Narcissist Terms: The Ultimate Glossary to De-Mystify The Narcissist’s “Power”

Use the dark blue menu above to see all the terms this glossary gives definitions for.

Narcissistic abuse is confusing, disorienting, deflating, and disempowering.

A deep understanding of the dynamics involved enables survivors to validate their reality and begin to free themselves from the prison of fear and shame.

Underlying / Core Psychological Dynamics of Narcissistic Abuse

Projection

Projection is when we ascribe what belongs to us to others, we see it as coming from them. It’s quite unbelievable how much we all project. Projection protects us against realizing things about ourselves that we just haven’t come to terms with.

Deep down, narcissists have a split-off, traumatized inner child with intense feelings of shame, worthlessness, helplessness & unmet dependency needs.

However, they disavow these feelings and defend against them by projecting these attributes, thoughts, and emotions upon others. They construct an idealized idea of who they are to fend off their helpless and scared inner child. The idealized self-image is grandiose, flawless, invulnerable, and independent.

Projection occurs regularly, but especially when the narcissistic person’s idealized self-concept feels threatened or attacked, or their inner child gets activated. They project their feelings of vulnerability onto others, accusing them of being weak or scared. Or they might blame others for their failures and shortcomings.

They feel attacked when something somebody says or does threatens their shaky delusional self-image and feel entitled to counter-attack.

They might constantly accuse others of lying because they are, in fact, dishonest themselves. They can’t accept this reality about themselves so they project it onto others. They essentially “see” their negative traits in other people, even when these traits are minimally present in the people they are accusing.

• Narcissists use projection to dump or disown their negative characteristics onto others.
• Projection helps narcissists feel better about themselves and maintain their inflated self-image.
• Narcissists accuse others of the exact things they don’t want to admit about themselves.

Projective Identification

This involves not only attributing one’s emotions to others but also inducing those emotions in those others. Children are extremely susceptible to this.

Here’s how projective identification works when a narcissist uses it:

• The narcissist (unconsciously) feels a strong negative emotion – shame, anger, or guilt. This is deeply uncomfortable. They cannot admit this is inside them, so they attribute the feeling to another person – projection.
• The narcissist then interacts with the other person in a way designed to provoke the projected feelings. For instance, if they’ve projected their anger, they act irritating or aggressive so as to induce anger. If they feel helpless, they undermine a person’s efforts to induce feelings of helplessness.
• If the other person reacts to the projected feeling (e.g., becomes angry), the narcissist feels they were “right”
  • It seems as if the feeling truly belongs to the other person, not to them, which reinforces their denial.
• The projected-upon person feels increasingly burdened by negative emotions they don’t fully understand and can’t control
  • Because they were never theirs, to begin with
  • But there is enough appearance of truth to get seriously confused
• The target may believe what the narcissist is “seeing” in them, start emotionally resonating with it, and even act it out at times.
  • If you get treated like you are worthless often enough, you will likely feel worthless
  • Especially if you’re a kid and your parents are doing this

All of this leads to intense confusion and feelings of guilt, that can be extremely difficult for the receiving party to decipher and deal with.

Introjection

Introjection is a psychological process where a person unconsciously absorbs and “swallows whole” the ideas, feelings, or attitudes of others into their own personality and self-concept.

There is no filtering, evaluating, or discriminating the truth or falsehood about) the attributes, perspectives, or behaviors of others … and adopting them as part of oneself.

This can be healthy or unhealthy.

For example, let’s say your parents taught you decent values, saw you for who you truly are, and gave you accurate and fair feedback about yourself. And let’s say they had the normal love, respect, and admiration that you would hope parents would have for their child. Or maybe you were even seen as Daddy’s little princess.

If you then introjected the above, that’s not so bad. You’re good to go, with these introjected internal resources as an adult.

If however, your parents were projecting onto you false and negative things (which were disowned aspects of themselves that they hated), seeing you as fundamentally flawed, worthless, or “bad” … not so good.

In this case, children often introject things that are not accurate or reality-based.

Healing requires becoming aware of these beliefs, sifting out the distortions, seeing how you’re carrying them into the present, and replacing them with more accurate and fair beliefs about yourself. To really heal, this has to occur at a deep level & typically requires work and professional support.

In narcissistic abuse:

1. Pathological Projective Identification: A narcissist projects their own insecurities, flaws, or negative traits onto their victim. They may accuse the victim of being selfish, overly sensitive, or lazy when in reality, these are traits that the narcissist doesn’t want to acknowledge within themselves.
2. Introjection: The victim (If they’re a child, they essentially have no choice) in turn, might introject these projections, incorporating them into their self-concept.
   1. They might start to believe that they’re selfish, overly sensitive, or lazy because the narcissist has consistently projected these characteristics onto them.

You can see how these two processes perpetuate a cycle of abuse, with the narcissist avoiding accountability for their actions and the victim internalizing blame and developing a negative self-concept.

Hegemony of Subjectivity

What is subjectivity / experiencing ourselves as a subject?

It’s living life from our own point of view – like we’re having an experience that we’re interpreting the meaning of – and at least somewhat directing. The opposite is feeling like you’re an object that is constantly being bounced around by and evaluated by critical other(s):

Subjectivity involves:

• Validating our own experience
• Self-referencing
  • Checking in with ourselves about what’s going on inside
    • Thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, etc.
• Knowing what we think, feel, value & believe – what matters to us and what doesn’t
• Knowing what we want and don’t want
• Feeling permitted and free to assert the legitimacy of our point of view
  • Without having to deny the reality of others or adopt the view of others
    • For fear of being rejected or psychologically annihilated
• Experiencing ourselves as agents capable of meaningful and productive action
• Having the ability to negotiate mutually subjective relationships, being free and able to resist demands for submission, and not having to demand it of others
• Having a stable, consistent, in-the-background foundation of our own intrinsic worth & value

Hegemony refers to the dominance of one person or group over others, including the dominance of their views and values.

Here, it refers to the dominant influence or authority of the traumatizing narcissist’s personal perspective / subjective experience over others whom they dominate.

• Dominance of Narcissistic Perspective: The narcissist’s subjective experiences, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs become the ‘ruling’ or ‘dominant’ one. This often comes at the expense of another’s subjectivity, which is disregarded or invalidated.
  • Narrative Control / Spinning:
    • You would think you were dealing with a politician or a highly polarized news outlet as you observe some narcissists relentlessly spin things to influence the way others see things.
• Invalidation of Other’s Experiences: Traumatizing narcissists negate the emotions, feelings, and perceptions of others. They assert their subjective experiences as “truth” and dismiss others’ perspectives if they differ from their own. The narcissist’s viewpoint becomes the prevailing narrative.
• Traumatization through Subjective Hegemony: The hegemony of a narcissist’s subjectivity traumatizes those subjected to it. The persistent invalidation of their experiences and feelings can lead to feelings of worthlessness, confusion, and emotional distress. People need to be connected to their own experiences.
  • This is why gaslighting is so damaging, it attempts to undermine your connection to your own experience – your own perceptions and recollections.
• Manipulation and Control: Traumatizing narcissists manipulate and control their victims. They dictate the ‘reality’ of situations based on their viewpoint, forcing others to question their own perceptions and experiences.

The oppressive dominance of the narcissist’s subjective experience over their victims causes emotional harm and trauma, ultimately leading victims to self-objectify themselves.

Objectification Leading to Self-Objectification

Since narcissists insist upon their own subjectivity being exclusive, their intimate others are seen and treated as objects. 

Objects have no consciousness, subjective experience, or point of view; they are objects which are useful or not useful to subjects. Eventually, the significant others begin to treat themselves as objects.

Narcissistic Objectification of Others

• The narcissist treats the other person as an object or extension of themselves
• Assigning the other the unwanted aspects of the narcissist
• They deny the other’s subjectivity and individuality
• Only one person gets to have a valid point of view, and that is the narcissist
• They see others’ differences as threats to their own subjectivity
• Objectifying others is the essence of dehumanization

Self-Objectification

Self-objectification is a psychological process where an individual starts viewing themselves as an object for use, rather than an independent, functioning being with their own desires and rights. This is caused by repeated objectification by narcissists.

When continuously objectified, people often begin to internalize the narcissist’s projections about them as their own self-perception. Of course, the projections don’t actually match with who they really are, so this causes massive cognitive dissonance.

People who self-objectify see their value primarily in terms of their usefulness to others, and critically evaluate and observe themselves from a third-person perspective, focusing on their external appearance to others.

This sucks the joy out of life and causes a wide range of negative psychological consequences.

Undermining Personal Perspective: The dominant perspective of the narcissist minimizes or invalidates the experiences and feelings of the one in relationship to him/her. Victims start viewing themselves through the narcissist’s lens, adopting an outsider’s perspective of their own selves.

Constant Evaluation: Attempting to appease the narcissist and make sense of their reality, victims constantly assess their behavior and appearance. Leading to heightened self-consciousness and self-objectification.

Loss of Autonomy: The narcissist’s control leaves victims in a state of learned helplessness & and unable to trust their judgment. This disconnection from their individuality can lead to a state where they view themselves more as objects being manipulated rather than autonomous individuals.

Internalizing the Narcissist’s Viewpoint: The narcissist’s constant projection of their subjective reality onto others leads victims to internalize this view, seeing themselves as the narcissist does – as objects whose value lies in their utility to the narcissist.

Externally Based Self-Worth: Consistent devaluation and negation of experience leads to basing their self-worth on how they believe the narcissist perceives them, thereby objectifying themselves.

All of this is very distressing and dysregulating, leading to decreased self-worth, and increased mental health risks.

Relational Subjugation

Traumatizing narcissists maintain the displacement of their dissociated vulnerability and dependency into their victims by controlling (subjugating) the other in certain significant relationships.

• Most of the content on social media about narcissism consists of descriptions of the various shenanigans used to subjugate others

By subjugating others, narcissists can keep others being the bad objects they need them to be.

They systematically undermine their victims’s ability to validate their own experience, disrupting the sense of self and autonomy.

Subjugation in this manner causes significant emotional harm and leads to a chronic sense of self-doubt, and dependency in the victim.

Maintaining the One-Up Position

A psychological stance or social situation where a person assumes a superior position.

Regarding power, knowledge, status, goodness, beauty, control, whatever matters to them – which they see as what matters period. Seeking to maintain their perceived superiority at the expense of others.

In narcissistic abuse, the narcissist relentlessly attempts to maintain their one-up position and keep targets one-down.

1. Dominance: The person in the one-up position asserts dominance or superiority over others. Displaying superior knowledge, skills, or attributes.
2. Control: Using a one-up position to control situations and people. Dictating the terms of interactions, making decisions, and setting rules, usually without consulting others.
3. Undermining Agency and Autonomy: Making the victim helpless supports the one-up position.
4. Manipulation: The one-up position enables manipulation, often subtly. They may use tactics like gaslighting, blame-shifting, or emotional manipulation to maintain their superior position.
5. Resistance to Criticism: Individuals in the one-up position generally resist criticism or feedback that threatens their superior status. They may dismiss such comments, react defensively, or retaliate.
6. Intimidation:
   • Verbal Threats: Direct or implied. About physical harm, emotional damage, or negative consequences such as loss of a job or relationship.
   • Physical Aggression: Invading personal space, aggressive body language, or even physical abuse.
   • Subtle Emotional Threats: More covert and harder to recognize. Manipulating the person’s emotions to make them feel guilty, ashamed, or inadequate. Subtly belittling achievements, unfair criticism, or making you feel like you’re always in the wrong.

Push-Pull Dynamic

This is related to the formation of trauma bonds. Without any positive reinforcement (good things), targets would never get sucked in to start with.

• Push: The narcissist pushes the other person away, with demeaning, dismissive, or overtly hostile words or behavior. Criticism, silent treatment, or other forms of emotional manipulation. This is done to assert control and superiority in the relationship.
• Pull: Then the narcissist then pulls them back in with intensity, causing them to feel temporarily great. Charm, flattery, or appearing to be very attentive and caring. This confuses the victim, as it’s a stark contrast to the negative behavior they’ve just experienced.

This cycle is very damaging to the person on the receiving end, as they are constantly being subjected to emotional highs and lows. They can become dependent on validation from the narcissist during the “pull” phase, which makes it difficult to leave.

The unpredictable timing of push and pull makes the pull more addictive, as it is intermittent reinforcement (the strongest kind). This causes trauma bonding in victims.

Narcissistic Abuse Tactics: One on One

Belittlement

Downplaying your achievements, skills, or attributes to elevate their own perceived self-worth by comparison. Derogatory or dismissive comments, excessive criticism, or outright mockery.

This can range from obviously brutal and vicious verbal attacks on your character, to snide remarks, to (confusing) sideways comments about people with whom you are similar.

Why do they do this?

1. To Maintain the Hegemony/Dominance of Their Subjectivity: For a narcissist, they must be right about their point of view being the “correct” one. If you have a different opinion, point of view, etc., they see it as a threat to their own. You must agree with them. Belittling you discredits you as a valid source of viewpoints that differ from their own.
2. To Maintain Control: It reinforces the power dynamic which strengthens control.
3. To Boost Self-Esteem: With no self-esteem at their core, belittling others helps narcissists feel better about themselves. It provides a distraction from their own shortcomings by magnifying your flaws.
4. Deflection: When faced with criticism or failure, belittlement allows narcissists to shift the focus onto someone else’s mistakes or failures.
5. Manipulation: Belittlement causes you to feel inferior, insecure, or dependent. Creates a cycle where you become more needful of (the narcissist’s approval) and validation.

Infantilization

One form of belittlement is to talk down to you as if you’re much younger, or less mature they they.

