Tips: Can’t Live without My Narcissist
Professor Sam Vaknin advises those in a relationship with a narcissist to count their losses and blessings and get away, but if they insist on staying, he offers advice. He suggests never disagreeing with the narcissist, never offering real intimacy, and admiring the narcissist for their achievements. He also advises being patient, emotionally and financially independent, and treating the narcissist like a spoiled brat. Finally, he suggests knowing oneself and developing strategies to minimize harm.
Psychopathic Bully and Stalker
Stalking is a crime and stalkers are criminals, yet the horrid consequences of stalking are often underestimated. Many criminals, and therefore many stalkers, suffer from personality disorders, most prevalently the antisocial personality disorder, formerly known as psychopathy. Psychopaths regard other people as objects to be manipulated, in instruments of gratification and utility. The best coping strategy is to convince the psychopath that messing with your life or with your nearest is going to cost him dearly.
Narcissistic Abuser Cons System
Abusers are often able to deceive mental health and social welfare workers, even when the diagnosis is unequivocal. There are four types of mental health and law enforcement professionals and practitioners who can be co-opted by abusers: adulators, ignorant professionals, self-deceivers, and those who are actively deceived. Mental health professionals are often egocentric and emotionally invested in their opinions, and they may pathologize the behavior of victims who disagree with them. Victims of abuse may need to stage a well-calibrated performance to convince therapists that they are the victim.
Corporate Narcissists and Fraud
Perpetrators of financial frauds in the United States have been diagnosed as malignant, pathological narcissists. Narcissists are driven by the need to maintain a grandiose self-image and seek attention to validate their self-worth. This leads them to engage in fraudulent activities to bridge the gap between their grandiose fantasies and reality. Pathological narcissism is pervasive and independent of culture and society, but its manifestation and experience depend on the particulars of societies and cultures.
Narcissistic Abuser Cons System
Abusers are often able to deceive mental health and social welfare workers, even when the diagnosis is unequivocal. There are four types of mental health and law enforcement professionals and practitioners who can be co-opted by abusers: adulators, ignorant professionals, self-deceivers, and those who are actively deceived. Mental health professionals are often egocentric and emotionally invested in their opinions, and they may pathologize the behavior of victims who disagree with them. Victims of abuse may need to stage a well-calibrated performance to convince therapists that they are the victim.
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.
Stalker Psychology
Stalking is a form of abuse that continues long after a relationship has ended, with the majority of abusers getting the message. However, a minority of abusers, the more vindictive and obsessed ones, continue to stalk their ex-partners for years to come. These stalkers are typically lonely, violent, and intermittently unemployed, but they are rarely full-fledged criminals. Contrary to myths perpetrated by the mass media, studies show that most stalkers are men, have high IQs, advanced degrees, and are middle-aged.
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.
Narcissists: Masculine and Feminine
Narcissism is a defining trait of our world and its people, with self-absorption, greed, and exploitation being commonplace. Narcissistic personality disorder is three times more prevalent among men than women, and this is due to the social mores and values of macho-capitalism. Women with narcissistic personality disorder tend to focus on their bodies and femininity, while men emphasize intellect, power, aggression, money, or social status. Narcissists conform to traditional gender roles and are chauvinistically conservative, depending on the opinions of those around them to maintain their false self.
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.