In order to understand narcissistic behavior, you must have met someone who suffers from the said disease, have seen it with your own eyes; otherwise, you wouldn’t believe it if someone told you what they can do to get their way.
People with a narcissistic personality disorder consider themselves to be highly grandiose; lack empathy for others and have an excessive need to be admired.
They believe they deserve special treatment and are the best at what they do.
These characteristics do not appear until late, when the person reaches adulthood, becomes s**xually mature and ready to start married life.
At first, the problem is not obvious since someone with a narcissistic personality disorder does not need to share anything with others.
In reality it is, but only with your family and there is a real difference between family life and married life.
When one is engaged in a relationship, one must be able to find compromises, to share one’s fears and deepest secrets with the loved one.
A narcissist is unable to do this. A narcissist is unable to show empathy or interest in anyone other than himself.
These people think they are very special in every way possible and are looking for people who, on the contrary, do not think they are special in any way.
It is a way to feed their ego and self-esteem, which is usually very low below the surface.
They cannot stand criticism and need people who hold them in high regard.
If you do the opposite, they will take it out on you because you have insulted and threatened what they value most – themselves.
The best I can wish you is never to be confronted with a narcissist but unfortunately, many of us are not so lucky and we end up fighting the darkness in which they have plunged us.
For your well-being, you must learn to spot and deal with a narcissist: his tactics, the methods of survival after having been abused by a narcissist as well as how to avoid a narcissist.
Finding and dealing with a narcissist
In general, it is not so difficult to spot the narcissists.
The real problem arises when you meet a dangerous narcissist, the one who disguises himself, the one who simply pretends to be a good guy until you fall in love with him desperately and he attracts you in his nets, leaving you no longer room for maneuver, entirely at his mercy and alone.
It’s always the same story. At the beginning, everything is perfect.
You feel terribly lucky to have finally found the man of your dreams, the one who loves you and would go to the end of the earth for you.
You even feel a little guilty for experiencing such great happiness. But it doesn’t last long. After a while, his true identity resurfaces.
The mask falls. The honeymoon is over, it starts to do things that bother you.
It tries to manipulate and control you but you don’t give it much importance because after all, we all make mistakes and no one is perfect.
And so you ignore all the disturbing things that happen. In reality, you are only fooling yourself.
Soon enough, you will find yourself trapped in a narcissistic hell, with no way out.
As I said before, not all narcissists are the same. Some are instantly recognizable but others (such as the “happy narcissist”) are unfathomable unless you have confronted them previously.
They manage to take you by boat because being with them is very pleasant.
They are charismatic, have a great sense of humor and are generally adorable.
They’ll brainwash you long before you find out that this is all a bunch of lies. They will transform you into something that you wished you never would become.
In order to prevent this from happening to you, read carefully what the signs are for identifying and dealing with a narcissist.
1. He is the most important person in his eyes
He only talks about him. This is clearly the best way to spot a narcissist. Take a simple test.
If you’re out, a man comes up to you and starts talking to you, don’t say much at first.
If this does not seem to bother him and above all, if he only talks about him, it is because you have definitely come across the “happy narcissist” type, the one that is difficult to discover.
He won’t listen to a word of what you have to say and if you feel otherwise, don’t be fooled. He is just looking for words that will allow him to keep talking about him.
What to do? It is a good thing that you have seen the warning signs indicating a narcissist before it is too late.
If you really can’t escape the conversation, let him speak as much as he wants, that’s his starting point anyway (just listen to yourself talk about him) and pretend to listen.
While you are at it, try to find a way out and grab the first chance that presents itself, run like crazy and don’t turn around!
2. He is furious when injured
We all get angry but not madly. However, this is what happens to him and he is unable to control himself.
Generally, he is only sad when one of his projects falls apart because, as I said before, narcissists do not feel empathy towards others and are therefore unable to see or understand the suffering of others.
He will try to make you responsible for all of his failures and will succeed in some way.
What to do? The first thing to do is to never let it enter your head.
Don’t let him hold you accountable for things you didn’t do.
This is called gaslighting (a form of mental abuse) and that is what it is trying to do to you. He’s trying to make you believe things that never happened.
He tries to make you believe that it is you who are mad and one day you will end up trusting him completely because you will no longer believe in your own judgment.
The only thing to do in this kind of situation is to threaten him to leave then to really go away.
This will take him out of his hinges since no one has the right to leave him, he who is so important.
However, this is what you will come to do. You just have to find the strength to stand up to him so that he can no longer hurt you.
3. He never respects the rules
It is too important for the rules. He has the impression that the rules do not apply to him because he is too good to be forced by one thing to write or decreed by another.
He feels like a man capable of living by his own rules.
Also, he will not respect the fact that you live by certain rules or a moral code and will break these simply to show you that he does not care what you consider to be “correct”.
What to do? Try to become aware of this as soon as possible.
If he does not respect your way of life or the things that are important to you, he is disrespectful to you.
Leave it as soon as possible because things will only get worse.
4. He’s trying to control you
He will be there, constantly trying to look over your shoulder and force you to do things you don’t want to do but want him to do.
He will control your life, starting with little things like canceling your appointments at the last minute, arriving late, meeting you when it suits him and where he wants, etc.
You will be bound hand and foot and this will make him the master of your relationship. Later, he will control you by prohibiting you from speaking as you see fit.
He will cut you off in the middle of a conversation because he will feel that what he has to say is more important than what you wanted to say.
What to do? The only thing to do, except leave it, is to ignore everything it has to say.
Do what you want and don’t let it control you. Never subscribe to its conditions because they are made only for its pleasure and for your misfortune.
He will likely go mad with rage but by then you should be away from him already.
5. He doesn’t respect your limits
He thinks your limits are not important and will continue to push you beyond it until he destroys you entirely.
He will most likely ask you to do things that make you uncomfortable and if you refuse, “no” will not be an acceptable answer…
That is to say, he will tell you that it is going well while he is already busy preparing a vicious plan so as to force you to go against your principles.
What to do? You just have to stay strong and true to your principles. Never do anything that seems inappropriate to you.
Even if he has already manipulated your mind, deep in your heart and your soul, you can distinguish good from evil.
He cannot take that away from you. Defend yourself and fight to the end.
Now that you’ve discovered how to spot and deal with a narcissist, let’s move on to the more dangerous part: recognizing the techniques of handling a narcissist.
These tactics that narcissists use to manipulate you
The one they master best is “hoovering”. It is a specific tactic used once you have decided to do away with them and no longer be psychologically abused.
It is their most dangerous weapon once you realize the extent of the harm that a relationship with a disguised narcissist has inflicted on your self-esteem.
The hoovering technique is a manipulation technique that consists in bringing a person back into an abusive relationship.
Usually, it is a technique used in the long term, without contact and when the aggressor manipulates his victim in such a way as to touch his sensitive points and to attract him back into his nets.
1. They offer false interpretations to explain your thoughts and feelings
Let’s say they have an ability to read your thoughts and that’s serious, because by disregarding your thoughts and feelings, they make you feel like you’re the one who’s crazy.
We speak of “telepathy”. They will make sure they can read your mind and whenever you have something to say, they will cut you off and make hasty conclusions, believing that you want nothing but staying with them.
They never happen to be wrong. If you try to defend yourself and confront them on the subject, they will fashion their own version of the truth.
2. They change the subject
Whenever you want to confront them about something they have done, they will skilfully and subtly change the subject so as to divert your attention to something other than them.
They will talk about “mistakes” you made years ago and play the victims. They will always have a joker in their pocket in order to handle situations like this.
Whenever you make a mistake, they’ll pretend it’s okay, just to blame you when it seems right.
3. They are harassing you and want to destroy your reputation
They will focus all their efforts on convincing people that it is you who are toxic and who are destroying them.
They will slander you and speak behind your back because their ultimate goal will be to make sure that no one is talking to you and that once you decide to leave there is nowhere to go.
They will harass your loved ones, hang out with them, and try to tell them lies about you. Then you will know who your true friends are.
4. They will use sarcasm and condescending tone with you
Their main goal here will be to hurt you and make you no longer worthy of anything.
It is one thing to laugh together but it is another to use sarcasm to belittle yourself and make you feel less than nothing.
And if you point them out, then you’re not funny and don’t understand the jokes.
It doesn’t matter that those jokes were meant to hurt you.
Others will speak to you as if you were a child and they need to choose specific words, to use simple terms so that you understand.
So you will feel stupid and unappreciated, exactly what they wanted.
After a while, you will begin to doubt yourself because it will seem like you are never right.
This will push you to say nothing, again, exactly what they wanted.
5. They will use the “gaslight” technique (mental abuse)
Here is the most popular tactic among the wide variety of manipulation techniques.
They like to use it because it’s easy. They want to make sure that you never leave because you will feel unable to live alone.
They want to make sure that you are unable to live without them. This will rob you of your respect and self-esteem because they will make you believe in things that do not exist.
They will make you doubt your sanity and everything else. Your levels of respect and self-esteem will skyrocket and you will be below them.
In the end, you will trust the man who mistreats you because you think nothing better exists.
6. They will criticize you and assign impossible tasks to you
Everything is planned. By assigning yourself impossible tasks, you will feel worthless because nothing you do will succeed or work.
Even when you succeed in doing something, they will find something to complain about and criticize you.
It is extremely difficult to remain indifferent to constant, non-constructive criticism that is specially intended to hurt you.
The goal with this tactic is to force you to think that you are not good enough for it and that you should be thankful to it for keeping you.
Once we have known the manipulations that narcissists use to take advantage of us and that finally we leave, we must still manage the inevitable consequences of their violence.
The consequences of ill-treatment by a narcissist
1. You will need to regain your self-esteem
It was broken into a thousand pieces, scattered all over the place and now you have to find them, collect them and survive all at the same time.
After a narcissist is done with you, you will feel lost and alone. You no longer have dignity and you are afraid – afraid for your life, afraid that everything will happen again. We must not give up.
You must continue because one day you will heal. Your life is not yet over.
2. You are vulnerable and scared
You trusted him and he took advantage of you. You will try to hide the fact that you feared for your life.
You will try to hide the fact that everything touches you and makes you cry. You will pretend that everything is fine, but your eyes and your behavior will say otherwise.
Do not be afraid and do not try to hide your vulnerability because that is what you are at the moment.
Accept it, move forward and try to gain another victory. Then you will have won the war.
3. You will keep your experience a secret
You will not be well. You will not want to smile because your world will just collapse around you.
And you will remain silent on what has just happened to you. Perhaps it is because you are afraid that others will judge you and say “I told you so”.
Or maybe you are afraid of reliving the same thing and therefore you build a wall around you and choose to never lower your guard again.
You decided never to open your heart to anyone again. You decided that you would never let someone love you again.
4. You are just anxious
Even in your own body, you no longer feel safe. The memory of him haunts you and makes each breath more difficult; whenever you think of him.
You are afraid to come back to him, to be tricked and to be brainwashed again. You never think you will be normal again.
5. You doubt everyone
You think everyone is like him. Because of him, you think there is no one good.
You lived in terror and it changed you. You perceive each person you meet via this look which has been gradually shaped by their emotional manipulations and their attempts to empty you.
6. You will hide your feelings
You will be too scared to show your real feelings because you will be afraid that another will come and take advantage of you.
You are not ready for a new love story. God only knows if one day you will be. But don’t give up hope.
Not all men are like that and perhaps the day will come when you will meet the one you were supposed to meet from the start.
7. You will always apologize
You used to always take responsibility. You used to apologize for the things you did as well as the things you did not do.
Because you were tired of arguments and criticism. You were tired of hearing him yell your incompetence.
Apologizing and agreeing to take the blame was just easier. But the saddest thing is that after a while you started to think it was your fault.
Now you do the same thing – it’s just that now you don’t have to apologize to anyone.
8. You will hate yourself
You will be unable to look at yourself in the mirror because every time you look at yourself, all you will see will be the empty and exhausted woman of her life.
It is not you. He stole your true identity and left this tired woman instead.
That’s why you hate yourself – you let it happen.
But don’t worry, you will find the strength to find this beautiful woman. You just have to wait a bit.
Certainly, the most important step in any history with a narcissist is to know the right way to ignore a narcissist, not to let it enter our head, to deny him any power he might have over us.
Ignoring a narcissist is the key to your survival, because no matter how unpleasant you make them, they will always try to control you.
You have to ignore it for its projects to fail and for you to triumph.
These methods of ignoring a narcissist
1. Ignorance as a way to hurt
When a narcissist is done with you, you will feel like one less than nothing.
You will no longer want to continue living your life, simply because he stole it from you.
If this happened to you in “classic” circumstances, if someone “normal” hurt you, your first reaction would be to seek revenge.
You would want to hurt this person, to inflict the same suffering on him as that which he inflicted on you.
But things don’t happen like that with narcissists, because playing with them is impossible.
They will turn it against you and somehow you will suffer it again.
If you want to get up while harming him, the best thing to do is to ignore said narcissist.
No longer giving them attention and importance is the thing that most hurts them.
But while ignoring it, you must begin to heal. Don’t try to find out if it hurts him if you act like he doesn’t exist.
Checking how he is going will only give him more importance and power. Forget it completely and focus on yourself. This will destroy it.
2. Do not give him energy or satisfaction
These are not normal people. Normal people find energy in positive things like love, friendship, etc.
Narcissists feed on conflict, argument, and pain. You see, basically, they are not happy with them. They do not consider themselves very much and that is why they have built an alter-ego (false self), in order to hide their true self.
So by giving them satisfaction and involving you in their discussions and toxic thoughts, you are only nourishing their narcissistic soul.
But, by ignoring a narcissist, you refuse them this food intended to reinforce their negative energies. They die internally slowly.
3. Ignore your “critical moment”
You think that once you’ve managed to ignore it and free yourself, you’re done. But unfortunately, this is not true and he knows it. He knows he has you.
He knows that you need to shoot him because he has become like a drug.
He will wait for the right moment, without prior contact, and attack when you experience a “critical moment” – when you doubt yourself and your ability to live without it.
This is where many women dive back. They experience a critical moment and return. They welcome them with open arms, swearing that they will change.
But after a while, everything becomes the same again.
Ignore the need to come back to him. Ignore his lies and promises that he will change because it will never happen.
It’s just another of his tactics to lure you into his nets and into this violent relationship.
Staying strong and ignoring it in these moments is a matter of life and death. Thus, you will deprive him of all his weapons and never, he will not wish to return.
4. The most important thing is to love yourself
Here’s the worst blow you can give him. By staying true to yourself and never doubting what you are doing, you will be untouchable.
If you are strong and you don’t let anyone manhandle you, her psychological games will not reach you in the least.
Narcissists are powerless when their victims regain their senses and regain their self-esteem because now nothing can reach them; because the love story between a narcissist and his victim is over once and for all.
