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Grief after a narcissist

Whether the narcissist in your life is a parent, an ex-partner, a family member or a friend, when you realise that you have been dealing with a narcissist there will be a grieving period.   The reason for this is that the relationship that you believed in and committed to, was completely false.  The narcissist, although they might have claimed to have loved you, they did not.

If you are the child of a narcissistic parent it will feel “normal” to put the needs of others before your own.  It will feel “normal” to be constantly criticised for just being you, everything about you will be on the agenda for criticism from looks, friends, relationships, grades at school, clothes etc. Anything that you have achieved will be dismissed as insignificant, unimportant or up-staged by something that they say they have achieved (which is very probably a lie).

If you grew up with narcissistic parents, you will have learnt not to share your achievements with them (or others) and to be self-deprecating as it feels “safer” because at least you are in control when you are attacking yourself where as a narcissist’s rage knows no limits and feels like a much more dangerous assault.

When you come to realise that your parent(s) or ex-partner didn’t see you as a human being or individual at all, but as an object to manipulate, use and control for their own needs, the entire relationship falls to pieces and it feels like you were living a complete lie.  You might well beat yourself up for being so “stupid”, not seeing it.  However, narcissists are absolute masters in the art of manipulation, deceit and lying.  It is really hard for “non narcissists” to even conceive the level of betrayal and dishonesty that exists in the minds of narcissists.  It is even harder when the narcissist is someone who society extols as being virtuous such as a parent and in particular a mother.  People who haven’t experienced this dynamic or who are currently involved with a narcissist in some way, will deny your assessment of the situation, so it is better for you if you do not look for reassurance from people other than those who know about and accept what you are talking about, because if they don’t have a good knowledge of narcissism they will treat you like you have gone crazy, are feeling sorry for yourself and are looking to blame someone else, which will only make you feel further isolated and misunderstood.

To acknowledge that a person is a narcissist takes a) the ability to observe and assess others, b) will bring in to question the ability of the other person’s judgement of character.  Some might see the narcissist as someone of power and influence such as a parent, boss or church leader and therefore it would not be in their interest to see that person as a narcissist because they want to ingratiate themselves.

When you realise that you have been reared by or have been in a relationship with a narcissist, the first thing that you will feel is confusion loneliness and isolation while you try to work the whole thing out.

A psychiatrist called Elisabeth Kubler-Ross came up with five stages of grief (which were based on her studies of patients with terminal illness) which also fit the stages of realising that you have been duped by a narcissist.  Obviously everyone experiences loss in a different way.  These stages are not sequential, they all inevitably over lap and not all of them happen for everyone.  The stages below are merely a suggestion as to what might happen.  The only thing that will occur after you realise that you have been in a relationship with a narcissist is that you will feel grief and as the cliché says “two steps forward and one step back”.

The five stages are:

