PART I: Some of How Trauma Bonds Are Formed with Narcissists

© Lise Winne
"Trauma Bond with False Narrative Blaming Cycle of Abuse" (all rights reserved)

In this post I discuss how trauma bonds can happen, and what is at stake for the recipient of the trauma bond. 

First of all, in trauma bonds there are always going be stark power differentials, where the person who holds the most power will want to take away from the person with less power. For narcissists, that usually means they want to take away the autonomous decisions, self esteem, and sense of peace from the person they deem as less powerful, so that they can gain more and more power over that individual for themselves. 

Ruminating that a less powerful individual that they've been taking power away from, even the power to take away autonomous decisions from that individual, will usually cause them to rage at, possibly reject, and resent that individual. 

Most trauma bonds in close personal relationships are between a parent and dependent child, between a parent and a disabled adult child, in a marriage where one partner lords power over their partner, and between siblings where one sibling (most often a favorite golden child who is financially and lovingly rewarded by parental figures) tries to control, damage and take something from another sibling (most often a scapegoat child who is financially punished by parental figures and where their love has been  withdrawn).

For the purposes of this post, I will be talking about situations between two adult partners in an intimate relationship, and mention more briefly the kind of trauma bond that is often formed between a parent and child. 

Since this is part of a series, I will be mentioning other kinds of trauma bonds eventually as they can occur between a boss and a worker, between an invader and the invaded, between soldiers and their captives, between a cult leader and their followers, between a president or national leader and the population, between a more powerful nation and a less powerful nation, between a drug dealer and addict, between a pimp and his prostitutes, between a perpetrator of child sexual abuse and his victim, and so on. A lot of these relationships can have violence and threats in them to make victims submit and to be more and more submissive.

On-going trauma bonds, particularly for children where the trauma bond is being instigated by a parent can be life long and can have a lot of adverse and devastating effects not only for the child, but for the parent, family, and for society will be discussed much later. Since trauma-bonding can effect the brain, brain development, and even what trauma survivors focus on (i.e. how to relate to perpetrators) it will also ultimately effect the evolution of the human species too. As a species, are we going to spend our time focusing on science, the health of a beautiful planet, the health of other people so that their attentions will be on the greater pursuits of human beings, the ability to make great, great works of art, architecture, beautiful cities, healthy joyful relationship building, or are we going to spend most of our time on the planet attacking and defending?

IN ADULT RELATIONSHIPS
(PARTICULARLY BETWEEN MARRIAGE PARTNERS AND INTIMATE PARTNERS)

To start off, I'm going to introduce you to a common way that power-hungry people (namely narcissists) decide to traumatize you and then intermittently award you for putting up with their rages. And I found a perfect example in a You Tube video by Dr. Ramani Durvasula called When narcissists HARM YOU and then expect a HUG... . I will expound on her video in this post so that you can see where this leads, and why, so often the narcissist abandons a person who is not falling in line with being controlled, some of the science as to why it doesn't work very well for them in any long term way even with an extreme power differential, and why the trauma bonded can also abandon the narcissist too. 

Following is some of what she said in that video (in blue type) to explain what can create a trauma bond. The "push-pull" reaction, and why the "Jekyll/Hyde" behavior that is on display here by the narcissist is what will create trauma in the other person.

I decided to write her words out, so that you can study them, and understand what is going on between both parties. 

     Trauma bonds are created by the alternation of bad and good, a good day and a bad day, idealization and devaluation. Sometime back in my podcast, the actress and writer Rebecca Humphries - she said it the most beautifully when she said in the narcissistic relationship she was in, it was like being pushed off a 100 story building and then the narcissist manages to be the one catch you just as you are about to hit the ground. So they are not just your abuser, they also become your savior.

And that is how trauma bonds get created and reinforced. ...
     Often in toxic relationships, they devalue, they demean, they insult, they argue, and once they feel better (it's like they let it all out), then they go in for the hug.
     Let's say it's a situation where they can't find their keys, and they believe that you've moved them. They say, "Hey, where are my keys!? Seriously, where are my keys!?"
     You may respond, "I don't know. I haven't seen them today."
     They say, "Yes! Yes you have seen my keys! You had to have seen my keys! I came home and I put them here, and you always move my stuff! You are so damned disorganized! Look at this mess! You don't put stuff away! I'm so sick of it! You have ruined my day! I need to go out in ten minutes to pick up that stuff and if I don't do it, then my entire day is going to be messed up! How could you do this to me!? How could you mess with my keys!?"
     Now imagine they are saying this relatively loudly like I was trying to show, and you really, really did not touch their keys. Some of you may go and try to look for the keys. Others of you may be having a freeze response where you're just sort of stuck. Some of you may fight back, but most of you will not feel well at this point. There will be more yelling. They are still trying to find them, then they say, "To hell with it! I am taking your car! Too bad if you need it!" And they grab their coat and put it on and viola: their car keys are in their pocket.
     They feel that pocket and they feel that jingle and they say, "Got 'em!" and then "I'm heading out!" and no apology. But as they are about to head out (and this is the part that's not okay), they may come in for a hug.
     They'll say, "Oh, come on! Let's make up!" and they'll come in for the hug or the kiss, and you mean well at this point, but you may feel sick, exhausted, depleted, scared, or triggered, but they may want to have a snuggle or a kiss and where "Let's make up!" makes no sense because they were the ones who were screaming at you for something you didn't do. It was largely a one-sided argument (if you want to call it an argument because there was no other side to it) ...
     ... If you freeze up and don't respond, they are going to tell you that you are difficult and unforgiving. But at a somatic level, to have the person who just psychologically harmed you, and then tried to touch you in a soothing or intimate manner (for lack of a better way to say it), it's kind of gross. And once again, you may feel that there is no response you're allowed to have - because if you push back or don't respond to them - it all starts again.
     It's always important to remember that narcissistic folks always use conflict to regulate. The yelling and screaming and abuse allow them to reassert their power, and as they shatter you, they feel better. So after they feel better (and that coupled with their lack of empathy), then as far as they're concerned, everything's fine. And they come in for the hug, and they just assume you want to snuggle because your argument is done. And they play upon your self-blame and your self doubt because when you push back and say, "I'm not hugging you!" and "We're going to have to talk about this more" and just say "This doesn't feel okay", then you become the bad person who can't let go of stuff.
     It feels very violating when someone swoops in for a hug or a snuggle, or a kiss after they have harmed you, and there has not been a period of time for you to talk it out, or work it through. Everything is on their time frame. And the more that happens, the worse it feels. Things that happen in the relationship feel like they are happening to you, and not with you. You are relegated to being an object, a sort of adult pacifier that they use to regulate, and when they are done with the yelling, they will want to regulate by being held. It's really not much different than a tantrum-ing toddler that screams and cries, and starts yelling in the middle of a store, and then they need a hug from the parent afterwards. But there's a big difference. That toddler is three, not fifty three. But many people are confused, and really put off ... It definitely reinforces, as you can imagine, the trauma bond. And it can also reinforce that somehow "You're the one who is closed off, you're the one who is mean. You're the one who is cold or unforgiving" if you don't just go with it. It's not true, but it is an absolute Catch-22 because there is no way you can talk to them about it and share your feelings. And then there is the stuck-ness, and that tees up the self blame.
     ... When someone goes from rage to affection, it's very normal not to want to hug back ... it's not about you holding back, or being distant, or holding a grudge, it's that other person not having empathy, or absolutely no awareness, of how their behavior is effecting you. So if that dynamic happens, be aware. It is quite harmful, and it reinforces a trauma bond.
     And when they constantly put themselves in this position of tyrant and tormenter, and lover and hugger and care-er, of perpetrator and savior, there's really no winning at that game, and it really helps you to understand why this relationship is not only so difficult to remain sort of sane in, but even more difficult ... to get out of. 

What Dr. Ramani doesn't fully explain in her video (although she does explain it in many of her other videos) is that while the trauma bond is building, the person on the receiving end of the rages and hugs is usually responding with these trauma reactions: fawn, fight, flight, freeze, or avoid. 

To a narcissist, these trauma reactions are narcissistic supply and they may very well be thinking these things (*trigger warning*):

Fawning: "You're going to fawn!? Good! That's what I want, for you to do everything I want, when I want it, and I'll correct how you're responding! Please me now! I'll guide the way on how you can please me!"

Fighting back: "You're fighting!? How dare you fight me! We'll just see who wins this fight! I'll win it, that's who! I'm superior and I'll knock you down a peg or two, and punish you! If you defend yourself, then that is your way of fighting with me too. I don't respect your defenses and explanations. I'll find a way to make you feel guilty and pay whether I'm the one who lost the keys or not! You are not to mess with my rages and perceptions! Got that!?"

Freezing: "You're just going to sit there in your frozen state! You're supposed to be reacting, or at least looking for my goddam keys! What's the matter with you!? Are you crazy or something!? This is important! This is what I hate about you! You're totally useless at a time like this! You're supposed to be looking for my keys! Anyone else would be looking for my keys! But not you! You're so incompetent. In fact, you're crazy! "

Fleeing (flight): "You're going to just walk away! You have better things to do than look for my keys which you moved on purpose!? I see that I'm high on your priority list! Always running away when there are important issues in this house! For all I'm getting around here, it's no wonder I'm not having an affair! You owe it to me not to escape and to help me find the keys that you actually moved! Maybe you moved them on purpose just to get me into that state! Did you do it!?" 

Avoid: "You weren't home when the keys went missing! What are you trying to do!? Avoid me!? Because if you are, I'm going to catch up with you! I never put those keys in my pocket, goddam it! You did it! I had to spend hours looking for them too! It's your fault, and as soon as you realize it, the better!" 

Some of this may not be said outright, but they are inferred. 

The partner of the narcissist is going to be undergoing situations that resemble the keys situation over, and over, and over, and over again. It won't just be about keys, obviously. It may, in fact take over every conversation depending on how controlling they are.

If they are true run-of-the-mill narcissists, they'll be telling you what you did, or thought, or felt, and they will be enraged about it. If you disagree with them, they'll be invalidating your disagreements because it doesn't fit in with their blaming narrative, and what they perceive as "the truth". I talk about why they do this below (it has to do with a number of traits that are particular to narcissists, and why, even when they are caught, can't readily admit why they screwed up. For the meantime I'll say it is a compulsion: they feel they need to blame and rage, even if they might not be in touch with reality, or what it is doing to the other person). 

Anyway, the same sort of situations will play out again and again that resemble "the keys" diatribe. It might happen when you forget to pick up the clothes at the dry cleaners. It might be about not putting enough gas in the car. It might be about not setting the table to the narcissist's exacting standards. It might be about why you weren't thanking them enough when they got you to the hospital after getting the car in an accident where you were the passenger. It might be about how you caused the accident because they told you they were tired, and you should have been the one to drive. It might be about how you didn't ask for forgiveness when they were giving you the silent treatment. It might be because they wanted to leave you the message that you were no longer allowed to talk to them about anything. 

The silent treatment is hard to figure out, and the reasons why narcissists use it are often indecipherable and muddy for a reason, but you can bet you aren't going to know the real reason, and you will surely fail at doing what they want when they go silent on you, so they refuse to discuss anything at all with you. If you do attempt to get to the bottom of it, you'll most likely get a similar kind of confusing blaming and rage session as the "keys incident", only much, much worse. 

Most narcissists don't communicate directly, but leave interpretations open-ended so that if you accuse them of the silent treatment, they can blame you for not really understanding what was really going on. It's a dirty mind game, of course, but this is a common narcissistic tactic that you should always be aware of. 

They may even do this cycle of erroneous blaming, then attacking (insults, yelling, threats) in about every situation in your joint relationship after awhile, and over every action and reaction you make, in a kind of micro-managing style as in the movie, Sleeping with the Enemy. The cycle is very common, even with the hug at the end, but I would bet that eventually you won't even get that, that the only reactions you'll get over time are the crazy blaming and rages. Most of your relationship, for them, will be about how you respond to the blinding rages, whether you respond, what you do when you respond, while they are blaming you for the next thing you didn't do. 

