Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Certain Hope on June 11, 2008, 12:10:32 PM
-
I'm very sad to say that Kathy Krajco, whose writing has so often shone the light of truth into the fog of NPD, has passed away.
Her obituary is here http://obit.schneiderfuneraldirectors.com/obitdisplay.html?id=541468&listing=All (http://obit.schneiderfuneraldirectors.com/obitdisplay.html?id=541468&listing=All)
In her memory ~
Narcissism's One-Track Mind
One thing people who haven't known a narcissist for a very long time and intimately don't realize is that narcissists give new meaning to the term "one-track mind." They are always on.
They may keep a lid on it with their boss and/or other people they don't dare treat as they would like, but the proof lies in how they treat the people they can play games with.
They are in game-playing mode 100% of the time. Everything, every interaction with them is viewed and treated by them as some sort of worthiness competition.
The childishness is something one must see to believe, and even then it's unbelievable. I went for decades before I finally had to admit that the narcissists I knew were so petty and childish that their game got all the way down to such silly things as having to have YOU call THEM, no matter what, just to support their delusions that YOU were the "needy" one. Yes (projection), YOU were the one who needed an ear to talk off. They were dying to talk at you about themselves, but it would have killed them to come down off that pedestal and pick up the phone. So, when you finally did call for some reason, you hardly had "hello" out of you your mouth before you were done talking and just listening for the next three hours.
But that's just one example. I could name hundreds of these childish games they play with virtually any everyday human interaction.
They are God, so they can't dispretend that by owing you anything. That would be a come-down from their grandiosity. Nor can they be in the wrong in any matter with you. They are perfect, and you are relative dirt. And EVERY SINGLE THING THAT HAPPENS MUST PROVE THAT.
cont'd. at http://www.zimbio.com/Narcissistic+personality+disorder/articles/82/Narcissism+s+One+Track+Mind (http://www.zimbio.com/Narcissistic+personality+disorder/articles/82/Narcissism+s+One+Track+Mind)
-
Kathy Krajco's writings gave me a leg to stand on, when I thought that I'd never walk again.
Because of her, I learned that...
The cardinal sin with NPD is to see her beneath the mask.
Don't dare even suggest that you may have heard something of which N was not aware... she'll despise you.
Did you have lunch with the prime minister today and excitedly try to tell N about it?
How dare you?!?
He'll either fabricate an entire fiction about his weekend visit with the Queen.. or... set about destroying both the prime minister's rep and your own, simply to show that you are both scum.
Does this make sense? No.
There's no way to explain it... you just need to have been there.
Every single, solitary positive quality within you is just another reason for N to want you erased.
Once he's done idealizing you, you're supposed to disappear.
When you won't go quietly, prepare for Armageddon.
************************************************
Actually, I'm not sure it's ever possible to go quietly.
Come to think of it, my experience has proven otherwise.
If you're fortunate enough to be able to maintain distance between yourself and NPD (i.e., you don't have to live with her/him),
then boundaries are the most important tool you have. But if they won't quit - and often, they won't, I've seen - then No Contact may be the only alternative.
Carolyn
-
More than anything else I've ever read, Kathy Krajco's writing helped me to break out of the suffocating stranglehold of the after-effects of dealing with malignant narcissists. She'd clearly had such intimate experience with these predators... and now I'm wondering whether that maybe didn't work toward shortening her precious life. Surely makes me aware that the thing to do is to move through this and get on with it, not get stuck in the mire or tangled up with any
more such webs.
The following is one of the first things I read by Kathy, way back when trying to make sense of the slander campaign initiated by NPD, when the mask began to slip.
I was not allowed to take issue, because to do so was to risk stalking and all other manner of emotional torture... and I couldn't understand why.
Well, there is no why... other than the N's constant, continuous obsession with trying to make self seem bigger, better, purer, and more powerful.
Then there is the other side of the coin, which is an even more menacing sign of bad faith — what narcissists do to the images of others.
Consumed with pathological envy, they make themselves look good the bogus way, by making others look bad.
Overall, individuals high in narcissism displayed amplified responses to social comparison information, experiencing greater positive affect from downward comparisons and greater hostile affect from upward comparisons.
— Bogart, L.M., Benotsh, E.G. and Pavlovic, J.D. (2004), Feeling Superior but Threatened: The Relation of Narcissism to Social Comparison, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 26, Iss. 1, pp. 35-44.