  • DENIAL This is what I call “wilful naivety” and it can go on for a very long time. It is when you say to yourself “no one would do that to someone else”, “This can’t be happening to me”, “This sort of thing happens in novels, history and far off places, not in my home”.  It can go on for a long time because you as an empath make excuses for the narcissist “okay they may be selfish but…”, you will project “good intention” on to the narcissist where there is none and you will be confused because all of the nasty things that a narcissist does and says to you which will be embedded in a language of false concern designed to make them look good, keep you confused and in a vulnerable place so that they can continue in their abuse.
  • ANGER After denial comes anger “How could they do that to me”, “I was a child”, “They said they loved me”, “Why do they think that it is okay to behave like this”. This is a stage where your anger is pretty much universal.  You will be grappling with the realisation of narcissism, you will be angry with the narcissist for not playing fair, angry with yourself for not copping on sooner, for dedicating so much time and resources to someone who doesn’t even see you as another human being and with everyone else for helping the narcissist to prop up their false persona/lies and enabling their abuse.
  • ACCEPTANCE PART 1 The first part of acceptance is knowing that your narcissist cannot love and this is a vital part of recovery. A mental disorder, is like any disorder, would you be angry with your parents if for example they had a physical disease?  You have to recognise their limitations and work with what you (and they) have got.  It is not perfect or ideal, but it is what you have.
  • BARGAINING “If I could just do something good or nice I could return to the comfort of the illusion and make the whole thing go away”, “Surely they can’t be that malevolent, I must have got it wrong”. You don’t want to believe that it is how it is and that there must be something that you can do to make it all right again.  You might even employ a few strategies to try to push your new found realisation away.
  • DEPRESSION This is when you realise that you cannot make it go away, you are angry with yourself and your narcissist(s) and feel a sense of despair. You question your own judgement, you resent the narcissist and your ability to trust yourself ebbs considerably.  It is at this point that you might well have suicidal thoughts and the prospect of life is a lot scarier than death.
  • ACCEPTANCE PART 2 This is when you realise that your relationship with the narcissist is dead and it never existed in the way that you thought it did. However, if you cannot go no contact you will still have to deal with their dysfunction on a regular basis.  This is difficult because a narcissist is not nasty all of the time, only when they are feeling threatened they can go straight into narcissistic rage.  They also use being nice as a ploy to keep you engaged with them, however, if you have a crisis or are upset about something, they will use it as an opportunity to be abusive.  When you accept that you are dealing with a narcissist you will learn how to protect yourself and will recognise the signs in the future so that you don’t ever get involved with a narcissist again (of your own volition – but it could be a co-worker or boss).   If it is a family member, from now on you will be able to manage them better, you will not seek their approval and you will not put their needs in front of your own as you did in the past.  The resentment bit is that you now know and accept that you are dealing with a person with whom you constantly have to be on guard.  You have to accept that they will say nasty things and put you down where and when they can and that there is nothing that you can do about that, but the type of people who believe them are not they type of person that you want in your life.  You might have to do a major cull of “friends” but it is a healthy thing to remove toxic people from your life, they are not making any valuable contribution to your well-being.

When you are going through the process of grieving after narcissistic abuse you may very well feel empty, despair, loneliness and isolation.  What you are experiencing is the death of a relationship not the death of a person (although it pretty much amounts to the same thing) so you will not get the sympathy or concern that you might garner if someone had physically died, rather than your belief in a false perception.  You may well be told that you are emotionally unstable and volatile and the thing is, you probably are, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.  To grow and develop we have to go through periods of discomfort and confusion, it is a necessary part of making changes for the better in our lives and many find this part of growth too painful and uncomfortable so they just don’t do it. When you make seismic shifts in your perception of the world and of those around you it is destabilising.  It would be like if the earth moved even a fraction of a degree on its axis, everything would change, climate, flora and fauna etc., what you perceived to be there is no longer and that is what grief is all about.

There is another thing to notice in yourself when you go through grief and that is the potential physical symptoms.  This might include feeling excessively tired or having insomnia (protracted insomnia does make you a little crazy, so it is important to get in to a good daily routine paying attention to what you eat and drink before bed and having a regular exercise schedule).  You might gain or lose weight.  You may oscillate between wanting to cry and wanting to vomit, your whole body may well hurt.  You may drink too much or take prescription drugs.  This is just part of the process.  However, if you do not show any of the above symptoms, it does not mean that you are not going through the process “properly”, it just means that you are doing it another way.

The final thing is that we can only move forward because we have a better awareness of ourselves and those around us, there is no evolvement without self-knowledge and enlightenment is not synonymous with happiness, it is merely the disregarding of false held truths, the real work starts after that realisation and the attempt to realign your perception of the world with that awakening.  It can be very lonely and solitary work, but at this stage you will have realised that there is really only one person that you can totally depend on (you) and perhaps it is time to give that person a lot more of your love, care and attention than you did in the past.

Global Intelligence

Global intelligence means that you have an interconnectedness between all types of intelligence as per American psychologist Howard Gardner:

  • Naturalist (nature smart)
  • Musical (sound smart)
  • Logical-mathematical (number/reasoning smart)
  • Existential (life smart)
  • Interpersonal (people smart)
  • Bodily-kinesthetic (body smart)
  • Linguistic (word smart)
  • Intra-personal (self-smart)
  • Spatial (pattern smart)

A person might score high on only one or two areas usually because the person has an interest in those areas.  Global intelligence means that all of your intelligent types are integrated and interconnected.

This means that a person instinctively knows how to be respectful to others and understands the inherent importance of empathy and emotional intelligence has on family and society in general.

