The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist Quotes

“They naturally want to keep that good feeling of being loved by their mom or dad, so they learn early on how they must behave to be treated with love. This sets them up for a life that is filled with the pressure of never being less than perfect in anything they do. It has been instilled in them that this is how they get people to love them and to keep their love and attention. They also don’t expect to be unconditionally loved, so often they choose partners who don’t treat them with consistent, pure love. They never feel good enough and can live with underlying despair and unhappiness for a long time.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Relationships with CNs are filled with destructive mixed messages.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“It is insidious abuse because no one sees it, but the victim feels it profoundly. It affects every fiber of their being.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“They are big fans of deflecting the focus off them and onto you, making themselves the victims and blaming you for all kinds of things that are massive distortions of reality.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“It’s an emotional rollercoaster run off their moods, and it keeps you constantly giving them attention. As long as you are doing this, you are useful to them as their energy supply. This keeps you off-kilter and susceptible to manipulation and control.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“A CN will say loving and nice things to you, compliment you, make you dinner, buy you gifts, but only on a random basis. Mixed in with this nice, loving behavior that keeps you thinking this is the person you fell in love with is also belittling that keeps you feeling weak and small, silent treatment that makes you think you’ve done something wrong, moodiness that makes you believe you are the source of their unhappiness, and several other means of making you feel insecure and not good enough.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“CNs are not people who fight for relationships or put much work into them at all. Most survivors say they were the ones planning dates, initiating communication, and trying to nurture the relationship. If there are issues in the marriage or partnership, CNs are not the ones to try to find solutions and work through things to come back together. They have no interest in putting effort into relationships.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“CNs are very passive. They put the responsibility on you to make sure they are happy and blame you when they’re not.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“They will say things like, “I am taking responsibility for my part of this, but you aren’t taking any.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Here are some common things I have heard survivors say they have been told by their CN: You are controlling, manipulative, inconsiderate; you don’t care about my feelings; you are lazy; it’s all about you; I can’t trust you; you only did that so you would look good to others.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Narcissists are deeply unhappy people. They get jealous of you when you are experiencing life and happiness. They do not want you to be happy and strong, as those feelings threaten their ability to control you. They”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“CNs observe you and groom you, and they know exactly what you need to hear to get you back. For them, it’s all about control.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“When a CN lies and you confront them about it, they will not acknowledge your feelings as would happen in a healthy relationship. They will never put themselves in your shoes. Instead, they will deflect, so the negative attention gets turned around on you and off of them. They will blame you for their bad behavior: “You made me do it, you drove me to it, this is your fault…” Hoovering”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“If a target brings any of this to the CN’s attention, the CN will find a way to turn it around and make something the target’s fault.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Their rage controls the climate of the home and keeps people feeling like they are walking on eggshells. This is one way they maintain control of people close to them.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“CNs have a lot of rage inside them. They may not yell, or get violent, but you can feel their quiet rage.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“The thing you start noticing when you become aware of the issues with the CN is that most of what they say about you is actually a projection of what is true of them.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“The CN also becomes more aggressive with their words and actions than you’ve seen before, but once again, you are the only one who sees this side of them.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Most likely, the discard phase will feel like the most confusing and painful betrayal you’ve ever felt in your life. The person you have loved for years and who you believed loved you back is now saying the cruelest things—things you would have never imagined possible.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“A CN will control you through their moods, through looks they give you, through statements they make that may not seem like putdowns on the surface but make you feel badly about yourself. They will say nothing is wrong when it feels to you like something is wrong.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Her husband of 18 years was suddenly done with her, telling her how happy he was without her, blaming her for all kinds of things. He told her how unhappy he had been the whole time they were married and listed all the ways it was her fault.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Over a long period of time, you are given the message by someone you love and trust that you have no value, no matter what you do, no matter how kind you are, no matter how much you do for them, you will never ever be enough for them.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“The word “covert” is defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “not openly shown.” “Passive-aggressive” is defined as “displaying behavior characterized by the expression of negative feelings, resentment, and aggression in an unassertive passive way.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Am I controlling and manipulative like he’s saying I am and I just don’t see it? Am I inconsiderate? Maybe I have been selfish? I can’t think clearly. I can’t even see what is true about me anymore.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“He was continuously telling her all the things he believed were wrong with her and blaming her for making it impossible for their marriage to work. All of this seemed to come out of nowhere. After 30 years, he moved out and made sure she knew how much happier he was without her. It didn’t seem to bother him at all that this was ending. He wanted out, and according to him, it was all her fault.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“So many things didn’t make sense. The way he was treating her was so hurtful, disturbing, and utterly confusing.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“What she didn't know was one of the worst things you can do is take a CN to therapy, especially in the beginning. Here is why: it's like a training ground for them. When the counselor tells them what they are doing wrong, how they are hurting you, it shoes them which part they need to do to impress you as well as others. They do what the therapist suggests, impressing the target and the therapist. Their heart isn't in it, but they act like it is.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“I spoke with one woman who would watch her narcissistic mom observe other people's insecurities and shower them with compliments and praise in those areas. Those "targets" felt loved, seen, heard. Her mom didn't care about these people.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“An amicable divorce is not possible when you are dealing with a covert narcissist. The breakup is sudden. It is a fire hose of so many different traits. You will experience intermittent reinforcement, smear campaigns, flying monkeys, lies, manipulation, crazy-making conversations, triangulation, absolute absence of empathy, devaluing and demeaning insults, emotional immaturity, profound selfishness, entitled superiority, and so much more during this discard phase. You will feel a betrayal like you’ve never known.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Loving, healthy, life-giving relationships require certain essential traits, such as putting yourself in the other person’s shoes, showing respect, really listening, caring about the other person’s feelings, being self-reflective, and wanting the best for the”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse