Once Narcissists Try to Hurt You, They Don't Want to Stop. It's One of Many Reasons Why Most Survivors of Narcissistic Abuse Eventually Leave Them.

(edited)

So, before you shame the next victim of narcissistic abuse for divorcing their spouse, or for a child who prefers to be estranged from a parent or sibling, or for letting a rift come between two best friends, consider that the reason may be that one of them has many or all of the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and that this narcissist is actually on a campaign to hurt the person they claim to love.

And if they do have this personality disorder, plus some power over you, and they have hurt you once, and continued to try to hurt you, consider that narcissistic traits in the "hurter" might be the culprit.

Some reasons why narcissists want to hurt other people, and why they go on retaliation and revenge binges:

* when they feel hurt over your complaints or criticisms about them, or in situations they manage
     They take complaints and criticisms as insults to their ego, an ego they feel must be worshipped, not found to be at fault. When dealing with others' complaints and criticisms, narcissists rage. They feel disappointed in the messenger of those complaints and criticisms. For covert narcissists and malignant narcissists, they most often want to seek revenge.
     Take note however: most narcissists believe that you have no right to complain about or criticize them because they put themselves in higher status and value than others, whereas they criticize other people in extreme ways: insults, degrading comments, false narratives, smear campaigns with only a little truth, fantasy scenes which make you seem to be the instigator.
     They call on others to have a bad opinion of you even if they don't know you, calling on others to hurt you.
     In fact, they try to out-do you in extreme ways with complaints and criticisms, as well as take on aggressive behaviors. 
     This shows a number of things:
     -first: that they have narcissistic traits, and maybe even the whole personality disorder, and possibly even other personality disorders too, especially if the revenge is so extreme that you wonder when they'll be done, or they use sabotage, crimes, physical abuse, and physical injury or attempted murder  to make their point, the sign of either malignant narcissism or psychopathy. 
     -second: entitlement. Narcissists feel entitled to hurt you, but that you aren't entitled to walk away from them because of the hurt they caused. They also believe you are not entitled to defend yourself against their attacks, or to call the police if a crime that they instigate or get someone else to instigate against you seems connected to them, or to live happily ever after without them. They can't stand any of these, so there is a great resentment against others' boundaries. 
     -third: boundaries. They believe they are so special that they have a right to traverse and crash everyone's boundaries. This includes emotional, mental and often physical boundaries. It also includes a right to interrogate you, or demean you.
     If they are home invading, stealing, stalking, trespassing, and sabotaging, this points more towards Antisocial Personality Disorder or Malignant Narcissism.  
     
* when they feel slighted when you don't invite them to important events in your life, or to a party, and believe it means they have a right to seek revenge over it
     Narcissists feel too important to be taken for granted, forgotten about, overlooked, or to be unwanted company.
     They assume they control others more than they actually do (they even think they control others' thoughts and opinions), that they are always the most important person in the room, that people always listen with baited breath to what they have to say while disregarding what others have to say, that others will always be careful not to step on their ego ("walking on eggshells"), that they "own" the event to which they are invited to some degree. They are not at events to get to know others except in gleaning information on how much influence they, the narcissist, can insert into conversations. This is one way they find both new narcissistic supply and new victims.
     Since "not being invited" is a bruise to their ego, their highly crafted "perfect persona", and sense of importance, entitlement and grandiose visions of themselves, they tend to get hurt and retaliate. 
     They may do a tit-for-tat and stop inviting you to their events too, but more likely they will go way beyond that in revenge-seeking. 

* when they feel they are losing control and power over you or over the events in your life that they believe they have a right to control
     One of the big things narcissists feel they have a right to control are the weddings of their children (and to some extent their grandchildren). This includes the cake, the guest list, the dress or tux, and anything else they can think of. It's the rare narcissist who says, "You can run your wedding any way you want to. If you need my support, I'm here for you." That is so obvious in forums for child abuse survivors. 
     That is the more well known control they exert, but there are also plenty more.
     If you are in a close personal relationship with them, they also feel entitled to control what you say, how you say it, where you go, what you do, what you tell them, who you have relationships with, what career you choose, how you manage your career, how you dress, what you do with your hair, everything. They are even known to try to micro-manage situations they aren't part of and know nothing about. 
     If you are in a work environment with them, they typically use gossip, tell false narratives to the boss, sabotage your work, take credit for your work and other maneuvers to make sure they are promoted and that you are demoted (or fired). Note: if bosses don't look into situations carefully, they can be taken in by narcissists. If they are adamant that the narcissist is right, then you can't talk them out of it. You can read my post on enablers and flying monkeys in narcissistic abuse to understand the dynamic. The work environment is likely to get more toxic than less toxic if narcissists are promoted. 
     If they've gained that kind of control over you, and feel they are losing it later on, or if you've come upon a false narrative or two that they've told about you, and you are showing distrust of them over these facts, then they are likely to go on a revenge binge. 
     They don't like losing power and position, and have to know they are always going to get more power, not less of it, and while rage is certainly part of losing power for them, it's a rare narcissist who won't retaliate too. 

* when you aren't walking on eggshells for them
     Narcissists feel they are too sensitive, that they need special care and that your duty is to be careful around their super sensitive feelings. 
     Fine, but they aren't sensitive to other people's feelings by a long shot because of their profound lack of empathy. 
     This makes it very difficult to be super sensitive to them when they are hammering away at you with such callousness. 
     When you've had enough, they'll play the victim. The only person they notice who is hurt is them, always and forever, because again, they don't care about your feelings (because of their lack of empathy). 
     If you don't come rushing to their aid immediately, when they want it, they feel you are a calloused brute who can't toughen up when they hurt you. So they want to hurt you more. 
     There is so much hypocrisy in these situations that it is hard to turn yourself inside out to address their feelings when most likely, because of their narcissism, they instigated it, they took hurting you to such extremes, they never offered a realistic resolution, and all you want to do is leave.
     Their playing the victim in these kinds of situations perhaps nauseates you too. 
     When you aren't taken in by their being the victim instead of acknowledging that they victimized you, then they start playing the victim in front of others, inserting a lot of false narratives about what happened between the two of you, making sure they turn you into the instigator, making sure they make everything that happened totally your fault, etc. Believe it or not, a lot of narcissists still expect you to save their sorry ass. 
     When you don't save their ass, they go on a revenge binge. 

So let's say they have decided the best way to react to being hurt is to go on a retaliation spree. Where does it end? How much destruction satisfies them? And do they keep wanting to hurt you once they have started?

Yes to all of it. 

For part of this answer, I went to Google AI and Google Search. I give you the Google AI answer below in dark red, and you can search through articles through the same link. 

There's a saying, "Hurt people hurt people," and it often applies to individuals with narcissistic tendencies. While it might seem counterintuitive to keep hurting someone they've already harmed, several factors contribute to this behavior: 

Lack of Empathy and Self-reflection

* Narcissists struggle with empathy, meaning they have a diminished ability to understand or share the feelings of others.

* They may not fully grasp the depth of pain they inflict because their reality is distorted and focused on their own needs and perspectives.

* This lack of self-awareness makes it difficult for them to recognize the impact of their actions or take responsibility for causing harm. 

Underlying Insecurities and Fragile Ego

* Despite appearing confident, narcissists harbor deep insecurities and a fragile sense of self.

* To protect their ego, they may employ defense mechanisms like projecting their flaws onto others and blaming them for their own insecurities or past traumas.

* Hurting others can be a way to regulate their own emotions and boost their self-esteem, even if it's temporary. 

The Cycle of Narcissistic Abuse

* Narcissists may engage in a cycle of abuse that includes love bombing, devaluation, and discard stages, where the victim is idealized, then criticized and put down, and finally cast aside.

* When a narcissist feels challenged or threatened, they may lash out in narcissistic rage, which is characterized by intense anger and a need to regain control.

* This cycle perpetuates as the narcissist struggles to maintain a sense of superiority and control, and may repeat hurtful behaviors to ensure the victim remains under their influence or subservient to them. 

Pleasure from seeing others suffer

* Some narcissists, especially those with sadistic or malignant traits, may derive pleasure from the pain and humiliation of others, according to Medium.

* They may see it as a way to prove their own superiority and get the "narcissistic supply" they need to feel good about themselves. 

It's important to remember that individuals with narcissistic personality disorder or strong narcissistic traits are operating from a place of deep pain and insecurity. While it's crucial to acknowledge the harm they cause, it's also essential to understand the underlying psychological factors driving their actions. 

If "the retaliations" are scary and seem like the actions of a "disturbed person" and they are escalating, this article by Psychology Today called "The Hidden Danger of the Homicidal Narcissist

When ego threats, perceived slights, and romantic rejections can lead to murder" might be helpful.

Note: Most victims of narcissistic abuse tend to downplay the amount of danger they are in (meaning they are usually in much more danger than they realize). 

So here are some traits to watch out for to tell whether you are in any danger. The more of these things there are, the more dangerous the person is.

* A need to get negative narcissistic supply from you
Negative narcissistic supply would mean the narcissist is feeding on these emotions from you:
      being upset and sad: being upset means, to them, that they have control over your emotions, that if they try to upset you, they will realize they have that kind of power over you. It's another sign to them that they can make a puppet out of you. If you are bothered by them throwing out your clothes, they'll be sure to "up" throwing your clothes away just to upset you, and then play dumb afterwards. 
If you are sad, to them it means they have managed to effect you in a negative way. They may do things that upset you more. If you don't like your dog running in the street, they will send your dog out to run in the street and then play dumb afterward. If you don't like ginger cake, they'll buy you a ginger cake especially for your birthday. If talking about a certain subject makes you feel sad and you don't like to re-visit those sad memories, they'll make constant excuses as to why they need to keep bringing it up. 
     sabotaging you: a lot of negative narcissistic supply comes from sabotaging you. Let's say you get a promotion at work, and they not only do not celebrate the event with you, they also decide to rage at you and start an erroneous argument so that your attention is on them instead of your promotion. They might call your boss up at work and tell them you didn't deserve the promotion because you have serious psychological problems (when you don't). Then they refuse to talk to you for three days. 
     getting you angry: They provoke you and bait you in ways that they know will get you angry and reactive. Once you become reactive, they tell you that you have serious mental health problems to get that angry at them. Then they tell you the argument was all your fault without taking accountability for provoking and baiting you for a response. This is also a bullying tactic, by the way. 
     getting you jealous: Again, they provoke you and bait you to get you jealous. They talk about what great sex they had with their ex. They talk about how attractive a woman is at work. If you go to a dance, they spend most of the night dancing with others and keep looking at you to see if you are reacting. In extreme cases they have affairs and flaunt them in your face, but then act surprised, devastated and vengeful when you file for divorce. They can even say things like "You never cared about me to file for divorce!" 
     controlling the conversation to get negative reactions out of you: blaming you for things you did not do, blaming you for things you did not say, blaming you for thoughts you do not have (called perspecticide). Any actions that show that they do not value you, who you are, what you do, or what you have to say is usually to get a reaction out of you. Stonewalling and silencing you is also one of the ways narcissists try to control what is discussed, when it is discussed, and how it is discussed. If they don't get their own way in this regard every single time, they have a tantrum, and often refuse to talk to you at all. 
     sending the message that no one cares about you: This usually is a bullying technique meant to make you feel alone and lonely, without support from a single soul, an outcast, a shunned person that no one in the world will accept. Except that it usually comes with false narratives about you, and lots of smear campaigns to get other people doubting you and siding with the narcissist way before they want others to shun you. In other words, it is premeditated, an insurance policy in case you "buck" their control.
     Part of why they do this is to get you wanting to get approval from them and the group, especially their brainwashed group. This tends to work in their favor in the short term, but not in the long term. If this is the first time they do this, the negative reaction they want is probably what they will get: you'll feel alone, lonely and shunned. 
     If they keep doing it, you'll probably figure out it is an obnoxious game they want to play to get you afraid and reacting, and to keep you from seeking other avenues of genuine support, instead of the very tenuous support they show you.  
     getting reactions out of you where you feel afraid, intimidated, threatened, anxious and/or hunted: This is generally referred to as coercive control. This is the most dangerous of negative narcissistic supply, but I bet it comes with all of the others I have mentioned first or in tandem with it. If it includes sadism too, there is even more danger to it. 
     Their wanting to get negative narcissistic supply out of you doesn't get better, and can get much worse.
     The amount of narcissistic supply they get from others is never enough. They always want more. Now imagine that their main source of narcissistic supply is the negative kind. This means they'll be increasing the amount of hurt they give you, sometimes to the point of sadistic acts. 
When therapists tell you that abuse escalates, listen to them. Getting negative narcissistic supply is part of it. 
     