This allows them to project their own sense of dependency, which is disavowed. They project their feelings of smallness onto those they are in a relationship with, making them feel helpless and dependent. This can be subtle or overt.

Examples:

• “I did not sign up to babysit you”
• “Buy some maturity”
• “You wouldn’t understand- it’s too complex for you.”
• “Don’t worry your little head about this.”
• “Are you sure you can handle that? It seems a bit too much for you.”
• “Wow -thanks for the idea, kiddo” – in a business meeting
• Calling you by the diminutive of your name when you don’t go by it and you’re not sincerely on affectionate terms with them.
  • Robert – “Robby” or “Bobby”
  • Christopher – “Chrissy”
  • James or Jim – “Jimmy”
  • Timothy – “Timmy”

Infantilization reinforces the narcissist’s superiority and undermines the confidence of the victim, which allows for more control over them.

Gaslighting

The abuser manipulates situations repeatedly to trick the victim into doubting his or her own memory, perception, and sanity. Distinct from ordinary lying. Here’s how:

1. Reality Distortion: Intentional and systematic distortion of reality. Not about white lies to avoid trouble. Creating a situation where victims question their own reality. Denying things that have happened or by creating false scenarios.
2. “I never said that”: This is a notorious thing for a gaslighter to say. Over time, targets come to believe that their own memory, which is essential to navigating life, is useless at best and completely unreliable at best. This makes targets feel helpless.
3. Manipulation and Control: Gaslighting is about gaining control and power over someone else’s mind and emotions. Making you doubt your own perceptions to the point where you rely entirely on the abuser’s version of reality.
4. Constant Doubt: The victim of gaslighting is in a constant state of self-doubt and confusion. Feel like they are losing their mind, causing low self-esteem and self-worth.
5. Ongoing Nature: Unlike one-off lies, gaslighting is ongoing. Consistent manipulation that gradually erodes the victim’s sense of self.

Gaslighting is distinct from ordinary lying in that it’s a long-term, targeted strategy aimed at destabilizing, controlling, and manipulating someone.

Lying

Common in narcissistic abuse apart from gaslighting.

Reasons narcissists lie:

• Creation of ‘false self’: The idealized image of themselves that they present to the world and believe in (somewhat psychotically). Created and maintained through lying.
• Deception in manipulation: Lying to manipulate the perception or behavior of others. Creation of false narratives to appear more appealing or successful, lying about others to create division and mistrust.
• Avoidance of responsibility: In denying or minimizing their wrongdoing, narcissists maintain their self-image of perfection and superiority.
• Control and power: Lying to maintain control in a relationship. By keeping the victim off-balance and uncertain, the narcissist can gain power and influence.
• Smear campaigns: Spreading false information or innuendo about someone to others, damaging their reputation and isolating them from possible sources of support.

In essence, lying is a tool that aids in the narcissist’s manipulation, control, and deception tactics, allowing them to maintain their narcissistic supply.

Emotional Manipulation

Emotional manipulation is when someone tries to influence another person’s decisions feelings, or behaviors (for their own advantage) by playing with their emotions.

Manipulators often induce emotional instability in their targets, making them easier to control. Emotional manipulators are often adept at disguising their true intentions and can seem very sympathetic and understanding, which makes them more effective.

Being emotionally manipulated can lead to low self-esteem, feelings of guilt, doubt, helplessness, and even depression in the victims.

Manipulation of Positive Emotions

Often subtle and hard to recognize.

1. False Flattery: Excessive compliments to win trust and affection. Makes the target more pliable to their requests or distracts from the manipulator’s ulterior motives.
2. Creation of Dependency: The manipulator makes the individual feel special, valued, and loved. In a way that makes the target depend on them to feel good about themselves.
3. Promises and Future Faking: Promises about the future, and fantasies to captivate the target’s emotions. Plans about a shared, prosperous future together, which are never truly intended to materialize.
4. Love Bombing: Showering the target with affection and attention at an overwhelming pace. Makes the target feel emotionally indebted and makes it difficult to spot potential red flags.
5. Reciprocity Influence: Doing a big favor or promising a significant gain – to create a feeling of obligation. Target feels compelled to reciprocate and grants the manipulator’s future requests out of gratitude and obligation.
6. Shared Secrets: Shares a ‘secret’ to construct a bond, making the individual feel part of a partnership. Bond is later leveraged to influence the target’s actions or decisions.

Some of the above can be in a healthy relationship. It becomes emotional manipulation when these behaviors are used dishonestly, with the intent to control the target for the benefit of the manipulator.

Charm Offensive

Some people are authentically charming, and that’s fine.

Charm offensives are elaborate attempts to use charm, flattery, friendliness, or the appearance of sympathy or interest to win someone over in order to influence them. They disarm the target by making them feel good.

1. Upfront Friendliness: Being exceedingly friendly, building a positive perception in the target’s mind. Coming across as charismatic, warm, and attentive. Makes you like them, trust them, and be open to their influence.
2. Excessive Compliments: Showering with praise, compliments, or flattery. When you feel appreciated, you’re more likely to be receptive to the person who appreciates you.
3. Feigned Interest: A manipulator may show what appears to be a genuine interest in the person’s life, ideas, feelings and well-being, even if this interest is superficial or false.
4. Congenial Body Language: Welcoming body language or facial expressions, such as warm smiles, direct eye contact, or open stances. Creates an atmosphere of closeness and trust.

The above are a problem when the charmer is insincere and uses these tactics to influence the other for a purpose. Serves to distract the person from the manipulator’s real motives, which may be deceitful or self-serving.

Emotional Blackmail (FOG)

A powerful form of emotional manipulation in which people close to us threaten (either directly or indirectly) to punish us if we don’t do what they want.

“Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You.” by Susan Forward, PhD

Components of Emotional Blackmail:

• Fear:
  • Used to manipulate and control.
  • Threatening to end relationships, ruin your reputation, do other things to hurt you if they don’t get their way.
    • Threats can be subtly alluded to
  • Intimidating others to make themselves larger in the target’s mind, get them to give in to demands and back down from boundaries
    • Creating fear, disorganization, and a desire for appeasement in the target
    • This is essentially how terrorists operate
  • Creating anxiety and apprehension, which pressures the victim to comply.
• Obligation:
  • Making victims feel like they owe something.
  • Because of a past favor, a sense of duty, or general societal expectations.
  • Victims are made to feel internal guilt for not living up to perceived obligations.
• Guilt:
  • Invoking this powerful emotion to manipulate people’s actions.
  • Making victims feel guilty for:
    • Causing imagined distress or
    • Not living up to certain expectations.

The cycle of emotional blackmail:

1. Demand: Blackmailer makes an unreasonable demand.
2. Resistance: The victim initially resists the demand, as it may seem unfair or inconvenient.
3. Pressure: The blackmailer applies pressure through FOG.
4. Compliance: The victim complies in order to avoid the threatened consequences or negative emotions.

The pattern is reinforced as the blackmailer learns that it works & victims get used to giving in.

Recognizing emotional blackmail and understanding its mechanisms is the first step to breaking the cycle.

Reactive Abuse

Narcissists run this 2-step playbook in private to get you to think you’re the crazy one.

They may also create this little drama in front of family, friends, and even therapists – who may be completely taken in and think you’re the problem. So this is also a social tactic.

Baiting-Provocation

The narcissist has a keen sense of your vulnerabilities and buttons.

They purposefully press these buttons to provoke an emotional response. This could include offensive comments, criticism, infantilization, or actions designed to trigger insecurities.

Overt or subtle provocative comments or actions will, over time, elicit angry responses from anybody. Narcissists know this and know you’ve got bottled up anger toward them.

Reaction

The target eventually lashes out in frustration or anger, which has usually been repressed so that it comes out in a pent-up, unintegrated fashion – forcefully. Perhaps “inappropriately” so on the surface, without context.

But it may well be a measured, or forceful, entirely appropriate response, given the provocation seen in context. It may just be the setting of a long-overdue boundary.

Whatever your reaction, if you respond with any emotional intensity and attention, you have just given them narcissistic supply. A win for the narcissist.

Abuse

The narcissist then focuses all attention on your reaction. They state or imply that your reaction is evidence that you are the actual abuser, shifting blame and responsibility. They might even whip up some tears to evoke sympathy in onlookers.

Now you doubt yourself and feel guilty and confused about your reactions. They are abusing you for having a normal reaction to abuse.

Examples:

• Baiting: A narcissist might intentionally bring up sensitive topics or make inflammatory statements to get a rise out of you.
• Provocation: They may repeatedly push your buttons or violate your boundaries until you respond emotionally.
• Reactive Abuse: When you finally react with anger or upset, they play the victim, act hurt, accuse you, or subtly or directly imply that you are the abuser.

Idealization > Devaluation > Discard > Hoovering

Sometimes this goes in the sequence described above, especially in romantic relationships. Or you might cycle between Idealization and Devaluation for an indefinite period of time, perhaps for the entirety of the relationship.

Idealization Phase

The first stage in the narcissistic abuse cycle. The narcissist puts their target on a pedestal, showering them with affection and praise.

Narcissists you only see once in a while may do this also, going on a “charm-offensive”.

Are incredibly charming and attentive, moving the relationship forward rapidly. The goal is to win the victim’s trust and make them dependent on the narcissist’s affirmation and presence. They also gain information about your vulnerabilities and embarrassing things, which they exploit later for devaluation and smear campaign purposes.

• Intense admiration: The narcissist showers their target with compliments, flattery, intense attention, and expressions of deep connection. You feel like you’ve met the perfect partner.
• Love bombing: The relationship progresses quickly, and the narcissist expresses strong feelings of love early. This is overwhelming and causes the victim to become emotionally dependent.
• Future faking: The narcissist talks about the future with the victim, painting a near-perfect life together. Deepens the victim’s emotional investment in the relationship.
• Narcissistic mirroring: A conscious counterfeit of actual mirroring (which happens naturally and unconsciously amongst non-manipulative people with empathy).
• The narcissist imitates or mirrors the likes, dislikes, behaviors, speech patterns, and other characteristics of another person. Employed as a way to gain trust and build rapport for future manipulation.

Devaluation Phase

The second stage of narcissistic abuse is where the narcissist starts to devalue their victim after idealization. Here’s what to expect:

• Withholding affection: Withholding love, affection, or attention as punishment. Confusing and hurtful for the victim, especially after the intense affection shown during the idealization phase.
• Projection: Of the narcissist’s own negative traits, behaviors, or feelings onto the victim. Accusations of behaviors that they themselves are guilty of.
• Criticism and belittlement: Criticizing the victim for things they previously admired or found endearing. Belittlement, mocking, or sarcasm aimed at eroding the victim’s self-esteem. Especially if you start drawing attention to how things aren’t going so well between you.
• Gaslighting: Making the victim question their own reality or sanity. Denying things that have happened or insisting that the victim is “misremembering”.
• Manipulation and control: Often of every aspect of the victim’s life. Via emotional manipulation, financial control, or isolation from friends and family.
• Silent treatment: Punishment involving ignoring the victim, refusing to speak to them, or even pretending they don’t exist.

Discard Phase

Narcissists can discard people, even partners, as if they were simply objects they have no use for anymore.

The discard phase can be incredibly painful for the victim, as it feels like rejection and betrayal from a trusted, valued, attachment figure. It can open up all sorts of earlier developmental trauma (as can all phases really).

• Narcissist is Cold and Uninterested: Often suddenly, without apparent reason. Completely loses interest in the victim.
• Abandonment: Sometimes with zero explanation. This could mean suddenly ending a romantic relationship.
  • Note: Going no-contact with a narcissist if, even they don’t discard you, isn’t you discarding them.
  • You’ve probably gone the extra to make things right way too many times.
  • Don’t guilt trip yourself.
• Blame-shifting: May blame the victim for the end regardless of the actual circumstances.
• Replacement: Often the narcissist will quickly move on to a new relationship/source of narcissistic supply, further discarding the old one.

Remember, this is about the narcissist, not you. They are callously and pre-emptively avoiding being abandoned themself. Also, they may need more admiration than you can give … now that you know them better.

Plus, they are superficial and need a new thrill. By discarding you, they can avoid taking responsibility for and cleaning up the damage they’ve already caused you. Being discarded by a narcissist is a blessing in disguise.

Hoovering

Once you have chosen to break up, sever ties, go no contact, or grey-rock them, they sometimes try to “suck you back in” like a Hoover vacuum cleaner for another go-round.

Narcissists don’t like losing control, they need to be sure they are the ones setting the terms … they are discarding you, not vice-versa. Or maybe they’re simply bored and want to play their little games on you for a while.

It may feel like the idealization phase is starting all over from scratch (as if all the nasty stuff never happened – no deep and sufficient acknowledgment, remorse, and making of amends).

They may use humor, warmth, charisma, love bombing, and reminiscences of the “good ole days”. The trauma bond can kick in here and many survivors go back many times until they’re truly sick and tired enough to be done for good.

Or they may use guilt and obligation if you resist (emotional blackmail), play the victim, employ flying monkeys, and use various manipulative tactics. They may even promise change.

But there is no sufficient acknowledgment of who they have been, apology, deep remorse (for you) no sufficient making of amends, and no deep commitment to work on their actual issues – their selfishness, narcissism, harmful behavior, and manipulativeness. They want to keep you available or exploit you for one particular purpose or another.

This is not how relationship rupture repair works in the real world. Rather, this is an enormously arrogant and entitled attempt to use you again.

Why?

• Control: Narcissists thrive on power and control – Hoovering allows control even after the relationship has ended.
• Narcissistic Supply: If they don’t have an adequate reliable new source of propping up their self-image, they might hoover you to regain it.
• Inability to be alone: Many narcissists cannot handle being alone and will resort to hoovering as a remedy.
• Inability to accept rejection: Being rejected, especially by you, the object of their negative projections, does not align with their inflated self-image – at all.

