Methods of Narcissistic Abuse
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
The dictionary definition of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is ‘a personality disorder characterized especially by an exaggerated sense of self-importance, persistent need for admiration, lack of empathy for others, excessive pride in achievements, and snobbish, disdainful, or patronizing attitudes’ (Merriam-Webster, 2022).
However, narcissistic abuse can be perpetrated by someone who doesn’t have an NPD diagnosis - Anyone can exhibit narcissistic traits to a greater or letter extent.
What is Narcissistic Abuse?
‘Narcissistic abuse is a chronic pattern of disrespect, devaluation, and degradation. It’s psychological warfare and manipulation, and can often result in you losing sight of your dreams, your finances, and sometimes even your sanity and your life.’ (Arabi, 2017, p. 164).
Narcissistic abuse can be perpetrated in your romantic relationships, by a parent, family member, friend, boss, or co-worker.
Narcissistic abuse isn’t always “only” emotional - it can coincide with other forms of abuse, particularly financial abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse.
It is often thought of as “not that serious” however, this type of abuse can have significant and long-lasting effects on survivors. In her book “Power: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse”, Shahida Arabi described a few cases where victims of narcissistic abuse took their own lives as a result of the abuse they suffered, highlighting the severity of the abuse that is so often dismissed by authorities or even friends and family. Because narcissists are so charming and often respectable towards other people, friends and family often have a difficult time believing that the abuse has happened, often even being convinced that the victim is the abusive or “crazy” one.
Here are some of Arabi’s examples:
“In 2015, Jessica Haban took her own life after years of domestic violence. Her husband was charged with driving her to suicide: he had been relentlessly bullying and contacting her during her recovery from a traumatic brain injury, even after a restraining order had been put on him. He convinced her to leave her treatment facility three days before she ended her life.”
“18-year-old Michelle Carter convinced her boyfriend, via a series of text messages, to kill himself, under the pretence that she too would end her life. She also attempted to get him to delete the text messages before he died in an attempt to cover up her involvement; this suggests that she was fully aware that what she was doing was wrong and that she was criminally culpable.”
The methods of a Narcissistic Abuse Perpetrator
Here is a list of ways that narcissistic abuse can occur in romantic relationships - however you may be able to recognise these traits and manipulations in non-romantic relationships too. Be warned, it’s a long list! Grab a cup of tea and read on :-)
1.Gaslighting: replacing factual information with false information.
Interestingly the word Gaslighting comes from a 1938 play called Gas Light which depicts a marriage based on deceit and trickery, in which the husband is committed to driving his wife insane in order to steal from her. The husband goes into the apartment upstairs to look for jewellery to steal and turns on the gas lamps (which dims the gas lights in the rest of the building). He convinces his wife that the dimming of the lights and the footsteps she hears in the empty apartment above theirs is all in her head.
2. Projection: displacing responsibility for one’s own negative behaviours and traits onto someone else.
With projection, you will often see a narcissist blaming someone else for the very things they are doing. For example, they might blame a partner for being paranoid, jealous, or obsessive, when it is them that is displaying those behaviours.
3. Nonsensical Conversations: using gaslighting, word salad, circular conversations and ‘ad hominem’ arguments to disorient you in an argument.
Nonsensical conversations are used to avoid any topics that a narcissist doesn’t want to address. For example, a partner might accuse them of cheating, and they will steer the conversation away from themselves and onto their partner’s drinking, money spending, weight gain, or anything else to avoid being accused of something. Ad hominem arguments refer to situations in which the narcissist avoids addressing someone’s point and instead attacks the person – for example, the partner might say something as simple as “I really like pink” and if this goes against the narcissist’s opinions or goals at the time they might reply with something like “well you have horrible taste, why would anyone listen to you?”
4. Blanket Statements and Generalisations: generalising anything you say and discarding anything that doesn’t fit into their view of the world.
A narcissist will use generalisations and blanket statements to twist their victim’s words in an argument or to ensure they “win” a conversation without actually addressing the nuances of the discussion. An example might be the partner commenting on a publicised sexual assault trial and the narcissist saying “yeh well, we all know that people make false reports”. This doesn’t address the fact that not all reports are false reports and shuts down the victim.
5. Deliberate Misinterpretations: specifically misinterpreting your thoughts and opinions, translating legitimate emotions and opinions into character flaws and evidence of your irrationality.
Again, deliberate misinterpretations are a way of the narcissist twisting the victim’s words to make the victim feel like the bad person. For example, a request for the narcissist to tidy up after themselves might be met with “oh and you’re so perfect! You always tidy up after yourself? I don’t think so!”
6. Moving the Goalposts: aiming to ensure they have every reason to be perpetually dissatisfied with you.
Moving the goalposts is a way for the narcissist to keep their victim on tenterhooks trying to please the narcissist. If the victim has a successful career, the narcissist might start picking on them for not being sociable or not being home enough, and if they start scaling back at work to be home more, the narcissist will then pick on the victim for not bringing in enough money. The narcissist will never be satisfied.
7. Evading Accountability: purposefully derailing an argument, distracting you or changing the subject to avoid being held accountable for their actions – most likely ending up blaming you.
Again, evading accountability – the narcissist will not ever be proven wrong, and so they will do anything to evade accountability including projecting the accountability onto their partner or someone else, changing the topic, leaving the house, or escalating the argument so that you lose track of the original point you had.