Or let us say that there are some situations where they are half-right, but they are not listening to the context or situation that it happened in, and they go on raging at you about what they believe really happened, and they still won't let you explain or defend yourself, or tell them what the situation is because they are on to the next false accusations ... 

They decide what you are doing, thinking, feeling, planning, and you're supposed to go along with what they believe, and respond to it all in such a way that they want, to show themselves that they still have control over you and how you react. As Dr. Ramani said in her video, they become addicted to treating you this way to get themselves emotionally regulated, feeling at peace within themselves and the relationship, and in charge, but it is all at your expense.

As the relationship progresses, the false accusations build up. Their suspicions (paranoia) build up at the same time about what you are possibly doing, what you are possibly thinking, and what you are possibly feeling - and whether you'll think of bucking their control over you, or whether you will hurt them, or run off on them when they start to rage for the 1,658th time in your relationship with them. Usually by the time they become really paranoid of your intentions (which is why there are false narratives to begin with, in part), many of them can't live with the paranoia or any reaction that isn't what they have come to expect, so they often end relationships at this point, suddenly, without explanation. They reason with themselves that they need someone ultra predictable, weak and timid, who can be groomed to be a better sycophant. 

The problem with abrupt endings to relationships, especially when you aren't getting anything but muddled confusing narratives, reasons and messages, is that there are usually matters to settle between you, even if it is just going to be about retrieving some of your clothes, or asking if they are going to be at a party you both were invited to (going to a party where the two of you are separated is difficult to deal with just after a break-up, and it's reasonable to ask your ex-partner if they will be there). 

But there, again, they are going to be raging at you over something, perhaps for accepting their rejection (and not working hard for their approval), or they'll be raging at you because: "I made it clear I don't want to talk to you! And I could care less whether you will be at that party or not! There's plenty of fish in the sea and I'll just ignore you! So there!" Or if it's about your clothes: "You're worried about your clothes at a time like this! I could care less about that pink cocktail dress you always thought you looked great in! It belongs in the dumpster and that's where I'm putting it! You must be crazy to want that back! I hate the color pink! But you were always too blind to see it! You are too blind to see anything that I like and don't like, apparently!"

Any response they have will be unpleasant to deal with.

These arguments (or actually diatribes) are most often no-win situations. Relationships with narcissists don't end the way most relationships do, with a lot of discussion beforehand, especially about compromises you could both make to solve a problem. In most relationships, the problem is the issue between you, but with narcissists, the problem is almost always going to be about what they believe about you, or what they think or falsely want to present to themselves and everyone else as an emerging problem with your character, mind, or perceptions. This is what gaslighting is about. 

Narcissists are, for the most part, compromise-resistant, and will be manipulating ways to keep you "in the game" without compromising on anything. If they are able to do a little bit of it, I'd bet anything that they'll be giving an inch to your mile in that department, and then try to hoard all of the power again later on.

Again this has to do with the fact that they can't admit they are wrong (it risks their vulnerability), and the entitlement that they have that you have to go along with them no matter how far from the truth they are. 

Narcissists will usually tell you that you are crazy and that no one would ever love you or put up with you except them (they'll try to make themselves out to be eternally patient), and in general they will try to wear down your self esteem and nullify your relationships. This the other gaslighting tactic, trying to make you feel that you are alone and will be surrounded by other attackers as long as you ignore their pleas to do what they tell you to do (make them faultless and make yourself at fault). 

But let's say that the narcissist says that he gave you the silent treatment because he wants you to coddle him, and try to please him more, and he gives you that as the reason for why he went silent on you. 

It is very unlikely he will change the way he treated you before. Because abuse escalates, it'll probably get worse. He is most likely trying to fine-tune the sycophantry and submissiveness that you provide. 

And you may be back in your old role over trauma bonding or co-dependency. There may be finances involved. There may be guilt involved: like the idea that you didn't try hard enough to please him. You might be frightened over a threat he has made. Maybe he is physically abusive and you are aware of the statistics of how many women are killed in the first few weeks of leaving their partner. You may not have a good plan in place on how to escape. Or you may just love the perpetrator. The reasons for staying are endless. 

You may be highly empathic, and every time your partner has a fit, there may be enough affection that you feel guilty for not accepting it. 

After enough of these episodes, and without some respite, or some kind of intervention (like a person who goes to bat for you), you are likely going to have full blown PTSD. 

PTSD symptoms are involuntary, with physical, mental and emotional repercussions.  If you are getting therapy for PTSD, these kinds of scenes (losing keys, silent treatments, and so much more) contribute to why your therapist may be insisting that going "no contact" may be the the only way to heal from the PTSD, and all of the symptoms that are present. It also gets you out of the loop of continual trauma responses, and giving in (bonding over and over again over the perpetrator's inclination to stir up traumatic situations where your life hangs in the balance, or finances, or your work, or children, or pets, or anything that is being threatened by them). 

One of the major symptoms of PTSD is not being able to sleep, of being in a hypervigilant state. At the point you aren't able to sleep, you are keyed up about the next impending false accusations or attacks by your partner. Your anxiety about all of this is such that it is keeping you awake at night. Your partner, on the other hand, may be sleeping just fine. Blowing off steam has regulated them enough so that they feel at peace, contented with the state of things. There is no looming danger to their authority or conscience about how they treat you. This may make them feel better, but for you, it is not only impinging on your happiness, wellbeing on all levels, ability to focus, ability to get through the next day with your best foot forward, it is literally driving you into more and more disability.

And aside from disability, narcissists are often trying to strip away any independence or autonomy you used to enjoy when you made your own decisions, had your own thoughts and feelings without someone countering you with what they want to believe, had your own relationships without the narcissist commenting on them or interfering in them. 

PTSD is a normal condition to being exposed to narcissistic fits day in and day out, but it can also be qualified as a disability, because the symptoms are such that they hobble your day to day ability to function at capacity. In the most severe cases you will be trembling from head to foot, and really won't be able to concentrate on anything people are saying to you, or about you.

To get a semblance of PTSD, try not sleeping for 3 days, and see how you feel. Then add in anxiety about being attacked or told what you think or feel (when you don't feel or think what they believe you do), and try to defend yourself in such a state, or get someone to start a crazy-making erroneous-accusatory argument with you after not sleeping for three days. See how well you do with their accusations, and how they try to manipulate certain negative responses from you. Get the person to rage in your face a few times too, and perhaps insult you in many, many ways (how incompetent you are, that they should just leave you to the dogs, that you never meant anything to them - just tell them to hammer you with this BS until you have that wide-eyed stare, and where you no longer seem to be comprehending what they are raging about). Then have them kick you once for not responding any more. See if your nerves are frayed after that episode, and take note of your symptoms, and imagine that the way they treat you largely goes on day after day, after day, and intermingle it with a few episodes of audacious and very confusing affections. Do you feel weepy? Are you begging them to stop it? And what happens when you ask them to stop it? 

They continue it, right? No one is going to stop them from their God given right to attack! Right? 

Now imagine you are so exhausted that you finally do fall asleep. But you have nightmares about being attacked by them. They are very vivid dreams. And when you wake up, there they are! Looking right at you with more rage in their heart. "You're done with sleeping! Get up and do something useful!" they shout at you. Take note of your symptoms after that. 

I'd bet you'd want to crawl under a rock. I bet you want them to just leave you alone already! Right?

And some of them do leave you alone, but not in a good way. They take all of the money out of your joint account, for instance. Or they get other people to lecture you about what a great, great person your abuser is. They run smear campaigns about you to other people. They taunt you with a new lover perhaps. They bait you about wanting to be left alone, as if that is totally unreasonable: "After all I have done for you," they say, "and all we have meant to each other, you're going to leave me in the lurch!?" - it's another blaming tactic and you're supposed to feel guilty, put your PTSD symptoms on hold somehow just for them, but your PTSD symptoms have the upper hand (usually).

The trauma bond at that point is starting to unravel apart because of the symptoms of PTSD in response to attacks, invalidations, and feeling hostage. Once your flight responses are more numerous than your fawn responses, or freeze responses, you are going to want to leave. It's actually better to leave before you get to that point, because you will leave much less disabled. The more disabled you are, and when you are at the point of thinking "I HAVE to get out of this! I WILL get out of this!" You will most likely have to build a new life from scratch, and the more disabled you are, the harder it will be to take on that monumental challenge. 

And it is monumental. Most survivors of narcissistic abuse go through retaliations by their exes, which again, is very confusing considering how much contempt they have shown you, and usually they are threatening to leave you or giving you the silent treatment, and usually they try to show you that they don't care about your feelings too. So why would they be angry and retaliatory if we leave? 

Some of the answers can be found in Jason Skidmore's video, a man diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder where admits to doing fake discards. Since narcissists often use other forms of stonewalling and silent treatments with their discards, it leaves it up to the survivor how they are going to interpret and respond to a discard. And what I have seen so far is that they tend to go in the direction of family values and family upbringing and what I mean by this is: Let us say that the recipient of the discard is from a family who thinks their daughter has been treated horribly, that discards have no place in an intimate relationship. She's more likely to take the discard as so unreasonable that it should not be responded to. Then there are other families who want you to talk to your partner, to work things out face to face, and to insist on it, or to go to counseling if both of you do not come to any conclusions, so you might try to talk to them, and report back to your family to get more advice from them. The other side of the coin are abusive families who expect women to beg their men to take them back, and sometimes, but not as often, for men to beg women to take them back - it's one way to ensure a trauma bond will go on and on. And then there are families with so many estranged members that the message is that if you attempt a return, nothing will work out, that there are no resolutions and that there is nothing you can do about it. 

Or let us say that you read survivor forums and go to meetings with other domestic abuse survivors and it becomes clear that not only were there no resolutions for the high number of cases (or quite often all of the cases), where the abuse got much, much worse when they went back. In some of these cases you will find that it became a life-threatening situation. 

To make matters worse, at the point of the discard, narcissists usually play the victim as well as spread more false narratives to get their co-bullies, enablers, and sycophants to attack you, or to tell you of the dire straights you left them in (when most likely they DARVO'd you). There will be all kinds of social pressures to get you back into the trauma bond again. It's a huge betrayal on the discarder's part, and for most victims, it seems scary, like how criminals act when they get caught and want to make it someone else's fault. My sense is that DARVOs don't work in bringing any survivor back; in fact, it creates a lot more barriers.

Then there are narcissists who get fixated on beliefs about you. The least obnoxious is that they believe that you have a permanent flaw of ingratitude. In fact, if you watch other videos by narcissists, they become quite fixated on that - and there are videos by Jason Skidmore of "The Nameless Narcissist" (mentioned above) where he talks about gaining leadership positions and being a mastermind in some games in friendship circles in high school and college where his friends bailed on him, and on how it hurt him greatly, where his mind went in the direction of wanting to hurt them for the "ingratitude" he perceived they had.  

But I have to say that it usually gets way worse than fixations of only "perceived ingratitude". After listening to so many survivor stories about the kinds of things perpetrators say about their victims, it can get really "far out". For instance, one parent became absolutely convinced that her daughter was bringing home fake report cards from school (because she was convinced her daughter was stupid), and even when her daughter told her mother to contact the teacher to see if the report card was real, the mother would find other ways to justify her belief such as the daughter talking the teacher into giving her better grades than she deserved, trying to play teacher's pet, and threatening the teacher. If perpetrators believe, or are stubborn about holding on to a false belief, you are not going to be able to say much without repercussions (whether they rage at you for convincing them or others that they were wrong - which narcissists hate - or they do everything they can to ignore the truth).

Another survivor's family was convinced that their physician family member was a clandestine prostitute on the side (and eventually it was found that the mother in that situation was a prostitute and assumed her physician daughter was one too). So a lot of it is projection.

Another survivor's family from a right wing community told all of the relatives that their daughter ran off with Antifa and was living in an LGBTQ commune when the real truth was that she left because of on-going physical abuse by her father as well as his propensity to continually make up things about her, isolating her further and further with him. What really happened is that she moved far away, was never part of a liberal community, and didn't know a single LGBTQ person, and was living alone scared out of her mind in an apartment. She was scared that her father's family and friends would beat her up over false accusations. In that case, it would seem the message was clear: "don't come back". Otherwise why make up such stories about his own daughter?

The most dangerous one was where a survivor went back to her abuser and the abuser beat her up badly at the doorway. She managed to get away and was hospitalized, but it became a case where the abuser believed he was in danger from the abused because if he had been abused like she was, he would have tried to kill the person who abused him. 

So part of the trauma bond is living continuously with fantasies, false narratives, dangerous assumptions and diabolical lies to get others to threaten you, abuse you, or kill you. And guess what? You often won't know which one it is. There are some signs, like the DARVO that can immediately put you on "DISTRUST ALERT", but most survivors are usually really surprised at how far their abusers will go to hurt them.

And, of course, narcissists can have Narcissistic Collapse where they feel that their egos or the image they are trying to portray to others is in immediate jeopardy, where they feel they will never be able to reach the heights they did before (even if those heights were illusory and were only propped by manipulations of other people), and where they can be on a mission to hurt a person, or type of people that remind them of someone who they believe provoked their narcissistic collapse. 

In that way, abusers can be like preppers. Preppers are known to build long tunnels on their property and store them full of food because they believe that a situation is building where their lives are under threat from world events out of their control. The one difference between them and abusers is that abusers "prep" for an attack by their victim.

It can be one of the reasons they attack you without provocation. It can be one of the reasons they spread false narratives and insist that people believe them, and protect them from phantom ostracism and victimization.

It can be one of the reasons they indulge in so many false narratives, as if you'll spread lies about them first and they'll be left without friends or family or a support group, so they do it to you as soon as they think you are not coming back.

It can be one of the reasons why they always left you out of social situations, or isolated you from family, or why they decided on estrangement over continuing the relationship they had with you, or why they took you out of their Will, because they falsely believe you will be trashing them and being as scary as they are. 

And it may even have to do with why they rage at you or abuse you if they perceive they have been criticized by you - because when they criticize there are many, many agendas behind their criticisms including trying to dominate you, take away your decision-making, take away your relationships, and take away your freedoms.

What this has to do with is that a lot of narcissists are paranoid, and some even have Paranoid Personality Disorder (another link), in addition to Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which tends to be the more malignant brand of narcissism where there is sadism and/or violence being expressed. The combination can be deadly, so it may be best not to go back, at least to a private residence (if they tell you they want to talk to you, consider a public place). If they are spreading a lot of false narratives about you (smear campaigns) that seem really delusional with a lot of false victim stories, you can see why this might be dangerous.

You would think that with all of the blaming, contempt, criticisms and insults they have for you that they would be happy that you left, or that they instigated a silent treatment, but the fact is that, as Dr. Ramani said in her video (and which I transcribed above), "It's always important to remember that narcissistic folks always use conflict to regulate. The yelling and screaming and abuse allow them to reassert their power, and as they shatter you, they feel better."

In other words, they need you back in your role, taking blame and abuse so that they can feel regulated and in charge. Perhaps when they feel they can't use you as a rage receptacle, they discard and use the DARVO. This also has everything to do with why they gaslight. If we were to add gaslighting to Dr. Ramani's tale, the gaslighting would sound like: "You know, you're so crazy that you didn't know you lost my keys. You go around and take things of mine, and then put them in my coat pocket on purpose so that you know I'm not going to find them." 

Gaslighting just gets you to PTSD symptoms a lot faster.  

Narcissists do not care about PTSD, and the symptoms and disabilities it presents. If they are instructed by a health care provider or mental health counselor about strategies to keep a peaceful, calm environment, they don't do it. They look at PTSD as a weakness, in fact, and something that is inconvenient. They have a love/hate relationship with you, just as they do any disabled person. A disability to them means: a limited amount of narcissistic supply where they can rage and insult like crazy, where the disabled person is too disabled to defend themselves against the attacks, but cannot do much more for them than that. Any other potential ego trips are stifled by the disability. 

I taught school, and the disabled are often picked to bully the most because they have fewer defenses and less of a network of peer support than the bullies do (usually). Bullies aren't going to look at an individual with PTSD differently than someone with a physical disability. On the playground, they might refer to a child with PTSD as "stupid", "retarded" (because children with PTSD are often amygdala hijacked). In terms of the amygdala hijack, it means the capacity to learn has been hijacked by hypervigilance, and walking on eggshells to temper the narcissist's clockwork rages). They may be referred to as "a baby" because children with PTSD tend to cry a lot more, and can appear inconsolable and unaffected even when they are comforted or teased about their crying. That is because they are literally living in pain most of the time. They can be described as a kid "no one likes" because kids with PTSD tend to isolate and not trust others. 

In terms of adult bullying, many of the same kinds of phrases will be lobbed at the partner, but they might say things like "intellectually challenged", or "insane", or "socially inept" - the more grown up phrases. Or they may say things which denigrate your PTSD: "Oh, here we go again! Your PTSD is activated again! You know, I've just about had it with your PTSD! You've got excuses to cry and be spacey again! Boohoo! But guess what!? I didn't activate it! You're a weak person who can't take a little argument! Or an insult! Such a baby! Waaahhhhh!!!!"

In terms of the way adults bully, it is not much different than the way kids engage in schoolyard bullying.

I will talk about the set of traits that attract other bullies in another post. Every scapegoat, and ex-partner of a narcissist, should learn what those traits are so that you can work on them, and so that narcissists won't even notice you, and hopefully not want a relationship with you either. 

Anyway, the PTSD symptoms can go off every time the narcissist is around you: headaches, stomach aches, a deep kind of exhaustion, anxiety through the roof, your heart may even hurt or pound, and you can't even pay attention to what they are saying any more because your own body and mind are all that you can deal with. You feel like you are under constant siege, onslaught, hostage to their nitpicking and rages. And you may get to the point where you don't care about the narcissist any more than they care about you. You just want to escape and get out of the situation. 

If you stay, your symptoms get even worse. You may feel like you can barely function. So escaping is going to cross all of our minds eventually. 

None of us are meant to be under constant onslaught (and having nightmares about a partner, not sleeping, flinching over being touched, and doubled over with stomach aches) in a marriage. 

I came across this from researcher and popular book author, Shahida Arabi, on Facebook: "How is it that narcissists and psychopaths can love bomb their partners so heavily, only to suddenly withdraw, devalue, or attempt to “replace” one person with another? Why do you feel like the narcissist or psychopath no longer “sees” you, is bored with you or that you cease to exist when you challenge the narcissist’s ego by standing up for yourself? Psychologists have a surprising answer to these questions."

This ends up at her Thought Catalog article, The Reason Narcissists Love Bomb and Devalue Their Partners So Easily, According to Psychology. 
     Here is an excerpt from her article (written in blue):
     You’ve heard of the phrase, "out of sight, out of mind." But did you know it applies to the mindset of narcissistic and psychopathic individuals? Object constancy is a term to describe the ability to maintain a consistent perception of objects or people regardless of whether they are physically present or if there are changes to their behaviors, emotional states, or appearance.  For example, children exhibit object constancy when they begin to realize that when their parent has left the room, they have not abandoned them and will usually return. Adults have an expanded sense of object constancy in their relationships, as they are able to still maintain bonds and relationships to people even during minor, temporary conflicts or experiencing emotions of being upset at the person. Psychologists have suggested that narcissistic people can have a distorted sense of emotional “object constancy,” in relationships, which means they can devalue people they once put on a pedestal quite easily because they refuse to hold the simultaneous state of loving and maintaining a bond with someone, while also being upset with them. 
     However, as a researcher specializing in narcissism, I would say it’s more accurate to include that not only do narcissists have a distorted sense of object constancy, they also lack empathy and have an excessive sense of entitlement. These are the driving forces behind their harmful and aggressive behaviors. “Out of sight, out of mind” applies to them emotionally because if their ego is harmed or sense of entitlement rattled, they begin to devalue the very partners they once love bombed heavily without much empathy or remorse, not caring how building a close relationship with someone and then suddenly pretending that person doesn’t exist may affect the other person. 
     This lack of object constancy, lack of empathy, and distorted emotional permanence is also what drives narcissistic and psychopathic people to pit people against one other and maintain a harem of people to “play” with. They seem to devalue other people at the drop of a hat to pursue someone or something they deem more novel or exciting at a moment’s notice.  Narcissists do this because they are attracted to status and prestige, so they’re always on the lookout for people who can boost their image. They place people into categories of “high value” and “low value” based on what these people can do for them or offer to them at the time. That is why it may seem arbitrary and off-putting when they once put you on a pedestal, making you feel important and cherished, only to suddenly pursue another target.
     People who were married to narcissistic individuals can attest to the shock and betrayal they experienced, when, after being the object of the narcissist’s affections and hyper-fixation, they were suddenly devalued or triangulated with another target. Or, partners of narcissists share how they experienced the rage, gaslighting, stonewalling or silent treatment of the narcissist when they stood up to the narcissist, because the narcissist does not allow themselves to keep both states of, “I still have a close relationship with this person and love them,” and “They have hurt my ego,” in mind at the same time. Narcissistic individuals often opt to focus instead on how that person has challenged their ego and entitlement, rather than focus on how this bond can be improved with their partner’s feedback, or create an even stronger bond with more trust and vulnerability. ... 

The whole article is worth reading. 

The point of showing her article to you is that for a person who is not a narcissist or psychopath, this will cause trauma. The rest of us are not built to invest hours every day, and years of our time into a relationship that can go "non-existent" in a second over our partner's ego issues, or because they compulsively decided we are "too low value" for them. 

Okay, so let us say that we get that they have devalued us to "low stature", and we move on with our lives.

But sometimes narcissists circle back around to us because we might do something that gives them a double take. Maybe you are in a relationship with someone who is deemed to be "high value" to them. They might even be afraid that the other person is of higher stature than they are. Or we make a lot of money at something, which makes them feel insecure (that we are on a higher hierarchy of money than they are). I think any number of us can count the times narcissists "showed up" suddenly - one woman I know had an art show and her estranged cruel mother decided to show up to it, and wanted to buy all of the paintings. It was very possible that she wanted to buy the paintings to destroy them because she had destroyed most of her daughter's paintings before.

It can happen with exes too, and someone who had been cruel to me (complete with discard) just happened to show up (with a gift) when he heard the news that I was involved in a project that he had always said he wanted to be a part of. I knew enough about narcissism by then not to trust him at all. 

If narcissists decide to come back at some point, you can see from Arabi's article that they are not doing so for good reasons. It is either to enact a kind of Trojan Horse of reinstating the love bombing to get revenge or to enact a retaliation for their bruised ego, or because they want your success, or because they miss your brand of narcissistic supply and think you can help elevate them by the company you keep. Love for them means "You are of some utility to me"; it does not mean what the rest of us mean. 

If you do accept them a second time, I think you'll see that they'll do another discard no matter what they promise (narcissists do not keep promises, especially these kind). They might keep a promise for the most mundane of matters, and even there they make excuses and slip up. 

The second time they come back and do another discard it can be quite a bit more traumatic than the first time. What I have seen and heard in asking survivors of narcissistic abuse how they survived narcissistic discards twice are these take-aways. If you are discarded in your late teens or early twenties, and are never tempted to go back, you have the best chance of healing, leading a normal happy life, not obsessing over a discard, and building your life from scratch. You can forget about the people who hurt you more easily. If you are discarded again by that same person in middle age, or in your fifties or sixties, it is much, much harder, and I bet PTSD symptoms are through the roof too. Perhaps it is because we are built in such a way where when we are 18 - 20 years old, our lives are more about exploring a grown up world and peer relationships, and moving around a lot, and constantly getting to know new people, that to get bogged down in a toxic partnership/marriage is not as likely. The testosterone levels tend to be higher then for both men and women. You can move on from them more easily because most people in their late teens and early twenties have fluid changeable lives any way, and you are at your healthiest to endure what ever trauma symptoms may temporarily plague you. 

It does not always happen this way, however. When I was in my early twenties and part of a friendship circle of people my own age in my city, a young man from the group had been suddenly, and without explanation, discarded by his girlfriend, and hung himself after pleading with her numerous times to talk to him. I thought about him more than usual because another friend I saw a lot rented the apartment where he hung himself. I ruminated about his self esteem, whether his self esteem had been knocked down in childhood or in his teens before he met his girlfriend, or if it had only been knocked down by her. I never found the answer. 

