Next, number three is crazy-making. Crazy-making conversations and fact-twisting. What’s going on with this one? The narcissist claims to have said or done something only to later deny it. Don’t allow yourself to be confused about your own perceptions; you are being used as a pawn in an elaborate ruse to invalidate and denigrate you, making you doubt your own sanity and your own vision of reality, gradually driving you insane over time. A narcissist’s tendency to engage in mind-bending crazy conversations like this usually emerges fairly quickly. As long as they can get your attention, they’ll drain your critical life force energy while being entertained. The narcissist gets all the benefits; they employ nonsensical talk to keep you spinning in circles, like a puppet on strings, attempting to explain and defend your position while expending a great deal of effort in an attempt to be heard and understood by them.
What follows is a strategy I’d like to share with you.
Four: Gaslighting. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse and manipulation in which the person doing it lies, rejects, and invalidates what you think you know about the situation to support their own skewed story. Narcissists will change and twist facts, downplay relationship crimes, and leave out significant parts of the truth, convincing you that they’re not guilty while making you doubt your reality. The point of giving you false information is to make you question your memory and what you know to be true. Any harm caused by them is made to look like they didn’t mean it or didn’t even know what they were doing. Narcissism is all about changing the past to make things better for themselves, reminding people that they are wonderful individuals.
Five: Emotional Blackmail. The narcissist uses emotional blackmail as another means of manipulating others. Unfortunately, empaths who haven’t yet discovered their own personal power can be particularly vulnerable to its effects. This is because the narcissist is well aware that their intended victim desires the narcissist’s affection and endorsement. Most of us want to feel safe and secure, to be loved. We also want to be accepted and validated. In addition, the narcissist will take advantage of your lack of self-confidence. A potential narcissist could tell you that they might propose to you someday if only you’re good enough, or they might give you a raise, a promotion, or an award to show you how much you’re valued.
Withholding emotional support is just one of the ways they’ll keep you searching for their acceptance. In the meantime, you find yourself wondering if there’s something wrong with you—maybe they would show you the affection you crave if you were good enough or better in some way, or if you showed proper degrees of compassion, care, and concern. As a result, no matter how hard you try or how well you perform, they will always find fault with you and continue to withhold any kind of support, emotional or otherwise. “If only you had done it this way,” or, “If you had done it differently, I would have helped you or supported you more.” Of course, this is a lie. There’s no limit to the condescending ways they’ll try to make you feel unworthy, inferior, incompetent, and small. Regardless of the methods the narcissist uses, they must keep you low and dependent on them for your sense of identity. The irony is that they are using these tactics in the first place because they lack self-awareness and need to control you in order to receive their fix of narcissistic supply.
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