1. Understand the Impact

Narcissistic parenting often leads to:

• Hypervigilance (always scanning for manipulation or danger)

• Difficulty identifying or expressing your own needs

• Fear of vulnerability or rejection

• Internalized beliefs like "I'm not worthy unless I perform"

Understanding that these are protective adaptations, not flaws, helps reduce self-blame.

2. Rebuild Trust in Yourself First

You likely learned to mistrust your instincts. Start here:

• Track your emotional responses. Keep a journal: “What did I feel? What triggered it? What did I do?”

• Validate your own perceptions. Even if others disagree, your experience is still real.

• Practice boundaries. They reinforce self-trust. Saying “no” when you mean no is a form of self-loyalty.

3. Learn the Signs of Healthy vs. Unhealthy People

It’s easier to trust when you know what to look for:

• Healthy people: respect your boundaries, show consistency, allow space for mutual influence.

• Red flags: gaslighting, lack of accountability, chronic self-centeredness, emotional volatility.

Use this knowledge not to judge others quickly but to observe behavior over time.

4. Start Small with Trust

Trust isn’t all-or-nothing. It’s built gradually:

• Share small, low-stakes vulnerabilities and see how the person responds.

• Notice how it feels in your body — anxiety, ease, tightness?

• Adjust based on patterns, not isolated moments.

5. Therapy or Support Groups

A trauma-informed therapist (especially one familiar with narcissistic abuse) can:

• Help you deconstruct internalized messages

• Support you in emotionally safe experimentation with trust

• Guide you through relational re-patterning

Support groups (online or in person) can also provide safer spaces to practice being seen and heard without judgment.

6. Practice Self-Compassion

Mistrust was your brain’s way of protecting you — that’s a sign of resilience.
Instead of pushing yourself to "just trust," try:

• “It makes sense that this is hard for me.”

• “I’m allowed to go at my own pace.”

• “I don’t have to trust everyone to begin trusting someone.”

7. Redefine Trust

You don’t need to fully trust someone to have a relationship. Trust can mean:

• Trusting someone with your time but not your deepest secrets

• Trusting that someone is doing their best, even if it’s not perfect

• Trusting yourself to leave if a relationship becomes unsafe

You Might Also Try:

• Books: “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents” by Lindsay Gibson, “Will I Ever Be Good Enough?” by Karyl McBride

• Somatic practices: grounding, breathwork, and body scans help retrain your nervous system to feel safe in connection

I’m reminded of my favorite foreign film where you are in suspense, trying to figure out what is happening, up until the very end when the credits are rolling. Then you have to go back and watch the movie again with this new information to understand what is actually happening. And you have a new understanding of what is happening, “so that’s why the pens didn’t work”. The same thing can be true of your relationship with a narcissist. They completely turn you inside out. They originally court you with sweet words and attention. They lure you in. Then you slowly become aware of what they really are. The mask slips, the elaborate facade they created falls away, and you see the actual person behind the mask. The manipulation, lying, and gaslighting begin and they blame you for everything that is wrong. You have to fight your way through it to see clearly. It isn’t until the end that you get a glimpse of what is actually happening. Then you have to go back and review the entire relationship - with different eyes and increased understanding, just like the foreign film.

So don’t beat yourself up for ruminating about it. Your poor mind needs to do that to get a clear picture of exactly what you are dealing with and resolve the discrepancy between what they told you they were and what they actually were. Be kind. Be patient. You will heal.

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Nature and music are two of the most powerful methods of soothing a traumatized mind. Music is especially good for helping you process difficult emotions. I strongly encourage clients to create playlists for themselves which they can access when they are experiencing strong emotions like; having panic attacks, going down a shame spiral, feeling triggered, or other situations which are emotionally overwhelming. Several different playlists can be especially helpful; a soothing playlist for when you are anxious or distressed, a sad playlist to help you grieve, a fun playlist to help you get out of a triggering event, an angry playlist for when you need to fight back and build courage, and so on.

This can be a daunting task for survivors of personality disordered parents. If you were raised by narcissists it’s probable that your sense of self never fully formed. I talk more about this in other posts. Without a fully formed sense of self you might not know what kind of music you like, your favorite color, what kind of food you like or dislike, etc. Many times children of narcissists think creating a playlist is something you do for other people, choosing songs other people will enjoy. But a playlist is a very personal endeavor and a wonderful self care technique.

Here are some suggested songs for playlists. I’ve included a category for women’s issues as they are especially relative right now.

Please add music you like in the comments!

Soothing:

Exhale (Shoop Shoop), Whitney Houston

Hallelujah, K. D. Lang

Nocturnes: III. Sure on This Shining Night, Minnesota Choral Artists

Angry:

I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor

Stronger, Kelly Clarkson

Someday, Mariah Carey

Home, Machine Gun Kelly, X Ambassadors, Bebe Rexha

Unstoppable, Sia

Sad:

Bridge Over Troubled Water, Roberta Flack

Full of Grace, Sarah McLachlan

Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, Elton John

Since I Fell for You, Gladys Knight

Say Something, A Great Big World, Christina Aguilera

Home, Michael Buble

Angel, Sarah Maclachlan

Unbreak My Heart, Toni Braxton

Uplifting:

Proud, Heather Small

Breakaway, Kelly Clarkson

I Hope You Dance, Lee Ann Womack

I Know Where I’ve Been, Queen Latifah

Broken and Beautiful, Kelly Clarkson

Women’s Issues:

Boss Bitch, Doja Cat

Can’t Hold Us Down, Christina Aguilera

Good as Hell, Lizzo

Fighter, Christina Aguilera

I’m a Woman, Deborah Coleman

The Bullpen, Dessa

Gabriella’s Sang, Helen Sjoholm (Swedish, from the Swedish film, As it is in Heaven)

Flowers, Miley Cyrus

Strut, Sheena Easton

Fun:

Can’t Stop the Feeling, Justin Timberlake, from the movie The Trolls

Cha Cha Slide, DJ Casper

In these Shoes? Kirsty MacColl

Uptown Funk, Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars

Let’s Get Loud, Jennifer Lopez

If You Wanna be Happy, Jimmy Soul

Say Hey (I Love You), Michael Franti and Spearhead, Cherine Tanya Anderson

Baby Shark, Pinkfong

Fireball, Pitbull, John Ryan

Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen

I’m Too Sexy, Right Said Fred

Shoop, Salt-N-Pepa

Waka Waka, Shakira (in Spanish and English)

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(I’m often asked if narcissists know they do this. For the most part no, they don’t. Narcissists usually come from a family of narcissists, borderlines, or antisocials (commonly referred to as sociopaths/psychopaths). The dysfunction is intergenerational and the behaviors passed down from generation to generation. Their behaviors are largely learned in their home as a child and feel normal to them. Can they know what they are doing? Absolutely. But, in general they are functioning on automatic pilot, doing what was done to them, with very little insight.)

Real life examples are in italics. Specific information has been altered to protect the privacy and confidentiality of clients and survivors.

Table of Contents

Abandonment
Baiting
Blaming
Boundary Busting
Bullying
Catch-22 (Double Bind)
D.A.R.V.O.
Defensive
Discussion as a Manipulation
Dismissive
Exaggeration
Flying Monkeys
Freezing You Out
Gaslighting
Gifting
Grooming
Grudges
Guilting
Hoovering
Idealizing/Discarding
Innuendo/Insinuation
Intellectualization
Moving the Goalposts
Oppositional
Passive Aggressive
Pathologizing
Proclamations
Projection
Puppeteering
Rationalization
Redefining Reality
Rewriting History
Sabotage
Sanity Attacks
Smear Campaigns
Splitting
Stonewalling
Suicidal "Threats"
Triangling
Trivializing
Victim, Playing the Victim

Abandonment (Constant Threats of Abandonment)

This is a really serious manipulation that causes severe psychological damage to children of narcissists and is seen in adult survivors. It can be part of the idealize/discard cycle (see below). Because of this constant fear of abandonment adult survivors of narcissistic parents may have anxious or avoidant attachments styles or they may decide to avoid relationships altogether. It can also create a great deal of anxiety in other adult relationships. If you have conflict with a friend you may fear they will stop being your friend. If your boss gives you constructive criticism you may fear being fired. You may go through life trying to keep everyone happy and avoiding conflict for fear they will leave you because that is what the narcissist would do.

It can take several forms; refusing to talk to you, breaking off the relationship, throwing you out of the house, or even threatening to commit suicide. It can either be outright abandonment or threatened/implied abandonment.

Examples:

"I hate people like you. If you weren't my daughter I'd have nothing to do with you."

To the oldest child:  “Children should be like pancakes, you throw the first one out.”

"When I don't like you or you disappoint me, I want to run away and not have anything to do with you."

They will also project their abandonment onto other people and try to convince you they will abandon you.  

"If you keep acting like this, nobody will want to be your friend."

Baiting

Bait covers a hook. It is used to lure you in to hook you. Baiting is the practice of offering something which appears to be tantalizing, but in reality it is actually something else. It may be absolutely nothing. Example: the narcissist who creates a lot of drama and cries wolf in order to get your attention then you find nothing is actually going on. It might be a bait and switch which appears to be one thing but in actuality is something completely different. Example: the narcissist who fills you full of compliments and sweet nothings to lure you back into the relationship then proceeds to abuse you again. Baiting can be totally benign, as in the case of the narcissist creating drama to get attention, or it can be completely nefarious, as in the case of the narcissist trying to lure you back into an abusive relationship with them. Whatever form it takes it is always a manipulation. This is an emotional form of seduction. They seduce you back into their drama.

Baiting for Attention

Narcissists must have attention. It drives almost everything they do. And they will do anything to get it. If they can compliment and cajole you into giving them your attention that is fine. However, if that doesn’t work they will lash out and hurt you, provoking a response that way. Since they have no empathy they don’t care whether they charm you or hurt you - whatever it takes to get your attention. They often bait you with a loaded statement in order to pull you closer to them with the tantalizing offer of drama. They will fill your ear full of sweet nothings, complimenting and charming you. They make an emotionally loaded statement, but fail to finish it. They drop a tantalizing tidbit, but refuse to say anything until you beg them to continue. They say something they know will upset or anger you. They accuse you falsely. They will say something they know will start a fight. They will negatively compare you to others. They will inflame your jealousy. They will contort reality or outright lie.

Example:

On Facebook, Michelle posts about herself and her boyfriend Ted, “Ted and I have made a big decision, text me!”  Instead of honestly, openly stating, “We got engaged!”,  she baits people to contact her.

Example:

My neighbor always Facebooks me things like, “The police were here last night…”.  That’s it.  He never finishes it.  He waits for me to beg him to tell me more.  If I don’t respond, he throws out another piece of bait.  “They were at #124…”   Then he waits for my response.  If I don’t respond, he throws out some more bait, “They arrested someone…”  When I used to respond to these ploys, I would then find out nothing really happened at all.  It was just drama.  After all that baiting, the “police” turned out to be a security guard and a friend of someone who lived in 124.  And there was no arrest or anything.   I finally stopped responding and he found someone else to play his games on.

They will also bait you to get a reaction.  This is especially true if you have cut them off or have stopped responding to their manipulations.  This form of baiting may be through actions or words.  Because their empathy and remorse is impaired they often don’t care if they get a loving response or an angry response.  They just want a response because a response is attention.  If being nice to you doesn’t work, they will provoke you.  As long as you acknowledge them, they know they’ve got you.

Examples:

“My mom would fake worry to bait me into telling her things.  Then she would use them against me.  If she was worried about where my sister went she would fake worry until I told her, then she would go to where my sister was and create a huge scene.  They even had to call the police once because she was so out of control and screaming.  She totally fooled me."  

Another form of baiting involves feigned attention, affection, empathy or compassion, or love.  They will bait the child by telling them how much they are going to help them.  They may shower the child with accolades and tell them how wonderful they are.  If they are the adult survivor’s partner, they may seduce them with courting behavior, attention, compliments, gifts, or sex.  But it’s all a lie.  They don’t actually feel these things, they merely offer them as bait to draw their partner or child back into the relationship.

This often happens when they’ve been confronted with their abuse or neglect.  It can happen when they realize they’ve stepped over the line.  They then sweet talk the child or partner to suck them back into the relationship.  They are nice just long enough to pull you back into the relationship, then it abruptly stops and they resume their usual behavior.  This is often referred to as the “mean/nice cycle” and is discussed below. 

Blaming

"We didn't kick your sister out. We told her to leave and she did, but she wasn't supposed to take it seriously. She's such a disobedient girl."

Nothing is ever a narcissist’s fault.  The blaming, the gaming, the gaslighting, the mind games, the denial, the contorting of reality, the rewriting of history;  it’s never their fault.  They will blame everyone else, anyone else.  They will casually throw people under the bus; devoted family members, their own children, loyal friends, even hard-working employees.  Whatever they have to do to avoid taking responsibility for their behavior will be done.   

They will blame you for everything that is wrong in their lives.  They will blame you for things which happen elsewhere.  They will blame you for the acts of other people.  They didn’t get that promotion at work?  It’s your fault for not being more supportive.  They live in a city they hate?  It’s your fault for “making” them move here (even though it was their idea to move).  They lost their temper and hit you?  It’s your fault for irritating them when you know they are tired.  The extent to which they will contort reality to avoid being wrong can almost be comical.  However, when they are throwing you under the bus or attacking your sanity it can be utterly devastating.

One of the most maddening games they play is blaming you for your own abuse.  You drove them to it.  If only you weren’t so difficult.  You upset them so much they couldn’t think straight.  Your backtalk pushed them over the edge.  Your nitpicking is driving them to distraction. They abuse you until you get upset, then they blame and shame you for being upset.  Why do you always overreact?  Why do you take everything so personally? 

Many times their blaming is so subtle you don’t even know it’s happening.  You came to them to talk about how they were mistreating you and walked away convinced you were mistreating them, and you don’t even know how it happened.  

Examples:

You tell your mother your stepfather has been inappropriately touching you.  She yells at you, tells you to stop “prancing around the house” and suggests you seduced him.

Your girlfriend leaves you for someone else and they offer no sympathy.  They know how difficult you are to get along with. 

Your sister breaks an important belonging of yours and your father insinuates you don’t take proper care of your things, suggests you are “overreacting”, or asks why you provoked her.  

"Why did you let me drink at all? It's really your fault I acted that way."

Boundary Busting

“Oh, that’s not what you think.  Let me tell you what to think.  You agree with me on this.”  (A narcissistic father discussing politics with his son, who disagreed with him.) 

They view themselves as the center of your world and cannot tolerate the idea that you exist separately from them.  Your emotions should be the same as their emotions.  Your belongings are theirs.  Your space is theirs.  Your food is theirs.  You are not allowed to have needs, desires, wants, problems, concerns, thoughts or feelings separate from theirs.  

Tell them “No”, “Don’t” or “You Can’t” and they make it their life’s mission to turn it into “Yes”, “Do” or “I Can”.  They will push, push, push.  They may drop it for a few weeks, even months, then, just when you relax and think it is settled they will bring it back up.   Below you will find examples of different kinds of boundaries and how narcissists violate them.  For a complete discussion on boundaries; what they are and why they are important please see my article, Why Healthy Boundaries are Important in Relationships.  

Emotional Boundaries

Narcissists do not consider that you have emotions of your own.  They see you merely as an extensive of themselves.  As a result, they expect you to experience things the same way they do.  They also expect you to take responsibility for their emotions and make them feel better.  You exist to meet their needs and have none of your own.  If they are upset about something, they expect you to be upset too.  If you have a problem, but they are in a good mood, they can’t understand why you are bringing them down and often resent the imposition.  If they are having a bad day, but you are in a good mood, they expect you to feel bad with them and to take responsibility for making them feel better.  They will also resent the fact that you are having a good day and may sabotage you or lash out to sabotage your happiness.  If you were raised by a narcissistic parent, you probably grew up absorbing the emotions of everyone around you and feeling responsible for fixing them because that is what a narcissist parent has groomed you to do.  You may also have grown up to be afraid of being happy.  Being happy in a narcissistic home may have gotten you attacked or at least disparaged. 

Mental Boundaries

Narcissists will tell you what you think. They will insist that you share their points of view, their opinions, their likes and dislikes. They will demand that you tell them what you think, then tell you you’re wrong - you don’t really think that. They will not allow you to have your own ideas and opinions. They will not allow you to think your own thoughts. They will demand your opinion, then disparage you for having it or dismiss it as irrelevant.

Example:
“Oh, that’s not what you think. Let me tell you what to think. You agree with me on this.”
(A narcissistic father discussing politics with his son, who disagreed with him.)

