The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist Quotes

“hard to trust myself to choose someone who is healthy. I doubt my own discernment because of everything I’ve been through.”
― 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 shows them which part of their mask is cracking. They learn what you want, and what 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. The therapy sessions make you feel even more love and respect for them, once again sealing their image as the perfect mate, ensuring your love and loyalty for a very long time.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“With CNs, it is all about them, but they know how to appear like it isn’t. For example, they despise taking care of you when you are sick or recovering from surgery or an injury. They won’t tell you that, but you feel it. They let you know through passive-aggressive ways. To family and friends, they will tell stories of how much they feel for you and appear to be taking exceptional care of you. They will come across as humble and will be sure to paint a picture of being a great caretaker. People around you will think how lucky you are to have someone so tender and loving by your side. The CN might even do things that look like they are taking care of you, but you will feel their resentment and will find yourself feeling alone and unsupported even though they are doing things that appear to be helpful.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“This is such a common story. This woman lived for years thinking something was wrong with her. She was being subtly manipulated and devalued at home without seeing it. Her body was reacting. She was slowly dying inside and couldn’t figure out why. Thank goodness for the therapist who understood covert narcissism and recognized the signs.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Amy left the appointment in a daze. Narcissist? That was the last word she would have used to describe her husband of more than 30 years. She had always seen him as kind, someone she respected. Their relationship wasn’t perfect, but most of the time she would have described it as a good marriage. She felt lucky to be with someone so easygoing. However, his behavior over the past year had been vastly different from the man she thought she knew. So many things didn’t make sense. The way he was treating her was so hurtful, disturbing, and utterly confusing. Then suddenly, he was done with her. The end of the marriage was shocking and incredibly confusing.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Even though Brad’s words were nice, Dawn could feel his anger toward her underneath them. The conversation began with her telling him how she felt used and somehow ended up with her apologizing and comforting him. He deflected the focus, didn’t address her feelings, and instead turned the attention back on him as the “victim.” She would continue to share with him how she felt over the years, but nothing ever changed. CNs aren’t interested in looking at their own issues or changing any of their behaviors.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“This conditions you to keep trying to please them in order to get the reward of love. It brings you to a place where you lower your standards so much that you become grateful for mediocre treatment that you never would have tolerated when you first met them. You end up believing you don’t deserve any better and that you are not worthy of love and affection. Or you think this is just what happens in marriages. In dating situations, CNs will seem uncertain about you and other times they will express how you are the only one for them. You never know where you stand with them.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Gaslighting is subtle, insidious, and intentional, always making you feel like something is wrong with you. When Dawn and Brad were intimate, she told him she felt used after having sex with him and couldn’t figure out why because they had such a great relationship. He never addressed how she felt, never looked at himself to see if there were something he might be doing that would make her feel that way. Instead, what he did was direct her attention to things she might need to change about herself. He also told her she was too sensitive and was reading into things. He distracted her, redirecting the focus onto her so she would doubt herself and not notice his deflection. This planted seeds in her mind that Brad would sow for years to come, making her think there was something wrong with her.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“The discard phase is excruciating. It is also extremely confounding, to say the least. You saw your CN as one person for years, and now you see someone you don’t recognize, someone cruel and unfeeling. Your head is spinning, and your heart is devastated. You’ve never experienced betrayal, hurt, and confusion like this before. Victims look back over the years trying to figure out what happened. Once someone brings up the idea that their partner might be a narcissist, they search again for signs they missed, traits they didn’t notice.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“When we see real love demonstrated, it helps us recognize the reality of the mess we had in our lives. It helps us see that it was all words with no actions to match.”
― 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 other person. The relationship can only work if both people have these traits.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Cognitive dissonance is when you hold two conflicting beliefs in your mind. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as, “Psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.” This is what makes covert narcissistic abuse so confusing and difficult. For so long you believed this person was kind and genuine. You believed with all your heart this person loved and cared about you. When you start to experience cruelty from them that is more overt or when you begin to discover they have many narcissistic traits, this messes with your mind because seeing them as manipulative and controlling contrasts the belief that they are loving, kind, and innocent.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“A covert narcissist is in some ways a more dangerous abuser. I say this delicately. All abusers are horrific, and all abuse is deplorable; all victims of all types of abuse have been through a tremendous amount. I don’t want to diminish anyone’s pain. The point I’m trying to make is when someone is hitting you or yelling at you it is clearly abuse. Covert abuse is hidden and so subtle, it is far from obvious. Manipulative, covert tactics not only hurt you, they also chip away at your identity, your self-worth, and make you feel like this is all your fault. Covert emotional and psychological abuse is what happens in cults. Leaders who make you feel loved can also talk you into committing suicide. These people are powerful. Do not diminish what you have experienced. You have been controlled and manipulated for years. You are a victim of abuse.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“When Is It Emotional Abuse?” defined emotional abuse as: …an attempt to control, in just the same way that physical abuse is an attempt to control another person. The only difference is that the emotional abuser does not use physical hitting, kicking, pinching, grabbing, pushing or other physical forms of harm. Rather the perpetrator of emotional abuse uses emotion as his/her weapon of choice. Emotional abuse in our culture is pervasive and damaging, and it’s as relevant a topic as physical and sexual abuse. Emotional abuse undercuts a person’s foundational self-confidence and love of self and replaces them with confusion about self-worth, value, justice, mercy, and love.