THIS was always the agenda with a Narcissist – or CONTROL over us for as long as we are a source of supply! ‘MANAGING DOWN’ putting more of the puzzle pieces together to understand this abuse! The Narcissist uses a distorted form of conditioning or manipulation making you believe you are OK and then you are not OK, and they use this just like you are a Yo-Yo to keep you off balance with all the ups and downs – BUT always making you go to a lower level feeling blameworthy and worthless!

Posted by ANA - After Narcissistic Abuse

From my Book – Greg Zaffuto – Author – From Charm to Harm and Everything else in Between with a Narcissist!

When we are attempting to relate to a Narcissist our interactions with them are basically manipulated into reactions that a Narcissist provokes by basically charming or love bombing our emotions positively or the direct opposite with negative reactions that put us on the defensive where we are basically having to always explain ourselves and made to feel wrong or even worthless. It is primarily about the negative reactions to gain control over their victim. It all stems from their shrewd interrogation techniques they used on us where they have gained all kinds of personal information that they have stored away in their memory for future use to Charm or Harm us. It is part of their big game plan or knowing the right or wrong things to get a reaction from their victim! All that information is significant and right there in their head and they will use it against us in some manner to get the response they want or to fulfill one of their many needs.

A Narcissist knows how to manipulate something in a way that makes us feel like we must justify or explain ourselves and our position – or in other words to keep us constantly off balance. They will make any conversation escalate into an argument by pushing the right buttons. Call it ‘bait and switch,’ or a diversionary tactic but they know how to manipulate your mood and emotions with their well-placed words. They are so good at this that it will make us feel angst or even get angry and then we end up looking like the crazy one because of how we react to the craziness. This is purposely baiting us to react and a routine they use regularly on their targets/victims. They will even try to elicit our anger in front of an audience if possible, to really make it effective! More than likely, we feel embarrassed by our own actions and reflect on OUR behavior but never realize that we have been managed down by the shrewd Narcissist!

Communicating with a Narcissist is impossible as far as reality is concerned so it follows that arguing or debating with them should be avoided at all costs because it will only provoke them into an attack and RAGE. So, we should not communicate or even talk to them BUT unfortunately, we didn’t know this at the time we were dealing with them. If we could have only kept our innermost thoughts and feelings private, we would have saved ourselves so much of this disabling distress. Unfortunately, we trusted these individuals and divulged things because we believed in them so they earned our trust, but in essence they manipulated us into trusting them to fulfill their manipulative agenda and they know our secrets as well and that is dangerous because they will embellish our weaknesses and make us hyperaware of them.

Narcissists have many tools in their arsenal or weapons that they use to constantly keep us in a state of despair and confused – or in that ‘fog.’ A Narcissist has been this way for an exceptionally long time and they just go into autopilot to make the negative things happen that they need to stay in control and manage you and everyone down and in turn they feel powerful or better. Conversations are very calculated and manipulated with Illogical arguments and distorted views that wreak havoc on your mental faculties. Narcissists must constantly do this to avoid falling into the depths of their own disordered reality, or the awareness of just how sick they really are so everything is basically a diversion to control us and their environment. So, by playing these ridiculous and irrational mind games they think they raise themselves out of that dark world where they reside by tearing someone else down and walking all over that other person’s emotions and trampling down all of their boundaries – purely crazy or ‘crazy making.’ Think of bullies that must put other people down or harm them so that they feel superior, but with a Narcissist this is all encompassing as far as their personality is concerned – as a matter of fact it IS THEIR COMPLETE being. They must malign everybody in their world and keep this absurd control mechanism going so they can survive.

Here is an example: Say you have an argument with a close friend or family member. You look for support in your partner (the Narcissist) feeling you can trust their opinion. The Narcissist will use this opportunity to turn the situation around onto you or basically blaming you by purposely taking the side of the person you are discussing (whether you are right or wrong). They may tell you that you are overreacting, too sensitive, or outright agree with the third party. The conversation is not meant to help or enlighten you to fix the situation – it is meant to manage you down, so you feel like you are WRONG!

They are essentially processing their victims which basically amounts to sucking the spirit right out of them, feeding off the negativity, and the constant managing down that they do to their target/victims that destroys their self-respect – and all of this is done to be in complete control! So, apply the logic here and that is how the Narcissist gets THEIR self-respect, by stealing or taking it away from others. Yes, it sounds absurd but basically it describes what a bully does to overpower people and feel some sort of superiority because they themselves are totally insecure. It is despicable that they infiltrate our world to harm us, but how they get us there to trust and listen to them is even more despicable because they manufacture a fake love first, so we develop emotions for them and then use this against us as part of the BIG con or agenda.

So, in essence they also play this game to fight off the awareness of what a contemptible thing their conduct has made them. They are not powerful; they are NEGATIVE and use this as a weapon to control and harm the very people that love them. So, we constantly ask ourselves why they do this, why did they pretend to love us to devalue us. WHY, why, why? Because these are very dysfunctional and miserable creatures that have extreme envy and even hate at the core of their disorder. You can’t put a real spin on this that would ever explain the why because they are disordered BUT you can see a clear picture, or a reality shot of the complete game they play, and it is destructive. With that in mind you must actualize the very truth that your very survival and recovery depends on getting them OUT of your life forever or they will keep pulling you down further and further until it is almost impossible to get back up.

So, let us just say that they ward off awareness of their extreme neediness by projecting most of it off and onto their target/victim – this is a diversion to keep you off balance and to make them feel powerful. But it is a vicious cycle with them because their existence will constantly challenge them and their illusions of their superiority – or basically the delivery of their contempt is ever-changing. Normal people cannot coexist in this parasitic relationship, especially one where your individuality is denied, and you are consistently managed down to question your own sanity. The Narcissist destroys every relationship because of their vast insecurities and need to win and feel superior. It is a dysfunctional cycle where they take every person from idealization to discard or from ‘charm to harm’ to achieve their dose of life sustaining supply. You must understand that this Narcissist is nothing even near happy or full of the charm they exude. Their inner mind is so riddled with their insecurities and an insatiable need for external attention to survive. It completely rules their world, and you can NEVER reach them because there is NO ‘them.’ They are stuck in this dysfunctional defensive mode and the slightest insult can send them into a major Narcissistic injury, so WE pay the price and always have a ‘bullseye’ on our back! They are NOT fit for human interaction.

All this managing down is also done in a manner to create a strong dependence on them (the Narcissist.) They isolate you from the world and make you beg for their approval. They must control their target/victims to stay in control or else that mask would come flying of and that monster behind it would be out of control and they would be hauled off and locked away in a cage.

I have said this MANY time before: PLEASE understand that the feeling of worthlessness that the Narcissist creates in your psyche is more PERCEIVED than real OR what the Narcissist says and does to make you FEEL like this worthless person that NEEDS them. There is no ‘them’ and they know this so they have to create a façade that they can’t keep up because there is nothing to back it up with internally, so they have to also manage you down to weaken you, so you are always diverted from the truth of how damaged they are. They have slowly but surely trained you to beg for their approval through manipulation and managing you down. Human beings love unconditionally but that implies that they are individuals that deserve reciprocation and individualism. Within that we voice concerns and at times disagree with one another and work through things. If you point out an error A Narcissist made, they go into defensive mode to counter any such notion with anger, venting, rage, cold-shoulder, silencing, and punishing. There is no such thing as reciprocity with a Narcissist because you are NOT an individual interacting with them – you are an object for them to use that serves a specific purpose.

A Narcissist will make you feel special and then emotionally distance themselves from you in so many ways that keep you unsure of yourself – THEY ARE NOT VIABLE PARTNERS IN ANY TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP because they are damaged. Virtually all their ideas or the way they are behaving in any given situation are stolen from others, perhaps people they know and think of as superior – they have many copycat personalities that they use to create all their many facades. People are basically servants to them, and Narcissists are blowhards, braggers, browbeaters, bullies, big-headed, but totally bogus. They will very rarely talk about their inner life, memories and dreams, or emotions BECAUSE THEY HAVE NONE! Narcissists demand your trust rather than earning it. They only see you as extensions of themselves and you are not allowed any individuality and freedom. They fail to recognize people’s emotions and feelings because all they can recognize are their own needs and wants. There is no substance to them other than a façade, lies and what they manipulate from life and people. To sum it up – they are emotional and psychological abusers! No/minimal contact to free yourself from this abuse and to move forward to a healthy lifestyle. Greg