If victims don’t get hoovered, they often think it means that the devaluation and discard were because they were not enough, and that the narcissist and their new supply will live it up, happily ever after, with real genuine love.

That is theoretically possible. But it’s also theoretically possible that you will get struck by lightning in the next 5 minutes. Both are equally unlikely. Not getting hoovered is much more likely to mean that you have one less irritant as you heal.

When faced with hoovering, you have no obligation to “believe” them, take what they are saying at face value, trust them, or re-establish ties. This goes for whatever stage you decide to limit or cease contact. You’re an adult, you have enough data to make your own decisions, and those decisions are yours to make. There is no guilt in that – only reality, wisdom, and sanity. And benefits for you and everybody else in your life.

Even hypothetically supposing you were “wrong” about them – the narcissist is perfectly free to go live a happy life; they’ve just burnt your relationship. Such is life, happens all the time. Perhaps it will serve as accurate feedback for them.

And anything is theoretically possible – nothing is stopping them from going to a therapist who works with narcissists and working on themselves for 10 years. Then maybe you can make time to meet them for coffee so that they can wrap up your relationship with a sufficient apology. Where they finally cop to exactly how awfully they treated you, in great depth and detail. Probably not with tears, narcissists don’t become hugely empathic. And then you go your separate ways.

Of course, don’t hold your breath for this; it’s probably a fairy tale. But if they want to try to make it happen, they can.

Your job? Boundaries.

Offending From the Victim Position

Also known as playing the victim.

Acting as perpetrators while portraying themselves as victims.

1. Manipulation: Skillfully twisting situations to make it appear as if they’ve been wronged, even while causing harm. Allows avoidance of responsibility and maintenance of control over the other.
2. Seeking Sympathy: Gains attention and sympathy. They can justify their actions & make others feel guilty for not supporting them.
3. Maintaining Superiority: By making you feel inferior and wrong, they boost their own ego and maintain perceived superiority.
4. Deflection: Deflecting blame while projecting their own negative traits onto others. Accusing others of whatever they’re guilty of, shifting attention away from it.
5. Control: Keeps victims in a perpetual state of guilt and confusion, allowing for continued control over them.
6. Provides Narcissistic Supply: Playing the victim is a convenient way to elicit attention, validation, and even admiration – the martyr mask.

Neglect

This is daily fare if you’re in a relationship with a narcissist – they can’t even see you for who you are, so you’re going to be neglected.

• Emotional Neglect – Not acknowledging or validating or ignoring needs and feelings, making you feel unseen and unheard.
• Physical Neglect – Not taking care of basic needs such as food, shelter, or safety. In extreme cases, this can also include deprivation of medical care.
• Neglect of Responsibilities – Shirking responsibilities that don’t serve their interests, often leaving their partners to carry the burden of household chores, childcare, and other duties.
• Neglect of Personal Boundaries – Disregarding personal space, privacy, and boundaries of others. This is a form of neglect because it signifies a lack of respect for the other person’s autonomy and individuality.
• Neglect to Show Empathy – Very painful – they fail to understand or recognize the emotional pain they cause, which can lead to a deep sense of loneliness.

Withholding

Intentionally denying or limiting communication, affection, or key resources to manipulate and control. Done to provoke feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, and fear.

Examples:

• Emotional Withholding: Narcissists don’t share their feelings and are dismissive of your feelings. Refuse to engage in emotional conversations or express empathy, leaving you unsupported and alone.
• Information Withholding: Deliberately keeping important information from their victim to maintain control or create uncertainty.
• Affection Withholding: Using affection as a weapon, giving or withholding it to punish, reward, or manipulate their victims.
• Financial Withholding: Controlling all the finances and restricting access to money, making it difficult for you to leave.

Word Salad

Speech that is nonsensical, disorganized, or confusing – historically associated with schizophrenia.

Narcissists can employ a form of “word salad” as a manipulation tactic.

When using this tactic, their words are essentially irrelevant to the topic at hand. They don’t convey meaningful content; they’re merely speaking a lot in order to invalidate you, trigger you, get you upset, and get you off track.

Examples:

1. Deflection and Projection: When confronted, they may respond with a disjointed barrage of unrelated or barely related accusations, aiming to put you on the defensive.
   • Before you can react to one shocking claim, they’ve swiftly moved on to another.
   • Pro tip: Listen with a blank face, ignore the diversions, and repeat your original question/concern
2. Circular Conversations: You seemingly resolve an issue, only for it to be brought up again without any acknowledgment of the immediate past.
   • They contradict themselves and repeat the same disproven arguments, disregarding any valid points you made earlier.
   • When you refer to previously established facts, it’s as if they were never established.
   • Then, they may have the gall to say “I feel like I’m going in circles with you”, making you feel crazy and burdensome.
     • It’s disorienting to try to make sense of because there’s no sense to be made.
     • It’s nonsense.
3. Diversion: To avoid a topic or direct question, they might respond with an irrelevant story.
   • For example, if you ask them why they came home late, they might say they ran into a friend
   • Then go off on a convoluted tangent about their friend’s life
   • Then you to engage – “You remember his ex-wife Barb, right?”
   • You may ask a simple question and get the response: “What?”

Word salad gives you a headache. You may find yourself ruminating for days about the empty words they spewed, spending precious emotional and mental energy for no good purpose.

Your instinct may be to defend yourself and find a fair solution, take your share of the blame, and make things right. Eventually, you realize:

• There is no making sense of Word Salad
• You’re taking all the responsibility and doing all the work

Narcissistic Abuse Tactics: in Social Settings

Triangulation

Triangulation occurs when two people in conflict will try to involve a third as a way to ease or shift the tension. The unlucky third person is caught in the middle.

Narcissists use triangulation as a manipulative strategy to create tension, sow seeds of doubt, and maintain control in their relationships. Here’s how they do it:

• Controlling Information: Through triangulation, narcissists control the flow of information between the people involved. This allows them to manipulate the narrative and keep everybody off-balance.
• Getting their way: The introduction of a supposed ally allows narcissists to establish they are in the right. They often position (or previously set up) the third person as agreeing with them, which makes the target the odd man out. The chosen third person usually doesn’t have the wherewithal to see through or successfully confront the narcissist, so this usually works.
• Creating Drama: Narcissists introduce a third party into their relationship to stir up jealousy, insecurity, and rivalry. This can be a friend, ex, or even a family member. They use this person to provoke envy.

Pity Play

Manipulation by eliciting pity to gain attention, sympathy, and control in social situations.

• Playing the victim: Exaggerating hardships to gain sympathy and attention. Portraying self as a victim of circumstances or other people’s actions.
• Emotional Manipulation: Crying or acting upset, to prompt a supportive response and divert attention from their own behavior.
• Evoking Guilt: Making people feel guilty for their supposed suffering, disposing them to behave more favorably towards the narcissist.
• Distraction from Real Issues: Eliciting pity to divert attention from real issues or their own wrongdoings. Shifts the focus onto themselves and away from their actions.
• Justifying Unacceptable Behavior: Using victim status to justify their hurtful or abusive behaviors, arguing that they were ‘driven’ to such actions due to their own suffering.
• Gaining Control and Power: By portraying themselves as weak or vulnerable, narcissists manipulate others into giving them more control, power, or sympathy and favor in the social milieu to “even things out”.

Scapegoating

Scapegoating is a social and psychological phenomenon where blame is placed on an individual or group for problems that are not their responsibility. This term is derived from the practice in ancient societies where a goat (the “scapegoat”) was symbolically burdened with the sins of the community and then driven into the wilderness, symbolically carrying away the guilt and sin.

In modern contexts, scapegoating can occur in various scenarios such as:

• In families, where one member is systematically blamed for family troubles.
• In workplaces, where an employee might be singled out for the failure of a project or workplace dynamics.
• In politics, where a leader blames a particular demographic or foreign power for economic or social problems.

Narcissists very frequently are the ones orchestrating the scapegoating in groups. It serves to deflect blame and project their own shortcomings or failures onto others, allowing them to maintain their self-image and avoid responsibility.

In groups led by narcissists, families, workplaces, or “frenemy” groups, scapegoating is likely because somebody is inevitably going to get thrown under the bus when there is tension in the system or the narcissist.

Here’s how narcissists use scapegoating:

• Diversion of Blame: Divert their mistakes, shortcomings, or failures onto the scapegoat, insisting that it’s not their fault but the scapegoat’s.
• Retaining Control: Creation of a narrative in which they are the victim, and the scapegoat is the perpetrator. Gives them leverage over onlookers due to their supposed “victim status”.

The impact on the scapegoat can be very severe and long-lasting:

• Loss of Self-Esteem: Constantly being blamed lowers the scapegoat’s perception of their own worth and abilities.
• Confusion and Self-Doubt: The gaslighting that scapegoating entails causes the scapegoat to doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity. This results in self-objectification and a near-complete loss of subjectivity.
• Isolation: When the narcissists manipulate everyone around the scapegoat to believe their terrible narrative regarding the scapegoat, who can they turn to?
• CPTSD: The persistent negativity directed towards the scapegoat is severely traumatizing, potentially leading to all sorts of mental health issues, including shame, emotional regulation, and relationship difficulties.

Social Isolation

A common tactic used by narcissists.

Why do they do this?

1. Control: Isolating someone from their friends, family, and social networks makes them more dependent on the narcissist and less likely to leave. Remember, narcissists desperately need a host for their unwanted parts of themselves.
2. Creating Dependency: By isolating their victims from others, narcissists can make them more dependent on them for emotional support, strengthening their one-up position in the power dynamic.
3. Insecurity: Narcissists often feel threatened by their partner’s other relationships. They may fear others will see through their facade, or that their partner will leave.
4. Gaslighting: Narcissists isolate so that the people they gaslight don’t have others in their lives to validate their own point of view, which would stand in opposition to the confusing lies of gaslighting.
5. Maintain Their Image: By isolating their victims, they can more effectively control the narrative in their intimate relationship about who they are.

How Narcissists Use Social Isolation

1. Discrediting Others: Make their victims believe that their friends and family are bad influences, don’t care about them, or are jealous of them.
2. Controlling Communication: Monitor or control their victim’s communication with people to limit or control their interactions.
3. Punishment: If their victim does connect with others, narcissists may punish them through emotional abuse, silent treatment, guilt, fear, etc..
4. Moving Frequently: Narcissists may move victims away from their support networks or keep them in constant motion to increase their isolation.

Smearing / Smear Campaign

A smear campaign is a deliberate assault on somebody’s reputation by the dissemination of false, misleading, or harmful information regarding them. This tactic can be used in various situations, such as politics, business, or personal relationships.

The main goal of a smear campaign is to discredit the target in the eyes of others. This is achieved by creating doubt, spreading rumors, or sharing negative information (whether true, partially true, or outright false) about the individual.

Smears can be as subtle and undetectable as innuendo, or hinting at things about the target, or gossiping about embarrassing information that should be protected as private, framed as concern, worry, or sympathy.

Narcissists have no qualms about publicizing the skeletons in your closet, they don’t respect others’ privacy. They may bring up your old struggles in a way that makes it appear that they are relevant today. Or, maybe they’ll even gossip about them as if they’re so happy that you overcame them; what an achievement for you – considering how awful a skeleton it “is”.

People see through these types quicker than they realize.

It may also be flat-out lies. The end result is to poison public opinion against the victim. Narcissists are masters of propaganda, and they need to discredit you to devalue you or discard you.

Smear campaigns can hurt you badly. Narcissistically abusive spouses have no problem getting orders of protection against their partners with pure lies, which greatly affects child custody issues. Document and protect yourself.

The target experiences smears as gaslighting at scale – coming from all around them – everybody is accusing them of doing things they didn’t do, or treating them like somebody they are not.

Narcissists conduct smear campaigns to cover up their own traits and behavior, shift blame, and create distractions to avoid accountability.

1. Control: Narcissists attempt to control how others perceive them and their victims. Smear campaigns manipulate the opinions and feelings of others in their favor.
2. Diversion: Smears are a distraction from the narcissist’s own shortcomings. By creating a commotion around someone else, they avoid scrutiny and keep they public focus off their misbehavior.
3. Revenge: Smear campaigns allow them to hurt people they think have wronged them.
4. Validation: Discrediting others gives narcissists a sense of superiority and validation. They may feel better about themselves when they damage another’s reputation.
5. Protection of Image: If a narcissist has a rival, or thinks somebody may expose them in a negative light, they may pre-emptively protect themselves by smearing that person.

Parental Alienation

Narcissists sometimes psychologically manipulate their children to become estranged from their other parent. Their goal is to undermine and interfere with the child’s relationship with their other parent.

Why do they do this?

• Control: Narcissists often have a high need for control, and this can extend to their relationships with their children. They may use parental alienation as a way to maintain control over the child and the family dynamics.
• Revenge: Parental Alienation is used as a form of revenge against the other parent. Feeling they have been wronged in some way by the other parent, they use alienation as a way to ‘get back’ at them.
• Insecurity: Narcissists are deeply insecure at the core, and fear losing their child’s affection to the other parent. By alienating the child from the other parent, they secure their favored position in the children’s eyes.
• Projection: They project their own negative feelings or actions onto the other parent, convincing the child that the other parent is the ‘bad’ one. This unconsciously helps them avoid taking responsibility.

Parental Alienation is a form of emotional abuse that can have serious, long-term effects on children. Get professional help if you believe Parental Alienation is occurring.

Shunning

The narcissist deliberately avoids recognizing you

• Ignoring your presence or existence
• Not speaking to you or acknowledging you communications
• Excluding you from social activities
• Not making eye contact, only indirectly interacting with you

Shunning is punishment and social control, and has very significant negative psychological effects. It’s a form of bullying.

If you go no contact, the narcissist will probably accuse you of shunning them or giving them the silent treatment. But you’ve probably made a good faith effort a hundred times over to clear the air, only to be accused just like this. So don’t take it seriously.

Silent Treatment

A form of shunning

• Punishment: For perceived slights or disagreements with their point of view. A way to inflict pain without resorting to physical harm.
• Control: Victims feel compelled to resolve the issue, giving the narcissist control over the situation.
• Avoidance: When the situation requires them to admit fault or engage in a difficult conversation, they may opt for silence.
• Validation Seeking: When victims apologize or seek approval to end the silence, this is a narcissistic supply and feeds the narcissist’s need for constant validation.

Ostracism

The ultimate shunning – expulsion from a social circle – excommunication from a group.

Historically & evolutionarily, this has always meant death to humans and it still feels like death emotionally. Thankfully, you can find another group that will accept you these days, it’s not your tribe or death.

However, ostracism can still result in severe loneliness, depression, fear, and low self-esteem in the ostracized individuals.

• Power Play: By excluding someone from social or professional circles, they reinforce their control and superiority.
• Punishment: For those who challenge or criticize the narcissist.
• Control of Narrative: By ostracizing someone, narcissists can control the narrative about that person. They spread rumors or false information to justify their actions, further alienating the person.
• Manipulation: Fear of ostracism makes people more compliant with the narcissist’s wishes.
• Self-Protection: Narcissists often have a deep-seated fear of rejection. Ostracizing others is a self-protective pre-emptive first strike.

Divide and Conquer

This is a strategy used to isolate and control individuals or groups by making sure they don’t act as a group – making individuals easier to manipulate. Narcissists do this to exert dominance by creating an environment of competition, mistrust, and isolation.

Occurs in families, friendships, and workplaces, where the narcissist stirs up hostility or sows seeds of doubt and division between people. Lots of siblings get alienated from each other this way.

Division keeps people isolated from potential sources of support, as they don’t trust potential friends and allies – victims don’t see others as resources, they see them as threats. The divided victims feel alone, which gives the narcissist further manipulation and control capability.

Flying Monkeys

A reference to the Wicked Witch’s minions in “The Wizard of Oz”, Flying Monkeys act as agents of the narcissist and do their bidding without much reflection.

They are often unsuspecting and believe the narcissist’s false narratives, aiding and abetting the manipulation and victimization of the target. However, they may be narcissists themselves and have malice toward you.

• Unwitting Participants: Often not fully aware that they are being used as tools. May believe they are helping the narcissist or protecting them from unjust treatment.
• Manipulation: Narcissists have manipulated flying monkeys to do their bidding. Guilt trips, feigned victimhood, threats and intimidation, or any number of manipulative tactics.
• Enforcement of the Narcissist’s Narrative: Flying monkeys enforce the narcissist’s narrative. If the narcissist is playing the victim, flying monkeys may blame or shun the true victim.
• Victim Isolation: Rallying others against the victim, the narcissist uses flying monkeys to isolate them in order to cut off possible sources of social support.

Understand these people are not your allies when navigating narcissistic abuse. They might not have any actual malice towards you, but are under the influence of the narcissist, and will parrot their messages, acting as extensions of them.

Survivors have few, if any, obligations to flying monkeys. None if they have abused you or smeared you.

General Narcissistic Abuse Terms

Abandonment (Fear of)

A central theme in narcissistic abuse – if our parents weren’t really there for us at a young age, we may be deeply driven by a fear of abandonment.

• Fear of abandonment: Narcissists are themselves driven by a deep fear of abandonment and rejection. They react with rage or cold indifference when they perceive slights or threats. Their fear also drives them to control their partners – in order to prevent being left.
• Threats of abandonment: Narcissists employ overt or subtle threats of abandonment to cause compliance with their wishes. They might threaten to leave or cut off support.
• Abandonment through neglect: Narcissists “abandon” their partners without leaving. They neglect your needs, disregard your feelings, and focus on their own desires.
• Actual abandonment: When you’re not giving them sufficient narcissistic supply, or they decide they need more, or you begin confronting them, they may actually abandon you, sometimes with no explanation. This sudden discard is extremely traumatic.

Abuse Amnesia

Victims of abuse tend to forget or suppress memories of the abuse to cope. Also, memories don’t form in an explicit, time-stamped, regular way if you are highly stressed during the abuse, which you probably were.

Instead, traumatic memories are stored in implicit memory, meaning they color your entire world-view and get triggered by reminders, which send you into emotional flashbacks – emotional tailspins.

This causes victims to stay in abusive relationships longer, and possibly to go back to them.

Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)

NPD and ASPD both involve callousness towards the feelings and rights of others.

However, ASPD involves more violations of societal norms and laws and behaviors that directly harm others, for the purpose of getting something out of it consciously. Narcissists may also be exploitative, but it’s motivated more by maintaining their inflated self-image. NPD and ASPD can overlap.

ASPD DSM criteria:

A. Pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
2. deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults
5. reckless disregard for the safety of self or others
6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

B. The individual is at least age 18 years.

C. There is evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years.

D. The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of schizophrenia or a manic episode.

On the other hand, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is characterized by a long-term pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive craving for admiration, and struggles with empathy. Key traits include:

• Grandiosity with expectations of superior treatment from others
• Fixated on fantasies of power, success, intelligence, attractiveness, etc.
• Self-perception of being unique, superior, and associated with high-status people and institutions
• Needing constant admiration from others
• Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others
• Exploitative of others to achieve personal gain
• Unwilling to empathize with others’ feelings, wishes, or needs
• Intensely jealous of others and the belief that others are equally jealous of them
• Pompous and arrogant demeanor

Boundaries

Boundaries are the physical, emotional, and mental limits we set to protect ourselves from being manipulated, used, or violated. They are essential to healthy relationships, allowing you to express, understand, and preserve your identity, needs, emotions & values.

Boundaries protect self-respect and personal integrity, warding off violations to our personhood. Our anger alerts us that our boundaries have been violated and gives us the energy to restore them.

Narcissists don’t respect and disregard boundaries. Lacking empathy, they justify overstepping their bounds and don’t consider the effects on others.

Callousness / Lack of Empathy

The narcissist’s entitlement and dismissive attitude towards others’ feelings is callousness. It stems from their self-absorption, and exclusive focus on their own needs, wants, and desires.

Emotional or affective empathy entails understanding and sharing the feelings of others and resonating with what the other is feeling. Narcissists don’t do this, especially if it’s a feeling involving vulnerability. They fail to show compassion or understanding when others are hurt or upset.

Narcissists are usually unaware of their lack of real empathy – they may simply lack the inherent ability to truly comprehend the emotional states of others.

However, narcissists may have cognitive empathy – they may intellectually understand the emotions of another person. But they don’t feel their pain. In fact, they may use their cognitive understanding of your emotions to manipulate you or to use your feelings (guilt and insecurity) against you.

Some narcissists have higher cognitive empathy than non-narcissists.

Codependency

Codependency is an ever-evolving and complex phenomenon where the codependent is dependent on focusing on the needs of another person, usually with people who are unreliable, emotionally unavailable, or needy.

Codependents are deficient in self-love and self-care, and they are generally out of touch with what they need and want for themselves. They develop a giving strategy so that they can focus on meeting others’ needs. This works for codependents because deep down, getting in touch with their own needs feels very threatening to them. All this occurs unconsciously for the most part.

Codependents enable others’ addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement. Which leads to guilt, resentment, and helplessness in the codependent. However, codependents do get something out of this arrangement – because the other person needs them, it’s unlikely that the codependent will be abandoned, which is a big fear for them.

Recovery for co-dependents means getting in touch with and meeting their own needs, gaining autonomy, developing healthy relationships, and creating their own self-esteem. It takes time and effort, but can be done.

Narcissists and codependents seem to attract each other. It can feel like the same movie with different actors, over and over, until the codependent heals and grows.

• Narcissists seek codependents: Narcissists often seek out codependent people because they easy targets for control. Their need for approval and fear of being alone make them perfect targets.
• Codependents enable narcissists: Codependents instinctively provide the admiration and narcissistic supply that narcissists crave. Because they are out of touch with their own needs, it’s natural to cater to the narcissist’s needs to avoid abandonment.
• Cycle of abuse: Narcissistic exacerbates codependency. Criticism and manipulation increase dependency and the need for validation, which they cannot provide themselves.

Codependents and narcissists often enter a vicious cycle where the codependent becomes increasingly dependent, and the narcissists more controlling and abusive.

Cluster B Personality Disorders

Cluster B’s share common traits of dramatic, unpredictable, and high-intensity emotions and behaviors, along with emotional dysregulation, impulsive and reckless behavior, and relationship difficulties, and identity distortions.

In my opinion, they all are manifestations of developmental trauma / CPTSD. Except perhaps pure psychopathy, a severe form of ASPD, which seems to have a genetic component. The distinguishing traits of CPTSD are:

• Emotional dysregulation
• Identity disturbances
• Relationship disturbances

With Cluster B personality disorders, these patterns are simply of a greater magnitude and more engrained as deeply rooted habits. (My opinion)

The 4 Cluster B Personality disorders are:

• Antisocial personality disorder
• Borderline personality disorder
• Histrionic personality disorder
• Narcissistic personality disorder

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance is mental discomfort or tension a person experiences when they hold two or more contradictory beliefs, values, or attitudes. Cognitive dissonance causes an inner conflict leading to restlessness, confusion, frustration, or even guilt and shame. We naturally strive for internal consistency, and try to reduce this dissonance to achieve balance and harmony.

Effects of Cognitive Dissonance:

• Stress and Anxiety: If your conflicting beliefs and behaviors are significant and the dissonance isn’t resolved, it can cause mental health problems.
• Decision Making: Cognitive Dissonance disturbs decision-making. Due to the conflict of opposing factors. Even after having made a decision, you may feel uneasy about the choice you didn’t make.
• Selective Perception: To avoid cognitive dissonance, you might reject information that contradicts your beliefs.
• Justification: To reduce dissonance about behavior that contradicts your values, you come up with a rationalization.
• Behavior Change: Cognitive dissonance can lead to behavior change if your current behavior does align with what you believe – making your behavior consistent with your beliefs reduces the dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is relevant to narcissistic abuse:

• Justifying Abusive Behavior: This resolves the dissonance between two conflicting beliefs: “This person loves me” and “This person is hurting me”.
• Idealization and Devaluation: The massive dissonance between the idealization phase and the devaluation/discard phases causes a huge amount of confusion, stress, and self-doubt.
• Reality Distortion: The distortions of reality via gaslighting cause cognitive dissonance as victims struggle to reconcile their own understanding of reality with the distorted version presented by the narcissist.
• Self-Blame: Dissonance between conflicting beliefs such as “I am a good person” and “I am the cause of this person’s cruel behavior”.
• Breaking Free: Once a victim starts recognizing the narcissistic abuse patterns and decides to break free, from a narcissistic abuser dissonance arises between the need to leave, the fear of losing the relationship, and/or facing the narcissist’s retaliation.
• Learning about narcissistic abuse: Once you start seeing what is truly going on, it’s hard to “unsee”.
  • On the one hand, you may experience increased cognitive dissonance because you know what you know, and you’re still in a relationship with the narcissist.
  • On the other hand, so many things that you could not formerly reconcile all make sense now, which can massively reduce your overall cognitive dissonance.

Recognizing the stress induced by all this dissonance helps victims make sense of their experiences and move toward recovery.

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD)

C-PTSD develops in response to prolonged, repeated relational trauma often occurring in childhood, early adulthood or intimate relationships. The main themes are fear, shame and shutdown.

Key characteristics of C-PTSD can include:

• Flashbacks or intrusive memories
• Severe emotional reactions to triggers that are reminiscent of the trauma
• Persistent sadness, anger, fear, or shame
• Feeling detached or disconnected from others
• Difficulty controlling emotions
• Problems with relationships and trusting
• Distorted perceptions of the perpetrator or feeling more trapped than you are
• Disassociation, feeling detached from your body and emotions
• Negative self-perception, toxic shame & feeling like you deserved or caused the trauma

Dissociation

Dissociation occurs when certain thoughts, emotions, sensations, or memories become disconnected from the rest of the psyche. You check out from the real world when something too overwhelming is happening.

It is usually a defense against overwhelming stress or trauma – those parts were so overwhelming at some point in the past that your system could not handle being aware of them. So, we exile them into our unconscious, becoming somewhat fragmented as we do.

In the short term, dissociation is very adaptive; it helps your conscious mind to not be aware of something too painful or overwhelming to experience. Later on, without proper treatment, it generally causes problems as the dissociated aspects wreak havoc since they are not under conscious control.

In severe forms, dissociation manifests as Dissociative Identity Disorder ( DID, formerly multiple personality disorder). People with DID were usually highly traumatized as children.

Common forms of dissociation:

• Daydreaming or getting lost in thoughts / checking out
• Losing track of time
• Forgetting information
• Feeling detached from your body (depersonalization)
• Experiencing the world as unreal/dreamlike (derealization)

Narcissists employ a form of dissociation, where they have dissociated aspects of their true selves, namely their vulnerabilities and dependency needs.

Essentially, what is dissociated in narcissists is their vulnerable genuine self, replaced by the invulnerable, inflated false self-image. It defends them against their dissociated feelings of vulnerability, inadequacy, or worthlessness – which were too overwhelmingly traumatic for them to integrate during childhood.