Physical Boundaries

What’s theirs is theirs and what’s yours is theirs.

If you are a minor living at home, your room is their room.  You can never have any privacy.  They will walk in on you in the bathroom.  They will search your room when you’re not there.  They will go through your things.  They will give away or loan your belongings to other people without asking you.  

If you’re an adult, they will invite themselves into your house.  They will visit you at work though you’ve told them it’s not allowed.  They will come to your house when you’re not home and “borrow” your belongings without your permission.  They will eat off your plate.  They will buy clothes for you in the style they like and the size they wear, and insist you wear them.  When angry, they will destroy your most precious belongings, often just for spite, because they resent you having something which delights you so much.  They can be that petty and vicious.

Example:

I can't believe it.  I keep hearing their words, “it's just a fish”, but they weren’t just fish.  They were my sanctuary.  And I’m mad at myself for thinking they couldn’t do something this awful.  I still can’t believe what they did, even when I’m staring right at it.  How could they be so cruel?  If not to me, to the fish?

I spent almost a year planning and setting up a beautiful aquarium.  I worked extra jobs to pay for it.  I started with a small tank and slowly worked my way up to bigger ones.  I did a lot of research and created just the right combination of fish and plants and decorations.  It was my safe haven.  It was my peaceful escape from all the chaos.  

I came home from school and found they had taken it completely apart.  There was nothing left but the empty spot in my room where it had stood.  I couldn’t believe it.  What had they done with the fish?  Did they just let them flop around, slowly suffocating?   Since I’ll never know I’m left with my imagination, and it’s horrible.  

And their reason for doing this?  Because I was spending too much time on the aquarium.  So they basically destroyed my beautiful fish because I wasn’t paying enough attention to them.  

My dad’s response when I protested?  “You always overreact.  Why do you have to be such a drama queen?”

Privacy Boundaries

They will read your email, go through your computer’s history, go through your phone, listen in on your conversations, and read your mail.  They will burst in on you in the bathroom or when you are in the shower.  They will demand to know private details of your sex life and your relationships.  

Body Boundaries

This will touch your body, usually painfully, pinching, grabbing, touching inappropriately.  They will make disparaging, inappropriate, hurtful comments/observations about your body loudly and/or in public.  And they do not believe you have the right to reject or refuse their intrusions or touches.  

My father always grabbed my knee cap and squeezed as hard as he could.  I don’t know if he considered that affection or what.  It hurt like hell.  When I asked him not to do it, he would only do it more.   His touch always felt creepy or sadistic.

Relationship Boundaries

They will intrude upon your relationships.  If you don’t talk to them, they will call your spouse and demand to know why you aren’t calling them.  They ingratiate themselves with the people around you in order to extract information from them or engage them as flying monkeys (See:   Flying Monkeys in this chapter.)  They will flirt with your spouse.  They will call your boss to see where you are.  They will turn your siblings against you.  They will give your children permission to do things you have forbidden, take them where you said they could not go, and buy them things you do not want them to have.  They will force their relationships on you against your protests.

Example:
Nadine’s partner (Marlena) is a narcissist.  Marlena has an adult daughter (Jessie) who is rude and abusive to Nadine.  Nadine has made it clear that she does not want Jessie to come over while Nadine is there.  Marlena disputed this at first, but then agreed to it.  However, the issue continues to pop up every few months.  “But it’s Christmas, don’t you think I should be able to see my daughter at Christmas?” (guilting)  Or, “Jessie just came by to drop something off, I don’t know why you are making such a big deal about it.”  (pathologizing Nadine for being upset).

Communication Boundaries

They demand to be answered - right now.  Whether they are calling you, emailing you, stopping by to visit unannounced or coming into town.  When they decide to talk to you, you are supposed to make yourself available.  If you don’t, they may inundate you with demands that you respond to them.  If you continue to ignore them, they will track you down at home, work, school, wherever you are.  They will contact everyone around you to demand that you respond to them - right now.

In their minds, you do not have the right to be busy at work, to be taking care of a small child, to be attending a medical appointment or to be going to the bathroom.  They believe you must answer them, immediately, at all times.

Example:
I came home from work one day and found that my narcissistic mother had been calling everyone in my life for hours trying to find out where I was.  She had called me at work earlier in the day.  I have told her repeatedly that I can’t be on the phone at work.  But she doesn’t care.  She wants to talk to me and she wants to talk to me now.  She doesn’t care about me or my employment, only getting what she wants. So I didn’t return her call, because I can’t be on the phone at work.  She began calling everyone, my friends, my colleagues, my neighbors, everyone.  I was so embarrassed.  But at the same time, I was kind of relieved.  Now they can finally see what I’m talking about when I tell them how crazy this woman is. 

Financial Boundaries

They will take out credit for themselves in your name.  They will take money out of your account if they have access to it.  They will access your credit card and bank accounts illegally.  They will use money and finances to manipulate you.  

My car broke down and I went to buy another car.  They ran a credit check.  I’m sitting in the car dealer’s office when I find out I have a line of credit at Home Depot which was behind in payments.  So they wouldn’t sell me the car because of my bad credit.  I knew my dad had been buying a lot of new tools.  Now I knew how.  I was livid!  I don’t know which made me madder, that he took out the credit in my name or that he didn’t make the payments on it.  He always pays his bills on time, but not the credit he took out in my name.  When I confronted him about it he rolled his eyes and responded, “Well let’s go get your name off of it.  I know how sensitive you are. (pathologizing)”

Bullying

They may bully with their rage, their intellect, even their body.  Bullying can take many forms.  It can also vary depending on the situation.  They may bully you one way in public and utilize a different method in private.  It’s important to be aware of the many ways they bully you in order to recognize it when it’s happening.

Emotional/Psychological Bullying

• Calling you names or calling you by derogatory terms, verbal put-downs and insults

• Hitting below the belt, hitting you where they know you are sensitive (i.e. insulting your artwork which they know is very important to you, calling you fat when they know you are sensitive about your weight, jabbing you about a recent relationship which ended)

• Throwing tantrums so intense they are frightening

• Yelling, screaming, getting really angry in order to intimidate you into doing what they want

• Getting loud or creating a scene in public in order so you will do what they want in order not to be embarrassed in public

• Threatening to leave you if you don’t do what they want

• Using private information to humiliate you 

• Starting a smear campaign against you (or threatening to) when you don’t comply

• Isolating you from your support systems and other people either physically, emotionally, or socially

• Repeatedly and/or harshly criticizing you

• Judging you by a different standard than other people or themselves

• Making up their own rules on the fly, then getting angry when you don’t know the rules 

• Falsely accusing you of something you didn’t do

• Staring, glaring or be non-verbally intimidating, hostile

• Using the silent treatment

• “Icing you out” or cold shouldering you when you don’t do what they want

• Out of control mood swings which leave you feeling like you are walking on eggshells trying to keep them happy

• Veiled threats

Financial Bullying

• Threatening to throw a minor child out of the house when the child doesn’t comply with their wishes

• Threatening to cut off payments or support (i.e. car payments, student loan payments, child support, housing assistance for a child in college)

• “Giving” you money then, when they get mad at you, claiming they really intended for it to be a loan and demanding it back

• Taking out loans or credit in your name then exploding in a rage when you confront them about it

• Demanding that you account for every cent you spend, demanding that you let them see your bank statements, keeping a spreadsheet of your financial transactions and tracking them

Intellectual Bullying

Intellectual bullies specialize in condescension.  They achieve this through a variety of methods.

• Using overly large words or technical jargon

• Using specialized knowledge you cannot be expected to know, i.e. an attorney talking down to his teenaged son in legal terms, a doctor expecting her daughter to understand medical terminology and berating her for being “stupid” when she doesn’t, a psychiatrist using their knowledge to “diagnose” people who disagree with them

Physical Bullying

• Blocking you with their body so you can’t leave the room

• Pushing you with their body

• Gross or inappropriate gestures, touching

• Beating you at physical feats then berating you for not being as strong or athletic as them

• Being violent with inanimate objects as a show of power or intimidation;  i.e. punching the wall, throwing a lamp against the wall, throwing a glass, slamming or banging things.

• Taking, “borrowing”, using, giving away your belongings without permission

• Invading your space, going into your room or space uninvited, going through your personal papers/belongings, listening in on your phone calls, going through your phone, showing up at your job, bursting in on you in the bathroom

• Inappropriate and/or aggressive nudity

I had a friend who was a narcissist, who also came from a family of narcissists.  As we got to know each other she started “changing clothes” in front of me.  Sometimes it would be in the middle of the living room.  Sometimes it would be in the middle of the driveway.  They lived out in the country, but still, it would be really inappropriate.  It seemed to be purposeful, to see if she could make me uncomfortable with her nudity.  What was really strange?  She had complained to me earlier that her sister would use nudity to intimidate her.  Then she did the same thing to me.  It was really weird.  

Walter Kirn describes this behavior when writing about convicted killer and con man, Christian Gerhartsreiter, a.k.a. Clark Rockefeller. 

“Once, a few weeks after the murder, a policeman rang the guesthouse doorbell, perhaps before all the gore had been sponged up. Tight spot. No time to think. But Clark surpassed himself. He answered the door naked, completely naked, proclaiming himself a nudist when asked to dress, as though he were resisting on religious grounds. The flustered policeman excused himself and said he’d stop by later. Clark shut the door, resuming the form he took behind shut doors.”  Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade (p. 193). Liveright. Kindle Edition.

Reputational Bullying

• Spreading lies about you on social media

• Smearing your reputation with your friends, colleagues, and/or family

• Accusing you of mistreating them, causing others to see you as the aggressor

• Threatening to out you if you are LGBT

• Threatening to expose any secrets you might have shared with them

Catch-22

Damned if you do.  Damned if you don’t.

A Catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules.  The name originates from a satirical novel by Joseph Heller which relates his experiences with the military in World War II.  It was eventually made into a movie which every survivor of a narcissist personality disorder should see.  Heller was an Air Force bombardier trying to survive World War II.  Airmen who were crazy were not obliged to fly missions, but anyone who applied to stop flying was showing a rational concern for his safety and was, therefore, sane and had to fly.  This is the classic double bind, a no-win situation.  The term “catch-22” was coined to describe such a double bind.  It is the typical damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario.

Narcissists are full of double binds.  

A narcissistic mother would tell her son, “If you’re not on fire or bleeding, don’t bother me.”  And she meant it.  However, what she really meant was, “don’t bother me for any reason” because she did not want anything which took time and attention away from her.  So her son learned to escalate his needs to emergencies.  If he fell or was hurt, he would exaggerate and say he was bleeding to death or horribly injured, as his mother had taught him to do.  She would then dismiss him saying, “You're such a drama queen!”  

A classic Catch-22.  No matter what he did, he couldn’t win.  It was a setup for failure.  If he didn’t complain loudly enough, she had an excuse to ignore him.  If he complained too loudly, she had an excuse to dismiss him.  But the failure wasn’t his, it was her inability to feel empathy for his childhood needs.  

D.A.R.V.O.

Deny - usually by gaslighting, they deny what you are trying to talk to them about
Attack - They turn it around and attack you, make it about you
Reverse…
Victim - blame you and
Offender - play the victim themselves

Example:

You try to tell your narcissistic mother that dropping in on you at work is not only unappreciative and intrusive, but it’s putting your employment at risk.

Mother: “I never come to your work, except when it’s an emergency!”
(She has dopped by 7 times in the past 6 weeks. This denial is gaslighting.)

“You are always accusing me of things I don’t even do! Why do you always overreact?”
(Attack.)
”I just can’t do anything to help you. You don’t even appreciate it when I try to be your mother! Why so I have such an ungrateful son?”
(Reversing victim and offender so that you are the one being rude to her.)

Defensive

"People don't defend a position which doesn't need defending."

Narcissists are extremely defensive, especially when you try to confront them about their bad behavior. Their defensive behaviors can be extreme.  They may flood your phone with screenshots of texts to try to prove their point. They may fill your email box with copies of emails to try to prove their point. They may try to overwhelm you with statistics or data. They may start name dropping or title dropping in an attempt to demonstrate that others think or act in the same way as they do.

It's natural to defend ourselves, our emotions, our point of view.  How do you know when you’re being manipulated?

When it’s over the top. When it’s irrelevant. When they appeal to authority which has nothing to do with the issue. When they issue a proclamation. When they spam you with emails, bombard you with texts or call you 15 times to try to “explain”.  They are the embodiment of Shakespeare’s line, “the lady doth protest too much”.

Discussion as a Manipulation

How could discussion be a manipulation?  This is one of the most maddening of the narcissist’s manipulations.  Narcissists convince you that the two of you are actually discussing something.  But they are really only humoring you and using your arguments against you, twisting and contorting what you say to gain an advantage in the conversation.  They will engage in a discussion as a way of pushing or violating your boundaries.  You issue a firm “No” or indicate a line which cannot be crossed and the next thing you know you are “discussing” it.  Now the firm line you drew has become an unrecognizable blur in the sand.  They will use discussion to attempt to move the goal post.  They will use discussion to gaslight you.  They will use discussion to bully you.  They will use discussion to contort reality into something you can no longer recognize.  You know you are in a “discussion” with a narcissist when the conversation disintegrates into a one hour debate on what a word means or a thirty minute debate about how to communicate a simple idea.    

This is a complicated, but perfect example of how many different manipulations they will employ in a single dialogue.  When it comes to manipulation, narcissists are true multitaskers.  I’ll indicate each form of manipulation (in parentheses, in plain text) as we go.  Each of these manipulations is described in this chapter.  

As the executive director (ED) of a charity, I once worked with a narcissist who refused to return a trailer and some panels which were the property of the charity.  I explained to her that the charity was closing down, the equipment belonged to the charity, and the IRS required that all assets be accounted for.  She refused to return it.  I explained that if she refused to return it, it would have to be reported to the IRS.  She continued to refuse.  It took two years to finalize all the paperwork for closing the charity.  During that time she made no effort to return the equipment and used it for her own benefit.  Upon final dissolution of the charity, the status of the equipment was reported to the IRS and she was duly notified.  She exploded.  

She went over my head to the president of the board (splitting, triangling) asking if we could discuss the situation (discussion).   There was nothing to discuss.  The time for discussion had long passed and she had refused.  Trying to open the door for “discussion”, she tried to slander me (smear campaign) suggesting that I was being dishonest or misrepresenting the facts.  She accused me of being “mistaken” and “misremembering” (sanity attack, gaslighting) how events had occurred.  

“I understand that you were under stress when (the charity) closed and perhaps you're a bit foggy on the facts.” (sanity attack, pathologizing)

When the board chair wouldn’t go along with it, she resorted to issuing a veiled threat.

“Arbitrarily assigning these assets to me as if that settles things for (the charity) is a mistake you may want to reconsider.” (bullying)   

Entering into a discussion with a narcissist implies that the matter is open for discussion.  It isn’t.  It’s also futile.  They are not interested in an honest, open dialogue.  They only want to win at any cost.  They will lie, manipulate, gaslight you, rage, rewrite history, bully you, attack your sanity, and make threats.  It will not be a logical, rational, sane discussion for the purpose of arriving at the truth or a compromise.  The only way to win is not to play.

Dismissive

My narcissistic father’s reply when I learned that a friend died of cancer:  "People die, you need to get over it. Go make dinner."

This manipulation is a lot more important that it seems.  Children of narcissistic parents grow up trying to get sympathy and compassion from parents who are incapable of giving it.  They try to tell their parents they have a concern, a hurt, or a problem.  But a narcissistic parent is devoid of empathy and unable to provide the much needed compassion and caring.  However, they will never admit the deficit is theirs.  Instead, they attempt to dismiss the problem as being unimportant or too trivial for them to deal with.  

Why is this important?  Because a lot of survivors will internalize this dismissive language and use it against themselves.  As you read this section, focus on how the narcissist in your life dismisses you and look for that same language in your own self-talk.  

Being dismissive is closely related to Trivializing.  (See:  Trivializing in this article)

Being dismissive can take several forms.  

They dismiss your concerns, your feelings, your ideas, your ideals, your opinions.  They dismiss you as a person.  They ignore you when you are talking, assuming that you couldn’t possibly say anything they would want to hear.  You are not even important enough for them to attend to.  They wave off your concerns and admonish you with the infamous, “Get over it”.  They dismiss you with their words

• “You think too much.”

• “Why must you analyze everything?”

•  “Get over it.”

• “Suck it up buttercup.”

• “Why do you always overreact?”

• “Don’t be such a drama queen.”  