Narcissists can only think in short term gains, so if they want something they will go after it irrespective of the long term consequences so if they have to be deceitful or steal something to get it so be it, they do not take responsibility for their consequences, they only think in terms of “winning” that particular game.  They are incapable of critical or logical thinking (or the big picture), ethics and morality is for other people, since they have little or no self-awareness, their own behavior is not something they question.  They have a running narrative that tells them that they are better, more deserving, more important than everyone else and this self-talk drowns out any self-analysis or personal development.

A narcissist with a high I.Q. is only intelligent in very limited fields of focus such as spatial or linguistic intelligence.  It can happen that highly skilled inventors can invent something like a weapon and their focus will be on three issues, solving the problem, gaining power and earning money.  They can express genuine surprise when people point out the destruction and devastation that their invention caused, because they do not factor in the human aspect and they have no capacity to see the global picture.  They cannot acknowledge that we are all inter-connected and that personal responsibility is at the very core of being a functioning adult human being.

Gossip

Narcissists love to gossip, the reasons for this are as follows:

  • It reinforces their notion of their own superiority
  • It provides a semblance of intimacy, they “share” other people’s secrets, not their own, so it creates a mask of trust, without exposing themselves in any way.
  • It creates drama and often division of friends and family, which in turn gives them more excitement.
  • Attacking/ruining the reputation of others diminishes that person in their eyes “buoys” up their own ego.
  • Any consequences of the gossip that they spread makes them feel “powerful”/important
  • They will pepper their gossip about other people with half-truths that will render their lies plausible
  • They will hint at things without actually saying something outright, hoping that you will take the bait. They will feel that they have a safety net in place and will be in a position to deny everything if it backfires

Glossary

Abusive cycle – This is when there is an oscillation between destructive and constructive behaviour.  A narcissist is not always destructive towards people, especially if they want something such as attention, material goods or to make a good impression to their ever present mental audience.

Accusations This is when a narcissist will tell another person, in a very forceful way, who they are and what they have done.  So it can be accusing them of anything from lying, infidelity or of being lazy, even when it has absolutely no grounding in reality.  “You always/never…” or “You are so…”

Alienation – This is when a person is deliberately cut off from the rest of a group, this can occur in a family, a group of friends or in the work place.  It can happen by keeping “secrets”, non-disclosure of information that would not be withheld in a healthy dynamic or by deliberately ignoring the wishes and requests of an individual.

Blaming This is when someone or something is always responsible for creating a “problem”, denial of personal responsibility and making it someone else’s “fault” rather than trying to find a solution.

Bullying The act of forcing another person into a situation, through force and/or threats, who is in a more vulnerable position either physically, socially, financially or emotionally.

Co-dependency This is when a person enables dysfunction in others, the most common form is an excessive reliance on other people for approval and identity.

Cognitive Dissonance is the mental disharmony or discomfort experienced by a person who holds two or more incompatible or contrary beliefs or values at the same time, or encounters confusion about what they “know” is true about themselves versus what the narcissist is telling them is “true”.

Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) is a series of symptoms that arise from prolonged stress from being exposed to narcissistic abuse (but can also be found in people who were held hostage, prisoners of war and survivors of religious cults).  Symptoms can include emotional flash backs, being triggered by past experiences, nightmares and panic attacks.

Counter dependency This is when an individual refuses to become attached or relate to another person.

Cowardice This is when a narcissist lacks courage to face pain, difficulty, commitment, perceived danger etc.

Denial Believing or pretending that something painful, shameful or traumatic event never happened. So they cannot learn from their mistakes because they do not admit that it happened.

Disassociation is the detachment from emotional experiences, when reality gets replaced with a revised or reframed version of events invented by the narcissist.

Emotional abuse Any systematic behaviour focused on a person by another which creates fear, shame, guilt or a sense of obligation.

Emotional blackmail A system of manipulation through threats, punishments and lies to control an individual’s behaviour.

Emotional flashbacks This is where an individual involuntarily relives something that happened in the past as though it were the present, it is not really a clear memory, more like a sensation.  Flashbacks can be traumatic, but they can also be happy and can be triggered by any of the senses.

Empath is a sensitive person who has the ability to sense someone else’s feelings and emotions, listen to them without feeling sorry for them.  Someone who is in touch with their own feelings so that they can identify with others.

Enmeshment is a relationship between two or more people in which personal boundaries are porous and unclear.  That is that there is a fuzzy line between where one person starts and the other one finishes.

