These are the deeper currents beneath the more visible tactics, the largely unconscious mechanisms that make narcissistic abuse so disorienting. Understanding them is less about labeling another person and more about making sense of what happened to your own sense of self: why you began doubting your perceptions, carrying feelings that were never yours, and treating yourself as an object. None of that was a flaw in you. It was an adaptation that made sense.
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, and unmet dependency needs.
However, they disavow these feelings and defend against them by projecting these attributes, thoughts, and emotions onto 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 those traits are minimally present in the people they’re 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.
This involves not only attributing one’s emotions to others, but also inducing those emotions in them. 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 it’s inside them, so they attribute the feeling to another person, projection.
The narcissist then interacts with that person in a way designed to provoke the projected feelings. If they’ve projected their anger, they act irritating or aggressive so as to induce anger. If they feel helpless, they undermine the 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’s 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.
Why your reaction makes sense
If you found yourself becoming angry, anxious, or “crazy” in ways that didn’t feel like you — that wasn’t your true character surfacing. Feelings were being induced in you and then pointed to as proof. Reacting to that pressure is what a connected, responsive person does; it isn’t evidence that the accusation was true.
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’s no filtering, evaluating, or discriminating the truth or falsehood of the attributes, perspectives, or behaviors of others, they’re simply adopted as part of oneself.
This can be healthy or unhealthy.
For example, say your parents taught you decent values, saw you for who you truly are, and gave you accurate and fair feedback about yourself, and they had the normal love, respect, and admiration you’d hope parents would have for their child. 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 false and negative things onto you (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, and typically requires work and professional support.
In narcissistic abuse:
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 the narcissist doesn’t want to acknowledge in themselves.
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.
They may start to believe 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, the narcissist avoiding accountability for their actions, and the victim internalizing blame and developing a negative self-concept.
Why your reaction makes sense
If you believe, at the core, that you’re selfish, too sensitive, or fundamentally not enough — it’s worth asking whose voice that belief first arrived in. Beliefs like these are usually installed, not discovered. The fact that they feel like simple truth about you is exactly how introjection works; it doesn’t make them accurate.
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 others.
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, and 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 their view, for fear of being rejected or psychologically annihilated
Experiencing ourselves as agents capable of meaningful and productive action
Being able to negotiate mutually subjective relationships, free 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 and 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 the narcissistic perspective: The narcissist’s subjective experiences, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs become the “ruling” or “dominant” ones, often at the expense of another’s subjectivity, which is disregarded or invalidated.
Narrative control / spinning: you’d think you were dealing with a politician or a highly polarized news outlet as you watch some narcissists relentlessly spin things to influence how others see them.
Invalidation of others’ experiences: They negate the emotions, feelings, and perceptions of others, asserting their own subjective experience as “truth” and dismissing perspectives that differ. The narcissist’s viewpoint becomes the prevailing narrative.
Traumatization through subjective hegemony: the persistent invalidation of someone’s experiences and feelings can lead to worthlessness, confusion, and emotional distress. People need to be connected to their own experience.
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: 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.
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’re simply 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.
They assign the other the unwanted aspects of themselves.
They deny the other’s subjectivity and individuality.
Only one person gets to have a valid point of view, 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. It’s 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 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 them. 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.
Loss of autonomy: the narcissist’s control leaves victims in a state of learned helplessness, unable to trust their judgment.
Internalizing the narcissist’s viewpoint: constant projection of the narcissist’s subjective reality leads victims to see themselves as the narcissist does, as objects whose value lies in their utility.
Externally based self-worth: consistent devaluation leads to basing self-worth on how they believe the narcissist perceives them.
All of this is very distressing and dysregulating, leading to decreased self-worth and increased mental-health risks.
Why your reaction makes sense
The constant self-monitoring — watching how you come across, second-guessing what you feel, checking yourself against their reaction — isn’t vanity or weakness. It’s what a nervous system learns to do to stay safe around someone whose perspective was the only one allowed. Beginning to feel like a person again, rather than an object being evaluated, is slow work, and the slowness is not a failing.
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 them being the “bad objects” they need them to be.
They systematically undermine their victims’ 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.
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). They seek 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.
Dominance: the person in the one-up position asserts dominance or superiority, displaying superior knowledge, skills, or attributes.
Control: using the one-up position to control situations and people, dictating the terms of interactions, making decisions, and setting rules, usually without consulting others.
Undermining agency and autonomy: making the victim helpless supports the one-up position.
Manipulation: the one-up position enables manipulation, often subtly, gaslighting, blame-shifting, or emotional manipulation to maintain superiority.
Resistance to criticism: they generally resist criticism or feedback that threatens their superior status, dismissing comments, reacting defensively, or retaliating.
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 emotions to make you feel guilty, ashamed, or inadequate; subtly belittling achievements, unfair criticism, or making you feel like you’re always in the wrong.
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.
Pull: then the narcissist pulls them back in with intensity, causing them to feel temporarily great, charm, flattery, or appearing 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’re constantly 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.
I came to this work through my own recovery from CPTSD, which I continue to navigate. I have training and years of coaching experience in the NeuroAffective Relational Model. That, plus 5 years facilitating a private support group for 500 survivors of narcissistic abuse, is what I bring to the room.
Naming these patterns doesn’t automatically free you from them.
These mechanisms (projection, introjection, relational subjugation) that don’t dissolve once you can name them. The nervous system learned to organize around someone else’s reality. That reorganization is slow, and it usually doesn’t happen alone.
Insight alone does not tell the nervous system it’s safe.
NARM-informed coaching is a slow, relational, client-led space for what understanding alone can’t reach, where old protections can stand down, and a truer sense of self can come forward.