If you are an expert in a given field of study or work they will still dismiss you with smirks, exaggerated exclamations, “Oh realllly?”,  “You don’t say!”,  “Sure it is!”, “Is that what you’re learning in those classes I’m paying for?”, or a condescending, “Where did you read that???” 

They dismiss you with their body language.  It may be a look, a gesture, rolling their eyes, waving you away with their hand, smirking, sneering, snorting, yawning dramatically, sighing loudly, shaking their head in feigned disgust, making a face at other people in the room, or laughing derisively. 

They may dismiss you with their actions.  

My colleague used to drive me insane by always claiming, “I didn’t hear you say that”.  We would discuss something and come to an agreement.  Weeks later, she would be doing something differently than what we agreed on.  When I questioned her she would always respond, “Oh, I didn’t hear you.”  This way she did whatever she wanted with no regard for what we had agreed upon.  For a long time I didn’t realize this was on purpose.  I actually caught her at it one day when we were discussing the reorganization of a building.  She gave her thoughts on it.  I noticed she did not ask for mine.  I started telling her mine when she interrupted me with a thought she had about turtles.  “Turtles?” I inquired, “How did you get from reorganizing the building to turtles”? “Oh”, she said, “I was sitting here thinking about turtles.”  That was the moment where I realized she didn’t listen to me at all.  She would look at me when I was talking to her, but her mind was somewhere else.  And she didn’t even know what I was going to say.  She decided before I even began talking that nothing I said could possibly be worth listening to.  That’s when I really knew what I was dealing with.

Exaggeration

Narcissists love to create drama and exaggeration is one of their tools. They exaggerate their distress, their symptoms, your behavior, the situation, or their problems to elicit help and sympathy from you or get what they want.

My mother, after she grew older, always claimed she could not do a lot of activities because of her blood pressure. It made her dizzy, it made her weak, it made her tired. She acted all this out quite skillfully. I totally believed her. So, being a good daughter, I did her shopping, her laundry, cleaned her house, and walked her dog. Then, one day a new neighbor moved in next door. A single, male neighbor. Mother donned her finest attire and sashayed over to the house, the epitome of health. I couldn’t believe my eyes. She had played me the entire time. I was furious!

They exaggerate your response to their bad behavior to pathologize you.

You: “Mom, why did you give away my computer?”
Narcissist Mom: “You never used that old thing anyway.”
You: “But it had all my music stored on it!”
Narcissist Mom: “Why do you always throw such a fit about your things! You’re such a drama queen!”

You weren’t “throwing such a fit”. You were confronting her about giving away your personal belongings without your knowledge or permission. But somehow she turns it around and makes it about your behavior.

Flying Monkeys

Flying monkeys are people the narcissist manipulates to apply pressure to you to do what the narcissist wants. If a narcissist is unable to successfully manipulate you themselves, they will often engage other family members, friends, colleagues and others to plead their case with you. This usually happens when you have cut off contact with the narcissist or set a boundary with them. Social media is a perfect medium for this. All they have to do is post a comment about how you are mistreating them, and the monkeys descend. Texts, emails, phones, and word of mouth can work just as well.

Example:

“My 10 year son has diabetes. My mom wanted to babysit him for me and agreed to adhere to his strict diet and regularly check his blood levels. However, when I went to pick him up he would be really sick and his blood levels would be really off. She feigned ignorance and denied doing anything wrong, but I finally got it out of my son that she was giving him cookies and other sweets. When I confronted her about it her only response was, “Well, he wanted it.” That was it. I wouldn’t let him stay with her any longer. She threw a huge temper tantrum, crying and raging, but I refused to give in. Then, she posted on Facebook what a horrible son I was for not letting her even see her grandson. Naturally, she left out the part about her feeding cakes and cookies to a child who was diabetic. Family and friends started bombarding me with posts. Why was I being so heartless? This poor woman, this doting grandmother, just wanted to see her beloved grandson. The guilt and shame they heaped upon me was endless. And I was mortified. They really believe I’m an awful person mistreating this poor woman. Nothing I said would overcome the drama she created. They couldn’t be bothered with the facts. I had to cut some of them off because I just couldn’t take it any more. Some of them have come around and see how she really is. Some of them are still believing her lies. It’s really sad, but what can I do? Most of them are really good people, they just don’t realize they’re being manipulated by a narcissist.”

Example:

Sarah’s elderly mother was in the ICU, fighting sepsis. She and her sisters, Terri and Jessica arranged to split the 24 hour day into three 8 hour shifts and they would take one. Following Sarah’s shift they met to compare notes. Her sister, Terri, whose turn it was to take over, announced she was tired and going back to her room to sleep some more. Sarah and Jessica were appalled. They couldn’t believe that Terri would just leave them hanging to cover the shifts themselves, and without any discussion. They confronted Terri on her selfishness. They were all tired, but they needed to look after their mother. Terri took her shift in the ICU, but proceeded to tell her mother how her sisters were ganging up on her and mistreating her. Their mother became very upset and tried, from her bed in the ICU, to intervene. Sarah and Jessica couldn’t believe Terri would pull their mother, from her bed in the ICU, into drama.

Freezing You Out
(The Silent Treatment)

One of the most insidious manipulations narcissists use on their children is threatening to disown them, throw them out of the house, or otherwise withhold affection until the child performs in the manner the narcissist parent wants. They will also use this maneuver in adult relationships. They may stop responding to texts, emails or phone calls. They may stop speaking to you. They may pointedly ignore you, all in an attempt to get you to do what they want. This is a form of abandonment and adult children will often have abandonment issues in their adult relationships as a result.

Gaslighting

“I don’t know why you make these things up, I never said that.”
“You have such a vivid imagination.”
“I don’t know why you lie like this.”
“Are you on your period?”
“I’m sorry you think I said that.”

Gaslighting is a perfect example of a crazy-making manipulation and narcissists use it frequently. It is the practice of denying something that actually happened. The definition of gaslighting is to manipulate someone into questioning their own perception of reality. It comes from the 1944 movie “Gaslight” with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. In the movie, the husband tried to drive his wife insane so he could collect her inheritance. One of his methods for driving her insane was to climb up into the attic, dim the gaslights, then come back into the parlor where his wife was sitting. When she asked him if he noticed that the gaslights dimmed, he told her they did not dim. He would tell her it was only her imagination and insinuated she was mentally unstable for thinking they dimmed. Hence the term, gaslight.

Narcissists employ this same method to achieve the same effect. They will most commonly employ gaslighting when you confront them about their bad behavior. They have no qualms about looking you right in the face and telling you they didn’t say what you heard them say, they didn’t do what you saw them do. They will deny your five senses, your perceptions, your thoughts and your feelings. It is truly crazy-making behavior. It is especially harmful when it’s done to a child.

They may simply say, “that didn’t happen” or they may take it a step further and accuse you of lying or attack your sanity outright. “Why are you always lying like this?” “Where do you get this stuff?”, “You must be delusional if you think that’s what I said”. They will also completely rewrite history and tell you they said or did something else rather than what you are confronting them about, then imply there must be something wrong with you if you remember it that way.

"Oh, you don't remember that correctly."

Gaslighting can also be used in much more insidious ways. It can be used to deny insults, slights, derogatory remarks, slurs, and outright attacks.

Michelle has always been very critical of her daughter’s weight. She is constantly making little remarks, dropping little hints, slipping in little comments which are derogatory and hurtful. One day, as her daughter is bending over to get something out of the refrigerator Michelle comments, “Oh, you’re wearing THOSE pants?” First, notice that her daughter is in a very vulnerable position when the comment is made. Second, notice the innuendo. Her daughter knows exactly what Michelle is saying, and that it’s aimed to hurt. However, when her daughter tries to confront her on it, Michelle gaslights her, saying, “All I asked was whether you are wearing those pants. I don’t know why you are making such a big deal about it. You always overreact.”

The opening, “all I asked was” is extremely common among narcissists, or another variant, “all I said was…”.  They carefully craft their attacks to be deniable. When her daughter tries to defend herself against the slur, Michelle dismisses it away with, “all I asked was…” then insinuates her daughter is making something out of nothing, and she is overreacting. Michelle gaslights her daughter by acting as if the attack is an innocent comment (it’s not) then pathologizes (See: Pathologizing) her daughter’s reaction.

Examples:

“I know how you are. I know how you really feel. I know the thoughts that you have inside. And that’s not how you really feel about it.”

"Don't tell me what you were doing! I'm telling you what you were doing!"

“That’s NOT how that happened.”

“ You are remembering this wrong on purpose to put me in a bad light — we both KNOW what REALLY happened…”

“I don’t know what to do with you when you are like this.”

"Don't tell me what you said! I know what I heard."

“If anything is wrong in your marriage it’s your fault. You will never find another spouse who is as good to you as the one you have now.”

You:  "What you said upset me." 

Narcissist:  "No it didn't, you weren't upset by it stop manipulating us"

“You're so over sensitive, I can't say anything”.

“You're so questioning, you don't believe what I say. You and your trust issues”.

“Are you losing the plot? I never ever said that”.

"You're remembering things wrong."

“If you won't hear it from me, ask your mum or friend, they know what you're like”.

“This is getting ridiculous, you need help. A therapist or something”.  (See also:  Pathologizing)

"Feelings are gay."

"You're an adult when I decide you are."

"I believe that you sincerely believe yourself. But you're wrong."

“I just don't see how someone so smart could be so stupid.”

"If you keep taking whatever I am saying as criticism, that is YOUR problem."

And, when all else fails, they expect you to gaslight yourself:

“Just think happy thoughts, don't think about the fact that you were yelled at/ shamed/ beaten/ humiliated/ terrified almost every day of your life in our house.”

Gifting

Narcissists' gifts are never free. They always come with strings attached. There is an expectation of reciprocation. If they give their child an allowance, they expect some sort of payback. And not the usual forms of reciprocation. Other parents may expect chores to be done or for the child to get good grades. This is different. The narcissist expects the child to be a trophy child, to live to meet their needs, to keep their secrets and lies, to tolerate abuse and neglect. They expect the allowance to buy loyalty and compliance. Instead of giving you something outright they will put on a payment plan. For instance, instead of giving their child a car they will make payments on a car for them. That way, if the child ever displeases them they can stop making payments. Naturally, not everyone who buys a car for their child on payments is a narcissist. But a narcissist will always do it this way.

As a result of growing up being baited, survivors of narcissistic parents often distrust gifts and kindnesses. They can’t believe anyone would just be nice to them for no reason. Most people don’t think of gifts as manipulations. However, with narcissists, gifts are never free. They always have a string attached. A gift is an investment, and they expect it to be repaid. They may use it to buy your silence or your complicity. They may use it to engage you in your own abuse. They may use it as bait, to cover a very sharp hook whose purpose is to lure you back in. They may wish to engender you to them or to buy your loyalty.

Regardless of their ulterior motives, they may still believe their gift to be a grand gesture or a great sacrifice. If so, they will be sure to let you know this and expect you to behave accordingly. They will expect you to acknowledge, and reciprocate, the value of the gift - as they perceive it. Nothing is ever given freely. Nothing. They count every thing they give you, every penny they loan you, every favor they do for you. They will ask about the status of the gift every time they see you, to keep it up front in your mind that you owe them. They will bring it up in front of other people to impress them with their generosity. They use it as an assault if you dare to question them or say no to them.

My parents used gifts as leverage or ammunition. “We bend over backwards for you and give you everything and this is how you treat us?"  They may also use gifts to play favorites or split family members.  They may also withhold gifting to punish the scapegoat of the family or someone who is not doing what they want.

There were three of us children.  Every holiday my father would pick one child and lavish them with gifts while ignoring the other two.  And he would rotate it.  It became a joke, who was his favorite this time?  But it really wasn't funny.  It used to drive my mom insane.  How could she explain to little children why one received so many presents and why the other two received none?  There was no good reason.  

They may give you their trash. I’ve known narcissists who dearly treasured every single thing they owned, to the point of being hoarders. They can’t throw away that worn out, old toaster. But they give it to you, make it a grand gesture, and expect to be repeatedly acknowledged for their great sacrifice.

Narcissists frequently use emotional manipulations in their interactions with those around them. Manipulations are crazy making. Manipulations are how the narcissist gets inside your head and turns your own mind against you. You start to doubt your own sense of perception of reality, your decision making abilities, your judgment, your emotions, even your own five senses. Because understanding the manipulations which are being played on you is such an important part of healing, I have created a comprehensive list. Because the list is so long, they are listed alphabetically for easy reference.  I've also created a table of contents at the beginning of this article to help you search for specific manipulations.  

Gifts from narcissists can also be a manipulation to hook you back in.  

“If I stopped talking to my mom for a while, she would eventually ask me if I needed money for anything as a way to bribe me to let her back in.  Or, if I was still speaking to her, but maintaining a healthy distance from her, she would mine our conversations for something I said which indicated I was having a problem.  She would then offer money to fix it.  But it was never a gift.  It was a bribe.  She used the money to compensate for the fact that she felt nothing for me.  She would use it as artificial empathy, to bind me to her.  She would also use it to install a sense of obligation in me.”

Their gifts can also be humorous as they tend to buy you what they like.  They will also gift you with what they think you should want or need.  Gifts from narcissists can also be little slurs.  Imagine a 15 year old tomboy of a girl who receives a frilly dress from her narcissist mother.  It’s her mother’s manipulative way of letting her know what kind of daughter she expects her to be.  To add insult to injury, they cannot fathom you do not love these gifts and are quite put out when you reject them.  

"We bought you a car, what else do I need to do to make you want to hang out with us?"

“Dad threatened to cancel the trip he scheduled for my birthday.  All because he was in a bad mood because I wasn’t being what he wanted me to be.  I blew up because I can only take so much of this every single day.  They suck you in, then slap you down.  I’m just so sick of it.  A gift from a narcissist is not a real one. It’s a way to hold something over you.”

Gifting can also be used to put on a show for other people, a grand gesture.  "Just look what all I do for my children."

Grooming

Grooming refers to their tendency to indoctrinate you to meet their needs, usually at the expense of your own. You exist only to meet their needs and have no right to your own.

Emotions

They groom you to believe that their emotional needs must be met. It is your job to know what their needs are, at all times, and to meet them. If they come home from work tired, irritated, frustrated, angry, or upset it is your responsibility to know how they are feeling and to make them feel better. Please notice there are two parts to this. You are responsible for know how they feel, without them telling you. You are then responsible for making them feel better without any assistance from them. This belief may plague your adult relationships. You may believe that you should know how your spouse, your children or your boss feels. As an adult child of narcissists, you may have very poor emotional boundaries, readily absorbing the emotions of those around you and feeling responsible for fixing them. This is wrong on both accounts. You should not take on the emotions of others, only your own. And you are not responsible for making others feel better. Healthy people are responsible for managing their own emotions.

At the same time that you were made responsible for their emotions, you were groomed to ignore your own. If you were hurt, upset, embarrassed, in pain, sick, or tired you were expected to “Get over it”. Even happiness would have been squelched because they resent your joy. They are miserable and you should be too.

As an adult survivor, you may find that you deny and ignore your own emotions and take on everyone else’s. You may not know how to cry or grieve. You may not know how to express anger or deal with frustration. You may not honor when you feel stressed or tired and allow time to rest or vent or calm yourself. You may not know how to enjoy being happy.

Physical Needs

You may have been groomed to deny your own physical needs such as; food, water, rest, medical care, etc. If they are hosting a party and you are sick, you are expected to attend anyway and “not act up”. They may have failed to come home and get meals for you, or failed to keep food in the house for you if they ate out a lot. They ate, why are you hungry? They may have it too inconvenient or expensive to obtain adequate medical care for you. They may have ignored when you were in pain or injured, and expected you to “suck it up”.

Grudges

Narcissists will hold grudges and hold onto every slight for the rest of your life.  They count everything. Every single thing they’ve ever done for you. Every slight. Every perceived wrong. Every dollar they’ve loaned you. Every “gift” they’ve ever given you. And they never forget. They will constantly deride you for something you did twenty years ago. If they are your parent, they will throw things in your face that you did when you were a young child. If they give you something, they will inquire about its status every time they talk to you, they will constantly remind you of it.

“She brought up old small things from years ago that I apparently did wrong but I don't even remember.”

Guilting

“But we’ve been friends for so long and I’ve always been there for you.”

Narcissists manipulate your empathy, a lot. Whether they are playing the victim, the invalid, or the martyr they love to manipulate your empathy. They tell you how selfish you are (for not putting them first). They cite everything they’ve ever done for you, or given to you, then accuse you of being selfish or thoughtless for not doing what they want.