Long-term narcissistic abuse causes dissociation in victims:

• Escaping Reality: Narcissistic abuse is severely distressing. To cope, victims may dissociate to escape an overwhelmingly harsh reality
• Response to Gaslighting: Dissociation might be a good short-term escape from this, as victims retreat into their own minds to protect their sense of reality.
• CPTSD: Long-term narcissistic abuse causes CPTSD, which is often characterized by dissociation

Dissociation is a natural coping mechanism, but not an optimal long-term solution. Trauma-informed treatment can provide effective strategies for gradually becoming whole by integrating dissociated aspects of the self.

Drama Triangle

The Drama Triangle is a spin-off of transactional analysis, developed by Stephen Karpman. It maps destructive interactions during conflict. There are three roles in the Triangle:

• One-up Roles:
  • Persecutor: The person who antagonizes others or the situation. The bully.
  • Rescuer: The person who takes responsibility for the victim’s problems and saves the victim from the bully
• One-down Role:
  • Victim: The person who feels victimized, oppressed or helpless.

These roles are not static and people can switch roles over time, or even during a single dramatic episode.

Narcissists frequently occupy the persecutor role, manipulating others into the victim or rescuer roles.

They may create situations that appear to position themselves as the victim to gain sympathy and control. This may be termed a “perpetrator masquerading as a victim”, or “offending from the victim position”.

Narcissists may also act as rescuers, but their motive and the end result is creating dependency in the victim upon the narcissist.

Here’s how these roles play out in narcissistic abuse:

• As Persecutors, narcissists maintain control and power through the use of emotional blackmail, demeaning others, exploiting their weaknesses, or creating conflict. Gaslighting and blame-shifting keeps victims confused and off-balance.
• As Rescuers, narcissists tend to make others dependent on them. They destabilize victims and create situations where victims need help or intervention, reinforcing their perceived invulnerability, superiority and control.
• Positioning themselves as Victims, narcissists manipulate empathetic individuals into “rescuing” them from the actual victim. They create narratives in their social circles about their persecution, suffering & hardship to gain sympathy, support, and control over the real victim. Rescuers feel obligated to help them, but they are just enabling them, and it usually comes at their own expense.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, resonating with where people are coming from. It involves being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and see situations from their perspective, and sharing their emotions a bit also. Emotional intelligence and healthy relationships depend on real empathy.

Narcissists lack real empathy. Another way of saying this is that they are callous.

Here’s how empathy relates to narcissistic abuse:

• Harming others: Since narcissists can’t feel your pain, it makes them more likely to harm you.
• Manipulation of Empathy: Narcissists may have cognitive empathy; be intellectually aware of your feelings- in fact they may exploit your feelings and even your own empathy. They may also exploit other people’s empathy by positioning themselves as your victim.
• Emotional Impact: The absence of empathy in your life causes emotional harm. Leaving you feeling misunderstood, invalidated, and alone.
• The Role of Empathy in the Healing Process: Empathy from others is essential in healing from narcissistic abuse.
  • Understanding, validation, and support from others is a disconfirming experience of all the messages you received while being narcissistically abused.
  • It reconnects you to others in a healthy way, and a single intimate good enough relationship with a significant other can serve as a template that generalizes to all of your relationships. 
    • This is where coaching, therapy, or even a healthy significant other can be crucial to healing.

Empathy plays a central role in narcissistic abuse and in its resolution.

Enablers

Enablers knowingly or unknowingly allow narcissists to continue their abuse. They avoid confronting the narcissist’s harmful actions due to fear, denial, or misguided love. The non-narcissistic parent typically enables the narcissistic one.

• Avoidance of conflict: Enablers avoid confrontations with narcissists, allowing abuse to go unchecked.
• Denial: Enablers refuse to acknowledge that the narcissist’s behavior is abusive. They rationalize their behavior or minimize the impact of their actions.
• Responsibility taking: Enablers often take on the responsibility for the narcissist’s actions. They blame themselves for the narcissist’s behavior or make excuses for them.
• Support: Enablers support the narcissist’s manipulative tactics by giving them emotional, financial, or other support.
• Silence: Enablers passively support narcissists’ abusive actions simply by remaining silent.

If somebody is enabling narcissistic abuse, they are getting something out of it, even if it is simply safety from the narcissist’s wrath turning on them. Be very wary of depending on enablers to support you; find somebody else.

Entitlement

It is not enough for a narcissist’s grandiosity (over-inflated self-concept) to exist only in their own mind. Their grandiosity craves external reinforcement.

And so narcissists feel entitled to expect and demand that others agree with their grandiose self-image and support it.

• Special Treatment: Narcissists feel entitled to special treatment or privileges that they believe match their perceived higher status.
• One-Way Street: Narcissists feel entitled to time, attention, and resources from others without considering the other person’s needs or feelings.
• Manipulative Behaviors: because a narcissist’s sense of entitlement might be so strong, they may feel free to use guilt, coercion, or manipulation to get what they believe they are entitled to.

A recent experience comes to mind. I was walking my dog, and a young woman was walking a dog on leash, and another big dog was near her – off leash. I asked “Do you know whose dog that is?” She breezily replied “Mine.” Her dog came over to mine, attacked it (my dog ended up getting the better of it I think), leaving my dog with a cut on her snout. I said “You can’t do that.” Without missing a beat, she turned up her nose and instinctively replied “We’re doing it.” and walked away. That’s entitlement.

Healthy Entitlement

This is often lacking in victims of narcissistic abuse with CPTSD, and needs to be restored or built for the first time. It is the sense that you have the right to your own feelings, thoughts, and needs.

• Respect for Personal Boundaries: Understanding and respecting personal boundaries. Feeling your right to have your own space, time, and energy, and respecting others’ rights to the same.
• Self-Worth: Healthy entitlement is rooted in a secure sense of self-worth. Believing you deserve to be treated with kindness, respect, and fairness, just like everyone else.
• Self-Advocacy: Advocating for your needs and rights. Standing up for yourself without infringing upon others’ rights.
• Humility and Empathy: While feeling and asserting your own needs and rights, you also feel empathy for others. The awareness that everyone has needs and rights, not believing yours are more important than anyone else’s.
  • Balance: Between your own rights and desires and everyone else’s. Expecting fair treatment from others and giving them the same.

Healthy entitlement is about self-respect, mutual respect in relationships, and overall mental well-being.

False Self

The term “False Self” is often used in psychology to refer to a type of defense mechanism where an individual presents a version of themselves that is different from their true self & real feelings.

Lots of people present a curated version of themselves to others, and this does not mean they are narcissists. It’s not always prudent to tell people the noise that’s going on in your when when they ask “How are you?” at work. Or, it’s not always safe to disclose your deepest vulnerabilities to a narcissist when they inquire about them.

People who were not accepted as children for who they were, or who were otherwise traumatized, are more likely to have a stronger false self. It doesn’t mean you’re a narcissist. Hopefully, you’re somewhat aware of the difference between the real you and the persona you’re putting out there to get by in the world.

Narcissists might be completely unconscious of their real feelings, and their real selves, and they may strongly believe that they are their false selves.

The false self could be much more confident, successful, smarter, compassionate, attractive, etc. – depending on what the person believes is what they’re supposed to be. This is closely related to narcissism:

• Insecurity and vulnerability: Ultimately, the false self is a shield against feelings of insecurity and vulnerability. Narcissists run at full speed from their true selves, which contain deep-seated feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, Instead, they use the false self as a denial mechanism.
• Idealized self-image: Narcissists are strongly identified with an inflated image of themselves that is grandiose, powerful, and superior.
• Need for validation: Narcissists require constant validation of their idealized self-image from others. This is driven by a need for external validation rather than internal self-acceptance.
• Lack of authenticity: Narcissists struggle with authenticity. Hiding their true feelings or beliefs in order to maintain their façade ultimately causes feelings of emptiness or dissatisfaction.
• Manipulative behaviors: In order to procure validation for the false self, narcissists manipulate. Lying, gaslighting, exploitation, etc.

Not everybody who presents a false self is a narcissist. If your parents didn’t value and make it safe for the real you, you’ll struggle with feeling safe being the real you to others. Really, it’s the same with narcissists as well. However, narcissists consciously identify with their false selves very strongly and with a lack of awareness that they are doing so.

Some narcissists can sell their false selves quite effectively to the world at large, self-confidence on its own can inspire confidence in others … for a time.

Family Scapegoat

In families where one or more parents exhibit narcissistic behaviors, the family scapegoat is the child who is targeted and blamed for the entire family’s problems and dysfunctions, often bearing the brunt of criticism, judgment, and negativity.

The scapegoat often refuses to look favorably upon the family’s dysfunctional behavior. This child may be sensitive, empathetic, and/or a truth-teller, making them an easy and likely target to absorb the blame for the family’s issues.

Narcissistic parents are frequently so unaccountable for themselves and their behavior that they maintain into old age that they were victims of their own children. Going back to when they were young, which ultimately doesn’t hold up.

Being the family scapegoat can have profound and long-lasting effects, including:

• Mental health issues: The scapegoat may be more prone to depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other mental health issues as a result of the emotional abuse they’ve endured.
• Identity struggles: The scapegoat may have difficulty developing a strong sense of self or personal identity due to being constantly defined by their role within the family.
• Low self-esteem: Repeated criticism and blame erode the scapegoat’s self-image, leading to poor self-concept and feelings of unworthiness.
• Chronic guilt and shame: The scapegoat often carries a sense of guilt and shame that is entirely out of proportion to their actual behavior or worth.
• Difficulties in relationships: Scapegoats may struggle with trust issues and developing healthy relationships due to their experiences.
• Struggles with self-actualization: They may have difficulties in realizing their full potential, or in pursuing their own goals and interests.
  • This is because they have internalized their families’ message that these things are essentially worthless, or even “bad”.

The above symptoms just about perfectly describe complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). Family scapegoats can have a bad case.

These are not insurmountable challenges. With professional help, support, and self-care strategies, it is entirely possible for family scapegoats to heal, and they have every incentive to do so. Coming to terms with who they really are is a major upgrade from the grooming lies they were conditioned to believe.

Family scapegoats frequently end up being the healthiest members of their dysfunctional families, whom they often limit contact with.

Golden Child

Narcissistic parents don’t appreciate the individuality and subjectivity of their children – for all intents and purposes, they see them as extensions of themselves, as objects. They define who their children are in their minds without much feedback from who the child actually is. It’s all family mythology.

Often one child is chosen to represent aspects of the narcissistic parent(s)’ grandiose and inflated false self. This is the Golden Child. It is a form of positive projective identification, the narcissistic parent(s) projecting their grandiose self-image upon this child.

The “Golden Child” is treated as much less “wrong” than their siblings, and is seen as a chip off the ole’ block (in a good way) by the narcissistic parent(s). This child is often lavished with praise and attention & given preferential treatment over their siblings.

It seems like a sweet gig compared to the scapegoat role, and it probably is in the short run. They are treated as “better than” and usually grow up thinking they are just that (on a conscious level). Mere self-confidence can get them far in many ways. However, the role comes with its own set of challenges.

• Since they are seen as an extension of the narcissistic parent’s false self, they are fundamentally “missed”, and their authentic selves are betrayed by the parent.
  • They may introject the parent(s)’ own values and ambitions, and mistake them for their own, losing themselves.
• Since the Golden Child has received a lot of positive reinforcement and love from their parents for living out a false self, they may strongly identify with their false self.
  • So, they can become narcissists themselves.
• The Golden Child ultimately has received conditional love, and can feel under immense pressure to live up to unrealistic expectations – and they may be harshly criticized for any perceived failure.
• Having a favored Golden Child sibling creates significant imbalance and dysfunction within the family unit.
  • It fosters competition, resentment, and division between siblings.
    • Think of Joseph and his brothers in the Bible.
    • His brothers were understandably not happy about his favorite status.
• The other children in the family may be cast into roles such as the scapegoat (blamed for everything wrong in the family) or the lost child (ignored or neglected), further exacerbating the family dysfunction.
• Ultimately all children are negatively affected with issues with self-esteem, difficulties in relationships, and struggles with identity and self-worth.

Roles can sometimes shift over time, as the family structure changes, or as the parent(s)’ moods change.

Grandiosity

A core characteristic of narcissism:

• Exaggerated Self-importance: An inflated sense of self-importance. Believing they are “special”, superior to others, have unique abilities or qualities, or are entitled to special treatment.
  • With communal / “altruistic” narcissists, this can be very difficult to spot
  • It presents as a self-sacrificing, concerned, compassionate martyr mask that ultimately proves to be false.
• Fantasies of Success and Power: Fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. Believing they are destined for greatness and/or deserve recognition beyond any visible achievements.
• Need for Admiration: Needing constant admiration and validation to reinforce their own grandiosity. Craving attention, feeling threatened or slighted when they don’t get it.

It should be noted that normal children and adolescents can be quite imaginative and grandiose as their developing sense of self wants to spread its wings and fly. As long as parents support their healthy self-esteem, this probably is not an indication of narcissism. They’re just being kids.

Grooming

Grooming is the process during which an abuser utilizes to identify a vulnerable victim, build a bond with them, and then exploits the relationship for their own gain. The primary objectives are:

• To extract what the abuser desires from the relationship
• To ensure the victim remains compliant and silent
  • Usually via shaming the victim

Grooming attempts to shift blame from the abuser to the victim. This way the abuser offloads their sense of guilt and shame onto the victim, lightening their own emotional load … any abuse is justified because you deserved it, right? Wrong.

This is fantastically easy for narcissistic parents – making the child believe the abuse is their fault. This fuels the child’s sense of shame (“If only I were better, this would stop”).

It also prevents the child from speaking out about it. It’s cunning, calculated, and manipulative, and allows the abuser to stay undetected while keeping the child imprisoned in their own shame and guilt.

Abusers leverage elements such as bonding, family mythology/narratives, enablers, gift-giving, favoritism, and authority to groom their victims.

Grooming is often considered the most destructive aspect of abuse, especially child abuse.

• What usually torments survivors of abuse the most are the beliefs about themselves that they were manipulated into believing.

Key aspects of grooming:

• Often starts from birth to ensure children are conditioned to accept abuse and uphold family narratives. Parents can have resentments or expectations about their kids while they’re still in the womb.
• Family norms and appropriated external systems (religion, culture, gender stereotypes) are brought in to reinforce beliefs instilled during grooming.
• Enablers and/or other exploited family members can also reinforce/parrot the grooming lies (as a survival mechanism).
• Covert grooming is a hidden form of self-perception coercion. The narcissistic parent subtly, almost invisibly, influences the child’s beliefs about themself.
• Covert grooming can be much more harmful than overt grooming because it creates so much confusion, dysregulation, and cognitive dissonance for victims, especially children. Here’s how it unfolds:
  • Creating Dependence: The narcissistic parent makes the child feel like they are incapable of functioning without the parent’s guidance or protection.
  • Isolation: The narcissistic isolates the child from other family members or friends, perhaps via a subtle or not-so-subtle smear campaign. Now they can control and influence the child without interference.
  • Gaslighting: The narcissistic parent questions and undermines the child’s perceptions of reality, causing the child to doubt their own experiences and feelings.
  • Love Bombing: The narcissistic parent showers the child with excessive affection and praise only to manipulate them later, or later uses the vulnerabilities that the child disclosed against the child.
  • Triangulation: The narcissistic parent gets a third person into their relationship with the child, usually to further isolate, control, intimidate or manipulate the child.
  • Gossip: Ignoring the child’s privacy needs, narcissistic parents spread knowledge of their child’s misdeeds, vulnerabilities far and wide, perhaps “needing a shoulder to gossip on” because “they’re so concerned”.
    • Now everybody around the child is looking at them like there’s something wrong with them.
  • Scapegoating: Indirectly blaming the child for the family’s problems through innuendo, sarcasm or mockery. This can lead to feelings of guilt and low self-esteem in the child.

Identity Erosion

Our ideas about who we are is important. Identity erosion is a gradual wearing away and As per Daniel Shaw’s work, relationally speaking, narcissists demand dominance of subjectivity (they are the subject having an experience, you are an object that is either useful or frustrating).

Here’s why it’s significant:

• Loss of Self: The victim begins to lose their sense of self as the narcissist imposes their ideas, beliefs, and values onto them, objectifying the victim instead of recognizing their subjectivity. Causes confusion, disorientation, and a lack of personal identity.
• Dependence on Abuser: As the victim’s self-worth erodes, they become even more reliant on the narcissist for validation and approval. A toxic cycle results where the victim feels the need to please the narcissist, which in turn gives the narcissist more control.
• Isolation: Victims distance themselves from friends and family as the narcissist convinces them that these relationships are harmful or unnecessary. This prevents them from getting accurate and positive feedback about who they are and it makes it harder to leave.
• Difficulty in Recovery: The erosion of identity and loss of subjectivity may make the victim feel lost, empty, or unsure of who they are without their abuser. This can lead to a prolonged period of recovery and healing.

Loss of Subjectivity

As per Daniel Shaw’s work, relationally speaking, narcissists demand dominance of subjectivity (they are the subject having an experience, you are an object that is either useful or frustrating). You may not have an experience that threatens them.

The way they feel and the way they see things is the way it is, my way or the highway. They perceive your divergent point of view as a threat that they feel entitled to eliminate.

• So they subjugate you, and you go unrecognized and negated, objectified by the narcissist.
• You are punished (and unrecognized) for your efforts to assert your subjectivity, rather than being loved for who you are.

Children of narcissists who don’t become narcissists themselves self-objectify from an early age, never being recognized and never being able to be a subject, which is heartbreaking and traumatizing:

“[T]he greatest need of a child is to obtain conclusive assurance (a) that he is genuinely loved as a person by his parents, and (b) that his parents genuinely accept his love. It is only in so far as such assurance is forthcoming in a form sufficiently convincing to enable him to depend safely upon his real objects that he is able gradually to renounce infantile dependence without misgiving … Frustration of his desire to be loved as a person and to have his love accepted is the greatest trauma that a child can experience”

~ Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1952). Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality. London: Tavistock Publications Ltd pp 39-40

Narcissistic Collapse

When a narcissist has been unable to meet their desired goals, receive admiration from others, or face a harsh reality that unavoidably contradicts their grandiose self-perception, they may experience a significant downfall or “collapse” in their mental and emotional state.

• Identity Crisis: Narcissists often base their identity on the admiration and approval of others. When this fails, they may feel very lost, confused, and unsure of their self-worth.
• Extreme Emotions: Excessive anger, depression, anxiety, or erratic behavior. This happens because the usual defense mechanisms have failed.
• Victim Mentality: In this state, narcissists may portray themselves as victims. They may blame others and avoid taking responsibility for their actions.

Narcissistic Collapse is a severe and painful state. It usually requires professional support to manage. It could conceivably serve as the beginning of meaningful change for the narcissist if they are willing to do the work. More likely, it will be a bump in the road that lasts only until they re-establish their defenses.

Narcissistic Injury

There are two senses to this term; injuries to a child’s developing and fragile sense of self-worth (injuries to their healthy developmentally necessary “narcissism”/self-esteem) from a parent, and injuries to a narcissistic person’s shaky grandiosity.

Narcissistic Injuries to Children

The emotional trauma and distress suffered by a child due to the actions or behaviors of a narcissistic parent or caregiver. These injuries can be due to the following, and more:

• Chronic Misattunement and/or Neglect: Narcissistic parents are so focused on their own needs and desires that they fail to tune into who their kids actually are, and what they need.
• Manipulation: Narcissistic parents can manipulate their own children for personal benefit. This causes considerable emotional distress for the child.
• Criticism: Constant, harsh criticism from a narcissistic parent causes feelings of worthlessness and low self-esteem in their kids.
• Idealization and Devaluation: Narcissistic parents may swing between idealizing their children (when they meet the parent’s needs) and devaluing them (when they do not). This causes insecurity, confusion, low self-esteem, and massive cognitive dissonance.
• Lack of Empathy: Kids need to feel that they are loved and supported in a convincing way. Narcissistic parents simply can’t do this and kids know it on a subconscious level.

Narcissistic injuries to children can cause lifelong issues with depression, anxiety, and difficulties with relationships and self-esteem, which typically require a conscious effort and the support of safe others to undo.

It is useful to know that most therapists became therapists in order to consciously overcome or subconsciously undo their own narcissistic injuries.

• It is important for your therapist or coach to be consciously aware of their own narcissistic injuries, the subject of narcissism, and how all of this pertains to themselves.
• Otherwise, it can manifest itself in all kinds of unhelpful ways for you as you inevitably trigger their securities during the course of therapy or coaching.

Narcissistic Injuries to Adult Narcissists:

A narcissist’s fragile self-esteem is vulnerable to the slightest criticism. A narcissistic injury can be caused by any perceived threat or criticism that a narcissistic person encounters from another. You might simply disagree with them or say no.

Narcissistic injuries occur when their grandiose, inflated self-image gets exposed as fake.

This typically causes them to react with extreme anger, belittlement, or diminishment of the person who caused it, or cool, defiant, calculated counterattacks. They’re convinced you deserve it.

• Nobody likes having their weaknesses, flaws, and insecurities exposed or called out, it’s not pleasant.
• But hopefully, we can own our limitations, mistakes, etc., and not snap too much when they’re brought to light.
  • And if we do get offended and snap at somebody, most of us can own that too and apologize.

Usually, people call out our flaws and misdeeds to light because we have negatively affected them

• If we’re mature and have empathy, we’ll have authentic guilt if our actions have harmed somebody
• We’ll feel bad about the effect our actions had on another – we’ll feel bad for their suffering.
• We’ll care about them and their experience.

However, those with NPD tend to have no authentic guilt, and a very low threshold for criticism.

Complaints about how they are affecting other people become all about them. They can react quite callously to slights, typically with no self-awareness afterward, much less remorse and apologies for overreactions.

And a genuine apology, or reparations for hurting you? The lack of these is a hallmark of narcissistically abusive relationships.

Narcissistic Supply

One of the things narcissists feel entitled to from others is that they supply their inflated self-concept with reinforcement.

Narcissistic supply, then, is the attention, praise, admiration, or even fear and contempt, that narcissists crave from others.

• Excessive Demand for Attention: Narcissists may feel entitled to constantly be the center of attention and admiration, regardless of the situation.
• Validation of Superiority: Narcissistic supply validates their superiority over others. The attention or admiration “proves” it.
• Control: Because they feel entitled to a constant supply of attention and admiration with no criticism or complaints, narcissists may have few qualms about manipulating people into giving them narcissistic supply. Guilt-tripping, gaslighting, or playing the victim can all keep the supply flowing.
• Negative Attention: Sometimes narcissists want negative attention because it serves as narcissistic supply. How dare you ignore them.
  • Validation of Existence: Negative attention confirms that they exist and matter. It affirms that they matter enough to provoke a reaction.
  • Control: They may feel a sense of control or power in these situations because they’ve affected you deeply.
  • Superiority: Provoking you means they’re superior to you; important enough to cause a negative reaction.
  • Drama: negative attention creates the drama upon which narcissists thrive, and keeps them at the center of things.

Narcissistic Rage

Coined by Heinz Kohut in 1972, “narcissistic rage” is an intense reaction to a perceived threat to a narcissist’s self-esteem or self-worth. Criticism, complaints, or “defiance” of the narcissist may all trigger it. Even having a different opinion than them can trigger it sometimes.

Narcissists (somewhat unconsciously) perceive these things as personal attacks or rejections.

Key points:

• The intensity of the rage is disproportionate to the perceived slight or threat.
  • That’s because it’s not really about the “provocation”, but about protecting the inflated self-image at all costs.
• Narcissistic rage differs from normal anger in that it is far more pervasive.
  • It tends to linger, leading to prolonged resentment and even revenge fantasies.
  • Normal anger is a response to a specific incident and subsides once the issue is resolved.
• Explosive versus passive-aggressive:
  • The explosive form is overt and may include verbal outbursts, or even violent behavior.
  • The passive-aggressive form is covert – think neglect, gaslighting, emotional manipulation, or silent treatment.

No Contact Rule

A self-protective strategy – cutting off all forms of communication and interaction with the narcissistic individual. Often advised by therapists and counselors (if realistically possible) for victims of narcissistic abuse. It’s not always possible or the best strategy.

Why No Contact

• It allows the victim to begin healing: With no contact, you’re able to start the healing process.
  • With the narcissist out of your life, your nervous system can begin to calm down after being jerked around by a narcissist for years.
    • Even once they’re gone this takes a while.
    • Getting narcissists out of your life sends a very real signal of safety to your mind, brain, body, and soul.
• It breaks the cycle of abuse: Love-bombing (over-the-top displays of affection and attention) followed by periods of devaluation and discard creates an addictive cycle of abuse for the victim. No Contact breaks this cycle.
• It gives the victim control: The No Contact Rule enables victims to regain control over their lives and emotions. It’s an empowering step towards self-care and self-respect.
• It prevents further harm: By cutting off all contact, the victim prevents further emotional, psychological, or even physical harm from the narcissist.

Implementing No Contact feels foreign and can be a real cognitive and emotional challenge, especially if the narcissist is a family member or a long-term partner. It’s best to have strong support in place when implementing this rule.

Pathological Lying

Narcissism can sometimes lead to pathological lying; they can lie so often for the reasons below that it simply becomes second nature. They can get quite delusional even, believing their own lies.

• Self-aggrandizement: To exaggerate achievements or abilities in order to make themselves appear superior, creating elaborate falsehoods about their past, skills, or experiences to gain admiration and status.
• Manipulation: Using lies to manipulate others into behaving in ways that serve them. This can include lying about feelings, intentions, or past actions.
• Deflection and blame-shifting: When criticized or confronted, they may lie to deflect blame onto others and avoid responsibility. Also to create confusion and doubt, and to undermine the credibility of their critics.
• Control: By controlling the perceptions of others, they can maintain their perceived superiority and avoid feelings of vulnerability. Lying allows control of the narrative regarding themselves and their behavior.

Psychological Abuse

Also known as emotional abuse, psychological abuse involves attempting to frighten, control, or isolate an individual. Through words and actions, with persistence. Attempting to degrade, humiliate, or question the sanity of the victim.

• Humiliation or embarrassment
• Constant criticism, belittlement, or disparagement of character
• Ignoring or excluding the victim
• Controlling the victim
• Threats of harm or abandonment

Narcissistic Abuse

A variety of psychological abuse that is more characterized by manipulative, covert tactics that are more aimed at undermining the targets’ subjective experience and ability to orient themselves.

Chiefly involves preventing them from thinking and feeling for themselves – emotionally destabilizing them, undermining their self-confidence and self-esteem, and ultimately controlling them.

Gaslighting is the perfect example of this (though not the only one) because it manipulates the victim into constantly questioning their own sanity or perception of reality.

Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm Syndrome occurs when a captive begins to identify closely with his or her captor and their agenda and demands. First used in 1973 when four hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. The hostages defended their captors after being released and would not agree to testify in court against them.