* If there is gang bullying going on, it can be more dangerous than one sole narcissist bullying you because brainwashed fools in numbers tend "not to be smart".
     They aren't being smart about what they are doing because they are brainwashed. They have given up any kind of moral convictions in order to please the narcissist. They have also given up on their own independent thoughts to act on the narcissist's behalf.
     The dynamic doesn't change because of the number of people involved (and the co-supporters of the bullying will justify each bullying incident)
* When family mobbing becomes dangerous (Google Search and Google AI)
* When the golden child participates in family mobbing (Google Search and Google AI)
* The enabler parent in the narcissistically abusive family - by therapist, Jay Reid (You Tube)
* Dirty Secrets: The Hidden Truth of Family Mobbing and Scapegoat Abuse #scapegoat #toxicfamily - by Rebecca C. Mandeville LMFT Scapegoat Abuse Expert (You Tube)
* An INSIDIOUS type of narcissistic BULLYING - by Dr.Ramani Duvasula (You Tube)
* Family scapegoat, prized, needed and envied | Diane Collins | TEDxFederalHill (You Tube)
* Are family scapegoats sometimes killed? (Google Search and Google AI)
* Signs Your Family is Using You as the SCAPEGOAT - by Psych To Go (You Tube)
* Are authoritarian families more abusive? (Google Search and Google AI)
* Are authoritarian parents more abusive? (Google Search and Google AI)
* Family mobbing and bullying (Google Search and Google AI)
* Friendship mobbing and bullying (Google Search and Google AI)
* Workplace mobbing and bullying (Google Search and Google AI)
* Why are daughters more at risk in family mobbing? (Google Search and Google AI)

* Sons and Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers: Who Fares Worse?

How boys and girls of narcissistic mothers can be impacted. - by Claire Jack Ph.D., and reviewed by Devon Frye for Psychology Today
* Why do narcissistic mothers hate their daughters? (Google Search and Google AI)
* 10 symptoms of daughters of narcissistic fathers (Google Search and Google AI)
* 10 symptoms of sons of narcissistic fathers (Google Search and Google AI)
* When your father is a malignant narcissist (Google Search and Google AI)
* My family is a narcissistic bully and keeps bothering me. What should I do? - Quora question
* What are the 3 R's to break the cycle of violence? (Google Search and Google AI)
* Domestic Violence (professional definition) - by Martin R. Huecker, Kevin C. King,  Gary A. Jordan, William Smock, for University of Loisville, Muhlenberg Community Hospital Greenville, University of Tennessee, National Library of Medicine (professional research paper)
* Signs and Effects of Workplace Bullying - by Sherri Gordon  and reviewed by Rachel Goldman, PhD, FTOS for Very Well Mind

* Insults are a sign of danger too.
     This means they are devaluing you. When they've devalued you, they don't care what you feel, or how you feel, or how much damage they've done. Not caring about how you feel gives them the entitlement to treat you badly, with even more insults - or at least that is what they tend to think. To them, you've lost their esteem of you. 
How insults contribute to violence against others (Google Search and Google AI)

* Arrogance is a sign of danger because it means the narcissist won't really hear you or listen to you because they have the attitude that they know best, that their mind and perspectives are better than yours. So if you want to tell them how you feel, grandiose narcissists will talk over you (not let you get a word in edgewise), covert narcissists will tell you that isn't how you really feel (and lecture you about how you feel something else instead), and malignant narcissists will tend to get angry because they don't want to talk about how you feel (it simply doesn't matter to them at all). 
     Arrogance tends to contribute to narcissists having confirmation biases and being blind to knowing anyone else other than themselves, so they will not necessarily care if they put you in danger, or someone else does. 
How arrogance contributes to violence against others (Google Search and Google AI)

* Controlling behaviors:
Coercive control consists of threats, humiliation and intimidation. Usually there are fear tactics, interrogation tactics, revenge tactics if you are prone to autonomous thoughts and decisions, isolation tactics to keep you from relating to common friends and family, and gaslighting tactics to get you to question your own mind. Coercive control usually goes with domestic violence or precedes it. Therefor it is dangerous. 
Managing you as though they are your boss, teacher, or spiritual leader, and trying to keep you from your own autonomous decisions is a common type of coercive control. This means if you have an autonomous thought or ambition you are being talked out of it to take on the controller's perspectives, ways of doing things, thinking style and opinions. Sometimes you might experience revenge or threats from them if you don't "do what you are told to do" or "think the way they want to think" or "feel the way they want you to feel". Usually this kind of action is only for their benefit, not for yours. They also tend to give you negative reinforcement than positive reinforcement to get you back under their control. Negative reinforcement always comes with dangers. 

* A Guide to Coercive Control

How to recognize this subtle yet dangerous form of domestic abuse - by Shelley Flannery for Domestic Shelters
Excerpts:
     ... Evan Stark, Ph.D., a forensic social worker and author of Coercive Control, estimates between 60% and 80% of female domestic abuse survivors have experienced coercive control beyond physical and emotional abuse. And a brief on the subject by Andrea Silverstone, RSW, executive director of Sagesse Domestic Violence Prevention Society in Canada reports more than 95% of domestic violence victims experience coercive control. ... 
     ... While coercive control can be found in any type of relationship, it’s most common in heterosexual relationships in which the man uses coercive control against the woman. In fact, about one in three women who experience intimate partner violence report being the victim of coercive control as compared with about one in 20 male victims of domestic abuse. Lisa Aronson Fontes, PhD, author of Invisible Chains: Overcoming Coercive Control in Your Intimate Relationship, says she believes this is due to pervasive sexism. ... 
     ... Coercive control may not be explicitly outlawed in every state, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a red flag. In a review of intimate partner homicides in New South Wales, Australia, 100% of cases involved prior coercive control while just over half of offenders had previously been physically violent toward their partners. In other words, violence doesn’t always escalate incrementally. In more than 40% of intimate partner homicides, offenders who had previously used coercive control against their partners killed them with no reports of physical violence in between. ... 
* Does coercive control lead to domestic violence (Google Search and Google AI) 
* Does coercive control lead to criminal behavior (Google Search and Google AI)  

* Who is most at risk of becoming a victim of coercive control? - Women's aid, under the article, "What is Coercive Control?"
* 9 Signs of a Relationship with a Controlling Partner - by Hilary I. Lebow and medically reviewed by  Lori Lawrenz, PsyD for Psych Central
* Recognising the Difference Between Love and Controlling Behaviour in Relationships: Warning Signs - by the administrators of National Legal service Solicitors (UK)
* Why is coercive control illegal? (Google Search and Google AI)
* Why isn't coercive control illegal in many states in the USA?  (Google Search and Google AI)
* What do you call someone who wants to control everything? (Google Search and Google AI)
* Do criminals use coercive control? (Google Search and Google AI)

* Isolating you from others is often part of every narcissist's agenda. Again, this usually comes with a lot of smear campaigns with false narratives that they tell others long before your relationship with them seems to be in trouble. Narcissists use smear campaigns as their insurance policy to hoard the people that you both know with fake charm and false narratives about your sanity, so that you will be shunned and unsupported by their sycophants and other minions when you do break up with the narcissist.
     If these minions are brainwashed for a long time, they won't want to hear your side of things.
     Isolating is another aspect of Coercive control that can be more obvious than other traits. 
* How domestic violence offenders try to isolate their victims (Google Search and Google AI)
* ISOLATION TACTICS – How victims of Domestic Abuse fall into the trap - National Centre for Domestic Violence
* How isolating a victim contributes to victimization (Google Search and Google AI)
* How does isolation lead to victimization? (Google Search and Google AI)
* Emotional abuse in intimate relationships: The role of gender and age - by Günnur Karakurt and Kristin E Silver for Violence Vict., and National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology, Pub Med Central (professional paper) - section on isolation

* male perpetrators who are loners, outcasts or have endured loneliness and social isolation for years or decades: The Cultural Roots of Loneliness and Violence

* Research with boys helps us understand the roots of loneliness and violence. - by Niobe Way Ed.D. for Psychology Today

* Entitlement can mean they feel entitled to do anything and get away with anything. 
How does entitlement figure into domestic violence? (Google Search and Google AI)
Can spoiled children become abusive? (Google Search and Google AI)

* Breaking your property is often a precursor to physical abuse. It is also a type of revenge, and revenge in any close personal relationship is definitely a more serious kind of danger. 
Property Damage in the Domestic Violence Context - by D. Kelly Weisberg, UC Hastings College of the Law, for UC Law SF

* Lack of empathy is another danger sign. If they don't care about you, they won't care how things affect you unless they are into negative narcissistic supply and sadism.
     Lack of empathy with threatening, menacing behavior? Particularly dangerous.
Lack of empathy in domestic violence offenders (Google Search and Google AI)

* Lack of any regret or accountability for hurting you - more dangerous. A sign of Antisocial Personality Disorder which can co-exist with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 
     Lack of empathy in domestic violence offenders is particularly dangerous.
     However, even if they have a habit of apologizing, it doesn't necessarily mean they've reformed. It doesn't necessarily mean they have regrets either. This is especially true if they keep hurting you in the same ways over and over again via a cycle. 
* Lack of remorse or regret in Antisocial Personality Disorder - (Google Search and Google AI)
* The Remorse of Abusers
Too much can lead to more abuse. - by Steven Stosny, Ph.D. for The Resilience Center of Houston

* Criminal past, criminal tendencies, or a criminal mindset - even more dangerous. A lot of narcissists will break codes of conduct, like having extra-marital affairs on partners (the partner thinks they are in a monogamous relationship and is shocked to find they are not, for instance), or playing around with damaging gossip, or hiding addictions, or saying "I do" for the fifth time in terms of being faithful in their marriage, and insulting others in institutions like schools that expect polite discourse, but most of narcissists fall just short of committing crimes. 
     For those narcissists who do commit crimes, there is usually some element of Antisocial Personality Disorder. 
     The crimes can be taking things that aren't theirs but have no value on the lower end of criminal activity. Murdering you is on the higher end of criminality obviously. The amount of Antisocial Personality Disorder that is mixed in with Narcissistic Personality Disorder depends largely on what they do and say.
     A person that cannot take any complaint or criticism without wanting to hurt you in extreme over-reactive ways might be someone high in Antisocial Personality Disorder, especially if they cannot tolerate any kind of autonomous decisions or thoughts from you either. 
     Micro-managing you in extreme ways so that you are constantly being monitored and told how you are making mistakes, and raging at you about the mistakes you are perceived to make, and punishing and insulting you for your perceived mistakes, especially when you are a full adult, is another trait of Antisocial Personality Disorder. 
     Sometimes it is hard to tell what criminal deeds they've done until after the fact since narcissists also have a strong need for positive validation from society tend to put hiding their criminal acts first.
     The truth can come out as late as when they've been arrested for some other crime in the past, or it comes out in court from the prosecution lawyers that they've committed crimes before and have many victims. 
     So don't necessarily assume they've never committed crimes.
If they have strong Machiavellian tendencies that can be a sign of a criminal mindset as the focus is mostly on deceit and self serving interests.
     A "criminal mindset" can mean they are focused a lot on "getting their own way" in issues where property is joint, or children are joint, or where they make plans to "get" what they want out of a relationship without considering you or your feelings. 
     A "criminal mindset" is often much more focused on revenge over matters which aren't meant to hurt them. While normal minds can be focused on revenge, it is more episodic and rarely carried out. 
     A "criminal mindset" is often focused on getting money, material possessions, lying about other people to gain favor, and rewards at the expense of others. 
     A "criminal mindset" is often focused on getting rid of people or manipulating people to get an unfair advantage over them (power) or to take something from them. 
     A "criminal mindset" uses an incredible amount of charm, politeness and love bombing in order to gain favor and entry into someone else's life in order to gain something for themselves. They also use it in cases where their real motivations are not easily detected. Most narcissistic criminals are much more charming and affectionate than non-criminals. They act over-familiar, and over-intimate. The love bombing is usually intense, with a lot of flattery, a lot of mirroring of your likes and dislikes, and memes that you later find out were insincere. However, if you're not bowled over by them and their love bombing, or accept them right away (take things slowly), they can be rejecting, snippy, feel insulted and angry - that shows their entitlement. Entitlements is another danger sign.
     A "criminal mindset" is also about getting away with things as much as possible.  
     A criminal mindset is very unlikely to change. If you tell them how you feel, how their actions effect you, the damage their actions have done, or the repercussions in their own life, or with their own family and society at large, they are still not likely to change a bit. These people are "all about themselves and what they want" so much so that they really can't focus on others. They will not have empathy, and they tend to act on impulse when their needs become "overwhelming" to them.
     Some of them make elaborate plans "to get the most out of situations that aren't immediately rewarding them". It is who they are, in other words.
     They may promise to stop stealing, or stop home invading, or stop dealing drugs, or what ever their specialty is, but overwhelmingly they don't unless they feel that arrest for their crimes and attempted crimes is imminent. They tend to go for more vulnerable victims, victims who are not suspecting or show weakness at being talked into things. 
     A lot of people describe criminal narcissists and psychopaths as intelligent. However, committing crimes and lying about their intentions is not difficult. The difference is that if we act like they do, we feel sick. If they do it, they don't, and have very little conscience about their actions. They use your empathy and trust to gain access to you, to take from or manipulate you for their own gains. The real word for criminals is "predatory" and "Machiavellian" instead of "intelligent". The latter uses plans and deceit to get what they want, but many criminal plans usually can be detected by law enforcement, especially with technological advancements: DNA, social media and sightings, warning signals, cameras in every city and most businesses, drones and satellites, among other investigative techniques. Thus most criminals do not have "unusual intelligence" to go undeciphered. If you have a sense that something is "not right" about a person, or someone you know has the traits of Antisocial Personality Disorder, never meet with them alone. Crowds are best. 

