Number 9: “This Isn’t You. Someone Else is Poisoning You Against Me.”
This is what they say when you stop tolerating the nonsense, when you let your authenticity speak, when you finally start pushing back, standing tall, or walking away. Instead of accepting that you’re waking up to their bad behavior, they deflect and blame your shift on someone else. It is never you thinking for yourself; it’s always someone manipulating you. In my case, my father blamed substance abuse for my changed behavior because he could not understand how I could be different. Why? Well, he had programmed me to be his servant. But then I gave up on playing that role, and that triggered a lot of panic inside him. When they refer to “that someone,” it’s usually an ex, possibly a sibling, a coworker, or anyone who previously saw through their act and got out. The narcissist still resents those people because they could not control them either. Now that you are starting to behave the same way, they group you in with the ones who broke free. What they are doing here is trying to undo your clarity by making it look like corruption. They want you to second-guess your instincts because if they can convince you that your truth does not belong to you, they can take it away. This is absolute gaslighting; this is isolation on a psychological level. They’re not just afraid of you leaving; they’re afraid of you becoming someone who does not need them anymore.
Number 10: “You Always Ruin Everything.”
This is their tantrum, their meltdown—the final punch. When everything else has failed, when they can’t love-bomb you, can’t guilt-trip you, can’t charm or silence you, that is when they reach for this line. If they can make you feel like the destroyer, you will automatically fall back into the role of the fixer. This is how they get one last shot at control. They want you to feel like you are the unstable one, like it’s your fault things are never working—like the chaos follows you, not them. If you internalize that, they win. You go back to explaining yourself, apologizing, and making up for a mess they created.
Conclusion
When a narcissist starts using the 10 lines I shared with you, it’s because they have realized they are losing the version of you they could control. The mask of composure they wear starts to crack the moment you stop playing the role they wrote for you. These phrases are beyond manipulation; they’re signs of fear—fear that you are changing, thinking for yourself, and seeing through them, which is what they do not want. Once that happens, their power over you begins to collapse. That is the part they cannot undo.
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