Now you wonder if YOU are a narcissist? Pt 2 of Game 31

On the surface or in the subconscious, something within YOU is resonating and responding to the energy he is sending out. Until that is recognized, the abusive tango we find ourselves in continues on, as we now set out to prove and show him that we are not the negative things he’s accused us of, insinuated we could be, and if we just behaved the way he seems to prefer a woman to act, he’ll come around to OUR way of thinking.

We, like him, now become challenged to “win.” Should a truly “good guy” come along, we step on him, the way our abuser steps on us. In many respects, we’ve become just like him. We now say things to him during fights, with the intent of trying to hurt him, get to him, and wound him. We think we are “teaching him a lesson.“ But we like him, have now just associated pain with love-and if we had that association early in our lives, here it is, back in full force.

Only we aren’t powerless children anymore. So we struggle and “fight” him. Both us and him-somehow equate love with pain. If you’ve never encountered abuse like this before, it’s imperative once you are away from him to get counseling, otherwise, your risk of having a man like this again in your life increases ten-fold.

We now, in our reverse abuse, turn the tables and criticize him-his lifestyle, his friends, his bullshit. We think we are defending ourselves, standing up for ourselves, asserting ourselves, we are “not taking any more shit”-but what we fail to see, is that he’s laughing. This is exactly what he wanted! He “got” to you. He turned this sweet, empathetic, generous loving person inside, turned the love that you had for him into something abusive, weird, unhealthy and insane. And knows that everyone-including himself-will simply say that “you let him.” That YOU are crazy.

And now that he is crying that YOUR true colors are showing-he has truly won. He now justifies his treatment of you by suggesting that HIS intuition knew all along that you were this type of woman and person that YOU really are, and that YOUR goodness was all just an act. Again, it’s the ass-backwards thinking of his world. The reality is-you ARE a good person, who is now showing a bad side, but the bad side is NOT your character, it’s not your soul. He is the BAD person, who occasionally showed a good side-but the good side is NOT his character, or his soul. He’s got you right where he wanted you. And with psychological abuse, you rarely have the means of proving the scars, of showing tangible evidence of the damage. So you really can look like the crazy one, especially when he appears cool as a cucumber to the outer world.

You may have found yourself becoming as passive aggressive as him. You are afraid to rock the boat, he’s got you dancing on glass, walking on hot coals, tip-toeing around because you don’t want to set him off, push him away, drive him into another woman’s arms, fall out of favor or take anymore disapproval. What he thinks of you has become so important to you, because he mind controlled and brain washed you into that. They are hypnotizers. So you may not even assert yourself anymore, much less get angry, because it will only get turned around and backfire on you anyway. So maybe you flirt a bit too much with that attentive guy down the street. You yourself might have an affair. You spend too much of his money, and just let him bitch about it. You find yourself doing things to get back at him in subtle, small ways-because now like him, you are not allowed nor able to express your appropriate anger. You are not allowed to vent. And I don’t mean you are not allowed to go off and start verbally laying into him and abusing him back. You were NEVER allowed to express your discontent, your hurt, your unfulfilled needs, your wishes and desires-in any way shape or form. If you display it, he wins painting you out as the unstable one. If you don't, you seethe with pain and anger, the love/hate emotions and wishing that you could be that girl that just tells him to f off, and leave him sitting in his own misery. Yet-you can't seem to do it. You are torn, it's like there are two personalities to YOU now, and you vacilate with love, hate, anger, guilt, pity, remorse and all sorts of emotions that you should never have to feel, with a man you love. Pt 3 to come

Game # 31 He's got you as a narcissist now, pt 1

To some degree, we all have some narcissism, or narcissistic traits in us. Its necessary I think, for survival and self-preservation. To a more or less degree, we all care what at least some people think of us. We all want approval and acceptance. We’d all like to be perceived as attractive and knowledgeable, or special in some way. None of us want to be stepped on. If we have a talent, we want people to admire it, hire us for it, pay us for it, reward and recognize us for it. I don’t even know if its called “healthy” narcissism, or just being human. But with a narcissist and certainly an abusive one, they have an insatiable greed for all of the above, a black hole surrounding them that simply absorbs, giving nothing back, and absorbs all of your good. They are emotional, psychic vampires-not only do they not see a reflection of their true selves-but they suck the energy and life force out of you. Oddly enough, they will accuse the people they don’t like or who are onto them, as being one of these sinister types.

In times of serious stress and chaos in people’s lives-when people are in survival mode-this form of self-absorption can be expected to a degree, but when people who’s lives are functioning crisis -free and normally, who still expect this heightened sense of awareness, concern, and consideration for them-(narcissists are always in “emergency mode”) it is abnormal. Some people are just the abusers that create that crazy-making “drama” that sucks those close to them into a vortex of shame and unreality. Catcher, pitcher-doesn’t matter. Pretty soon the lines become blurred anyway, because after a lot of time dealing with them and getting abused by them, you can then end up becoming a “reverse” narcissist .

Of course, you are aware that you aren’t perfect either, and so you strive to understand his self centered behavior, and his hot/cold behaviors towards you. Often people who are being emotionally abused start to take on the abuser’s “ways”. Trying to fight fire with fire. It makes sense on a certain level- if you are in Mexico you’d get a lot further if you were able to speak Spanish. When you are with a person who refuses or is unable to learn your language, you find yourself having to speak theirs to get thru to them. We end up stepping out of our normal characters and becoming more “psychotic” ourselves, which is really a normal response to abnormal behavior. This is where terms such as “He drives me crazy” comes into play, because in all seriousness, that is their whole objective. Now that he’s so sick, he’s got you pretty sick, too. This is where “reverse” narcissism comes in-when you are so frustrated, so tired, so bewildered and so emotionally beat up that you feel your only recourse is to stoop to his level in order to “get through” to him.

“Reverse narcissism” steps in, because now you’ve been challenged to be seen as a good person in his eyes, because he’s told you over and over in so many ways and so many times, that he fears that you aren’t. Now you are self-absorbed in how he’s treating you, and you are using his perception of you to reflect back whether you are worthy of being treated well or not. A part of you also feels that how dare anyone treat you this way? Treat anyone this way? You treat people you can’t stand better than how he is to you.

The difference is, your reverse narcissism is not meant to hurt him, you are trying to protect yourself from the pain he’s caused you. Trying to stop him from continuing to hurt you. But the reality is-if in fact you felt truly good about yourself, you wouldn’t need him to reflect to you that you are okay. His approval and thoughts of you wouldn’t matter. You’d be able to see him for what he is-a loser-and move on. A part of you does. But that vulnerable part of you inside can’t accept it. Maybe you’ve been abused in your past. You may be harboring your own shame, guilt, and feelings of being undeserving. Maybe this is a familiar dance and while toxic, it’s the “devil you know.” You may have been “love-starved”, wanting so badly to find the “one” and to be in a happily ever after relationship. Those are the “tells” that he brings out for us to “show.“ Those are the things that made you vulnerable to his abuse. And if you’d had prior abuses in your life-well, just as abusers will move on and just abuse the next woman-those of us with abuse in our past, often move on to yet another abuser.