It's Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People

by Ramani Durvasula

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their volatile and reactive rage, which is often activated by shame. If you trigger their feelings of inadequacy, they will often target you with either overt aggression (yelling and screaming) or passive-aggression (stonewalling, giving you the silent treatment, showing resentment).[4] They might then feel shame about their show of rage because they actually do know it’s not a good look, so they’ll blame you for it, and the whole cycle begins again. The unwillingness of narcissistic people to control their impulses means they can be highly reactive, especially when they feel provoked, envious, or disempowered. Narcissistic people have high rejection sensitivity, and any experience that smacks of rejection or abandonment is met with reactive rage.[5] Narcissistic rage plays out in every possible communication platform—text messages, voicemails, emails, DMs, phone calls, in ...

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abuse is about domination, which counterbalances the inadequacy and insecurity that are at the core of the narcissistic personality. Needing to control schedules, appearances, financial decisions, and the narrative is a classical part of narcissistic behavior. Their control may also feel spiteful and simply serves as a way to show you that they are in charge. This may happen when a narcissistic person refuses to go to an event that matters to you, which may mean that you don’t get to go, either. They will use money to control you; for example, by paying your rent in order to keep you living nearby, or offering to pay a family member’s medical bills so you then feel silenced and indebted. The control extends to isolation. Narcissistic abuse often consists of the narcissistic person criticizing your family, friends, and workplace, and when you are with those people, the narcissist will behave in a manner that is insulting and rude. A narcissistic person may also tell you falsehoods about people close to you so you question their loyalty and friendship. The result is that you...

Hell really hath no fury like a narcissist scorned. Their vindictive behavior may range from spreading damaging workplace gossip or stealing business leads to major things like quitting a job so they don’t have to pay you spousal support or cutting you out of a family trust because you set a boundary. The challenging part about narcissistic vengeance is that narcissistic people are skilled at flying right under the radar, which may limit you from taking any substantive legal remedies—after all, being a jerk isn’t against the law. Narcissistic abuse is characterized by threats big and small: legal threats, threats of exposing you to key players in your life, or financial or custody threats during a divorce simply to create a sense of menace. Grandiose statements like “Nobody messes with me” or “I will see you in court,” or even behavior t...

sparring patterns that characterize narcissistic abuse include criticism of just about anything you do.

The criticism can reveal itself as contempt for you, your habits, your life, or your mere existence, and can also go a step further with humiliation. It may be framed as mockery in front of others, and downplayed as a joke, but it may also be indirectly communicated through non-verbals such as eye-rolling. Shaming and embarrassing you is an unconscious way for the narcissistic person to eliminate their own shame by pivoting it to someone else.

Narcissists lie; it’s what they do.

Narcissistic folks lie to maintain their grandiose narratives, get attention, and sell an image to the world and they lie as a hedge against their shame.

Have you ever had that experience when the narcissistic person promises to change, or offers you that thing you wanted—whether it’s to get married, move to a certain place, have children, go on vacation, repay you money, get into therapy, etc.—to keep you in the relationship longer, and then it never happens or the goalposts keep moving? Future faking is a particularly twisted element of narcissistic abuse. Narcissistic people know what you want, so they offer it to you as a manipulation to draw you back in and keep you on the hook. Most future-faked promises are tied to some

Breadcrumbing is a dynamic whereby the narcissistic person in the relationship gives less and less, and you learn to make do on less and less, and even express gratitude for