and is sucking the life out of you
It is essential for narcissists to live parasitically off of our humanness in order to be able to present themselves to the world as something other than the alien life forms they are. They use normal people around them to prop up their pretense of normalcy. This is accomplished in a million different ways. Projection, devaluation of your virtues, blaming and shaming are a few of the tools which accomplish this.
Projection: The narcissist wipes the crap of their own behaviors or motives onto you making it seem like you are something you are not. Somehow the act of projection gives the psychological cover the narcissist needs. It distances themselves from what they do, say or think by wiping the shit off of themselves onto you. Then they stand back, shake their heads and marvel at what a stinky, dirty mess up you are. It is not rational, but it is psychologically effective for them. It works even better when you start to believe this alternate reality is true, resulting in you feeling responsible for all the crap you find yourself in. They've taken you and their pathetic self and transposed the images. Your normalcy and decency has been stolen by them to hold up a false image of themselves to the world.
Devaluation of your virtues: Nothing like true virtue in you to set off the fury and envy of a narcissist. Without even trying, you show them up for what they are. The solution? Take your virtues, twist them upside down, then slander you to whomever will listen. Are you a scrupulously honest person? The narcissist will turn you into a liar. Are you a talented musician? The narcissist will denigrate, criticize and negatively compare you to themselves or some other musician until you become convinced you have no talent whatsoever and give up. Are you compassionate and caring? The narcissist will turn you into a weakling and a sap.....or accuse you of being selfish and uncaring. We could go on here forever. There is no virtue that a narcissist can't tarnish. By tarnishing your virtues the narcissist has lessened you in the eyes of others, and maybe even in your own eyes. Now the narcissist can feel they look good in the comparison. Again, they have swiped some of your humanness from you to prop up their image and camouflage that they are predatory alien life forms.
Blaming: There is nothing a narcissist does, says or thinks that they can't blame someone else for. This is where you come in real handy. They can absolve themselves completely at your expense. Another theft of your good name and your humanness.
Shaming: When one is caught in the grip of a narcissist it can be extremely difficult to not succumb to the shaming techniques of a narcissist. They use this tool to great effect to keep your level of resistance to a minimum while they continue to rape your self respect, good name, good graces and decency. It is because you are a decent person that shaming is so effective. You can be shamed because you have a conscience. The narcissist is a real adept at turning your conscience against you. If you can be convinced that you deserve the shame and blame heaped upon you then you can be used by the narcissist to keep yourself in line. This is yet another theft of your humanity used to prop up the false image of the narcissist. If you accept the shame then you are likely to shut up and put up with the narcissist's behaviors. You will act like what they do is normal which usually means that you start thinking you're the crazy one. In this transaction, the narcissist comes out looking like the sane one because you've accepted his insanity as your own.
Aliens do exist and they are trying to take over your body and soul. Resist. Narcissists do not believe they are mere humans. They take themselves out of the realm of humanity by thinking they are something different, something more and better than human. Even though they get that part wrong....the part about being better than the rest of us....they do get it partly right: they are not human. This makes them aliens. Not nice, benevolent aliens either. They are the kind that live off of you parasitically and destroy you in the process.
It is possible to dis-empower the parasitic narcissist in your life. Isn't that what you really want to do? Well, you do have some power here. You must extract yourself from their sphere completely so they can no longer use you to appear to be something they aren't. You were not born to be a source of nourishment for a parasitic alien life form. Why should we allow our lives, our normalcy, our decency to be prostituted by some narcissist for their own selfish purposes? Can't find a reason.
Dear Ms. Valerious,
ReplyDeleteI just want to thank you SO much for this blog. This is such a service for us daughters of mothers who are narcissists. I am only three weeks in to my NC, and when I go about thinking that this may be me who is crazy, how can I not talk to my own mother, etc., I go to my bed, open my computer, and read your blog. You are speaking my truth and I remember why I am not speaking to this beautiful woman who has tried, but not succeeded, in poisoning my soul and the lives of my husband and family. I wish my siblings would join me, but, like you, they are going the way of mom and the generation before her. I wish you would write this in a book. I would soooo buy it! Thank you for writing from your heart, as it is from my heart as well. I know you are, you don't have to even write that you are not writing from your ego, because your true brothers and sisters know that this is the truth. I know. Thank you, Julie
Dear Ms. Valerious,
ReplyDeleteI want to thank you for this wonderful blog. You really should be writing this as a book. I am preparing to cut my mother out of my life once and for all. She knowingly and willfully plagiarized my published scholarship for a self-help book which she self-published, after telling me repeatedly how useful my work had been to her "new project." I read her "new project," and there is no mention of my book, or even my full name. She shamelessly gave me a copy (after I found out about it on my own). It is as if my work did not exist or she had never read it. When I confronted her, she said "I don't know what you're talking about." This, I finally see, is a form of evil and vampirism. I am a well-published scholar, and she is a self-publishing amateur with no credentials. She plagiarized my ideas about legacy in her own "self-help" book about how to "create regenerative legacies." A mother plagiarizing her own child's published work, then denying it. Everything else falls into place. A few years ago I accused her of feeling competitive and envious toward me, which she completely denied. The one good thing to come out of this indisputable outrage is that it is concrete proof of what I have known my entire adult life: my mother has malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and I am her designated target.
I recently came to this conclusion regarding my 11 year marriage to my N wife. The various lies I've had to convince myself of to be with someone who attacked me on every level of my being has been shocking.
ReplyDeleteI have become a person that I fail to recognize in all aspects of my life. In order to attempt to "keep the peace" i slowly began to compromise my values and core beliefs in order to justify staying with her. My life is in shambles because of it yet she continues to tell me that "things will get better". I know now that it will never get better as long as I am with her and that things being that way is by design.
I see them as ogres. In some cases Shrek’s evil twin sister.
ReplyDelete