Stockholm Syndrome relates to narcissistic abuse:

• Survival Mechanism: Stockholm Syndrome is often viewed as a survival strategy during captivity. Similarly, victims of narcissistic abuse may adopt appeasement behaviors in an attempt to reduce conflict and reduce harm inflicted by the narcissist.
• Identification with the Abuser: Just as hostages identify with their captors, victims of narcissistic abuse can develop strong attachments to narcissists. They may defend them, rationalize their behavior, and dismiss harmful actions.
• Trauma Bonding: With a narcissist intermittently harassing, beating, threatening, abusing, or intimidating their victim, then love bombing them, the cycle of harmful and rewarding interactions becomes addictive.
• Cognitive Dissonance: Stockholm Syndrome creates cognitive dissonance – stress caused by holding two or more contradictory beliefs or actions. Victims of narcissistic abuse simultaneously recognize harmful behavior but remain loyal to the abuser.

Trauma Bonding

A trauma bond is a deep emotional attachment between an abuser and the person they abuse. It forms due to cycles of abuse followed by reconciliation and promises of change, making it difficult for the victim to leave despite the harm inflicted.

Key points:

• Emotional Intensity: Trauma bonds are typically formed under situations of high emotional intensity (positively during love bombing), inconsistency, and danger. This is highly stimulating in both directions. These bonds can be incredibly strong.
• Cycle of Abuse: There are 4 phases: the tension-building phase, the incident of acute violence, reconciliation, and the calm phase. The abuser might apologize profusely and go over the top during reconciliation, providing strong intermittent reinforcement.
• Isolation: Abusers often isolate their victims from friends and family, making the victim dependent on them. Being dependent strengthens the trauma bond.
• Intermittent Reinforcement: This concept refers to the unpredictable timing of reward and punishment. In the context of abusive relationships, the abuser may swing between affectionate and abusive behavior.
  • A term from B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory, intermittent reinforcement has been shown to be the most effective way to maintain a particular behavior. It refers to when a response to your behavior is not always followed by a reward or punishment, but only some of the time.Gambling is an excellent example of intermittent reinforcement.
    • When people gamble on a slot machine, they win money (the reward), but not every time. The unpredictability of the reward – the fact that it only comes sometimes and is not guaranteed with every pull of the lever – creates a powerful sense of anticipation and encourages continued play.If the slot machine paid out reliably every time, you’d get bored (because the outcome is predictable and no longer exciting). Since the rewards are intermittent, people stay engaged, hoping that the next pull might result in a big win. It hooks your attention.
    There are various schedules of intermittent reinforcement: fixed ratio, fixed interval, variable interval, and variable ratio. Of all these, the variable ratio is the most addictive.
    • Variable Ratio Schedule: A reward (or punishment) is given after an unpredictable number of behaviors on your part.
      • This is the type of reinforcement schedule most commonly associated with “addictive” behavior like gambling.You don’t know when the next reward is coming, so you keep pulling the lever, sometimes winning, sometimes not.And this is the unpredictable nature of being in a relationship with a narcissist – you never know when they’re going to go off, or when they’ll love bomb you, etc.
  The intermittent, unpredictable nature of rewards creates a strong drive to keep engaging even when it’s clearly not in your best interest. Such as excessive gambling.

One of the things that makes trauma bonds so strong is that the abuser

Validation

Validation in psychology is the recognition and acceptance of another person’s thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors as real, valid, and understandable.

Not necessarily approving or agreeing with, but acknowledging that a person’s internal experience is their own reality and that it is valid.

• Emotional validation: Accurately recognizing someone’s emotions and acknowledging them as real and legitimate.
• Intellectual validation: Acknowledging someone’s ideas and thoughts without necessarily agreeing with them.

Validation is crucial in childhood development:

• Emotional Intelligence: Validation helps children understand and manage their emotions. Validate a child’s emotions you are teaching them that it’s okay to feel a certain way and that they can manage feelings.
  • An unbelievable amount of mental dysfunction is due to using all of our energy to reject our primary emotions.
  • We take a stance against our primary emotions with secondary emotions such as guilt or shame.
  • Validating a child’s emotions prevents them from having this habit for them for a lifetime.
• Self-esteem and Confidence: Being validated boosts self-esteem and confidence. It helps children appreciate their worth and realize that their thoughts, feelings, and actions are important and valued.
• Resilience: Validation helps children become more resilient.
• Healthy Relationships: Validation enables healthy relationships. Kids learn to respect others’ feelings and points of view … empathy.
• Mental Health: children who regularly have their feelings validated are less likely to develop mental health issues such as CPTSD, anxiety, depression, or personality disorders.

Vulnerability

Vulnerability is a person’s capacity for being emotionally wounded or hurt – how willing are you to admit you have been hurt, can be hurt, and how willing are you to take risks with people knowing you can be hurt?

Emotional vulnerability is opening up to others about personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It takes courage because you risk being criticized, misunderstood, or rejected.

Vulnerability is often seen as a weakness in many cultures, but it’s actually an essential and inescapable part of being human. It allows us to connect with others on a deeper level and fosters empathy, compassion, and understanding. It’s also critical for personal growth, allowing us to learn from mistakes and become stronger and wiser.

Recognizing our own vulnerability allows us to understand and empathize with other people’s vulnerabilities, causing more compassionate and supportive relationships.

Vulnerability is not something to be feared or avoided, but rather something to be acknowledged, understood and embraced.

Vulnerability in Narcissists

Narcissists have a complex relationship with vulnerability. On the surface, they appear confident, self-assured, and strong. Underneath lies a deep fear of vulnerability, which they project onto others.

Lots of victims don’t believe this, the narcissist appears invulnerable to them. They’re not.

• Hidden Vulnerabilities: Despite all the bluster and bravado, narcissists are running full speed away from their own terrifying feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. Their grandiose self-image is often a defense mechanism against these hidden vulnerabilities.
• Avoidance: Narcissists typically detest feeling vulnerable and may go to great lengths to avoid situations that could expose their insecurities or weaknesses. A resort to defenses such as denial, projection, or blameshifting.
• Exploitation of Others’ Vulnerabilities: Narcissists may take advantage of others’ vulnerabilities to make them feel immune to their own vulnerabilities.
• Therapy: The goal for narcissists in therapy is to understand and acknowledge their own vulnerability, and to develop healthier ways of managing it. This is challenging because it’s threatening and requires giving up deeply ingrained defenses. But with time and committed effort, it is possible for narcissists to develop a healthier relationship with vulnerability and improve their relationships with others.

Vulnerability in Recovering from Narcissistic Abuse

If you’ve been abused by a narcissist, you’re probably consciously in touch with a heck of a lot of vulnerability. You’ve been carrying the rejected and hated vulnerability of the narcissist’s inner child – way more than your fair share. So you’re actually probably a lot stronger than you realize.

That being said, recovery from narcissistic abuse is a journey that often involves embracing vulnerability.

• Acknowledging Pain and Hurt: The first step is acknowledging the deep pain and hurt caused by narcissistic abuse. This requires vulnerability, as it means openly admitting to feelings of sadness, anger, confusion, or fear.
• Seeking Help: This requires vulnerability, as it involves sharing deeply personal and deeply painful experiences and emotions with others, who may or may not be safe.
• Setting Boundaries: Can feel vulnerable, as it may involve saying “no” and potentially upsetting others.
• Self-Care: This requires vulnerability because you have to acknowledge your needs and limitations and give yourself permission to take care of your needs.
• Healing and Growth: Embracing vulnerability often leads to significant healing and growth, and unlocks access to healthy self-expression and self-assertion. By acknowledging the pain from the past and working through it, you (somewhat counter-intuitively) get stronger and more resilient.

Terms for Types of Narcissists

Just for context, narcissism is a concept made up by psychiatrists and exists on a spectrum. The concepts are used to describe patterns in human beings. Narcissists are using defense mechanisms to avoid their own pain, which was historically grounded.

The Overt / Grandiose Narcissist

The classic stereotypical narcissist. Makes no serious attempt to hide it. Criticisms tend to bounce right off them; they shoot back and move on confidently. They display the following pretty openly:

• Excessive Self-Importance: Inflated sense of self-worth and believe they are superior to others. Often exaggerate their achievements and talents and expect others to recognize them as superior without commensurate achievements.
• Preoccupation with Fantasies of Unlimited Success, Power, Brilliance, Beauty, or Ideal Love: Overt narcissists often daydream about obtaining absolute power, unrivaled success, or ideal love. They may spend a significant amount of time planning how to achieve these fantasies.
• Need for Constant Admiration: Require constant attention and admiration- this can be tiring for those in their lives.
• Sense of Entitlement: Believe they are inherently deserving of special treatment. This can manifest in expecting others to comply with their expectations without question.
• Interpersonally Exploitative Behavior: Take advantage of others to achieve their own ends. Manipulating others without any consideration for their feelings or well-being.
• Lack Empathy: Utterly incapable of recognizing the needs and feelings of others. Callous, emotionally harmful behavior.
• Arrogance and Haughty Behavior: May belittle others to boost their self-esteem.
• Envy or Belief that Others are Envious of Them: They may be jealous of other people’s accomplishments or possessions or may believe others are envious of them.

The Antagonistic Narcissist

A subtype of overt narcissism, antagonistic narcissists are more focused on winning and dominance, often engaging in direct conflict, as opposed to simply seeking admiration.

• Heightened sense of entitlement and disregard for others’ feelings.
• Strong sense of competitiveness and rivalry.
• Strive to always win and will often exploit others to achieve this.
• May instigate arguments or try to belittle others to appear dominant or gain the upper hand.

The Malignant Narcissist

Have additional traits found in antisocial personality disorder. Malignant narcissists are consciously cruel, malevolent, and sadistic. On a conscious level, they really enjoy hurting you.

• Characterized by aggression, sadism, paranoia, and antisocial behavior.
• Not only lack empathy but take pleasure in manipulating and exploiting others for their own gain.
  • Often in a calculated, conscious manner.
• More severe entitlement; may react aggressively or violently to perceived criticism or slights.
• Antisocial behavior, including a disregard for the rights of others, impulsivity, deceitfulness, irresponsibility, and lack of remorse for hurting others.

The Communal / “Altruistic” Narcissist

Hard to spot due to the seemingly selfless nature of their actions. The grandiose self-image is one of exceptional compassion, self-sacrifice, giving, martyr-mask, etc. These types become teachers, therapists, caregivers, clergy, etc.

Their virtue-signaling serves as a facade to cover their self-centered tendencies. The persona stems not from altruism, but from a desire for validation.

Characteristics

• Moral Superiority Complex: Moral grandstanding & virtue signaling, puts them in a one-up position & allows them to justify their narcissistic behavior.
• Charitable Appearance: Present themselves as generous, helpful, and altruistic. Can be found participating in community service, charitable work, or other activities that seem selfless.
• Covert Desire for Recognition: Despite apparent selflessness, have an intense desire for recognition and validation. Want others to see their good deeds, often motivated by the attention they receive rather than helping.
• Manipulative: Using seemingly selfless acts to gain power, control, or influence.
• Lack of Empathy: Despite appearing caring and compassionate, lack genuine empathy for others. Focused primarily on maintaining their own self-image and receiving validation.
• Adoption of “Lost Cause” Friendships: Taking on people with insuperable problems as “friends” or “causes”. This keeps them looking charitable, the other person dependent, and allows them to be in a one-up “rescuer” position.

Possible Behaviors

• Feeling entitled to special treatment because of ‘selfless’ actions
• Dismissing or belittling the efforts of others
• Using their “altruism” as a way to manipulate others
• Expecting appreciation for their actions
• Showcasing good deeds for recognition

Interactions with Others

People interacting with the Communal / “Altruistic” Narcissist may initially be drawn to their seemingly selfless nature. Over time, however, they may begin to notice the narcissist’s constant need for control and recognition of moral superiority, along with their nastier side. They may also feel manipulated or used as the narcissist isn’t truly “there” for them.

This type of parent can be intensely confusing and invalidating for their children. Nobody may validate that their mask as the “good person” is not real, while the child bears the brunt of traumatizing narcissism.

Mothers

Mothers with this variety of narcissism may intensely resent and shame their own children.

These types can look forward to being mothers because that will be their starring role as the consummate compassionate giver. They look forward to the validation they will receive – the child will surely appreciate them so much.

However, from the outset, children are mostly very needy – that’s the reality. The way it’s supposed to work is the mother has appreciation and love to give, and the child has appreciation and love to receive – that’s the child’s end of the transaction.

And the child’s end is very valuable in its own right. The mother gives the breast, and the infant gives the mouth.

However, this mother doesn’t genuinely like giving the breast. She quickly discovers that the child’s dependency needs don’t provoke a genuinely nurturing response from deep within her. At some level of consciousness or unconsciousness, she envies her baby “getting” to receive all the care, nurturance, attention, and dependency. She also discovers that the child doesn’t seem to be as sufficiently appreciative of her being so “giving” as she had imagined.

She becomes painfully aware that her “giver-persona” is not real. She deeply resents the child for this, blaming her shameful feelings of exposure on the child. She then proceeds to invent “reasons” that the child doesn’t merit genuine care and compassion.

Sometimes the above dynamics don’t fully kick in, or get worse, when the child attempts to develop its healthy autonomy as a toddler, and then later in adolescence.

The Somatic Narcissist

Overlaps with histrionic personality disorder. Often stems from a deep-seated insecurity and fragile self-esteem.

Extreme preoccupation with physical appearance, charisma, and attractiveness. Uses appearance as a source of self-worth and validation. Seeks attention and admiration from others to affirm self-perceived superiority.