Flying monkeys This is when a narcissist will lie to, manipulate and coerce selected individuals to isolate, alienate, punish and control a chosen target.

Gaslighting This is when a narcissist will play tricks on an otherwise mentally healthy person to make them think that they are going crazy.  They do this by denial of an individual’s reality through lies and manipulation.

Golden child A golden child is when one child in a narcissistic family of origin is selected by one or both parents to be given preferential treatment.  This child “can do no wrong” in the eyes of the parent(s), despite any evidence to the contrary.  S/he will be given a disproportionate amount of resources in terms of attention, finances and inclusion with otherwise neglectful parents.

Grey rock Grey rock is a technique to use when you do not want to get involved with the drama of a narcissist.  What this means is that you do not seek their approval, but you do not give yours either.  You remain emotionless, cool but not cold.  If they say something like “you are a such and such”, “you never loved me” etc. All you say is “I am sorry you feel like that”, “that is not my experience”.  Keep it as “dry” as you can and walk away as soon as possible.

Grooming is when a narcissist manoeuvres a person into a false sense of connection, dependence and trust so that they are much more vulnerable to accepting (or not initially noticing) future abusive behaviour.

Hooking This is when the narcissist goes on an active campaign to get the attention and often resources of a target.  During this cycle they are charming, generous and attentive.  The target is lulled into a sense of security with the narcissist, but when the target is hooked the narcissist moves onto the devaluation stage.

Hoovering This is what can happen when a person tries to break away from or limit contact with a narcissist.  It is the action of a narcissist to try to suck a person back into giving them narcissistic supply.  This can be done through presents, flattery, faux remorse (if they think that they have done something to upset you) or social invitations.  This is a temporary phase until they know you have been pulled back in.

Image weaving This is when a narcissist participates in certain activities to improve their public image.  For example, they could make a big donation to charity, this is not done from a sincere place of concern about the people/animals who would benefit from the money, but from how the narcissist thinks it makes them look.

Isolation This is when a narcissist will deliberately and intentionally set out to isolate a person from their family, friends and support network.  This is a controlling technique to make their target easier to abuse.

Intimidation This is when a person uses non-verbal threats both tacit and implicit to control another.

Invalidation A narcissist will use this technique to prevent a person from expressing themselves, to encourage that person that their feelings, thoughts, values, beliefs and even factual knowledge is incorrect, inferior and worthless.

Manipulation This is when a narcissist will coerce an individual(s) into acting in a way that serves a hidden ulterior motive.

Mobbing Is another term for “flying monkeys” (see above)

Narcissistic injury is when the narcissist feels that their self-esteem or self-worth have been threatened in some way.  When their true hidden self has been revealed in some way (real or imagined) by someone.

Narcissistic rage Is when a narcissist will fly into a rage over a seemingly unimportant issue.  This is not “real” rage, although it feels like it because they violate the other person’s boundaries.  It is a tool that the narcissist uses to control another person.  It is not real because they can get really angry in seconds and if someone who they want to impress enters the company they can become “sweet natured” with the same velocity.  A narcissist will expect the person who they raged at only minutes before to pretend it never happened.

Narcissistic supply This is when a narcissist will go after other people’s resources.  In general it comes in the form of attention (both positive and negative attention seems to work for them).  However, they like the attention to come in the form of favours, care taking, presents and inclusion in social situations.  They do not like intimacy and will become aggressive or dismissive if you try to bring the “relationship” to that level.

Objectification This is when a narcissist treats people like objects for their personal gratification and not like sentiment human beings.

Parentify This happens in a narcissistic family of origin, where one or both parents force their children (even from as young as two years old) to always put their emotional and other needs before the needs of their children, no matter how unwilling or frightened the child is to do this.

Passive-aggressive behaviour is when someone engages in the indirect expression of anger, it involves behaviours to “get back” at someone without the other knowing that they are “acting out” their anger in a veiled manner.

Projection This is when a narcissist takes a situation, a personality trait or a problem that causes them discomfort and attributes the “blame” to someone else.  So they will accuse you of something that they do not want to take responsibility for themselves.

Reframe This is when a narcissist takes an event out of context and changes the meaning of what happened by putting a spin on a situation so that it works out to their advantage.