Despite the fact that I worked there for 7 years and often worked 10 hour days, every Friday at 3, if my boss ran into me, he would look at the clock and ask me, “Oh, are you leaving?” He didn’t know my schedule? He didn’t know when I was leaving? He came in after me and left before me, but he never came in and said, “Oh, you are already here?” when I was there before him. He never said, “Oh, you are staying late?” when I worked every night long after he left. He never noticed that. All he noticed were the days I left early. And he guilted me for leaving early.

They will use other people to guilt you.  They may take to their bed, ill.  They may cry.  They may even threaten suicide.  All in an attempt to get you to do what they want.

Hoovering

Hoovering is a technique named after the Hoover vacuum cleaner. It’s used by narcissists to “suck” their victims back into a relationship with them. It’s often done after they’ve given you the silent treatment or after you have left them. It may also be used when you try to set a boundary with them or tell them “No” and they blow up. Any time you are no longer meeting their needs and they want to draw you back in, they may hoover you.

They usually hoover you by attempting to manipulate your emotions. This can take many forms. It has also been referred to as “love bombing”. They will call and leave messages expressing concern about a recent illness or just the fact that you are missing, knowing that you feel a compunction to respond to someone who is speaking to you, or an obligation to reciprocate.

With today’s technology, these messages are usually by text and that’s how I’ll refer to them here. But they can take any form; phone messages, Facebook posts, flowers with a card at work, comments to your friends or family. Whatever works. It’s also important to notice in the following examples how many different parts of you they may attempt to manipulate.

They will try to manipulate your sense of fair play (i.e. the landlord charging $250 for cleaning the apartment). First of all, the landlord may not even be charging a fee. This could be a lie. Second, you left your area spotless. If a fee is being charged, it’s because your narcissist roommate left their area a mess. They are appealing to your sense of fair play that they not be left with the entire bill for an apartment the two of you shared. But it’s really a ploy to get you to re-engage with them. (See: Discussion above).

They will try to manipulate your empathy for others. Appeals regarding your children are especially powerful. Contacting you when someone is in the hospital and you are really feeling vulnerable is another ploy. They may feign concern about you hoping you will answer them so they don’t worry.

They will try to manipulate your sense of responsibility, as in the appeals which appear to be “just business”. Unlike them, you like to be responsible, pay your bills on time and resolve situations which need to be addressed. They may use this to suck you into a discussion.

Whatever they appeal to, it will be an appeal to open the door and just “discuss” something. (See: Discussion above.)

• Messages on or about special occasions/holidays: “Happy New Year!”, “Hope you are having a good birthday–wish I could celebrate it with you”, “Are you going to Madeline’s party next weekend? If you’re going, I won’t go–I don’t want to upset you.”

• Messages acting like nothing happened: “Hey there, long time no talk” or “Hey what’s going on?”

• Messages expressing concern about someone else.  “I just heard about so-and-so being in the hospital.  I am so sorry.  Please let me know if there is anything I can do.”  

• Messages about your kids: “I was at the park today and saw a cute kid that looked just like Gabriel.  I sure miss seeing her” or “I know you hate me, but please tell Johnny that I wish him a happy birthday and I’m sorry I can’t be there.”

• Messages which are allegedly “just business”.  “Hey, when can you come pick up your stuff?” or “The landlord is charging us $250 for cleaning up the apartment.  Call me, we need to resolve this.”

• Messages feigning concern: “How are you?”, “Hey, I’m thinking about you”, “I know things didn’t work out, but you really do mean a lot to me. I just want you to know that.”

• Messages that are guilt or pity inducing: “Can’t we work this out? Please give us another chance.” “What about the kids? You know how hard it is having divorced parents–why would you want to do that to them?” “I have a lot of issues. I get that now. I’ll get into therapy. I promise.” “My drug use is out of control. I need help.”

• Messages about bogus family illnesses or some sort of crisis (i.e. drama): “I think I might have cancer, can you talk?” or, “OMG my mom just had a stroke.” or “What does a heart attack feel like? My left arm really hurts,” or, “I can’t handle this anymore, I’m going to kill myself.”

• Messages which are “accidentally” sent to you by mistake: “See you in ten minutes xoxo” (Supposedly to their new love interest.) “The boss just moved the meeting to Wednesday at 3pm.” (Supposedly to their colleague.) Or, “Sam called and said John is in the hospital and to call him immediately.” (Supposedly sent to someone else, but sent to you so you feel a sense of urgency to get back to him.)

• Messages about an upcoming event: “Hey, I know you said you never wanted to talk to me again, but Kidz Bop Kids is in town this weekend, I was thinking about taking the kids.” or “Adele is in town next weekend and I have an extra ticket–you wanna go?”

• Messages about sex/deep connection: “I miss snuggling with you.” “You will always be the love of my life.” “You are my soul mate, I’m sorry I let you down.”

• Messages about things you like to do that he’s never been interested in doing with you before:   “Wanna go hot air ballooning this weekend?”

• Messages that attempt to flip the hoover back on you: “Did you just text me?” or “Did you just call me?” or “Was that you who just drove by?”

It’s important to realize that the narcissist ultimately wants an emotional reaction from you. Any emotional reaction. They don’t feel empathy or remorse so they don’t care how the hoovering affects you. They just want a response, any response. Therefore, if they can’t get a positive, loving response from you, they will go for an angry or upset response. If all else fails, they will go on the attack.

Messages making bogus accusations to get some type of emotional response:

• “Don’t be such a weenie. Have the guts to answer me.”

• “Why are you calling my mom and bugging her?”

• “I just found out you cheated on me.”

• “I’ve moved on. You need to quit stalking me.”

Idealizing = Discarding

Sometimes referred to as the mean/nice cycle,

A narcissist’s treatment of someone may vacillate wildly between mean and nice. This is an expression of their idealizing and discarding of the child survivor  When they’re idealizing you they are sugary sweet to you, almost seductive. When they’ve discarded you, you get contempt and meanness. They train you to work for the nice and endure the mean, living for the time when they will be nice to you again.

Innuendo/Insinuation

“The intelligent abuser is a master of insidious innuendos.”

“Innuendo is a hint, insinuation or intimation about a person or thing, especially of a denigrating or a derogatory nature. It can also be a remark or question, typically disparaging (also called insinuation), that works obliquely by allusion.”    Wikipedia

Obliquely (indirectly, slantwise) by allusion (an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly).  

Because the innuendo alludes to something instead of stating it directly, it allows the narcissist to deny their intent.

Example:

Your narcissist parent has a long history of comparing you unfavorably with their friend’s son, Eddie.  Eddie is your age and is in your class.  Your parent has made it very clear that they wish you would be like Eddie and that you fall very short, much to their great disappointment.

Narcissist:  “Oh look, Eddie made captain of the football team.”  

You:  “Why do you always throw Eddie in my face?”  

Narcissist:  “All I said was he made captain.  (Trivializing.)  Good grief, I can’t even be happy that someone else’s son is doing well without you blowing up! (Exaggerating.)  You’re so sensitive!”  (Pathologizing.)

Intellectualization

In psychology, the term intellectualization is used when someone uses thinking to avoid feeling.  This can be a defense mechanism learned when emotions are overwhelming.  

However, with narcissists it is used as a manipulation.  Narcissists are especially prone to distancing themselves from their feelings using intellectualization.  They are prone to using intellectualization to dismiss or trivialize your feelings.  They will also use intellectualization and rationalization (See:  Rationalization) to justify their behaviors.

I didn’t fully realize what my brother was until we had to put our elderly mother, Maria, in a nursing home.  Ed, the youngest son and our mother’s favorite was also antisocial.  When she was placed in the nursing home, and while mother and my siblings were emotionally reeling from the sudden decline in her health, Ed moved in and manipulated her into signing over all her money and her power of attorney to him.  A few months later, she developed a growth which we suspected was a tumor.  Since Ed had both the medical power of attorney, the power of attorney and all the money, there was nothing the rest of us could do.  He decided to have it tested and it turned out to be benign.  But while we waited for the results, he let us know he wasn’t going to allow treatment.  We were horrified!  Who was he to make that decision?  And how could he be so cold and cruel?  His reasoning?  ‘She’s old and they won’t invest a lot of treatment in someone her age.’  He just coldly justified his callousness like that.  That’s when I saw what he really was.

Moving the Goalposts

Moving the goalposts is when the narcissist arbitrarily, and unilaterally, changes an agreement with you.  It’s usually because they never intended to keep the agreement in the first place and thought you would not take it seriously.  When they realize you intend for them to honor their promise, they “move the goalpost”.  

Example:

My dad promised he would meet me halfway to buy a car.  However much I earned, he would contribute an equal amount.  I worked after school every day for the entire school year and managed to save $4500 dollars.  I then asked him to honor his promise.  He then said he had promised to match what I earned if I also kept my grades up.  Working so much to raise the money, my grades had taken a hit, and he knew that.  He never said anything about my grades, until I asked him to do what he promised.  Then he changed the rules after the fact.

Example:

My dad would always hound me to get a job.  Who did I think I was?  Did I think I was too good to work?  No one would hire me anyway, the way I looked.  I was so lazy.  

So I got a job.

He then berated me for not getting a job which used my degree.  Why was I such an underachiever?  How could I so thoughtlessly throw away the education he helped pay for?  

So I got a job which used my degree.  

He then started nagging me because my job didn’t pay enough.  Why didn’t a job which required my degree pay more?  Why did I get such a useless degree?  Why didn’t they give me more responsibility, it must be something I’m doing wrong at work.

I finally realized it would never be enough.  He had no pride in me to give.  And because he was unable to give it, he would always flip it and make it about me.  Nothing would ever be good enough. 

Oppositional

Being oppositional means doing the opposite of what you ask them to do, or refusing to do what is asked of them. Since most narcissists are utterly convinced that the rules do not apply to them, attempts to hold them to the rules will result in an increase in oppositional behavior. They will do it to the point of absurdity. They will do it to the point that it harms them. They will refuse to do something just because you asked them to, just to spite you or invoke a power play. If you ask a narcissist to stop doing something, they will do it more. If you ask them to go left, they will go right. The more pressure you apply to get them to follow the rule, the more perverse they become, to the point of being bizarre, maddening, or even comical.

Example:

Jill is the executive director of a non profit organization. She is working on a grant and needs the board members and upper management to sign conflict of interest forms as part of the grant requirement. Everyone readily signs the form and sends it back to her, except Mark. She has to track Mark down before a meeting and ask him to sign it. He tells her he will sign it later. She asks him to sign it now, she is working under a deadline and needs this last document to complete the grant packet. Mark makes a huge display of what an imposition this is . Jill holds her ground. Mark then says he needs to read over it first. He elaborately makes a cup of coffee (she wouldn’t begrudge him a simple cup of coffee would she?), spends several minutes looking for his glasses, spends several more minutes finding the right chair, then sits down and spends several more minutes reading the one page form. He then carefully and pointedly signs his name and the date. He sighs a bit, turns it over and around a bit then painfully hands it to Jill and goes into the meeting. Jill breathes a sigh of relief, until she looks at it more closely. He signed in the executive director’s slot instead of the employee’s. She goes into the meeting, asks Mark to come out and asks him to sign the right place. Another 15 minutes of labored sighing, complaining, deliberate coffee making, going to the bathroom, and finding the right pen and chair. Jill goes off to do something else and comes back to find a form which is signed - with the wrong date. Having dealt with Mark before, she decides not to be held hostage by his behavior. She pulls him out of the meeting again, notes the incorrect date and tells him she will make a note that he refused to sign the form. Mark explodes! Just because he made a simple mistake, just because he wanted to take the time to look at what he was signing, how can Jill be so petty?! He can’t believe it! He continues to rant at Jill, he follows her down the hall as she tries to leave, he blocks her with his body so she can’t leave. She pushes past him and goes out to her car. He continues to follow her trying to block her from getting into her car with his body. All the while ranting about how “petty” she is being.

Passive Aggressive

"There is nothing passive about my aggression." 

Passive aggressiveness is covert, or hidden, hostility.  It is anger and resentment cloaked as compliance, compliment or courtesy.  It is saying “yes”, but doing “no”.  It is smiling in your face, then stabbing you in the back.  It is saying something really nasty, then downplaying or denying it.  It happens when someone appears to be passively going along, but they are really being aggressive.  This can take many forms:

Chronic Tardiness

They are constantly late for everything.  They may just be 15 minutes late, but they are consistently 15 minutes late.  They may only be late for events which are important to you, but on time for things they want to do.  They may constantly say, “I’m coming” but they don’t come or they are late.  

This is an act of contempt for other people and other people’s time.  It can be an attention-getting device (everyone is waiting for them), a power move (everyone is waiting on them) or a hostile move (agreeing to come, but being late).

Chronic Forgetfulness 

Chronic forgetfulness can also be passive aggressive behavior.  “Honey, will you take out the trash?”   “Yes.”  But they forget to do it every, single time.  They may also employ aggression by omission, they purposefully “forget” to tell you something important, “Oh, I thought you knew.”

Wishy Washy/Waffling Communication

Avoiding concrete communication about issues so they can’t be held to what they agreed on.

You:  “Can you take care of this on your way home from work?”   
Them:  “Hmph.”  They may add a nod of the head or shrug of the shoulder suggesting the “Hmph” is a “yes”.
Next day, You:  “You didn’t pick that up after work?”
Them:  “No, why would I?”
You:  “I thought you said you would.”
Them:  “I never said that.”

Weaponized Incompetence

Bill Cosby told the story of his wife waking him up on Saturday morning and asking him to get up and feed the children breakfast.  He didn’t want to, but she insisted.  He went downstairs and found chocolate cake and grapefruit juice in the kitchen, so that’s what he fed the children.  She came down to see what was going on, caught him and sent him out of the kitchen - which was exactly where he wanted to go, back to bed.  

Narcissists may feign incompetence or helplessness in a passive aggressive maneuver to avoid doing what they don’t want to do.  Sabotaging something, completing the task but making a mess of it, willful incompetence.  When you call them on it, their response?  “You always have to have everything be so perfect.”

Procrastination

They never get around to doing something they don’t want to do.  When you confront them about?  “I didn’t know you meant now.” 

The Angry Smile

The angry smile, “Sure, I’d be happy to”, but they throw it in the trash, or “lose” it, or ignore it

Martyrdom

“I tried to do it but was too sick, you can’t expect me to do it when I’m sick can you?”

Sarcasm

A really nasty comment followed by, “I was only joking” or “Can’t you tell when someone is joking?” This can also be; critical jokes, off-color jokes, humor which targets a specific person

The Silent Treatment

This can take several forms; pouting, not responding to texts/calls/emails, inappropriate grunts, one word answers, inattention, being generally unavailable.  This is much more powerful than it sounds, especially if the recipient is a minor child.  What the narcissist is insinuating with their silent treatment (and with Withdrawal, below) is they will abandon you if you don’t do what they want.  Children require parents in order to survive.  A child cannot go out and get a job and pay the rent.  They require an adult.  For the adult to threaten abandonment is a very powerful threat.  

Withdrawal

Withdrawal; of financial support, from the relationship, of their contribution to shared goals, of sex, of communication can be a form of passive aggression.

Bullying

Indirect shows of strength such as; banging things, slamming doors, destroying property, being aggressive or cruel people who are smaller or weaker than them, i.e. children or animals

Obstructionism

Deliberately delaying or preventing a process or change.

Backhanded Compliments

“You did that really well for someone who barely graduated from high school.”  They take special care to attack you where you are especially vulnerable.  

Sulking

Withdrawing with a mumbled, “Fine” or “Whatever”.  

Slander

Gossiping or criticizing you to a third party to negatively affect their opinion of you.  They may combine this with playing the victim, pulling the third party to their side, garnering sympathy for all they put up with from you.

Pathologizing

Pathologizing is when a narcissist convinces you that your emotions, thoughts or behaviors are abnormal.  They usually employ this tactic when something you are doing is deleterious to the them. 

Pathologizing Your Emotions

Because they lack empathy, your emotions often make them very uncomfortable for many reasons:

• There is a danger your emotional reaction to their bad behavior will expose their dysfunction.  

• Your emotions require a response which they are incapable of giving, and this makes them uncomfortable and possibly very aware of their deficiencies.

• They don’t want other people to see your reaction and, as a result, have themselves cast in a bad light.  

• Your emotions also draw attention to you and away from them.  

• Finally, they view your emotions as an inconvenience, something they may have to attend to, which is a huge imposition.

In order to make themselves more comfortable and deflect responsibility, they pathologize your emotions.

Sadness

“Don’t be such a cry baby.”
“Stop whining and get over it.”
“You’re so emotional.”
“Don’t be such a drama queen.”

Fear 

“Oh, you always make such a fuss.”
“Why do you always overreact?”
“How weak must you be to let others affect you like this?”

Anger

Your anger is especially threatening to them.  Your anger empowers you to stand up to them, to fight back.  Narcissist families are especially intolerant of your anger and work hard to squelch it.  If they can’t squelch it, they pathologize it.

My mother had no boundaries whatsoever.  She would just let herself into my room and go through my things, bust in on me in the bathroom, take whatever she wanted from my belongings, and yeah, I got mad.  But it did no good.  No matter how outrageous her behavior was, when I got mad about it, she should collapse into a heap, crying and sobbing, complaining about how mean I was to her.  How could I be so “aggressive”?  She didn’t know how she had raised such a violent daughter.  And all I did was yell at her for bursting into the bathroom and to get out.  That was her definition of “aggressive”.  

Happiness

They resent you being happy.  Perhaps it’s because they can’t be truly happy themselves, perhaps it’s because you dare to have fun without them, perhaps it’s because you aren’t paying attention to them.  Whatever their reasoning, they will pathologize even your happiness.  

My aunt would always call us names when we were laughing and having fun, “the silly sisters” or “the nitty wits”, really disparaging names.  To this day I have trouble really having fun because I have this deep down feeling there is something wrong with it.

Pathologizing Your Thoughts and Ideas

Narcissists expect you to hold the same thoughts and beliefs as they do.  Independent thinking, having ideas contrary to theirs, holding beliefs which are different from theirs is not tolerated.  They also don’t tolerate you questioning them, disagreeing with them, or challenging their outrageous claims or behaviors.  They will also squelch any dreams, hopes, or ideas about establishing your independence from them and sabotage your efforts to succeed.  

I decided to stand up to my narcissistic father one year and refuse to go on the family vacation, which was always a nightmare.  His response?  “You’re not normal.”

Pathologizing Your Behaviors

Especially any attempts at any independence, or expressing an opinion contrary to their own.

Example:

When I was a kid, I used to like to keep my room really neat and nice.  The rest of the house was chaos.  My mother was a bit of a slob and felt like she should have a maid to wait on her.  She didn’t think she should have to do lowly housework.  She was always a raving narcissist.  So the house was a mess and Mom was a mess.  My only sanctuary was my room, where it was quiet and nice.  But my mom would make nasty remarks about it, probably because it accentuated her sloppiness, “Why do you have to be such a neat freak?”   If she messed up something which belonged to me and I complained, I was a “control freak”.  She just had to make it about me, instead of her.

Example:

My parents actually brought out the DSM 5 and tried to use it to say I had antisocial personality disorder.  They cited my “authority issues” as evidence.  Any time I didn’t do what they wanted, they said it was because I was antisocial.  When I finally got away from them and got to a therapist, I was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder from having dealt with them.  I was relieved, but angry too.  I had spent so much time and energy worrying that I might really be antisocial.  The therapist said the fact that I cared that I was antisocial indicated I probably wasn’t.  She also explained projection to me and that just made everything make sense.  They were projecting their defect onto me.

Proclamations

They present their opinions as if they are facts.  

Our mother lived in a different state than all of her children.  It was the state where she had always lived and all of her friends were there.  The nursing home was the one she had put her father in and where she had said she wanted to be placed if she ever needed that level of care.  She stayed there for about two years, without incident.  However, our brother suddenly decided she couldn’t stay there and started making plans to move her to the state where he lived.  He announced, “she can’t live there alone” and everyone started discussing where to move her.  Then, I realized what had happened.  He just stated, “she can’t live there alone” as if it were a fact.  It wasn’t.  She had stayed there more than two years with no problems.  He just wanted her where he would have more control over her (and her money).  I caught the manipulation and stopped the dialogue about where to move her and backed it up to, “can she live alone there?”  We decided she could and the attempt to manipulate everyone into moving Mom ended there.

Projection

Projection is when someone takes their negative; emotions, behaviors, or thoughts and assigns them to (projects them onto) others.  In short, they accuse you of doing what they are doing.  Narcissists will often project their character deficits onto you.  If you don’t recognize what they are doing, you may actually believe you are doing what they are accusing you of.  When you do recognize what they are doing, it can be almost comical what little insight they have into their own behavior.  

I once told my mother I would no longer take her to the grocery store.  She was perfectly capable of taking herself.  She had a conniption fit!  At first she was incensed and yelled her head off.  That didn’t work.  She then lapsed into crying and sobbing and accusing me of failing to be a good daughter.  That didn’t work.  She then snarled at me that we would talk about this when I was no longer hysterical.  Me.  Hysterical.  I almost laughed out loud.

Puppeteering

Puppeteering is the act of pulling other people’s strings so they are doing what you want.  A narcissist may even indoctrinate people to the point they parrot what the narcissist thinks or wants.  Narcissists frequently utilize this technique to manipulate the people around you.  They may turn your entire family against you, they may manipulate everyone at your work or school.  But it will all be done behind your back.  One day, everything is fine, the next, everyone is treating you differently and you have no idea what happened.  It’s crazy making and frustrating.  You feel like everything just shifted, but no one will tell you what happened.  Naturally, you assume you did something because you don’t see the machinations of the narcissist.  The narcissist has gone to each of them separately and is pulling their strings.  You may even hear them parroting the narcissist’s words, using language that is foreign to them, or doing things that were previous unknown to them.  

Example:

When my mother went into the nursing home, my sister swooped in with psychopathic efficiency and took control of everything.  She coldly bullied my mother into signing over her power of attorney, her medical power of attorney and control of all her assets.  We live in a small, Southern town where everyone knows everyone else.  We had known these people all our lives and always had a good relationship with them.  But now there was money on the table and a psychopath in play.  She brainwashed everyone in my mother’s world; her attorney, her money manager, her nurses, her doctor, even the aide who took care of her.   I’ll never know what she told them, but she turned them all against my brother and I.  As a result, these trained professionals refused to talk to me or my brother about anything.  If I asked the nurse how my mother was doing today, she would tell me to ask my sister.  This is my mother too, you know?!  My sister had taken control of my mother’s money and refused to give her any spending money for toiletries or anything. When my mother complained to my brother and I, we tried to talk to her money manager about her money.  The  man we had known for years suddenly wouldn’t talk to us, even on my mother’s behalf.  I’ll never know what my sister told him, but she totally had him, and everyone else, wrapped around her finger.  These were professionals whose professions require them to function within ethical and professional guidelines.  But they all got played by a psychopath.  It was so creepy, and it seemed to happen overnight.  Everything was fine, then, suddenly, it wasn’t.  We couldn’t figure out what happened.  Then someone let it slip, what my sister had been telling them.  We were stunned at how completely, how totally, how effortlessly, she controlled them all.  It was so bad that I was talking to my mother on the phone one day and the aide walked in and caught her talking to me.  She deftly took the phone away, told me my mother had to go now and ended the conversation.  My sister had even manipulated the aide.  She hadn’t missed a single person, no matter how big or small a role they had in my mother’s life. 

Rationalization

Their primary way of justifying their behavior is rationalization.  This is especially true of antisocials.  Since their emotions are seriously impaired, they lean heavily on rationalizing.  They will rationalize you into most anything.  Because they lack empathy and remorse, they can also rationalize themselves into anything.    They will rationalize that someone “deserved” what they did to them, “if they didn’t want me to steal their paycheck, they shouldn’t have left it laying out on the desk”.  They will justify their scathing remarks as “just telling the truth” stealing music on the internet is all right because “everyone else is doing it”.  They will blame the victim, “it’s not my fault you got gonorrhea from me, you should have worn a condom if you didn’t want an STD”.  They will even justify their behavior by claiming altruistic motives: 

Alicia, an antisocial, wants to control her aging mother as a way of getting hold of her money.  Her brothers, Javier and Eduardo want what is best for their mother.  Alicia lives in Los Angeles, their mother in Dallas and Javier and Eduardo in Houston.  Their mother has made it very clear that she wants to remain in the city where she has always lived, Dallas.  But Alice wants to get control of her to justify taking all the money.  She tells Javier and Eduardo that it is “best for mother” if she is nearer family.  However, she is near family because Javier and Eduardo are within driving distance of her.  What Alice really means is she wants their mother to be near her, but she will not phrase it that way.  She is doing what she wants, but stating it as if it were for her mother’s best interests.  She is rationalizing her antisocial behavior.

Redefining Reality

Narcissists often redefine reality by making up falsehoods and presenting them as fact.  This can cause survivors to question their own perception of reality.  As a result, survivors often distrust themselves to accurately assess what is happening and make good decisions about it.  This can lead survivors to doubt and distrust themselves as well as experience a great deal of anxiety.  Narcissists can be shameless in their misrepresentations of what has happened and unflappable in maintaining their version of reality is the truth - even in the face of undeniable evidence to the contrary.

My ex-husband, a narcissist, had a long history of disputing what he had told me.  He would always claim I had “misunderstood” what he said.  So I moved to text so I would have it in writing.  On his visitation day, he texted me that he would pick up the kids at 6 p.m.  We waited and waited.  He finally showed up at 7:45.  The kids were tired from waiting and hungry because they were waiting to go to dinner with him.  But I was relieved I had it in writing, because I thought that would avoid the petty arguing about my understanding of what he said.  I was wrong.  When I confronted him about his lateness he blew up and said he never said 6 pm, he said 8 pm and he was actually early.  I tried to show him the text, but he brushed it away and dismissed it saying, “that’s not what I texted”.  Seriously?  Did aliens take over your phone and send false texts?  I couldn’t believe it.  He still denies it to this day.

Rewriting History

Narcissists will often rewrite history.  This is closely related to gaslighting and redefining reality, but instead of simply denying that they did or said something, they will change the story completely.  They may do it to deny culpability, they may do it to further their grandiosity, but they all do it.  They will even have the audacity to deny things they themselves wrote, such as emails or Facebook postings.  This is serious crazy-making behavior as it calls into question your memory of events.  

The Victim

One of their favorite historical rewrites is to cast themselves as the victim.  They mistreat you in some way, you confront them about it, and they rewrite the story to say they were victimized by you.  

You:  “Mom, you gave away my computer without asking.  That was my computer and had all my music on it.  How could you just give it away without asking me?!”

Narcissist Mom:  “After all we’ve done for you!  You’ve always been such an ungrateful child!  I can’t believe you are getting upset about some old computer you’ve had since the 8th grade!”

The Doting Parent

Another favorite rewrite is to cast themselves as the loving parent.  If they can pathologize you in some way, then portray themselves as the long suffering, loving parent of a wayward child, it is even better. 

Narcissist Parent:  “You know Eddie is back in rehab again.  I don’t know how much more we can take.  We have been through so much with that child and nothing seems to help.”  (This is the same parent who allowed her boyfriend to molest Eddie through much of his childhood, the reason behind his drug addiction.  But that is never mentioned.)

The Great Benefactor

They donate money, but only to 501c3s so they can write it off, and only for the amount they can write off.  Not one penny more.  Then then portray themselves as being so generous.  But they do absolutely nothing for anyone in their lives and they give nothing.   See:  Gifting

The Center of the Universe

I was in a meeting with a coworker who had to be a narcissist.  She suggested an idea which everyone listened too, but ultimately dismissed.  Later, I heard her telling someone how she had presented such a fantastic idea that the entire group had applauded her genius.  I was stunned.  That simply was not how it happened.  

Stealing your Ideas

My business partner would poo-poo every idea I ever came up with.  He would tear it completely apart.  Then, six months later, he would present the same idea as his own telling everyone how he came up with such a great idea.  He would even have invented a story about how he came up with the idea.

Sabotage

 They resent any happiness or success you might have, especially if it doesn’t include or reflect back onto them.  A trophy child is wonderful if they make you look like parent of the year.  However, if it doesn’t serve the narcissist, they may sabotage your efforts. 

• They may “forget” to give you important messages.  

• They may disparage you to family, friends or important people in your life behind your back.

• They may tear down your ideas to discourage you from succeeding.

• They may spend the rent money on a luxury item for themselves.

• They may get drunk at your birthday party and ruin your special event with their bad behavior.

Sanity Attacks

When I confronted my mother about her physical and psychological abuse of me she answered, "I did that because you were always crazy (referring to bipolar disorder).  I had no choice!"

A sanity attacks attempts to target your mental health as the source of the problem rather than the  narcissist’s bad behavior.  They may use your mental health diagnosis as an excuse for their bad behavior.  They may use your mental health diagnosis to call into question your memories or perception of events.  Either way, they are trying to make it about you to distract from their bad behavior.

While at school today, you see someone wearing your favorite sweater.  This person used to be a friend of yours, but every time they came over to the house your mother spent the entire time flirting with and talking to them.  She made it obvious she preferred them to you to such an extent that you had to stop being friends with them.  You now notice them wearing what appears to be your favorite sweater.  You ask the person and they confirm that your mom gave it to them.  You go home, find it missing and ask where it is.  Your mother denies knowing anything about it.  When you tell her you know what happened to it she says, “I told you I didn’t take it.  Why would I do that?  You are always making things up.  Have you taken your medications today?”  Two weeks later she contradicts herself and tells you she gave it to the other person because, “it looked better on her.”

Smear Campaigns

Narcissists engage in smear campaigns against you, slandering your good name and calling your integrity into question.  This often occurs when the two of you have a dispute or a falling out.  Social media is their favorite medium because they can reach everyone you both know in one fell swoop.  They will do this for various reasons:

• Preemptive strike - Fearing you will criticize them or engage in a smear campaign against them (because that is what they would do), they lash out, trying to get in the first shot.   

• Retaliation - This one is simple;  pure, unadulterated payback.

• Spin - A lot of times they will engage in smear campaigns in order to make sure people hear their version of what happened between you.  They want to control how the story is told.

• Splitting - They try to pull the people who know you both over to their side of the argument.   

• Bullying - They may threaten a smear campaign in order to bully or intimidate you into doing what they want.  They have no qualms about outright lying or slandering your good name if you refuse to meet their demands.  Social media makes this especially efficient, far-reaching and devastating.  In a matter of minutes they can reach everyone of your Facebook contacts.  Many survivors will give in to the narcissist’s demands in order to avoid a smear campaign.

Splitting - Let’s You and Him Fight

Splitting refers to driving a wedge between people, turning people against each other, or pitting them against each other.  This is usually done to divide and conquer, or as a manipulation to get what they want.  This also isolates people and prevents them from comparing notes about the narcissist or banning together against them.  They will pit their children against each other in order to fight for the narcissist’s favor.  They will play their children against the other parent.  As a friend, they will pit friends against each other.  As a boss, they will have their employees vying with each other for the narcissist boss’ attention and favor.  This keeps everyone a little off balance.  It also keeps them from busy fighting with each other instead of looking at the narcissist. 

An example of splitting is frequently seen in the family dynamics of narcissistic families:  the golden child and the scapegoat.  One child will be the scapegoat.  Another child will be the golden child, the favorite.  The golden child can do no wrong.  They are the exemplary child the family presents to everyone; the straight A student, the winning athlete, etc.  As an adult, this child is the financially successful child, the perfect mother.  The scapegoat can do no right.  The scapegoat will also be blamed for any wrong doing done by any member of the family, especially the narcissist parents.    If Dad drinks too much it’s because the scapegoat drives him to it with their bad behavior.  “Mom lost her temper because you cause her so much trouble”.  The scapegoat is frequently the child who fights back and calls the narcissistic parent on their bad behavior.  However, they can also be a child with anything about them which the narcissistic parent views as negative;  a disabled child, an LGBT child, or a child with a substance abuse problem.   Narcissistic parents can also do this by playing favorites with the children who do their bidding and don’t contest them being their favorites while children who do nothing are ignored and children who contest them are targeted.

Narcissistic splitting is not limited to the family.  They employ it in every relationship group they have whether it is at work or in their friend group.  They constantly keep people at odds with one another.  

My business partner was a huge narcissist and was never wrong about anything.  We worked on a ranch and were always running out of horse feed, which was her job.  As a result, the horses would miss a meal until someone made an emergency run to the feed store.  When I asked her why she hadn’t ordered horse feed she always blamed the owner of the feed store saying she had called him but he hadn’t delivered it yet.  She said this all the time, blaming him for feed not being delivered on schedule.  And it was all a lie.  He was delivering it, she wasn’t calling it in.  She had done business with this man for more than a decade.  In the past, with her own ranch, he was even kind enough to give her credit when she ran short of funds.  But she had no qualms about throwing him under the bus to cover her own incompetence.  At first I believed her.  She even watched me call him to ask why he didn’t deliver the feed yet and never said a thing.    Though he was very well respected in the community, he and I always had a very contentious relationship and I never knew why, until I found out I was accusing him of not delivering something which had never been ordered from him in the first place.  I couldn’t believe it.  I couldn’t believe she would lie about him like that.  I also couldn’t believe she would watch me accuse an innocent man and say nothing.