     Narcissism is often described as a personality disorder with arrested development. When a child is born, they focus overwhelmingly on their own needs, and on getting those needs met by a caregiver. However, as they grow older, and as empathy develops in a normal way, they stop thinking of the world as "I got to have --" and "I have to get my needs met by others", and "I'm the most important person in this relationship".
     As the enmeshment with the caregiver weakens, either in a slow or fast way depending on the caregiver, the child also takes on more autonomous thinking, doing and planning. Narcissists and narcissists who commit crimes never get to this point. Their minds are still on "how to get from others" and "I'm the most important person in this relationship."
     Entitlement to control or take from others can come from having most every need and want met, especially compared to other children in the family - important distinction. As children, budding narcissists probably receive very little explanation for why they can't have everything and anything they want, (i.e. they are not taught "resource lessons") . Many of them are not taught basic lessons like: "Do not take from others," or "Those aren't your toys," or "You aren't entitled to receive more than your sibling."
     This is especially true if they are taught by example that they are "special" and deserve more rewards than others (arrogance).
     Thus when they believe that they deserve more than others, and also deserve to be "treated special" in terms of "getting", it is this entitlement, often mixed with envy, that drives them to exploit situations and others to "get more". If others show weakness in terms of the exploiter (malignant narcissist) gaining easy access, a trusting person can become a victim.  
     Children who grow up in narcissistic families are often taught that boundaries are not acceptable when it comes to family members, and this is what can cause them to be victims with people outside of the family too. Boundaries are one of the first steps to becoming safe and autonomous if you are in a narcissistic family. Criminals especially love people who have poor boundaries, poor self defense, poor self esteem, poor knee jerk reactions to being exploited and taken from, and high empathy and trust. 
     Criminality doesn't preclude doing damage to you in terms of taking your finances, your assets, your mental health, your trust in others, your peace of mind, and your very life. If they've gotten away with a lot of crimes, they can feel especially emboldened to hurt you and take from you again by other means. In other words they like scheming against you because of your vulnerability. 
* Can a criminal mindset contribute to domestic violence? (Google Search and Google AI)

* Domestic Violence and Deviant Behavior - by William D. Norwood, Ernest N. Jouriles, Renee McDonald, and Paul R. Swank. This research was supported by grant number 98–WT–VX–0005 from the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. (professional paper)
* Men are more likely to commit violent crimes. Why is this so and how do we change it? - by Rick Sarre, Andrew Day, Ben Livings, Catia Malvaso for The Conversation, re-published at The University of Melbourne, Australia
* Is domestic violence a violent crime? (Google Search and Google AI) - the answer? - yes, it is. 
* Narcissism and criminal behavior (Google Search and Google AI)
* An exploration of the link between narcissism, masochism, and crime in a post-incarcerated sample - by Hannah I. Piros , Amy Bauman  and Brendan Clark for Journal of the National Medical Association, Volume 115, Issue 5, October 2023, Pages 488-495, and Science Direct (professional paper)

* Physical abuse? - even more dangerous still.
* Rates of homicide in physical abuse (Google Search and Google AI)
* Danger Assessment - Women'sLaw.org
* Is pushing and shoving assault? (Google Search and Google AI)
* Is shoving someone physical abuse? (Department of Justice USA)
* Is pushing and shoving abuse? (Government of Canada)
* Is throwing objects at you considered an assault? (Google Search and Google AI)
* Is grabbing a hold of you considered assault? (Google Search and Google AI)
* Is spitting on you considered assault? (Google Search and Google AI)
* What to do if a child is punched in the stomach (Google Search and Google AI)
* Child Abuse - Mayo Clinic
* Definition of Domestic Violence (Government of Delaware, USA)
* Abuse Almost Always Escalates

Bad news: If you’re trapped in a cycle of abuse, it’s most likely going to only get worse - by Amanda Kippert for Domestic Shelters
excerts:
     ... While an abuser may say they “lost control” or “didn’t mean it” when their abuse escalates, that’s not true. Escalation is a choice abusers make when they feel like they’re losing control of the survivor or when they want to send a very clear message—they hold the power in the relationship. ... 
* Why would my boyfriend say he loves me but when he gets mad, he says mean things? - Quora question
* RECOMMENDED: How To Know If My Abusive Husband Is Changing – Claire’s Story

Learn how to safely observe if he's truly changing or if it's just more grooming and gaslighting. - Betrayal Trauma Recovery (a podcast, but by scrolling down, you can read the transcript)

* Any assaults to the face, head and neck - especially dangerous - can put you in imminent danger of losing your life, even. Includes slapping your face, digging fingernails, pushing your face, clawing your face or neck, touching your neck in an aggressive way, choking, punching, karate chopping at your head or neck, slamming your face or head into an object, pulling your head, kicking your head, face or neck, jerking your head to one side. 
* Assaults to the face head and neck in domestic violence (Google Search and Google AI)
* Is a slap across the face assault? (Google Search and Google AI)
* How dangerous is strangulation? Domestic Violence and Strangulation…4 Facts and 4 Myths - by Sarah Swiston for Wings, Breaking the Cycle of Domestic Violence
excerpt: 
The odds of homicide increase 750% for victims that have been previously strangled by their partner. If an abuser has access to firearms, the odds of female homicide increase by 1,100%.
* Domestic Violence and Traumatic Brain Injury: The Chilling Truth of This Hits Home - American Brain Foundation, American Academy of Neurology 
* What are the most common injuries from domestic violence? (Google Search and Google AI) - answer: head, neck and face
* Domestic violence, assaults to the head (Google Search and Google AI)
* Understanding Domestic Violence as a Cause of TBI - Brain Injury Association of America
* What to do after getting hit in the head? (Google Search and Google AI)

When you are in danger, often a number of these things are at play. Whether it's two of them or ten of them, it's still dangerous. Yes, some of them are more dangerous than others. But when I visit forums for battered women, most of them are surprised that their so-called lover was that violent, was that calloused about how the violence was effecting his victim(s), was that blind as to how "at fault" he was. 
     Most of these women are surprised that they ended up in the hospital with severe injuries that needed in-patient care. In other words, they didn't see it coming. And for a lot of them, only verbal abuse, or emotional abuse precluded this kind of violence.

Verbal abuse and emotional abuse are not to be taken for granted. 

FURTHER READING

The Psychology of Revenge (and Vengeful People)

When it comes to watching your back, hone in on narcissism and anger. - by Peg Streep, and reviewed by Matt Huston  for Psychology Today
excerpt:

     ... Not everyone is inclined to vengeance and some are much more inclined than others; additionally, certain emotions, such as anger, are much likely to up the possibility of revenge as well. People who set great store by their reputations, for example, are more likely to seek revenge if they feel they and their honor have been unfairly impugned. But the clear top-scorer on the vengefulness scale is the person high in narcissistic traits. Up next? The one high in neuroticism.

     The narcissist and revenge

     One study by Ryan P. Brown explored the link between lack of forgiveness and vengefulness; was being unforgiving a guarantee of revenge? It was true enough that people high in forgiveness were low in vengefulness, but being unforgiving per se didn’t predict vengefulness. The deciding factor? Narcissism. The people most hell-bent on revenge were both low in forgiveness and high in narcissistic traits.  ...

Narcissists = REVENGE-Seekers - Dr. Rhoberta Shaler for Help for Toxic Relationships (You Tube)

NOTE

I hope this post wasn't too link-heavy for you, but I thought the links were important to understand so that it wouldn't look like an opinion piece. 

FOUND ON FACEBOOK

newest update: new comments, the gist of what I have to say to survivors suffering from abuse, my October plans

Note on 9/20/22: I have edited this post since publishing (spelling errors and grammatical mistakes) ... 
more minor editing on 9/21/22 & 9/23/22

I haven't been publishing posts since March of this year, which is unprecedented for me considering I have so many in the wings almost ready to go. In the meantime, I do have a message for my readers below, and some news about comments I have been receiving. 

I have been answering some of these comments, and a couple of them do provide some new information I haven't published yet, if you are interested. Feel free to add your thoughts and experience to be part of the conversation, especially if you are a survivor of abuse (polite discourse only). 

Some of the posts getting comments include (but are not limited to): 

Why It Is Important to Keep the Conversation About Gabby Petito Going: Lessons in Domestic Violence

If You Are Good and Show Altruism and Magnanimity, Will That Keep You From Being Abused?

How Dangerous is My Abuser? How Do I Get Out of a Dangerous Relationship?

Do Abusers Project Their Thoughts and Feelings On To Others? 

Interviews with Someone Diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Abusers and Splitting

Verbal Abuse: Constant Insults and Criticisms

In the meantime, I also have some words to say (very shortened version) of what I believe is necessary to know when suffering through abuse:

- abuse escalates
- abuse can and does reach dangerous levels
- abuse can, and often does produce the debilitating symptoms of PTSD, which manifest as physical symptoms, not just emotional/mental ones, so it is very unhealthy in a myriad of ways. Some of those symptoms are listed in a section below.
- the majority of abusers are not out to change their behaviors; they are out to inflict more pain and get away with their behaviors. Important to know ...
- abusers with Cluster B personality disorders try to get their way by raging, threatening, and using abusive tactics (many of those tactics are listed on the right side of this blog)
- abusers often target the most vulnerable 

Here is a slightly longer version of the above: 

Can people in the Cluster B spectrum change their behavior?

Not really, however:
     
     Borderlines without narcissistic traits have the ability to change the most, but it can mean baby steps, a lot of hard work, and a very long journey. 
     Narcissistic traits that bleed over into some borderlines include:   
* arrogance (particularly "I'm right all of the time and you are wrong all of the time")
* putting their children into roles (one child is deemed to be "all bad", and one is deemed to be "all good")
* being overly sweet to friends, acquaintances, and strangers, but being cruel, abusive and bullying in the home or to their partner or kids (which is a form of gaslighting).
     If they have the above narcissistic traits, they aren't very likely to change.
     Borderlines can have narcissistic traits, but many of them don't. They can have empathy, and that sets them apart from narcissists. Narcissists will always have very little empathy, and psychopaths have none, or close to none.
     Many borderlines aren't particularly arrogant, many don't gaslight, or split their children into unchanging roles. Or they may show arrogance and grandiosity in the evening, but then feel horrified by their own actions (particularly if they rage in a haughty style) by midnight, and then experience an emotional crash and feel the opposite way: very low self esteem, self pity, suicidal. 

The reasons why people with narcissistic traits - particularly arrogance and lack of empathy - don't change, is precisely because of the arrogance, and lack of empathy, especially the kind of arrogance where they feel they are right all of the time, and that your job is to listen to them and do what they tell you to do. When people have lack of empathy with that brand of arrogance (which is really a propped-up grandiosity - an image they try to maintain at all cost), it adds up to them not wanting to hear how much they have hurt you or others, and not caring if they hurt you or others. Lack of empathy with arrogance is partly a brain issue, and it is also a personality trait, neither of which can be changed very easily or very much (I will go into this in depth in another post). 

Note: narcissists will say that you hurt them if you criticize them, or if they perceive criticism from you, and they will expect your empathy to flow in a never ending direction towards them afterwards, and very often when you give them apologies and empathy, they feel it is not good enough (because what they really want is to control you and use it as an excuse to hurt you when they feel they are losing power).
     However they are most likely hypocrites because narcissists make an art out of criticizing others, even insulting people, manipulating facts that other people tell them in such a way that is not only nasty but the facts are twisted into half truths. Narcissists are usually much more constant, harsh and cruel than you could ever think of being: if you are their partner or kid a lot of them tell you repeatedly that you are crazy or stupid.
     They often expect you to live with low self esteem and to keep enduring getting your self esteem battered, while they expect you to prop up a "perfect image" of them, another hypocrisy.
     The reason they get hurt by criticisms but expect you to take much worse forms of it from them is that your criticism of them is a wound to their self-appointed authority over you, their grandiosity, their fantasies that they are superior to you (in other words, they insist that they come first, and they will rage at you until you follow their script of how they want this to happen). So this doesn't really count as a legitimate "hurt" in terms of this discussion. 

Knowing that narcissistic abusers are extremely unlikely to change, means the decision rests with you as to whether you can engage with or want to engage with a person who lacks empathy, is terrible at listening (refuses to acknowledge any hurt or pain they may have caused you), is most likely to lecture, particularly "behavior lectures". If you want them to address the pain you are living under, they will do anything to deflect the fact that they are a culprit. They cannot stand to do anything except to be in the dominant position (cannot compromise, or address your concerns).
     They tend to trick you, play head games, play with your self esteem, sabotage you with negative comments behind your back, blackmail you. They escalate abuse because they never are satisfied with the amount of power and control they already have over you.  

Some of them are downright spiteful (the more dangerous abusers).  

People with empathy are the only people among us who can truly change, and the more empathy we have, the more ability we have to change. Still, most of us aren't going to change drastically: personalities tend to be more fixed than mutable, and in the best case scenario, can only change 30 percent at most. 

When we are in abusive relationships that aren't changing and are getting worse, and when our focus is mainly on what to do with abusive relationships or a toxic family, we sacrifice living in a world of consistent empathy and consistent love. Abusers withdraw their love to punish you, so they are not capable of real love, and the investment of time and energy for you is always going to add up to pain. When we stay engaged in abusive relationships most of the time, we sacrifice the possibility of relationships where mutual trust, mutual empathy can be expressed (most abusers will insist that the empathy go one way: towards them). In staying in abusive relationships, we are not available for the best forms of mutual belonging, of safety, mutual understanding and mutual intimacy, the elements that make us feel whole with the world. We also can't heal properly from the trauma the abuse brought to us. We are not as likely to experience the best form of working together in harmony. We aren't likely to experience mutual understanding, mutual compromise, mutual compassion and reasonable solutions. 

One of the reasons why we feel stuck is that abusers often use smear campaign tactics with gaslighting ("they are crazy and should be institutionalized ... you shouldn't even talk to them" - one example) - it is an attempt at isolating their victims from better relationships and a better life. 

Raging is common for most Cluster Bs:

Simplistically said:

- how rages for many borderlines play out: rage, feel guilty, beat themselves up, lots of self pity 
- rages for narcissists: rage, feel like it might ruin their reputation, get paranoid, pretend to be a victim
- rages for malignant narcissists and sociopaths: rage, feel like their victims brought it upon themselves for being so gullible and easy to brainwash, feel like it might touch upon their reputation but feel they are too clever and that they can weasel out of anything, thinks of ways of turning the tables so that they appear to be the victim to others and their victims appear to be the perpetrators, either wish they had been more clever in punishing their victims or make "revenge plans" to better hurt or sabotage their victims
- rages for psychopaths: rage, feel no remorse for what they have done, pat themselves on the back for "a job well done", feel invincible, go on to do it again. Doesn't feel fear, paranoia, doesn't care about anyone's feelings, or that they will get caught. No one means anything to them. Most laws don't mean anything to them. The worst of them believe that other people are to be used and abused to get what they want. 

Again, can you live with, or do you want to put up with rages?

Habitually rageful people tend not to have empathy (and especially when they are in the act of raging, or feel that raging at you is good for them in terms of getting what they want out of you). Habitually rageful people also tend to amp up the rages rather than cool them down.

Rages can be overt: screaming, yelling, loud, insults, swearing, out of control, telling you what to do, where to get off, telling you to go away, pushing and shoving, slapping, hitting, pounding their fists at the wall, throwing things or smashing up things, telling you that they can't stand you or don't love you any more.

And rages can be covert: spiteful, attempting to hurt your reputation with common friends or at work (smear campaigns), "scapegoating" rages (rages over spilled milk, a look on your face, forgetting to take out the garbage, rages over remarks you made that were never meant to hurt them), the silent treatment and stonewalling (a selfish maneuver meant to pressure you to give into them and a sign that they have no empathy), hurts you through personal property (stealing, throwing things out, giving your things away, taking your picture off the wall, cleaning out your bank account, sending the message they don't care about you, they don't care about respecting your property or the rule of law, or your contributions), hurts you through triangulation ("I have a lover and I don't care how it makes you feel!" when they are married to you, or "I never loved you. Your sibling is the only one I ever loved" when they are your parent).

Again, is this something you can live with, or want to live with? Is there a better way to live in the world than living under a constant cycle of escalating rages, threats, put-downs, lots of instability, and scapegoating? Is this the best use of your potential? That should be the focus.

Again, changes in the worst part of the human race are extremely unlikely (and the probability that they will get worse is predictable - look at tyrannical vindictive authoritarian leaders for how they conduct themselves). Look to the traits I have listed on the right hand side and see if you truly want to deal with these traits going forward? 

Some other traits I have not listed in this post or on the side (and where I will be covering them in the future) are:
- jealousy (the urge to trip you up to make themselves appear "superior" and to feel less jealous)
- confirmation bias (opinions and stances that never change, especially about the people in their lives, no matter whether their views are fantasies, or what you do for them, or what apologies and overtures you make)
- sadism and cruelty
- coercive control
- punishments 
- trying to kill your self esteem
- threats
- brainwashing
- infantilization and parentification: (update 11/22/22 - this post has been finished) -  talking at you as though you are a child who needs to learn lessons from them when you are an adult, or expecting you to take care of them as though you are their parent when you are their child (the role of the handmaid child).
- demands, commands and micromanaging what you do, how you speak, how you react to their control and domination tactics
- hoovering, sweet-talk, and otherwise drawing you into another round of conflicts and abuse (can include revenge for "not abusing you enough the first time")
- physical abuse (not all abusers are physically abusive, but those who are, tend to be dangerous, especially if verbal and emotional abuses have been escalating)
- scapegoating (the urge to use you for blame out of convenience for what is "going wrong" in their lives ... it is also where they display the most hypocrisy - also mostly dangerous)

I would bet that you will feel like you are being slowly killed by all of these tactics and traits of theirs rather than changing them. Note: they can often change them temporarily and "for show" if you are doing what they want you to do and giving in to them, but otherwise they won't. But always remember it is "temporary". True change is a long hard process. The "temporary" niceties, or temporary relief from abuse, doesn't change who they are or what they will do. Some of them terrorize you more when you give in. 

I encourage anyone who is going through abuse to contact a domestic violence counselor or center to assess the dangers. The counselors may suggest a safety plan, a slow or fast withdrawal process depending on the risks, support groups, legal or financial help, shelters, medical or emotional treatment for what you endured or are still enduring. 

Why it matters

The more rage or punishment cycles you endure from abusers, the less longevity you will have, the more upset you will be, and eventually debilitating physical symptoms will likely appear. 

Being constantly exposed to rages, discards and abuse mean that the stress hormones will be constantly firing off, especially if you are also being threatened in addition to the rages and abuse. Constant stress means symptoms physically, mentally and emotionally.  

Physical symptoms:
- stomach aches and other stomach issues which never go away, and cannot be explained by a gastroenterologist (in "fight or flight mode", the blood needed for digestion goes away from the gut and into our limbs; the heart also beats faster). In PTSD, this response can be going on all of the time, thus chronic stomach aches or nausea, sensitivities to foods, bloated gut, and other symptoms. 
- lack of sleep, light sleep, and nightmares when you do sleep (if you are really sleep deprived, only sleep 3 hrs. a night, you can have hallucinations).
- heart issues (racing heart, heart pain, heart disease)
- constant overall muscle pain (especially in legs, neck, shoulders and arms)
- constant headaches
- constant state of panic 
- auto-immune diseases 
- extreme weight gain or loss
- shaking, trembling, the feeling that your nerves are going haywire, problem getting your words out (speech impediments, not remembering words, "trying to find words" to finish your sentence and panicking because you can't retrieve the word from your memory, nervous speech, stammering, often accompanied by heart palpitations)
- prognosis for longevity: not good

All of these are symptoms of PTSD and you can have them in varying degrees, or you can have some of them but not all of them. Symptoms can fade in and out or be constant. If you have most of these symptoms, and they are becoming disabling, you have most likely been over-exposed to traumatic events or Cluster B people. 

Mental and emotional symptoms:
- when rare feelings of calmness come over you, it is extremely difficult to maintain
- easily triggered (symptoms re-emerging) over sights, sounds and especially when you are around your abusers or people who remind you of your abusers. Swearing, hyper critical behaviors, insults, loud angry voices, violence on T.V., commanding or demanding people or attitudes, arm-twisting, punishing people, manipulations or manipulative people, people who want to dominate you, also are usually triggering.
     Re-emerging symptoms often mean 5 - 7 day periods where you will want to isolate from others. If your abusers are still in your life in some minimal way, you can limit what they talk to you about so that you don't get triggered again, and if they can't respect that, which they probably won't, then you can always make the choice to remove them from your life completely and forever. "Completely" means not allowing them to contact you or control you in any way: making sure they are not allowed to see you at your most vulnerable moments: in the hospital or urgent care (nothing like mean abusive people in those environments!), when you or your loved ones have been diagnosed with a chronic or terminal illness, when you are going through PTSD symptoms, when you are alone without support, when you are going through a divorce or break-up, when you are financially devastated or you and your loved ones have had an accident. It means separating from them as much as you can. You'll have a great desire to separate once the symptoms get to a certain point anyway. 

Other Mental and Emotional symptoms of PTSD:
- inability to focus or concentrate 
- inability to complete simple tasks without crying or other emotions
- inability to find resolutions to issues in your life
- feelings of doom
- feeling that you no longer have feelings (numbness): happens after an intense emotional separation from an abuser 
- feeling that your life or ability to cope is falling apart
- chronic depression
- "everything seems to make you cry"
- generalized anxiety disorder
- social anxiety disorder
- separation anxiety disorder especially from someone who you feel safe with, where you feel if they left you alone that your abusers would find you or a vulnerability in you, and attack you some more. 
- other anxiety disorders (less common in PTSD than the ones listed above, but still possible)
- For victims of child abuse:
     If you have a parent who practices idealize-devalue-discard or love bomb-devalue-destroy (the "destroy" is more indicative of physical abusers), you will go through a process of three phases. I list them here:
     feeling terrorized that you will be abandoned (first phase)
     then the terror of being abandoned plus the terror that they will try to reconnect or engage with you again (second phase) - this is a very uncomfortable kind of cognitive dissonance, which can vacillate between guilt and feeling justified, between sadness (of losing your old life) and joy (for being in a new life without abuse), between wanting justice and not wanting to make any "waves", between wanting to understand what happened and feeling like you don't want to understand anything and prefer a life of ignorance, between thinking you can deal with them to realizing you can't and the dangers. It often comes down to more opposite feelings and anxiety than you can seem to handle.
     and finally the concern of being abandoned has dropped, but the terror that they will try to contact you, get back into your life, or try to hurt you again remains (third phase) - can last a long time or even forever, and produce a lot of anxiety because you have figured out by then that they have no empathy for you. Their attempting contact is more likely to have the same effect on you as a known criminal wanting to make a visit. The threat they will return can produce many sleepless nights. Note: if you have "stalker parents" it is really important to get domestic violence services and police involved. It is nothing to take lightly. 
     Also note: the reason why children and adult children go through these three very common almost predictable phases is because biologically we are programmed to trust our parents to take care of us, keep us safe, be consistently engaged with us in a loving and supportive way, until we reach adulthood, and if they aren't this way, they are scary, the opposite of what we expect parents to be, monster-like, beings who will hurt us and are not to be trusted. By the time we reach adulthood, we are programmed to expect them to respect our decisions and autonomy, to accept how we relate to our own children and other family members, to accept who we want in our lives and who we don't want in our lives, to respect that we have our own lives now and that they need to give up the reins of control and lecturing and treat us as co-adults. If we don't get that, we tend to think, "Something is wrong here. This doesn't seem to be 'the way it is supposed to be.'"  
      If we don't have consistent love, respect, safety, stability, and reasonableness as children or adults, or our parents are cruel to us, or if we are abandoned heartlessly with narcissistic discards, the mere presence of our parents can send off a litany of debilitating PTSD symptoms that are too hard to live with again. Most abused children prefer to heal and leave the past behind.
- For victims of marriage and partner abuse:
     Cognitive dissonance is still probable, but the phases above are not as predictable as they are for child abuse survivors (I'll cover the intricacies of why in another post). Since partnerships mean different things to different people, depending on the disparate ways we are brought up these days, plus our individual expectations of how people should act in a partnership, even biology fails to tell us what we should expect out of a marriage or partnership. If we go into a partnership assuming we are both "equal adults" in terms of responsibilities and decision-making, living with a partner who refuses to live that way can mean catastrophe for the partner who wants those things. Because of constantly changing gender roles, a huge upswing in child abuse since the Industrial Revolution which effects generations of people and their attitudes, a country of citizens who seem to prefer more individualism out of life than family, a country of citizens who are seeking "personal fulfillment" out of partner relationships instead of the creation of a healthy intertwined family, a country of citizens who prefer desk jobs over manual labor where they are working with members of the opposite sex, the advent of birth control taking away prior norms like men ingratiating themselves to a whole family of potential in-laws to get their daughter's hand in marriage, the advent of much smaller families and the new generation preferring not to have children at all, the advent of school children potentially becoming a victim of school shootings putting undue stress on people who want to have families, the rise of psychopaths in western societies with the USA coming in third, the advent of atheism wiping out traditional expectations of certain morals and rules of marriage - a lot of these very profound changes have not caught up to our current level of evolution and biological  proclivities. There seems to be a lot of confusion as to whether there are any rules at all, including whether you have to be true to your partner, or even consider him or her beyond what you want for your own individual needs and desires. So divorce rates are sky high.  

But to get back to PTSD ...

The symptoms of PTSD that I covered above aren't something you can control or deal with on your own most of the time: counseling from mental health professionals is usually sought to get you on a healthier track (domestic violence counseling, and trauma counseling at the very least). Note: keeping abusers out of your life or on "very minimal contact" with absolutely no drama or emotionally-laid discussions is the very first step to healing. Without that step, you will keep going down the rabbit hole of worsening symptoms for you, and more raging from them. Without treatment for symptoms, and with an abuser still in your life, PTSD is likely to get much, much worse.

If you tell your abuser(s) that you have PTSD, and they are not making any signs that they want to help you, or provide you with peace, comfort, safety, stability or compassion, which they won't be (pretty much guaranteed), consider that these people are not good for you in any way. 

Consider also that you weren't born to carry these symptoms, or to take on the constant rages of others, or the constant domination by people who are hypocritical, ethically and morally bankrupt, and cruel. Consider that you are a vital part of the planet and its healing: even healing what ails the human race (abuse, violence, corruption, war and ecological heartlessness). Perhaps you are a vital part of what the human race needs in order to heal: transforming a past of dark deeds by humans into an evolution that is more compassionate, more peaceful and harmonious, more about healthy co-operative relationships. Perhaps if we treated our kids with the respect and love that we would have wanted, and in ways that honor co-operation (as opposed to what abusers do to extract co-operation from you to fulfill their own needs: coercive control and abusing the most vulnerable among us). Start change with the changeable.

October plans

I hope to be back by October with the posts I have been working on since March. 

Some quotes I found on the 
"War at Home" Facebook page:

The Pursuit of Power, Control and Domination in Narcissistic and Sociopathic Abusers: Their Be-all and End-all Agenda

As Psychologist Alexander Burgemeester states in the article, When the Narcissist Can't Control You Anymore, This Happens:

... A major component of narcissism is gaining control over others. This type of behavior is often a reaction to a childhood completely dominated by a narcissistic parent (or parents)- controlled in all aspects of his young life and not allowed to develop control over his own life.

Healthy parenting involves allowing children to learn where the boundaries lie, whereas narcissistic parenting involves the parent(s) establishing complete emotional control over their offspring.

The narcissist feels threatened when they lose control; they are afraid they will be exposed for who they really are, and they are petrified of losing their narcissistic supply.

They can’t bear this feeling, and to defend themselves against this gut-wrenching emotion, the narcissist will go into attack mode. These are the things you can expect when the narcissist can’t control you anymore.

Narcissistic People see other people in their environment as extensions of themselves. They are the center of the world- the controller, an idol to be adored and admired. In their mind, this makes it acceptable for them to control and abuse others. An expert in knowing best how things should turn out and how people should behave, the narcissist tries to control them ...

The pursuit of power, control and domination in relationships is the number one agenda for all abusers, most of whom tend to be narcissists and sociopaths. They simply cannot imagine any relationship empty of this huge desire. In fact, as they become closer to other people (who become part of their inner circle), this desire will begin to overwhelm them to the point where they will be hurting and manipulating others to fulfill this agenda. They feel they must have power, control and domination to feel emotionally regulated and calm. 

Emotional dysregulation for narcissists and sociopaths is usually in the form of rage. They try to make everyone they are in close personal relationships with feel that the demand or command behind the rage is reasonable, and that it is the only thing that will make them stop raging and hurting other people. There is no doubt that their rages are destructive, and some people around them capitulate to their demands to dampen the destruction. 

It tends to be one of two cycles: 

1. they rage, the other person capitulates to the demand, they become calm again for awhile until the next time they are having a fit about how much dominance they have, so they rage again, over, and over, and over, and over again in a cycle kind of way: rage, satisfaction, insecurity about their domination status, back to raging again to get their victim to capitulate to the demand-of-the-moment. .

2. the narcissist (or sociopath) rages, the other person backs off, the narcissist becomes more enraged because the person is backing off (the narcissist hopes that if they "up" the rage to a punishment in "blackmail style", that the other person will capitulate), but the other person becomes traumatized by the punishment which makes them back off more, which makes the narcissist or sociopath ever more  rage-ful and escalate the punishments because they aren't getting their way. Then some narcissists think that if they enact extreme forms of revenge, then that will get them their way. Many of their closest relationships will eventually end up looking like this. And in the meantime, their revenge fantasies can take over their entire lives.

Sometimes they feel that totally destroying the other person will result in emotional regulation and well-being for them, but most often it does not because paranoia can and does take over after every act of evil and destruction that they perpetrate, depending on what kind of narcissist or sociopath they are: Paranoia will be much more of a factor for narcissists and sociopaths who want to have some semblance of social standing, to be looked upon as pillars or prophets. Paranoia is less of a factor for sociopaths who are grifters, loners, who do not have a reputation to upkeep or maintain (and instead their reputation is built more upon how clever they are in breaking societal norms, fooling you and others, and getting away with it all). The latter can be much more dangerous than the former for this reason.

However, trying to reach a stage of emotional regulation and equilibrium that pleases them does not necessarily have to have rage as a precursor. For instance, they are quite capable of emotional regulation in public: with bosses, with their friends, with some of their colleagues, with certain family members who they have deemed to be totally on their side. They can even be criticized to some extent in their line of work without becoming enraged. They will especially be regulated for a potential mate in the love bombing stage. 
                                                                                                                                  
When they feel confident that you can be effected by their opinions and how they treat you, often the controlling behavior begins to manifest a little more clearly. When they feel they have finally hooked you and enmeshed with you, that is when the domination and small signs of rage begin to come out (the rage tends to be subtle at first: the cold shoulder, "behavior lectures" - telling you how to behave in all kinds of situations, what to say to whom, toying around with your self esteem a little, toying around with your perceptions - called gaslighting, inserting themselves between you and others - called triangulation). This tells us that the rages are manipulative, and used to get their victims to surrender to their desires, and especially since the rages tend to ramp up in intensity over time especially if the narcissist is not being held accountable in any way. 

Most people experience anger when there is an injustice. Narcissists and sociopaths get angry when they want to dominate and control you. Another big difference is that when most people feel they are being criticized, they feel hurt, whereas narcissists and sociopaths instead tend to rage and get destructive when they feel criticized. They feel their grandiose ego is being questioned, so they go on the attack.

This is from the same article as above by Psychologist Alexander Burgemeester:

When a Narcissist can’t control you anymore they will fail to find Narcissistic Supply sources, just like a drug addict that can’t find any drugs. This precipitates a narcissistic crisis.

The narcissist becomes more desperate and more compulsive in looking for his drug. The more they fail, the more he is hurt and expresses his emotional turmoil by acting out (not uncommonly with ‘narcissistic rage’).

The Narcissist is so afraid of losing their Narcissistic supply (and of unconsciously being emotionally hurt) – that they would rather “control”, “master”, or “direct” the potentially destabilizing situation.

Narcissistic Rage

If you think you’ve seen your narcissistic partner angry, well hell hath no fury like narcissistic rage! You will witness their wrath in a way you’ve never experienced before, and let me warn you in advance, it will scare you.

Scaring you becomes the only way that they can think of to maintain control over you. It's also a punishment: "How dare you not let me control you! Just for that I'll ..." and then the threats come out. They won't say this, but they will show you that being recalcitrant about pleasing them is going to end up with a lot of pain for you (what they don't tend to realize is that pleasing them ends up being a lot more painful for you because of their rage cycles). 

Going from enmeshment, flattering you and caring about your every move, to a long campaign of hatred, silence and destruction also tends to happen quickly, in the blink of an eye, a sign that they never loved you. To them, love means that in return for you idealizing them, they may pretend to idealize you, but of course, they will always try to let you know that you are also more flawed than they are and that their idealization of you is always going to be on shaky ground. They put themselves in charge of correcting your flaws and this is where power and control begins to manifest in your relationship with them. 

Their love has nothing at all to do with intimacy, trust, sharing and bonding. It has to do with how controllable you are. And if you aren't controllable enough for them, they devalue and discard you, or alternatively, try to destroy you. 

When they feel you are disillusioned with them, when you have caught them at lies, manipulations, gaslighting, cheating, triangulating, broken promises, and hypocrisies that are the hallmark of narcissistic traits, they discard you because once you have seen these traits, they know you will no longer be idealizing them. Again, love to them means idealizing them. We know that this is peculiar to narcissists and that the general population does not conduct themselves in relationships in this way. 

But this is all they tend to know or want to know. Their "brand of love" is so wrapped up in the urge for domination and control that it overpowers everything, like a strong addiction (only it is an addiction at others' expense). They just want to manipulate and order people around without the inconvenience of looking into how it is effecting them and you.  

And it is hard for them to keep their narcissistic traits hidden (especially these days with so much discussion about narcissism) that they feel that when the traits are exposed or complained about by the other person, they take it as a challenge: they see it as a race of who will devalue the other the most and who will be the "believable one". When you see the rage and destruction after your legitimate complaint, that is the crux of what it is about for them.

Many people expect and hope for a resolution in a close personal relationship, and instead of getting resolution, from narcissists you get devaluing, rage and destruction. It means that they are having a temper tantrum about the amount of power and control they are losing when it comes to you and your life, and about a race to the bottom. 

When you are in a normal relationship, it is assumed that neither person is perfect, and that issues can be worked out with self reflection (owning up to mistakes), talking things through and compromise. Narcissists don't do that. Instead of self reflection they give lectures about what you are doing wrong and how it is all your fault. Instead of talking things out, it is about the silent treatment (a form of abuse that ends relationships, and if it doesn't, it becomes a trauma-bonded relationship that is still likely to end, if further down the road). Instead of compromise it will always be about their need to gain dominance and control over you. 

These should be unacceptable terms in your close personal relationships, especially in light of the fact that what you approached them about is something that hurt you. Instead of dealing with the hurt (whether they were gaslighting, or cheating, or being unjust), the narcissist or sociopath decides to hurt you more. 

So, why are they hurting you more instead of resolving things between you? The short explanation it is: "Okay, since you don't idealize me any more, I don't idealize you any more either! In fact, I devalue you!" They won't say it, but they will show you. Many narcissists are playing tit-for-tat games like this a lot of the time, for any slight they feel. Their relationships tend to be transactional, and their emotional make-up tends to be immature, so tit-for-tat games are just another Junior High Mean Kids kind of transaction. It is important to know this before you confront them. 

When you reach the conclusion that what they want is a tit-for-tat game, it tends to make you more disillusioned, which brings out even more rage and destruction in them. Instead of being some pillar where their words have clout, they don't care about their integrity any more: all they want is to be a destructive hurtful force in your life. When you experience this, it is shocking. It can happen even if you were hitherto their dear spouse or their dear child. It is no longer about a resolution, or even about a relationship; it is about protecting yourself at all costs, period, from their unethical styles of attack. Again, they think of your confronting them as a call to arms, and they will use what ever their constitutions dictate, which can be pretty dark, including ramping up more and more cruelty, and in some cases, stalking you, stealing from you, violence, and other crimes.

In this way they act like addicts: if they can't have their junkie dose of getting idealized by you and controlled by them, then you are at the very least "useless" (one of their favorite phrases for people who are not serving their narcissistic supply needs) or at most, they punish you for not giving them their hit of narcissistic supply by volleying egregious never-ending attacks. 

So what are their unethical styles of attack? The most common ones are (taken from the same article by Alexander Burgemeester):

* Aggressive Outbursts: An aggressive outburst can take the form of intimidation, overtalking their victim, yelling, threats of harm, throwing objects and verbal abuse.

* Violent Outbursts: Violence typically takes place when narcissistic rage gets to an uncontrollable level and they feel they have no other outlet apart from physical force. The violence is either towards their victim or themselves.

* Passive Aggressive Behaviour: This is a more subtle form of rage, but it is equally as damaging. Passive aggression involves giving their partner the silent treatment, backstabbing, agreeing to do something important and then denying it when the time comes. Gaslighting, orchestrating someone’s failure, procrastinating and guilt-tripping.

He goes on to list others:

The smear campaign, doing a disappearing act, stalking you, humiliating you, lying and denying, baiting and provoking. 

In the end he points out the dangers:

Do narcissists destroy who they can’t control? The answer to this question depends on the type of narcissist you are dealing with. Narcissism is a spectrum Personality disorder, the higher up the spectrum they are, you can expect an all-out war when they can’t control their victims. A word of caution, if you are dealing with a high spectrum narcissist, you might want to be very strategic about how you plan your exit.

If your partner has ever been violent, there is a high chance you are dealing with a more severe type of narcissist, and in situations like this, I wouldn’t risk it, instead, I would advise that you seek legal assistance in the form of getting a restraining order. In this way, you can more or less guarantee your safety.

Either way, once you are confronted with the reality of who your partner is, you need to make some quick decisions about whether to remain in the relationship, because it is exceptionally rare for a narcissist to change.

Another way to tell if they are high on the spectrum is whether the abuse is reactive or proactive:

Reactive abuse tends to be momentary, impulsive. They might verbally abuse, but then apologize for losing it later. This type of abuser tends to be lower on the spectrum ... However, if it is a cycle, they are not particularly low on the spectrum, or as likely to change. Most of all, be aware that reactive abuse can still be violent. Instead of verbal abuse, they become violent, and have regrets over their violence a day or so after. This is dangerous and at this point it does not matter whether they are low or high on the spectrum.

Proactive abuse is planned abuse (what is more often associated with Antisocial Personality Disorder, but narcissists tend to be in between, so they practice both reactive and proactive forms of abuse).

The best way to tell if someone might have a preponderance of Antisocial Personality Disorder traits is how sadistic they are. Sadism, planned attacks, no guilt or remorse for hurting others is more aligned with Antisocial Personality Disorder. Cruelty to animals and/or children and/or people with disabilities is another sign. Never apologizing is another sign. Lack of empathy and pathological lying is another trait. Phrases like "I would never lie to you" is another sign, especially when all of these other traits are visible. 

One of the things that keeps their perspectives in this tit-for-tat one way track is the disorder itself: the lack of empathy, the pursuit of dominance and control by betting on your capitulation throughout the relationship even under abusive attacks, the arrogance where they believe they are better than you are and better at running your life than you are (which is really their attempt to fulfill their own fantasies:  that they are your leader and that you are their follower), getting caught at blatantly unethical deeds, feeling entitled to get what they want at the expense of others, and gaslighting in order to make their victims feel incompetent about anything other than the narcissist's or sociopath's control and perspectives. So there are a lot more reasons they go for tit-for-tat games than simple devaluation.

HOW THEY TRY TO HANG ON TO DOMINANCE, POWER AND CONTROL

So, we have discussed rage as a tool they use to try to get people to do what they want. Rage is inherently scary, so it can work for awhile. In effect, they are saying, "I'll be scary and threaten them a whole lot with things that I have learned will hurt them, and through that method, they will do as I say."

The reason why it works in the short term is the same reason it works in a war: you threaten the enemy a bunch of times and if they don't give into the demands, they throw bombs at you, sanction you, make up stories about you to get an entire army to attack you, and so on. 

One thing they aren't smart about is that the victim will know that it is a war for the narcissist, and that the narcissist regards their victim as the enemy. In order to ward off the offensive from the attacking narcissist, you launch a defense: perhaps a security system, a neighborhood "watch", a police report, a police "watch", a family "watch", plans to thwart the narcissist from attacking again, various types of vigilance, or you slap a restraining order on him, which for first time offenders takes one prior warning - at least in the USA. 

So where is the domination, power and control that they were so desperate to obtain and hang on to after this kind of shielding? Some people make statements that narcissists are intelligent. But where is the intelligence when this is the obvious outcome? 

flying monkeys:

These are the narcissist's recruits and henchman, often obtained through love bombing. They tend to be brainwashed individuals who believe the lies the narcissist has told about you. These are not people who look into both sides of an issue. They tend to be belief oriented in the way that cult followers are. Narcissists are NOT going to be telling the truth about you, and they often slant their tales in such a way that they are the victim and you are the perpetrator. 

These are also the people that the narcissist blames if the attacks become criminal or highly immoral. In order to stay on that pedestal, they have to at least pretend that the attackers acted on their own behalf, and not on the narcissist's behalf. 

Where is the fulfillment of domination and control of you in that? 

Yes, they have flying monkeys who they are getting domination and control over, who are acting like little helpful puppet soldiers, and the narcissist seemingly has the ability to control the army, and even control the perspectives of the army, but it is all based on lies. The narcissist is again, risking their reputation on lies that they may or may not be caught at. These aren't relationships that will ever be close, enlightening, full of trust and iron-clad promise. Not bright either, nor anything to be proud of.

For the original victim, this is a disgusting nauseating display, as well as a desperate one where the narcissist's every relationship seems to be based on lies. It comes to our realization too: "Wow! They can't be authentic at anything or with anyone! What meaningful relationship can come about when it is based on a pile of lies and brainwashing just to hurt another person outside of their orbit! Wow, I must be important if they want to send out a brainwashed army to attack me!" - you are that important. Their revenge fantasies can become an obsession, which is why some of them turn into stalkers or hoover-ers who try to love bomb you back in order to fulfill more revenge fantasies. 

What it does in the end is to make having power and control over you again an impossible goal for them to achieve. They also tend to lose some of their recruits when the truth becomes more apparent. Brainwashed people tend not to be sadistic, so that is another area where the narcissist can fall hard.

smear campaigns:

Smear campaigns aren't very effective at getting you to recruit yourself again to their power and control fantasies. It produces the same kind of nausea in their victims that flying monkeys do. 

love bombing: 
 

Eventually love bombing isn't a very good tool either. Victims get wary of it. It becomes just another invite into the idealize, devalue, destroy cycle that the narcissist is getting to be known for. It doesn't matter how many flowers and kisses there are (for partners in this mess). It doesn't matter how many bogus promises and "Everyone loves their child" meaningless phrases they spout (for children who have endured enough). 

Victims get cynical: "Oh, you love me, do you? Nothing like a lot of lies, destruction, and abuse to convince me that this is love! Who do you take me to be? Stupid? I would never go back to you! I wipe you from my life forever! Get lost!"

Where is their intelligence when it comes to this? Do they think that love bombing is an automatic smoothing tool they can use with the same effectiveness and results over and over again? Do they really think their victims are going to ignore the back-stabbing when it comes to this? 

verbal, emotional, and physical attacks:

VERBAL: The reason they attack you verbally (which really means they are attempting to attack your self esteem) is that they want to convince you that you are so flawed that you need to take orders from them, learn behavior and etiquette lessons from them, learn how to talk to other people in a way that will make them happy, and learn that the only way you will survive in their company is to be dominated by them. The movie, "Sleeping With the Enemy" demonstrates this pretty well. In that movie, the wife of an abuser has to put away cans on a shelf with military precision or he will show his dissatisfaction. He is always correcting her on this "flaw". She also has to make sure every towel hangs in perfect precision too. Micro-managing the actions of others in every detail of domestic life is common in relationships with a domestic violence offender (called coercive control), and a pompous expectation of the abuser since they make it clear they cannot even control themselves, particularly when it comes to their rages. Their messy abuses, their putrid plans to take down their victims, their mucky lies, rebellions, crimes and etiquette is often in blatantly stark contrast to what they are trying to teach, that their lessons become laughable, and the wife in that movie makes it plain that it is laughable too when she has a little fun messing with the towels in the bathroom. 

So where is their intelligence in implementing this? The narcissist is practically screaming: "Never mind my blatant hypocrisies, and the fact that I'm insulting you so much to smash your self esteem to get you to do what I demand! Just follow my orders anyway! Just make me happy in the relationship since I'm the important member of the relationship here, and you're not! You're just the servant! Got that?" - Really!? Anyone with half a brain is not going to fall for this line of BS after awhile.

EMOTIONAL: Emotional abuse looks much the same as verbal abuse except that instead of trying to do destruction to your self esteem directly, they try to destroy your self esteem indirectly. They try to meddle with perceptions of what is happening instead.  They try "dirty tricks" to make it seem that you are going insane. They try to convince you that your insanity means they have a right and an obligation to control you. While you wouldn't appear to be insane unless they played "tricks" on you, this can be pretty evil. This is called gaslighting and it is extremely common for narcissists and sociopaths to use to get you under their domination, control and spell. They will do everything they can to convince you that all of their domination and control is for your benefit too, when it's really only for their benefit. Gaslighting takes "planning", and insidious reminders to the victim that they are insane and disabled by their insanity, so it is usually categorized as "proactive abuse".
   It's also about brainwashing, so that you look at them as your holier-than-thou cult leader. 
   It is less obvious than verbal abuse, because just like the movie Gaslight, you may come to believe you are actually insane because your abuser will have drastically different perceptions than you do over the same events. 

   Being gaslighted can also effect your self esteem: "I'm nothing but a crazy imbecile who needs someone to lead the way and take control of everything I do and say because I can't think straight or see reality for what it is. Supposedly I'm living in a world of hallucinations!" Wow, is that an evil thing to do to someone! And that is when the power and control agenda becomes really dark. 
   Someone who is gaslighted is likely to find out about it when they go places and do things where their perceptions are not being questioned or challenged at all, or when they go into therapy. It used to be that before the mid 1980s that parents and spouses who gaslighted could get their child or marital partner committed to an insane asylum, to shirk the responsibilities of marriage or parenthood, just like in the movie. Now they gaslight just to achieve ultimate control, to have a puppet, with the reasoning that ultimate control will not necessitate abandonment of their partner or child. In a way, gaslighting has gotten worse because the people who want to shirk responsibilities are using gaslighting in extreme ways to make up for NOT abandoning. One reason why some narcissists don't want to abandon underage children or a spouse is because they don't want it to sully their reputation that they have been touting as being a model spouse or a model parent. They have invested their image in being a model, or even better at being a spouse or parent than anyone else (to inspire envy in others, and thereby tendencies to worship), so to withstand their natural instinct to abandon, they gaslight in extreme ways instead. 
   Isolating their spouse via false narratives and triangulation, and home-schooling their children so that they won't experience anything other than their abuser's gaslighting then becomes the agenda. It is power and control on steroids, so it is an ultimate toxic unhealthy relationship for the victim directly and the perpetrator indirectly. 

   Other emotional abuses include constant shaming, constant blaming, invalidation of your feelings and thoughts ("only I know what you feel and think" kinds of messages from your abuser - which is also another form of gaslighting), triangulation (where you are compared unfavorably to someone else), false gossip (it can be anything, but it generally tends to be about how crazy you are so that they can get narcissistic supply in the way of sympathy), broken promises (particularly in the way of "future faking": promising something in the future and making sure it never materializes), bullying and blackmail practices and the silent treatment usually accompanied by stonewalling. 
   All of this adds up to pain inside the victim, and the perpetrator knows it, so it is just another predictable scheme to administer pain in the hope that they will gain complete, never-ending domination and control over the victim. 

Victims who are in these situations too long develop trauma symptoms. That becomes a liability to the abuser (they are called upon to care in order to maintain the relationship, and they don't do that, nor do they want to do that), so in the end they try a carpet bombing approach form of attack with all of the abuses that they can think of to get the victim to give into the demands the abuser wants, and the way the victim used to deliver. When this doesn't work, they can either ramp up attacks by stalking, or appear deflated and default to abandoning you to look for another victim who will do a better job of giving them the power, domination and control that they want. 
   The reason it doesn't work is because it's like punching out someone who is bruised and scabbed from head to toe and lying in a hospital bed. Not much narcissistic supply in that.

The way that emotional abuse isn't smart is for the same reasons that verbal abuse doesn't work over the long term. The primary objective is to bombard you with pain, plus confusion, and as we know, a person who is in pain is not going to be feeling well at all, with emotional, mental and physical symptoms, not exactly capable of narcissistic supply administrations. Someone who is deeply hurt and traumatized will have, as their main objective, healing. They can't heal when they are still in the company of a person who is hell-bent on hurting them again and manipulating them in ways that are totally self-serving. Plus, being around an abuser sets off even more symptoms: it is the body's alarm system.

Perhaps some narcissists know what they put their victims through, but I would bet a majority don't. Besides being unempathetic, putting their domination addiction front and center in their relationships so that they are blind to anything else, and a penchant for giving the silent treatment, I have a feeling they don't really have a clue. Many, many survivors of abuse report that they never felt their abuser ever knew them. They thought that the only thing their abuser ever really understood about them was what their vulnerabilities were, what they could obtain and not obtain from them, and which buttons to push to get a reaction. It was about how much the abusers could penetrate personal boundaries, and that's it. That's not much enlightenment. 

People who have managed to de-sensitize to their abuser instead of being effected by them, who have many other family members or friends who understand what is going on and take up the slack of a deeply unsatisfying and rigid relationship, who spend the least amount of time with their abusers, and who rarely listen with open ears to what their abusers say, often report that they got bored with them. Yes, bored. These abusers tended to be on the lighter part of the spectrum, but the tactics were so predictable and incredibly obvious that they found them more yawn-inducing than painful, traumatizing, disappointing or disillusioning. They still related to their abusers, but not in any kind of deep meaningful way. "Whatever" and "You don't say" and "That's interesting" became their predictable unemotional responses to the narcissist, and not much beyond that. Their deepest relationships were always on the outside of these relationships. So this doesn't add up to much domination and control in any real sense of the word either.

As for the silent treatment, which I have written about at some length, it is a passive aggressive form of abuse. It seems to be used by narcissists and sociopaths on their adult children the most. A great deal of the time it is used as a form of punishment: "If you don't give me more power, control and domination over you, at least to the point that I had when you were still a young child, and do what I want at all times including adhering to the role I have assigned you, I don't want to have anything to with you!" They don't say that directly, but they make it pretty clear that these are the terms. So what I have seen is that the adult child apologizes to the narcissist when the adult child did not do anything wrong. So they feel they are being forced into an apology they do not own. It certainly smooths things over, and that's the only reason for the apology, but it tends to create a lot of resentment inside the victim. The resentment exists because not only was there nothing to apologize for, but silent treatments typically are administered under duress such as when there is an important event being planned (like a wedding) or when the victim is going through a tragic time (like the death of someone near and dear to them). The apology only works for a little while until the narcissist gives the silent treatment again (and they predictably always do it again - remember that the amount of power and control is never enough for these people - it's an addiction where they need higher doses of it, always). Also, most silent treatments are given for erroneous reasons, or they are given as a guessing game: "You know what you did wrong! Don't tell me you are too stupid not to know the reason!" - which is another form of gaslighting. So, eventually the silent treatment becomes a permanent state, an estrangement. The victim experiences pain and many trauma symptoms every time it is doled out, plus resentment, and it breaks the relationship bond forever.

So, how does the narcissist or sociopath gain power and control from this bad idea? It doesn't seem all that smart either. They know that this abuse tactic will hurt their adult child, certainly, but they don't know much beyond that: they don't know enough about human behavior and the human condition to make this work in the way they want it to. 

I think I have demonstrated why administering any kind of emotional pain does not work in any way that will bring a narcissist or sociopath their pie-in-the-sky dreams for ultimate power.

There is a reason why therapists trained in domestic abuse tell their clients to walk away from these relationships (before trauma symptoms take a big foot-hold, and knowing that perpetrators like to re-use and recycle these same predictable abuses over and over again). 

PHYSICAL: Physical abuse is also about power, control and domination, but instead of trying to smash up your self esteem or reduce you to an insane imbecile, it is used to intimidate you and dominate you instead, physically. Abusers who prefer physical abuse usually have victims who are shorter, or less brawny, or who have some physical, emotional or cognitive disabilities. They also tend to choose victims where they perceive a power imbalance (where they have the advantage). They don't pick on people their own size, in other words. 

Physical abuse most often follows a period of verbal and emotional abuse, and a lot of unsolicited lectures where you are being expected to follow the directives of the abuser. It tends to manifest as in-your-face rage, with a lot of guilt-trips, in other words, close proximity rage (shouting in a way where it is as loud as it can be, spitting out the words to the point where the spit lands on your face). The abuser gets angry and comes towards you in a way where the head comes forward, the fists clench, the upper torso and neck muscles tighten, and he gets loud, extremely loud, and usually a lot of insults follow. In other words, it is breaking the physical boundary that would connote a more respectful discourse. And that's the problem from the very beginning: a respectful relationship is sacrificed by the abuser in order to intimidate you to give in to them. 

During the rage and directives, they are also infantilizing you. Infantilization means that they are treating you as though you are still a child (when you aren't) who needs to be told by a big daddy or big mommy figure about what to do and how to behave. Infantilizing means it is happening in adult relationships: marital abuse, sibling abuse and workplace abuse are the most common forms of infantilization, but it can happen between a parent and an adult child too. Infantilization is inappropriate to the age, education, intelligence and status of the victim.

Physical abusers tend have grandiose overt narcissistic traits. However, darker Machiavellian personalities can also be physical abusers (for instance malignant narcissists), but in order to qualify, there are also planned attacks. Since narcissism is on a spectrum, the abuser can be mostly of the grandiose overt type, but if they never apologize for their attacks, never are concerned how these attacks are effecting their victims, and they exhibit some propensity for planned ways of hurting their victims, or if they steal (especially stealing items like photographs and mementos as opposed to food, for instance), you are most likely dealing with someone who has traits of secondary psychopathy. 

Like all abusers, grandiose narcissists will be giving you "behavior lectures", i.e. that you need to adopt certain behaviors to make them happy. Behavior lectures are also a sign of infantilization. However, the physical abuser tends to give behavior lectures much more frequently than other types of abusers, on the whole, and it can sometimes be at every encounter. These abusers also tend to be micro-managers: they take on the role of the despotic boss who must comment on whether you are doing something right or wrong, while you are expected to be the servant. Like most abusers, roles are everything to them. 

Just about everything has to go their way after they put you in a role or they rage. Again, the rage is going to be intimidating, in your face, so you will definitely feel you are walking on eggshells. Most victims keep quiet, and do everything that is expected of them (up to a point) to keep the abuser from going into a rage again. However, I discuss fighting back a little later in the post, which some victims will do at the very beginning of being physically abused. 

But assuming the victim isn't fighting back, and the victim mostly goes silent, the perpetrator is still very likely to rage again, over increasingly erroneous reasons, and then again, and again. They basically turn into rage-a-holics (addicted to rage to get their way). It seems that after awhile everything is deserving of rage and derision in their eyes. Grandiose narcissists are also people who only care about gaining power, control and domination, but it is a lot more of an obvious manifestation than the gaslighter, for instance. You can actually see that they are dangerous from the beginning when they engage in physical abuse unlike the gaslighter who can get away with gaslighting for a much longer period of time. 

And predictably men who are physically abusive become more and more dangerous (except if you are doing absolutely everything they want you to do, and help them bully others to some extent).  

At some point when they are raging in your face, there is likely to be a push (usually to your shoulder) accompanied by words such as "Do as I say!", "Do it now!", "Get going!" and so on. Other favorite phrases are "You're selfish!", "You're useless!", "You're driving me crazy!" (when you are emotional yourself), "You think you are so special!", "You're no good!", "I don't have time for your drama!" If they are also alcoholics, they tend to swear a whole lot too, and do not have the capacity to understand the reality of a situation, especially when they are drunk. 

The grandiose narcissist seems like they are not in control of their emotions at all, however, like most narcissists they will be emotionally regulated in public and with people they don't know yet. Grandiose narcissists can be very two-faced, overflowing with flattery in situations they aren't comfortable in, but hyper critical and insulting behind other peoples' backs. If you see the nasty side of them, this is their true self because they don't come out of the nasty side of their personality until they have something to socially gain from a situation. They are also insufferable braggarts who give advice about subjects they know very little about. 

This happened to me once. I was in the presence of a grandiose narcissist who was giving all kinds of advice to a teenager who wanted to be an artist. Her father was an artist, and I had a masters degree in the subject. He went on and on and on, acting like an expert in the subject, with a syrupy delivery (pretending to care a great deal about her fate), but had no idea of what he was talking about. It was all I could do to hold back my disgust. So grandiose narcissists love to grand-stand and make a big impression, but most often they are more like the Emperor with No Clothes.  

Anyway, the physical abuse starts with pushing and shoving. Some of how they behave is also to pull you in a direction where they will demand an action from you when you get there. Also common is grabbing objects out of your hand. They might handle both of your shoulders and turn you around when you are walking in a different direction. They tend to grab you to scare you. Some other kinds of beginning physical abuses are pushing you up against a wall, pushing you against a door, pushing you aside to get to where they want to go. Generally there are other kinds of unsolicited touching. Grandiose narcissists can give hugs and pat you on the head or back, but they also tend to do a lot of pushing, shoving, standing in doorways with their fists clenched so that you can't get past, and all kinds of other actions to let you know that they are in control and they are in a rage. 

All of this happened to me with Johnny (not his real name) - I talk about Johnny in this post. I went to a domestic violence counselor when these beginning types of physical abuses were happening to me about how to handle the situation. I actually down-graded what was happening: "Doesn't he have to slug me first for it to count as physical abuse?" And his answer was, "Not at all. That's coming next if you stay in this situation. This is what we see. If someone was pushing and shoving you on a street, and someone saw it and called the police, the police would have him arrested! This is illegal! It's a crime! And when there is pushing and shoving, it usually escalates very fast to slugging. The slugging could start in a week. Is this what you want? You are in an especially dangerous situation because he also has a major drinking problem because alcoholics can see hostility in facial expressions that aren't there. They can also have blackouts where they are violent and don't know it until they wake up in jail." 

He was also a favorite golden child in his family of origin, meaning that he wasn't going to change, and that the parents who anointed him that role would side with him no matter what, enabling him to be a domestic violence offender. 

I was not surprised when I confronted Johnny about his behavior and asked how his present wife handled it and his answer was, "She does what I tell her to do!" I was also not surprised when Johnny's ex-wife said she had left over an escalating domestic violence situation with him, and when I learned one of his kids was punched in the stomach by him while in a shower getting ready for school. There is a lot more to the "Johnny story", but the main point was that when I began my research project into domestic violence, I found I was given the right advice: get out when the pushing and shoving start, or preferably before.

Pushing begins because the narcissist doesn't feel they have enough power, control and domination over you, and they think this is the ticket to getting it. Like all narcissists, they always want more power, and with the grandiose narcissist, they usually do not have the patience to wait for it (unlike the emotional abuser or the covert abuser who has a lot of patience to get you incrementally gaslighted and under their control). Not having patience has everything to do with why it escalates so fast into slugging, and other forms of egregious physical attacks. 

Warning, if they put your hands around your throat, or chin, or face, or attempt to strangle you, this is a particularly dangerous sign that you are in a life-threatening situation. 

As for the impulse to fight back ...

So, let's say the perpetrator has shoved you at the shoulder in a rage. The natural impulsive inclination is to defend yourself by shoving his shoulder. You defend yourself by showing that you are on equal footing and that you won't be his victim. The reason why this impulse happens is because when you don't fight back, your system will launch into trauma responses. But, here's the problem with acting on impulse: as I've said, narcissists who physically abuse usually choose victims who are smaller than they are. They aren't going to shove around a big male who is 6'8", has huge muscles and weighs 300 pounds when they are only six feet tall. One reason male perpetrators tend to choose women is that they are usually smaller, are more likely to default into pleasing behaviors to ward off attacks, and because of societal attitudes about women (that women are property or inferior), that if you want to take your rage out on someone, you take it out on a woman instead of a man as Jonathan Katz's book so well illustrates. 

If you leave, one of the things that domestic violence offenders are known for is their apologies to their victim, usually holding a bouquet of flowers (unless they have some Antisocial Personality Disorder traits where they won't be apologizing at all unless they want to draw you in to attack you). However, the apology is just another manifestation of future faking where it is designed to get the victim back into role again, and back into another round of dominance and violence (the idealize, devalue, destroy cycle). Some of them may initially mean it when they say they want you back, but if you listen closely, they will also make excuses for their behavior ("It's just the way I am; I just fly off the handle!" and other sorts of statements about why they are unable to control their emotions and why they can't compromise - but remember that they don't act that way in public). 

One reason why physical abuse doesn't work over the long term in getting steady narcissistic supply in the way of power, control and domination is because it is dangerous. Most women who are in domestic violence situations want to get out. And on top of it all, many of them get restraining orders too. Plus the behavior lessons and lectures are absurd from someone who physically abuses. So, that doesn't seem all that smart either. 

You have to wonder why anyone would want victims, especially estranged victims who want nothing to do with them and use police to get rid of them (sullying the perpetrator's reputation). As I've said before, narcissists sort of survive like this, but this doesn't add up to a life of happiness. Grandiosity is the closest they get to happiness, but when their grandiosity is chipped away by victims who have no respect for them, and can't stand to be around them, they are pathetic. 

FINANCIAL: Financial abuse happens in 98 percent of all abusive relationships. The problem with being dependent, co-dependent, or trauma bonded to an abuser is that he will want to control the money to control you. If you are the breadwinner, he (or she) will find excuses to take it from you to pile up reserves in his or her name only. If they are the bread winner, every minute financial purchase will be vetted. 
   Finances are often used to threaten too. "If you don't do what I tell you to do, and do it exactly how I want it, you won't get another cent!" or "If you don't do what I tell you to do, and do exactly how I want it, I'll get a divorce from you and take your money away from you!"
   If you get a high paying job to counter it, narcissists and sociopaths are known to try to sabotage it.
   If you don't live with them, it's best not to talk about your successes and failures in your career or in your finances. In fact, the more you can keep your career and finances in the dark, the better.
   The problem for victims in these situations is that it puts you in an unstable financial position, constantly. The perpetrator's emotions and actions are unstable, and then you have to deal with financial instability too. It's a giant whiplash of instability on a constant basis. 
   One reason why so many women stopped being home-makers and raising children as their full time occupation was because of financial instabilities like this. They felt vulnerable, so they went out to earn their own paycheck. As long as the society is misogynistic and excuses men for abusive behaviors, it makes sense for women to be financially autonomous. You also have more solid ground not to put up with abuse. And peace in this way can transform your life. Again, abusers only pick on people who they think are weaker than themselves, including being vulnerable to financial attacks. 
   The reason why financial abuse does not work at maintaining or gaining power, control or domination for abusers is because it is a painful whiplash for the victim, who will react to the whiplash by becoming trained and financially autonomous.

NARCISSISTS AND SOCIOPATHS
BELIEVE THAT MOST PEOPLE ARE JUST LIKE THEM
AND WHY IT SHOULD MATTER TO THE REST OF US

 Narcissists and sociopaths really do believe that others are just like them, with one caveat: they think the majority of people are more stupid and crazy than they are. At the very least they think that the rest of us wish we were just like them. 

The rates of narcissism are going up in the country, which tends to happen when parents, as a whole, isolate their children (alienation), become more selfish ("me first"), more abuse-oriented in solving problems, more rage-oriented, more neglect-oriented and less family oriented, where family estrangements and divorces are becoming the norm, the rates for all of the Cluster B personality disorders will go up, including narcissism and sociopathy. You can't starve a population of children where the only attention they get is rage, criticism, inconsistency, strong-arming, abuse, estrangements,  insults, and isolation, and expect a good outcome. You'll even get tyrannical despotic authoritarian national leaders and people who think it's a good idea to kill other people over differing political viewpoints, or a facial expression, or a disability, or a different cultural background - take your pick.

So in terms of close personal relationships, what does it mean in terms of how they treat you? 

WHEN YOU ARE ANGRY:

We know that narcissists and sociopaths feel anger when their domination and superiority is being questioned and threatened. They must keep their grandiose egos intact; they must keep believing that they are "the special golden god", the one who can control and dominate everyone in sight. It is why they rage when you are resisting being controlled and dominated, and when you start questioning whether they should be an advisor to anything in your life at all. In contrast, the rest of the population tends to get angry when there is an injustice committed against them, or people who they cherish. They have healthy egos and they don't have to resort to an inauthentic life of lies, cover-ups, distortions and plans to hurt and dominate others. However, since narcissists believe everyone is just like them, when you get angry, they will take it to mean that you are trying to control them. They want to be on top, so your anger will infuriate them and that is when you see callous disregard. They won't see that you feel  injustice. This is also why, when they sense anger in you, they escalate it to a power struggle, even an outright war - they think it is about who can destroy the other person the most. It is important to know this. The communication fails because they are putting their own stamp on what you are going through (because they think they have superior knowledge, superior psychic abilities, superior intelligence, superior everything). This is why they don't know you. This is why they don't get you. This is why they don't care about what you are going through. This is why they shut you down when you are trying to tell them what you really think and feel. You run up against their wall of arrogance, where the only thing they will accept is that they know what everyone feels and thinks. They'll even come right out and say it. It is called perspecticide and invalidation and it is primarily associated with narcissists and sociopaths. Normal folks can slip into it every once in awhile, especially if they are lied to a lot, but with narcissists it is on-going, a part of their very personality, and in their every day interactions with others.

They are, in effect, speaking a different language.

WHEN YOU ARE HURT AND CRYING: 

When you cry, the same sort of thing is happening. While you are feeling pain, and crying because of it, many narcissists, and especially those with Anti Personality Disorder traits, will "fake cry". They also love to pretend that they are victims of their victims. They love to turn things around so that when they discard you, they are telling others that you discarded them instead (do you see how much they mirror?). So when they see you cry, they think you are "fake crying." That is why they don't show you empathy and why they tell you to stop irritating them with your crying, that they aren't going to listen to it. They aren't listening to it because they manipulate people with fake crying, so they assume that is what you are doing too. This is sometimes why a grandiose narcissist might hit you when you cry. 

So, let us say that you are crying because you were victimized by someone else. You were raped, or someone stole your money - it can be anything. They don't believe that you were victimized, because they play the victim just to get attention. So, they think you are just trying to get attention. 

And they know exactly what they are doing when they try to make their victims appear to be perpetrators - it is a plan to get out of being accountable. So, after you are victimized, they are going to be calloused because they think you are pretending to be victimized too. It is also why they sometimes lecture you, and tell you that the abuse was your fault. It is also why they tell you to apologize to your abuser (extremely common, especially for narcissists): it is their way of saying they believe you are faking it. 

But they also "just plain like it" if you are forced into apologizing to your abuser. They see it as a "sucker sign" that you might apologize to them when they abuse you too. 

They also think that when you share your hurts with them, that you are trying to enlist them as a co-bully, because that is what they do when they are telling someone they were victimized. They see your hurts and tears as a power-and-control move because when they are down on power, control and domination, they cry and tell others they were victimized by the people who won't hand over their autonomy willingly and let the narcissist control them. 

So if you are getting un-empathetic calloused responses, this is why. 

This is the problem with living a life as a narcissist, full of lies, half truths, fantasies and distortions where the only thing you care about is getting narcissistic supply, power and control, and fooling everyone as to who you really are. 

WHY THEY THINK YOU ARE LESS INTELLIGENT:

They rate intelligence in terms of how well a person can get what they want: rewards, wealth, children who worship them, a spouse who can worship them, how many notches on the bed post they can obtain (for somatic narcissists, both male and female), how well they can twist stories and make up stories without detection that put them in a superior position. 

They don't necessarily measure intelligence in terms of knowledge, but they certainly don't like it when someone appears to be a lot more knowledgeable than they are, which is why they turn into arrogant blowhards as in the example above. They try to fake their way through being knowledgeable about a subject they really don't know anything about. They also take it as an ego hit when someone points out that the narcissist doesn't know what they are talking about. They also try to manage their children's careers, hopes and dreams in such a way that is best for them, not the child. Narcissistic parents should never be the managers of anything because of their propensity to serve their own egos, but they should especially not be the managers of their children's careers. I'll be talking about why in another post. 

Now in terms of why they think everyone except them is so stupid, and why they idealize themselves as the pinnacle of intelligence ... It is because they think they are doing power, control and domination better than anyone else. Most of us could care less about whether we have power, control and domination over others. We are happy with peace, stability, working together, compromises where everyone has a say and can be fulfilled, real love, and real work (rather than using work, and workers in triangulation games, and using the workplace as a bullying playground). Peace, love and stability comes with empathy.

Case in point: Let us say that the narcissist is caught: they aren't as knowledgeable about a subject as they are pretending, they aren't as steadfastly committed as they are pretending either, and they keep getting fired from their jobs (but they tell you it is always the boss's fault, that their talents are being overlooked - even though you may suspect it is because they got into a power struggle with their bosses instead), in fact it is pretty clear they aren't the person they have advertised themselves to be at all. So why do narcissists think that a pile of lies, fooling others, bullying others, and being so blinded by an addiction to power and control, and pretending to be someone they aren't, and all kinds of downfalls from grace, is such an intelligent way to be?

It turns out that the most intelligent among us have high amounts of empathy. This is a subject I'll be covering in more detail later, but for now: 

You can see from what I've written in the last two sections (anger and hurt), that they are incapable of understanding what other people are going through. They don't get that everyone is different. They don't get that most people do not want to be narcissists or sociopaths. They don't get that we aren't jealous of them (that it is a fantasy in their minds). They don't even get who most people are. They wouldn't have to practice perspecticide and invalidation so much if they truly knew. The only way they would have knowledge of what we are going through with our feelings, and thoughts, is to have empathy. They don't have empathy, nor do they want it, so they stay blind. They might know piles of facts, and remember the facts that seem to work in getting them into a real or alternatively "emperor without clothes" type of dominant position, but other than that, they are the least able to understand other people aside from how they can manipulate them and put them into a role. Narcissists who have woken up a little bit from so many people walking away from them, leaving them feeling stranded and alone, do start to wonder why so many people have left. When situations hit them hard, they are capable of not playing the victim. Some of them even begin to understand how they caused it on a cognitive level, but if they are still being enabled by someone, they will never get it. 

The enabled ones are the bitter old people who glare at their victims with hatred on their deathbeds.   

    

WHY THEY THINK YOU ARE CRAZY:

The reason why they think you are crazy is because, in their minds, you let them gaslight you and convince you that you are crazy. Only a crazy person could not see through the gaslighting agenda and manipulation. So after awhile, they believe that you truly are crazy. You have been talked into it, whereas they would never have been talked into it, and would have fought back with every fiber of their being to convince everyone they weren't crazy. 

So, is being trusting being stupid? They think so. They live in a cesspool of untrustworthiness, including their own untrustworthiness. But do most people think it is stupid to trust? Actually trust is something most people expect in their close personal relationships, especially with a parent or spouse. And the high majority of close personal relationships are trustworthy and where trust can be expressed. We were actually built to trust in our closest people to survive (our ancient history). So, it isn't stupid to trust. Being untrustworthy is an aberration to group and community survival. The way you tell if someone is untrustworthy in a close personal relationship is if they are trying to hurt you, if they don't show signs of empathy, and if they are lying. 

However, when you grow up with a parent who likes to hurt you, and abandon you and is arrogant despite having hurt and abandoned you, you are going to normalize abuse and lack of empathy in relationships to some extent. Either you become that person yourself (become like they are), or you get married to a person who hurts you. That seems to be the trend. However, as long as you are aware that living in pain and unhappiness was pushed down your throat in childhood as being normal, and you finally understand that "normal" is being able to trust and to be trustworthy, then you can have the life you were meant to have: true trust, true love, and so on. You don't have to live in environments that are devoid of trust and happiness. And as long as you know the signs (lack of empathy, abuse, etc), you can steer away from people and a home environment like your original home environment that lacked all of that good stuff. I found happiness, and there are a lot of others who find it too even after the most grueling abusive unhappy childhood. 

Anyway, some narcissists do notice that other people are not nearly as concerned about gaining power, control and domination as they are. They think that's a deficiency, a disability. And the disability they come up with is that you are crazy. 

They also think you are crazy if you don't hold them in the highest esteem, when you think of them as an equal instead. "Are you kidding? As an equal? You have got to be crazy to think that you are as superior as I am! You don't have nearly the power and control over me as I have over you!" - those are the unspoken words (taken from narcissists who want to share their truth about how they think).

A group of us were talking about men who reach high places of power in government and who grope or accost women sexually. I mean really - how hard is it not to grope a woman? How hard is it to ask people if they are uncomfortable with how you touch them? But this is what happens: you pursue power and then feel entitled to treat other people badly, treat them as sex objects even (a role), and even hurt them. Then you fall from grace and disgust a whole lot of people. You are laughed at even. Rinse, repeat. This is how narcissists live too. So, those of us who don't want to live this way: are we crazy? Maybe they are actually the crazy ones and project it onto us.

IN CONCLUSION   

You can see how stuck their minds are on power, control and domination to the point where it is an obsession. It is the be-all and end-all desire for them (a desire that can never be fulfilled), and they think other people are stupid and crazy when it is not the be-all and end-all for them.

It is why they lack empathy; it is why they abandon the people closest to them; it is why they rage so much; it is why they give you the silent treatment; it is why they hit you; it is why they don't want to hear what you have to say; it is why they are so arrogant; it is why they can't find satisfaction in their relationships and why they resort to endless criticizing and gaslighting. It is what they want when they get up in the morning and when they go to sleep at night. In fact, every one of the tactics they use is to get more power and control, even, if it suits them, pathological lying, the one thing that is bound to get them "found out" and falling off of their fake self-made pedestal. 

However, when it is not the be-all and end-all, you actually are a lot less likely to have estranged children, or an unhappy marriage, or look at every relationship, every piece of land, every experience as an opportunity to manipulate and exploit. It is only when most of us realize this that we will have peace among human beings, and peace in the world.

  

Final note: my writing on how narcissists think and why they behave the way they do was inspired in part by Sam Vaknin's explanations of what is going on in the narcissist's mind (he's a self-proclaimed narcissist, and psychology professor, and tries to teach others what is going on, and is amply aware that narcissistic thinking is drastically different from how most of us think - he's even said that the narcissist's arrogance is a delusional shield for a human being that most resembles an empty shell, that narcissists believe that the arrogance and the pursuit of power is protecting them from a world of criticism and derision, the kind of criticism and derision that they dish out).   

New video since publishing this post (and the best I have found on this topic so far):

"The Hunger For Power That Drives Narcissists"
by psychologist Les Carter for "Surviving Narcissism":

"How Narcissists Are Bound By Their Own Need For Dominance"
by psychologist Les Carter for "Surviving Narcissism":

description:

A major feature of narcissism is the need to be in control. Or as Dr. Les Carter explains, narcissists don't just want to be in charge, they insist that you should be subordinate to them. But because their tactics are so off-putting, they miss out on the aspects of life that truly matter. They eventually are tied down by their own egotism. Rather that succumbing to their dominance, you can see it for the misguided way of life that it represents, choosing freedom over their efforts to confine you.

What is "coercive control"? (Glossary of Narcissistic Relationships)
by Dr. Ramani Durvasula

please note that after this video aired
Hawaii passed laws about coercive control,

and coercive control laws are being considered in California and New York.
Hopefully these kinds of laws will be passed nationwide too.

"9 Signs Someone is a Narcissist"

by PsychToGo:

"7 Signs Someone Is A Sociopath"
by PsychToGo:

"The insults you hear in a narcissistic relationship"

by Dr. Ramani Durvasula:

FURTHER READING:

When The Narcissist Can’t Control You Anymore, This Happens - by psychologist Alexander Burgemeester

How Micromanipulations Help Narcissists Stay in Control (Narcissists use a mix of direct and covert tactics to manipulate others) - by Kristy Lee Hochenberger for Psychology Today

14 Thought-Control Tactics Narcissists Use to Confuse and Dominate You - by Dan Neuharth, Ph.D., MFT for Psych Central

Ten Ways Narcissists Take Control - by Leslie Glass for "Reach Out Recovery"

Power and Control Phases of Narcissistic Relationships - by Donna Hines for Linked In

How Narcissists Control You. What Techniques Do They Use? - by Taylor Bennett for Counseling News

Fantasies of Unlimited Power & Craves Power/Control - for Narcissistic Abuse Support

How to stop psychopaths and narcissists from winning positions of power - by Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University for The Conversation

Narcissists and psychopaths: how some societies ensure these dangerous people never wield power - by Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University for The Conversation

Power and control in the male antisocial personality - by Linda L. Nauth (professional article)

A personality disorder of excessive power strivings - by W. Charney for PubMed.gov (professional article and a proposal for the DSM)

Control Freak (saying) - Wikipedia

How to Recognize Coercive Control - a Healthline article

Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence (Abusive Partners: Coercive Control) - The State of New York

What are the Signs of Coercive Control? - Medically reviewed by Janet Brito, Ph.D., LCSW, CST — Written by Louise Morales-Brown for Medical News Today

What Is Coercive Control in a Relationship? - by  Brunilda Nazario, MD for WebMD

Coercive Control and the Definition of Domestic Abuse - by Arfie Ghedi for 1A

Children experiencing interparental coercive control - by Dr. Lauren Smith for ESSS online 

7 Signs Your Partner Is Pulling An Emotional Power Move On You - by Lea Rose Emery for Bustle

Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life (Interpersonal Violence) - by Evan Stark (book)

Do ‘Coercive Control’ Laws Really Help Abuse Victims? - by Marie Solis for New York Magazine (The Cut)