Sabotage Narcissists do not like it when other people have healthy relationships, good careers or are socially popular.  They can sabotage by a smear campaign on your reputation, try to destroy your confidence by sneering and deriding any creative endeavour, destroy valued possession from a previous life or try to lower your self-esteem.

Scapegoat This is when one child or individual is singled out to take undeserved blame or treatment, this child is the polar opposite to the golden child in a family.

Silent Treatment This is when a narcissist literally refuses to talk to or engage with someone who has “upset them”, the upset can be real or imaginary, the silence is used as a manipulation tool to insult and control their target in an infantile way.

Smear campaign This is when a narcissist will start to spread rumours about another person to destroy their reputation.  This can happen if you are separating from a narcissist, or if they feel like they have been injured in some way by someone.  They will tell lies, make false accusations and generally manipulate as many people as they can to “see” things from their jaundiced view.  This can create paranoia the person on whom the smear campaign is being carried out will feel the hostility but will not know why and it is not based in reality.

Testing This is when a narcissist repeatedly forces another person to demonstrate or prove their love or commitment to a relationship.  So they will constantly ask if you love them, rather and will say things “if you really loved me you would..”, or the more passive aggressive version “John gave Mary a beautiful necklace” and will look at you expectantly!

Triangulation This is a technique that is used to stop direct and frank communication between two people.  Like the name suggests, the narcissist will put themselves in the middle so that they can edit the exchange of thoughts and feelings between two or more people through lies and selection of information shared to serve their own goals.

Triggers are current events that provoke a traumatic memory from the past and upset you all over again, either at a conscious or unconscious level.

Can Narcissists love?

 

The short answer to that question is no.  This is something that is very difficult to digest of you are in or have been in a relationship with a narcissist.  The reality is that narcissists merely view other people as commodities, for them to use as they find convenient and then discard or attack when they are “burdensome” or if they cease to fulfil a role that was allocated to them.  A person who likes to work with people and help others will be a natural target for narcissists, and people who are open and giving are likely to have more than one predatory narcissist in their lives.  The problem with this for the non-narcissist is that it “normalises” their behaviour, they select you for your usefulness to them.

This is not a relationship as most people would see relationship.  It is one person taking advantage of another and the more love and attention you give, the more they will take, the more material stuff you give them the more they want.  To use a horticultural expression, they are “voracious feeders”, they know no limits or boundaries and will quite happily sit back as you work yourself to the bone to provide them with what they think they are entitled to and will always expect more.

The more you give the more content and placid they will be.  They will bandy the love word around constantly to let you know how well you are doing at providing them with what they want.  It is only when you stop giving or slowdown that they will expose their true nature.

Narcissists love inanimate things like cars, clothes, jewellery, they do not love people.  The quality of the feelings they have for another person is the same as it is for a machine of some sort.  You stop working for them and you will end up being brought to the dump.

In a healthy loving relationship there is give and take, you can get angry with your partner, child, friend and pet, but that doesn’t mean that that relationship is over, because healthy love comes from a bond that goes beyond the superficial.  Narcissists however expect unconditional love.  Healthy unconditional love is a love that is appropriate for parents to have for their children.  Adults do not need unconditional love as they have (in theory) developed and grown as people to be able to stand alone.  A narcissist has not gone through this developmental phase and will try to “force” those around them to love them like the emotional infants that they really are.

Narcissists cannot see beyond the superficial aspect of someone else, their clothes, the car they drive, the amount of money they have and above all how they can be useful to the narcissist they will not want to harvest everyone in the same way a mere meeting with a famous pop star is sufficient for the narcissist so that they can name drop in public, or a connection to the church is sufficient for them to feel worthy, a politician to feel powerful but with other people they will demand to be parented and their every need attended to.  They cannot see the inner landscape of someone else because they are completely blind to their own, they do not understand how it works.  It leaves the person interacting with the narcissist feeling that they just are not seen or being listened to, it is very frustrating but also an accurate assessment of the situation.  So in short, narcissistic love can be described as “I love this person for what they can do for me and only when they are doing what I want them to do/fulfilling the role I have designated to them”.

