Most narcissists generally lack self-awareness. In fact, their sense of self-esteem and self-worth depends on how others perceive them, and they tend to deny faults in themselves and blame others for their faults, mistakes, and misfortunes. This is called projection, and people with narcissistic tendencies are individuals burdened with projection.
Here we’ll explore five different but related ways in which people with strong narcissistic, sociopathy, and psychopathy tendencies deny, project, blame, confuse, and hurt others.
- Calling you things you are not
Classic example, you’re cheating on me, when you’re not, but you can bet they’re cheating on you.
Or you are selfish because you don’t want to do what I ask you to do. You only think about yourself. Meanwhile, they are the ones who constantly make excuses, break promises, are unreliable, only think of themselves, or compete with you. Not only that, they will forget all the things you have already done for them.
Related : The ultimate guide to breaking up with a narcissist
In their eyes, they are entitled to your resources (time, money, energy), and you assault them when you can’t or don’t give them what they want. They will not reciprocate unless there is a reason for them to do so. They will use different methods of manipulation and abuse such as name calling, ridicule, bullying, triangulation, belittlement, denigration, berating feelings, trolling, hiding the problem, deflecting, gaslighting, guilt tripping, Or provocation, unreasonable criticism, trolling, or simple verbal abuse. They mistreat everyone to make you feel bad and give in to their demands.
If it’s not you, there’s always someone else. Look how terrible this other person is! Do you know what that person did? Meaning, forget me and my faults; Let’s find someone else who has flaws and talk about it. This way, in their minds, we don’t have to think about my flaws, otherwise we’ll come to the conclusion that I’m great by default because everyone else is so bad.
2.Greatness, imitation, and exaggeration
Narcissists believe that they are very special, that they deserve exceptional treatment, or that they are justified in harming others. They have great goals and exaggerate their accomplishments to seem more impressive and superior.
Narcissists often feel the need to compete with others because in reality they are not special and are not at all insecure. They will pretend, lie, hurt, exploit others, or do anything else they deem necessary for personal gain.
As a result, they may acquire other people’s personality traits and achievements. This comes from a place of envy and self-aggrandizement. Often to the point of imitation, plagiarism, theft and fraud, all while defaming and belittling others. This aims to destroy the credibility of their victims while appearing to be more competent. This provides a useful distraction from what’s really going on.
This is another weird form of projection where they see something they like in someone (whether it’s actually admirable or just a status symbol), and then instead of actually working toward it, they simply claim they already have it or that they deserve it. . This is usually simply done by saying it with confidence and conviction. Thus, when they claim positive traits, accomplishments, or characteristics in others, they project their negative traits onto their victims. They may or may not realize this is happening, but it happens nonetheless.
This whole process requires a lot of illusion, pretense and deception. Unfortunately, many people fall into this trap and see the narcissist as this wonderful, amazing human being that they present themselves as, but in reality they are light years away from them.
- Preemptive strike
When a narcissist feels threatened, he will call you things that he himself sees or fears that others will see. Then they will try to pursue you, defame you, or tarnish your reputation. They will try to sabotage and destroy you. They will start a smear campaign and attempt character assassination. In their minds, frighteningly, I became their sworn enemy.
They also have no problem doing it all proactively and calling it defensiveness.
So, if you push them away privately, set healthy boundaries, or end the relationship, they may be afraid that you’ll see their flaws, or that you’ll tell others about their type. Whether you do it or not is not important to them. Because the mere possibility of this happening in their minds is enough of an excuse to label you as an enemy. Because a narcissist has little or no empathy, he or she may imagine that you will behave as he does in these situations. If they are lying, or more likely they are already lying, they will accuse you of lying.
And so they will do all of these things just because they think you are trying in some way or you might hurt them. They will also accuse you of the same things they do to themselves.
- Playing the victim
A common narcissistic strategy is to play the victim. you hurt me! Poor, poor me. Instead of resolving the problem with you or internally, they have no problem dragging others into it by lying and portraying you as the perpetrator and themselves as the victim.
Often, this involves the preemptive strike mentioned above or provocation to get a reaction. For example, destroying your property, defaming you, turning people against you, or physically assaulting you. Then when you respond appropriately to their positive or negative aggression, they can now say that you are the aggressor because you are hurting them or that you are being unreasonable because of your unruly and unacceptable behavior.
It’s cruel and calculated, and again, involves accusing you of things they do or have done themselves. So it is not uncommon for the audience of this dramatic scene to not see the whole picture or not care enough to know the whole story. It is not uncommon for many to side with the narcissist. Narcissists are so desperate to believe their sight in order to control their emotions, that they will say and do almost anything.
For the narcissist, it is rarely about the truth, and often about the perceptions of his or her audience.
This way they receive false confirmation that they are right and good, and that you are wrong and evil. Here, their sense of self-esteem is restored and their feelings of shame and inadequacy are managed. So it’s all well and good. Except for those who are injured but who cares about them, right?
- No, you! defense
If you call them out on their foolishness or if they suspect that you can see through their smoke and mirrors, they will say that you or others are all of those things. Or that it is all false and nonsense. They may even say that they are honest, caring, honest, that you don’t understand these things, that you are pretending, that you are pretending, that you are gaslighting, that you are gaslighting, that you are a narcissist, and whatever buzzword they have learned!
Because people with narcissistic tendencies can be interested in human psychology as well. Many of them already work in the helping, teaching and medical fields or pretend to be experts and intellectuals on social media. Some of them are really smart, eloquent and popular, which makes their statements more believable to an uninformed audience.
They can learn all these fancy terms and phrases, but they often don’t understand them or even care how to apply them correctly. Here is another tool for manipulation. For them, learning means finding ways to justify all their disturbing thoughts and behaviors, or using knowledge as a tool against others for personal gain.
They will do anything but accept reality and become decent people, and yet they can play a role very well.
