Interacting with Your Abuser
Sam Vaknin advises those in abusive relationships to work with professionals such as lawyers, accountants, and therapists to extricate themselves from the situation. He suggests maintaining the minimum contact mandated by the courts and avoiding any gratuitous contact with the abuser. Vaknin also recommends exposing the abuser’s needs and filling one’s life with new hobbies, interests, and friends. Finally, he warns against discussing personal affairs with the abuser and disconnecting from third parties who may be spying on one’s behalf.
Abuse By Proxy
Abusers often use third parties to control, coerce, threaten, stalk, tempt, seduce, harass, communicate, or manipulate their targets. They use the same mechanisms and devices to control these unaware instruments as they plan to control their ultimate prey. The abuser perverts the system, and therapists, marriage counselors, mediators, court-appointed guardians, police officers, and judges end up upholding the abuser’s version and helping him further abuse his victims. The victim’s children are the abuser’s greatest source of leverage over his abused spouse or mate.
Narcissist’s Language as Weapon
Narcissists use language as a weapon of self-defense, to obscure, not to communicate, and to obtain narcissistic supply. They talk at others or lecture them, exchange subtexts, and spawn private languages, prejudices, superstitions, conspiracy theories, rumors, phobias, and hysterias. The rules that govern the narcissist universe are loopholeed, incomprehensible, open to interpretation so wide and so self-contradictory that it renders them meaningless. The narcissist, in this respect, is a great social menace, undermining language itself.
Victim! System is Against You? Tips and Advice
The system is stacked against abuse victims, who are often re-abused by law enforcement officers, judges, guardians, evaluators, and therapists. Therapists are conditioned to respond favorably to specific verbal cues and behaviors, and the paradigm is that abuse is rarely one-sided. Victims are often labeled uncooperative, resistant, and even abusers if they refuse to participate in a treatment plan or communicate with their abuser. To navigate the system, victims should adopt the slick mannerisms of their abuser, use key phrases, attend every session, participate in a long-term treatment plan, and emphasize the welfare and well-being of their children.
Narcissist’s Reactions to Abandonment, Separation, and Divorce
Narcissistic abusers often resort to self-delusion when faced with the dissolution of a meaningful relationship. They may adopt a masochistic avoidance solution, punishing themselves for their failure, or construct a delusional narrative in which they are the hero. Some may become antisocial psychopaths, while others develop persecutory delusions and withdraw completely from social contact, becoming schizoids. Finally, some abusers resort to an aggressive stance, becoming verbally, psychologically, and sometimes physically abusive towards loved ones.
Victims of Abuse: Recovery and Healing
Sam Vaknin discusses the process of healing and recovery for victims of abuse. The therapist’s first task is to legitimize and validate the victim’s fears and make it clear that the victim is not responsible for the abuse. Facing, reconstructing, and reframing the traumatic experiences is crucial for healing. Education is an important tool in the recovery process, and the victim should be made aware of the prevalence and nature of violence against women, warning signs, legal redress, coping strategies, and safety precautions. The therapist should emphasize the survivor’s strengths and help the victim regain control of her life.
Safe Surfing: Narcissist Invades Your Computer
Narcissists may use malware to log everything you type, discover your passwords, and break into your email and bank accounts. To protect yourself, never click on links or open attachments from unknown sources, and never enter personal details on unknown sites. Always check the lock icon and HTTPS address before entering personal information, and read emails in text format rather than HTML. Change your passwords frequently, update your operating system and antivirus software, and scan your computer for malware regularly. If you notice suspicious behavior, disconnect from the internet and scan your computer for malware.
Narcissist’s Addiction to Fame and Celebrity
Narcissists are addicted to being famous as it provides them with power, constant narcissistic supply, and fulfills important ego functions. The narcissist’s only bad emotional stretches are during periods of lack of attention, publicity, or exposure. The more the narcissist fails to secure the attention of the target group, the more daring, eccentric, and outlandish the narcissist becomes. The narcissist is not really interested in publicity per se, but with the reactions to his fame and celebrity.
Narcissist: Women as Sluttish Huntresses or Sexless Saints
Heterosexual narcissists desire women but are frustrated by their inability to interact with them meaningfully. They hate women virulently, passionately, and uncompromisingly, and their hate is primal, irrational, and the progeny of mortal fear and sustained abuse in early childhood. Narcissists are infinitely pessimistic, bare-tempered, paranoid, and sadistic, and their daily routine is a rigmarole of threats, complaints, hurts, eruptions, moodiness, and rage. They are their own worst enemy and cannot conceive of life in one place with one set of people, doing the same thing in the same field with one goal within a decades-old game plan or career path or relationship.
Narcissism Myths: Suicide, Types, Crises
Narcissists come in different types, with cerebral and somatic being the most common. All narcissists share certain traits, such as pathological lying and lack of empathy. Narcissists are not interested in people as such, but they love to have an audience as long as they provide them with narcissistic supply. Narcissists rarely commit suicide, but they react with suicidal ideation and reactive psychosis to severe stress. Narcissists prefer to find alternative sources of supply, and they are creative in doing so.