It takes two people to have a relationship and if one person is not relating to the other person, that relationship can never be healthy and it cannot be fixed because part of the narcissistic armour is to deny that there is anything wrong with the way that they interact with others.  If someone goes to lengths to explain that there is a problem, and if the narcissist grasps the concept the blame will automatically and immediately be shifted on to someone or something else.  So if you think that you love a narcissist you are really only loving a false image that has been projected out by them and supported by you.  You want them to be who you want them to be so we keep filling in the gaps, making excuses, listening to what they say not what they do and holding on to a level of naivety that says “I cannot believe that someone would behave that way towards someone they love” which flips into self-righteous indignation when the cracks begin to appear

Having a daily relationship with a narcissist takes a lot of mental work they are very corrosive in a relationship and will blame the other person or circumstances for creating a negative atmosphere, when in fact you will be perpetually trying to figure out her motives or intentions; constantly trying to avoid a flare up of narcissistic rage (for the sake of a quiet life), not confronting their abusive language and behaviours to try to minimise the impact on yourself and those around you (which is what most people do), only lets them know that having temper tantrums actually works in controlling the other person.

This is very draining and exasperating because they will not accept your thoughts and feelings, and in the long run you will feel worse after sharing your feelings because they will either dismiss them out of hand, shame/ sneer at you for having such silly feelings, or harvest the information and use it against you at a later date and in a different context, so rather than a problem shared and one would hope in some way resolved, it will feel like a burden that you have exposed yourself to some pending peril.  Normal communication between adults is not bewildering or confusing and it does not create anxiety.

So ultimately it will feel like you are always alone when in the company of a narcissist.  They will not tolerate any demands or obligations to be imposed on them and ultimately, the worse you feel about yourself the better they feel and vice versa.  It is all about them trying to control everything.

A narcissist will know that you will not blow up in their face the way they do and depend heavily on politeness and consideration from the people that they abuse.  Basically they are cowards, so if they know that they will not get away with something they will back down.  They try to test your boundaries all of the time (even after ten years in a relationship) to see if they can gain a little more ground, just like a child.

Frequently when a narcissist is talking about herself she will use the 3rd person singular.  This is because this mode of speech puts distance between her actions and her accountability.  So if the person you’re in a relationship with is highly narcissistic, there is little to no chance for a long-term, happy relationship.

When a narcissist is in a partnership or a family of origin situation the way that they prise out supply from their “loved ones” can be extremely nasty.  They will revert to verbal abuse, emotional abuse, instigate fights simply to be the centre of attention.  It does not matter if it negative attention, just so long as it is attention.  It gives them a power surge to humiliate someone, to see them cry or get depressed it is a game that they are absolutely determined to win by whatever means they can, even if that hurts, upsets or humiliates their victim.

Narcissists do not want to be loved as love requires openness and honesty, feeling difficult emotions and compromise.  The narcissist will avoid these at all cost, it is not your fault that you cannot be loved by them, they were never available for authentic love, they can seem to love you, they will say that they love you, they can even think that it is love, if you are involved with a narcissist you are involved in a very different relationship.  It is called Enmeshment, this is where the narcissist did not get healthy love and attention in childhood and the narcissist violates someone else to feel “safe” which is why they need a lot of minding, they are not good at taking care of themselves and will push their “love” interest into a parental role as well as a faux partnership role, in other words, an extension to serve the needs of the narcissist, they cannot love because they do not pull back far enough to see you as an individual.  Your individuality poses a threat to the narcissist which is why s/he is so hell bent on controlling you.

The narcissist cannot bond beyond the superficial appearance and behaviour of someone, not based on any meaningful connection.  Love requires self-awareness and the narcissist has become completely cut off from their own inner experience which is why the cannot see or listen to other people and really connect with them.  It takes two to have a healthy relationship, if one person is emotionally dead inside they will not be able to love you because that part of them has been completely shut down and this has happened due to some childhood trauma that caused them so much pain at the time that they will be completely unwilling to revisit it and will have put substantial armour in place to keep it buried deeply inside them.

 

 

 

Bullying

The core essence of being a narcissist is contingent on the fact that they are bullies.  Bullying comes in many different guises, they are:

  • Verbal bullying
  • Physical bullying
  • Emotional bullying
  • Isolation bullying
  • Extortion bullying
  • Cyber bullying
  • Stalking

The reason that people bully is because they are carrying a lot of shame and anger which in turn makes them feel powerless and fearful, in the distorted thinking of a narcissist’s mind, hurting someone else makes them feel powerful and in control.  Bullying however, is in no way a show of strength it is a sign of an underlying deep seated sense weakness.  A strong well balanced person does not need to hurt or demean someone else to feel okay about themselves, they are sufficiently grounded in themselves to not lash out at or abuse someone else to feel “better than”.