I later learned that she did that with everyone at the organization; the board of directors, the volunteers, the staff.  She would split them off from me and tell them all kinds of things to keep drama going, to keep us at odds with each other, and to keep the focus off of her.  She was especially interested in keeping me off balance and isolated from them.  She worked very hard to ally them with her - against me.  I really couldn’t believe it.  And this was my partner.   Needless to say the partnership did not last.

Stonewalling

Stonewalling is the act of refusing to communicate.  Whether they refuse to talk, refuse to answer, stall, evade, shut you down or just walk off they’re stonewalling.  They may bail on a conversation, refuse to take you seriously and laugh it off.  They may ignore, dismiss and trivialize your concerns.  They may express boredom with you and/or the conversation.  They may smile, impassively and pretend to listen while thinking about something else.  They may pretend to have forgotten what you told them.  They may just walk off while you are talking to them.  

However they express their stonewalling, it is either an expression of contempt (you aren't worth my time and attention) or it is a maneuver to extract themselves from a situation they are losing (you have provided a piece of evidence or argument they can’t refute, so they are shutting down the dialogue).  They may portray you as a nag or a bore who “doesn’t know when to stop talking” or who’s “always trying to start something”.  They may cast you as the angry one who just can’t let it go.  They may portray you as the crazy one who keeps harassing them unnecessarily while they are doing nothing.  But it’s really them stonewalling.

Suicidal “Threats”

It’s important to note that I am not referring to actual, authentic feelings of suicide in this section.  Feeling suicidal is a very serious mental state which should be taken very seriously.  It is a horrible place to be in and should never be trivialized or ignored.  I also want to state, unequivocally, that the borderline’s feelings of suicidality are real - and lethal.  People with borderline personality disorder commit suicide at a rate 50 times higher than the general population.  

So I want to be very, very clear here.  I am not talking about genuine feelings of suicidality, or genuine threats to commit suicide.  I’m talking about someone who is not depressed, is not hopeless, who has no intention of ending their life, but is threatening suicide as a manipulation.  This may be the most unscrupulous manipulation a narcissist uses.  It’s even more heinous when it’s used against children.  A child’s life literally depends on their parents’ existence.  A child can’t get a job and pay the rent.  They rely on adults for their very lives.  Having a parent who flippantly threatens suicide if you don’t clean your room is is a threat to the child’s very sense of safety and security in the world.  Many adult survivors have been severely traumatized by this behavior.  They may fear making a simple mistake, having an unexplainable feeling that someone will die if they do, because it was threatened when they were a child.  

"I'd kill myself if it wasn't for your brother.
"I've nearly committed suicide several times because you're such a disappointment, I must have completely failed as a mother!"

Triangling

Triangulation is a manipulation tactic where one person will not communicate directly with another.  Instead, a third person (person 3) carries the message from person 1 to person 2, creating a triangle.  Triangling can take several forms and serve different purposes.  The red flag is always when someone is delivering a message to you - from someone else.  Why?  There can be several reasons:

• To be the center of communication, so everything flows through them, making them feel attended to or important  

• To ensure that everyone communicates through them, but remains isolated themselves  

• To use communications as a way to drive a wedge between two other parties, often by scapegoating one of the parties, blaming them for the bad behaviors of the narcissist

• To maintain control of one party by controlling communication between them and their family and friends

• To put a third party between the narcissist and someone they are constantly in conflict with.  Rather than communicating with them directly, the narcissist sends communications which make his case through a third party to make his claims seem more credible

I’ll never forget the last Christmas I spent with my family.  My aunt (Martha) and uncle bickered the entire time.  My sister (Nancy) was screaming at her kids the entire time.  The drama was rampant - and constant.  I’m an introvert, so social interactions are draining anyway.  But all the drama really exhausted me.  I admit I got irritated a couple of times.  When I started getting irritable, I would excuse myself and go play a puzzle or something more quiet.  I was really proud of myself for that.  I realized I was getting frustrated, I took responsibility for it and I did something about it.  Yeah for me!  Then, enter the narcissists.  Several weeks later, we’re all back home and I get a phone call from my aunt Martha.  We were talking and she said to me, “Nancy asked me, ‘Why did aunt Francine get so irritable at Christmas?’”   I totally crumbled.  I felt just awful and started thinking that my irritability had ruined Christmas for everyone.  I was such an awful person, why did they even bother inviting me?  Then, a few days later it hit me.  The screamer asked the bickerer why I was so irritable?  Really?????  I couldn’t believe it.  I finally realized how they shamed me into thinking I was the only one with a problem.  I couldn’t believe it.  And I realized they’d been doing that to me my entire life.

Trivializing

Trivializing is very closely related to being dismissive (See:  Dismissive, above).  It is making something less important than it is in order to downplay it or as an excuse to disregard it.   They may be trivializing something important which happened to you.  It can be something disastrous:

"Yeah ok, I made fun of you after you were sexually assaulted, but you come late to school and inconvenience me which is basically worse."

It can also be something really good:

“Ohh, whoop-te-do, you got a gift for your birthday.  You’re such a drama queen.”

Or they may be trivializing their bad behavior.  

"Emotional abuse is a bunch of bullshit. People who say they were abused with words are babies and need to grow up."

Victim, Playing the Victim

One of their favorite manipulations is also one of their most mind blowing.  At the peak of their abuse of you, when confronted with their behavior, they will flip the script and accuse you of abusing them.  Ironically, narcissists, while abusing and manipulating everyone in their lives, view themselves as the ultimate victim.  And this is a powerful manipulation.  It really plays on your empathy and easily sucks you into defending yourself.  They are especially apt to accuse you of abusing them when you confront them about their abusive behavior toward you.

“I couldn’t believe it!  I was trying to confront my partner for lying to me about how much money he spent on clothes last month, totally exceeding what we agreed on and wrecking our budget.  He kept denying it and made up all kinds of excuses about how the store made a mistake.  So I called him on his lying.  What did he do?  He got miffed and told me how hurt he was that I would accuse him of lying.  I started sputtering and muttering, trying to explain that I didn’t mean to hurt him and how I really thought he had bought the clothes.  Then the light came on - he had played me.  I couldn’t believe it.  He was the one who broke the budget.  He was the one who lied about it.  But he somehow had me apologizing for it.  

Skilled narcissists will even score a preemptive strike by telling people how they anticipate you will “abuse” them before you do it.

“You know Melissa and I are about to break up.  I’m so upset.  I can just see her spreading all kinds of lies about me.  I’m so afraid people will believe her.”

 The depths of their victim playing knows no bounds.  They will accuse their children of abusing them:

“When my sister and I tried to tell my mom she was being abusive, she would turn it around and say we were “ganging up” on her.  As adults, she still accuses us of ganging up on her.   She claims she would have been a better mom if I had been a better child.  Sure.  Her bad behavior was my fault.”

They will even enlist elderly parents lying in the ICU to perpetuate their claims:

Our elderly mother was in the ICU with a serious staph infection.  She was so sick she would come in and out of a delirium where she couldn’t remember where she was or recognize her own children.  Because of her age and the severity of the infection, her doctors were very concerned whether she was going to make it or not.  We were terrified.  Since there were three of us, we decided to divide up a 24 hour day into three 8 hour shifts.  One morning, after I was coming off the late night shift the three of us met for breakfast.  My sister who is antisocial blithely announced she was tired and didn’t feel like taking her shift.  My other sister and I were stunned and angry.  Did she really expect us to just double our shifts because she was tired?  Did she not think the rest of us were tired too?  We confronted her about her thoughtlessness and she got up and left.  She later went to Mom in the ICU and told her my sister and I were ganging up on her again.  She had Mom convinced that she was being horribly mistreated by me and my sister.  My sister and I had no idea she was doing this.  It would never occur to us to take it to Mom.  When my sister went in to stay with my mother, my mother was very upset thinking that her children were not getting along.  We were absolutely stunned.  Apparently my other sister was too tired to watch Mom, but not too tired to stir up drama with an elderly woman who was fighting for her life. 

Boundaries - What are they?

Boundaries are physical, emotional, sexual and mental limits we set in relationships that protect us from being controlled, manipulated, abused or exploited.  They make it possible for us to separate our own thoughts and feelings from those of others and to take responsibility for what we think, feel and do.   They make it possible for us to accept "No" from others and to say "No" ourselves.  They make it possible to be aware of where you end and another begins.  They enable use to make choices about how we feel, think or behave.  They help draw a line between "me" and "you".

What are "Healthy Boundaries"?

A person with healthy boundaries is able to identify how he feels about something, what he thinks about something and how he reacts or behaves in a situation.  He is able to distinguish between his own emotions, opinions and behaviors and those of others.  And he takes responsibility for them.  He does not blame others for how he thinks, feels or behaves.  He is very clear where he ends and another person begins and maintains that line.  He is able to stand up for himself calmly and intelligently without intimation or manipulation.

A person with healthy boundaries does not allow other people to control how she thinks, feels or behaves, nor does she try to control them.  She does not manipulate, guilt, bully or blame.  She does not play the victim or the martyr.  She does not tolerate abuse.

A person with healthy boundaries is able to say "No" when his boundaries are intruded upon.  He is able to recognize his own needs, take responsibility for them, and ask for what he needs honestly and openly without bullying or mind games.  He is able to accept "No" from others without having his self esteem shattered.

A person with healthy boundaries has a strong enough sense of self that she doesn't absorb other people's negative emotions or personalize their bad behavior.

Why are Healthy Boundaries Important in Relationships?

Successful relationships are composed of two individuals, each with a clear definition of his or her self, sharing themselves with each other.  They are not a parasitic coupling of one person or both people feeding off each other to get their needs met.  Some believe that "love" consists of becoming totally absorbed by or engulfed in the other person.  This is not "love".  True love requires that each person be a healthy individual within themselves before they can form a healthy relationship together.

If you’re not happy alone, you won’t be happy in a relationship. 

Each person in a relationship needs a clear sense of who they are in order to clearly communicate their needs to their partner without manipulation or mind games.  You can't do this if you are carrying someone else's emotions, blaming others for your behavior, or practicing someone else's beliefs.

One measure of a healthy self esteem is how we manage our emotional boundaries. Personal boundaries are the limits we set in relationships that allow us to protect ourselves from being manipulated by emotionally needy others.  Healthy boundaries eliminate the need for blaming or scapegoating.  They eliminate guilting, manipulating, victimizing and martyrdom.  If everyone in the relationship is responsible for their own behaviors, thoughts and feelings it eliminates a lot of games.

Having healthy boundaries also makes the resolution of problems much more simple and clear.  If someone hurts you, having healthy boundaries allows you to experience the hurt, knowing that you have a right to protest the hurt and stand up for yourself.  You can do this without guilting or blaming, but by simply stating that you are feeling hurt and asking that the behavior not be repeated.  If the person who caused the hurt decides to keep hurting you, healthy boundaries will allow you to walk away from someone who is hurting you.   People with healthy boundaries do not allow themselves to be mistreated or abused.

Healthy boundaries are not selfish.  They allow a person to have a clear sense of how they experience things.  They also allow a person to have empathy for others, without taking responsibility for them.  Healthy boundaries create a good balance between taking care of yourself and being there for others without being manipulated or exploited.

What do Unhealthy Boundaries Look Like?

People with unhealthy boundaries often find themselves "carrying" the feelings, ideas or behavior of someone else.  People with unhealthy boundaries are usually unaware of this violation or may have rationalized that it is justified.

Example 1:
Juan is the Scapegoat in his family.  He was working to stop being the scapegoat at work.  He  was working for an organization whose management decided to change the lunch policy.  He was new and not attached to the old lunch policy so he didn’t really care about the change - until a group of employees started complaining about it around him.  He suddenly found himself incensed that they would treat professionals like them in such a degrading manner.  He was asked to go with a group to complain to the management.  However, having done his own work he knew this was a pattern he was susceptible to and asked for time to decide.  Stepping out of the emotionally charged environment for an hour allowed him to reflect on the situation and realize that his original feelings about the situation were that he didn't care.  It was only after listening to his colleagues complaints that he felt maligned.  He realized he was carrying other people's emotions and declined to participate in the complaint.  In doing so, he protected his emotional boundaries and avoided his old Scapegoat pattern.

Unhealthy boundaries are often seen in relationships which are abusive.  One partner will walk on eggshells around the other to avoid making them mad or having them get violent.  The abused partner subjugates their emotions, opinions and behaviors to the wishes of the other.  If you are not allowed to have your own emotions, opinions or behaviors that is emotional abuse.  So many times I see this and the partner being abused will justify it by saying, "But he/she never hits me, so it can't be abuse."  Physical violence is absolutely atrocious, but in some ways I wonder if mental and emotional violence is not more insidious, because it goes unseen.  A broken bone or a bruise is obvious to everyone.  But when someone gets control for your mind, they have control not of your arm or your face but your entire being.  They have control of who you are and they make you question the validity of your own judgement and instincts.  And they leave no mark.  They leave no scars which you can point to and say, "See what has happened to me."  This can make you question your own sense of reality.  And in some ways this is the ultimate boundary violation.

Types of Boundaries

Weak Boundaries

People with "weak" or "diffuse" boundaries have boundaries which are non-existent or very porous.  Other people's ideas, emotions or behavior heavily affect such people.  People with weak boundaries are often unaware they are being affected in this way.  Being unaware of their own boundaries, they are also very unaware of others'.  People with weak boundaries may intrude constantly upon the boundaries of others; invading their space, violating their privacy, spewing their emotions or opinions or trying to manipulate those of others.  They rarely stand up for themselves, do not feel able to protest any maltreatment by others and often blame themselves for their own abuse.  People with weak boundaries may experience serious mood swings as they vacillate back and forth, absorbing the emotions and beliefs of everyone around them.  You often see this in family systems.

Example:
Mary's mother calls to complain to her about the behavior of her sister, Nancy, at a recent family event.  Mary buys into her mother's outrage and calls her brother Sam to complain to him.  Mary and Sam may find themselves feeling very angry at Nancy even though her behavior at the event did not initially bother them - until their mother called.  They may even go to Nancy to tell her how awful her behavior was and how outraged they are.  Notice how the mother is not telling Nancy directly that she has a problem with Nancy's behavior.  The mother is pushing her emotions onto her children - and they are carrying them for her.  They confront Nancy for the mother instead of the mother confronting Nancy herself.  It is important to note that mother can only push her emotions onto Mary and Sam if they allow it.  If they maintain a healthy boundary, they say "No", this is not my emotion and stop the interaction.  A healthy intervention here from Mary and Sam would redirect mother to talk to Nancy directly instead of taking it up with them.

Some indications of a person with weak boundaries are:

Unable to say "No" to anything or anyone
Constantly vacillating in response to whatever is going on around them
Easily distracted, so flexible they are in a constant state of flux
Cannot tolerate being told "No" without their self esteem suffering greatly
Cannot tolerate constructive criticism or feedback without personalizing it
Treat everything as equally important, unable to prioritize or discriminate for themselves what is important and what is not
Highly reactive to external factors; other people's emotions, thoughts and behavior

Rigid Boundaries

People with very rigid or closed boundaries don't let anything in and rarely notice the effect of their behavior, opinions or feelings on others.  They may appear very intrusive and perhaps manipulative.  They often blame the victim for the resulting outcome.  People with rigid boundaries can be very withdrawn and isolated in relationships.  Some indications of a person with rigid boundaries are:

Inflexibility
Impervious or nonresponsive to feedback
Being unwilling to change, hanging on to how things "have always been done"
Seek stability at the price of flexibility
Listen without responding or changing
Impervious to anything outside of themselves

Healthy Boundaries

Some indications of a person with healthy boundaries are:

Ability to adapt and change when it is needed and appropriate
Do not vacillate wildly according to what is happening around them
Able to say "No" when it is appropriate
Able to accept constructive criticism or feedback without personalizing it
Able to accept "No" from others without taking it personally
Able to stand up for themselves
Know how they feel, what they think and how they behave
Take responsibility for meeting their own needs
Take responsibility for their emotions, their ideas and their behavior

Kinds of Boundaries

There are several areas where boundaries might need to be established and maintained.  These same areas are where the majority of boundary violations can occur.  

