Narcissists
Narcissistic types have been a thorn in my side since birth, and that is a very long time. I can assure you, that I do not use the label narcissist nonchalantly or lightly. When I talk about narcissists, I know that they are narcissists. Although I may not be a licensed therapist, I did obtain a master’s degree in two areas of psychology as it pertains to mental health. One of those degrees is in mental health counseling.
I say all of that to say that I know a narcissist when I have encountered a narcissist, and I have dealt with the behaviors of narcissists to the extent that I had discerned their patterns. Although they are not all the same, they are definitely the same in how they execute narcissistic tendencies. Some narcissists are less craftier than others, and still other narcissists are less covert than others. Nevertheless, narcissists are what they are, and mainly they are diabolically evil.
Sometimes I have to wonder about the humanness of narcissists because oftentimes they do not seem to be human. They seem to be demonically otherworldly because they seem to frequently scheme and think upon nothing but evil in their attempts to push people over the edge literally and figuratively. I ponder over situations where I have actually been pushed to the brink of self-completion … ending my life because a narcissist was wreaking so much havoc upon me. I could never understand it.
Narcissists go after people for the sake of simply inflicting pain, and if I did not get to know some narcissists personally enough to understand who they were as people beyond the masks they are always attempting to keep covering them, then I would just assume that these are the types of people who hate without consciousness, lie without reason, and destroy without empathy. The truth of the matter, however, is that narcissists do hate without consciousness, lie without reason, and destroy without empathy.
Deep down, there are issues that made a narcissist a narcissist. Those same types of issues could have enabled me or anyone else to evolve into a narcissist. There are so many factors at play when I think about it. I have researched this, and there are many factors including types of innate characteristics within a person, generational ties (and lack thereof), and environmental situations that propel a person into becoming a narcissist. For what it is worth, many would-be narcissists are simply narcissistic. Those that are narcissistic have enough remorse and self-reflection about the wrong that they do to others.
Frequently Sending You Over The Edge
Narcissists are frequently sending their targets/victims over the edge … over the edge of insanity, over the edge of an emotional rollercoaster, and over the edge of a cliff. Narcissists constantly keep their targets/victims within the cycle of narcissistic abuse – idealize (love bombing), devalue (put downs), and discard (taking their presence away through breakups and desertions). They love making their targets/victims feel crazy. Nothing is ever as it seems, and that is by design.
I think about a friendship I had with someone I was not always sure was a narcissist because they did not always display narcissistic traits. Yet, after spending time with him and his family, I was very aware of the narcissistic dynamics at hand because of the resemblance of themes that were always at work within my own family system. As the friendship with this person blossomed, I found myself always able to see past the mask that the person always tempted to display around others. The friend was very aware that I knew the real person, but I never said a word openly.
The friend had a public face and a private face but was always careful not to push me too far over my limit in public for fear of losing my friendship. Yet, the more I stuck around, the more I was taken through a brutal cycle of devaluation in the form of silent treatments, stonewalling, and projection. If I made attempts to bring forth discussions about behaviors that hurt my feelings, then I was the one who was always told that I was “maybe projecting”. If I apologized for my part in any wrong against the friend, then the friend would act clueless as to what I was talking about.
In the meantime, I would be subjected to more subtle but continued devaluation. When I had finally reached a breaking point, I discussed with the friend breaking off the friendship and was met with a lot of resistance. At the time, I simply did not have the heart to walk away. Yet, the more I look upon that time now, I realized that it was less about having the heart to walk away and more about the trauma bond I had formed with the friend.
The thought of walking away was painful at best, and simply soul wrenching at worst. I had become a soul friend with this person – enmeshing my whole self with this person because I was a people-pleaser. I suggested the break, but the friend projected the situation back onto me saying that a break was something I frequently brought up when I could not handle simple disagreements.
Of course, this was not the case, and my venting to the friend about their lack of appreciation, their lack of common courtesy, and their cold indifference was met with the same type of behavior. But as usual, I would always be the one to self-reflect upon my own behaviors so that I could correct myself. Yet, the friend never did the same. There was very little reciprocation unless there was something the friend could gain from me for their benefit.
My greatest issue with this person was communication. I never felt that we truly communicated even though we were supposedly the best of friends. I had enough recorded experience with other narcissists to know that when I had a difficult time communicating with the person, it was because there were eggshells all around, the person had closed themselves off from truly communicating with me, or the person had me in a stage of devaluation or discard. Outwardly, to anyone else, the friend always appeared to be okay, but I always knew when something was off.
Frequently, we resorted to text communications, and the friend knew that my greatest pet peeve was a lack of response to my texts. This friend gave me frequent wait times between text messages that always irritated me particularly when they always texted me first even when asking me for a favor. I noted that the friend always kept another main friend on rotation with me, and although we were all friends, I honored their friendship because they had known each other longer. So, it never surprised me that the friend was always texting me in conjunction with the other friend.