Key Characteristics

• Obsession with Physical Appearance: Invest a significant amount of time, effort, and resources into maintaining their physical appearance. Rigorous exercise routines, strict diets, cosmetic enhancements to ensure they look their best.
• Attention Seeking: Need to be center of attention; will often go to great lengths to ensure they are noticed. Dress provocatively or extravagantly, engage in showy behavior, and dominate conversations.
• Lack of Empathy: Struggle to empathize with others. Dismissive of other people’s feelings and needs, focused on their own desires and ambitions.
• Materialistic: Strong fixation on material possessions and luxury items. Believe that owning high-end goods elevates their status and serves as a visible marker of their superiority.
• Vague and Impressionistic Language: Using highly emotional and dramatic language to evoke strong emotions in others, vague descriptions, exaggerations, and fabricating stories. The lack of details/specifics invites the audience’s imagination. Usually self-focused, typically lacking in empathy for others, may use seductive or provocative language to attract attention.
• Manipulative Behavior: Highly manipulative, using charm and physical appeal to influence others to get what they want. Gaslight their partners, making them question their own perceptions and feelings.
• Sexual Conquests: Use physical attractiveness to manipulate others. Self-esteem can be tied to their sexual prowess and number of sexual partners.

Somatic narcissists can be simply irritating, or highly toxic and damaging, depending on how manipulative, exploitative, hurtful, and deceptive they are.

The Cerebral Narcissist

Characterized by intellectual prowess, a thirst for knowledge, and a desire to display intellectual superiority.

• Intellectual Dominance: Great pride in their mental capabilities; prefer to assert dominance through intellect rather than physical attributes.
• Obsession with achievements: Often obsessed with academic or professional achievements; constantly seek new opportunities to prove their intellect.
• Perfectionism: Set unrealistic expectations for themselves and others, which can lead to dissatisfaction and frustration.
• Need for Admiration: Constantly seek admiration for their intellect and/or achievements. Self-esteem is largely dependent on how others perceive their intellectual prowess.
• Lack of Empathy: Like other narcissists, often lack empathy and struggle to recognize or validate the feelings and needs of others.
• Manipulative: Can be highly manipulative, using intellectual superiority to control or influence others.
• Grandiosity: Inflated self-importance believing they are superior to others intellectually.
• Avoidance of Emotional Intimacy: Avoid emotional intimacy and disregard the emotional needs of partners.
• Sensitivity to Criticism: Extremely sensitive to criticism, especially if it threatens their perceived intellectual superiority.

The Spiritual Narcissist

These narcissists use their spiritual beliefs to manipulate, control, and dominate others.

• Self-centered Spirituality: Interpret spiritual texts or teachings in a way that serves own needs and reinforces self-image. See themselves as spiritually superior to others.
• Entitlement: Feel entitled to special treatment because of their perceived spiritual superiority. Believe that they are more enlightened or awakened than others, and thus deserve more.
• Need for Adoration: Crave or demand constant admiration/validation for their spiritual journey and accomplishments. Frequently share their spiritual insights or experiences in a way that elicits praise.
• Lack of Genuine Spiritual Practice: Lack of consistent, humble, and genuine spiritual practice. Spiritual expressions are more about appearances than about an internal journey toward self-improvement or enlightenment.
• Lack of Empathy: Despite spiritual leanings, they often fail to express genuine compassion.
• Manipulative: Use spirituality as a tool for coercion. Uses spiritual jargon or concepts to justify their behavior or make others feel inferior or guilty.
• Spiritual Bypassing: Avoid dealing with their emotional pain or psychological issues. Dismiss valid emotional responses from others, labeling them as “unenlightened”.

The Covert / Inverted / Vulnerable Narcissist

Seemingly quiet and shy, covert narcissists believe they are extremely special but are deeply resentful that nobody else seems to notice this. They can be sly, subtle snakes.

• However according to Daniel Shaw, very frequently the traditionally described “covert” or “inverted” narcissist is not a traumatizing narcissist.

What’s the difference?

Actual Covert Narcissism

Real Covert Narcissists are highly manipulative, are strongly identified with the idea that they’re essentially flawless, and think everybody else is the problem.

They may be (invisibly) incredibly envious, quietly domineering, calculating, highly manipulative, aggressive, deceitful, nasty, vindictive, and rarely if ever apologize or be accountable.

Covert narcissists may have overlapping traits with CPTSD.

Overlapping Traits from CPTSD

• Introverted Personality: Covert narcissists tend to be introverts. People with CPTSD are introverted largely as a consequence of constricting their lives to avoid triggers.
• Hypersensitivity: Heightened sensitivity to criticism, real or imagined. May react poorly to feedback, often perceiving it as a personal attack rather than constructive input.
• Chronic Feelings of Inadequacy: Persistent feelings of inadequacy or dissatisfaction with their achievements. May engage in perfectionism as a way to cope with these feelings.
• Subtly Self-Centered: Might come off as reserved or self-deprecating. Still fundamentally focused on their own experience.
• Passive-Aggressive Behavior: As a way to express their dissatisfaction or resentment without confrontation. Subtle manipulation, procrastination, or seemingly intentional mistakes.
• Victim Mentality: May see themselves as victims. They were indeed victims at some point (traumatically so), and may still have that worldview. May blame others for their failures or difficulties and may seek sympathy or validation to support the victim narrative.
• Lack of Empathy: Expression of empathy can be limited due to continually dealing with all of the above.

The Difference

If a person has the characteristics listed in the bullets above but is not consistently subjugating those around them in a rigid and predictable way, and they can own up to their imperfections and misdeeds:

• Then are probably more accurately thought of as having CPTSD.

People with mere CPTSD tend to not systematically subjugate and undermine the subjectivity of others. Although they may be very reactive at times, they have remorse afterward and attempt amends, albeit with limited internal resources. They also tend to have a decent amount of empathy, which grows a lot with healing.

• CPTSD can be induced by a traumatizing narcissist (especially by a parent)
• People with CPTSD are in touch with a lot of conscious shame (that is the defining characteristic of CPTSD), know they need healing, and worry a lot about being narcissists themselves
• If they get the right treatment, they have a good prognosis for recovery

Historical Conceptions of Narcissism

Daniel Shaw (1950 – )

Daniel Shaw goes first because as a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach specializing in recovery from narcissistic abuse, I believe he is the most practically useful thinker on the subject for survivors of narcissistic abuse.

Shaw introduced the concept of the traumatizing narcissist.

Shaw does not focus primarily on what is going on inside of the narcissist. Rather, he focuses on the relational aspects of the narcissist and the trauma they cause in their targets. He sees narcissists as subjugating their significant others by undermining their subjectivity.

Traumatizing narcissists act as parasites who use others as hosts, onto whom they project their disavowed vulnerabilities and dependency needs, which they are terrified and ashamed of. They need hosts more than hosts need them – they drain their hosts’ energy.

They subjugate their hosts and coerce them to keep carrying their own shameful parts. They do this by objectifying their host(s) and insisting that their own point of view is the only valid point of view. This is accomplished through all of the tactics we know narcissists employ.

Fundamentally, narcissists coerce others by undermining their subjectivity, rendering them incapable of being in touch with, and taking as valid, their own point of view. They destroy your ability to validate your own experience.

This is traumatizing and dehumanizing. Children are the most vulnerable (and likely) targets for this since they are completely dependent on their parents, and believe what they are told.

Shaw has done much work in treating adult children of narcissists and has detailed the severe traumatizing aftereffects of being raised by a narcissistic parent. This largely invisible form of abuse is particularly insidious and destructive.

Recovery for people who have been traumatized by narcissists, according to Shah, involves learning how to recognize themselves (and others) as subjects. In intersubjective relationships, both people are in touch with their own needs & perspectives. At the same time, they are in a relationship with the other and sensitive to the other’s needs & perspectives.

DSM-5 TR Criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder

A pervasive pattern of:

• grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior),
• a constant need for admiration, and
• a lack of empathy,

beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by the presence of at least 5 of the following 9 criteria:

1. A grandiose sense of self-importance
2. A preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. A belief that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions
4. A need for excessive admiration
5. A sense of entitlement
6. Interpersonally exploitive behavior
7. A lack of empathy
8. Envy of others or a belief that others are envious of him or her
9. A demonstration of arrogant and haughty behaviors or attitudes

Greek Mythology

In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a handsome youth known for his beauty. However, he was also extremely proud and disdained those who loved him.

One of the nymphs who loved Narcissus, Echo, had been cursed to only repeat what others said. Echo deeply loved Narcissus, but her love was not returned:

On seeing his reflection in a pool of water, Narcissus fell in love with it, not realizing it was merely an image. Ignoring Echo, Narcissus was so enraptured with his image that he lost his will to live and stared at his reflection until he died.

Echo, who was heartbroken and rejected, faded away staring at Narcissisus until only her echoing voice remained.

• The story of Narcissus has been used as a cautionary tale about the perils of self-obsession and gave root to the term “narcissism”.
• Just like Narcissus, individuals who display narcissistic tendencies often have an inflated sense of self-importance and lack empathy for others.
• Echo represents the “codependent” in a narcissist-codependent relationship. She is unable to express her own feelings and thoughts due to her curse
• Echo represents the behavior of codependents who often suppress their own needs in favor of others.
• Echo’s inability to leave Narcissus despite his disinterest is similar to how codependents stay in unhealthy relationships at the cost of their own well-being.

This ancient myth illustrates the harm that can arise when one person is excessively self-focused while the other neglects themself.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Freud thought that primary narcissism is a normal developmental stage in which children believe they are the center of the universe and are full of self-love.

Secondary narcissism occurs when a child gets stuck at the phallic stage of development and redirects their libidinal energy (the energy of the sexual drive) back into their own ego, rather than directing it outwards towards others.

Secondary narcissism develops in response to a developmental situation where the individual’s ego is threatened or damaged.

This could be various things such as a traumatic event, significant loss, or intense criticism. The ego defensively withdraws its energy from the outside world and focuses it inwards, leading to a heightened sense of self-importance and self-focus. This is a way for the ego to insulate and protect itself from further damage.

Karen Horney (1885-1952)

Horney thought that narcissism was not just a fixation at the phallic stage as Freud proposed but rather is a very specific kind of neurosis.

She believed that we create an ideal self as an attempt to deal with anxiety and feelings of worthlessness. However, narcissists inflate their self image to match the ideal self, which is unrealistic.

She believed narcissists have an abnormal need for need approval and power, and that they desire to exploit others.

Horney also introduced the concept of neurotic pride which is a false pride based on the inflated self-image.

Melanie Klein (1882-1960)

An object relations theorist, Klein introduced the concept of the paranoid schizoid position. This is a universal developmental stage from 3-6 months old, where we look at the world (our mother) in black and white, all good vs all bad terms. This is called “splitting”. And we all can regress to this position from time to time. 

Narcissism is rooted in this position as it sees others as either all good or all bad. It is narcissistic in that it does not see others as whole people but only relates to them as far as they are relevant to their own needs and desires.

Klein also discovered projective identification. Narcissists project their undesirable attributes onto other people and cause them to resonate with what is being projected upon them – to take it in into a certain extent, and “internalize” it.

Klein also explored the concepts of envy and gratitude. She thought that narcissists might be deeply driven by envy leading them to be destructive towards others’ happiness or success.

Donald Winnicott (1896-1971)

Winnicott’s insight was that we all have a true self which is our authentic core and our real feelings, and a false self. The false itself is our persona, our mask that we show society and to some extent, our significant others.

Winnicott thought that narcissists are strongly identified with their false self, because they were not allowed to express their true self as children.

Winnicott also introduced the concept of the “good enough” mother, which provides a situation where the child’s true self can safely develop. The absence of a good enough mother can be a contributing factor in the development of narcissism, or other challenges.

Alexander Lowen (1910–2008)

Lowen thought narcissism was the result of insufficient nurturing and validation from parents in early childhood, resulting in a deep-seated fear of abandonment.

Narcissists develop a defensive strategy to ward off this constant background fear of abandonment by the constant need for, and procurement of, validation.

Lowen thought that narcissists fail to see others as separate entities.

He also believed that narcissism tended to manifest physically as a tight, muscular, physically attractive body.

Heinz Kohut (1913-1981)

Kohut thought that some narcissism is necessary in all of us for self-esteem regulation and basic development of the self.

He also introduced the concept of mirroring, where the parent positively reacts to their child as a mirror. Children need this mirroring as an early narcissistic supply to develop healthily.

Kohut also thought that children need to idealize their parents as perfect powerful and flawless, somebody to look up to. This also is a narcissistic supply.

Kohut thought that narcissists are constantly seeking validation and admiration from others to make up for the missing mirroring and idealization from their childhood.

Otto Kernberg (1928- )

Otto Kernberg, a notable psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, proposed a comprehensive theory about narcissistic personality organization. His theory is rooted in object relations, which emphasizes the importance of relationships in shaping the mind from early childhood.

Key aspects of Kernberg’s theory:

• Pathological Narcissism: Kernberg proposes that narcissism goes beyond normal self-esteem and refers to pathological grandiosity. This grandiosity is a defense mechanism against feelings of internal emptiness or worthlessness.
• Splitting: Kernberg’s theory heavily involves the concept of splitting, which is a defense mechanism where a person fails to integrate the positive and negative qualities of oneself or others into a cohesive image.
  • Narcissists tend to see things in extremes, either all good or all bad, contributing to their self-aggrandizing behavior and devaluation of others.
• Object Relations: Kernberg theorizes that narcissists have problematic internalized representations of others (objects). They often struggle to perceive others as independent beings with their own thoughts and feelings, leading to difficulties in interpersonal relationships.
• False Self: The false self hides the true feelings of inferiority or worthlessness. The false self requires constant validation and admiration from others.
• Narcissistic Rage: When their grandiose self-image is threatened, narcissists experience intense anger or ‘narcissistic rage’. Outbursts of aggression, manipulation, and belittlement all serve to reestablish the false self.

Kernberg also showed how narcissists defensively use idealization and devaluation to protect their inflated self-image.