Time

One of the most common boundary violations involves your time.  People can encroach upon your time in a myriad of ways which may be elusive and difficult to nail down at first.  A colleague who passes their work off onto you or wastes your time by showing up late for meetings, or not showing up at all, may be violating your boundaries.  A family member or friend who makes constant demands upon your time and is unwilling to reciprocate can be violating your boundaries.

Example:
You have scheduled some free time in your busy schedule to participate in a yoga class.  You've been feeling very stressed and rushed in the past few weeks and have been looking forward to this down time all week.  Your brother calls - again - and needs a ride to work.  He frequently requests rides from you, but is never available or has the time to give you a ride when you need one.  Taking him to work will prevent you from attending the yoga class.  Public transportation is available which your brother could utilize to get him to work, but he would prefer that you take him.  You feel guilty and give in.  You resent the imposition on your time and are angry that you "have" to miss your yoga class.

First of all, realize that you do not "have to" take him to work.  You choose to.  If you tell yourself that you "have to", then you give the power to him instead of keeping it yourself.  However, with power comes responsibility.  If you have the power to say "No", then it is your responsibility to do so or to not resent the imposition.

Physical Boundaries - Body Space

Personal body space is an important boundary to be aware of and the amount of body space each person needs is determined not only by their own personal history, but by culture.  For instance, Americans typically require a lot more body space than people from the Middle East.  A history of trauma will make people very sensitive to body space or being touched.  Touching is part of body space and should be approached only with permission.

Example:
You are standing in line at the grocery store and the person behind you in line keeps bumping into you with their cart.  Once you move on through the line and are entering your debit card information, they stand close enough to you to read the screen and your pass code.

Some people will not be bothered by this.  Some people will come out of their skin.  If this feels like a boundary violation to you - it is.  Turn around and ask the person to please give you some room.  They may not understand why you need it, but they will usually back up a bit.  It does not matter whether people understand why you need more space.  You still have a right to it regardless of whether they understand.

Example:
Sam grew up in a very violent family with a lot of alcohol abuse that resulted in abuse of his mother, himself and his siblings.  As an adult he is working at his desk, buried deep in a computer program on which he is working.  Jose comes up behind him and suddenly slaps him on the back and laughs loudly expecting to share a joke with him which they have both enjoyed in the past.  Sam jumps violently and starts yelling at Jose not to "sneak up" behind him like that.  Jose is hurt and confused.  He and Sam have joked for years and become close office buddies.  He doesn't understand why he's being attacked.

People who have experienced trauma, especially sexual abuse, may be particularly sensitive to intrusive touch, or touch without permission.  People who have been traumatized by violence may be particularly sensitive to others coming up behind them unexpectedly or touching them on the back or shoulder without permission.  It's best to ask before putting your hands on someone else, even casually.  Sudden loud noises can also startle people who have been traumatized.

Even after you have known someone for years, like Jose and Sam, you may suddenly find that the familiar slap on the back which Sam has always tolerated, provokes an explosive reaction when it is unexpected.  A husband may find that his sexual advances are suddenly rebuffed when he touches his wife in a new or different way that reminds her of past sexual abuse.  The most important thing to do is not take it personally.  They are reacting to something from the past and not you.  Hopefully, the person who experiences the violation is aware of the source and can communicate this to the other person.  If Sam has had counseling for his childhood abuse he is more likely to be aware of the cause of his reaction and will be able to take responsibility for his response to Jose's innocent joking.  Hopefully, Sam will be able to explain that it is not Jose himself he is reacting to and will be able to request that Jose announce when he is coming up behind him in the future so as not to provoke that reaction again.  Notice that Sam does not blame Jose for his reaction and works to explain it as a problem which he, Sam, has.  He then works with Jose to negotiate a way to continue the joking without provoking the negative reaction.

Emotional

You have a right to have and express your emotions.  Emotional boundaries are violated when you absorb other people's emotions or are not allowed to experience your own emotions.  You have a right to feel  your feelings, regardless of what they are.  You are responsible for how  you express them, but you have every right to have them.  You should be able to maintain an emotional boundary without feeling like you have hurt or disappointed another person.  You should be able to ask for what you want or need.

Example:
You get up in the morning, feeling happy and content and looking forward to the day you have planned.  Your father calls and is upset with your brother for some perceived slight.  He tells you about it and you begin to get upset with your brother , even though the slight was directed at your father and not at you.  You call your brother and tell him what you think of him.  An argument ensues.  You hang up distraught and agitated.  You stay upset for the rest of the day and are unable to enjoy the plans you made.

If you tend to absorb other people's emotions it's good to get quiet and determine how you felt before Dad called.  Also ask yourself how you felt about the situation before Dad told you how he felt.  This may be one of the more difficult boundaries to establish and maintain.  Dad may be hurt, feel rejected, or place guilt if you do not buy into his emotions and take on his cause against your brother.  But it's important that you maintain your right to only feel your own feelings and not take on his.

You can also have your emotional boundaries violated by name calling, insults, hate-filled remarks, discrimination, intolerance and prejudice.  Being called stupid, ugly, fat or lazy is a violation of your emotional boundaries.  Being insulted because of your race, sex, religious beliefs or sexual orientation is a violation of your emotional boundaries.  Being treated as an inferior is an emotional boundary violation.

People can also violate your emotional boundaries by not allowing you to feel any emotions or not allowing you to express certain emotions.  If you are not allowed to be angry, hurt, fearful or sad that is abuse.  If you are only allowed to feel what someone else feels or what someone else thinks you should feel that is a boundary violation.  Everyone human has emotions.  They are a natural reaction to life and not allowing them denies us the full experience of life itself.

Many times people with anger problems do not have good emotional boundaries.  They allow other people to control how they feel and how they respond to the point that they are raging out of control.  They often personalize things which are not personal.  They also fail to maintain a good boundary between their feelings and the rights of others.  This failure to take responsibility for how they express the emotion of anger can result in them being violent, aggressive or abusive.  Taking responsibility for how they perceive things, how they let things affect them and what they can do to derail the anger before it becomes full blown rage will go a long way toward reestablishing a healthy emotional boundary between themselves and others.

Mental

You have a right to hold your own opinions and express your own ideas.  Being told what to think, when to think or how to think violates your cognitive boundaries.  It is more commonly referred to as brainwashing.  One of the most common abuses of this is in domestic violence when the abuser forces his or her ways of thinking about things on their partner or the partner subjugates their own opinions to keep the abuser from "blowing up".  This is a boundary violation.  You have a right to disagree.  If it is not safe to express and hold your own opinions without fear for your safety, you are being abused.

Another way I see this is manifested is with religious beliefs.  One partner may feel strongly that the other partner should share their religious beliefs.  You have a right to your own religious beliefs, even if they contradict someone else's.  And other people have a right to theirs.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

-- The Friends of Voltaire, 1906

Privacy

You have a right to privacy.  You have a right to receive postal mail, email and phone calls in private.  Listening in on phone calls, reading someone else's mail, passing along personal information which was entrusted to you in confidence can all be considered boundary violations.  People from different families can have different boundaries regarding getting dressed, using the bathroom or taking a shower.  This can be a common point of contention with married couples who grew up in families with different privacy boundaries.

Example:
Joe grew up in a large family where everyone shared the bathroom and came in and out with ease.  Sandra grew up in a small family where privacy was highly regarded and people expected to be left alone while in the bathroom.  Now Joe and Sandra are married and Sandra cannot understand why Joe walks in on her in the bathroom.  Joe cannot understand why she makes such a big deal of it.

This example kind of overlaps with emotional boundaries.  It does not matter why Sandra feels the way she does.  She simple does.  And she has a right to.  Nor is Joe wrong in needing less privacy than Sandra.  No one is right or wrong.  They are simply different and have the right to have that difference respected.  If they both have healthy boundaries Sandra can stand up for the privacy she needs and she and Joe can negotiate a compromise that works for both of them.

Example:
Tina insists on checking Ron's phone and monitoring all incoming and outgoing phone calls to be sure he is not calling other women.

This is a violation of the privacy boundary.  If you don't trust someone, why are you in a relationship with them?  There is a more serious trust issue here that Tina and Ron are not addressing.

Property

Your personal property is an extensive of you.  This particular boundary can be extremely variable from person to person, family to family and culture to culture.  Some cultures put a very low value on personal property ownership.  Other cultures value it very highly and take it very seriously.  Families too can have very weak boundaries regarding property ownership with family members easily borrowing from each other without a thought.  Other families may have very rigid boundaries regarding personal property with strong rules about not touching or bothering something which belongs to another family member without permission.  A simple example is "mom's purse".  For some families, getting into mom's purse to get something is permissible and not given a second thought.  Other families may regard this as a major intrusion which is not permitted.  This can become a major problem when a person from a family with thin property boundaries marries someone from a family with thick property boundaries.

Example:
Joe and Maria get married.  Joe comes from a family that is very close knit and shares their belongings.  Maria comes from a family which has a very strong sense of "mine" and "yours" and rarely crosses those boundaries.  Maria comes home from visiting with a neighbor to find that Joe's brother has borrowed her car to run an errand.  She is incensed that she is left without a car and that Joe lent it to his brother without even asking her permission.  Joe is mystified as to why Maria is upset.  She wasn't planning to go anywhere and if she does his car is still there.

It is important for Joe and Maria to realize that neither of them is "right" or "wrong".   They inherited two different sets of family rules and this is a common and natural problem of getting married.  Likewise, neither set of family rules is "right" or "wrong".  They are just different.  Realizing that you come from two different, but equally "right", ways of doing things validates both of their feelings and avoids the blame game.  Communication about how to negotiate this difference and the willingness to compromise will be crucial.

Audible
You have a right to peace of mind.  What many people in our modern society do not seem to realize is that sounds can be a boundary violation.  If I am riding on the bus, train, subway or plane your animated conversation on your cell phone can be very intrusive.   Working out at the gym, sitting in the sauna, eating in a restaurant, or having coffee with a friend can be intruded upon by someone talking on their cell phone.  Music which is played so loudly that it interferes with your neighbor's peace can be a boundary violation.  Children yelling and screaming in a place which is meant to be quiet (i.e. a bookstore or a library) can be a violation of other people's boundaries.  Yelling in confined places can be very threatening to people who come from an abusive background or who have witnessed violence.

Sexual

Children who grow up being molested learn to have sex they do not ask for or want.  They often replicate this pattern as adults, though usually unknowingly.  As adult sexual partners they may have sex when they do not want to or do not feel like it.  They may engage in sex for money or drugs or they may be attracted to partners who force sex.  Any time you are having sex you do not want, that is a boundary violation.

As always, remember that what is healthy for someone else may not be healthy for you.  Everyone has to determine what feels "right" for themselves.  Some people have very thin, permeable boundaries and are comfortable with this.  Others require very rigid boundaries to feel safe and comfortable.  Define for yourself where your boundaries and what feels comfortable for you and stick up for your right to feel that way.

Many people in unhealthy relationships do not realize what they can expect from a truly loving partner.  For women who were sexually abused as children I strongly recommend the book, "The Courage to Heal " by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis.  See Part Four for real life examples of what loving husbands are willing to do for women they love who have been abused.  For men who have been sexually abused I recommend "Victims No Longer" by Mike Lew. 

Relational

Remember too that having good boundaries does not mean blaming others for their unhealthy boundaries.  You cannot control the behavior of others and having healthy boundaries is not an excuse for you to become the Boundary Police.  It is a way for you to take responsibility for clearly and consistently maintaining your own boundaries. Unless we set clear limits and consistently maintain them we cannot expect others to know where our boundaries are or to respect them.

The essential features of a personality disorder are impairments in personality (self and interpersonal) functioning and the presence of pathological personality traits. To diagnose a personality disorder, the following criteria must be met:

• A. Significant impairments in self (identity or self-direction) and interpersonal (empathy or intimacy) functioning.

• B. One or more pathological personality trait domains or trait facets.

• C. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual's personality trait expression are relatively stable across time and consistent across situations.

• D. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual's personality trait expression are not better understood as normative for the individual's developmental stage or socio-cultural environment.

• E. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual's personality trait expression are not solely due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., severe head trauma).

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The person must meet the overall criteria for a Personality Disorder and the criteria listed below to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.  Please note:  the words "psychopathy" and "sociopathy" are words used by the public to describe this disorder.  But there is only one diagnosis:  antisocial personality disorder and this is the criteria for diagnosing the disorder.  

The essential features of a personality disorder are impairments in personality (self and interpersonal) functioning and the presence of pathological personality traits. To diagnose antisocial personality disorder, the following criteria must be met:

• A. Significant impairments in personality functioning manifest by:

  • 1. Impairments in self functioning (a or b):

    • a. Identity: Ego-centrism; self-esteem derived from personal gain, power, or pleasure.

    • b. Self-direction: Goal-setting based on personal gratification; absence of prosocial internal standards associated with failure to conform to lawful or culturally normative ethical behavior
      
      AND
      

  • 2. Impairments in interpersonal functioning (a or b):

    • a. Empathy: Lack of concern for feelings, needs, or suffering of others; lack of remorse after hurting or mistreating another.

    • b. Intimacy: Incapacity for mutually intimate relationships, as exploitation is a primary means of relating to others, including by deceit and coercion; use of dominance or intimidation to control others.

• B. Pathological personality traits in the following domains:

  • 1. Antagonism, characterized by:

    • a. Manipulativeness: Frequent use of subterfuge to influence or control others; use of seduction, charm, glibness, or ingratiation to achieve one's ends.

    • b. Deceitfulness: Dishonesty and fraudulence; misrepresentation of self; embellishment or fabrication when relating events.

    • c. Callousness: Lack of concern for feelings or problems of others; lack of guilt or remorse about the negative or harmful effects of one's actions on others; aggression; sadism.

    • d. Hostility: Persistent or frequent angry feelings; anger or irritability in response to minor slights and insults; mean, nasty, or vengeful behavior.

  • 2. Disinhibition, characterized by:

    • a. Irresponsibility: Disregard for – and failure to honor – financial and other obligations or commitments; lack of respect for – and lack of follow through on – agreements and promises.

    • b. Impulsivity: Acting on the spur of the moment in response to immediate stimuli; acting on a momentary basis without a plan or consideration of outcomes; difficulty establishing and following plans.

    • c. Risk taking: Engagement in dangerous, risky, and potentially self-damaging activities, unnecessarily and without regard for consequences; boredom proneness and thoughtless initiation of activities to counter boredom; lack of concern for one's limitations and denial of the reality of personal danger

• C. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual's personality trait expression are relatively stable across time and consistent across situations.

• D. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual's personality trait expression are not better understood as normative for the individual's developmental stage or socio-cultural environment.

• E. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual's personality trait expression are not solely due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., severe head trauma).

• F. The individual is at least age 18 years.

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The essential features of a personality disorder are impairments in personality (self and interpersonal) functioning and the presence of pathological personality traits. To diagnose narcissistic personality disorder, the following criteria must be met:

• A. Significant impairments in personality functioning manifest by:

  • 1. Impairments in self functioning (a or b):

    • a. Identity: Excessive reference to others for self-definition and self-esteem regulation; exaggerated self-appraisal may be inflated or deflated, or vacillate between extremes; emotional regulation mirrors fluctuations in self-esteem.

    • b. Self-direction: Goal-setting is based on gaining approval from others; personal standards are unreasonably high in order to see oneself as exceptional, or too low based on a sense of entitlement; often unaware of own motivations.
      
      AND
      

  • 2. Impairments in interpersonal functioning (a or b):

    • a. Empathy: Impaired ability to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others; excessively attuned to reactions of others, but only if perceived as relevant to self; over- or underestimate of own effect on others.

    • b. Intimacy: Relationships largely superficial and exist to serve self-esteem regulation; mutuality constrained by little genuine interest in others‟ experiences and predominance of a need for personal gain

• B. Pathological personality traits in the following domain:

  • 1. Antagonism, characterized by:

    • a. Grandiosity: Feelings of entitlement, either overt or covert; self-centeredness; firmly holding to the belief that one is better than others; condescending toward others.

    • b. Attention seeking: Excessive attempts to attract and be the focus of the attention of others; admiration seeking.

• C. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual's personality trait expression are relatively stable across time and consistent across situations.

• D. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual's personality trait expression are not better understood as normative for the individual's developmental stage or socio-cultural environment.

• E. The impairments in personality functioning and the individual's personality trait expression are not solely due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., severe head trauma).

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Our sense of self is our perception of ourselves.  It organizes the way we think about ourselves and our experiences of the world we live in.  It consists of the feelings, thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, perceptions, and attitudes we have about ourselves and the world around us.  Our sense of self answers the question “Who Am I?”  For example, beliefs such as "I am a good friend" or "I am a kind person" are part of an overall sense of self.   A strong sense of self allows us to feel serene and secure in the world, regardless of what is happening around us. 

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Some of the attributes of the sense of self can include:

• Physical attributes (e.g. short/tall, blue /brown eyes

• Social relationships (e.g. husband/wife, colleague, friend)

• Familial relationships (e.g. brother/sister, son/daughter, mother/father)

• Occupations (e.g. teacher, plumber, engineer)

• Abilities/disabilities (e.g. smart, funny, shy)

• Spirituality  (e.g. child of God, Catholic, Buddhist)

• Affiliations (e.g. sports fan, memberships, groups you belong to)

• Characterological attributes (e.g. hard working,/lazy, honest/dishonest, good

  looking)

• Family roles (e.g. the caretaker, the hero child, the scapegoat, the mediator)

• Hobbies (e.g. athlete, musician, artist, volunteer)

• Preferences (favorite music/food/art/style of clothing, things you dislike, things that delight you, things that annoy you)

• Values (honest, hard working, loving)

• Cultural (family first, rugged individualist)

Where does our sense of self come from?

When we are young our sense of self grows through our interactions with our parents.  Ideally, we receive love, empathy, compassion, and nurturing from our parents.  We internalize this love and caring from our parents and provide it for ourselves.  We internalize that sense of caring, security and safety into our mind, body, and emotions and become our own source of security.  We develop a secure base inside ourselves which helps us maintain an even keel even when there are external stressors.  

Ideally, healthy parents will also encourage us to “individuate”.  Individuate is a psychological term which refers to the process of separating from our parents and their identities and forming our own identity.  This process usually occurs in our teens and early twenties.  A lot of times you will see people in these age groups experimenting with their clothing and hair, practicing with different religious and political beliefs, and trying on different roles or ways of being.  This is a normal and healthy process which helps them discover who they are separate from their parents, their culture, and their society.  

Why is a strong sense of self important?

When our sense of self is undeveloped we feel uncertain within ourselves.  We doubt our thoughts, our feelings, our perceptions, our ideas and ideals.  We question our sanity and second guess our own decisions.  We seek approval and validation from others.  We give too much weight to what other people think.  We feel completely devastated by criticism or disapproval.  We have poor boundaries.  When other people praise us we may be on cloud nine or distrust them and wonder what they want.  We vacillate wildly between these extremes with no internal compass to guide us.  Our sense of worth and value don’t come from within, but from external forces and therefore require external validation.  We may even develop dependency on others, putting all our energy into sensing what they want and need, dedicating our time and energy to meeting their needs, often at the expense of our own.  We may be very reactive to the opinions and behaviors of others and find our emotions vacillating wildly as a result.  We may absorb the emotions of others and take responsibility for making them feel better.  We may absorb the emotions of others and experience them as our own.  As a result, we end up blowing in the wind, with our moods wildly and unpredictably fluctuating, without ever understanding why and feeling completely helpless, hopeless, and out of control.

By contrast, when we have a strong inner sense of who we are we feel confident that we are okay, regardless of what is happening externally.  We believe we will be accepted by others.  We depend upon our own validation of ourselves and can maintain our sense of competency and calm even when others aren’t around to reassure us.  This inner resilience calms us when we are stressed and allows us to bounce back from the hurts we all experience without feeling like we are coming completely undone.  It provides a compass to guide us and an anchor to steady us.

In a narcissistic family everything circulates around the narcissistic parent.  Everyone in the family functions for their benefit and only their emotions, opinions, and actions matter.  Other members of the family are often regarded as inanimate objects with no needs of their own who exist only to meet the narcissist’s needs.  In this environment, the sense of self may not have room to fully form or develop.  Imagine a butterfly in a cocoon.  If it is never freed from the cocoon, it never has the space to unfold its wings and fly.  It never has the chance to be the butterfly it was meant to be.  

This can also occur in a heavily traumatized family.  A family dealing with a huge stressor or trauma may not have the emotional resources to foster the development of a child’s sense of self.  Everything may be devoted to the survival of the family and individuals may sacrifice themselves for the family.  This can be seen in families where there is substance abuse, a parent with mental illness, the death of a family member, extreme poverty, a disabled parent, etc.  

Likewise, abuse and neglect distorts our experiences of ourselves and the world around us.  In order to make sense of abuse or neglect we may create meanings to explain them.  Children tend to assume that anything going wrong in the family is their fault, so they often blame themselves for harm that comes to them, telling themselves, “I’m a bad kid” or “I deserved it”.   Meaning may also be assigned to us by others, but it too may be distorted.   Abusive parents may have blamed you for their dysfunction, telling you it was your fault, or labeling you as the problem.  You may have internalized these messages and incorporated them into your sense of self.  As adults, we may perpetuate those beliefs through our choices and our relationship patterns reinforcing that story over and over.  If we believe we are “bad” or “not good enough” we may choose partners who mistreat us or friends who take advantage of us.  We may tolerate work environments which are harmful.  We may endure unhealthy situations because we are convinced we don’t deserve anything better.

The process of changing your life involves challenging those distortions and editing your story so you can build the strong, healthy sense of self you were meant to have.  The process of reclaiming and rebuilding a strong, healthy sense of self requires first and foremost looking critically at your life. What is your life reflecting back to you and where are you focusing your attention?

Claiming Your Power

If we grew up in an environment where power was abused, we often have a belief that power is violent and ugly, something which is forced on you.  But power can be quiet, calm, and assertive.  True power is not about dominating others, it is knowledge, wisdom and understanding about ourselves and the conviction that we know who we are.  

No one gives you power, you have to take it.

Rewriting the Story of Who You Are

What are your Core Beliefs?

Core Beliefs are unconditional beliefs that serve as a basis for interpreting and explaining our experiences.   For example, “There’s something wrong with me”, “Others can’t be trusted”, “It doesn’t matter what I do”, “I never have any luck”.  These often function without our awareness in our Self Talk.    

What do I believe to be true about myself?  

Where did it come from?

What messages have I claimed for myself?

What messages have I accepted to belong or survive?

What messages have I accepted from others?

What assumptions am I operating from as a result of these beliefs?

How do these beliefs affect my thoughts, feelings and behaviors?

How do I know what is really me?

How do I know what is not me?

What is the story you tell yourself when things go right?

When things go wrong?

As you move through each day, stop, look at what is happening in this moment, and ask yourself these questions:

Do I like it?

Do I want it?

Is it good for me?

What do I need right now?

How do I feel?

As you make space to listen to yourself you strengthen your self knowledge.  You won’t get it right every time, especially at first.  That’s okay.  Progress, not perfection.  As you learn to trust yourself it will become more automatic and you will gravitate toward the answers you know are true for you.  It’s not selfish to make space for yourself, it’s necessary for you to thrive.

It is our responsibility to create the environment in which we can thrive.

Our lives are determined by the choices we make for ourselves.  Do you feel empowered? Are you actively making choices about your life, or allowing external forces to influence and drive you?  To reclaim your power and control in your own life you have to know how to make choices to nurture and care for yourself, how to make choices to meet your needs, how to move in directions that allow you to reach your full potential.  That is thriving.  Start simply and pay attention to each choice.

Every day try to reflect on these three questions:

What choices did I make today that feel good?

What choices did I make today that are leading me where I want to go?

What am I most grateful for today?

As you strengthen your knowledge about who you are and what you want you will drop the need to justify and explain or apologize when your needs and wants do not appease others.  As you turn your attention to who you are, what you want and need, and what is working you will find it easier and easier to make that choice.  That is where you find happiness and where you will thrive.

Find your values.

Values are the deep-rooted beliefs you have that guide your every choice in life, whether you are aware of them or not.   Not knowing your own values can make it easier for you to fall into the trap of living someone else’s.  Living someone’s values instead of your own can leave you unfilled and unhappy in your life.  It may even compromise your mental, emotional, or physical well being.   Using another person’s values leaves you constantly working against yourself.  

It pays to look at your actions over your thoughts to find your true values. If you think one of your true values is being financially stable, but you tend to take jobs where you are underpaid or you are constantly bailing out other people so that you come up short, you might be living someone else’s values.  If you value honesty but constantly find yourself telling little white lies to avoid conflict or perhaps even abuse, you are not living according to your values.  

When we live according to our values we feel good about ourselves.  It improves our self-esteem and our confidence.  Our friends know what to expect from us and we are consistent, reliable, and true in our relationships with others.  When we live according to other people’s values we are constantly having to morph into whoever they want us to be, like a chameleon constantly having to change its colors.  We can never relax, we can never stand firm, we can never just breathe and be ourselves because we are constantly on guard, watching to see what everyone wants us to be now.  

Practice saying no.

Every time you say yes to something you don’t really want you weaken your self esteem or self confidence.  It’s like constantly lying to yourself until in the end you don’t even know what the truth is.  Granted, we often have to agree to things we don’t want in settings such as work, in family situations, or in social settings.  But if you are consistently saying yes when you mean no, especially in your personal relationships, you are compromising your sense of self and your self worth.  If you consistently say yes to things you don’t want you can become so far removed from knowing what makes you happy you have no sense of self.  You may even develop depression from the constant denial of who you are.  

So how do you say no?  Keep it simple, calm, and pleasant.  You often don’t need to give a reason for your decision.  Overexplaining can suggest that the decision is negotiable or that you aren’t sure.  Keep your refusal firm and upbeat.  You don’t have to be impolite or aggressive.  A simple, “no thanks, that’s not for me” will often be sufficient.  

Become very aware of your need to please.

It is very hard to have a strong sense of self if we form our identity based on the opinions of others, and choose our actions based on their responses to us. The thing to keep in mind is that it is simply not possible to please everyone. We have to pick and choose who we make happy, and the person who deserves to be at the top of the list is you.

A lot of people, especially survivors of narcissistic parents, believe that taking care of themselves is selfish.  Think of it this way.  You can’t pour from a pitcher which is empty.  If you are constantly turning yourself inside out to keep everyone else happy, and never taking care of yourself, how will you have anything to give away?  

This doesn’t mean you aren’t considerate, thoughtful, kind, or helpful to other people.  Of course you will be.  It does mean that you don’t sacrifice your own well being to take care of everyone else.  There is a difference in being there for the people in your life - which is good - and constantly subjugating and denying your own needs to meet everyone else.  It’s about balance.  You should make sure your pitcher is full so you have something to share with others.  If you don’t, you go through life exhausted, overwhelmed, and stressed.  

Of course if you are a pleaser, it can be very difficult to break the pattern. Start by asking yourself, with every decision you make, am I doing this for myself, or for the other person? And take time to sit down and write about this question- “what would my life look like if I didn’t have to please anyone?”

Work towards accepting yourself.

If you are in a constant state of self criticism it’s like trying to see yourself clearly through a rain of fired arrows>  You can’t feel strong and confident when you are constantly berating yourself.  And what purpose is that serving?  Does it make you smarter?  Stronger?  Or does it just beat you down?  

Make a list of all the things that are going alright in your life, and all the things you like about yourself no matter how small, and read through it at least once a day. Spend more time doing things you are naturally good at. Get honest with yourself, too, about social situations you are choosing that make you feel less than good enough. If you have critical friends or family members is it time to find a new social circle?

Write down your negative thoughts.  Notice what you are saying to yourself.  Would you ever say these things to a friend or loved one?  Probably not.  Challenge them.  Are they reality based?  Or have you internalized someone else’s negative messages to you?  Where did these messages come from?  Are they fair and accurate?  Or just mean and hateful?  Replace them with more realistic thoughts.  

Get real.

Therapists call this being authentic.  What we mean by this is being who you truly are.  A lot of times we put on a face that we are expected to wear.  If we are talking to our boss, we may smile and be polite when we’d really like to scream.  And we will always have those situations in our lives.  You have to be polite to the boss and your colleagues because your job depends on it and you need your job to pay the rent.  We wear our best face in social situations and business interactions.  But your personal relationships should not be built on putting on this face.  With the people you love, the people who are closest to you, you should be able to express who you really are.  Being authentic means expressing who you really are, being safe enough to say, “I’m really upset right now”, being able to disagree with other people, and being able to hold opinions that differ from other people’s.  

Learn how to be alone.

The way you respond and react to others is a great way to learn about yourself.  But if you never spend much time by yourself, how can you truly know who your real self is?  Many of us fear being alone.  Sometimes things we are avoiding dealing with tend to surface when we have time to think.  When we are alone our emotions come to the surface, our worries make an appearance, and boredom becomes a problem.  Sometimes we are too worried about what people think if we do something alone.  Sometimes we just haven’t learned how to be alone and need to practice.  

Spending time alone doesn’t mean you need to book a week to go to a meditation retreat or do anything radical (although a week alone is a truly enlightening experience if you are the sort who is always surrounded by others).  Being alone can mean carving out one evening a week to do something for yourself, by yourself.  It can mean doing something that you really love, whether that is a long walk or going to see a foreign film, or spending time at home writing in your journal.

It is true that learning to be alone can at first feel a bit miserable. Emotions you have hidden from yourself might surface, and you might, for the first time in a long time, actually feel a little lonely.   But wait it out.  Once you adjust to spending time alone you’ll also start to hear yourself clearly.  It can be quite exciting to suddenly have a clearer voice in your head telling you what you do and don’t like.

When you are strong on your own and can handle your emotions and worries by yourself you are much less tempted to latch onto the first person who comes along.  Too many people get with partners who are at best unhealthy and at worst toxic because it’s better than being alone.  Being able to live and thrive alone means you can choose who you want to be with - and wait for the right person.

Find yourself with therapy.

Sometimes the best thing of all when we are trying to build a stronger sense of self is impartial help from someone who first, has no demands of us, and second, is on our side. And that’s what a therapist is for.  All kinds of therapy can do wonders for clarifying our sense of self and building up our esteem. Talk therapies like psychodynamic psychotherapy and people centered counseling are good options. CBT is another choice, focusing on catching our cycles of negative thoughts and working to change or eliminate them.  

Create a healthy, support network.

Surround yourself with people who honor, love, support and respect your authentic self and avoid people who require you to be a chameleon, contorting yourself into the person they need or want you to be.  Weed out people who expect you to turn yourself inside out for them, who constantly make demands on you and do not reciprocate, who don’t respect your boundaries.  

Encourage exploration and curiosity.

Find your passions and pursue them.  Try new things.  Sign up for a class.  Go to new events.  Be brave.  Watch and listen to what other people enjoy doing.  Don’t be afraid you won’t be good at it, or you won’t like it.  No one is good at something when they first begin.  And knowing what you don’t like is just as important as knowing what you do like.  

Be aware of reciprocity.

Reciprocity is defined as, “the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit”.  It means there is give and take on both sides of a relationship.  Tune into the relationships in your life.  Do the people closest to you give as much as they take?  Are you surrounded by people who take and take while giving nothing to you?  Supporting, nurturing, and caring should be mutual.  If it’s not you might want to examine just how much the people around you really care about you.  Do they really care about you, or just what you can do for them?  It’s impossible to assert yourself and ask that your needs be met when you are with people who are only taking from you.  

Change is hard.

You know you are struggling. You know life shouldn’t be this hard. You know something is wrong, but you can’t figure out what so you assume it is you.

I spent years, wandering around, going to therapy, taking psychiatric medications, and trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

Being raised by narcissists, I was convinced I was the problem. And yes, I had problems, but they didn’t begin with me. That revelation changed my entire life.

This is a healing community.

My goal, with this blog, is to help others who are wandering in the dark, trying to find the Truth. I will be providing information about narcissists, borderlines, and antisocials and the effects of being raised by them. I will describe the symptoms you may be struggling with as a result of this parenting. I will also be posting ideas for healing and building your best life. This community is not for the personality disordered themselves.

I’m a licensed therapist - and a survivor.

There is a lot of information about narcissism and about healing. Much of it comes from lay people. Some comes from professionals. Some of it is helpful. Some of it is misguided or even wrong. Some is downright harmful.

I have the benefit of personal experience of being raised by a narcissist and a psychopath (someone with antisocial personality disorder). I have also been professionally trained in personality disorders and specialize in treating their survivors.

Let me show you the path towards a better life.

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1 – Find a partner who is capable of forming a secure attachment, who has a history of forming secure attachments.
2 – Work on feeling less shame of not being good enough so you can start feeling more worthy.
3 – Work on building your self-esteem.
4 – Work on expressing your emotional needs in a clear and direct way.
5 –…

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Survivors of Narcissists, Borderlines, or Antisocials (Psychopaths/Sociopaths)

PTSD and C-PTSD

Relationships

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The person must meet the overall criteria for a Personality Disorder and the criteria listed below to be diagnosed wi…

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