8. Threats: using either covert or overt threats.
The narcissist will use either covert or overt threats. So they will use obvious threats like telling their partner that they are going to hurt them, break up with them, hurt themselves, and so on, or veiled threats like insinuating that they were happier with a previous partner (and therefore insinuating that the current partner isn’t good enough in some way) or even just giving the partner a knowing glance to shut them up in public.
9. Name-Calling: putting you down, degrading you, and insulting your intelligence, appearance or behaviour (i.e. targeting you as a person rather than targeting what you’re saying).
The narcissist will use name-calling as a tactic to break down the partner’s self-esteem. For example, calling them fat, stupid, ugly, not clever enough, not as funny as X, etc. They can do this in public as well and claim it’s a joke or sarcasm, that the partner is just too sensitive for them, etc.
10. Destructive Conditioning: conditioning you to associate your strengths, talents and happy memories with negative thoughts or outcomes.
Destructive conditioning is a covert process of conditioning the partner to associate their strengths with negative outcomes. For example, being ambitious is linked to a memory of fighting over conflicting schedules. The narcissist might also ruin positive events by starting arguments or making the partner feel bad or guilty in some way. For example, they might leave a family wedding and the narcissist will start claiming that someone was talking badly about the victim, that the victim’s family don’t like the narcissist (driving a wedge between the victim and their family), and so on. The victim might start to dread going to family events.
11. Smear Campaigns and Stalking: seeking to control how others see you (when they can’t control how you see yourself).
Smear campaigns and stalking. All of these other tactics are used as a means of control and manipulation. If the victim manages to escape the abusive relationship, the abuser can no longer control their victim, and so they try to control how other people see the victim. They might start spreading stories about the victim abusing them, about the victim being a terrible parent, about the victim stabbing a friend in the back, and so on.
12. Love-Bombing and Devaluation: trying to influence you with shows of attention and affection, followed by deprecating you.
Love bombing and devaluation are two of the main stages in the relationship cycle with a narcissist (and most other abusive relationships). Love bombing is the first stage when the narcissist is charming and romantic, buying gifts, organising dates, always in contact, and so on. They will likely draw the victim in by saying things like “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before” or “no one understands me like you do”. I’ve known victims of narcissists to move very quickly in the early stages of a relationship, even moving in together within a few months, exchanging “I love you’s”, getting pets, and so on.
Devaluation is often the next stage, which is where the abuse starts to creep in. It can start small, with sarcastic comments, blowing hot and cold, silly arguments, and so on, but escalate to consistent name-calling, heavy put-downs, manipulative arguments, and even physical abuse.
13. Pre-emptive Defence: overstating their ability to be kind and compassionate.
Pre-emptive defence is an interesting one. A narcissist might emphasise how much of a nice person they are, how caring they are, or how giving they are. They can “perform” empathically and sympathetically at the beginning of a relationship, which also allows them to gather information to use against you later on. It’s important to remember that people who are naturally nice and/or empathic don’t need to spend time and energy trying to prove it.
14. Triangulation: bringing the opinion, perspective or suggested threat of another person into the dynamic of an interaction.
Triangulation is when they bring the opinion of someone else into an argument or conversation with their victim. The other person and/or their opinion might be made up, but they use it to gain the upper hand or majority vote in an argument. For example, they might say “I spoke to Jim at work about our disagreement and he said he would never put up with that kind of behaviour” or “Mary said she would never date someone who does X”.
15. Feigning Innocence: after learning about your insecurities and wounds, ‘innocently’ triggering a reaction in you, and then ‘innocently’ asking whether you’re okay and emphasising that they didn’t mean to hurt you.
After learning about the victim’s deepest insecurities during the love-bombing phase of the relationship, which is also when the narcissist is performing empathically, they will continuously trigger the victim and then innocently ask whether they are alright. For example, they might cancel plans with their partner, causing the partner to feel abandoned or rejected, and then feign innocence and become the source of comfort once again.
16. Boundary Testing and Hoovering: continually testing your boundaries to see where they can trespass, and ‘hoovering’ victims back into the relationship when they have managed to leave.
A narcissist will continually test boundaries within the relationship to see how much they can get away with. Often, the longer the relationship goes on, the more they are able to cross boundaries without repercussions.
Hoovering is a term used within the narcissistic abuse literature to refer to the process that a narcissist goes to in order to get their relationship back. A narcissist will hoover their partner back in when it was the partner who left them, not the other way around because a narcissist will see this as losing (something that would have deeply wounded them). The way that a narcissist typically “hoovers” is to revert to the love-bombing stage, promising to be better, even promising to go to therapy, but in most cases will revert back to devaluing the partner, breaking them down a bit more, and then leaving them themselves.
17. Digs disguised as jokes and sarcasm: getting away with saying horrible things through ‘dressing them up’ as jokes or sarcasm, and then claiming you ‘have no sense of humour’ or are ‘too sensitive’.
A narcissist will disguise verbal and emotional abuse as jokes or sarcasm, allowing them to get away with it in public, and also to confuse their partner to the point that they start blaming themselves for being too sensitive.
18. Shaming: destroying your self-esteem, and targeting any behaviour or belief that could challenge their own power.
Shame is one of the narcissist’s greatest tools. They will use shaming to destroy their partner’s self-esteem, making them feel like they can’t ever get anything right, that no one else would ever love them, and so on.
19. Control: maintaining control by playing with your emotions.
Finally, control. This is one of the main aims of the narcissist – and they use all of these other tactics in order to gain and hold onto control over their victims.
If you can recognise any of these traits and manipulations in your relationships, or past relationships, you may benefit from working through your experiences in talking therapy.
As always, if you would like to book an initial counselling session with me, please click here to get started!