In other words, malignant narcissists feel that praiseworthy information about you diminishes them,
and they feel that denigrating information about you elevates them.
Hence, like the rapist, narcissists must tear their betters "down off that pedestal" by maligning them.
Therefore "malignant" is a good name for malignant narcissists, because every malignant narcissist's middle name is Malign.
Narcissistic rage, character assassination and projection are some of the overt ways in which the narcissist expresses himself.
For example, she may envy a work colleague's beauty, and project her feelings into her colleague by accusing her of being envious.
Whom do narcissists malign? Almost everyone.
If you suspect someone of being a narcissist, praise a person who obviously deserves it to him or her and observe their reaction. It shows.
Malignant narcissists speak well of very few others. Only their narcissistic parent (when no longer vulnerable to that parent) and anyone they can aggrandize themselves by association with at others' expense.
However subtle the vandalism may be, you never hear a narcissist say anything about anyone that you would like to hear said about you.
Worse, narcissists are gossips. They eagerly listen to and spread slander. They are self-righteous finger-pointers, pulling the same stunt Lucifer did in the old Gnostic myth about Lucifer coming before God everyday and accusing other angels of being bad. The result was "war in high places" until the good angels, lead by St. Michael the Archangel, cast down Lucifer (now called "Satan," that is, "the slanderer") to the status they deserve.
Narcissists can make it sound like a virtue, but giving others a bad name isn't a good deed. Even if the report is true, it cannot possibly be done in the spirit of goodwill unless it is done in true witness — that is, responsible witness, on the record, not behind the back. Just because the badmouth perfumes his speech with words like love and Christian and concern and for the sake of our children (always the justification when there is no justification) and sports a halo does not change the spirit in which slander is done.
Shakespeare gives us a marvelous example of sugaring o'er slander with false concern or pity in a speech the usurper King Claudius makes to Hamlet before the whole court:
'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father;
But you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness. 'Tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd;
For what we know must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd, whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
'This must be so.' We pray you throw to earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us
As of a father; for let the world take note
You are the most immediate to our throne,
And with no less nobility of love
Than that which dearest father bears his son
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire;
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
Such kind and pious words, eh? Yet, how would you like that said to you in front of a hundred people?
Notice how sweetly and left-handedly Claudius calls Hamlet obsequious, obstinate, impious, stubborn, unmanly, willful, weak, impatient, a simpleton, ignorant, senseless, peevish, a sinner against God and the dead and nature, irrational, impotent, and intent on doing things retrograde to the king's desire.
Talk about "betrayal with a kiss."
The whole court immediately starts treating Hamlet as though he's radioactive. His girlfriend's father and brother immediately order her to dump him. He's a marked man.
And for doing what? For not forgetting the dead king, his father, and cutting short the customary mourning period to celebrate the remarriage of the queen to the usurper. Typical narcissist — can make even a virtuous act sound heinous.
If you know that narcissists are inveterate character assassins, it's easy to spot them.
A narcissist has a trail of trashed good names and careers in his wake.
He will even have told you strange and terrible lies about the people in his own immediate family.
If you know the person he is telling you something strange about, compare the accusation with your own observations.
A narcissist will have ignored that person's real faults and smeared one of his or her virtues as a vice!
And, if you know the narcissist, you'll find the narcissist himself is guilty of the very thing he's accusing this other person of.
-
Carolyn - you read my mind, I was just going to ask you to start a new thread for Kathy Krajco. Much of her work as touched me.
For today, I'm going to reflect and read some more in memory of her.
My guess is that if Kathy had a wish it would be for at least one N (if not all) to come to the light of all of those who are so easily fooled so that they are no longer being deceived and pawed as objects without their individual knowledge.
Thank you for this thread, Carolyn.
Lise
-
((((((((Lise)))))))) thank you... and welcome home.
It's shocking me how affected I've been by learning of Kathy's death.
Very few writers have ever touched the essence of what the N does to your soul, the way she was able to do.
Love and hugs,
Carolyn
-
Worse, narcissists are gossips. They eagerly listen to and spread slander. They are self-righteous finger-pointers, pulling the same stunt Lucifer did in the old Gnostic myth about Lucifer coming before God everyday and accusing other angels of being bad. The result was "war in high places" until the good angels, lead by St. Michael the Archangel, cast down Lucifer (now called "Satan," that is, "the slanderer") to the status they deserve.
Narcissists can make it sound like a virtue, but giving others a bad name isn't a good deed. Even if the report is true, it cannot possibly be done in the spirit of goodwill unless it is done in true witness — that is, responsible witness, on the record, not behind the back. Just because the badmouth perfumes his speech with words like love and Christian and concern and for the sake of our children (always the justification when there is no justification) and sports a halo does not change the spirit in which slander is done.
Carolyn,
Kathy's work was the most influential for me in helping me come to terms with Nsaint this past year; it was as if Kathy had read my mind, illuminating the pain, confusion and spin of Nsaints lies and slander which helped me to stop blaming myself. Her work allowed for me to see that I was not the N as the victim usually is left questioning themselves. Oh sure we are human and need love, but the N's define our need for love as wrong...which invalidate our natural instincts.
For so long I thought that *I* was the blame and the problem....Nsaint was the perfect, spotless saint...I was the person always baring my soul and talking about my faults and sin, basically my authenticity is what Nsaint hated about me the most because it is the reverse of what she is and cannot be. My honesty gave her a door into my heart so that she could tweak my struggling to heal self-hatred.
There is so much that Kathy wrote about N's that took the edge off my pain.
May she rest in peace...I'll be praying for her to be in happy heaven.
If OK with you, may I post her article on Attention Seeking?
Lise
-
Her work allowed for me to see that I was not the N as the victim usually is left questioning themselves.
What a great summation. I agree!
What I'm hearing in your description of N-Saint is the lack of reciprocity, all along the way... unable/unwilling to take her eyes off of her own image and put herself into someone else's position, and - since you are able and willing to critically self-examine - she was more than happy to shove her own rubbish off onto you, as well. Is that right?
Lise, I'd love to read Kathy's article on Attention Seeking.
There's something in me which would just like to hang onto her wisdom and never let it go, you know?
So that's why I wanted to have this thread dedicated to her and her insights.
Love,
Carolyn
-
The Attention Game by Kathy Krajco
Does any of following ring a bell? If you live with a narcissist it does.
Protocol
At all times, everyone must face the king. The foot servant is beneath the king's notice. So, the king never dignifies him with any attention at all, does not even look at or speak to him. Now, this might seem a bit inconvenient, for what good is a servant you can't speak to? But the foot servant's duty was to watch over the king and see to all his needs without the king having to suffer the indignity of having to ask him for anything. So, the most he got from the king was an offhanded grunt or a hand signal while the king was talking to someone else, which was to be interpreted as "Bring me my footstool." To obey the command, the foot servant approaches the king in a groveling manner to indicate that he asks for the favor of being allowed to approach the king and bring him his footstool. The foot servant takes care to avoid notice so that he distracts nobody's attention, even for a moment, from the king. The king is to tolerate the foot servant's vulgar presence no longer than necessary and, without looking at him, "spurns" him (kicks him aside) when the task is done. Then the foot servant shows his gratitude by humbly bowing-and-scraping away.
There you have it — a real-world example of relating between someone who deserves all attention and someone who deserves no attention.
The actions of both parties to that "relationship" speak louder than words. I scare-quoted the word relationship because this is an un-relationship. The king is dis-relating to his foot servant.
Nobody bothered to know that the king must have zero integrity if merely looking at another person would degrade him, but the farce in the myth of nobility is beside the point. Nobody noticed that they were treating the king like an infant, either. I mean, only an infant normally gets its needs taken care of without having to ask for anything.
Well, just like the king, I guess: he's such a big baby it would be an insufferable affront to his dignity if he ever had to ask for anything.
What about Please and Thank you? Though he is unworthy to be heard by the king, the foot servant is the one who must say "please" and "thank you," by literally groveling and then bowing-and-scraping away. How perverted can human behavior get?
So perverted that the foot servant was deemed so unworthy of attention that he deserved no acknowledgement of his service, let alone thanks. For, in acknowledging what someone has done for you, or in expressing gratitude for it, you're paying them attention, aren't you? Majestic beings mustn't degrade themselves by doing that. To emphasize this, the custom was for the foot servant to receive anti-gratitude with a gratuitous kick. That is why kings responded to whatever their foot servant did for them by "spurning" them, literally kicking them away. How perverted can human behavior get?
Answer: The foot servant had no right to even resent such treatment. Therefore, he was subjected to the extreme perversity of having to bend over for it (the Sin of Sodom). And with a smile. For, he then had to bow-and-scrape some more in gratitude for the minuscule attention of a kick. Can't get perverser than that.
There are only three places I know of where one person must be the focus of all attention: a theater, a church, and a royal court. The way-up-high-in-the-sky there thing — the so-called "star." Or God. Or the king.
Correction: there is one more place where that is the case, any place plagued by a the presence of a malignant narcissist. He or she must be the focus of all attention.
Being entitled to all attention and being entitled to no attention are appraisals of a person's value, or worth. In a society that regards all human beings as created equal, to give all attention to the narcissist is to worth-ship him as a false god, and to give no attention to others is to dehumanize people and treat them like dirt.
Which is exactly why the narcissist plays The Attention Game = to make himself God and all others dirt beneath his feet. This is how he supports his delusions of grandeur. He's just playing Pretend. He's making it so by acting as though it is.
Do you play along?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And then, of course, we get to the heart of malignant narcissism, Narcissistic Envy.
You will notice that, invariably, when anyone is given recognition before the group, a narcissist immediately starts showing dislike for, or animosity toward, that person. Immediately he sets out on a campaign of character assassination.
Envy is bitter, an extremely unpleasant emotion. It's normal only when some other party really has robbed us of our due.
A narcissist's unnatural envy is so universal and so strong that he cannot even stand being in a place where someone else gets attention. If he cannot keep that from happening, he will find some way to absent himself from the situation — if only by turning away from others and staring at a corner of the ceiling.
-
:? Yes, that rings more than one bell.
Thanks, Lise... it's a classic and another example of some of Kathy's purest work.
I've got to tell you...
there's this nagging question which keeps trying to float to the surface of my mind...
whether maybe she held onto this stuff and wrote about it for too long and could it have shortened her life... ?
God help us to put it aside before it ever reaches that point.
Love,
Carolyn
-
Dear Carolyn,
I hear what you are saying. The creative juices seem to flow when we are carrying around more passion....the anger passion.
The anger and hatred must come out and then be gone if we are to heal and live happily.
When I read her work I am reflecting with care to make sure that I do not allow for myself to start feeding off the bitterness.
The healing from a sociopath or a NPD is very painful and very slow, at times. Forgiveness will be a soothing balm that allows the healing the quicken, however, we still need to talk about the pain, I have noticed that as time has gone on my pain is less and less as my voice about N-Saint is less and less.
I too hope that Kathy did not have a shorter life because of this stuff -- IMO, dying for N's is not a martyrs death.
-
Dear Carolyn,
I hear what you are saying. The creative juices seem to flow when we are carrying around more passion....the anger passion.
Yes, exactly, Lise.... and that sort of passion drives away the passion for life!
It's like darkness and light... can't co-exist.
I'm glad we have a couple of threads now to recognize Kathy's work and to honor her memory, too.
Thanks for joining me in this.
Love,
Carolyn
-
... I then had the misfortune to live next door to a very different style of narcissist. One whose true colors showed to be very seedy indeed when the honeymoon was over and the domestic abuse began. In contrast to the administrator I mentioned above, this guy had a rap sheet a mile long. He tried to move the lot lines with con schemes. He would run over his neighbors' fences and small trees and bushes with his huge, jacked-up pickup truck and leash his dangerous dogs out onto your property to keep you from getting to your garage door. Mean and wild as a junkyard dog, that is, and drunk every day.
To my surprise, he tested his prey too. Immediately after his wife and children suddenly disappeared one day, he decided to replace them. In fact, I was grilling steaks when I overhead him snarl at his dog that he'd "get a new dog too" if doggie didn't behave.
Before my wondering eyes could believe what they were seeing, he was hitting on me. Testing me to see if flattery would make me revise history. I was supposed to be so google-eyed over his sudden attentions that I would forget everything I knew about him and forget what he had done to us! I must say that that was the most breath-taking sample of raw narcissism I have ever seen.
But guess what? He was now a different person, an unassuming and likeable man any woman would like. I was just as surprised at myself as I was him. His magic was truly tempting me. I had to keep a tight grip on reality and keep reminding myself of the past - when Dr. Jekyll here was Mr. Hyde. He was quite thick-headed about it and couldn't take a hint to get lost. I had to let him know with a wink one day that I saw right through him and was entertained by his efforts.
Zoom, gone just like that, and bringing other women home from the bars for testing in the role of his new mamma.
