Tactics of narcissistic abuse
Love Bombing & Mirroring are tactics to gain your favour. These will come from a narcissist youâre just getting to know and theyâre trying to convince you theyâre your perfect partner, soulmate, best friend, ideal lover. Love bombing is showering you with over-the-top affection and support, theyâre likely to see what works best on you, then give you just that. Theyâll convince you that youâre special and make you feel special, whether itâs with attention, gifts, promises, love phrases, or making you look and feel very good in front of other people. If they can spin this as fate or destiny, they will. You have one lucky coincidence? Itâs destiny that you met. Theyâll create the image of âitâs us against the worldâ and convince you that theyâre all you need to never be alone, unappreciated or unhappy again. They will say phrases like âWe were born to be togetherâ or 'Youâre the only one who understandsâ and make you feel like youâre in a romance film. Â Mirroring is the way to convince you that they are just like you, your perfect match. They do this by pretending they want the same things as you. All of your opinions will be shared, your desires will be their desires too, however you want to live, thatâs now their ideal life too. If you want children, so do they, if you want to live in a cottage, so do they.
These will be repeated until you feel like you finally got something perfect from life, you commit to them and trust them completely. You will become lenient with your boundaries and disregard minor red flags, because hey, you finally found love, or someone like yourself who makes your life better. These are crucial to keep you around for a long time; the illusion of happiness and perfect companionship you always wanted will keep you holding onto them in hope that things could once again, be this perfect for you. You will not want to let go of them even after the love bombing and mirroring is long gone. Love bombing and mirroring are not indicative of how theyâre planning to treat you once youâre committed to them; as soon as they feel you are ready to fight for a life with them, roles will change and you will have to endure escalating abuse from this person, endlessly.
Scapegoats and people badly damaged by trauma will often not get the full love bombing or mirroring, narcissists will be able to win our devotion by acts of basic decency, small thoughtfulness and acting tolerant of our trauma symptoms, this will feel like everything to us, and once we decide this is a good, special person who makes us feel safe and weâd do anything for them, theyâll turn and exploit us endlessly.
Only way to spot this on time is: there will be a little voice of suspicion in your head going âIsnât this actually a little too perfect to be real? A little too convenient and ideal?â and you will not want to listen to that voice. You should listen to it. Itâs your instinct, trying to tell you something is off. I wonât blame you if you donât. Most people wonât just walk away from their ideal partner because things seem 'too perfectâ. But, get suspicious at least. Alert to red flags.
Enablers and Flying Monkeys
Narcissists canât abuse if theyâre on their own; they will work hard to build a reputation and charm people who they can later use for purposes of enabling, triangulating, controlling, scapegoating and smear campaigns. Enablers, or Flying Monkeys, are people who are either admiring the narcissists, want to be in narcissists good favour, are trauma bond and scared of the narcissists, are emotionally manipulated or simply too cowardly to point out that the narcissists is wrong and cruel. Most people will fall under the influence and want to be on narcissists side because itâs easier, tempting, feels safer, and doesnât require much thinking. Narcissist will sometimes emotionally manipulate people to go do their dirty work; they will cry about how they miss their runaway children so flying monkeys would harass and judge children for running away, they will invent stories of abuse and insanity of their spouse so people would shame and judge the spouse who the narcissist is abusing. They create environment in which they can keep abusing and other people will jump to defend, justify, victim-blame and further confuse the victim. âThey had a hard lifeâ, âTheyâre your mother/father/uncle, you have to forgive themâ or âHeâs not that badâ are the phrases youâll hear from enablers and flying monkeys. The term âFlying Monkeyâ is taken from the Wizard of Oz, because the Wicked Witch owned an army of brainless flying monkeys who would do her bidding â much how narcissists do with their enablers.
What enablers are doing is absolutely wrong. They should not be ready to defend abuse, or excuse and justify it, or believe and act on smear campaigns, not for any reason. They are hurting and isolating the victim, and regardless of how much they suck up to the narcissist, they will eventually become the targets too. Victims are right to cut out enablers just how theyâre right to cut out abusers. You do not have to suffer for their cowardice or stupidity.
Triangulation is a form of abuse where narcissist brings another person into the relationship in order to bypass your boundary. For instance, you refuse to speak to the narcissist, so they send your family members, friends, or their friends, to talk to you about how much youâre hurting the narcissist and how cruel and unfair youâre being. Or, youâre trying to set a boundary in your marriage, and suddenly a friend or a relative comes talking to you about how unreasonable it is to set such awful boundary and to think of your spouseâs feelings and how bad they have it. Narcissist may try to use you for triangulation too, for example, they might tell you 'Go tell your sister she should do xyz and sheâs making a mistake, sheâll listen to youâ. Itâs implied you agree with the narcissist, and that both of you are doing it for the sisterâs good, when itâs more likely the narcissist is trying to force this person to do something theyâre deeply set against and would only serve the narcissist. Narcissists will use their children to triangulate a marriage, they will often 'gang upâ other family members on their spouse, or one of the children. If youâre the victim, youâll find yourself cornered, isolated, and in doubt whether youâre doing the right thing, trying to establish a boundary. Narcissists will also often show affection, compassion or even love to a third person simply to make you jealous and worried that something is wrong with you since you donât get the same treatment. Itâs what creates an illusion that the entire world is agreeing with the narcissist and no matter what you do, you look unreasonable for fighting them.
Narcissists will sometimes invent completely boogus scenarios and try to terrify people into doing their bidding and believing theyâre right. As if the world will fall if narcissists donât get what they want.
Society at large will often enable abusers; you can call out abuse and be rendered a 'killjoyâ because people prefer to enjoy cruelty together with the narcissist than to oppose them. Narcissists are capable of rousing a whole gang of people to turn against the victim and to aid in their abuse; this is scapegoating.
Gaslighting is a form of abuse where the abuser attacks your sense of reality. They will usually do this to obscure and deny acts of abuse. âI never said thatâ âThat didnât happenâ âThatâs not how I remember itâ âYou imagined itâ or âYouâre crazy, I would never do that!â are common gaslighting phrases abusers use for events that absolutely happened, and they absolutely remember. Itâs even more powerful if they get other people to agree that youâre insane for remembering a past event of abuse. They can sometimes try to convince you that something didnât occur while itâs still happening. This renders your intention of calling out abuse impossible; youâre now debating whether the event even happened and your sanity is questioned.
The point of this is to drive you into insanity; prolonged gaslighting will make you doubt your own memories and senses, and you will no longer be secure in your own point of view or version of reality. You will not be able to fight abuse, because you will get stuck on wondering if itâs even real, or if youâre making it up. Narcissist wants not only to abuse you, but to control your perception of it, reaction of it, and to disable you from telling anyone and being taken seriously. Smear campaign and gaslighting ensures that everyone thinks youâre lying to make problems, even you.
You can attempt to block gaslighting with phrases like 'That was not my experienceâ 'I know the truth and I am not debating it with youâ â Donât tell me what happened, I was thereâ or ridiculing them for thinking it would work, but sometimes abuse will escalate if you refuse to play along, so be very careful with them.
Baiting, Projection and Scapegoating
Baiting is the way narcissist finds out which triggers will work on you. Types of baits are: Scaremongering, Accusations, False Claims, Guilt-tripping, Victim-playing, False Hope, or Intrigue. They will use these to elicit either fear&anxiety, or guilt&responsibility. You are likely to get pulled in and respond emotionally to these, and thus the narcissist will discover which one of these is most triggering and they can use it to either control you, or to affirm that they can still get you riled up, scared, guilty â they feed on being able to provoke these, it makes them feel powerful. They can later use the same trigger to push you into guilt and fear if you try to resist their control. If they continue doing this to you for a long time, you are likely to develop self-doubt and anxiety about your own persona. Way to counter this is to grey rock them.
Projection is a primitive defense-mechanism, where a person feels uncomfortable with their behaviour or thinking, so they accuse someone else of it to deflect the bad feelings from themselves. This can feel the same as baiting, but narcissists do it without realizing theyâre giving you the information about what theyâre actually feeling and doing. For instance, a narcissist will accuse you of being self-absorbed after they start feeling uncomfortable with how self-absorbed they are, they will start to call you selfish when it comes to their mind how selfish they are. They will accuse you of the exact shit theyâve been doing whether itâs lying, manipulating, faking for attention, cheating, exploiting, lacking compassion, stealing. These claims will feel like theyâre coming out of nowhere at first, but eventually you will wonder if youâre really like that, and accept their projection on yourself, believing to really be as bad, or worse than they are. Even though theyâve done 100% of these things, while you have done none of it. This can also be countered by being aware what is going on and grey-rocking them. Deflecting the blame back to them will not work because theyâll either deflect it back, or throw a tantrum and insult you.