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“The truth is this relationship never meant the same to them as it did to you. You approached it from a genuine, goodhearted, loving place. They did not. They acted like they did, but it wasn’t genuine. The reality is they have enormous issues and have projected them onto you for years, making you think you are responsible for things that have nothing to do with you. A big part of healing is recognizing the truth and coming to the place where you can accept that it really was all an illusion. This takes time and can’t be forced. Accepting what really happened is a natural result that comes with educating yourself on covert narcissism, getting support, and learning to trust yourself and treat yourself with the utmost love and kindness.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Everyone around her loved him and was constantly confirming how lucky she was. The trap of the powerful love-bombing stage had been laid, so she trusted the way he appeared more than things she was feeling deep inside. She excused things he did that were unkind and disrespectful, believing he loved and cared about her. Her body knew better and was trying to warn her. She was feeling stressed and trapped for a reason. She had difficulty trusting him because her body knew he could not be trusted. She didn’t realize how much she could trust herself.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“People with no empathy have no remorse and act out of their own selfishness, hurting others and not feeling badly about it. They excuse their destructive behavior and blame others.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“The CN will sometimes foster this idea to minimize their abusive behavior. Painting a picture that they just weren’t a good match devalues and minimizes trauma the victim has experienced and is experiencing and makes them question them self once again.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Brad made comments over the years about how easy it would be for Dawn to be a nun, or wondering if she was a lesbian.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“When you start out working with or for these people, they seem like the dream boss, coworker, or partner. You feel incredibly lucky to be working with them. They compliment you and make you feel valued and needed. They are often described as charismatic people, the boss or employee everyone likes. CN bosses are easy to work with, and many victims feel relieved to have a boss like them after experiencing difficult employers in the past. However, they are often chameleons who mirror the people they are around, so everyone feels like they are seen by them and understood. They win people’s trust quickly. They are charming, but not in a creepy-player kind of way. They seem like the real deal. Easygoing, smart, not a big ego, endearing—these are words I have heard to describe this type of person. As in romantic relationships, a CN boss will take you through the three stages. They will love bomb you in the beginning. It will feel easy, exciting, fun. They might make grandiose promises of your future with the company, your financial success, and your involvement in projects you love. You will feel excited and so lucky to have gotten this opportunity, telling your friends and family all the glowing stories of this new boss. Sometimes this person becomes a trusted friend.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Covert narcissists tend to be financially successful people. They want to look good to others, and this is all part of the image that is so important to them. Because of this, they can often be found in leadership positions in organizations.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Intermittent reinforcement is a conditioning behavior where CNs set the rules. Their love is inconsistent and on their terms. This leaves you feeling unstable and longing for their love and attention. The relationship becomes a mixture of subtle cruelty and periodic affection. They will woo you and withhold from you. This conditions you to keep trying to please them in order to get the reward of love. It brings you to a place where you lower your standards so much that you become grateful for mediocre treatment that you never would have tolerated when you first met them. You end up believing you don’t deserve any better and that you are not worthy of love and affection.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“This can look like advice they give you or “constructive criticism.” This can be especially cloaked when they are parents. They come across like they are just trying to help guide you, but you leave feeling disempowered and scared of life, believing you don’t have what it takes to figure things out. You get the subtle message you are doing things wrong, but it comes in the form of “concern for you.” You feel the life go out of you and don’t know why.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“The ironic thing is the CN usually initiates the end of the relationship, but it is often the survivor who actually files for divorce. The CN wants to be liked, to be seen as the victim, not the one who destroyed a family. They want people to feel sorry for them and see you as the one to blame. How they look to others is their top priority.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Covert narcissists are not capable of real love. It was an illusion. That is an incredibly painful and disheartening realization.”
― 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. During the devaluing phase, the victims are programmed to not trust themselves.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“A covert narcissist can appear to be a loving partner for a long time. Their behavior often becomes more aggressive at the end of the relationship. This is when the narcissistic traits listed in the DSM-IV become more obvious; the sense of entitlement and superiority, the arrogant attitude, becomes more pronounced. They will still be covert with others, but the survivor will see and experience more of the overt traits coming to the surface. Their mask cracks when you, the survivor, begin trusting yourself. The stronger you become, the less they can control and manipulate you. When this happens, they no longer need you. You are no longer supplying them. This is when you feel their rage more than ever. This is when their behavior turns aggressive, cruel, and shocking.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“Covert narcissists will often have careers that are impressive. They can be pastors, spiritual leaders, therapists, and heads of non-profit organizations. They can be politicians who are charming, look you right in the eye, and really seem to care.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“The word “narcissist” is thrown around a lot and grossly misused. “He’s so narcissistic! Oh, yeah, I was with a narcissist too!” People often use this word to describe someone who is selfish and arrogant. The true definition goes much deeper, and when the word is so carelessly used, it diminishes the painful reality of victims of true narcissists. Someone who has experienced a true narcissist would never toss the word around so lightly.”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

“CNs often use passive-aggressive means to punish you when you do not behave in ways they want. Sometimes they will give you the silent treatment, act as if they didn’t hear you,”
― Debbie Mirza, The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse