Folie à deux Among Narcissists? Or Sycophants? Or Maybe Not Either?

 So what is Folie à deux?

Here is a definition from Google AI in red (and you can search other articles about the phenomenon):

"Folie à deux," which translates to "madness of two" in French, is a psychiatric syndrome where two or more individuals share a delusional belief. This shared psychosis is also known as shared psychotic disorder or induced delusional disorder. The term "folie à deux" was first used in the 19th century to describe this phenomenon, according to Wikipedia.

Key aspects of folie à deux:

Shared Delusion:

One individual (the "primary" or "inducer") develops a delusion, which then influences another person (the "secondary" or "induced") to share the same delusion. 

Close Relationship:

Folie à deux is typically observed in individuals with a close relationship, such as family members or intimate partners. 

Influence and Suggestibility:

The primary individual's delusion can influence the secondary individual, who may be more suggestible or impressionable. 

Treatment:

Treatment typically involves separation of the individuals, antipsychotic medications, individual and family therapy, and potentially psychotherapy. 

Types of Folie à Deux:

Folie imposée (induced psychosis): The primary individual's delusion is imposed on the secondary individual. 

Folie simultanée (shared psychosis): The primary and secondary individuals share delusions independently but become very similar. 

Other Terms:

While "folie à deux" is the most common term, other terms like "shared psychotic disorder," "double insanity," or "psychosis of association" are also used, according to Merriam-Webster. 

In the context of the movie Joker: Folie à Deux:

The movie uses the term "folie à deux" to reflect the shared madness and delusional beliefs between the Joker (Arthur Fleck) and Harley Quinn (Lee Quinzel). The film explores their shared delusion and the impact of their relationship on each other. 

Pronunciation:

The term "folie à deux" is pronounced as "FOH-lee ah DEU".

In addition, a Wikipedia article claims that the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual that psychologists use will not legitimize Folie à Deux, and therefor no psychologist can diagnose a patient with it.

However, the Wikipedia article classifies two sub-divisions of Folie à Deux in these passages (also in red):

Various sub-classifications of folie à deux have been proposed to describe how the delusional belief comes to be held by more than one person:[9]
Folie imposée
Where a dominant person (known as the 'primary', 'inducer', or 'principal') initially forms a delusional belief during a psychotic episode and imposes it on another person or persons (the 'secondary', 'acceptor', or 'associate'). Normally the latter, described as "un malade par reflet", does not suffer from a true psychosis. If the parties are admitted to hospital separately, the delusions in the person with the induced beliefs are typically abandoned.[10]
Folie simultanée
Either the situation where two people considered to independently experience psychosis influence the content of each other's delusions so they become identical or strikingly similar, or one in which two people "morbidly predisposed" to delusional psychosis mutually trigger symptoms in each other. Due to the lack of a dominant partner, separation of patients might not improve the condition of either.[10]

So while it is illegitimatized by the writers of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual so that no one can get a diagnosis of it, can it still be discussed and researched a bit?

My feeling about it is that "of course it can." 

I have often wondered whether people can pick up narcissistic traits from long term exposure to a narcissist. Can psychopathic traits be picked up from being around a psychopath? Can Machiavellianism be picked up from being around someone who has the traits of a Dark Triad?

Then there is the phrase "narcissistic fleas" where people who engage with a narcissist might pick up some narcissistic traits. It is heavily used in forums for victims of narcissistic abuse. I found the phrase being repeatedly used in this one and here.

Dr. Ramani Durvasula, a psychologist and expert on narcissism denies that it is possible in some of her videos that discuss this, and in my mind she has a lot of clout because she studies this subject so diligently. 

But I also can't help noticing how sycophancy is being embraced in politics, in political parties, in wars, between nations, and how so many people are willing to parrot the ridiculous false narratives of someone else. Are these sycophants actually a mini-me or have they lost their minds to the point of being an almost-puppet, or an almost-robot, spouting the phrases of narcissists and dictators without being influenced by them a bit to think like a narcissist (hard to believe they are generating this "stuff" in their own mind) or are they just lazy thinkers and adopt someone else's thoughts, opinions and beliefs? Or is something else going on?

And is it folie à deux or something else? 

And how responsible are we if we "go along to get along", if we adopt sycophancy to keep a job or to keep being a member of a family, or if we adopt another person's perspectives ala folie à deux?

The reason I think it deserves some consideration, even if it can't be a diagnosis is because of a narcissist's incredible pressure to get people to enable them and to be sycophants for them - and it is often so highly successful even when it is clearly not advantageous to the person who has decided to support, enable and submit to what ever a narcissist wants.

So many enablers take up the narcissist's perspectives too even if the narcissist is lying, spreading false narratives, is clearly out to exploit and benefit from his powerful position (grifting or other means), is telling people he is very popular when he's not, is telling people he invented something when he did not, is telling people that most people agree with him when they don't - these sycophants and enablers seem to stick with the narcissist and what ever he says even as his life and their own lives and autonomous decisions are being unraveled and eroded away constantly. 

in terms of politics:

Politically, this happens all of the time: Why does a population believe in the lies of a politician? 

They often do believe in the lies politicians tell. And as we know, a population can go much further than believing lies are the truth, and help to enact policies which hurt themselves, their families and communities, giving too much power over to a leader who is more interested in his own power than the people he diabolically serves. Some of them will even go to war and die for a narcissist when they know that the spoils from the war will mostly go to the leader and his oligarch grifters. 

We know how a combination of threats, punishments and rewards are used to get people to enable and submit to despotic leaders. That's usually in plain sight. If it's so plain that you are following a person who threatens to get his own way, why do people do it so willingly, with so much loyalty and fervency. 

It's been branded as "the cult mind" all over the internet these days. You've probably seen it yourself. People who are not submitting, who don't believe in the lies and false narratives, constantly shame these enablers for "joining a cult", for giving credence to a leader who "takes away more than he gives, and if you can't see that, then you have been anaesthetized with fantasies and hopes rather than reality" - the obvious stigma of what a lot of cult followers get from outsiders. 

Then there are the voters who voted for the tyrant but who complain constantly about what he is doing. They'll say, "I didn't want to pay more taxes and I don't like socialism, so I went for him and I hope we can all live through what he's doing", or "I didn't want an authoritarian right wing government, so I went for him and cringed the whole time he was in office." They certainly can't be branded as sycophants, but are they enabling "a mad leader" if the leader is indeed truly mad and producing crazy-making policies? 

And by the way, that is how Jekyll/Hyde personality types are often created: reluctant sycophancy, alternating between being enraged by the actions of an abuser, tyrant or silencer behind their back, calling them names, swearing up a storm, then being fawning and sweet to them in their presence.

Then this kind of sycophancy becomes a way of life for them: they vacillate wildly between being scary and nice depending on the person they are relating to, the situation they are in, what they get out of the situation to the point where they can be two-faced with every person they meet. And it can have extreme manifestations, their violence constantly being corrected by their sweet-talk afterwards, over and over and over again via the cycle of abuse. 

I had to separate from one of these types myself. It was no longer safe and it made for an unpredictable, extremely chaotic, "walking-on-eggshells" type of environment. 

It tells me that reluctant sycophancy over years, or starting in childhood, is not in the least bit healthy, for anyone, least of all them, or even particularly valued by most people, even the tyrant, and I bet it can have an impact on the brain as I've never seen or heard of cases where it can be abated in any significant way except with borderlines. For folks with heavy narcissistic or antisocial personality disorder traits in addition to pronounced Jekyll/Hyde traits, these traits seem hopeless to correct. Maybe it can be "modified" somewhat through DBT therapy and CBT therapy. I don't know. Although it might be best not to change these people especially since narcissists and psychopaths are consummate actors looking at how to exploit situations with new-found tools, and "politeness tools" in the hands of people like this may not be a good idea as far as society goes. "Better to see it and flee it" I'd say.

Anyway, for now it seems that reluctant sycophancy to despotic tyrants would be just as unhealthy as the all-in sycophants. 

Can folie à deux manifest among followers of despotic tyrants? Can some of those followers peel off from an adoring crowd if these tyrants fall from power? I bet they can via folie imposée. Can Jekyll/Hyde personality types go more Hyde on a despotic tyrant as the tyrant is falling from grace? I bet they can and do.

crime families and accomplices: 

Then there is the advent of crime families. If two parents are criminals is it likely their children will become criminals too? Research suggests that yes, a child of criminal parents is likely to commit crimes themselves. Not only are they being taught criminal behavior through a parent setting an example, but I'd bet they are being pressured in some way to be accomplices. Criminals usually pressure other people. They want to get away with unlawful acts and if the consequences for those actions can be put on others, so be it. So children grow up in situations where crime is normalized at the very least, and they are coerced to commit some of them themselves at worst. 

Children are either going to please the parent by being an accomplice, or condoning what their parents are doing, or keeping quiet about it, or they are going to disapprove of the criminal acts and usually suffer severe consequences from the parent. If their criminal parent has delusions the child may very well have them too, right? Or at least puppet those delusions. 

Children are assumed to not have much of a free will, so they are usually put in detention homes instead of prison. "My parent made me do it." Not exactly, but to disobey a parent like this might have a very dire outcome for a child. As for the thought processes they might have adopted from the parent maybe it goes like this: "My parent can be scary. I guess he steals so that makes him more scary, right? I believed in what he believed in because it made him happy. I felt I was more a part of the family if I believed everything he said. If I didn't I felt alone, shivery, cold and scared. Being so alone and cold made me realize I should believe him. It makes me happy to see him happy and he is happy if he is believed. I can tell the difference between a lie and the truth when I'm away from him, but when I'm with him my mind tends to go where his goes. Is this my fault?" - I think this is possible for children, yes? So we could say it is a case of folie à deux and folie imposée ... maybe. But not quite because the child can think for himself (mostly? sometimes?) outside the presence of a parent. Still, his free will is compromised by being dependent on a parent, and possibly societally ("obey your elders"). 

But what about when it comes to adults committing crimes under peer pressure?

Folie à deux doesn't typically work because a free will, the ability to come and go, the ability to make your own decisions and know the law, and follow the law, and an ability to be and act in an autonomous manner is assumed after you turn the age of 18. You'd have to make a pretty iron-clad case that these things were restricted all or most of the time for you by someone. If you were able to leave the house, walk the dog, go to the grocery store, talk on the phone, and go to a job every day, then it shows you don't have the kind of restrictions that would keep you from making a lawful choice. Still defense lawyers sometimes try to legitimize folie à deux anyway. 

This link tells why the defense typically doesn't work. 

No wonder psychologists don't want to give folie à deux much credence. "Your honor, my client has folie à deux and was unduly influenced to commit crimes because of it." - Thank God this is not happening and that no doctor can diagnose it. 

But the law about being pressured also means that you must resist sycophancy. That might be harder to do in a country where sycophancy to a leader is extreme and expected to the point of worship, and where there is also a double standard about it: sycophancy to others besides "the leader" is punishable, like if you follow a father into a life of crime, or if you follow the leader of your troop out of the battlefield and all go AWOL, or if you try to escape a country like North Korea. 

It is notable to me anyway, that sycophancy is so popular when it comes to people with no empathy, who start wars (whether killing wars or trade wars or silent civil wars), who bully others, who lie their way through life, who harm lots of other people, who make rash irrational decisions, who often show a disregard for the law, and whose main goal in life is to get as much attention in life as possible (narcissistic supply), get as much money as possible even if it's done unethically, and to get ever more power, control and domination.  

Why would anyone want to be a sycophant to someone like that? Why wouldn't they opt for a free mind instead, a mind unfettered with worry about a tyrant's disapproval every time they had a thought that was different than the tyrant's? Wouldn't it be better to be out of the tight confines of sycophancy? Wouldn't it be better for your mind to go free than to be deemed, under pressure and tyranny, to be no more important than having a lock or silencer on your free-roaming investigations, ideas and perspectives? 

Is it possible for folie à deux to be more common among a group of narcissists, or is it more common for sycophants to adopt it?

In a lot of ways, sycophants and narcissists are kind of alike. They both are looking for rewards in relationships and with each other, and they both tend to give up on ethics to do so. 

The sycophant is looking to be rewarded by the narcissist either monetarily, or through position, or through reputation, or through membership, or attention. Something is going on where they want something from the narcissist and are willing to prostrate and sweet-talk to get it. They wouldn't need to be a sycophant if it wasn't for something they value and want. They could speak their mind, not worry if the narcissist approves, not care if their thoughts or opinions on a matter match the narcissist's - they'd be their own individual and not be afraid of being their authentic self. 

There is usually something in the sycophant where they feel they cannot be their genuine self, to be self aware, and self accepting. In a way, it's about giving into a narcissist via shame. And sycophants give into narcissists a lot and often find themselves so deep into doing and saying things for a narcissist, even evil-doings, that they can lose sense of who they really are beyond what the narcissist wants them to be. 

Some sycophants are expected to be the fall-guy for the narcissist so much so that they eventually reach a point where they can go no further into immoral actions and places that the narcissists comes to expect from them. They then have to give up on the rewards and being in the good graces of the narcissist. 

This isn't a relationship based on compromise.

The narcissist won't hear the sycophant's ideas and thoughts, and the narcissist won't really care about the sycophant past what the sycophant can do. It's also usually based on how much and far the sycophant will go to please the narcissist. How much will the sycophant give up on themselves, their dignity, their safety, their dreams, their authenticity, their own thoughts and feelings, their own experiences, for the narcissist?

The narcissist will always be testing the sycophant to take on more of this too. 

The narcissist, in contrast to the sycophant, is looking for admiration, attention, domination, power and control, and in order to get it, they have to have sycophants who will constantly promote them, bring in people the narcissist thinks are important for their self image and reputation, call them a genius, make admiring gestures, say what the narcissist tells them to say, speak in the way the narcissist wants them to speak, do what the narcissist wants them to do and generally "follow" them. They will also be expected to have the same enemies as the narcissist. If the narcissist bullies an individual, the sycophant is either expected to enable it or to go along with it, and sometimes even take on the role as the main perpetrator.

For the sycophant it is a job of servitude, and if there are few or no rewards, a kind of slavery. Unfortunately the vulnerable, the disabled, the sick, the traumatized, the prejudiced against, and children can be lured into slavery for a narcissist. There isn't much power and control to achieve for a narcissist without a sycophant, or two, or ten, and narcissists think it is easier to find and keep  sycophants among the disadvantaged or children. 

Sycophancy might not be so bad if narcissists weren't cruel and didn't use blackmail, threats, manipulations, fake grand-standing, lying, punishments and coercive control to get sycophancy out of others, if it was totally a volunteer job where you could get a good recommendation if you wanted to quit. 

But narcissists often get enraged when you quit. They want you to suffer. They want to punish you. Only they are supposed to do the firing. Most of them attack you for quitting the sycophant role. They look at it as a grave disloyalty. They look at it as a deep betrayal. But is there really any loyalty in sycophancy since it is based on rewards? And is there really any loyalty when narcissists only look at people as potential sycophants? In other words, isn't it co-disloyalty?

"Will this sycophant be a good one or a bad one? How will they compare to others? Do I need to run a competition between them all to see who is best at it? Do I need to throw away the sycophants who aren't doing enough of what I want them to do?"

And they love the competition. One of their sycophants can be dangerous to another one of their sycophants, and the narcissist will insist they still need to compete for narcissistic rewards and approval. 

That's just sick. If this is being done to children it's especially sick.

You'd think they would make exceptions for their children in this regard. Like: "No, honey. You can't be a sycophant. You're too young for that job. You should spend your childhood playing, laughing, learning, and being healthy. You can't handle it at this age. If you grow up and really want to be a sycophant, then that's up to you. But not even over my dead body will I want you to be a sycophant." - but no, a narcissist will traumatize a child, bully them, threaten them, lie to them, wreck their self esteem and play abandonment games to prime them for a sycophant job for parental use!

And then they will especially seek revenge on a child who no longer can work in that capacity. Richard Grannon talked in one of his videos about narcissists who wouldn't even take care of or visit their young child dying in a hospital, because these narcissists thought the child was a disappointment to them. There is no getting around the fact that most of them are too transactional and very cold-hearted individuals.

So in that way they are worse than a lot of their sycophants.

However, there are usually a lot of sycophants around a narcissist unless the narcissist is old, and because of the numbers of sycophants, and because they want "the rewards" mostly to themselves (there are already too many sycophants vying for those rewards), so they can be quite a bit more menacing for that reason than one lone narcissist. 

And the other thing to take into consideration is that sycophants can be other narcissists. Maybe even most of them are. They want power and control too, but have to work their way up the sycophancy ladder. 

Granted children, even adult children, the disabled, the traumatized, etc. don't necessarily know what they are getting into. This is especially true if they are relating to a covert narcissist. 

For instance, let's choose a child who was rejected in childhood and adolescence for not being enough of a sycophant as our example. Perhaps this child doesn't know they were rejected for those reasons. They just knew they weren't loved and that's about all they know. Perhaps they also know their parent wasn't like other parents. 

So they don't have a very strong connection with the parent afterwards. Maybe they don't have any contact with their parent when they reach adulthood. If they see the parent, the parent puts them down which reinforces, in the child's mind, that they aren't loved. But nothing is new there and let us say there is radical acceptance of this fact by the child even though it is not what the child wants. 

So time goes on and the parent spends most of their time with the golden child while the rejected child scraps together a life for themselves. They are learning to live autonomously from the parent while the golden child is not. The golden child is called upon a lot and there is a lot of parentification and infantilization in their relationship. 

But then the golden child is not producing enough sycophancy and not enough narcissistic supply. Most narcissists do reach a point where sycophancy and narcissistic supply is not good enough in any relationship. They also get sick of relationships they are in because they are novelty seekers. 

So the parent wants the rejected adult child back. It'll rock the golden child's world, but narcissists typically don't mind if it does. This is very common, by the way. Because of the love bombing and future faking the child is receiving, they think that their parent has had a change of mind and heart and found that they actually loved their rejected child after all. No, but the child doesn't know that because the love bombing is convincing them that the parent's intentions are sincere: to love. 

Often the child doesn't know they are being groomed to be a sycophant and source of narcissistic supply at this point until they are near rejection again from the parent or just after they've been rejected again. 

Another example is a person who comes from a highly functional loving family. They, and everyone else in their family takes good care of each other and "goes to bat" for each other, just the opposite of a narcissistic family. It is all voluntary. The members have a lot of empathy for one another and were taught to have empathy through example by empathetic elders.

If a person is sick, or has had an accident, the family wants that member to recover and to be their best individual selves. They love and respect individuality because it means the help and expertise is diverse.

So this kind of person enters a relationship with a narcissist thinking that this is going to continue with them, only to find out that sycophancy, impolite undignified conversations peppered with insults is the standard fare, as well as the narcissist's insistence they get their way all of the time and that there will be no compromise. 

So these are the un-intentional sycophants who didn't know that they were supposed to be in a sycophant role, or were even called upon to be a sycophant. They thought the intentions of the narcissist were love and compassion. 

By the way, love and compassion are the two things you will never find with a narcissist (though they can pretend). The discard and torturing you over not supplying enough sycophancy, enough narcissistic supply, enough mirroring and mind-slaving is proof of it. 

In terms of narcissists, they are sycophants themselves in enough situations until they gain power over others.

If you have had narcissists in your own life, you know they can be beating you up in a car, or dropping you off on a road in a rage to walk home by yourself, or throw food at you and not talk to you for days at a time, and then turn it all off in an instant when someone who is rich, or famous, or has a lot of clout, or is popular, or who they want to impress, walks in the door. They are sticky sweet to these people who come to see them; they fawn all over them and compliment them endlessly; they do things for them that they'd never do for you and you live with them! And you think, "Who on earth are they?! Are they the mean person or the nice person, and how come the mean person and the nice person aren't anything alike, that they are too drastically different from one another, like two different people?"

If a sycophant goes out of the realm of the narcissistic cult and no longer has this kind of Jekyll/Hyde personality where the cruel side of them is exceptionally cruel, and the nice side of them is so sticky sweet that they might as well put a big shining yellow lollipop in the mouth of people they idealize, then they probably aren't a narcissist. If they keep up with the Jekyll/Hyde treatment of other people, then they are probably a narcissist, or at least a Cluster B. 

No one who has an authentic self wants or needs to be Jekyll and Hyde. 

So the answer to "Is it possible for folie à deux to be more common among a group of narcissists, or is it more common for sycophants to adopt it?" It's both. It's both because sycophants can be other narcissists and often are. They, like the narcissist they are "following", often expect rewards for "thinking like the narcissist", otherwise they'd just be themselves and let the chips fall where they may when they speak. If an authentic person is rejected or punished by the narcissist for not being a sycophant, so be it; they still have a personality, interests, perspectives and inner strength to weather the storm. Whereas for someone who has put a lot into sycophancy, and given up a lot to be a sycophant, and they are narcissistically inclined themselves, they can go through a major narcissistic collapse from their leader's discard, making themselves out to be horribly betrayed victims. But that is also the price for being in relationships for rewards, and the price for being the sycophant of a "discarding narcissist" since most narcissists discard, and the price for giving up yourself to please someone who could care less about other people (especially sycophants because it is a user-ship type of relationship for them). 

The fact that narcissists feel they need to reward to get people into relationships with them speaks to their hidden shame and agendas. If they stopped giving out rewards or promises, or idealizations and flattery, would people walk away from them?

Probably. Usually who they have around them are reward-driven people, so yes, people would walk away from them.

No one should be in a close personal relationship for the purpose of rewards (rewards are about having extrinsic value to another person, not intrinsic value - so no, it's not a good relationship because of that).

The fact that narcissists feel the need to punish and hurt people (and children!) because these people no longer want to be a sycophant, or can't deal with it to begin with, also speaks to the folly of trying to punish people for not being sycophants. The purpose of the punishments, I take it, is to get these people to submit to further sycophancy out of fear. That just doesn't work unless they are trapped! And trapping people to serve you is against the law. And it's kind of a disgusting reason to have a relationship with someone to begin with.

Whether a narcissist is flattering, pedestal-ing and rewarding,  or whether they are punishing, threatening, and trying to destroy someone else in a pre-adolescent name calling way because the other person isn't a sycophant enough, none of these are ever going to make a good relationship full of realness, lovingness, care. It's a desperate mimic of a relationship, a junkie relationship, and a limited one at that (as in "any relationship will do, even a bad one where people are after rewards from me or they are kicked to the curb by me because they are willing to sacrifice the rewards to get away from me"). - makes a lot of sense, doesn't it - said facetiously, of course. 

FURTHER READING

Folie à deux and the Sycophant - Google AI article followed by other articles on the topic

 
Folie à deux and the Narcissist - Google AI article followed by other articles on the topic

Folie a deux among a narcissistic group of people - Google AI article followed by other articles on the topic

Folie à deux and Antipersonality Disorder - Google AI article followed by other articles on the topic

Folie à deux and Psychopaths - Google AI article followed by other articles on the topic

The Malevolent Side of Human Nature: A Meta-Analysis and Critical Review of the Literature on the Dark Triad (Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy) - professional study by Peter Muris, Harald Merckelbach, Henry Otgaar and Ewout H Meijer for Research Gate

How Do Dictatorships Survive in the 21st Century?
Early in the twenty-first century, the number of democracies surged past the tally of authoritarian states worldwide. By 2019, dictatorships outnumbered democracies. Why do they keep rising from the ashes? - by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman for Carnegie

The dictator who got away - by Adam LeBor for The New York Times

The Reason You Can't Make Up With Narcissists Has to Do With What Psychologists Refer to As "Splitting" (for both sides)

For a reference and a long explanation as to what splitting is, you can go to my own article on it  HERE. 

For a short explanation it is black and white thinking, "all or nothing" pronouncements, Jekyll and Hyde behavior, looking at people as all good or all bad and nothing in-between those two extremes, and "I have to have my own way or I want nothing to do with you at all" types of behavior. 

It is a very obvious trait for Borderlines, Narcissists and people with Antisocial Personality Disorder.  

It does not breed success in relationships, but with the exception of Borderlines, it is a "fixed" trait that you cannot change by complaining, reasoning, facts, asking them to stop it, expecting them to grow out of it, expecting them to "wake up some day", and all of the other ways that involve change. 

For this post, I wanted to discuss an article about "splitting" on political matters, particularly when it comes to fixed perspectives that seem threatening, but almost all relationships with narcissists have this dynamic going on. You can merely "disagree" on a statement, or perspective, and the narcissist casts you out as a "them", an alien, no longer an "us", no longer belonging to the family, or marriage, or friendship circle. 

Being on the receiving end of a narcissist's splitting is usually heartbreaking and shocking for most people, and a depressing set of circumstances once you realize that the splitting will never change. For narcissists, it's a preferred way of life for them, a preferred mental state where they protect themselves from giving up the on-going agenda of getting evermore domination, power, control and manipulating in every relationship that they are in.

To a lesser degree, it is also their way of protecting themselves from criticism too: unlike the rest of us, they rage and very often hurt us and punish us for perceived criticisms, or having the experiences, perspectives and feelings that they don't want us to have, whether the punishments are about insulting us, or discarding us in favor of looking for a new relationship where they can control the other person more easily, or beating us up, or committing crimes against us. 

Being in the orbit of narcissists means most of us will most likely be splitting too, at least when it comes to them, especially when the narcissist goes into a rage, decides to punish us, when they refuse to listen to us or resolve an issue where both people will be satisfied with the outcome. This comes from Dr. Ramani Durvasula. 

How much you "split" depends on a lot of factors, whether the events that led up to the narcissist's rage or punishment were traumatic for you, whether you were or have been already traumatized, whether you are dealing with physical illnesses or injuries, whether the narcissist clearly wants to or has said that they want to hurt you, your own resilience versus your vulnerabilities. Even when we aren't in the middle of a crisis, narcissists can and do manufacture one, and use it to grab more power and traumatize us. They've studied us long enough to know what will hurt us, and if they are trying to get more power at that time, there's no doubt you will be splitting then too, i.e. perceiving them as "all bad." 

I'd bet anything if a person really, really hurt you (with abuse as part of the picture) and you had traumatic reactions to the pain they caused you (lack of sleep, hypervigilance, stomach issues and/or headaches, muscle aches, lots of grief or pain), and no resolution which takes into account your feelings at all, and where the narcissist is consistently unempathetic and chronically trying to get their own way, it would be very rare for you not to split. You will likely see them as "all bad".

The big difference between us and them is that we go through considerable pain before reaching that conclusion whereas they can do it over the most minor of disagreements, or about a fact in dispute, or because they are momentarily not feeling grandiose, or they may even have a mistaken belief about our intentions towards them. A lot of them are suspicious and paranoid, particularly malignant narcissists. It's why they have a desperate need to control others, judge others and dominate.

But the end result is the same. So we can say we understand them if we've gotten to the point where we find ourselves not able to listen to them any more, no longer able to enjoy their company, no longer feel warm and fuzzy towards them, and feel our lives would be better if they weren't in it (kind of like a discard, only for us it is after our patience has been completely broken). Again, the big difference is that they discard us because they are finding that controlling us "isn't working, isn't enough for their standards" ("never good enough" being one of the major plagues of their disorder). It's a lot different than the way we experience discarding, usually after years and years of patience, trying to resolve un-resolvable issues, feeling sick and traumatized around them, and so on.

We are putting a lot of effort into the relationship, and often caving in to things we really shouldn't be caving into, but that is what all narcissists require. Our efforts, of course, would be deeply appreciated if we weren't doing this with a narcissist. It doesn't take the narcissist much time to get to the point where  they believe a relationship isn't worth their energy or consideration. 

When both narcissist and target reach the conclusion that the relationship cannot be saved, where there is too much stonewalling, contempt, ongoing defensiveness and where the decisions of both parties is that the other is "all bad", it is what Gottman discovered to be one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, where the narcissist shows the contempt first (i.e. "splits" and sees you as "all bad") , which in turn sets up a chain reaction of a mutual "splitting", thereby turning away from each other and ending the relationship. 

Narcissists usually end relationships first: they "split", devalue the person they now view as "all bad", and then they "discard" the person from their life. For malignant narcissists it is "discard and destroy". 

What you go through instead is trauma, then you go through the five stages of grief, and finally acceptance. Once you reach the "acceptance stage" which can take 7 months to several years, you will most likely not be willing to go through it all again, so the relationship ends. 

Some narcissists try to keep this from happening, so they attempt to come back at some point before you get to the acceptance stage of grief where they try to talk you into going back to them, or how they've changed. If you've gone through the acceptance stage, I bet you can't get talked into anything by them, or even have the same capacity to hear anything they have to say the way you used to. If you see them, you get triggered instead (i.e. feel pain or anxiety, wherein you want to get away, or for them to leave you alone). 

I can even attest to the fact that I view all of the narcissists I've had in my life as "all bad" too, even "exceptionally evil", and I ranked very, very high on a part of the Five Factor Model test on Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas (meaning I'm a lot less likely to be splitting than most people, and I do like to give people a lot of chances: whether to calm down, get their emotions under control,  be at peace enough to look at other perspectives, to get out of a defensive mindset, to sit down and talk things out - and by the way, this is not possible for most narcissists, and in contrast, they usually rank very low on Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas unless they are entirely their own). 

The narcissists in my life hurt me so much, were extraordinarily punishing over the most inconsequential matters and resistances, and also lacked reason, empathy, ethics and any trace of fair-mindedness, and believed in assumptions as reality/truth. They were all misogynistic, even the female narcissists went against girls and younger women with a ruthless war-like mentality, slashing away at any sign of a young female's self esteem. All but one commit crimes. And I do not want any of them in my life at all. As the saying goes, "I've had it." 

I think for any of us, we "have had it" when, again, our patience has been tested to the limits, or when we are going through pain from another life event - an accident, or surgery, or chronic condition, or life-and-death event when we are most likely to see their lack of empathy and realize that it is much worse than we ever imagined ... and for Malignant Narcissists, they make it abundantly clear that they get off on our pain at such times.  

Before we get to the "had enough" stage, ranking so high on "Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas" also means that we are able to listen with a much more open mind, and unfortunately, give way too many chances to people that most others would have been intolerant of and dropped long before we did. This is to say that it took some extraordinary events in my life to finally say "no more" to all of the tactics and head games they played. 

And I also found that I wasn't interested in hearing what people without empathy or ethics have to say.

In my own life, I take some pride in the fact that my attitude of "I've had it!" only applied to people with heavy narcissistic or sociopathic traits, the people among us who only seem to have some human qualities (and the worst ones). Granted, I understand that they have a personality disorder, and can't exactly grow empathy or a personality of their own because it was destroyed in childhood or abandoned by them in childhood. They may not have a choice in splitting either. But they do have choices about whether to gaslight or not, whether to go into a rage or not when they feel they are being  criticized or overlooked, whether they criticize others to the extent that they break others' self esteem, and they have a choice as to how they treat women. They also have a choice of whether to give ultimatums, about whether to use others to bully someone else, whether to scare people, and whether to hurt other people as egregiously as so many of them do, especially people who are going through tragedies (so diabolical of them, and even 100 times more so if they do all of this to a child).

I personally can no longer tolerate their lack of ethics and empathy, or deal with their head games and arrogance, especially with what I've lived through, and if no one else can either, their well-being is up to a therapist, not me.

I actually enjoy the fact that I've been able to spend most of my time with empaths in the many years since. The rest of the human race is not like narcissists and sociopaths, and what a difference it makes. I even enjoy other people's  different perspectives, something that they could never do themselves, or tolerate from me. I'm usually eager to hear what people have to say. It feels as though you get to see whole other ways of living, or worlds, beyond your own. Not that I feel I have to adopt theirs as my own, just as the Milky Way does not have to become part of, or mirror, Andromeda. But it's comforting to me that we are not all the same, or think in the same ways, that we all have expertise in diverse areas of work and study, that we don't have to be our own doctor, or our own teacher, or our own compass, or our own police force, and that there are even so many different species inhabiting the same planet who offer even more diversity in the way of thought and perspectives.

"Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas" seems like a good mental state, and to some degree, I think it helps when attempting to live through, and heal from, the trauma that narcissists and sociopaths invariably inflict upon us. It would be hard to "move on" without overwhelming intellectual curiosities, enjoying new experiences and new people, and having a creative approach to life.

Anyway, here is the excerpt of the article:

I’m a Couples Therapist. We Can Address Our Political Divide. - by Orna Guralnik for The New York Times
excerpt of the article:
     ... As children, early in our psychological development, we all resort to a defense mechanism identified by the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein as “splitting.” To cope with negative or inexplicable experiences, we divide our perceptions of people into either all-good or all-bad.
     This splitting allows us to avoid dealing with feelings of vulnerability, shame, hate, ambivalence or anxiety by externalizing (or dumping) unwanted emotions onto others. We then feel free to categorize these others as entirely negative, while seeing ourselves as good.
     In political environments, this kind of splitting manifests in an “us versus them” mentality — where “our” side is virtuous and correct, and “their” side is wrong and flawed — which produces the kind of rigid, extreme, ideological warring we are caught up in now.
     The technologies that mediate our access to reality only exacerbate this dynamic. The algorithms used by social media prioritize sensationalist and divisive content, creating “bubbles” that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives, rather than fostering a balanced discourse.
     It’s important for us to recognize just how gratifying this process can be, both for individuals and larger groups. Splitting produces a kind of ecstatic righteousness. There’s an intoxicating thrill in hate — in feeling that you’re in the bosom of a like-minded brotherhood, free from complexity and uncertainty. In this state we’re prone to ignore information that contradicts our idealized version of ourselves; we become allergic to dissonance; and those with differing views are cast out or canceled.
     To protect this brittle and distorted version of reality, we resort to extreme defensiveness. We frame opposing arguments as a threat to our identity and values. In psychoanalytic terms we call this the paranoid-schizoid position. We all tend to drop into this state of mind when we’re under extreme threat. In certain circumstances, it can allow for powerful acts of courage, but it’s also a state in which nuance and complexity are intolerable, and it’s too easy to see difference as danger.
     What I find most striking when talking to people in my practice is how intensely afraid they are of what they describe as “the other side.” Much as Louisa and Isaac sometimes felt they no longer knew each other even after decades of marriage, many of us have become frightening strangers to each other across the political divide.
     So how do we make our way back from this paranoid-schizoid state? It can seem difficult to imagine — but I know that empathy, compromise and brutally honest self-awareness are the beginnings of reconciliation.
     In Kleinian psychoanalysis, the “depressive position” is the phase that comes after the paranoid-schizoid position, when one emerges into a more integrated and mature state. In the depressive position, individuals begin to see themselves and others as complex and multifaceted, capable of both positive and negative qualities.
     To make this shift, you have to grapple with feelings of guilt and responsibility as you become aware that your aggressive feelings can hurt others — and that these feelings can also coexist with love and respect for the same person. The depressive position represents emotional maturity, within which one can reconcile ambivalence, manage feelings of loss, take responsibility and repair harm in relationships.
     When I work with couples on coming back from great mistrust and animosity, the initial phase requires encouraging each of them to take a good second look at their partner — approaching the other with friendly eyes to gather new and honest information. I embolden them to seek an attitude of true curiosity: How did their partner come to feel the way they did? What motivated them? What matters to them? This entails a shift in rhetoric, away from a stance of suspicion, ridicule and derision toward friendly curiosity. Interest in difference is a place of potential growth and repair. ...

I would argue that emerging "into a more integrated and mature state" has to come with Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas, at least a little. 

As I've said before, this is not a transition that narcissists will make. They get to the paranoid-schizoid state and stay there. 

You might think, "How can that be? Some of them seem to have regrets. Some of them come back and say that they will change." 

They may say that, but they really don't change (another link). And the reason they don't is that their version of splitting doesn't change. It is cemented into how they relate to other people. They won't and don't listen to you right away after a difference of opinion, or an argument, or just because you're an adult and want to make autonomous decisions about your own life without their input. It happens way before most people will stop listening to other people. It can easily be said that it is an extreme form of confirmation bias where even the most unsubstantiated and ridiculous beliefs and prejudices are revered by them. 

Anyone who has ever been hoovered by a narcissist knows that even if they say they are going to change, they go back to splitting and not hearing your perspectives, and often it happens instantly, in seconds, and stays stuck there for months, years and decades.

Most people who have been in close personal relationships with narcissists, also know that narcissists go back to raging, or violence, or discarding if they feel criticized, no matter how sorry they appeared to be, and in a worse way than they were before. We know that the ambitions for power, control and dominance are still there for the narcissist, and probably more so since they failed at it so miserably the last time you were in their life. Believe me, they want that again from you, and it's a pipe dream on their part. They are also extremely jealous, envious people, and unless you burn out your bright light just for them, they are going to hurt you over and over again. It has to do with "what you have" that they feel they are lacking, or wanting, whether that is beauty, money, talent, attention, popularity, youth, a job, or you have family members or best friends who they believe are better than their family members or best friends, or just something they perceive as hierarchically superior to them.  

And because they split so easily they will feel that you are "all superior" and that they are "all inferior" at such times, which at the very least will make them extremely angry and you anxious. 

When narcissists feel inferior they most often triangulate, spread smear campaigns about you, rage, call you crazy or other names, or play the victim so that your time is spent giving attention to them and empathizing with them instead of spending your time on something that makes your light shine brighter. Narcissists really don't like hoovering or showing any signs of pretend-empathy or regret unless they feel they absolutely have to, for the sake of their reputations, or because they've driven everyone away, or for Malignant Narcissists, because they want to make sure they get back at you by hurting you so that you will remain inferior, a loser, to them in their eyes (as if whether you are hurt or not is a sign of inferiority - but to them it is ... just look at how they treat the disabled, the poor, children, women who they perceive to have no power). 

By the way, hoovering means trying to get you back to either reinstate you as narcissistic supply, or to get you back into the role they have assigned you, or to abuse you some more, or to enact a revenge by softening you up via manipulative flattering words. Hoovering is about trying to reinstate a toxic relationship with you and not respecting your boundaries, or the separation between you, your rights to say no, or ignoring your rights to make your own decisions about your own life. There is a creepiness to it, especially if they've trashed your self esteem and are suddenly acting as though it never happened and that you are the love of their life - common. 

Often when their hoovering attempts don't work, they become enraged again, so there are some entitlement aspects to hoovering. 

Some narcissists resort to stalking when hoovering doesn't work for them. 

Hoovering is also highly unethical as it most often comes with lies and fake promises, and can be dangerous. 

Hoovering is also unhealthy for you as it can stir up feelings of fear (again), feeling oppressed or spied on (again), feeling a sense of doom (again), feeling frightened and hypervigilant (again), and getting symptoms of traumatization. 

Most of all, hoovering is a sign of splitting. Let's say they called you a "senseless waste of a human being", "a b*tch", "insane and stupid", and they leave you for another woman. Then one day they show up at your door with flowers and tell you that you "are the love of my life", "the sweetheart of all sweethearts", that you must go back to them "because I had the great epiphany that I can't live without you, that it changed me to my core. You don't have to worry about me ever cheating again, babe". That's a sign of splitting, but it's also the sign of hoovering. 

If they were very nice to you until you "dared to criticize" them, whereby they abandoned you because of the criticism, that's splitting too. If they have the attitude that they have rights to do anything they want but that you don't have the same rights, that's also a sign of splitting. If they come back after months of being away after your separation, that's splitting with hoovering. 

Can you ever trust a hoover? I wouldn't - speaking about myself in my own life. And I'll leave it at that. 

Hoovering and splitting can also be a sign that they are insecure. Let us say that they dumped you and you found someone new. It eats them alive, and then they want to get back at you to see if you are still open to a relationship with them. If they find that they have the power and persuasive abilities to get you back even if you are in another relationship, it's all they really need to know, and they often abandon you again once they have the information they sought. Again, their own power and persuasion tactics are more important to a narcissist than being in a mutual relationship. It's like putting a check mark on a chalk board next to their conquests' names (for instance, checks on Melissa, Janet, Sue and Karen in terms of women who will take them back if they want to go back, or feel they need something from any of them). Again, even this is splitting with hoovering.

THE ARTICLE TALKS ABOUT A DEPRESSION PERIOD.
DO NARCISSISTS GO THROUGH THIS PERIOD TOO?

It's not very likely because of why they are in relationships in the first place: for dominance, power and control of another person. 

Instead of depression, they tend to become very paranoid instead. They can't live with the fact that they are not in control of you, and cannot believe it either. "Why was this person so easy to control before, but they aren't now?" - the answer is because the controlled person was leaning towards peace in their everyday life and was walking on eggshells to achieve that peace. Most everyone does it at one point or another with narcissists.

Also, for narcissists, the paranoia is also about their inward self, that they don't have "the magic to control and dominate" enough, or "the magic to persuade" enough, like they thought they did, or even "the deviousness to control and have people believe in the false narratives of what happened." Sometimes they are happy when the people closest to them say, "Oh, I believe you!", but again, beliefs are flimsy and often built on magical thinking, not reality, not facts, not proven, not vetted, not seen from all sides, often not within reason even, and resemble what the population has about politicians, or religious leaders, or cult leaders.

In terms of believing a politician will save our jobs, or incomes, or statuses, we often feel let down, right? When they talk about how great everything is under their leadership, we feel left out, and some of us vote for the other guy from the other party over it. The same goes for looking to religious leaders to perform miracles. Or cult leaders showing empathy they do not really have. 

Narcissists undergo the same "disappointments" where they know that people look at their "leadership", or advice, or persuasions, or their bullies, as just another ruse of self serving nonsense. 

While the average human being gets depressed and draws inward, and ruminates for a long time about what led up to the event of the paranoid/schizoid state, and how they are going to relate to the person they disagree with going forward, the narcissist gets paranoid and seeks immediate narcissistic supply from someone else instead. Obviously this doesn't help matters, however it is not obvious to them. And when they gather yes-men who have been fooled into a certain narrative, or go further and get their bullies to attack you, it makes matters unresolvable. It's more of an impulsive and thoughtless defensive reaction on the narcissist's part.

But in that impulsive state they are trying to protect themselves from being wrong by staying in that aggressive and paranoid-schizoid state. And you'll notice that the aggression escalates as they try to prove to their partner over, and over again that they are right and that their partner is wrong, and is so wrong that they deserve to be shamed and/or abused a lot. The hurling of constant insults is even abuse, but it tends to go beyond that. 

The other part of this is that narcissists aren't "invested" in relationships the way the rest of us tend to be. They are attached to us in very, very superficial ways, and since power, control and domination are all that they seek in relationships, breakups are superficial happenings because they weren't able to dominate you or tell you what to do as much as they thought they were going to be able to. You'll notice that when you talk to narcissists, they'll either be playing the victim and spouting on and on about how crazy you are, or they will describe the break-up in an off-handed, non-traumatic, "I don't care" way, even if it is their spouse or their child or their best friend. 

As I've said in this post, narcissists can feel disappointed that their relationships don't work out, but not as much as that their relationships didn't feel "good enough" to keep. 

That's an attachment style that most of us cannot relate to at all, but it is important to know that for narcissists it is par for the course. It means, for the most part, that if you want to be in a relationship with a narcissist, you won't be allowed by them to disagree, or at least outwardly disagree with them. But it's also a fact of life that at some point during our lives, we will disagree with them about something. 

Sometimes that disagreement is a life-and-death issue that they won't take seriously. The narcissist then produces an ultimatum where you have to agree to their point of view, no ifs, ands, or buts, or otherwise endure a shaming session and a discard from them instead. You can't afford to put your life in danger, so you accept the end of the relationship. 

While life-and-death issues aren't always the reason, it can be because you were ill and they abandoned you - typical. It can be because they got angry and told you that you were worthless to them, but then acted like it never happened - also common.  It can be because of one of their enablers is a sadist, or because you are their adult child and aren't willing to divorce a spouse or get rid of a boyfriend at their command, or let your child live with them, or any number of reasons where you finally hit a wall and cannot "give into them" any more. 

And let's face it, relationships with narcissists are always about giving into them. There isn't much else to it.  

But more importantly, it often means that relationships with narcissists break apart because they are at the paranoid-schizoid level, and never get to the mature level. 

And it is apparent that the issues don't necessarily have to do with divisions over politics either. You can break up with narcissists over just about anything, even the most confusing, confounding reasons, particularly ones not imbedded in reality. 

It seems nuts that a parent would forbid a child to get married, when for most families they accept that it is part of having a human life (pairing), or for spouses to break up over who does the laundry, but again, for narcissists, they are willing to break up over these kinds of issues and differences regularly. Again, it's because they view their own opinions and thoughts as superior, and that because of that, their attachments to others are superficial. As Dr. Les Carter says, narcissists don't invest in relationships, they manage relationships. I would say "they see themselves as a manager" of other people at all times, whether it is wanted or not. Or maybe that's too nice. Maybe they take a dump on others, metaphorically speaking, since they are so negative about others, especially behind their backs. 

Their type of "managing others" is also what is referred to as utilitarian love. The idea is that falling in love with a person is like falling in love with a toaster oven that works until it seems broken. And they give a person as much consideration as a toaster oven too. They do not go deep. Their love does not include depths of compassion, wanting to understand and learn, exploration, admiration for individuality, admiration for talent and beauty, admiration for the intelligence of others, none of that "openness to new experiences, perspectives and ideas" that make long lasting relationships.  

Once the narcissist splits off from you and sees your perspectives as "all bad", everything else about you becomes "all bad" for them too. It resembles someone only looking at your black and blue fingernail and deciding that the rest of you is all black and blue too - i.e. it is fantasy-making. 

Only submission and agreeing with their perspectives, no matter how fantastical and child-like they are, is seen as acceptable behavior to them. It's another reason why hoovering can be dangerous. Narcissists who want you back usually only want you back in the role they assigned you - and in one way or another dealing with their manipulations again. They know that you are not going to agree with them on absolutely everything, and for most of them, that's the pre-requisite for being in a relationship with you in the first place. It's what they mean when they say, "Loyalty is the most important thing to me" (but they require that the loyalty only be in others; it's not a quality they want in themselves at all). 

Since they know you disagreed with them, it's suspicious when they want you back.

So for the hoover, there will be consequences for not having the loyalty to agree to everything they say they want or need you to be. 

If you do not agree with the pre-requisites of being submissive and agreeing, grandiose narcissists will tend to say you are crazy and stupid and they will have the stance that you never mattered to them much anyway. 

     Covert vulnerable narcissists are likely to want you to pity them, to feel endlessly sorry for them, and they play the victim and even take the reason for the break up and twist it around into a lie. Let's just say the narcissist is a male and he is pressuring his wife to do all of the laundry in the household, that it's a "woman's job." She feels they both work, and both bring in the same amount of income and contribution. He goes ballistic on her, rips up her clothes that are in the laundry bin, pushes her when she tries to save her clothes, shoves her into a concrete wall when she tries again whereby she has a concussion and is taken to the hospital, and she leaves him after she is discharged and files for divorce. The typical covert narcissistic response is: "We broke up over laundry! Can you believe it? I'd never expect a woman to do all of the laundry all of the time, but she wouldn't lift a finger and left our relationship over it! Can you believe it? What other poor sucker is she going to reel in to do her laundry?" - very common, very projection-oriented, and also a sign that suddenly looking at a person as "all unreasonable about laundry" and creating a version where they are "all bad" comes with plenty of lies, omissions, and for paranoid narcissists, fantasies. 

     For malignant narcissists, they will be seeking ways to hurt you for not being as submissive as they want, or submissive enough. If they beat you up and if they are your marriage partner, they'll often try to convince everyone they know that you were having an affair (when you weren't - they want their audiences to see their violent actions as a crime of passion; i.e. as reasonable justification over jealousy, to not take the wounds they inflict seriously). 

     If they are your parent, and they are committing crimes such as theft against you, they'll try to convince others that you are so crazy and that you lose things constantly (again, the lie covers up their criminality against their own child). 

BUT AREN'T BORDERLINES THE ONES WHO "SPLIT"?

Splitting has been attributed to Borderlines as a stand-out trait. But it is something that can be treated in them. Borderlines do have empathy, and self reflection, and that is where they differ from narcissists. 

The lashing out also tends to be impulsively driven, but also just as impulsively regretted afterwards. 

As with narcissists, they tend to grow up in abusive abandoning families too, but their empathy, abilities to self reflect, and potential, weren't destroyed in childhood like narcissists tend to be. 

And many tend to have a reactive form of PTSD too, especially when it comes to abandonment where their emotions fly from one reaction to another, the "I hate you; please don't leave me" kind of responses that Borderlines are noted for. In reality, the response has been attributed by some clinicians as a really rapid PTSD trigger flipping from one trauma response to another (fight, flight, freeze, fawn and avoid). The trauma responses are often so overwhelming that they don't know what they feel in the end, as they flip in and out of one impulsive traumatic response after another, and then finally freeze when they know they have been abandoned for good.  

So Borderlines can find themselves wanting to get out of the paranoid-schizoid state, of at least knocking harder on that door to let them enter "the mature state" (if they are not active addicts, that is - many of them tend to be, as it is part of "the impulsivity part" of Borderline Personality Disorder). 

Narcissists plainly can't get there, nor are they interested in a more "mature space". It's the lack of empathy that keeps them from entering "the mature space", but it also has to do with the fact that they feel safer, stronger, more self-managed, more in control of others and the emotional climate in a room if they can stay stuck in their accusatory aggressive patterns. 

Borderlines tend to be creative visionaries, and I'd argue that they are too creative for maintaining ongoing accusatory aggressive stances (like they have more openness to new perspectives, ideas and experiences than narcissists have). 

Borderlines also don't have the illusion that they self-manage very well. In fact, most of them agree that their lives are a mess. 

In contrast, narcissists have the delusion that they self-manage exceptionally well, and that all of the people around them don't or can't. And narcissists tend to think that way even when their lives are full of broken relationships, broken commitments, broken promises, feeling like no one and nothing is good enough for them, unremitted raging, the kind of aggressions that most people would regret. Their lives are often also filled with regretful affairs, firings, lies, pretending, shallow narcissistic pastimes like gambling, getting drunk, endless trash-talking about other people, going on endless trips to get away from something or someone, going to prostitutes daily or weekly, and taunting, goading and bullying others. They would never see their lives as a mess, and if there are some messes in their lives, they attribute those messes to others, always.

If they rape a woman, it's always deemed to be the woman's fault, or they will deny having raped her in the first place. - those kinds of messes. 

And, of course, if they can't convince the woman that she needs to say "I brought this upon myself" (which they actually entertain because they believe that they are *that special and charismatic* or teflon-like), or press her to say that it "never happened", she is deemed to be "all bad, all nasty, the most 'ugly horseface I've ever met', would never want to rape her let alone look at her, unbelievably stupid and will face consequences for having accused me of such aggressive, criminal acts." - i.e. the immature, never-accountable, side of them comes out. 

Borderlines are less able to go to these kinds of extremes in splitting, accusing victims, or even trying to make their victims the guilty party. In other words, if they don't have morals, or empathy, or if they spend lots of time blaming victims for everything, they are not Borderlines. They are probably Narcissists, or Sociopaths or Psychopaths. It's a good distinction to make (and yes, some Narcissists can be mis-diagnosed as Borderlines, and vice versa). 

FURTHER READING
AND VIDEOS

Why Narcissists Can Forget Their Own Bad Behavior Using "splitting" to expel bad behavior from their memory. - by Erin Leonard Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Splitting (psychology) - from Wikipedia

Narcissistic Behaviour Post-Separation: Understanding Splitting in Psychoanalytic Theory - by Sarah Squires for Get Court Ready, Improving Outcomes for Children in Family Court

Splitting - from the administrators of Mindset Therapy 

Narcissists and Splitting - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula (clinical psychologist), You Tube video
Note: interesting comments on this video too

When A Narcissist Shifts From Promising To Devastating - by Dr. Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)

A Narcissist's Outside Angel, Inside Devil - by Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)
Note: interesting comments on this video too. 

Splitting and Narcissism - Google AI from a number of articles written on the subject

splitting and a narcissistic discard - Google AI from a number of articles written on the subject

When narcissists "devalue" and "discard" (Glossary of Narcissistic Relationships) - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula (clinical psychologist), You Tube video

Splitting in the narcissist relationship | Idealization and devaluation with the narcissist - by Mindset Therapy, PLLC (You Tube)

"SPLITTING" IN BORDERLINE AND NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER : WHAT IT DOES TO US IN CHILDHOOD - by Dr. Kim Sage, Licensed Psychologist (You Tube)

Another reason making up with narcissists doesn't work: An Angry Narcissist's Non-Negotiable Stonewalling - by psychologist, Les Carter, for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)

FOUND ON FACEBOOK

From "I Am a Queen" (poster from the Phillipines on Facebook)
I included it because there may be some truth to it?
 
Do narcissists plan to destroy their relationship from the beginning ?

The truth is that the narcissist never wanted a future with you. From day one, they saw you as something that was temporary. You were disposable.

When a person is in a relationship and they're thinking about their future with that person. They're going to take the necessary steps to ensure that everything turns out ok. It's like preparing for a storm. They're going to do everything they can to prevent destruction. To prevent anything from going wrong. But the narcissist never took any steps to protect your future with them. And although you could argue that there are storms in every relationship.

They never took any steps to make things right. When you look back at your relationship, you will see that the narcissist is the storm. They caused destruction in your life. They broke you down. They turned you into nothing but a shell of what you used to be. They destroyed you mentally and emotionally. They destroyed you financially. If they were considering a future with you, they would never have done any of that.

If they have a purpose for you in the future, they're going to treat you with dignity and respect. They're going to protect you from danger or harm. They're not going to abuse you. But that's exactly what these narcissists do. They abuse you to the point where there's no going back.

Where you're not going to serve any purpose for them in the future. Because those are their true intentions. They want to break you down. So that you're not going to be good for anyone after they're gone. They know that the relationship is going to end. They know that at some point you're going to leave them and move on to something else. Every narcissist knows this. They know that they're not meant to be loved. They know that you would not willingly desire to remain around them.

Why Do Narcissists Care So Much About Their Image? Narcissism and the Inauthentic False Self: Acting, Faking, Self Aggrandizing, Playing the Victim

"Seems a Little Too Big, Don't You Think?"

© August, 2023

Someone asked me in the comments section of the post on narcissistic enablers and co-bullies whether narcissists are acting most of the time? Yes. It is explained in the text that follows and in the further reading and video sections below.

It's why you see Jekyll and Hyde behavior (often super sweet to total strangers or people with money, harsh and cruel to and around family or people they deem weak or beneath them), playing the victim (when they are actually the perpetrators who started the ostracizing and/or attacks on your self esteem), self aggrandizing and pretending they are greater than they actually are (so they can convince people that they are entitled to special treatment).  

Narcissists who have gone public about their condition talk about the dilapidated self, that they don't know who they are beyond what people tell them who they are. What this means is that no personality was able to develop in childhood, so narcissists make up a personality to fit what ever situation they are in. Like the echoist, they tend to grow up in circumstances where other people decide who they are and their value (adults who heavily judged everyone). However, unlike the echoist, when narcissists become adults, they decide what kind of personality to use in order to manipulate people into thinking certain things about them, to exploit situations so they would either be feared or would inspire absolute loyalty (in other words, there is often no other choice except those two awful choices).

And the reason why is this: 

When they deem they can control you, you often get the nice side. They can talk badly about you behind your back (and Dr. Les Carter says most of them do in several of his videos), but to your face, they are ingratiating and charming. If they think that they can get you to hitch your self esteem to their opinions of you, you are "in" their good graces. If they think they can brainwash you to hate the people they hate, again you are "in the club". If they think they can give you constant advice which they can later turn into commands, you are part of the club. If they think that you will be loyal to them no matter what they do, and if they think they can talk you into taking the blame when they do something wrong, you are part of the club. If they think that you will look at them as superior and entitled to special treatment at all times rather than as an equal, you are also in the club. If they think that you will believe their acting job is the real authentic person that they are, you are very much in the club and you will be rewarded for it. 

However, if you have some issues with how they treat you, or how they lie, or how they blame you for things that aren't your fault, and if you do not want to go along with what they advise, or expect, or command, you will be treated like you don't matter. You may get the cold shoulder, or the silent treatment, or they will discard you in the most inhumane way, depending on the type of narcissism they have. Some of them will spiral down into downright evil if you so much as look at them in a way that they don't approve, even if the way you looked at them was not what they assumed. If you experience or see their Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde side, and you don't like it, again, you are toast. They can make it known that they never cared for you or about you, that you never really mattered to them when they were love bombing you (which again, is an admittance that they lie to you - and love bombing, in and of itself, is a lie). Some of them, particularly malignant narcissists can be quite retaliatory and vengeful, deciding that they must hurt you in order to make themselves feel better. And if they are more sociopathic than narcissistic, they will have no regrets, no morality, for having done so. In their minds anyone who they hurt, and sought out to hurt, deserved it, even when they misinterpret (and the more disordered they are, the more they misinterpret). 

Being cruel and unkind to you for not living up to these kinds of standards is common to all narcissists, so it can't be counted as a trait or identity: these are just reactions that come from their personality being disordered. 

Most of us have consistent traits that people can count on every time they see us. We are likely to have strong interests, and to be motivated to pursue those interests. The same personality that we had the last time someone saw us is the same personality they see again. We don't have a Jekyll/Hyde personality. We don't look to people to prop up an image we want to have. We are secure in ourselves and who we are and it can't be dismantled by someone's opinions because we have morals and ethics that can't be denied by someone else. We don't just change our personality to become evil and dismissive because our ego isn't being stroked all of the time the way narcissists do. 

Narcissists can't do this, especially if they have all of the traits of their disorder.     

They often mirror or become like their childhood abuser. "Mirroring" is not a personality. In childhood it is a survival tactic to keep from being abused and/or neglected and unloved. If the parent approved of their acting job in childhood, the child will use it as an adult. 

In adulthood narcissists use the mirroring for garnering narcissistic supply than to get along with abusive people: they entice or get along with other people by being ultra nice, and once they have your attention, they figure out what role or use they want you to inhabit in their life. If you don't fit the role they want you to, they can become disenchanted and out you go. This is not a personality, per se. It is just a common part of the disorder.

And by the way, a lot of narcissists think that everyone else has the same disorder that they do, but that we aren't as aware of that fact as they are. No, the whole population does not have the personality disorder they have, and we do not conduct ourselves in relationships in the same way that they do.

They often get discarded themselves by others, and they think they are discarded for the same reasons. No they are not. They mostly get discarded for their profound lack of ethics, morals and lack of empathy (because they never developed them in childhood or adolescence), and because being in a close personal relationship with the high majority of narcissists causes almost all of us non-narcissists to have trauma symptoms, or to start getting them. 

We don't have trauma symptoms when we are in healthy relationships (i.e. when we aren't in relationships where one person is hellbent on getting power and control over over another person in a close personal relationship - an evil motive as far as I see it). 

We don't discard others over roles either, but that is the way they want it. And they aren't able to tell that we don't discard over roles because they are highly self-absorbed, have selective listening, project their own behaviors on to others, and manipulate in ways that are not healthy for the majority of us.

When they seek out relationships as adults, they generally pursue "followers" and people who would believe, even if not true, that the personality they propped up and that they try to inhabit is of greater stature and ethics than they really are or were. They don't feel comfortable with anything resembling true intimacy and the truth, and many of them resist it by having affairs on us, or toxic secrets, and avoid truth-telling. The truth to narcissists is "free to interpret" and therefor either disregarded or treated as an amorphous molding compound, just like the personalities they try on.

Having a secret life is about getting more narcissistic supply, to get more feelings of grandiosity, power and entitlement outside the relationship whether that is through gambling, through finding a scapegoat or scapegoats to blame and/or torture, running an underground or illegal business that their family does not know about, fulfilling an addiction, telling false narratives to someone, or having an affair ... In other words, they don't share much of themselves, or their true motivations towards other people most of the time. 

A high majority of narcissists have "a secret life" that their partners, friends, and children, and many others do not know about. The secret life is just another personality they are trying out, which they believe fulfils some need in them, which feelings of impulsivity drive. 

When the secrets are found out, the narcissist usually rages and abuses the person who either revealed the secret, or found out about the secret. So they have a crisis about it, and whose fault is it? They usually decide it is the person who found out.

Being exceptionally cruel for speaking out about "their secret personality" is especially true for the malignant brand of narcissist. The morals and ethics of the narcissist spiral down because they feel entitled to a "secret life" that should never be spoken about, no matter how it effects the people around them. They don't want you to have a secret life from them, of course, and they feel highly threatened by information that is kept from them, and will insist that you even share confidential information from others. Their feelings of entitlement in this regard (an illusory feeling) tells them that they are "special" and that they have rights that others do not. That is also part of the personality disorder and is predictable for almost all narcissists.

Many of them reject the people who find out about them, that they have toxic secrets. It is their way of saying, "You have found me out. I can't be anything but superior, and you knowing that I am not, that I lead a double life is always is going to compromise my superiority, so out you go!" 

You can see why a partner or family might react to "the narcissist's secret life" too:

in cheating: unwanted pregnancies with non-family members, lovers who may become obsessed with "acquiring" the narcissist such that they'd be dangerous to the spouse or children to get them out of the way, getting venereal diseases that they'd then spread to their partner, the potential of splitting the family where children aren't as likely to be cared for and risk abuse, and just generally creating a lot of hurt and drama, among many, many other potential issues.

in gambling: using money meant for the family towards an addiction to the rewards of slot machines, casinos, or a nightlife of one person's singular pleasure activities, and the possibility that the family will go broke, and lose the house, the car, and everything else that keeps the family functioning. 

in addictions: similar to gambling, but risking arrest or a round of rehabilitation centers. 

acquiring scapegoats: the secret life here is focused on bullying, hurting or killing other people. Some of the drawbacks here are: risk of arrest, risk of incarceration, risk of retaliation by the scapegoat's "people", risk of the family being thought of as prejudiced. Also, if the narcissist is a bread-winner for the family, it puts the whole family at risk. Since abuse tends to escalate, and scapegoating can become an obsession with many plans on "how to hurt the scapegoat(s)", the family has a lot to worry about. 

stealing: risking arrest. Some narcissists feel they have to impress people with what they have, so they steal from others as a way to say, "I'm richer than you think I am. Why look, I have a big diamond," even though they stole it, "If I were a low life, I wouldn't own a diamond." They get a sense of grandiosity and attractiveness by owning a diamond. It can be a way to entice others, to have power over others, to get into certain social circles, to get envy from like-minded individuals, and so on. Then they begin to have an air of superiority and think that anyone who goes to work 9 - 5 is living a boring life not worth living. They think people who get their money through honest means are stupid too (when you can get so much more by stealing?). Stealing can have a snowball effect, like an addiction where they don't feel quite powerful enough unless they acquire more, and more, and more, so they eventually take bigger chances to acquire more expensive goods, and possibly do home invasions, and then if someone finds them out, they have to get rid of what they have stolen or the person who found out about their stealing, and down in the moral dumpster they go, until arrest becomes imminent. Then they have a narcissistic crash after they have tried to make the point that poverty, or lack of goods, fairness or status, made them do it (and depending on where society is on this issue, if society is convulsing from a great depression where a quarter or more of a nation is out of work, juries may not convict, or give lenient sentences). But assuming that jurors and judges have played by the rules and laws, stealing can have serious repercussions.

Narcissists don't like to be reminded of any of this. Again, they guard and defend their entitlements to these activities, and because of their inability to care about others or to feel much, if any, empathy, they take to raging and blaming instead of feeling embarrassed and cleaning up their act.   

In other words, they expect that others will keep their secret life of a Hyde personality a secret too. Not too likely. So then the narcissist, after rejecting you, finds other people to brainwash. 

In terms of collecting "followers" in their authoritarian dictatorial way, they expect their followers to adopt the same enemies or scapegoats that they want to hurt, taking up interests that they want taken up, to think in the ways they want, and so on ... That also comes from their childhood, where they mirrored the adult abuser's personality, likes and dislikes, to avoid the abuse or neglect they saw around them. In other words, they became a follower, and perhaps even a golden child, and saw how the abuser got away with pressures, ultimatums, abuse and insisting on a script of behaviors, and now expects the same from others around them. 

A PERSONALITY IS NOT AN IMAGE

Narcissists put a lot of effort into acting out personality types.

And the personality type they put the most effort in, and which is hardest to maintain, is the one where they are super nice and superior to others, that they aren't capable of any wrong-doing, that their ethics are clean and pure all of the time (past, present, future), their intentions towards others are to be empathetic, kind and understanding, and that if anything goes wrong in their relationships, they are so faultless that they are to be seen as the wronged victim. 

If you've lived with a narcissist or narcissists, you know that this is not who they are at all. If anything, you see the opposite of this. They are probably even talking and laughing about the people they show this "fake personality" to. It's endlessly humorous to them that people fall for this holier-than-thou image they put forward. They do like it that they get away with it so much, that they can fool others.

They aren't going to go around and announce: "Well, I have affairs, and I particularly like this one guy. But when I'm around friends, I act like I'm shocked when I hear one of them talk about how their spouse ran off with someone else. I act like I don't condone the act so I can stay in my friend's good graces. I actually don't care about my friends' personal lives at all, and who is cheating on who, unless I find a way for it to work in my favor. I just play the angel or saint most of the time. It works for me, and they come to me for advice. I like being an advisor: it makes me feel in control of their life and gives me narcissistic supply. I also like the fact that I dupe them with this advisor persona. And if I can present the idea that I never have affairs, that my ethics are super high and clean, then I can feel like I have a superior life where I have a spouse I can work things out with, where I can present a happy marriage. And then they get jealous of this happy marriage I have, and come to me for advice so they can get the kind of marriage I have. But the marriage I have isn't that great, which is why I'm cheating." - after all, who would want a friend like that, who is faking it most of the time? And most narcissists know that they would be rejected for being this fake, or sense it, especially when they go negative on that same friend in private.

So, they have to hide that part of what they do, and present themselves in another way. 

They need it to get other people to side with them when something goes wrong in one of their relationships, thus the mask:

One of the other reasons they go so negative on people in private also has to do with getting other people to side with them in case that person tries to expose them, or what is called exposing the mask (another link and another link and another link). They feel they have to be able to refute it all, and to have an entourage of flying monkeys who will stoutly defend them, and to shout down the person who has seen what they are really about. 

They will do just about anything not to be exposed. 

The shadow self:

The mask also exists because they have a much, much larger backlog of embarrassments, of "a secret life", of stored shame-based information about themselves, than most of us have that they don't want exposed to anyone. This is called the shadow self.

Most people have a shadow self, and how we relate to having a shadow self is to do better. This is how we develop ethics, and better alternatives instead of going around with shame. Narcissists don't do that. Instead, the shame-based "stuff" they hide is too overwhelming for them, that it would be too hard to fix because there is so much of it, so they rage and bully instead when you get close to it, or after you discover it. They feel the need to guard it like an attack dog so that you, and no other person will dare to look, let alone tell them what they have found, or venture to see what their particular "shadows" might be. 

They make it pretty plain that what causes them shame, and what has caused them shame in the past, is pretty locked up, not to be looked at, not to be talked about, not to be studied or researched, not to be brought up at the dinner table, and that anything at all that will lead to where their shame is, is going to be guarded. 

It is why very few narcissists share much personal information about themselves, and why they tend to stick to subjects that make them "appear" good instead. Why get into the shame-based stuff when they can show you something ideal and larger than life instead?

However, when it comes to you, they'll want to know everything that makes you feel ashamed. They dig into it and tell you that you can trust them at the same time. You find out later that you can't when they use it all against you in a discard. But they have been using it all against you in gossip circles and with their flying monkeys all along. 

When we are children of a narcissistic parent we tend to over-share. They become enraged when we have to keep confidences that we have made with other people, when we want privacy, and when we want to keep our thoughts, interests, experiences and what goes on in our relationships to ourselves - even when we are full adults, even when we are over age 50 and not kidding. We and narcissists can sometimes misplace this "desire to know us" as a desire for intimacy, but it is not. 

Real intimacy is about both people sharing, so the lesson here is not to share any more information than you are receiving from them. And don't be pressured into sharing information you don't want to share. One of their favorite phrases is "It's none of your business." You have a right to that phrase too if they are using it. And don't be bought (narcissists will sometimes give you money to get you to talk - just don't do it, and keep things people say to you in confidence to yourself because it's the ethical thing to do). 

Narcissists will horde information their children give them to use against them later ("blackmail insurance"): "You do what I want or I'll start talking about you in derisive ways with all of the information I have gathered about you." 

They do play lots of games with other people's shame and "shadows", but get enraged when you've discovered one of theirs. That should speak volumes. 

But blindingly obvious hypocrisies is also part of their disorder; it comes with the territory of all narcissists. Hypocrisy and becoming dangerously enraged is also the way they keep the mask on. 

When they are breaking up with someone, or doing one of their discards, they have no trouble shaming the other person, or spreading gossip and false narratives to make their victims look shameful.

Also, for people outside the situation, over-sharing with anxiety is a sign of the real victim, whereas making judgmental statements (especially, "They are crazy!") is the sign of the perpetrator.  

Accountability and the mask:

As I've said in the last chapter, trying to make them accountable for being fake, you get rage, and very often abuse too. The more drastic this two-faced behavior is, I'd bet the more malignant they are in their narcissism too (malignant meaning having some Antisocial Personality Disorder traits in addition to the Narcissistic Personality Disorder traits).

They can't deal with shame in a healthy way, other than to rage. That has everything to do with the shame-rage spiral attributed to narcissists (to be published soon). 

If you have been around narcissists, you also see that they seem a lot more relaxed when they are negative on others, or towards others, especially if they have other narcissists to be negative with. "Ha, ha, ha! What a loser! Who wouldn't cheat on her anyway! Cow!" - that kind of talk.

So, is that their real self?

Is their real self their shadow self, all of the negativity?

Narcissists who have gone public say "mostly no" there too, even though it is easier, more comfortable for narcissists to be negative on others than it is to be positive. It's their quite large shadow self breaking through to the surface where they feel a bit safer, perhaps.

But it has more to do with their lack of empathy and compassion (this is actually not fake: they don't feel empathy most of the time; they have to act it out and they find it trying and irritating to have to act, but necessary, if they don't want to come across as heartless - I will be giving examples in another post - so in situations, usually with other narcissists, they feel comfortable and at ease at not having to appear empathetic). It also has to do with the fact that most of them have low morals and ethics too, as I've said before. If they can let the acting go by the wayside like "I tell the truth all of the time and I am altruistic in everything I do" be put aside to criticize others instead, they feel more at ease.

Scapegoating someone in these co-narcissist groups is always going to be an agenda too, so they are encouraged to be negative. They are encouraged to deal with their shadow selves by being aggressive, hurtful, abusive, insulting, and so on, instead of being nice and pretending to be altruistic.  

However, this is not necessarily their true side either. Here are a number of reasons why:

Most narcissists feel they absolutely need to be in relationships all of the time. They are not comfortable at all not having close personal relationships where relationships are reduced down to the kind of relationship you would have with a grocery store clerk, for instance. It is the kind of relationship that psychologists suggest for the rest of us when dealing with narcissists, however (gray rock), if they aren't suggesting you to go "no contact". So narcissists are having to deal with a lot of gray-rocking these days. When every relationship they have is full of people who are guarded and will only relate to them on a superficial basis, they tend to not take care of themselves and wither away when people aren't propping them up and when they are alone. Even getting proper meals can be part of the picture.

The more pathological narcissists deal with narcissistic collapse by trying to hurt others, or if they have gone a certain way with their pathology, to do a murder-suicide. A lot of mass murderers have pronounced narcissistic traits.  

But if they haven't chosen this "deadly way" of dealing with narcissistic collapse, which most of them don't, and they are reeling from bad deeds instead where no revenge fantasy will work for them any more, and they are bereft of close relationships, they can get to a point where they no longer take care of themselves. 

But again, there is hypocrisy in not being able to stand being forsaken in this way as they have no problem trying to put other people in situations like this (smear campaigning one of their scapegoats to such extremes that the scapegoat is defenseless and alone, for instance, and has to fend totally for himself). What they dish out is what they can't live through themselves. 

They puff themselves up to be a big bad bully, but run and hide (like a coward) when being bullied themselves. 

They also puff themselves up to appear grandiose and better than all living beings on the planet, but when no one goes along with it, they practically shrivel up and die. 

So, without these facades, and left to ponder their ethics, and how they have lied about, and treated people in their lives, they often become a "pitiable mess".  

In other words, they feed off of what other people tell them, whereas the rest of us get to know ourselves and build our personality, starting in childhood, out of morals, our interests, our work, our relationships with peers, the thoughts that go through our head and what we are willing and not willing to do in terms of the kind of thoughts we have - in other words, we are always making moral decisions all of the time, and what we feel will be the best outcome for everyone, not just for ourselves, or primarily for ourselves. In order to grow up this way we usually have to have at least one ethical caretaker who takes an interest in our ethics, in addition to our emotional intelligence and well-being. It can sometimes happen organically, just because some of us are born with an innate sense of direction, no matter how much the caretaker tries to counter or sabotage it. But usually, someone in the child's life has to model ethical behavior.

When we are challenged by narcissists into fights, many of us avoid them because they will go into a very unhealthy highly unethical place to win the fight, whereas we won't, so we leave them alone mostly when they want to fight. This doesn't mean that we won't fight for awhile to make our point and plead our case, but when we see how low they want to go, we either abandon them and the fight, or they abandon us for not fighting. 

In terms of all of the negative talk that they engage with their co-narcissists (trash-talking), the level of scapegoating can be uncomfortable for those on the lighter end of the spectrum since not all narcissists are created equal. Take the scene of slipping on a banana peel. Some of them are going to be laughing about the scapegoat hitting their head and dying while slipping on the banana peel, and some of them don't want to go that far: they are going to be happy with them landing on their bottom, and "learning a lesson" instead, as if good lessons can be learned by people getting hurt. 

Some of them are not going to feel death is necessary or justified, or a proper payment for what the scapegoat has done. Some of them will be laughing nervously even if they are pretending to go along with the group who wants death.

On a grander scale, this happens in war too, with atrocities in particular: whether to obliterate women, children, farm animals, pets and personal homes, and not just military targets and personnel. There will always be members of any army who do not want to kill women and children, farm animals, pets, and take away their personal homes or shelter, who don't feel it is justified or necessary in winning a war (it is how members of an army get low morale, and how generals become complacent - because they are commanded to do things which goes against their morals and ethics, even the morals and ethics that their leader expects when they are on their own home territory. They cannot look at "the enemy" the way their commanders are demanding they be looked at).

So, if being negative is also not entirely authentic, and just another mask, even if it is a bit more comfortable because they can let out steam, and let go of the act for awhile, why do they do it? 

The answers have something to do with the other traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

The manipulations:

The other big part of the picture besides low empathy and low ethics is that narcissists, especially those with all of the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and perhaps some other traits from the Cluster B spectrum, are manipulating people constantly. They wake up to a day of manipulating, and they go to bed at night wondering if they've manipulated others the right way, too much, or too little, and whether and how they've managed to effect people to their desires.

Does everyone in their circle approve of them sufficiently; is everyone in their circle blind to their acting enough; is everyone brainwashed enough so that they can start a campaign of ____________? (and you can fill in the blank).   

One of the ways they like to manipulate people is by proxy. Let us say that you are a child and you are hearing the adults in your household having trash-talking sessions about other people. Part of the trash-talking goes around to talking about a child who slipped up and made a mistake, who was grounded for weeks for being insubordinate. "I let him have it hard! His ass was red by the time I was done spanking him. My child will never question who is boss again!" 

So, in this kind of scene it is to threaten the children who are listening to this story by proxy: that adults are boss no matter whether you like it or not, and if you fail to let them be boss at all times, then you will get hurt. Again, this comes from narcissists themselves (in their forums), talking about their condition, and the different personalities they put on to effect what ever situation they are in. 

The other way they like to manipulate is through gaslighting: "You're so inept! What is wrong with you!? It must be your mind again. I guess I'll have to take control."

But, again, manipulating is part of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and part of an original larger defense mechanism of keeping safe from a Cluster B parent. The often subconscious and impulsive thought pattern is: "If I manipulate people and control people around me enough, like my parent did, then I am protected from accountability, fault, blame, hurt, abandonment, and I can do anything I want because I am even in control of labeling and telling them how they feel. They don't get to label that; only I do, and if I don't like how they feel, or they are rebelling against my labels, I have a right to call them crazy." 

Obviously there is way more to manipulation than this, but think of it as "the original manipulation" that put their narcissism into motion, and thus all of the different personalities they needed to coerce every source of narcissistic supply they came across into giving them power, control and domination. 

I will get to some of the other traits of the disorder in the next chapter. 

WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF A PERSONALITY
AND WHY DO NARCISSISTS LACK HAVING ONE?

The definition of personality in this context according to the Merriam-Wester Dictionary is: 

     the quality or state of being a person

     the condition or fact of relating to a particular person ... 

     ... the complex of characteristics that distinguishes an individual or a nation or group

especially : the totality of an individual's behavioral and emotional characteristics ... 

But then incites readers to pick the right synonyms:

     Choose the Right Synonym for personality
* DISPOSITION, TEMPERAMENT, TEMPER, CHARACTER, PERSONALITY mean the dominant quality or qualities distinguishing a person or group.

* DISPOSITION implies customary moods and attitude toward the life around one.

     a cheerful disposition

* TEMPERAMENT implies a pattern of innate characteristics associated with one's specific physical and nervous organization.

     an artistic temperament

* TEMPER implies the qualities acquired through experience that determine how a person or group meets difficulties or handles situations.

     a resilient temper

* CHARACTER applies to the aggregate of moral qualities by which a person is judged apart from intelligence, competence, or special talents.

     strength of character

*PERSONALITY applies to an aggregate of qualities that distinguish one as a person.

     a somber personality

The Cambridge Dictionary:

     the special combination of qualities in a person that makes that person different from others, as shown by the way the person behaves, feels, and thinks

For the intentions of this post, the list of synonyms from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary are more appropriate (with the concept of "consistency" as part of it). 

To go from being an upstanding moral figure in one's family, with a secret life of killing prostitutes as a side-line activity (malignant narcissism - dark tetrad) is not any kind of consistent personality. The family will know him in one way, the great father and husband, and the law will know him in another way, as a criminal, with a predatory mind, and define his misdeeds as his personality. 

But the fact of the matter is, in these kinds of individuals, personality is either:

1. the sum of all of the parts of his character

or 

2. a person who has no personality and adopts certain personalities that have been modeled to him to achieve certain goals

Narcissists who have gone public say it is the second. Adopting someone else's personality is, of course, acting.

And if you want to get philosophical about it, these "adopted" personalities aren't particularly fake (even if narcissists say they are fake - like pretending to love someone they do not love), because they don't have a personality to begin with. For instance, let us say you have decided to take on baking, but you don't have all of the ingredients to make a cake. So do you make a fake cake, even though you have never made a real cake? Again, it is just a philosophical question.

Adopting the abusive parent's personality and what else they learn in childhood: 

As I've discussed before, as children, narcissists are known for having adopted the abusive parent's personality to keep safe. But it is not their personality: it is someone else's. As soon as the child realized their narcissistic parent liked their child mirroring them, the better off they were compared to their siblings. And narcissists expect a whole lot of mirroring from their golden children including adopting the parent's perspectives (especially on other people; i.e. parroting), the parent's style, the parent's agendas, and so on. Narcissistic parents very rarely tell their children to be their own selves, to discover and explore different fields of study to decipher what their real interests are, to treat their siblings with dignity and respect because they will never have another one, and so on. No, they just want mirrors, to talk about hierarchies and which of the golden child's sibling is doing better or worse, constantly comparing their children to one another, and "yes-men".  

So they are taught that having any other "persona" or "thoughts" other than the narcissistic parent's is dangerous for them, that they will be unloved and not taken care of. The parent must be seen as the "superior personality", which, if adopted in full by one of the children, can also make that child feel he is superior too, just like his parent. He gets to tell people how to act and behave just like his parent.  

They see the parent trying on all kinds of personalities to please and entice others, and being two-faced too to some extent, and they parrot that too. 

So, they never really know what their real personality would be like without this constant micro-managing, molding and the power trip of their parent, what potentials they would have otherwise had beyond being just another manipulator, thought police, emotional regulation officer, and bully like their parent. And the rewards are so great for being a mirror that it keeps them stuck in a child-like molded-by-parent state often forever. It accounts for some of why they are so immature emotionally. My own observation is that a lot of golden children baby-talk well past age 50 too, just to keep the parent satisfied (narcissistic parents are satisfied when any follower acts like innocent brainwashed child-like individuals without a capacity for independent thinking). Adulthood is very hard to achieve when your parent keeps treating you like a six year old child, and is still enmeshed with your upbringing and rearing at age 60, and not kidding. 

And of course, if you aren't allowing the molding, you can be thrust into adulthood very early, like at age 14 or younger (severe parental neglect). And they never have your back when you need it or ask for it - you've been naughty for not following a script and are deemed not to deserve care or consideration.

One of the reasons why scapegoat children get chosen is because they tend to have ethics, and empathy, and much more of a sense of who they are (a more grounded personality) than all of their other siblings. That has been well documented, and you can google the findings. The parent keeps trying to write the scapegoat child's script, and if the child looks like they are resisting, it is more about being true to themselves, of keeping their personality intact, of disagreeing with the parent's judgements (when you are put down all of the time by the parent - common for the scapegoat, and the judgements are false, you are not as likely to hear what your parent has to say). You become disenchanted with your parent's judgements instead.  

Then the parent tries to make up a role for them: "thou art blamed for all of my faults and everything that compromises my image or the image of anyone else in the family." For this role, of course, the scapegoat child is going to be abused and exploited, or at the very least, put on the side-lines of the family and treated as though they aren't really a member. So they become disenchanted with their own families, and often feel a lot more free to talk about its dysfunctions. Of course, many in the family will fight like mad about it, but in order to do so, they have to make up lies about the scapegoat, and down in the moral dumpster the narcissist(s) go. 

Scapegoating is very primitive and scapegoats originally were blamed for famines, storms, ship wrecks, for living a little differently, and the like. It's not much different today, except scapegoats tend to be blamed because of the color of their skin, or their type of religion or culture, or because of what sex they are, or sexual orientation. If a scapegoat is raped, they are blamed for enticing their perpetrator; if they are abused by a sibling they are blamed for "egging them on". If a scapegoat is disenfranchised or abused because of the color of their skin, they might be blamed in this way: "You should have known your place" as if Jim Crow laws are still in existence, or the perpetrator thinks they should still be in existence. If the scapegoat is thrown out of their family for their sexual orientation, they might be told, "Members of this family have always been married to people of the opposite sex. If you are with the same sex, then you aren't one of us." If the scapegoat is a woman, they might be told, "Don't you know that men come first always?" If the scapegoat is hit by a parent, they might blamed for what ever the family dreams up as a reason: "You forgot to walk the dog!" Everything the scapegoat says and does is used for punishing, hurting and ostracizing. 

Scapegoat children from narcissistic families are pressured to be their own caretakers at an early age, which can actually help them to be independent of their parent as adults. It is why scapegoats can and do achieve great heights in their careers - if they can survive and thrive outside their families. I have met quite a few famous artists who were ostracized from their families where parents are still saying these children aren't good enough. Good luck with that! - said facetiously of course!

The golden child sees how sibling scapegoats are treated, without respect or help, without hearing them out, so in a way it pushes them ever closer to the parent often to the point of emotional incest to keep from having the scapegoats' fate. Even if they highly resent the parent, they have to keep up the exhausting act of putting the parent first at all times, at any time, to keep up the constant parroting of the parent's likes and dislikes, discomforts, hatreds of others, political views, societal views, prejudiced views, and so on. 

To keep the golden child from seeking a life outside of parental control and micro-management, the golden child, along with the rest of the family, is counted on to hate and sabotage the scapegoat, and the scapegoat's success. It's a distraction away from complaining about the micro-managing and enmeshment. The scapegoat must always be seen as a failure, and themselves as superior, especially financially, otherwise the risk is too high that the golden child will seek independence too, and try to find their own personality separate from the parent. And a lot of money gets shoveled into the golden child compared to the other children in the household to keep up the financial disparity between golden child and scapegoat. But sometimes fate has other plans ... and the parent would have to break the law, and risk arrest, to sabotage the scapegoat's financial success. 

The golden child can feel so out of control, meaning that they feel they have very little of their own control over their expressions with the parent who is dominating them to the extreme, that they resent it enough to become ultra-controlling bullies themselves, and the rage often gets funneled to their own children instead of against the parent, again picking the most vulnerable and innocent, an act that they saw their parent do first.  

You can see that independence might mean the co-narcissistic child would have a personality separate from the parent and what the parent wants. All of the parent's agendas could potentially be questioned with a personality that differentiates from theirs. This is just one reason why a budding narcissistic child has no personality either, and the lack of a real personality or self, the lack of any ethics or morals, the lack of perspectives that differentiates from the parent's, the willingness to be immorally two-faced, the lack of consistent personality traits, and why personality-lessness or adopting the personality disorder of the parent can last until they die. 

SOME INSTANCES OF HOW THE LACK OF AN IDENTITY CAN MANIFEST

the possibility of the individuated self as drowning under the shadow self and harsh judgements of early care-givers:

As I've said before, narcissists make a huge effort not to be shamed, to feel ashamed, and to look at their past or present deeds (whether they be affairs, not loving one of their children, having addictions, using people for narcissistic supply, telling false narratives about many others, gambling with money or gambling with discards of people they actually wanted to maintain relationships with, and so on). The list tends to be quite long. 

As I've said before, I have included some writings and videos by narcissists below which I hope can enlighten you more than I have put into this post as to what narcissists go through with this, and why they want to bury this stuff so badly that it is like it doesn't exist in the first place for them (because it is defining them in a way that they aren't proud of, that they think should be over-ruled by the altruistic good things they do, and why defining themselves by these two drastic personas just doesn't feel right to them because they are acting on what other people want from them, or how they see them). Deciding they are an individuated person seems impossible. Some of them say they are nothing but actors and frauds most of the time, and when they get a break from acting, they feel empty and boring and bored with themselves, and therefor feel compelled to stir up some drama. 

Did you ever have arguments with rageful narcissists that were about nothing? This was their way of stirring up drama, and to get reactions because they are bored and feeling really empty without the narcissistic supply that your reactions bring to them. 

Have you ever had an argument with a narcissist about how you really felt, and what you really thought? For instance, they are insistent that you are feeling and thinking something else, and accuse you of acting, or of lying? Most of us who have dealt with narcissists have had more of those arguments than we can count. That is the narcissist's way of projecting what they do onto you. "Of course you are acting and lying all of the time!" they seem to say. 

They aren't authentic and many of them don't realize that most people prefer to tell the truth, and enjoy telling the truth, and prefer living in the truth rather than in a delusional muddied state of switching, changing, modifying lies and unrealities to fit what ever situation they are in. Narcissist's sense of what the truth is and what falsehood is changes all of the time, just like their adoption of personality styles to fit what ever situation they are in. You instinctively know that if you plunge into that world with them, you are going to feel insane. And so often, the narcissist no longer seems to have a grip on the truth either as they forgot to take mental notes of which lies they told to which person, what the original truth was, which exaggerated self aggrandizements they are trying to put forward to whom, to achieve what objectives, and whether those objectives really work, and so on. 

In some videos I have featured below, Jacob Skidmore of "the Nameless Narcissist" said he can keep track of his lies. But I have known narcissists who are terrible at it. They live in more lies than they live in reality, and can't even keep track of what is real and what is false any more. They create a confused muddled mess, and if you try to interfere and correct them as to what really happened, they rage over that too because it's the sign that you know their shadow self (the part that has to be out of view even though it isn't).  

Jacob Skidmore did realize people were authentic and told the truth eventually (but has serious bouts of doubt) when he was diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and studied up on his disorder.

And then to realize that most people prefer being authentic? "Why do that when you can get so much more power and validation by putting on acts?" is how the narcissist thinks about it. 

They don't understand the benefits of the truth, like how sanity, and clarity, and insight, something that can only go so far when you are being overwhelmed with your own lies and fake personas, can create wisdom. Maybe he is starting to understand, but again, he doesn't know who he truly is, or how to present himself to someone, other than to react to who they are, and what he is being told he is. 

Which brings up the question of all of the "You are -" statements being bandied about today, of which narcissists tend to do a lot more than the rest of us, but maybe the rest of us should take heed and step back from that activity, especially when it comes to children. It obviously damages them, their psyche, their inner voice, their developing personality, their hopes and dreams, their ambitions, and makes them feel inept. Society doesn't need emerging adults who feel constantly inept, unworthy, or fraudulent, or crazy because they aren't pleasing some narcissist on high, and who are looking for an identity in other people. 

How this hurts the family and society:

Adults who can take care of themselves, and contribute to society move evolution along and seem to be the most capable and intelligent among us, as far as I can see. 

When you have arguments with narcissists, the first thing they do is to attack with "You are -" statements. It's never a resolution, of course, and is always meant to confuse and hurt and skirt around the real issue being brought forth. "You've changed! You aren't nice any more!", "You're not feeling that way! Give me a break!", "You should see how you act! As if that's going to change how I react to you!" right down to insults, "You are nothing but a selfish pig!", "I put up with you, but really, you are nothing but a sniveling brat most of the time!" Ask yourself why any human being needs to be doing this, hearing this, and going through this, especially children?

I have been around families all my life who don't do this to children, or to each other as adults, and when that kind of oppression is lifted off, it's amazing how children and adults act and react, the peace and brotherhood that emerges, the careers they have, the health that they have, and even how people grow and learn in leaps and bounds. 

Who wants to live under the constant oppression of off-the-wall judgements? Even if you are doing this in your own mind to yourself? Which apparently can happen when you are in an emotionally toxic environment, even to narcissists who have spoken out.

If you are an adult child of a narcissist reading this, have you ever been slapped or told to shut up when you were crying? Many narcissists think that you are crying for effect, to either create drama or to manipulate them (again see videos below on what narcissists see) - they most often aren't feeling empathetic; they are feeling annoyed and angry about your tears instead. And the empathy isn't there much to begin with. That too, tends to be an acting job for them. If they truly understood that their child's expression was of real pain, then they might react differently, but most often they "believe" that it is not real, that it is an act, a manipulation. 

Ever wonder why narcissistic parents thought you were "faking it" when you were a child and were sick or you had a painful ear-ache? The same issue applies here too: they think you are an actor, especially when you are a child. Many of them send you off to school when you are in pain, or when you are sick, regardless of what you have told them. They don't want to hear any more about how bad you feel. Then the school nurse calls them up and tells them to take you home and get doctor's care. Then they listen. Narcissists don't want to listen to children, especially when they grow up with the meme, "Children should be seen and not heard." - what a crazy-making statement that is! It gives credence to ignoring and abandoning children when they most need to be heard and cared for, and when medical issues can multiply and be critical.

If you were a partner, why they insisted that you were cheating on them when you weren't? It might drive you crazy when they keep it up. "No, honey, you're enough for me!" you might say, exasperated. And they up the challenge by saying, "Oh, you think I'm too much for you, do you!? Well, that's why you're cheating! Because I'm too much to handle! Just for that --"  

Also, do you ever wonder why, when you say to a narcissist, "You are really hurting me! Please stop! Can't we just work this out?" they not only don't work it out, but get angry and more hurtful. Narcissists look to people to tell them who they are, and if you tell them they are hurtful, they think that you are defining them in a bad way. Why would you define them as "hurtful" when they can be so much more nice to you than that? Also why insist that they are cruel when they can fight back and be more cruel than you ever imagined? "You want to define me as cruel?! Okay, then you're going to get cruelty!" ... or ...  "Why would you tell me I'm hurtful when I give you the kind of personality that I always thought you wanted? What's the matter with you!? You want to turn me into a cruel person? Okay, I'll do that then, and be your worst enemy!"

This is what they see, the judgement first. They may see what they have done and then deny, deny, deny, but many of them also don't hear or don't want to hear what you are saying because they have decided that they are never going to be accountable for anything that comes up, ever. And if they've been brought up as a golden child "who never does any wrong", they have been taught by their parent for 18 years at the very least, usually much longer, that they are never accountable either.

They have selective hearing, and not kidding.

And they can attack you on the spot for the insinuation that they are cruel. "How dare you!" 

This is why a lot of psychologists heavily promote the DEEP method: "Don't defend, don't explain, don't engage, and don't take it personally." In other words, hear what they have to say, and if they attack your character, continue to remain composed, don't explain why you are hurt by them because they won't understand or care anyway, and don't engage them in any more discussion about the issue (change the subject or find a reason to leave the conversation), and don't take what they have to say personally - obviously they are too disordered to take anything they have to say personally, and they probably don't know you very well because of all of the selective hearing they do. 

Unless this is also a manipulation ... that has also been proposed by a number of psychologists too, that they know exactly what they are doing, and that it is a game to get you roped into only giving them accolades and ego strokes, so that they can use your accolades and ego strokes to get ever more narcissistic supply from others so that they get a fan club going and a lot more flying monkeys, and have more power and control over you than ever before (especially if you give in). 

Dr. Ramani, a psychologist who specializes in the Cluster B personality disorders at the University of Southern California suggests that her clients find their deepest relationships outside of the one with the narcissist, always, and to back away from them, and learn how to do it slowly and relatively imperceptivity. 

Not all of us went that way, and not all therapists give that advice. Some survivors decided to stand up to them instead, create boundaries right away. As a result, we got the silent treatment, or got beat up in response. Sometimes therapists want their clients to "break the silence of abuse" because you've been expected to shut up about it for too long, to keep the narcissist's treatment of you a secret (silence helps them to abuse you more, and the escalation process of abuse tends to be faster too if they can convince you to be silent). By the time you are in therapy, you may be sick with trauma symptoms. One of the best way to break out of the trauma bond is to start speaking about what you went through and taking your power back, and ignoring the narcissist's reactions no matter what they are, or calling the police or moving if they've decided to attack you. 

But Dr. Ramani comes at this with a different perspective, from how narcissists act and react, how they perceive, what they generally do to solve interpersonal relationship problems, and their selective hearing (only hearing what has to do with them and their status in your life or in others' lives - the link takes you to one of her videos about what they hear and don't hear).

I always suggest going to a domestic violence center to get the best advice for your situation however, because narcissists are unpredictable and can be dangerous in terms of what kinds of attacks they will use. 

Not having your pain addressed by a narcissist is one of many reasons people bail out on narcissists - they don't listen to you, and your pain is not resolved, or going to be resolved when relating to them. If anything they are increasing your pain. And also, there is the very real possibility that they think you are faking pain.

But even if they know you are in pain, it's narcissistic supply for them. They are effecting you. And therefor they are being validated by the effects (they may think, "I'm a cruel person. Who ever knew? I guess I like it."). Their morals and ethics spiral downward because being a cruel person requires it, and they are getting rewarded for it. However, they can also experience great exasperation, indignation, and impatience, so upping the cruelty is not always the road they take. Jacob (the Nameless Narcissist) below explains why he experiences other people's pain as feeling irritated and convinced people are faking their pain just to hurt him, and make him seem like the culprit of it. In a more polite and elaborate way, Sam Vaknin who has also been diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder too says more or less the same thing.

Vaknin, in one video that I remember said something like: narcissists just want you to be their Mommy, to soothe them as though they were a baby or small child, no matter what is going on, and not to blame them because they are like little children who don't really understand blame by big scary grown-ups yet. Could be ...  

But on the other hand, most narcissists openly admit that they often get bored with their relationships and acting a certain personality type with you - they thrive on adopting other personalities, and getting you out of the way opens up more possibilities for that, plus getting new sources of narcissistic supply. They say this is the reason for their cruelty and swift discards and not caring how you feel afterwards. If they care how you feel at all, some of them try to contact you in some way to see how you are doing, and they just don't want to be bothered any more. Boredom, many of them say, is a terrible irritating burdensome state for many of them, and they get around to feeling that about almost everyone in their life eventually, so this is why they react to your pain with irritation and anger too.

They just don't want to put that much time into the relationship any more. And when it is being mired with burdens such as accountability, a terrible family issue (like someone complaining about an abusive family member), they just don't want to deal with it. Discarding the complainer is just "easier." And they do prefer people who are easy, who don't complain, who are agreeable to everything they want and everything that is happening. They don't have a sense of loyalty to anyone (although they expect everyone around them to be loyal to them).

I remember seeing a post by a narcissist once in some sort of self-help forum. She said something like: "Stop grieving over us! We are all a bunch of nobodies, actors who played a part in your lives for awhile! We aren't real, so just leave us alone about how hurt you are! We don't want to hear it! And we also could care less!" This sounds super cold, and especially when you don't understand narcissism. 

We were duped, like how criminals dupe people out of their assets. We were duped into a loving relationship that was never loving. The sham was that the love was "convincing acting." 

Many narcissists like the ones I listed below, by the way, think you are stupid for complaining about them, since they rarely want to hear your complaint, could care less about how they treat you, feel that they treat you "good enough", and feel enraged that you aren't giving them ego strokes instead of talking about being hurt. They feel you made a big mistake in going into a discussion like that especially since you will have to pay (be in pain by them) for having done that. 

I, myself, have noticed that narcissists do require that you be grateful at all times for what they do and don't do, even though they are rarely grateful themselves and show it (it's part of their entitlement and their disorder), so when you complain, they interpret that as "they are accusing me, and that is unacceptable because I have a personality that cannot do anything wrong, and they better realize this is the personality I'm putting forward at a time like this, but they want to be an enemy and be ungrateful instead. Good luck in fighting with me!" Also: "They aren't giving me positive narcissistic supply. So, just for that, I won't give them positive narcissistic supply either! No more flattery, no more gifts, no more relationship! Outright war! They haven't seen cruelty yet! They will be shivering in their boots for having crossed me!" In the blink of an eye, you can be their enemy just for a complaint, and for malignant narcissists they can be this way over the most minor of issues, or ones they are certain you are lying about (even when you aren't), the most made up inconsequential scenes you can imagine. 

The last thing a survivor is thinking is that they are in a tit-for-tat, retaliatory war with a narcissist. Later they figure it out. But the narcissist's war is always way too delusionary to be playing retaliation games with them. We might be angry about their aggressions against us, and might "tell them off", but we are also likely to back off and think they are totally nuts for taking it to this level over a legitimate concern that never deserved the all-encompassing hostile energy the narcissist put into it. 

Let us say that you are hurt and angry, and they throw a huge bomb in retaliation over it to show their might (maybe they take an action that is illegal like stabbing the tires of your car), to show that they are a much more formidable enemy than you are, and that you need to take what you said back or there will be more hurtful consequences by them against you for saying it, that they are much, much better than you are at retaliations, and manipulations about playing the victim, and will be believed when they lie to others that they are the true victim.

This shows that they think that you are a narcissist, like them, and they do until they are convinced that they have a personality disorder, i.e. diagnosed by a clinician.

We know there are retaliatory despotic world tyrants like this too, and yes, they do tend to be malignant narcissists with delusions of grandeur. As if being a mass murderer is an enviable position for anyone other than other malignant narcissists who want to destroy and murder too. Mostly they get a reputation like Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin got ("disgusting!" - especially if you like laws and abhor murder for the sake of hurting other people and grabbing their stuff).

And they tell lies about their so-called enemies too, to get the army motivated, but then the army figures out they have been lied to.  

Over-reactive hostility to slights and complaints is a big sign of narcissism as well as primary and secondary psychopathy ... with the exception of paranoid schizophrenia, but usually these people are easy to spot because many of them have speech impediments (talking in non-sequiturs, for instance). 

Even with gaslighting, the main issue is that they are faking an alternate reality, specifically designed just for you, as they do with adopting a personality to fit the situation they are in with you. They want, also, for you to think you are the crazy one in the relationship, not them, that you are the one that is at fault in the relationship, not them, that you are the one who is inept in the relationship, not them (so that they can control you). 

And then add to it that narcissists fib their way through life to convince others that they are something they are not, or that they have hidden talents that they haven't exposed to the world yet (when they  actually haven't been working on their talents at all - common for covert narcissists, in particular), that they know more than they actually do, that they discard and forget about people more than they actually do too, that their grades in school were higher than they actually were, and so on.

Fibbing is just another extension of having a false self. 

The problem with narcissists making non-truths a mere convenience for their ego, is that, if they thought about it, it really doesn't feed their ego. How can lies about themselves feed an ego? A lie is a propped up thing, not the real thing. The conversation is just a made up narrative by taking a few truths and adding them to the lies (like you would sprinkle salt or sugar on to a food to make it taste better). 

If the truth is as amorphous as they want it to be, then they don't really live in the world that most of us inhabit. And maybe, as Vaknin and Skidmore suggest in the videos below, that's why they feel empty, like non-people. Then the question has to be asked, why fib at all? 

The truth is too blinding? It's like a bright light that they can't stand to look at? It's easier for them to do than telling the truth? They don't get butterflies in their stomach when they lie? What is it?

The other problem of making reality into some sort of distorted story of fibs with a little reality sprinkled on top is that other people can't, and don't, want to deal with it; they don't want to get close to it. 

For adult children, what are they supposed to do? "This is my Dad. He likes to make up stories that aren't true. Don't bother listening to him or taking him seriously." 

Underage children tend not to do that because they will be abused if they do. They get punished for telling the truth. So lying is rewarded. If that isn't a screwball way to parent, and a toxic way to proceed in society afterward, I don't know what is.

But that's not the end of it. 

Some children who get rewarded for lying, also get punished for lying. Perhaps if you lie for the narcissist, you might, but not always, get rewarded. If you lie to get something for yourself, you might, but not always, get punished for it. The problem with this upbringing is that there aren't any rules about what you can and can't lie about, so abuse can happen even when you were given a green light and rewarded for lying hours before. That's how it is in narcissists' households. You are encouraged to add to the lies to help create a totally fictitious parent and family situation, but punished if you add the wrong kind of truths or lies. Also, you can get even more punished for telling the truth, that your parent rewards you if they think you are lying for the their benefit. And, you are told you are lying when you aren't, and told you are telling the truth when you are lying. In other words, no one in the household knows what the truth is any more. It has a lot to do with why narcissists and psychopaths have very few ethics and morals to draw from. There aren't any in a household like this, and very often there never will be. The kids were brought up in this crazy-making situation and most had to endure it for 18 years - or more. 

Then there are the golden children, many of whom become narcissists themselves (but not all). When they are like the parent, many of them know they have to outsmart the parent to survive, so many of them out-manipulate their narcissistic parent. They know intuitively that they have to flatter the parent like crazy even when they know their parent should not be flattered, so then it becomes fake flattery that they begin to use on everyone.

So now there are two liars who "fake flatter" in the family just to stay safe, plus get narcissistic supply especially if they get flattered back. And if they get flattered back, they both feel safe.

When narcissists disapprove, it is a sign you aren't safe from their rage or violence. If you flatter them in the midst of their rages, even if they are highly unethical while raging, even if it is not your fault, even if their punishments are incredibly abusive and off the wall, a lot of them will stop if you flatter them, thus the fake flatterers who don't have the strength of character to say, "The way you treat people is highly unethical." 

This kind of a golden child also knows intuitively that they have to "act" like a sycophant too. "Just be so sweet and accommodating in their company, kiss their ring if that's what they expect, put a crown on their head if they expect that too, but put them down behind their back for all of the neediness they exhibit, the lies they spread, all of the unethical deeds they do. You'll be rewarded and you can take off steam on someone else!" And who do they take it off on? The same child the narcissistic parent takes their rage off on (the golden knows they probably won't be punished for that), or a child smaller than they are, or a girl, or someone who is disabled, or disenfranchised, or from a minority, or someone who is bullied in school - anyone who they deem to be on a lower hierarchy than themselves. And they continue it with their spouse and children. 

Do we wonder why narcissists are so hierarchical in their thinking, and why they put themselves at the top? It's the bully's way of thinking: "I can beat them at any war game, any manipulation, any false narrative where everyone will believe me and not the nay-sayers." - as if that is something to be proud of. 

Then, of course, they use their false self to tell others they would never do that, never say that, that everyone is on an equal par in the family, that everyone's concerns are addressed, that everyone is loved in the family, that everyone is happy in the family (except a scapegoat, or two, or fifteen). "You mean, little 'ol me, who flatters other people constantly - the nice guy on the block who would give my shirt to someone? Who is so deferential?"

And the more, they get away with it, the worse it gets, the more manipulative it is, the more entrenched it is, the more grandiose they feel.  

And we wonder why narcissists are so two-faced, and why they can be like two separate people (Jekyll/Hyde). The Jekyll/Hyde of some narcissists can be so de-stabilizing, cruel and violent that the family experience is something like you'd see in a horror movie, and not kidding.   

And we wonder why there are so many estrangements in narcissistic families. And why the estranged are mostly girls, women, the disabled, the ill, the disenfranchised (deemed as weak by narcissists). 

Then there are the scapegoats.  

The narc parent said goodbye to you as a child where you were shown over, and over, and over again that the narc parent didn't want to be close to you. Let's just say they were trying to avoid the above statement (the scapegoat telling a friend that the parent makes up stories). The scapegoat is discarded for telling the truth, but are often told they are lying when they tell the truth.

But as we know, the truth is a threat to the narcissist's "false self". 

This is usually the first child to "tell it like it is", who is rolling their eyes at all of the lies flying around the family to keep up an image. They also tend to be the first to see the narcissist's shadow self, a particularly cruel Mr. Hyde side (the cruel side). Perhaps they are encouraged in school or by another relative to tell the truth. Perhaps their brothers and sisters are complaining about the random and unreliable disciplines of the narcissistic parent, and the scapegoat comes forward to try and put a stop to it for the sake of peace in the family.

But the narcissist is totally committed to winning this game and imposed conflict or war. It is why scapegoats experience the narcissist's gaslighting in the extreme. The parent is convinced that they have to talk the scapegoat into having a mental illness such that they can never perceive anything the right way. When I said that narcissists will do anything to hide everything, and I mean everything, about their shadow self, or any mistakes they have made in life, and put that agenda first, especially when they are being challenged, I'm not kidding. Scapegoats are absolutely pressured, abused, taught sadistic lessons, tortured to "give it up already", to believe in the lies of the parent. All of the lies. 

If the child still refuses to go along with the parent in this regard, these days they most often experience neglect: they aren't cared for, they aren't looked after, their wounds are minimized, their health problems are ignored, what they have to say is ignored, when they are abused by other adults no police are called and they are either denied protection or they are ignored when they are traumatized by the experience(s), they are put in dangerous situations with dangerous people, and there are usually issues around food and dress. If you are a skinny scapegoat, these parents are liable to give you less food. If you are a heavy scapegoat, you are often given more food than you can reasonably handle and are told to eat everything on your plate. Neglect also means dressing you in dirty clothes and not having enough clothes to deal with temperatures and the elements. Many scapegoats talk about terrifyingly dangerous, speed driving (they thought it was on purpose, to scare them, or to hope they would get in an accident). Many, many girl scapegoats also talk about their parents dressing them down, in clothes they especially don't want and don't look good in, being dressed in boy's clothes, or baggy matronly outfits when they are starting to get curves in high school, and cutting the hair short (so common, causing them to scream and cry when they were kids - the overwhelmingly number of grown up adult female scapegoats have long hair, and at least half of them have hair past the bra-line or down to their waist).

In the old days a parent could put their scapegoat child in a mental institution or insane asylum to get lobotomized or electric shock therapy. It was their way of getting rid of them without breaking the law. And a lobotomized child, of course, could no longer function in society, so they were institutionalized for life. Electric shock therapy could garner the same results. They also put these kinds of children there when they wanted to get out of their marriage and run away with a new lover (when the new lover did not want stepchildren: more common for male inlaws than female inlaws).   

If none of these "tortures to teach you a lesson" worked for the narc parent, in order to keep from being exposed, the narc parent has to get rid of the truth-telling scapegoat. And the scapegoat's reputation has to be ruined too, of course, because to the narcissist, the scapegoat told the truth, "and they shouldn't have done that. They should have put my reputation above the lies I tell!"

Really now!? 

But as Jason Skidmore (The Nameless Narcissist) has said, many discards are fake in his video, Watch Out for the Narcissist's Fake Discard. Jeez, another fake phony thing they do, if he's at all right that a lot of narcissists do this. What he says in his video boils down to this: he and other narcissists discard you in hopes that you'll beg them to take you back and say, "No, no, everything is my fault! I'm so sorry! I still love you!" - his words in that video of what he wants others to say when he discards someone else. He tells us in the video this too: "... I was doing an interview and the lady asks me, like, 'Oh, so you are doing that to try to get what you want, is for them to, uh, love you, but like you're not realizing that you, um, that they actually think that you hate them.' And it almost blew my mind because I was like, 'Wait! Is it not obvious what I want in those situations? Is it not obvious that I want them to, like, beg for me?' It was so natural for me that it didn't even occur to - because I knew that it was toxic behavior, and I haven't done it in a long time, it's been like a year, at least, that I've done that - but it felt so natural and innate so I just assumed that everyone at some level knew - and which reinforced that fear of abandonment, right?" - and he goes on to talk about how he's abandoned a lot, and some of it is because of the fake discards.  

And I'm not surprised that narcissists have this indirect phony way of talking to others. And, of course, you can't know that it is fake. Getting discarded and getting the silent treatment from them is traumatic because it's not a normal break-up at all where you have a lot of discussions (with direct communication!) about what is working and not working, what you are both feeling and not feeling, some possible compromises, talks like "is there enough love to continue?", and if worse comes to worse, some therapy. There is usually a lot of effort put into saving the relationship.

With narcissists, there is none of this. Something bothers them, and so often victims complain they didn't even know what it was. And if you've been through one silent treatment with them, you can't handle any more because it's too traumatic, often with full blown trauma symptoms. Discards mean that you are treated like you don't exist, and as Dr. Carter likes to say when he talks about narcissists and their discards, you are treated like a piece of meat that is tossed on the side of the road ... You are treated as though you don't exist, and that sends the inevitable message that they don't care about you at all or take any of your feelings to heart. It's all about the games they want to play, and the power they want. 

So the fact that we'd want to come back under those circumstances is not realistic. Would they beg if we just summarily dismissed them and didn't accept any conversation, or care what was happening to them at all, including emotionally, psychologically, physically, financially with what they were going through in their life, and their medical issues? 

As Jason Skidmore said, it's a game. Let's call it what it is: a head game. And we are supposed to figure out that we are supposed to beg, and beg for what? Not to be treated that way? But of course, if you focus on how a narcissist is treating you, they will rage because you've just defined them in a negative way, and you are supposed to, according to many narcs, be grateful. So, we're just supposed to take them back regardless of how they treated us, and so many other head games, and false selves we have to deal with, that we love them so much that we want more head games just like this? Because this is what loving a narcissist means: more head games = your trauma = more head games from them = more of your trauma = even more head games from them, until infinity. If you look carefully at what he wants from the victims of his discards it is for them to say this: "No, no everything is my fault! I'm so sorry!" in his charming endearing way. If you look at the real words instead of how he delivers the words, they seem diabolical. 

Begging is a way of giving up your own power. It's just adding another toxicity to a relationship where you're supposed to beg for love. And while he may not be in all relationships for power and control only, many narcissists are. 

And if you are a scapegoat, you've been getting the message your whole life that you aren't important, you aren't appreciated, that you are a "throw-away" kind of person, that you are hated to the point where they have to do a "fake gaslighting" on you so that they can make excuses as to why they don't provide care, that they can think of nothing better than to punish you endlessly for not going along with fakeries like the fake discard, that they don't want you around very much at all (and this proves they are so much more ungrateful than we could ever think of being). A lot of scapegoats are discarded by their narc parents when they 12 - 16, and they live with the other parent, or a relative, or in foster care. And estrangement tends to take over from there. 

So "I want you to beg" seems like it would be fraudulent too, not authentic. Especially when it comes to scapegoating. It's why a scapegoat would take the discard seriously. 

But even if it was not an authentic discard, "fake discards", and the thousands, if not millions, of other fakeries that narcissists discharge every day, is why every relationship that narcissists have is a sham. 

And what is weird about narcissists is that they think most people envy them! Whoa! I asked one time why, when it came to the false self and the pathological lying, and realized as I was asking it, that it was probably just more projection on the narcissist's part because they are so envious of others. Shared truth-telling is where you find intimacy, not in lies. So they are missing out on that wonderful experience completely. How sad!

But let's just say that the discard was also sham. They didn't mean it, or at least that's what they say sometimes. But it could be their false self talking and you don't know. They could be using their false self to hoover you back, and the reason why is because they want revenge on you. Let's say that you think about that possibility, but you are hoovered back.

But in going back, you are still not "up to snuff" according to the narcissist as the narcissist tries to get you to focus on them (very common), and they are gaslighting you even more than they did before so that you don't challenge their false self and expose it. So the issues are still there, but now you have trauma symptoms from their discard to deal with too, which is ruining their image as the great altruistic parent that they present to outsiders. Also, your healing keeps you distracted, quiet, irritable. Then they start telling you that you are selfish. The thing is, healing from narcissistic abuse, especially if you are their child and abandonments are part of it, means that you are going to be selfish, or self-involved, and inward-drawn, and you may even be unable to cope. Psychologists write that even parental abandonments that have nothing to do with narcissistic abuse (an illness, the parent having to leave for duty in the military) can be traumatic enough, but when parents abandon children out of cruelty and vindictiveness, it scars kids for life. Maybe that is the point. But since narcissists can't deal with interpersonal challenges like their kid being trauma-ridden, and because they have to present themselves as parents who would never do that, they do a discard of you again.

This is the most common outcome if a child goes back to their parent, but my experience is that most children don't go back at all, or they go back for a week or two and realize they are too riddled with anxiety to stay.

As for a second discard by the parent: is it a fake discard or a real one? Was it done by the false self, or the real one, or the shadow self, or a kind of grandiose "I killed them in battle" persona, or another adopted personality did they decided to use? And what other lies will they have to resort to in order to avoid looking like someone who abandons their children? 

Is your head starting to hurt yet?  Or at least spin?
 
But that's not all I have to say ... 

Let's say that a discard of a scapegoat child is absolutely intentional. It doesn't seem to be a fake discard. The parent wants you gone, doesn't want to think about you, could care less what you are doing or going through, is just sick of you ... and you have failed to provide the parent with enough flattery to keep up a steady image for their false self. 

So let us say that this scapegoated daughter (since daughters tend to be scapegoated much more than sons) has spent most of her life mostly being estranged from her father, because the father didn't want his reputation ruined by truth-telling, and his daughter was seemingly giving him grief about being an uncaring father. Can't have that! He just wanted easy gullible people around him, people who he could lie to and be believed, people easy to brainwash, people who were more likely to flatter him no matter what he did. Life was easier for him that way. He didn't have to work hard at relationships that way. He could just parrot people, make up some personalities, have a private life of superficial extra-marital affairs that were purely sexual with no commitments. Except that not all of the women wanted to keep it a secret, and told his wife about "the reality" of what was happening.

"Oh, no, reality is creeping in again!" So he tries to convince his wife that these women are just after him because he's good looking and has money, that they are all crazy and making false accusations against him! He says that some of them he never saw in his life!

Anyway, his whole life falls apart after awhile. His wife leaves him, and all but one kid wants to be around him. And every time he is rejected, he's a tyrant. And he plays the victim even though he's the perpetrator, which disgusts his family members more. He also indulges in false narratives and smear campaigns about most of his kids.  

His sister believes he's been horribly mistreated by everyone in his family, but the closest family members keep telling her that he has this other side, the cruel side. She doesn't believe them. 

Then everyone starts dying off: his kids, his present wife, his sister, on and on. 

So, he figures he's got to have someone looking after him and gets in contact with the scapegoat who has now spent most of her life (let us say it started at age 16, and now she is 57) being estranged from her dad. He tells the scapegoat daughter that he really didn't mean to reject her "so badly", that he was mistaken by thinking of her as a bad person, and one excuse follows another and he says, "I need you to take care of me, because you are all I have left." Really? After years of cruelty, abuse, neglect when she was a child, abandonment and rejection when she was an adult? And being taught that it was best if she didn't contact him and stayed out of the family? 

Again, it's just more acting, lies, and about faking her out, right? - and of all people, scapegoats know this more than anyone about their narcissistic parents. She doesn't trust him at all. She figures it's just a hoover, and if she takes care of him that he'll go back to being tyrannical in no time flat. 

"Wouldn't you be better off with someone who can lie for you, Dad? Someone who can tell doctors that you have hearing loss instead of dementia? That your little pinky got broken fixing a car when it actually got broken when beating Mom? And just how many lies do you want me to tell like this, Dad? Your poor image might fail with me around!" 

After scapegoats spend so much of their lives learning how to live with the injustice of being prejudiced against, being lied about, told to be ultra-independent without their birth family, a scapegoat is supposed to coddle a dependent parent? And live in a bunch of lies again? 

These situations pop up. 

With narcissists, the constant manipulation of others, all of it ends up to be some major head games that confuse, disorient and eventually traumatize victims, especially victims who are vulnerable, have PTSD, are children, or are disabled. A psychologist who treats people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder guessed that 70 - 75 percent of them have extra-marital affairs throughout their marriage(s), and now someone did some research to back that up, and the psychologist was right (around 75 percent) - I'll be talking about this in another post. Most of the time, extra-marital affairs require, for the narcissist, so many lies, false narratives, hiding, excuses, different personas, and word salad arguments to the spouse, that the family feels like they are living full time in lies and cover-ups, where everywhere you turn, there's another lie you have to deal with, and that gets uncovered.

And the narcissist also has to lie to the people they are seducing on the side too. It becomes like "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" where, if the narcissist tells the truth, it may very well be taken as just another lie.

And if it's not extra-marital affairs, it is usually something else: a gambling addiction, or a substance addiction, or a porn addiction, or an addiction to retaliating over a prejudice they have against a person or people. Malignant narcissists especially tend to be obsessive about who they hate, and hate apparently tends to bring out overwhelming desires to hurt others.

And most narcissists tend to be abusive to any number of people just because the empathy and ethics are so low, and they tend not to think they have a personality disorder unless it becomes absolutely clear to them. Otherwise, they figure human beings are more or less like them, faking empathy, faking personalities, making up stories, running smear campaigns, lying just about anything and about anyone they feel like lying about, and, as I've said, convinced they are being lied to all of the time too. - and we wonder why one of the trauma symptoms for people enduring all of this is headaches.

They'd probably be shocked if they really knew that most of us aren't doing these things, that we don't want to live like this, in an insane asylum of lies. 

In conclusion:

Narcissists feel they did their best at giving you a personality that was tailor made for you, and that everything else they do (like the abuse, threats, gaslighting, lying, lack of empathy, the abuse they do to keep you away from looking too clearly at their shadow self) they insist, should be overlooked. If you read or watch some of the other videos by the three narcissists below, they all complain bitterly and constantly that people from their past who they abused, controlled, threatened and/or discarded were incredibly ungrateful. They believe people they reject should be pleading with them to get back into their good graces, and should be happy they are controlled. They believe that their abuse should be overlooked and that their victims should realize their narcissist is brilliant, generous, and superior to most others in the world in terms of the personality the narcissist put so much effort into. Many of them don't comprehend and don't care when they see that constant control, indirect communication, low empathy, low ethics, threats, lies about who they are and what they do, their discards and abuse generally cause trauma. 

In fact, they can't see that narcissists, in general, cause a lot of trauma to most people in close personal relationships. 

And this blind spot causes them to become obsessed with revenge. If they see that their past victims are thriving in any way afterwards, they have a narcissistic collapse that can cause even more vindictiveness, and danger, and their ethics keep spiraling down, down, down to achieve some sort of permanent damage to their victims. 

Unless they want to deal with primary psychopaths who are trauma-resistant and the least likely to run away from them, they will have to face the fact that trauma from their actions is why they lose those closest to them. When they create even more lies and vindictive solutions to their relationship problems, trauma drives those people away further. As I've said in other posts, they can even traumatize each other, so their lazy, I-have-to-have-my-own-way-because-I'm-Godlike-and-you're-not approach to relationship problems can mean they may have to face being old and miserable by themselves.    

Children especially become traumatized because they are hard-wired to see the parent as someone who will provide safety (if anything, narcissists don't provide safety, and they continually increase the unsafety by abusing their kids and putting them through tests that challenge their safety). Children also expect their parent to take care of them, to be fair and to treat them fairly, to soothe them when they are hurt or ill, to nurture their growing personalities, interests and education. Narcissists, in general, fall really short of providing any of this. Children, especially, cannot deal with communication that is not direct, that has a lot of manipulation and inconsistency in intent, black and white thinking, parentification, infantilization, triangulation, gaslighting, injustice, constant erroneous blaming, and other head games attached to those communications. And unfortunately children are often the first in the line of attack for narcissists. Children can be so hurt as to be practically emotionally branded by the traumas and scars from living through all of this.

Even the golden child suffers. Even though the golden child is idealized and rewarded, the fact is that he is also at risk for not growing and developing into an emotionally healthy adult, when he is being coddled like an underage child so much, when he is called upon constantly to be controlled, and a perpetual flying monkey for the parent, there are also repercussions on his psyche. It is not good child rearing at all, being so enmeshed with the parent to the point of emotional incest. The fact that a lot of golden children become another narcissist is proof of it, and what can be so rewarding about that? Also rarely are golden children close to any of their siblings, so even if they have ten siblings, they are most often alone - with their parent. 

The other issue with not having a very good identity or sense of self, is that they rely on other people to tell them who they are. Of course, the people who praise them, or fake-praise them, will be rewarded by them the most, as if the narcissist needs to pay their audience for their one-man show where they are actor, writer, producer, and of course, the manipulator of emotions. 

The fact of the matter is, when narcissists only surround themselves with flatterers, this is how they get a superiority complex where they feel it is perfectly fine, even when it is not, to love bomb prospective mates when they are already married, to give unsolicitous lectures, lessons, leadership, aggressive advice, aggressive opinions about the character and disposition of their victims. They make judgements about other's personality, talent, presentation of the self, sanity, type or lack of intellect, type or lack of appropriateness with others, and all of the other aggressions they display - and this has to do with the narcissist's belief that others also have the ability to make a personality tailor-made for the narcissist. They are constantly telling you that you are not good enough and need to change for them, right? "Just be another actor and praise me all of time, please! But let me play the lead!" they seem to be saying.

If we refuse, they rage. As if all the world needs in its future are children who are more actors with false selves. 

It is a very, very similar "dictator trap" that Brian Klaas talks about where the constant presence of only sycophants, "yes men" and flatterers goes to the narcissist's head and becomes their illusory notion that they are great, and that they can control everyone and everything to procure more power, and where they seriously believe they can aggress upon others without consequences.  

Inside themselves, the aggression feeds the superiority complex, and the superiority complex feeds the aggression.

This is one reason why narcissists tend to get worse in their aggressive behaviors, not better, and often turn to an array of abusive tactics to solve their problems. It also keeps them blind to the fact that their aggressions create more problems than solutions - they often get an illusory "high", a "feeling of great grandiosity", as if it was a drug, even from being cruel. But like all drugs, it's a hallucination that they are superior or becoming great. But, like all "highs", it doesn't last, and they have to procure their drug of narcissistic supply again and again and again.

A few psychologists, but not many of them, suggest that in order to get along with narcissists, just give them what they want: lots of flattery so that they don't attack you or think of you as hostile. I think this is absolutely nuts unless you are in a life-and-death situation with them. Flattery is adding to the problem, the illusions, the incredible number of lies where there are already way too many of them, and creating more lies. Survivors should be getting away from the lies, illusions and acting trips. 

The fact that so many narcissists highly resemble one another, the disorder is running their interactions, perceptions, and their inability to know themselves or anyone else. Dr. Todd Grande has said something like, "They are imprisoned by their own narcissism", especially when he talks about the vindictive-style narcissists who never feel fulfilled by their vindictiveness. 

The fact that they can go from "grand to shameful", and from the illusion of being admired even when they are evil and abusive, from mirroring someone else when they are love bombing and devaluing that same person months later, and all of the inconsistent, often changeable black and white thinking that they do, shows that they are not really in touch with what produces character, a strong identity that they, or anyone else, can recognize once they get to know them. 

When they murder their entire family, don't most of their neighbors say, "Oh, but he was so nice! Always a smile! He bent over backwards for those of us in the neighborhood. So shocking!" 

Who are they? This nice person who treats his neighbors altruistically, or the evil person? Even they can't come to terms with it because their impulsivities, their Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde switching to fit what ever black-and-white judgements they are making moment to moment, person to person, and the compulsive agendas for more power and narcissistic supply run their lives. If you have morals and ethics, the kind of agendas they have will never rule your life.  

"Oh, but being so false, and making up a false self is so rewarding!" - no it is not.  

It's a disorder that emerged as a way to survive childhood with either a Cluster B personality disordered parent (the most likely scenario), or an inconsistent alcoholic parent or parents with either anger management issues or a chronic inability to emotionally regulate themselves and their actions, but it doesn't serve them very well after childhood. No one wants to be manipulated, gaslighted, triangulated, pretend-loved, and lied to by them. So a lot of relationships fail for narcissists. By the time they are old, sometimes the only person left is the golden child, but even they have their limits, or they can get sick and die, and, as we know, narcissists don't really consider this, or have respect for realities in general. They are agenda-driven and they often think their agendas foretell the future. No, they do not. It's just another illusory issue they have.

Some of my notes follow these videos, and because I'll be going more and more into the study of healing from trauma, I will be discussing how and why narcissists false self creates trauma for individuals, and ways to heal from it. But I think you have a pretty good idea from my writing above how you could get trauma from living the life as a flatterer for a narcissist.  

the false self according to people who have been diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

videos by Professor Sam Vaknin:

Narcissist's False Self vs. True Self: Soul-snatching - by Professor Sam Vaknin (You Tube)

Narcissism as Theatre: More on the False Self - by Professor Sam Vaknin (You Tube)

YOU are the Narcissist’s Ego, Self - by Professor Sam Vaknin (You Tube)

Narcissist's False Narrative and False Self - by Professor Sam Vaknin (You Tube)

Narcissist’s False Self: Primates, Perverts, Serpents, God - by Professor Sam Vaknin (You Tube)

Sam Vaknin Demon Possessed Narcissism & False Self - by Professor Sam Vaknin (You Tube)

Narcissist as Social Misfit - by Professor Sam Vaknin (You Tube)

Narcissist Hates Himself, So Can’t Love YOU - by Professor Sam Vaknin (You Tube)


videos by Jacob Skidmore, the Nameless Narcissist: 

     Note, I find Jason to have "Narcissism Lite". The reason why is this video where he states: "I would not consider myself an abusive person in my romantic relationships. And that's debatable. I was toxic. I'll say that ... but I would never dream of taking my partner's money, or like hitting them, or intentionally making them feel insane, or take advantage of them in some way ..." 
     Exploitation, abusiveness and gaslighting are usually very common traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and most of us have run into narcissists who use all three - narcissists like Jason seem rare. Without those three ingredients, it puts him on a lighter part of the spectrum. So, keep this in mind when you listen to him. 
     Sam Vaknin (above) calls himself a malignant narcissist (i.e. with some Antisocial Personality Disorder traits). But, he too, is unusual. For one thing, he was abused so constantly and so intrusively that he describes his childhood in some of his videos as "like the Holocaust". So, in other words he was a scapegoat, and like a lot of scapegoats, he has a bit of rebelliousness and wants to know why he was treated so badly, and what was going on when he was a child (including why a mother would hate her son to that degree), and feels free to talk about his vulnerabilities and even his diagnosis. Most narcissists would not be caught dead talking about either. They'd still be trying to please their parent (and not saying or staying quiet about your abuse as a child is part of pleasing an abusive parent, by the way - oh, yes, they want you to lie or omit). Also scapegoats are the least likely in abusive toxic families to be diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (according to therapist, Jay Reid). 
     Sam Vaknin is also so much more aware and "open to new experiences" than other narcissists, including changing, and growing, and advising others on what to do with the narcissists in their own lives (his words: "Abandon the narcissist."). 
     It's doubtful you will run into any narcissists as self aware as Professor Vaknin. Self awareness is so lacking in the overwhelming majority of narcissists, and for some it is non-existent, that most people feel like they are talking to a brick wall, especially if there is an issue to be resolved in your common relationship. Not so with him. 
     So also keep this in mind. 
     H.G. Tudor, below (who is hiding his identity, other than the fact that he is British), seems much more like your average narcissist, however, I feel that you can gain more knowledge about the "whys" from Jason Skidmore and Sam Vaknin than Tudor. I think it takes missing a few of the traits to get into the nitty gritty of why narcissists act as they do.                           

The Narcissist is (and feels) FAKE - by Jacob Skidmore, the Nameless Narcissist (You Tube)

The Narcissist’s MASK - by Jacob Skidmore, the Nameless Narcissist (You Tube)

The Narcissist is completely empty - by Jacob Skidmore, the Nameless Narcissist (You Tube)

The Narcissist’s vulnerability is FAKE - by Jacob Skidmore, the Nameless Narcissist (You Tube)

Narcissists are NEVER themselves - by Jacob Skidmore, the Nameless Narcissist (You Tube)

Narcissists are NOT HUMAN - by Jacob Skidmore, the Nameless Narcissist (You Tube)

Narcissists don’t feel like real people - by Jacob Skidmore, the Nameless Narcissist (You Tube)

Why the narcissist always fakes his emotions - by Jacob Skidmore, the Nameless Narcissist (You Tube)

Do Narcissists care if they make you cry? - by Jacob Skidmore, the Nameless Narcissist (You Tube)

Why the narcissist always accuses you of lying to them - by Jacob Skidmore, the Nameless Narcissist (You Tube)
     Note: In this video he makes the case that he (and other narcissists) lie and make up grandiose stories about themselves to impress other people (and he asks the question to his audience, "Why wouldn't anyone do that?"). It gets down to making up a personality too, though he doesn't say this, but I think it is implied: Why wouldn't someone act out a personality type to please someone else, if your goal is to please, or entice?
     It gets down to upbringing, especially the golden child role with a parent who disciplines children with heavy judgments about their character, for instance, the constant "You are - " statements. A golden child is also expected to live his entire life in the service of pleasing his parent most of the time.
     Narcissists most often assume they are not narcissists, especially if they are never diagnosed, and that everyone goes through life lying and acting. It may have something to do with the fact that in forums for narcissists I often see them accusing each other of "faking it", "being fake", "lying to themselves and others", "being a fraud".
     But they say this to non-narcissists too, which is a clue that they think we, in the majority, are like narcissists in this regard. No, we are not. 
     Contrast that with other forums. This never goes on in forums for survivors of abuse, for instance. 
     The "Why not lie?" question that Jason brings up in his video explains so much. As if social standing is some sort of concrete thing you can build that can never change or get knocked down when they get caught at being inauthentic. 
     There are so many obvious and serious reasons not to lie. When I was over-exposed to narcissists at one point in my life, the alternate realities painted by narcissists was awful to live in. I felt nauseous and head-achy most of the time. I was deemed crazy, of course, for not going along with the alternate realities (which, as we know is called gaslighting). So, I find being around narcissists who insist that other people believe in their lies and alternate realities, and Dr. Jekyll niceness (when they have an obvious Mr. Hyde side that is very, very cruel and annihilating) to be traumatic, especially when you don't believe them and they become insistent and try to lecture you into the unrealities to wear you down. Malignant narcissists especially won't let it go. They can hammer you to believe them  endlessly and even threaten you if you won't at least say, "I believe you." Changing, tampering with and coercively trying to control someone's "beliefs" should never be some end goal anyway, and being pressured to believe is something narcissists themselves don't tolerate, so why do they do it to us? 
     Anyway, there is a trauma aspect to dealing with someone's acting jobs (especially finding out that they never loved you, but were with you to manipulate something, or to get narcissistic supply and power, possibly even to sabotage you), and lying (forcing others to believe something that isn't true). 
     And then there is the problem of them being caught. If they fake running a marathon, and they get caught faking it, that they were never even at the marathon to begin with, they risk people not taking the narcissist seriously in anything they have to say. They lose clout. And people start wondering why anyone would want to lie about something like that when there is so much down-fall to lying?
     It explains why narcissists don't listen to what we have to say. They are always trying to find the alternate reality even of what we are saying. Or they look to see if there are any manipulative motivations to lie in us, and they go on "possible motivations" as their excuse to accuse someone of lying. And it is why they insist that we are lying when we are not. That's such a crazy-making world to live in and most of us can't live in that world with them. 
     It also explains why narcissists don't take getting caught seriously. "Oh, it was just a little fib. It never hurt anyone! I was just trying to see if anyone caught on! Everyone lies, you know." Or they cover it up with another lie: "I was there. We all have our moments of forgetfulness. No one saw me because they were running and trying to win instead." 
     For most of us, reality is something we don't want to tamper with because it kills the trust between people (trust is necessary for an ongoing healthy relationship), kills the clout (we see that the ethics are very, very low - "and what other unethical deeds do they do?"), and it really kills the desire to have anything but the most superficial relationship with them, if even that. 
     On a grander scale, tampering with reality becomes a world of wild conspiracy theories and such drastically different perspectives that it creates many divisions and sometimes confusion. We see that in American society today. Conspiracy theories in politics are running people's decisions more and more, and we are creating a situation much like the kind of family narcissist's insist we live in when we are children.
     Narcissists love their made up totally untarnished images and the many lies that go with it, but we don't have to love it or feed it or be talked into it. 
     Who wants to have a life like the one in their forums where they are all trying to convince one another that they are fake and fraudulent? What about trying to find a cure for Multiple Sclerosis instead? Or how about trying to find a cure for the trauma that narcissists bring to our lives? Anything seems better than spending your life on this, yes?

Articles, Radio and You Tube videos by H.G. Tudor:

Always on the Fake - by H.G. Tudor
excerpt:
     ... The reason it seemed so genuine is because our performance was so convincing. This performance was of such a high calibre owing to two things. The first because we have practised repeatedly and we possess experienced ease at mimicking the behaviour of others. We have done it so often and to so many people we do it without thinking. And there is the neat segue into the second reason. We do it without thinking because we believe it to be absolutely the right thing to do. We are not concerned that we are exhibiting a false front to you. We are not troubled by the fact that all our smiles, kisses and pleasantries are manufactured. Not only are we not burdened by this because we are not designed to be burdened by such concerns it also because we have the complete and utter conviction that behaving in this manner is the right thing to do. We need to seduce you. We need to ensnare you and what better way to do so than by this campaign of love and desire? Where is the harm in that? We get you where we want you, we receive dollops of delicious fuel and you feel loved, wanted and placed on a throne at the top of a pedestal. It is a win- win surely? ...

Hiding from Yourself - by H.G. Tudor

A Word About Pathological Narcissism - by H.G. Tudor (Tumblr) 

Idealization and Devaluation: Why Narcissists Flip - by H.G. Tudor for Fairy Tale Shadows

5 Things You Do Wrong When it Comes to Narcissists and What You Should Do Instead - by H.G. Tudor for Radio Public (google Play)

Do Narcissists Lose Their Sense of Self? - by H.G. Tudor (You Tube)

The Narcissist's Performance of One: Part 1 - by H.G. Tudor (You Tube)

The Narcissist's Performance of One : Part 2 - by H.G. Tudor (You Tube)

VIDEOS BY A PSYCHOLOGIST (NON-NARCISSIST)
ON THE FALSE SELF

"To Narcissists, Lying Is A Necessity"
by Dr. Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism:

""HOW THE FALSE SELF DEVELOPS"
by Dr. Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism:

"THE MAKING OF A NARCISSIST: How Narcissists Are Trapped Inside The False Self"
by Dr. Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism:

FURTHER READING

Treatment of the False Self (Narcissistic Defenses) - by Michael Etts, LCSW-C for Adaptive Therapy
excerpt:
     Rules of the false self family:
     Exhibit socially desirable traits (appearance, money, athleticism, intelligence, etc) to bolster the family image and hero status will be awarded
     Failing to bolster the family image or identifying flaws in the dominant parent will result in the assignment of scapegoat status
     Do not question the family consensual reality that the family unit is “special” “gifted” “lucky” or in other ways superior.
     Feelings and emotional intimacy are discouraged except “positive” feelings like being happy. This contributes to the myth of the “happy family” that is believed and presented to outsiders. This happy facade is often considered evidence of the family superiority. Empathy, compassion, sadness and warmth are all compromised, especially for those outside the family of origin.
     Dependency and attachment needs are disowned and denied. Guilt, power, money, etc are used to control family members to assure that dependency and attachment needs are met. In accordance with this, saying “no” or setting boundaries is reserved for the dominant parent (and to a lesser degree, the subordinate parent).
     The self esteem that does exist is entirely conditional and is based on feeling “better than” others. This requires almost constant judgment of others, both within the family and those outside the family. This explains the main function of the scapegoat. They are to assume an inferior role and thus enable a superior role for the remaining family members.
     In the more troubled false self families, children are largely objectified, related to as sources of gratification for the dominant parent’s needs. In a sense, children are seen as vending machines. Something that one goes to to get something, without the need for reciprocity. The idea that children are thinking, feeling beings with their own needs, is not acknowledged. This becomes the relational style of the hero.

True self and false self - Wikipedia

Understanding the Mind of a Narcissist (Narcissists are not who they appear to be. They're both easy and hard to love.) - by Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT for Psychology Today

The Dual Role of the False Self - by Sam Vaknin for Healthy Place

How Do Narcissists Hide And Suppress Themselves? - by Fahim chughtai for Medium.com

Can a Narcissist Stop Lying Even With Evidence? - by the administrators of Elevation Behavioral Health 

The Narcissist’s False Self - by Mayna Wakefield for Narcissistic Abuse Rehab

False Self Syndrome: The Dangers Of Living A Lie To Fit In  - by Robert Whitley, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, McGill University for Huffington Post

False Self-True Self: The Perils of Living a Lie to Fit In (Exploring the link between authenticity and mental health.) - by Rob Whitley, Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Why Narcissists Act the Way They Do - by  Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT (medically reviewed by Scientific Advisory Board) for Psych Central

Behind the Facade: The “False Self” of the Narcissist - by Steve Blizard for the Steve Blizard blog

Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Are Psychodynamic Theories and the Alternative DSM-5 Model for Personality Disorders Finally Going to Meet? - by Frans Schalkwijk, Patrick Luyten, Theo Ingenhoven and Jack Dekker for Frontiers - professional paper

Healing from Identity Loss After Narcissistic Abuse - by Kim Saeed for Psych Central

“It’s not you, it’s me”: identity disturbance as the main contributor to interpersonal problems in pathological narcissism - by Marko Biberdzic,  Junhao Tan and Nicholas J. S. Day  for Bio Med Central - professional paper

Unveiling the Mask: The Secrets Behind Narcissists’ Constant Identity Swaps - by Jaden Craymer for Medium
     Note: this article argues that identity swapping is about getting control

Insight across mental disorders: A multifaceted metacognitive phenomenon - by G Konstantakopoulos for National Library of medicine (PubMed) - professional article

Self creation and the limitless void of dissociation: the 'as if' personality - by Hester McFarland Solomon for National Library of medicine (PubMed) - professional article

Self psychology and the narcissistic personality disorders - by A Goldberg for National Library of medicine (PubMed) - professional article

Dissociation and Confabulation in Narcissistic Disorders - by Sam Vaknin for Herald - professional article

6 Less-Known Signs of Narcissism (How can you recognize the fragility behind the narcissist’s grandiosity?) - by Leon F Seltzer PhD for Psychology Today

Narcissists 7 Weaknesses Reveal - by Amy Pierce Romine for Psych Central

Narcissists Have No Identity - by the Little Shaman for Hub Pages 

     Note: this is not a professional article, but there is a lot of insight (possibly taken from Vaknin's many studies on the lack of identity in Narcissistic Personality Disorder) 

Do narcissists struggle with identity issues? - Quora question

RECOMMENDED: Catching a Narcissist in a Lie (What Happens?) - by Rebecca Zung for Thrive Global
excerpt:
     If you catch a narcissist in a lie and confront them, you will definitely face at least one of the Four D’s. They will either deny, deflect, devalue, and/or dismiss you.

How to Trick a Narcissist Into Telling the Truth - by Jay Reid, LPCC, and Madeleine Flamiano for WikiHow

RECOMMENDED (this post gets into the adoption of twisting reality to conform to their beliefs): Narcissists Don’t Lie, They Create Alternate Realities - by Kara Summers (her own story plus interviewing a psychologist) for The Good Men Project

Would I Lie To You? A Narcissist's Fluid Relationship With Truth - by Dr. Les Carter (You Tube)
excerpt:
Narcissists have such a need to look good and to have their way that they are (shall we say) loose with the truth. With a motive of self-promotion, they can gaslight you will all sorts of comments leaving you just shaking your head in dismay. Dr. Les Carter exposes this pervasive pattern with the goal of promoting insight and awareness as you respond.

RECOMMENDED: A neuroscientist says parents who make these 3 mistakes are more likely to raise a narcissist - by Cody Isabel for Make It

Why Do Narcissists Lie So Blatantly? Chronic Lying of Narcissists - by Karsten Noack for his own site 

RECOMMENDED: 5 Reasons A Narcissist Moves On So Quickly - by Sarah Squires, Abuse Recovery Coach, NAPARRC for LinkedIn.
excerpt:
     ... 1. The area of the brain responsible for empathy (the frontal lobe) is much less developed in a narcissist that the rest of the average population.  Therefore they are physically less able to understand others feelings and so will struggle to recognise love.  We learn how to love from others but if our brains are less capable of performing this function, we won’t learn how to love meaning relationships are much more superficial for narcissists. ... 
     ... 4. The cerebral cortex has also been found to be less developed in narcissists and this area is responsible for memory, emotions and behaviour.  Therefore the narcissist seems to move on so fast because their emotions are not as deep as ours but also, they don’t form memories in the same way the rest of us do.  For most of us it’s the memories which keep us attached to someone and unable to move on.  The narcissist doesn’t have this problem.  Their brain hasn’t stored those memories in the same way so they can quickly move on without the attachment. ...

What Is Narcissistic Personality Disorder? - by Kate Dube, LCSW for Calmerry

Personality disorders (Explains personality disorders, including possible causes and how you can access treatment and support. Includes tips for helping yourself, and guidance for friends and family.) - by the Administrator of Mind (Welsh organization in the U.K.) - provides information on all of the personality disorders (many personality disordered individuals have a number of overlapping personality disorders. 

How To Spot A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing - from the administrators of Power of Positivity blog
excerpt:
     ... What does a wolf in sheep’s clothing mean? The warning regarding the wolf references a sermon often taught by Christian leaders, from Jesus Christ “beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” (Gospel of Matthew 7:15, King James Version) ...
     My note: apparently narcissists and psychopaths have been around for a long time. Read more excerpts:
     ... However, the message has since evolved beyond its origins in the church to serve as a warning not to trust someone in a friendly disguise who may not be a good person.
     What is the moral of the wolf in sheep’s clothing? Generally, a wolf in sheep’s clothing will display “red flags” that can potentially unveil its true intentions. ...
     ... Be careful how much you tolerate. You're teaching them how to treat you ...
     My note: Yes indeed! 
     ... The wolf in sheep’s clothing makes being with them fun and exciting at first, and then they shift the focus of the relationship onto them and their needs. ... 
     My note: red flag!
     ... A wolf in sheep’s clothing will try to hook you with sweet talk and a false sense of interest. That is how they build trust and form a bond. It enables them to use us emotionally once the real motive of the relationship becomes clear. ...
     My note: it's called love bombing. 
     ... Take note of your friends’ feelings when you recommend something. If they harshly react when they don’t agree with you or when criticized, the wolf may be hiding underneath. ...
     My note: narcissists and psychopaths rage when they feel criticized. "Feel" is the operative word here. 
     ... After you hear their story, you intuitively feel that they have embellished major parts of it or just fabricated the entire thing altogether. ...
     My note: narcissists and psychopaths like to deal in false narratives (anything to feed their ego, and to get them on an entitled bandwagon). 
     ... They quickly grow impatient.

     Impatience can be defined as the following:
     1. Irritable behavior that results from delays

     2. A restless need for change and excitement. ... 
     My note: impatience is not always the sign of narcissism, but it usually is for people who perpetrate domestic violence (i.e. people who have traits of psychopathy).      

HOW AMERICA GOT MEAN (In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world - by David Brooks, Illustrations by Ricardo Tomás for The Atlantic
excerpt:
     ... The story I’m going to tell is about morals. In a healthy society, a web of institutions—families, schools, religious groups, community organizations, and workplaces—helps form people into kind and responsible citizens, the sort of people who show up for one another. We live in a society that’s terrible at moral formation. ...
     ... In 1788, Noah Webster wrote, “The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities ; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.” The progressive philosopher John Dewey wrote in 1909 that schools teach morality “every moment of the day, five days a week.” Hollis Frissell, the president of the Hampton Institute, an early school for African Americans, declared, “Character is the main object of education.” As late as 1951, a commission organized by the National Education Association, one of the main teachers’ unions, stated that “an unremitting concern for moral and spiritual values continues to be a top priority for education.” ... 
     ... Expecting people to build a satisfying moral and spiritual life on their own by looking within themselves is asking too much. A culture that leaves people morally naked and alone leaves them without the skills to be decent to one another. Social trust falls partly because more people are untrustworthy. That creates crowds of what psychologists call “vulnerable narcissists.” We all know grandiose narcissists—people who revere themselves as the center of the universe. Vulnerable narcissists are the more common figures in our day—people who are also addicted to thinking about themselves, but who often feel anxious, insecure, avoidant. Intensely sensitive to rejection, they scan for hints of disrespect. Their self-esteem is wildly in flux. Their uncertainty about their inner worth triggers cycles of distrust, shame, and hostility. ... 
     ... Sadness, loneliness, and self-harm turn into bitterness. Social pain is ultimately a response to a sense of rejection—of being invisible, unheard, disrespected, victimized. When people feel that their identity is unrecognized, the experience registers as an injustice—because it is. People who have been treated unjustly often lash out and seek ways to humiliate those who they believe have humiliated them. ... 
     ... Lonely eras are not just sad eras; they are violent ones. In 19th-century America, when a lot of lonely young men were crossing the western frontier, one of the things they tended to do was shoot one another. As the saying goes, pain that is not transformed gets transmitted. People grow more callous, defensive, distrustful, and hostile. The pandemic made it worse, but antisocial behavior is still high even though the lockdowns are over. And now we are caught in a cycle, ill treatment leading to humiliation and humiliation leading to more meanness. Social life becomes more barbaric, online and off. ... 
     ... Normally, she argues, we go about our days with self-centered, self-serving eyes. We see and judge people in ways that satisfy our own ego. We diminish and stereotype and ignore, reducing other people to bit players in our own all-consuming personal drama. But we become morally better, she continues, as we learn to see others deeply, as we learn to envelop others in the kind of patient, caring regard that makes them feel seen, heard, and understood. This is the kind of attention that implicitly asks, “What are you going through?” and cares about the answer. ... 
     ... Democracy is the system that best enhances human dignity. Democratic regimes entrust power to the people, and try to inform people so they will be responsible with that trust. Authoritarian regimes seek to create a world in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. ...
     My note: democracy is better even in the family, especially when co-members are adults. Authoritarian families are much more likely to create criminals, immoral acts, to present a false image to outsiders, and to be an abusive family with a lot of ostracized and estranged members. 

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