Coping with Stalkers: Psychopaths, Narcissists, Paranoids, Erotomaniacs
Stalkers come in different types, including erotomaniac, narcissistic, paranoid, and anti-social or psychopathic. Coping techniques suited to one type of stalker may backfire or prove to be futile with another. The best coping strategy is to first identify the type of abuser you are faced with. It is essential to avoid all contact with your stalker, but being evaded only inflames the stalker’s wrath and enhances his frustration.
Cerebral Narcissist’s Confession: Regulation of Narcissistic Supply
The cerebral narcissist describes his pattern of selecting women inferior to him, engaging in brief periods of sex, and then becoming a recluse interested only in his studies. He sees his intimate partners as fulfilling roles such as admiring him, reminding him of his past accomplishments, and doing chores. He does not care what else they do with their time or with whom they spend it, but panics when they show signs of leaving him. He embarks on a charm offensive, but it is usually too late. The women feel that something is wrong with the relationship, but cannot place their finger on it.
People-pleasers and Pathological Charmers
People pleasers are often dishonest and manipulative, seeking to foster dependence in their beneficiaries. They use a range of coping strategies, including infantilization and self-sacrifice. People pleasers are a subset of pathological charmers, who are mostly narcissists. Pathological charmers use their charm to manipulate others and exert control, and feel threatened when their charm fails to elicit narcissistic supply.
Narcissist: Stable Life or Roller Coaster?
Narcissists are dependent on and addicted to fluctuating narcissistic supply, leading to volatility in their lives and moods. Classic narcissists maintain an island of stability in their lives, while the other dimensions of their existence wallow in chaos and unpredictability. Borderline narcissists react to instability in one area of their life by introducing chaos into all other dimensions of their existence. Narcissists of all kinds hate routine and avoid it as part of their emotional involvement prevention mechanisms, which prevent them from getting emotionally involved, bonding, attaching, and subsequently being hurt.
Paranoia, Narcissistic Mirroring, and Narcissistic Reflection
Narcissists tend to react with paranoia when they feel threatened, but these attacks tend to fade and the narcissist frequently homes in on new agents of persecution. The narcissist’s paranoia is a grandiose fantasy aimed to regulate their sense of self-worth. The narcissist’s partner tends to encourage their paranoid or threatening attention, and this is a game of two. Living with a narcissist can tilt one’s mind toward abnormal reactions, and even after separation, the narcissist’s partners typically still care for the narcissist greatly.
MMPI-2 Psychological Test: Controversial, but Hard to Fake
The MMPI-2 test booklet has 567 items, but a rough assessment can be made based on the first 370 queries. The items are arranged in scales, and the responses are compared to answers provided by control subjects. The nature of the deviation determines the patient’s traits and tendencies, but not their diagnosis. The test results place the subject in a group of patients who reacted similarly, and the validity scales indicate whether the patient responded truthfully and accurately or was trying to manipulate the test. The clinical scales measure various mental health issues, and the interpretation of the MMPI-2 is now fully computerized.
Narcissist’s Psychological Defense Mechanisms
The psyche is a battlefield between instinctual urges and drives, the id, the constraints imposed by reality on the gratification of his impulses, ego, and the norms of society, the superego. Narcissism is a defense mechanism, and narcissists have a monopoly of other defense mechanisms. There are dozens of defense mechanisms, including acting out, denial, devaluation, displacement, dissociation, fantasy, idealization, isolation of affect, omnipotence, projection, projective identification, rationalization, cognitive dissonance, reaction formation, repression, splitting, sublimation, and undoing. All these defense mechanisms operate within the narcissist.
Masochistic Personality Disorder (Masochism)
Masochists have been taught to hate themselves and consider themselves unworthy of love, leading to self-destructive behaviors. They avoid pleasurable experiences and seek suffering, pain, and hurt in relationships. They reject help and render attempts to assist futile. Masochists tend to choose people and circumstances that lead to failure and avoid those that result in success or gratification. They adopt unrealistic goals and generate underachievements, leading to rage, depression, and guilt.
Narcissist Re-idealizes Discarded Sources of Narcissistic Supply
Narcissists keep discarded sources of supply in reserve and seek them out when they have no other supply source. They frantically try to recycle their old sources and re-idealize them without admitting to having been mistaken in the first place. To preserve their grandiosity, they come up with a narrative that accommodates both the devaluing content and the re-idealized image of the source. If you are an old source of narcissistic supply, simply ignore the narcissist as indifference is what they cannot stand.
DSM V Gets Narcissistic Personality Disorder Partly Right
The DSM-5 criteria for diagnosing narcissistic personality disorder include impairments in personality functioning, both self and interpersonal, and the presence of pathological personality traits. The impairments in self-functioning include identity and self-direction, while the impairments in interpersonal functioning include empathy and intimacy. The DSM-5 also focuses on pathological personality traits of the narcissist, which are characterized by antagonism, grandiosity, and attention-seeking. The diagnostic criteria should be stable across time, consistent across situations, and not solely due to direct physiological effects of a substance or general medical condition.