So how does it happen, that someone who is weak can bully a stronger individual.  There are a number of techniques that are used

  • A bully will attack when they perceive that another person is “down” for some reason, they might be new in the job and unsure of their role, they may have had a divorce or just moved into a new area. In school a child might be physically smaller for her age group or over weight.  A bully zones in on the weak point and relentlessly repeats the same message over and over again to enforce an insecurity and create disharmony.  It is not clever or sophisticated it is just repetition of a mean judgemental sentiment.  It is important to note that narcissists are cowards and do not bully people who are on a level standing with them whether that is financial, physical or well supported by their family and community.
  • They will recruit an army of supporters of their own so that the target of the bully has nowhere to turn to. This is done by gossip, providing false information, performing practical “jokes” to humiliate and isolate their target.  The recruited very possibly have no idea that they are being manipulated and will fully support the narcissist for what they think are the right reasons.
  • They can launch a verbal attack on you out of the blue, so you never know what it is that they are accusing you of. This sort of attack is projection, they might have had a massive fight with their partner who accused them of things, but since a narcissist is never wrong, suddenly it is your fault that their partner (who you might have never met) is angry with them.  You will never know the background story, they will just hit out in anger.
  • We have all seen videos where a kitten will bully a Great Dane, it is not because the kitten is stronger than the dog, it is because they repeat the same action over and over again. The Great Dane knows that it could kill the kitten with one shake of its head, but it doesn’t because it is only a tiny kitten.  It works the same way with bullies, the minute that the meet resistance they hold up the feeble, weak victim flag and suddenly the bullied person is supposed to back down.  Bullies trade on the fact that other people will be much better behaved, more polite and sensitive to others than they are.
  • Physical bullying is also a weakness and comes in many forms such as when an adult tickles a child until he cries, that is not playing that is a show of physical domination, there is a lot of rough housing among children that it is healthy, however there is a turning point when it becomes abuse. Physical bullying frequently happens amongst adults too.  It is not always in the form of hitting or pushing, it also happens when someone violates your private space and shouts into your face.
  • All bullying is confusing to the target because it is usually illogical and always abusive. For example, a girl could be bullied in a group of friends because she is very beautiful or always gets good grades, what is wrong with that?  Absolutely nothing unless you are around narcissists who can only see things from their own perspective and so the beautiful, intelligent girl will “make” them feel ugly and stupid.  It is important to note that a narcissist will very often think that another person did something (like being born beautiful) deliberately just to make them look/feel bad about themselves.

When a person is unable to share their feelings with someone else and they get the usual feedback of “oh I am sure that they didn’t mean it that way”, “you are being too sensitive”, “it was probably just a misunderstanding” it can leave them emotionally exhausted and scarred.  Research has shown that people who are persistently subjected to abusive behaviour are much more at risk of stress related illness.  Most of the research has taken place in childhood bullying and has shown that children/adults who score highly on ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) or CEN (Childhood Emotional Neglect) are significantly more likely to get serious illnesses later on in life such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.  If one child has been singled out to be bullied is in a family of origin, it causes anxiety for all of the children in that family just being a witness to the abuse of their sibling, for fear that the bullying behaviour might be turned on them, but also from the guilt and shame that they did nothing to intervene and stop the bullying of their brother/sister.

Bullying has no boundaries and can be redirected at any time to anyone, it can come in the form of constant erosion of someone’s self-esteem through snide comments, put downs and name calling to physical contact with a victim, it can be short term or go on for years as in a family/partner situation.

 

The effects of bullying are:

  • Low self-esteem/confidence
  • Constantly anxious and on high alert
  • Depression
  • Confusion, lack of motivation
  • Self-doubt
  • Difficulty focusing/concentrating
  • Lack of appetite or comfort eating
  • Disrupted sleep patterns
  • Self-medicating with drugs or alcohol
  • Mood swings
  • Vomiting
  • Panic attacks
  • Social anxiety
  • Suicidal ideation