hurt person can fall silent as they process their thoughts. When a narcissist doesn’t get their entitlement met, this causes their psychological pain, and they seek to punish you for everyday things. You could simply have a friend’s birthday coming up, as the narcissist feels contempt towards this friend, believing you think the friend is more important than the narcissist, meaning the narcissist might sulk before you go. If a narcissist isn’t happy ain’t nobody going to be happy, you’ll often find once a narcissist has dampened your mood, the narcissist feels smug, narcissists get pleasure out of your pain, if you go, they’ll be silent on you return, to punish you, get you questioning what you did, as surely they can’t fall silent because you went to celebrate a friends birthday, right. Wrong, a narcissist is going to punish you for celebrating somebody else’s birthday. Yet ask them, and they’ll claim it’s not that. It’s because you’re selfish. A narcissist will cheat on you and then claim it’s because you weren’t giving them enough attention. Narcissists use silence to punish while blaming you for their inability to communicate their feelings because they don’t want to be exposed as requiring excessive attention, feeling entitled or feeling envious. Instead, they’ll fall silent and blame you.
4. Playing the victim.
Be it the vulnerable narcissist that’s going to ask you to do something that you either don’t have time to do or you don’t want to do. You say no, the narcissist is going to turn round and say, “after all I’ve done for you. You won’t do this one thing for me.” Now non-narcissistic people can find themselves saying this usually because they’ve done so much for the other person. When the puzzle starts to click, they can stand back and think, after all I’ve done for them, they won’t do this one simple thing for me. With a narcissist, you’ll find yourself doing absolutely everything for them while they do the bare minimum for you. Yet claim you do nothing for them. You will find yourself doing more and more for them as they do less and less for you.
A grandiose narcissist might proclaim you’re not doing that for me and then list a lot of people that would potentially do that for them, again, to get you to question yourself, and they might even turn round and say, well, if you loved me you would.
5. Logical reasoning.
This is when a narcissist might have promised to do something for you. If you did something for them, they would make dinner for you when they came home. They come home and say, “you’re so much better at making dinner than I am. I’ve had a really bad day, a really long day. My back is really hurting me. Would you mind making dinner? I know I said I would. Still, I promise I’ll do it next time.” Only next time rarely to never comes, and as people can genuinely have backaches, we find ourselves justifying, rationalising, sympathising with them, trying our best to help them out, not recognising that they are taking advantage of us. They are exploiting our compassion towards their tail of woes that we can’t see what they’re doing so that the narcissist can get away with their behaviour.
Narcissistic people have a way of getting you to do things for them out of fear, out of obligation or out of guilt, and when you don’t do something for them, they will find a way to shame you, criticise you and blame you and punish you for not serving their sense of entitlement as they believe that you should do, often leaving you feeling like you’re going crazy and feeling confused to which a narcissist will accuse you of going crazy when you try to point them out one of their behaviours.
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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.
i hate the gaslighting. am finally nc with my narc parents and unlearning all their false narratives and self-doubt