The narcissist S V- nin says the same, though in an abstract way:
I compared Narcissistic Supply to drugs because of the almost involuntary and always-unrestrained nature of the pursuit involved in securing it. ...The narcissist rates people around him according to whether they can provide him with Narcissistic Supply or not. As far as the narcissist is concerned, those who fail this simple test do not exist. They are two-dimensional cartoon figures. Their feelings, needs and fears are of no interest or importance.
Potential Sources of Supply are then subjected to a meticulous examination and probing of the volume and quality of the Narcissistic Supply that they are likely to provide. ...Needless to say that he loses any and all interest in them and in their needs once he decides that they are no longer able to supply him with what he needs: an audience, adoration, witnessing (=memory).
So, that's the crucial determiner of whether you are likely to fall prey to a narcissist or not - do you flunk these tests?
If you do, you will seem to attract narcissists.
A narcissist seeking a lover as prey might test you by going off like firecracker in some off-the-wall reaction to something you do or say.
The test is to see whether this herds your behavior in the direction he wants,
whether you attempt to appease him, whether you forget about it tommorrow (when he acts like it never happened) by acting like it never happened.
In other words, you flunk this test by "forgiving and forgetting."
To a narcissist, that's a green light.
You pass this test by raising your own voice, saying, "What the hell are you mad about?" and "If you won't make sense and be reasonable, I won't waste my breath on you," deciding that if he is such a changeable, unpredictable Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you aren't going to date him any more.
The street con artist always tests potential marks too.
For example, will you do a stupid thing to please him just because he acts like you'll be a bad person if you don't?
You pass the test by replying, "WHAT? Are you nuts? No!"
You flunk the test by caving in to moral pressure by saying, "OK, I'll go into the bank and draw money out of my account to help you guys catch that evil teller."
In any case this test is always a test to see if the narcissist slams into the brick wall of a backbone. If he does, he flies away like a bee that has just discovered there's no nectar in that flower.
From these examples, you can see that the children of narcissists are more likely than others to flunk some kinds of tests. For example, they have been brainwashed to regard as normal and tolerate blow-ups in people with the nerve to be so rude.
They have been trained to say, "Well, yes he does have a terrible temper but he doesn't carry a grudge."
Note the irony in that: the fact that he's all smiles the next day is a BAD sign, not a good one!
The bottom line is that it isn't so much a matter of backbone as it is a matter of naivite.
We all must face the fact that there are people like this out there.
They look just like the rest of us.
You can't tell who they are by their reputation or status or anything else. Only these red-flag behaviors give the predators among us away.
Never forget that faces are masks and that we never really know what's going on in anyone else's head.
You are easy prey for predators if you are naive, not knowing that you must just ALWAYS choose to have a backbone = ALWAYS pass the test.
No matter WHO that other person is. Yes, even if people will say you're a bad person for it:
good people don't prostitute themselves to the threat of being called a bad person for doing the right and/or sensible thing.
So, just always pass the test. It's a vaccine for a narcissist-free life.
Not to mention a truly virtuous one.
.
-
Carolyn...................I love you. Your witty!
-
lol... o, well... I love you, too, Lise... and I have my little stray moments of wit... lol... but I did not write this.
It's more of Kathy Krajco... from her article titled "A Vaccine for N"
The whole thing is much longer. Here's the link, which I forgot to insert:
http://www.zimbio.com/pilot?ZURL=%2FNarcissistic%2Bpersonality%2Bdisorder%2Farticles%2F13%2FHow%2Bto%2BKeep%2BCyberpaths%2BAway&URL=http%3A%2F%2Fnarc-attack.blogspot.com%2F2008%2F02%2Fvaccine-for-narcissism.html (http://www.zimbio.com/pilot?ZURL=%2FNarcissistic%2Bpersonality%2Bdisorder%2Farticles%2F13%2FHow%2Bto%2BKeep%2BCyberpaths%2BAway&URL=http%3A%2F%2Fnarc-attack.blogspot.com%2F2008%2F02%2Fvaccine-for-narcissism.html)
-
"but I did not write this."
Yes.........but your timing for putting this article up on the board was excellant!
-
Thanks, Lise. Just trying to balance things out and not spin off into never-land.
This comment, added by a reader of Kathy's blog to the previous article, expresses my own beliefs and experience quite well:
sonicido said...
Childhood conditioning can be undone.
I was not a child who grew up 'suspecting' because of my experience.