Needless to say, however, when the friend was communicating with me, there would be a huge text of need from them, and once I responded to the need, then I would not hear from the friend for a long period or amount of time in response. I would need to send several texts just to get a response. After a while, I grew tired of this treatment and began to mute the friend and allow their texts to me to go unanswered just as they had done me. This, of course, would resort to me being passive aggressive and never directly calling the friend out for their behavior until I was pushed over the edge of being able to reason with them.
I would always end up losing my cool with the friend for such blatant disrespect only for the friend to react coyly with me as if I was the unreasonable one. The friend would then give me some sob story that made them the victim, and interestingly, the story was often true but often more dramatic than it really needed to be. I, of course, would end up feeling bad as if I had overreacted, and then I would be back at square one happily at the friend’s service but wondering within myself what had just occurred in the situation.
If I ever repaid the friend with the same energy I was given, then I was mean, cold, and callous. In actuality, I would feel mean, cold, and callous as well because it is just not in my nature to want to treat people meanly. Yet, this friend had no qualms about doing me the same way. A few times, I knew the friend had blocked me from being able to communicate with them or would make sure my calls were sent to a full voice box.
At least twice, the friend invited me over to their home, but when I showed up the friend would be riding off with other people who pretended not to see me. If I called or texted the friend to ask what was going on, there would be no response because I had been blocked by them. Whenever I would mention the episode of bad behavior, I would be told to calm down … that I was overreacting. Yet, I knew that I was not overreacting but being mistreated, but like a dummy, I held on because I thought things would change.
In actuality, I now look back and know that this friend who was more like a frenemy wanted to see me at a breaking point and emotionally destroyed in a way. Once I caught the friend with the tiniest micro-expressive smirk that revealed to me what was really going on within their heart for me. Although the friend would often times show their care of me and extend themselves to me in benevolent ways, I now know that those were all love bombing traps to keep me around them. I was such a bad enabler of their behavior towards me. I was passive in putting a stop to it. Even though I began to realize that the friend had no respect for me, I continued on hoping for a different outcome. That was insane of me.
At some point, the friend’s disdain for me became a little too much for them to hide from me much in the same way it became for other narcissists who were in my life in the past. I realized that the more love and support I gave this friend, the less honor this friend had for me. If I tried harder to please the friend, I gained even less from the friend in mutual respect. I was the loser in this situation all the way around, and eventually, all of the crazymaking behaviors drove me over the edge to the point that I lost it with them and verbally blasted them with all the words that I could think of to describe them and their sorry gift of friendship to me.
Once this friend’s narcissistic behavior sent me over the edge, I did not climb back up to greet them. I went over the edge, and I remained there for a while. Of course, I ended up looking like the bad guy, but that too was by design. Yet, I took the descent over the edge with a small bit of pleasure because I understood the freedom that doing so would bring me. I was forced to take a look at myself and the part that I played in allowing the situation with the friend to go on as long as it did. I did not deserve the abuse at all.
Fearfully, I did not want to break the trauma bond. Doing so felt like a death to me when I actually did try. My heart literally shattered at the thought, and my verbalizing this to the friend helped the friend to understand the power the trauma bond had over me. It certainly did not appear to be that the friend was trauma bonded to me. Only I was the one who seemingly suffered in agony at the thought of losing them as a friend while they could have cared less about losing me.
I had formed a soul attachment with this friend and with every other narcissist that has ever been in my life. Detachment for me was not an easy feat. I crumbled at the thought of it, and could literally feel the breaking within my own soul. I had connected with this friend in the soulish realm, and the breaking away from that incurred me a scar – a severing of my own soul. I was wounded emotionally, and although I knew I would recover, it felt like I absolutely never would recover. I felt so saddened and grieved by the break that I contemplated deleting myself, but I now realize that that was totally something else which I will discuss in another blog post.
The main thing here is that narcissists frequently send you over the edge, and they do not care that they do either. They cannot help themselves for doing so because ultimately that is their plan all along. It is either the death of their soul or the death of your soul, and they are going to choose the death of yours every single time. Their soul is already dead.
If I had to sit down and make a diagnosis of this former friend, I would not because I am not licensed to do so. Yet, I discern all day that this friend is indeed a narcissist – a covert narcissist. I imagine that they are still treating their other narcissistic supply just as the same as they treated me – with indifference and disdain. Looking back, this person was never truly my friend but more my enemy.
In addition, I did not even befriend them in the beginning. This person was introduced to me, and then went out of their way to attempt to subdue me, bring me under their submission, and then destroy me. Although they almost succeeded, I resiliently bounced back from over that edge, learned my lesson, and moved on to tell about it. Narcissists are frequently trying to send you over the edge, but it is worth more to think about what you are going to do about it when they do.
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My Voice Unchained 