Scapegoating is the most vicious abuse narcissist can inflict on their victims and is designed to completely break a personâs spirit while creating power out of terror. Scapegoating doesnât only serve to terrify and control the victim; it shows everyone what the narcissist is capable of, causing them to go very far to avoid becoming the next scapegoat. This creates enablers, flying monkeys and other benefits for narcissist to enjoy, while the scapegoat is isolated, not believed, and often shunned by the community to show loyalty to the narcissist.
Scapegoat will be blamed for every narcissists flaw, accused of provocation and creating trouble, shamed for their likes and interests, humiliated for their appearance or needs, their work will be rendered worthless and any pain and injury will be treated as if the scapegoat deserved it, or wanted it. Nothing is out of bounds to criticize or belittle in the scapegoat; flying monkeys will do it too, to either affirm themselves with the narcissist, or because they too crave power by stepping on someone defenseless. If a narcissistic parent decides to scapegoat a child, the other parent might stop caring for the child, and agree that the child deserves only to be neglected and shunned. The illusion narcissists create, of entire society agreeing that a person is irredeemable, deserving only of pain and ridicule, has turned people to suicide.
Scapegoat absorbs all of the narcissistâs malice, cruelty, sadism, baiting, projection, guilt and tantrums, so other people in the environment can get some relief and can use the scapegoat as their shield. You can be chosen to be a scapegoat for challenging the narcissist and standing up to them, for refusing to scapegoat someone else, for seeing thru them and showing any potential for undermining their authority, if narcissist is jealous of you, if narcissist feels threatened by your intellect, compassion and emotional depth they lack. And often, youâll just be chosen because theyâre in position of power and youâre unprotected. If youâre their child, a lonely classmate, employee with no high reputation or lots of friends, a minority, different in the way of sexuality or behaviour, anything that is easily used to sway a group of people against you. Narcissists will make sure to spread a smear campaign filled with lies against you, so that nobody would align with you, or believe you if you try to counter their word.
This type of treatment is beyond anything a human being could deserve, and devastating for the victimâs self esteem and sense of reality. After surviving a scapegoating situation, people might not want to find themselves in any social setting anymore. They might start believing themselves to be unlovable and defective. There is usually no way to counter it or fight your way out, unless thereâs a higher authority who could side with you, or thereâs a way to physically remove yourself from this environment.
Grey Rock, Hoovering and No Contact
Grey rock is a way to counter baiting and projection; narcissists learn and thrive on our emotional responses, it gives them a thrill to be able to send us into rage, terror, disbelief, shock or panic. Grey rocking means you give zero emotional response, and thus prove yourself very boring and a bad source of narcissistic supply. So, regardless of what egregious threat, accusation, claim or insult they make, you just reply with 'mhmmâ and look completely disinterested. You reply with one-word sentences, say 'sureâ or 'yupâ if they accuse you of something or try to fearmonger, answer questions with 'maybeâ or 'I donât knowâ, agree with whatever bs theyâre pulling out of their ass without caring, refuse to get pulled in or baited, give them no significance in the conversation until they leave. It is very hard to do, because they will up their game and even fly into rage to get a response, if they feel entitled to it. In some cases they might resort to violence. Often, theyâll keep changing the tactics until something works, and if nothing does, theyâll feel dejected and go find another source of supply. If they feel like they canât get to you, this undermines their imagined power over you.
No contact is the only way to truly win against a narcissist; if they canât reach you, they canât manipulate or hurt you. This means no responding to messages, no letting them know where you live, blocking them on every service, and in most situations, even the enablers have to be no contact, because the narcissist is likely to send them into triangulation and use them to get to you. If youâre unable to go no-contact with a narcissist, a lot of people opt for 'low contactâ, which means you only hear from them once a year, or once every 6 months, insufficient for them to gain control over you, and you grey-rock them all the way, and never share any personal info that might be used against you. Hoovering is something a narcissist will do to you after youâve left them. They might leave you alone for a long time, then suddenly send a message saying they miss you, or theyâre thinking about you and wishing you could do xyz together. They might also influence another person to tell you 'x misses you, they wish to see you again, theyâre doing bad without youâ. This is done to remind you of the 'good timesâ and an attempt to draw you back in, as youâre supposed to have forgotten all the abuse already and be ready to take them back. It might come as outrageous expectation or denial of everything bad that happened â thatâs because it is. All you have to do is grey-rock this, not respond, and enjoy in knowledge that even if you canât ensure revenge, you can take yourself away from them, and they will never have you back.
Sources: Baiting, Scapegoating, LoveBombing, Gaslighting(video), Projection(video), Triangulation, Mirroring(video), Â FlyingMonkeys (video), Hoovering, Grey Rock