I grew up accepting.
Becoming a Christian later in my 20's I was trained to "turn the other cheek"; "love suffers long"; and, "he who is without sin, may cast the first stone".
Because the N's in my life provoked bad behavior from my own self, I knew I was definitely NOT fully pure in heart.
It took me many years to separate "man's" idea of God (religion) from, God and His idea of "man", i.e. mankind.
I have learned to separate religious actions-rooted in "man's" proclamation of "love"- from, actions that are rooted in the love of God.
Any time "love" has a human twist to it, I watch out.
An example of a human twist would be, when someone commits an unloving act towards their victim,
and expects to be unaccountable for it
while the victim is totally accountable to the perpetrator for their response to the unloving act.
This kind of meddling has ruined the human race.
**********************************
Indeed.
-
Thanks for your last post Carolyn, that was a good read.
The website with the NPD link, which you provided on the Epiphany thread, is very interesting.
Check this paragraph out:
Narcissism is therefore an inevitable and unavoidable part of psychological development. An evolving self is incomplete, and therefore more self-directed than reality-directed. Narcissism is therapy for the fragile self; to counterbalance the felt incompleteness self-directed behaviour comes into being. Narcissism is a force bringing fragmented parts together when they are not yet composed into a whole, and the more fragmented the parts, the stronger the required force, and thus the more intense the narcissism. But the penalty, the necessary penalty, of making the self more real than reality, is that reality is demoted.
After reading this I felt as though I had just gone for a walk into the brain of a person suffering from NPD.
It was a wow moment of realizing that narcissism, as this paragraph says, is therapy.
Well, like duh...but looking at it that way never occurred to me.
This paragraph also illuminated how others can suffer from varying degrees depending on the need for "therapy."
Lise
-
:o
I will have to think on that one, Lise!
For some reason, I seem to be saying, "Wow!" alot today, but... Wow!!
I can sure see how reality gets demoted (or totally denied!) when narcissism becomes pathological,
but I never woulda thought of N as therapy.
What you've said makes sense, though. The more fragmented a personality is, the more N is needed to hold it together... or at least it may seem so to the one who's fragmented.
Some time ago, I did a thread on NPD info from sources other than Sam V. I think that other link would be worthwhile to post onto that list... will go find it.
Thanks, Lise. Lots to think on!
Love,
Carolyn
-
excerpted from:
The Poor Narcissist Feels Threatened
Let's take a look at this line that narcissists aren't really bad, that they lash out at you because they feel "threatened."
This idea begs the question "Threatened in what way?" and "Threatened by what?"
If you're the victim of a narcissist, you know that this "threatened" excuse is a farce, because the narcissist attacks precisely when you are anti-threatening him or her. Like when you are trying please them, when you are saying you love them, when they are already mad at you and you are trying to appease them, when you try to get them to listen to you.
WHAM – you expect the normal reaction to these friendly behaviors, but what do you get instead?
The PERVERTED reaction of an attack. It's a shock tactic that takes you aback and makes you have to pinch yourself.
What on earth have you done to "threaten" the poor narcissist?
Let's look at the last example – trying to get her to listen to you.
By doing that, you ARE "threatening" her, I'm afraid. Yes.
Correction: No, you are not threatening her; you are threatening the imaginary her, the bogus "her." You're threatening her delusions of grandeur.
ANY honesty or reality does.
Remember that she is a mental child playing Pretend, and she wants all her playmates to play along.
That means you are supposed to follow her script.
You are supposed to act unworthy of her attention or regard.
When you don't play that part, she stomps her little foot at you and gets mad, throwing a temper tantrum to be so obnoxious that you give in and do what she wants.
In her self-deluding game of Let's Play Pretend, she is so far superior to you that you are beneath her notice, at the relative level of some worm or bug with respect to her. Something divine her should look down her nose in contempt at.
And, you had better act the part or she will go off at you. But here you are, acting like she owes you her attention. In other words, you're acting like God Almighty's equal.
Oh, how horrible an insult to God Almighty!!! Shame on you! You - a mere bug, a mere worm - are "threatening" her majesty by treating her as your equal!
Quit "threatening" her delusions of divinity, you mean and naughty person.
You are not threatening the poor narcissist.
The narcissist is just a pervert = someone who perverts the course of logic to pervert reality.
Hence, she pervertedly views love or affection
or any call for engagement from her
as its very opposite = a "threat."
Her Perverted Thinking Machine is not your fault or your problem. It's her fault and her problem.
All animals occasionally fight others (including others of their own species) when those others cross boundaries to threaten their interests in some way.
You can tell when this is the motive, because the moment the aggressor backs off the fighting stops, and everybody's cool again.
Why? Because when you feel threatened, your motive is to repulse the threat = self-defense. Once you have accomplished that mission, you are done.
But when your motive is to destroy the other, the other party backing down or trying to appease you has the opposite effect.
Then it's a sign of weakness that just emboldens the attacker to pour on the attack more furiously than ever.
That's why when an animal attacks to eat another, it doesn't stop till it has ripped that other to shreds.
That's what human predators (like psychopaths and other narcissists) do to their prey, as well.
The only way to avoid "threatening" these perverts is to just get and stay far away from them.
-
Life with a narcissist is a never-ending put-down. How does he or she force the other members of the family to put up with it?
The narcissist just does whatever it takes to make them submit to her abuse. Any complaint goes in one ear and out the other, as if unhearing it annihilates it. Then the narcissist flies in the face of the complaint by repeating the offense, more forcefully and with contempt. She thus trains her family to submit by teaching them that demanding better treatment only gets them worse treatment.
What if that doesn't work? To repulse any further insistence that she treat them with respect, she just throws a temper tantrum.
One might as well try to talk into the blast of a foghorn. Sheer volume and irrationality can silence the other party, because nobody beyond the age of reason will degrade themselves by getting down to her three-year-old spoiled-brat-throwing-a-fit level to argue with her. Nonetheless, terror tactics, like hateful looks and a threatening posture in a menacing advance, or even windmilling fists, may be part of the tantrum.
Every narcissist I have known has such uncanny skill in perverting the course of logic that every statement one makes bounces off his or her forehead twisted a full 180 degrees. They grab some word near the front of your sentence and blast off with it in God-knows-what direction to yell you down in a whirlwind of bewilderment.
One might as well argue with a cantankerous three-year-old.
And the Projection Machine gets going like crazy. I mean really crazy.
For example, here's how one man I knew reacted to any complaint about his insulting treatment of others or his jumping all over his kid for trying to get attention: he always bawled "WAAH!" Get off my BAAAAACK!"
That's right, he told the jumped on party to get off his back!
Presumably this crackpot thought he was imitating the person complaining to him about his insulting treatment of her. He was making her out to be the big baby ... in the very act of bawling like a big baby for her to get off his baaaaack! Projection of his big babyhood in the very act of being a big baby.
So, give it up. Narcissists do not permit you to communicate with them. They pervert everything and just blast it back in your face. Not one word you say can get through that wall of flak. To twist everything a full 180 degrees, they use anti-rationality and acting crazy as debating tactics.
I think they have a fear of communication taking place and frantically try to block it. So, trying to have a talk with them makes as much sense as trying to have a talk with a dumb beast.
You get nothing but Nimrodian nonsense out of them. It's enough to make the head spin. The offender makes the offended the offender. There's no end to this shit. There is no getting through that irrational wall of flak. They will do anything to make you give up and be silent.
Presumably that's because, as I mentioned above, narcissists want their unanswered say. When they accuse you, you mustn't answer the accusation. When they insult you, you mustn't answer to tell them not to insult you. When they treat you abusively, you mustn't answer to complain about it. You must shut up and docilely submit to it.
For, remember, you are worthy of NO attention, no regard, no consideration, and so forth. They won't even listen to you speak.
Narcissists are desperate to shut you up so you don't answer them, lest human voices wake them there in the Land of Pretend and they drown.
How desperate? So desperate that they go nuts if you won't shut up. From what I've seen and heard, it's common for them to threaten to call the police on a family member who won't just shut up and take it but insists on a chance to speak.
To deny you your right to speak, the narcissist just blabbers at the top of her lungs to drown you out. Or refuses to stay put and listen. She obdurately refuses to let you say anything she doesn't want you say. If it's not in her script, she won't let you say it.
You are supposed to shut up and just bend over for her abuse, to play along and pretend with her that she is God Almighty and you are dirt who deserves to be treated like that.
Do it or she will get so obnoxious that it will make you scream.
http://www.narcissism.operationdoubles.com/forcingsubmissiontoabuse.htm (http://www.narcissism.operationdoubles.com/forcingsubmissiontoabuse.htm)
-
Wow!
I hadn't read her stuff before and it's......
Wow!!!
So, trying to have a talk with them makes as much sense as trying to have a talk with a dumb beast.
You get nothing but Nimrodian nonsense out of them. It's enough to make the head spin. The offender makes the offended the offender.
How many times have I tried to have that talk and experienced this? Too many to count. Knowing this bit of info could have kept my poor brain from many twirlings.
I feel like I need a new t-shirt that reads:
"I have learned to disengage from beasts ."
:mrgreen:
Sela
-
lol... ((((((Sela)))))) gotta love Mr. Green :mrgreen:
If you find a place that'll screenprint some of those shirts, I'm interested!
How about an entire box of them... one for each workday?!
Kathy K. really nailed this stuff, didn't she?
I don't know if you saw the beginning of the thread, but she passed away last month, at age 56.
Can't imagine how many folks are missing her now.... so sad.
So I'd like to keep this thread going, just to consolidate some of her best (imo) in one place.
No idea who might keep her old site going, if anyone...
I don't think she had much family left.
Hate to think of her writing just disappearing from the scene.
Love to you, Sela,
Carolyn
-
This is what I want to become immune to:
It's when every single thing that you do or say, express or attempt, lose or gain… is taken by someone with NPD and turned inside out & upside down in order to inflate her own image.
It's when you are not allowed to simply be - individual, autonomous, unique, unencumbered - because some N is determined to cast you as a mere speck of space rock, continually orbiting around her supreme sun.
It's cloying and it stinks like death... because no human being was created to revolve her life around another mortal.
It is soul stalking... and it is insidious… and if you tend toward co-dependency, it is extremely dangerous.
Also… sometimes... the soul is stalked from within, by the internalized parental voices of those who should have loved and cared the most, but only wanted to mold you into their images… or destroy you for preventing them from reaching the elevated status to which they believed they were entitled.
This stalking from within must not be allowed, either. Is it possible to go No Contact with the voices in your head? I believe so, in time and with diligent practice. And that is a whole lot easier, once you’ve detached from the outer voices who sing the same tune!
Here’s another one by the late Kathy Krajco:
**************************************************************
There's no end it. It feels exasperating because it IS exasperating. You never get through that brick wall a narcissist throws up to bounce back everything you say or do as a flattering reflection on him- or her-self. One that denies you one bit of gratification and sucks every bit of gratification in the transaction to herself. (See the book The Games People Play by Eric Berne.)
No communication ever gets through that wall. There is never any human connection. No meeting of the minds. Just this constant play off everything you say or do in a narcissist's infernal, eternal, infantile game-playing.
Normal people have self-respect. So, from an early age on, your first thought is to rise above this childishness. You couldn't bear to stoop to such silly competing for vanities.
Right. But the mistake we often make is to think that "rising above it" means "taking it."
When you do that, you are allowing yourself to be used.
That's enabling. Does that do the narcissist any good?
Does that do yourself any good?
The ego is not an evil thing. Nature has instilled us with this aspect of our personality because it is highly adaptive. It houses the healthy narcissism responsible for our self-love and instinct for self-preservation. If we allow it to be turned traitor against ourselves though, it becomes our own worst enemy, the Enemy Within.
You can't let a parasite like a narcissist constantly bleed it without that happening. This is a narcissist's way of dumping his or her own ego problems on YOU. The narc is transferring his or her own shame and self-hatred to you, like as in a bad-blood transfusion.
Don't allow it. I'd hate to have to admit how long it took me to realize that I can't expect myself to be unharmed by it. Note the narcissism in THAT!!!
I am just a human being. I am not invincible. I can and will eventually be harmed by this constant bloodletting. No shame in acknowledging that, just appropriate modesty.
We all need a world in which "I'm okay, and you're okay." But narcissists deny you that. They impose a world in which they're perfect and you're hopelessly defective.
So, now, when I sense that someone is using me - using me as a mirror for that - I take that mirror away. They don't get to interract with me at all.
In theory, it's simple to deny your presence to a narcissist who abuses it. In practice, however, it sometimes gets complicated, because the situation doesn't always allow you to physically remove yourself from a narcissist's Pathological Space. Then you must analyze the situation and find working ways to deny them interaction.
But be sure to deny them inappropriate interaction with you. Don't allow it and then just IGNORE the put-down you get.
Doing that just gives them permission to use you. And giving others permission to use you will destroy your self-respect.