The specter of suicide can be an issue. Seconds-long discards with cruelty behind them, and the silent treatment following the discard, and lots of stonewalling can, in some cases, produce a suicide. While most of us would care about that, be concerned with how he was handling the issue, and be effected by his suicide (certainly the friendship circle did), I somehow doubt that a narcissist would. As long as they feel they can say "It wasn't my fault" they move on. 

IN RELATIONSHIPS WITH CHILDREN

Obviously children experiencing a trauma bond with a parent or other care-taking adult, and an on-going cycle of the false narrative blaming cycle is going to be tremendously damaging to the child. It is nothing better than a hostage situation. And because children don't have choices like adults have, and because the power imbalance is so wide, the likelihood of child abuse, even physical abuse over the false things they are blamed for, is high. 

On their own, children don't have many choices when they are falsely accused. The only way that they might get help is through another adult calling Child Protective Services or a mandated reporter knowing that a child is being mistreated over a parent's false accusations continually. 

And narcissistic parents tend to falsely accuse other people and their own children (or more often their scapegoat child) a lot so that they don't have to feel shame. In a way, that is why they give a hug or some other form affection at the end of their diatribes (after they have found the car keys in their own pocket after accusing their child of taking them, for instance). It keeps them from having to apologize, admit that they are wrong, admit that they are hurting a child, admit that they are damaging a child with these continuous cycles of false accusations, or admit that any shame can be attributed to them. It is probably also done to ensure to themselves that they still have a bond with the child. 

But the damage is more likely to be extreme with children. All children are afraid of their parents going missing or abandoning them. All children are afraid that their parent won't be able to provide for them (food, clothing, shelter, teaching life skills). All children are afraid of divorce (for good reason). All children are afraid of punishments, especially unjust ones. All children are afraid of not being liked or loved by a parent (shown contempt or criticized instead). All children are afraid of adult rage and violence. All children are afraid of being so dependent on adults for their survival. All children are afraid that this survival dependence is also tied to attention and love from a parent (that it can be taken away). All children are afraid that if a parent doesn't love them that supervision, being fair, being protective and putting safety first, being just, being emotionally self regulated will be taken away -  and that if the parent isn't adult enough to take on challenges that a child cannot handle because of their age and size, then that can be pretty scary too. - there is a reason I wrote this in red ... 

Narcissists know these fears because they were once a child too. But they are more likely to play on these fears, take advantage of the fears, and use them repeatedly as threats, in dog-whistling comments, in head games, in manipulations, in power trips, and some parents, especially narcissistic parents who have some sociopathic qualities, actually go through with all or most of them to show a child (even an adult child) that the parent doesn't really love them, need them or want them. 

If one or two of these things from the list (in red above) is missing, like a parent not being able to provide for them, it is challenging for a child. It can also be traumatic depending on how bad it is. If half of them are missing, the child is walking around on eggshells wondering when the next crisis will happen. If all of them are missing, it is a game changer and PTSD is inevitable, as well as a really, really sick, toxic, and dangerous (for the child) trauma bond. 

Let me say it this way:

So let us say that the parent is a rage-a-holic, that any kind of consistent love is missing, that they are violent, that they don't protect you from the violence of others, that they provide meals that aren't particularly nutritious (like feed you boxed cereal for breakfast and dinner, where you get a real meal from school lunch or the neighbors), where they are telling you that they are going to get a divorce from a parent who actually loves you, where they tell you that you "Can run away any old time" or threaten to abandon you, that's only half of the issues above that you are forced to deal with. I would argue that one or two of these issues, like improper physical care coupled with an angry temper, is too much for children to deal with. But if you add in all of the rest of the ingredients from that paragraph, with even more like: erroneous unfounded blaming, gaslighting, silent treatments, some actual abandonments, actual withdrawals of love over short or long periods of time, hyper-criticisms, contempt for who the child is and the way they do things, comparing the child negatively to siblings or other children, and all of the other ingredients from that paragraph, it is way too overwhelming for any child, even the strongest most resilient of them. Then if you add in more than I have mentioned like exposing the child to a parent's alcoholism or drug addictions or to family members with those issues, being abused by others with no protection or resolution from the adults, retaliatory or tit-for-tat parenting, false imprisonment, sexual abuse, war, street violence, more criticism than love, that child is going to have PTSD so severe that it is likely to be life long. It can be mitigated in adulthood with trauma therapy, domestic violence therapy, and going "no contact" with people who display more than a few narcissistic traits, but it will never go away completely ... absolutely calm environments are the best bet. Even there it is not full proof: too many human beings seem to want to start wars, retaliate, start pointless grand-standing arguments, and destroy ... 

And by the way, most scapegoat children of families have to live with more of a predominance of the fears (that end up coming true) listed in the red paragraph. It's no wonder that so many scapegoats I have met all seem to go "no contact" and are "nature bugs". Humans are difficult animals to cope with, and especially when you've been brought up with so many loud arguments that never go in a positive direction (mainly because narcissists require that they chronically get their own way), you can't hear any more rages, criticisms, DARVOs, loud arguments, without symptoms or blanking out altogether. 

So how do trauma-bonded, scapegoated children act? 

There are so many symptoms other than an inability to sleep, headaches, stomach aches, nightmares and anxiety, that I'll take that up in other posts when I get more into the trauma section of the blog. At the very least, it can impact the developing brain, and all of that hypervigilance can effect the heart too (medical issues with the heart can happen early in life even if you have a good diet, and stay away from smoking, alcohol and caffeine). It is what Bessel van der Kolk writes about, and particularly for the well know book he wrote called "The Body Keeps the Score". 

All of the anxiety, hypervigilance, being on the powerless end of the relationship, being abused, condescended, insulted, used for diabolical  purposes, and abandoned can have significant medical issues sooner or later. 

In the meantime, here are some healthy videos and writings by various psychologists, researchers and experts: 

VIDEOS
(WITH SOME OF MY OWN COMMENTS)

"What Do Narcissists Gain by Your Trauma Bond"
by Dr. Les Carter for the Surviving Narcissism channel:

I have transcribed his video so that you can study his words carefully (his words are in a mustard color):

When you hear the concept of trauma bonding relative to a relationship with a narcissist, we often and rightly will focus on the difficult experiences that you have because of the narcissist's behavior towards you, and it's so necessary for you to understand the dynamic of trauma bonds. 

Today I want to help you find out how you're going to manage your end of the trauma bond with a narcissist by understanding what's going on inside of them, what they feel like they are gaining from having their side of the trauma bond with you. 

Now before we get too deep into all of that, let's first remind ourselves what we're talking about when we refer to having a trauma bond. When we talk about psychological trauma, basically we're talking about you receiving so much negative stimulation in that moment, you simply don't have the bandwidth, you don't have the inner wherewithal to process what's going on in front of you. It's too over-powering. And then we can add the word "complex trauma" and that implies that the trauma repeats itself over, and over, and over. Now when you have a trauma bond, basically what we're talking about is a relationship that's based upon a strong power differential. And guess what that equation you're on. 

Narcissists have an on-going need to keep you in the "down position". They're going to argue with you a whole lot. They can have major anger when ever you try to have a dialogue with them regarding any difference or difficulty. You're not going to have a constructive dialog at all. There is lots of character assassination. These individuals have a vested interest in keeping you feeling inadequate, or inferior. They'll put guilt and shame upon you. And specifically when I talk about shame, they want to keep you believing that your character is truly defective. They demand blind loyalty. They have extremely strong control features in the way that they come toward you. And lots of double standards. They'll isolate you from other individuals. As you can tell just from this description, a word that we often use relating to the trauma bonding is "toxic". This is a toxic way of engaging with other individuals. 

When we're talking about trauma bonds, we're talking unhealthy attachments that are on-going. 

Now I know that on your side of the equation, you can readily relate to certain feelings or experiences. You might end up trying to filter your decisions or priorities through that narcissist. "Well, am I going to set this person off?" Sometimes you just wonder "What's the next false move that I might make that's going to get them angry at me?" So you become guarded and calculating. You can commonly feel very angry in reverse towards them, and you can have a build up of hurt and pain, and resentment, and all that goes with that. Often there can even be times when you feel the need to cover for the narcissist's anger towards you because you can feel so embarrassed and humiliated by the experiences that you have. 

But then let's go to that question - we know that this has a debilitating effect on you - but what's in it for the narcissist? What are they hoping to gain by creating this illicit form of bonding with you? And it's so essential for you to understand what's in their mind, what drives them because the narcissist definitely wants you to think you're "the problem". When in fact, no, what's going on is that they're carrying a great deal - and when I say a great deal - of psychological damage from the inside out, but they want you to think you are deficient because of heir unwillingness to examine themselves.
(4:50)

So what does the narcissist gain by keeping you bonded in this traumatic kind of way? 

Now first, let's begin with the understanding that the trauma bond between the narcissist and you is all about the narcissist's pain management strategy. 

Now you may think that is truly strange. You see, these individuals are already damaged individuals in their own right. Frankly many of them are already living in their own version of Hell and some of the ones who grew up as the golden child already want to perpetuate the myth that they are special. But make no mistake. They operate with an illogic: "The way for me to manage my pain is to make you have more pain. The way to make me feel like an adequate person is to make you feel inadequate. When you are down, then I feel validated. I'm not as pitiable as you."

And so as a result, narcissists in their own strange pain management try to fend off their pain by putting it on to you. And they feed off of the fact that you're hurting because it's a way of reminding themselves, "See, there's the inadequate person right there."

Much of this is going on in a subconscious level, but none-the-less this is their strange psychological math: "I get rid of my pain by making you feel pain."

Now in addition, I mentioned trauma bonds are based upon a power differential. One of the things narcissists feel like they gain by maintaining the bond with you is it becomes a compensation of their own fear of powerlessness. In the mind of the narcissist, their assumption is that relationships are based upon dominance and submission. That's the psychological language they learn and so they've thought to themselves, "Well, I definitely don't want to be on the submissive end of it, so I'll be on the dominate end of it", and they will come at you with all sorts of power tactics, because they must keep you in subjection and subordination to them to build up their pitiable weak ego.

Another thing we can say is that narcissists carry on the inside - and again it can be that they won't admit this necessarily - but they carry a great deal psychological fatigue. You know and I know that relationships carry a great deal of work and concentration and patience for them to unfold for us to build a solid foundation, and narcissists have the thought, "I don't have time for all of that! I don't want to put in the work; I don't want to invest myself not knowing what the outcome is going to be", so in their psychological fatigue they go straight to the finish line and say, "Look, let's just establish that I'm good and you're not good. I'm excellent; you're terrible." And they refuse to live in the patience that's required to establish a healthy love of respect and honor. It just doesn't happen overnight. But to the narcissist it's like "I don't have time for that."

In addition, narcissists harbor a lot of self directed insults. And again, this is not what they will say out loud to you. But in their mind, they "Hate what people have done to me. And they think I'm going to take the inadequate side of the equation? No way!" Instead what they'll do is to go in the opposite direction and say, "Well, I'll tell you what. I actually hate what you are!" And it takes them away from hearing the message that says "People out there have rejected me. I just reject you." It's again, a compensation.

Or they can think to themselves, "I've been subjected to much judgement and condemnation, or being on the outside looking in, so if I can make you look worse than me, I'll be happy to judge you." And so they need you to be inadequate to take the focus off of their own internal psychological confusion, which is why they put so much psychological energy in to keeping you down. All of that anger, and all of that brash, and pushy and contemptuous way of living - it is all a part of their compensation for their inner sense of inadequacy. They have an empty interior. They do not have a well-conceived philosophy of what brings meaning or purpose to life. Instead it's all about being on a grading system, and they have to be on the high end, which means they require you to be on the low end. 

So, we go back to that question: "What does the narcissist gain by keeping you trauma bonded to them?" 

They gain a diversion from their own inner confusion. They gain the capacity to go into denial of their own fears and hurts (like: "That's not me!").

They gain dominance as a cover for their powerlessness.

And so much of what they do is such a matter of projection - they see in you all of the confusion that they refuse to come to terms with on the inside of themselves, and then along with projection, they love to gaslight. In other words, if they can keep you confused about what's really going on, they win. And so what we're trying to do here is to clear up some of that gaslighting, and remind us that the world view that they have is so inappropriate, and it is so illogical. 

I mean, for example, "My self respect arises from insulting you." That doesn't make sense. 

Or "My feeling of power arises from wiping out your ability to make decisions."

Or "My sense of pleasure is derived from you having pain." 

Or "My hostility I have on the inside is satisfied by displacing it on to another individual." 

I mean their whole world view makes no sense what-so-ever. So, basically by understanding what is going on inside the narcissist as they try to keep you bonded to them, I'm hoping that you can see that you're being used. And you're being used to prop up their poorly constructed interior. And you know, "If I'm on the receiving end of all of the messages and the abuse and condescension that goes with this, my response is, 'I didn't sign up for this. This doesn't help me, and frankly it doesn't help the narcissist, therefor I'm going to withdraw from the role that was assigned to me without my permission. I need my freedom.'" 

... I so want you to break free from the bonds that the narcissist holds you into. ... 

"THIS Is What Trauma Bonding With A Narcissist Does To A Decent Person"
by Dr. Les Carter for the Surviving Narcissism channel:

I have transcribed his video up until 7:13 so that you can study his words carefully (his words are in a mustard color):

... When you've been bonded with a malignant narcissist (inevitably that's who this person would be), it takes such a toll on you that you begin to wonder is "Is there something really and deficient about me?"

That's part of what trauma bonding does. 

And I'm here to tell you "No." You have to understand that the problem that happens with trauma bonding is that with a very pathological person, who themselves is very disturbed and dis-regulated, they are the problem. They want you to think you're the problem, and it's so necessary for you to see what they do to you so that you can recognize it is more about them than it is about you. So we need to adjust some of the thoughts and feelings that you carry about yourself. 

Now before we get into that, I've actually read quite a few comments I have seen from people who have been in trauma bonds, but let's remind ourselves what we're talking about when we use that term "trauma bonding". 

Basically the person who has been trauma bonded feels very self limited. They are mentally and emotionally exhausted and they feel very unworthy specifically because of an ongoing toxic relationship with a hyper controlling narcissist, a master manipulator. And one of the things we know about trauma bonding is that as time passes, the recipient of that toxicity begins to feel weaker and weaker relative to the narcissist, and of course the giver of the toxicity, the narcissist, becomes more and more diabolical. By the way, do you understand the meaning of the word, diabolical? We also have "diablo" in other languages. But it comes from a Latin root word that just means "the devil." It's evil. And it's truly evil when a malignant narcissist in their malignant mannerisms says "I need to make sure you know who's in charge around here." They grind you into the ground. They want you to have little to no belief in yourself, because they are going to fill you with them. And so the narcissist demands your subjugation ... Over time when you've been around someone that long, you become habituated to the game that they go to. You're trying to seek peace to get rid of conflict, that you feel that if you do leave, then you're disloyal, you're wrong or somehow you're the impossible one - that's the bond that happens. You stay stuck to them because the malignant narcissist lets you know "If you do something away from me then that means there is something terrible about you. You need to stay underneath my subjection."

Now I have a whole list here. I just sat down at my desk and I wrote it out and these are comments I've received from viewers such as yourself and from other individuals I've spoken with and I want to read these to you. And as I do, I want to see if you can identify with some or maybe all of these comments because this is what happens to a decent person when they have been trauma bonded to a narcissist, inevitably a malignant narcissist. Here we go - 

... "I totally lost myself. I can't tell you how hard I've tried to hold the relationship together. I constantly felt it was my job to make peace. Nothing, and I mean nothing, ever satisfied that person. I had to choose to be a 'yes person' or face serious wrath."
How many of you have worried about that one?
"There was lots of verbal abuse and constant shame."

You know what that's like?

"After all of the controlling demands, I would be left wondering 'Who am I? And how the Hell did I get here? I had to Comply," with a capital "C, "to that person. And I hated it. My worth, my self respect weren't just stolen, they were trampled upon. To this day, I struggle with doubt and profound grief." 

These are words from people who have been in trauma bonds. 

"I feel like damaged goods. Will I ever be accepted or lovable again?"

"I was told repeatedly if I left, 'it will not end well for you.' I felt so alone. I had to get away from the toxic fumes, but I felt terrified."

You know, I read through these kinds of comments and there are more and I know that many of you can recall or add to the list here. I read through comments like this and I'm thinking, "Yea. This is what happens. This is what trauma bonding does to a decent person. That narcissist who has such a strong control agenda and has somehow convinced himself or herself that it's a reasonable thing to grind you into the ground - they give you so many messages and there are so many experiences where they rob you of your own decency, that this is what happens to an otherwise decent individual." 

And I want you to understand that if you've been on the receiving end of this, you don't have to stay. We call it "trauma BONDING" - the narcissist wants to bond to you, but it really is okay to say "No! No! I can't do this." And so I want to give you a few thoughts here. If you've been associated with a narcissist who has tried to bond you to them through this trauma and toxicity, I'm going to see how we can figure out how to get away from that. ...    

When Dr. Carter talks about some of his clients, or the people leaving comments, who feel like they are half a person, an invisible person, a person they don't know or recognize within themselves is called an "echoist state". Who you are is constantly about a narrative that the narcissist has decided to be in control of, so it causes internal confusion: "Am I really as terrible as the narcissist says I am?" No, but that is their agenda in a trauma bond - to constantly make you feel that you are not up to their standards. They are judging you in the extreme to the point where you no longer recognize your version of who you are and sometimes their version of who you are either. You are confused, and in most cases you don't have time to think, because they have some other criticism to present to you. That's another subject I hope to take up soon too. 

In the rest of the video he tells how to psychologically break the trauma bond by noting that it is not your duty to protect, defend, constantly apologize to, be loyal to, and stay with a person who is continually putting you down, attributing the worst qualities to you, who treats you like you don't matter past what you can do to regulate their rage and need for power and control, and who is grinding you down to take control of you in every way they possibly can regardless of how it is making you feel (a very diminished version of yourself, or not knowing who you are at all other than the narcissist's constant overbearing berating and shaming sessions). 

The following video by Lisa A. Romano, a life coach specializing in healing from narcissistic abuse, is so good! Not only does she explain what is going on, she consistently has a warm compassionate delivery:

 RECOMMENDED:
"BREAKING TRAUMA BONDS WITH A NARCISSIST/" WHY it's SO HARD TO LEAVE A NARCISSISTIC RELATIONSHIP
by Lisa A. Romano, Life Coach:

"SIGNS YOU'RE IN A TRAUMA BOND AND TRAUMA TRANCE" - by Dr. Kim Sage (You Tube)

8 SIGNS OF MAMA TRAUMA BONDING: COMPLEX PTSD AND BORDERLINE/NARCISSISTIC RELATIONSHIPS WITH MOMS - by Dr. Kim Sage (You Tube)

5 Tips to Help Support Someone with a Trauma Bond - by Doctor Donnelly Snipes (You Tube)

12 Potent Strategies Narcissist Use to Sabotage Breakup Attempts. "Humanization" Trick & Others - by psychologist Ross Rosenberg (You Tube)

Origins of Codependency (Self-Love Deficit Disorder). Recorded 2012. EMM = Pathological Narcissist - by psychologist Ross Rosenberg (You Tube)

12 Steps to Overcome the "Narcissistic Storm." Safely & Strategically Setting Boundaries - by psychologist Ross Rosenberg (You Tube)

Narcissistic Parents: When 'Honoring' Them HURTS you - by Jerry Wise, MA, MS, CLC (You Tube) 

Narcissistic Parents: The Damage of their RAGE & Explosive Outbursts - by Jerry Wise, MA, MS, CLC (You Tube) 

Narcissistic Parents: Ways You Are Invisible to Them - by Jerry Wise, MA, MS, CLC (You Tube) 

8 Signs Its A Trauma Bond, Not Love - Psych2Go (a consortium of psychologists), You Tube 

FURTHER READING

Traumatic Bonding - Wikipedia

6 Signs of Trauma Bonding - by Jenna Fletcher and medically reviewed by Lori Lawrenz, Ph.D. for Psych Central

Breaking the Trauma Bond Forged by Narcissistic Parents (Tips for undoing a dysfunctional parent's hold on you.) - by Suzanne Degges-White, Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Narcissistic Parent - Wikipedia 

Narcissists Use Trauma Bonding and Intermittent Reinforcement To Get You Addicted To Them: Why Abuse Survivors Stay - by Shahida Arabi, MA for Psych Central

How Having a Narcissistic Parent Impacts Young Adult Mental Health - Newport Institute (treatment center)

What Does a Trauma Bond with a Narcissist Look Like? - Mental Health Center of San Diego

PSYCHOLOGY AND RELATIONSHIPS (There are 2 styles of parenting that lead kids to become narcissistic adults, says psychologist who’s treated dozens of them) - by Aditi Shikant for CNBC (Make It section)

Break Free of the Trauma Bonds in Narcissistic Abuse - by Jay Reid, psychotherapist for his own website

10 Shocking Ways To Break A Trauma Bond With A Narcissist - by Shahida Arabi for Thought Catalog

7 Stages of Trauma Bonding: Why Leaving Is Hard and How to Stop It - by Gyenn Ow for Sofia Wellness Clinic

Are You in a Trauma Bond? - Lexie (Children and Family Worker) for Safer Places, UK

FOUND ON FACEBOOK

from NICABM on Facebook:

also from NICABM on Facebook:

From Shahida Arabi
Note: This one seems to be said to the gaslighters and not the gaslit:

Escalation of Abuse, With Discussions on Why It Happens, What to Do About It and How Dangerous It Is

 

Updated 1/27/22: newest updates include a section on ownership of guns, as well as one on threats. 

Note: this post is for information purposes only. It is not to be used to diagnose yourself or anyone else. If you need help, contact your local domestic abuse center or the domestic violence hotline. 

As usual, this post contains articles, resources, videos and a further reading section. 

So does abuse almost always escalate? Yes. Read on: 

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 DomesticShelters.org:

When you ask survivors what their last straw was during domestic violence, their answers will likely range from “the first time they threatened to hit me” to “the first time they put me in the hospital.”

Survivors can pinpoint that moment in time when abuse took a sudden escalation and for many that’s their cue to find a way to leave, and fast. Others may feel trapped, either by circumstances like finances or housing that make it seem impossible to leave, or by the hope that they can still change the abuser. Either way, escalation is often a glaringly red flag that indicates a survivor’s life is at risk.

The article describes both gradual escalation (from insults to pushing), or sudden escalation (physical assault or threats of physical assault). 

Here is another excerpt from the article as to why escalation of abuse is so dangerous:

Why It’s So Dangerous

When abuse escalates, an abuser is basically showing that they have a new way to exert power over a survivor. The abuser is becoming more emboldened. They are moving on to the next phase of their plan to trap a survivor.

Escalation is not caused by something a survivor did. A survivor did not make an abuser “more mad” by something the survivor did or said ...

According to "Aris" from the National Domestic Violence Hotline:

     The reason why escalation is so dangerous is because the abuser is showing their partner that they can use new and more damaging tactics to continue to hoard power and control in the relationship. An abuser may test out whether they can get away with crossing a line that has never been crossed before, with the intention of creating a new and deeper level of power and control when they fear they are losing it.

     Abusers typically escalate when they feel they are losing control over the relationship, often because they feel that the independence of their partner has increased in some way or that their partner will leave. The escalation may be intended as a warning or a demonstration of what could happen if their partner decides to become independent. This warning is not to be taken lightly—leaving an abusive relationship is a dangerous thing to do. In fact, 75% of all serious injuries in abusive relationships occur when the survivor ends the relationship. This does not mean that the survivor should stay if they want to leave, but it does mean that any plan to leave should be a good, solid safety plan that takes into account the unique barriers specific to each survivor’s situation.

However, staying in the relationship is dangerous too because it is escalating, so many domestic violence counselors prefer that their clients make a good safety plan (safety plans are available at most domestic violence centers and should be sought there). 

The article also goes on to say that emotional and psychological abuse can also turn into homicide or injury. I cover some of the red flags below as to how dangerous the situation is when it comes to purely emotional and psychological abuse.  

From the same article:

Is it my fault?

You deserve independence and individualism in your relationship. If your partner responds to your request for independence by escalating their abusive behavior, it is a clear sign that you are with someone that seeks to gain power and control over you, which is abusive and never okay. Healthy relationships nurture independence, and nobody feels threatened by their partner seeking friends, safety, happiness, individualism or anything that brings them joy. Abuse is a choice—nobody is forcing your partner to take away your independence. Therefore, the fault of abusing (and escalating abuse) can lie only with the person making that choice—the abusive partner.

Some abusers, instead of doing physical damage to you, will target your possessions or pets. Some of them may also use threats, false imprisonment, burglary, stalking, criminal trespass and other crimes. Threats of criminal intent also count as abuse.

PETS:

Why keeping pets safe is important. This is from the same website as the one above:

48% of respondents feared that the abusive partner would harm or kill the pets;
37% reported that the abusive partner had already threatened to harm or kill pets; and
29% said pets had already been harmed or killed.

My note: People with Antisocial Personality Disorder often harm, kill or torture animals. If they are not doing direct harm to animals, they will show disdain for animals (note: if you hear a person repeatedly tell you that they don't like animals or that they wish they were dead, it is a huge red flag for Antisocial Personality Disorder). 

The opposite of that would be empaths who make their pets often a lifelong part of the family, who are diligent caretakers of their pets, and who, these days, are often vegetarians.

POSSESSIONS:

According to an article entitled Domestic Violence and Destruction of Property by Christopher Martens for Martens Law Firm: 

Domestic violence is a very specific offense comprised of a number of actions against a certain individual ... This can be a past or present spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, fiancé, partner, or cohabitant, the parent of your child, or someone you are closely related to through blood or marriage. Abuse is broadly defined to include physically hurting someone, sexually assaulting them, making them fear for their safety, or violent or destructive behavior such as stalking the person, disturbing their peace, or destroying their property.

In certain states in the United States, destroying someone else's property is also illegal, no matter what kind of blood relationship exists between two people.

Laws in the United Kingdom are more extensive and include threat to destroy someone else's property (another link). 

OTHER TYPES OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AGAINST THE LAW:

This comes from LSNJ LAW (from New Jersey - check laws in your own state or country):

harassment: note this definition can change from state to state. In some states it can simply mean unwanted communication (you have asked a perpetrator not to call or text you, but he does it anyway). In some states the term is much more narrow and has to include insults or threats. 

assault: in some states it includes "intent to harm". In other states the "intent to harm" must include a weapon. In other states you actually have to be harmed.

terrorist threats

criminal mischief: breaking or tampering with your personal property. Using your property as a weapon. 

criminal restraint and false imprisonment: servitude against your will, keeping you in a place that is dangerous, locking you in a structure or room, restraining you from leaving when you want to leave

burglary: breaking into a building or car owned by you. "Intent" to break into your property is also considered to be a crime in some states (such as hiding out in another building or car with the intent to break in).

criminal sexual contact:  Someone who uses coercion or force to have sexual contact. Different states have different laws as to what "contact" means. In some states touching or fondling the inner thigh and breasts counts as criminal sexual contact.

sexual assault: laws on what constitutes sexual assault varies from state to state in terms of how far it goes out of the realm of penetration. 

kidnapping: taking someone out of their present location and bringing them to another location through force, threat or deception - again "threat" and "deception" is about "intent to kidnap" and may not count in some states.

stalking: follows you or has others follow you, harassment in a person-to-person way, threats, staring at someone a long time. Again different states have different definitions as to what constitutes stalking. 

lewdness: someone who exposes his private parts to a non-consenting individual. 

criminal trespass: defined as a person ignores restrictions such as signs, locked doors, fences, or a security guard and enters anyway ... (taken from their website)

homicide: one person takes another person's life. 

criminal coercion: defined as Criminal coercion means that someone tries to make you do something or tries to stop you from doing something by threatening you ...  (again: taken from their website) Laws differ from state to state. Some states have no coercive control laws, some states are considering coercive control laws, and some states have coercive control laws that encompass a lot of different kinds of threatening acts and sentences. 

robbery: defined as someone steals something from you while at the same time hurting you, threatening to hurt you, using force, or committing or threatening to commit certain other crimes ... (again: taken from their website)

contempt of a domestic violence restraining order: Restraining orders are available in most states for some or all of the crimes above. Violations usually carry an additional crime added to the record of the offender.

cyber-harassment: defined as ... when someone threatens online to harm you or your property or someone else or their property. In most states it also includes selling or posting lewd, sexual or naked videos or pictures of you. 

Any other crime involving risk of death or serious bodily injury: can include neglect of a child or elderly person, destruction of your pets or your farm animals, destruction of your land, putting your life at risk (coercing you to perform dangerous duties that put your life at risk) and other crimes. Again, laws are different from state to state.  

My note: emotional, psychological and verbal abuse count as unlawful in some countries. In the United States, some laws are being considered, especially in child abuse and partner abuse. It is also likely that most states in the United States will have coercive control laws (some states already have them). However, verbal and emotional abuse are considered domestic violence by domestic violence shelters and domestic violence centers, so you can gain admittance to these kinds of services in most states if you are experiencing these forms of abuse. 

Also if children are being verbally and emotionally abused, in some counties in the USA, mandatory counseling of parents is starting to be a trend, or children are removed from the home by social services. Children who are receiving this form of abuse often display learning disabilities (their grades take a deep dive and they are often upset and distracted in the classroom).  

All of the above crimes (plus emotional, psychological and verbal abuse) create trauma symptoms the longer they are endured. I will be covering trauma symptoms in another post, but one of the first signs is feeling hopeless, distracted, depressed and having sleeping issues (can be nightmares, restlessness or inability to get a full night's sleep). 

RED FLAGS THAT THE ESCALATION OF ABUSE
WILL CONTINUE TO GET WORSE

initiating insults in a close personal relationship is often the first red flag. A person who insults you more than once or twice is showing he has disdain for you. If he also shows that he does not care how you feel after insulting you, it is pretty much a given that the abuse will escalate. The number of insults will also show you how fast it is escalating. If he tells you that you deserve to be insulted (and has no remorse): extremely dangerous sign!
     However, if you are the one who is initiating insults, and you are getting insults back, it may be their way of defending the insults with another insult (as in a volley of back-and-forth).

gaslighting and calling you crazy after an abusive episode is also a huge red flag and can eventually put you in a dangerous or life-threatening situation. The reason why gaslighting is such a huge red flag for escalation is that the perpetrator is trying to minimize the abuse, trying to convince you that you are crazy for feeling hurt after abusive incidences, trying to convince you that the severity of the abuse is "all in your head", trying to convince you that you should be blaming yourself and not the abuser, trying to convince you that your perceptions of events are always wrong. Warning: gaslighting can sometimes work the way gaslighters want it to work because most abusers use it gradually, seeing how much they can get away with each time they escalate this form of attack.
     It is a form of brainwashing. 
     Punishing you for criticizing them for being hurtful, unempathetic, or cruel will usually result in them raging (a lot of abusers rage when they feel criticized, which can also result in more abuse by them). One of the ways they try to gaslight you is to try to convince you that you deserve to be criticized, scolded over insignificant events or behaviors, insulted, and told you are crazy over and over, while they will try to make the case that they never deserve to be criticized, ever. I will be talking about hypersensitivity to criticism in abusers in another post.
     Playing with your perceptions and trying to convince you and others that you are insane is largely a trait of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder. These personalities are extremely resistant to change, and an overwhelming number of them are abusive, so always expect the escalation of abuse when gaslighting is part of the picture. 

perspecticide and invalidation of your feelings, thoughts and experiences: This is also a type of gaslighting in that your abuser is trying to convince you that you are not feeling the way you say you are feeling, that your thoughts are not what you really think, and that your experiences didn't happen the way you said that they happened. It is about calling you a liar in other words.
     But it can also mean that your abuser states what you are feeling, thinking and experiencing before you state it yourself, or without getting your feedback as to what is the truth. In other words, your abuser is showing you that he doesn't care what the truth is. He only cares about his own opinions and agendas where it concerns you.
     Blocking the truth of someone's reality is a bad sign in terms of them understanding or caring about what you are going through. It is a big contributor to why they do not feel empathy. 
     It is also a sign of someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Antisocial Personality Disorder. While normal folks sometimes use it (very sparingly, if at all), they are open to hearing the other person out, especially if this is their child or partner. With the disorders, you will notice that you aren't heard, nor do they want any part of hearing you out. They very often give you the silent treatment or stonewall you as a way to tell you that they want no part of hearing what you have to say (and the silent treatment and stonewalling is often a huge sign of the two personality disorders too).
     And if they do hear you out, they will be arguing about what you really felt, or thought or what you went through. 
     You can see why abuse would escalate with perspecticide as part of their agenda. It's just one more avenue for invalidating the abuse you experience from others or them. 

erroneous blaming: Erroneous blaming is about blaming someone for a perfectly normal activity such as:
    To a child: "You hurt me by going to college."
    To a wife: "You hurt me when you got a job. Your job is to take care of me and the household."
    To a husband: "You hurt me when you went against me punishing your child. Perhaps this calls for a divorce."
    To a child who has been hit by a parent: "How dare you cry! You are hurting me by making me feel like a terrible parent!"
     To a girlfriend or wife: "I know you were glancing at him! Just for that you are going to get punished, and punished good when we get home!" - it's also a sign of perspecticide. 

     To a child: "You deserve to be punished, and punished severely, for that look on your face!" - also perspecticide.
     To a wife, sibling or child: "Why did you think the bread belonged in the refrigerator!? Are you STUPID? It ALWAYS goes in the breadbox!" and then the insults and rages come out for the "mistake" you made at putting the bread anywhere he did not want you to put the bread. Note: these kinds of demands and arguments will escalate, and can even become a daily or hour-to-hour event. 
     A lot of abusers abandon their victims when erroneous blaming "perfection standards" are not met with the utmost concern by their victims. While many abusers want to neglect relationships with children and partners who do not live up to what is expected, some use it as a way to scare their victims into submission instead (i.e. physically abusive or physically threatening) to make their victims comply with their demands at all times.
     A lot of abusers nitpick at you about how you are not managing your choices about your own life. And then when you aren't managing your affairs in the exacting standards that they see fit, they abuse you.
     When a relationship has gotten to the point of erroneous blaming over little things, the escalation has reached a tipping point where danger can happen fast. It is not unusual, also, for abusers to punish over erroneous expectations. They will see their own abuses as excusable, and at the same time your perfectly normal "mistakes" are inexcusable. The escalation of this would be: they see that the abuse is justified because you made a "mistake". You did not live up to their perfection standards (and therefor, in their minds, deserved the abuse/punishment). 
     They also use erroneous blaming to see what they can get away with, and how far a victim will go to please them. 

     Erroneous blaming is also often used by your abuser as an excuse to become more entitled, more abusive, and more powerful and controlling, if not totally dominating. 
     I think anyone can see why abuse would escalate with erroneous blaming in the picture, and why finding fault in you in a myriad of small ways and possibilities would incite escalation (especially since they excuse the abuse they do through blame shifting, gaslighting, normalizing and other tactics).

    Again, these are definitely signs of the two personality disorders I have mentioned before, and since it is extremely rare for them to change, they won't be changing addictive tactics like erroneous blaming with an aftermath of abusive "punishments" or prolonged rages. 

blame-shifting and playing the victim: These are strategies that abusers use to avoid accountability of any kind. They use them with impunity and are also traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder.
     They are linked to gaslighting, of trying to change perspectives so that you look like the abuser and they look like the victim. 
     Every and any excuse will do to get themselves off the hook of accountability, and any lie will do to protect themselves from the fall-out of hurting other people. 
     They will insist that you see yourself as "the flawed at-fault one" and themselves as "the perfect never-at-fault one" and that you brought on the abuse all by yourself, and ruined the relationship as well. Most abusers don't change and they certainly won't change this stance no matter how many years go by. 

     When they refuse to accept any accountability, it means they have anaesthetized themselves of the shame of being a perpetrator of abuse and therefor have excused themselves from hurting and/or damaging other people many, many times.
     The abuse of others can be verbally, emotionally, psychologically, physically, financially or via self esteem.
     Some abusers get to the point of abandoning you, and then if they see you again they will reprimand  you: "Why did you let me abandon you?" as if you are the one ultimately responsible for their abandonments - it's just another "dirty tricks blame-shifting game" as well as a "playing the victim" tactic, and crazy-making for you. It's to get you to sympathize with them, rather than to consider the dire straights they left you in at the time of their abandonment. 
     When abusers excuse themselves so readily with these two tactics, you can see why abuse would escalate. They'll just excuse the next egregious act. And the next one. And the next one after that. 
     In many abusers' minds, any and all abuses they perpetrate deserve excuses.

entitlement: This means they feel they deserve more than other people deserve. In abuse this often translates to:
     "I demand and deserve the utmost loyalty from you, but I don't have to give my loyalty to you."
     "I demand that you never criticize me again, but I can criticize you as much as I want to, and do it constantly."

     "I demand and deserve that you talk to me when I want you to, and I deserve to be able to walk away when conversations aren't serving my purpose, but how dare you walk away from talking to me! In fact, you are flawed and can't work out problems through discussion!" - also a type of gaslighting and blame-shifting.

     "I demand that you disclose everything I want you to disclose, including the most sensitive details of your life, but how dare you think you can get the same kind of disclosure from me!"
     "I will call you selfish when you forget to put gas in the car, but I'm not selfish when I take every stick of furniture out of the house that you paid for when we are getting divorced."
     "I deserve to be treated with the utmost politeness and respect at all times, while I get to call you names, call you crazy and stupid with impunity, abuse you, and treat you like you and your feelings don't matter most of the time."

     A sense of entitlement means they think they are special and you are not. They believe you are so "un-special" in fact, that if they abuse you, they won't feel sorry.  You can see why abuse escalates under these unfair standards.

infantilization and parentification and putting people in roles (with unchanged opinions):
     Infantilization means that the abuser takes on the role of parent or teacher when you are a full adult. It is inappropriate in these ways: they lecture you constantly, tell you what to do and how to behave, what to say to others, what to do with your money, what to do in your relationships, how to manage your career, and how to manage your life. Sometimes they will micro-manage how you drive, how you cook, how you house-keep, what you say to whom. 

     It is very common for abusers to infantilize. A perfect demonstration of what it looks like can be found in the movie, "Sleeping With the Enemy" where the victim has to keep towels and cans of food in perfect precision.
     On the other hand, parentification is just the opposite, but it is also common for abusers.
     "Parentification of a minor" is often used to describe how an alcoholic parent relates to a child. They are too inebriated to parent their children, so the parent expects his or her child to play the role of parent or handmaid: make his or her parents mixed drinks, open beer cans, serve them hors d'oeuvres and chips during "Happy Hour", make dinner every night, be the one to keep the grocery list up to date, clean the entire house, make their parent's bed, change their siblings dirty diapers, heat milk for the baby, make appointments with car mechanics, electricians, carpenters, get their parent out of bed and dressed in the morning for appointments, dress their parent, calm their parent during an alcoholic rage, do damage control when there is family strife. When things are not running smoothly then this child is seen to be at fault for the state of the family. 
     However, parentification can happen in abusive partner relationships too where one partner is given a predominance of responsibility for emotionally soothing the other partner, for being the sole breadwinner, for managing all of the affairs of the household, for doing most of the shopping and housework, for raising the children, for being the one who is loyal and steady, for being the one to take all of the "fault" when they argue, and so on. If things go wrong, then it is claimed that this overly-responsible partner is at fault.
     Whether the abuser is infantilizing or parentifying, you can see why abuse might escalate. Most abusers love to put people in roles where they, the abuser, is pulling the puppet strings, telling others what to do. If the person goes out of role, the abuser rages. Raging can lead to abuse and violence. 
     Children of abusive narcissistic or antisocial personality disordered parents are put in roles very early in their lives, often when they are babies or toddlers, and pre-verbal. In family photographs you can even see it: the golden child is often in the lap or hugged by the parent, while the scapegoat child is sidelined and often by himself or herself, even if in the same photograph with the parent, and where there are few-to-no photographs of affection between parent and child (during childhood). The scapegoat is used for derision, ignoring, blame and abuse while the golden child is lavished with attention, gifts and affection. The roles usually do not change over the lifetime of the children unless the golden child disappoints (the parent switches the roles temporarily until the golden can re-assume the pleasing behaviors and the role). 

     The parent excuses their lack of affection and attention for the scapegoat child by claiming that this child is crazy (extremely common - gaslighting is used as an excuse for not parenting or caring about the child). It is common for a parent to initiate an estrangement between himself (or herself) from the scapegoat child during the child's adult years, however to outsiders the parent will try to make the case that the child initiated the estrangement instead. After years of estrangement, grief and pain, some adult children prefer to continue the estrangement to reinstating the relationship (because it is an incredibly toxic trauma bond with no hope that the abuse will stop, and if anything, they are told by mental health professionals that it will increase - many also have no hope of the relationship becoming a healthy loving bond with truth and trust behind it). Scapegoat children are often left out of wills and trusts.
     It means opinions about children are fixed and unchanged in the abuser forever. 
     When an abuser wants to put people into roles this much, you can see why abuse would escalate to unbearable proportions when someone wants to go out of role, or when they are deemed not to be enough of a puppet to make the abuser happy.
     However, a scapegoat, a forever-target of the abuser, will never make an abuser happy, ever, even if the scapegoat works hard to please, to take abuse, to take being blamed even when they are not at fault. The role requires martyrdom, and it isn't something most people can withstand for any extended period.     
     An abuser wouldn't last a day in the role themselves, so it is hypocritical to expect it of anyone else, let alone a child.

     
rage off the charts (includes quiet rage): Some abusers overtly rage all of the time, at almost anything. It shows entitlement and that they can't deal with what life hands out like the rest of us, without becoming overwrought. Rage-a-holics often get their way because they won't stop raging until they get their way. People often respond to raging the way they would a baby who is screaming. 
     Then some of them rage when they perceive that they are criticized. They rage because their grandiose, have-to-be-in-the-dominant-all-powerful-position-all-of-the-time is being challenged. Almost all abusers who are sensitive to criticism are very critical of others, and some spend their whole lives being critical with cruel remarks, especially if they are triangulating other people a lot (they try to get other people suspicious of each other, especially people who they find to be a threat to their grandiose ego - it is a divide-and-conquer strategy mostly used by people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder) - the link to triangulation above explains it. 
     In both these personality types, rage is used to get what they want, and it is the reason why both types rage over erroneous or relatively small issues, to see if you are going to bend to their will over small issues, or any issue. If you do bend, then they exploit this information and use you for more of their power-and-control fantasies.
     The rage either manifests as shouting, threats and insults or passive aggressive threats: "I'll never talk to you again because you did the unthinkable thing: criticized me!" If you tell either type that you are hurt by their behavior, and lack of respect for you and the relationship, or that they are being hypocritical or unreasonable, they look at it as another criticism and double down on their mode of punishment. 
     It is the abuser's temper tantrum and it looks that way to most people too.
     Most of the time rage turns into abuse. Abuse is almost always a power-and-control move (whereas for normal folks who express anger it's mostly about an injustice - and no, most people who get angry over injustices do not abuse others; they just want their voices heard). To make the differences clear, notice they excuse themselves if they criticize and hurt you, but you are never excused by them if you inadvertently hurt them by a mere "perceived" criticism or injury to their ego. 
     All of this is definitely another sign of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder.  
     In other words, rage and abuse are the tools they use to gain more dominance over you. Sometimes it works the way they want it to, other times it doesn't (people usually get weary of the constant displays of rage and abuse, and the disordered person's ever-increasing demands for more power, control and domination - if you want to be a slave to them, you put up with it and if you don't, you excuse yourself from these manipulative games). 
     There is one caveat here: if you are their scapegoat, the one who they use for continual unfounded blame, rage and abuse, they won't accept it when you try to meet their demand, or if you offer an apology. They often tell you that the apology is not good enough. It is so they can keep using you (and it also has to do with the role they put you in: you are deemed by them to be 100 percent bad, and all-bad people do not apologize in good enough ways). 
     You can see that rage (especially over a power-and-control addiction - an addiction which is never satisfied) will lead to ever more egregious acts of abuse and domination to the point where you lose yourself to become the narcissist's or sociopath's puppet. This is extremely unhealthy and potentially deadly for children. For partners who have the choice to leave, it is still unhealthy, just remember not to get into a cycle where you are as addicted to pleasing them as much as they are addicted to hurting you to get pleased. 

     I discuss leaving below.
     At any rate, the appearance of rage, and the level of punishments that follow should let you know how far they will go in being injurious (dangerous). If the punishment is severe, long, unforgiving and over something relatively small in the scheme of things, and they follow up with smear campaigns on your character, they are potentially a lot more dangerous than the abuser who shows up at your door in two weeks after exploding and appears to want to do everything they can to make it up to you, but WARNING: it can still be dangerous: some of them soft peddle a honeymoon period to soften you up enough to enact a life threatening attack (it's a lure to attack in other words).
     Even if they appear to be truly contrite (the ones who show up at your door and do not attack you after "winning you back"), they usually cycle back around to abusing you again, with each attack getting worse and more hurtful and destructive. 

     It is why once they start abusing you, they never stop, and it is very important to realize this. It is a habit in them, often a reaction to not feeling they have enough power and control over you. It can be impulsive: they feel a trigger of shame, or they feel insecure about their power for a split second, so they rage and abuse. Or it can be planned: they need to make you feel that you deserve to be abused, so they gaslight you and play head games with your self esteem (gaslighting and trying to manipulate you so that you feel you don't deserve to be treated well, or listened to, is a planned attack ... once you see gaslighting on a regular basis, which is a planned attack, tread carefully).   

     Planned attacks eventually become part of the escalation process for narcissists, and are definitely part of the picture for sociopaths. The escalation of planned attacks happen especially if they get the sense that you are not as brainwashed by them as you used to be, or if they feel you are too influenced by someone else, or are backing off even minutely, or trying to heal from what they did to you, or that you are not convinced about what they are saying (especially if they say they are sorry, but continue to abuse).
     When you are dealing with planned attacks, this means that they are certainly capable of injuring you or killing you. Even unplanned attacks can become deadly because they are often not in control of how they use their strength when they rage (outward rage tends to tighten the muscles). But planned attacks are always dangerous, even if they are escalating them slowly.
     Planned attacks are usually done without outward emotion (but have aspects of internal rage), whereas unplanned attacks usually have a lot of emotional outbursts and you can see the rage right away.             

power and control agendas, and jealousy:  Power and control is the "be-all-and-end-all" strategy for most abusers (not all of them, but certainly a very high percentage of them). That is why, if you are discarded by them, they make it clear you are not important to them. Relationships are not important to most abusers unless the relationship is about fulfilling their needs for power, control and domination.
     The abuse will tend to escalate because the abuser never feels fulfilled with the power, domination and control they already have. They want more and more, and for their demands to be met by the target. I talk about how the power-and-control agenda is connected to rage and abuse in the section above.
     As for jealousy, most abusers feel jealous, really jealous, jealous to the point where they are very uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that they believe they have to take some action to relieve it.
     A boyfriend might be jealous of their girlfriend's beauty and her ability to attract the attention of other men because of her beauty, so they try to isolate her, and often pro-actively abuse her so that she never thinks of leaving (see my Gabby Petito post about how this dynamic can play out).
     A mother might be jealous of her daughter's beauty, talent or intelligence, so she might proactively abuse her by crushing the daughter's self esteem, or trying to lead her astray so that the daughter won't seek success, and if that doesn't work, trying to tell others that the daughter is only successful because of the mother's doting. Either is a red flag that the daughter will be, has been, or is, abused. Note: normal parents don't act like this.
     A father might be jealous of his son's success and ability to make more money than the father. In order not to feel ashamed and jealous, the father sneers or displays chiding targeted jokes about his son to a big crowd to make the son "look less than" the "picture of greatness in the world of success". If the son falls on hard times, the father can make the son look like a much worse business failure by withdrawing support, attention, sympathy and empathy so that he never outshines the father again. If the son becomes financially beholden to the narcissistic father because the father bailed him out, the father can try to keep him in an "infantilized position" by only giving an amount which will bind son and father together financially, so that the father can control the shots (have power over the son), and blackmail the son into giving him, the father, more domination, power and control. Note: normal parents don't act like this either.

     A friend is more successful in her marriage than the narcissist is. In order to "one up" her, and crush her self esteem, the narcissist tries to see if the friend's husband can be seduced away from her, to see if the husband is as loyal and good to her as the friend says he is. If the husband can be seduced away, the narcissist tells the friend that her husband was seduced. The narcissist feels better because now she and her friend are on the same level in terms of misery in their relationships, and the narcissist is above the friend because she has "the power to seduce" a relationship away from her friend. It's typical narcissistic behavior, though not all narcissists cheat. But they all triangulate people against one another, and if the husband doesn't want to cheat, the narcissist will try to be his confidante about how the relationship is going instead. Note: a normal friend does not act like this.
     The reason why jealousy plays a huge part in the escalation of abuse and why it is a sign that abuse will escalate, is that the narcissist feels better when they can enact these kinds of events. Narcissists feel better about their own state of affairs when they can penetrate the weaknesses in other people's marriages, in other people's successes, in other people's self esteem, in other people's financial autonomy, in their daughter's good relationship with her children or husband, and so on. They will keep poking and prodding these weaknesses in "escalation-style" to the point of seriously hurting other people, dividing them up so that the narcissist is the center of their world, and leaving a trail of destruction behind. The narcissist may run away from their dirty deeds when they get uncomfortable and start rumors with other sources of narcissistic supply about how their victims brought their own downfall on themselves, even though the narcissist had a huge hand in aggressively pursuing the destruction.

becoming calm after abusing or attacking you (showing no empathy): This is a bad sign. Without empathy, there is little hope for change in them. If you are upset, and they become calm, it is usually a sign of a personality disorder (most often Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Antisocial Personality Disorder, especially if they meet the criteria of everything else on this list). If they have no regrets after hurting you, or say that you deserved it, then it points to more Antisocial Personality Disorder traits. You can see why a lack of empathy would mean they would escalate abuse. "Empathy" is normal, and "shame" is normal once we step over the bounds of hurting another person, and once we know we hurt another person. It is like an internal break in most of us which keeps us from going too far.
     Warning: don't get caught up in narcissists playing the victim after attacking you. This is a sign they want empathy to go one way, towards them.    

at some point in the relationship, they enlist you in order to "make" someone else jealous: Another bad sign, especially if they meet the criteria of everything else on this list (generally just one of the signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder).     

normalizing abuse: They wouldn't be able to escalate abuse unless they can talk other people into abuse being "perfectly normal", or at the very least excusable because they had a hard day, or because they are so sensitive, or because they worked so hard at the relationship.
     Some may say: "Punishing children is normal" - not when it is abusive, and not after children reach adulthood.
     Normalizing abuse is a brainwashing technique to get you to side with them if they abuse other people, and if they abuse you too. They want to hear how it is all other people's fault they were abused (blaming the victim). They also want you to be self effacing enough to believe it was all your fault when they abused you too. 
     It's just another sign that they will escalate abuse, and escalate it without thought, because people are so agreeable to abuse being as normal as eating apple pie. 

     It isn't normal, of course, but when any number of people are putting up with it, it can seem normal, whereas your rebellion in saying "it isn't normal" may be met with derision and corrected by the group. They are putting up with abuse, so why can't you???
     The reason why escalation of abuse happens so seamlessly and effortlessly may be because normalizing may be part of the picture with their group or family.
     WARNING: When normalizing is present, you may be expected to apologize to your abuser. This can escalate abuse faster and be quite a bit more deadly. It is a get-out-now situation. I talk about this in the chapter below:

EXTREMELY DANGEROUS RED FLAGS

Sadism: Sadism means the abuser likes abusing. This is basically a "get-out-as-soon-as-you-can" sign for a victim. 
     Some of the signs:

     The abuser boasts about tricking someone out of their money.
     The abuser boasts about hurting another person and how they, the abuser, got a free pass by playing the victim.
     The abuser boasts that he committed a crime without being caught.

     The abuser boasts that he got an entire inheritance by pretending he was a victim of a sibling. 
     The abuser boasts that he stole, or tricked someone, and got away with it. 
     The abuser tells someone else he will get everything he wants and that someone else won't get what they want.
     The abuser tells someone he got rid of someone else's cat without telling them where the cat went.
     The abuser spends a lot of time trying to make you feel uncomfortable or scared.
     The abuser spends most of his time in private conversation insulting others, sneering at others, putting people down with an arrogant air.  
     The abuser tells his adult child that he, the abusive parent, is having a wonderful Christmas (even though the adult child was not invited) and laughing about how hurt the adult child was at hearing this.

     In other words "getting" and "making someone uncomfortable" is the main conversation. There is no "We agreed that since my wife is good at playing the piano, she should get the piano, and that I was good at woodworking, so we both agreed I should get the tools." There is no "My child and I weren't getting along, so we decided to go to therapy together. The relationship means a lot to both of us, and we were both suffering." In other words, there is very little conversation about sharing and coming to an agreement, and if there is a miniscule amount of it, it is usually for effect only, to impress someone else outside the relationship.
     Sadistic people tend to be two-faced. They are incredibly charming and overly sweet to a person when face-to-face with them, and then behind their backs verbalize them in cruel ways: "He's a dork, a loser, a mamby-pamby man." 
     People with obvious sadism characteristics tend to be either malignant narcissists, sociopaths or psychopaths.
     They are going to escalate abuse for the love of making people uncomfortable, unhappy, sad, left out of events, traumatized, and so on. The more traumatized people are, the more they like it. 
     When sadists are escalating abuse, it is very, very dangerous. 
     It is best to get out of it, but get out of it with help from professionals like domestic violence counselors, police and possibly a lawyer too. 

Physical abuse: Physical abuse is a very bad sign that the escalation has reached a dangerous point. Pushing and shoving can escalate very fast to a life threatening situation. Do not expect physical abusers to change or for your abuser to be sorry for how they treated you. If they do act sorry, usually it means they will be doing it again. In the cases where they are sorry, the overwhelming tendency is for it to be a cycle: honeymoon, tensions building, explosion, making up, back to honeymoon, back to tensions building, and so on. 
     Physical abuse always tends to escalate to more egregious forms of it.

An abuser has abused you physically before or assaulted you in the head, the neck (strangulation or mock strangulation), struck your face, or pulled you by your ear or hair or threatened to injure you or kill you:
     These are a huge danger sign, perhaps the biggest danger sign of all of them. A lot of child murders and partner murders are perpetrated by abusers who attack this part of their victim's body. If you have been attacked anywhere on the head, face or neck, get out as soon as you can, but get out carefully and smartly (usually domestic violence services can help you devise a plan of escape - see section below). 

     See my post on the Gabby Petito case on how an abuser who initiated an assault to his partner's face, ended up killing her (more common than most people realize).         
      

You are expected to apologize to, or make up with, your abuser, or someone you have complained abused you (especially if there is social pressure to make you apologize):
     Another really, really bad sign. It's another "get-out-as-soon-as-you-can" situation.
     Abusers like to see victims apologizing to other abusers because it translates for them into "If they are apologizing to this abuser, then it is likely they will apologize to me too when I abuse them. It's a great way to see how much abuse I can get away with." 
     A lot of victims are ostracized from their families (even an entire family) if they refuse to have a relationship with a family abuser, and this abuser is probably inside a family with other abusers in it, or where abuse has been normalized to a large extent. The abuser is being coddled and excused for hurtful behavior. Abuse tends to be multi-generational, so usually where you find one abuser in the family, you find others.
     Prepare yourself for being abandoned and "sacrificed" in situations like this by preparing for an autonomous life without them. This kind of situation won't get better and can escalate very fast. It is very dangerous because the abuser you are complaining about has a free pass from his family or group to abuse you some more without second guessing themselves as to the "rightness" of putting pressure on you to apologize. There are also no repercussions for the abuser, no eyes on the situation, no one is caring what happens to you. The path they have chosen is for you to apologize to someone who has hurt you and/or put you in danger.
     It is a total no-win situation.     

The abuser insists that you meet him alone to discuss your relationship issues, but only in a place of his choosing, (again, it is not about an agreement between you) or The abuser is trying to lure you to a place where you will be alone and vulnerable to more abuse:
     Again, this is a really, really bad sign. People who are uncompromising about where to meet are insisting they get their way. Who insists on getting their own way most of the time and are un-bending about it? Narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths. There is no reason why they should be pressuring you to meet them in only one place, so consider that "the place" is dangerous for you, but will serve them. 

     When they have shown they are abusive, or have abused you, and want to make sure you meet them alone in a place of their choosing only, it always means they want to abuse you or blame you some more. This is not in the least bit trustworthy on any level.

     They may try to lure you instead: "Don't you want some help with that project?", "Don't you want to work out our differences?", "Wouldn't you like that violin you always dreamed about?", "I'd like to give you some flowers, money, a vacation" (what ever it is) "if you only meet me at -" after they have abused you or abandoned you - dangerous. 

     In fact, it is never advisable to meet with any abuser alone. But it is especially inadvisable to meet with an abuser who is stubborn (and repeats that it has to be a certain place). Quite creepy too.

The abuser tries to lure you into a situation where there are co-abusers present or You are a scapegoat and are bullied by a gang: This is even more dangerous than the situation above. Not only is the abuser trying to lure you into a place that is dangerous for you, but when they have co-bullies, the dangers intensify. There will be someone in the group who will enact the most egregious abuse they can think of, even injuring you, to see if the group approves or might approve. It sounds wild that they would look for group approval for perpetrating injuries and murder, but it happens. 
     This is not anything to mess with. It is better to be alive, than be a member of a group like this. It is beyond unsafe.   

    

An abuser has used, or is making real or veiled threats of criminal acts such as false imprisonment or kidnapping: 
     Sociopaths usually voice their fantasies well in advance of their threats and abuses. If they have fantasies or they are writing a novel, a short story, or drawing pictures about how someone resembling you is being strangled, held against their will, or is kidnapped and put in a dark dungeon, they are telling you what they want to do. It is to be taken seriously and literally, in other words: they are not just saying it to scare you. 

     They are especially to be taken seriously if they have sociopathic traits: sadism, are hyper-critical of others, enjoy hurting other people or animals they do not like, have no regret for hurting others, they rage over perceived criticisms, they display arrogance, they try to make people feel uncomfortable by bringing up topics that will trigger the other person into a negative response (crying, anger, shocked, terrorized, traumatized). 
      Making threats of criminal acts is dangerous and should not be "brushed off". Very few people make threats or make up fantasies about breaking the law to hurt another person. While it may be used to scare you, often it is not: they are trying to tell you that they want to hurt you, and how they want to hurt you. When criminal acts are added to a dialogue about what they want to do to you, it is best to assume it is real. 
     It is also dangerous.
     If you happen to be in this person's presence again, abuse is likely to escalate, but they may try to lure you somewhere before doing anything to you. 
     Many sociopaths like to stalk and harass. They have a "hunter mentality" where you are the prey. 
     If you are not stalked or harassed, it may be because they are high functioning (meaning they care about their reputations in society to some extent, minimally of course). 

An abuser who talks to you about his fantasies of hurting other people, children or animals:
     Again, this is the chatter of sociopaths and psychopaths. Danger!

An abuser is an owner or has access to lethal weapons (can be guns):
     According the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, a government website:
     Firearms contribute significantly to domestic violence in the U.S. — to threaten, to coerce, to control, and to kill. Around 4.5 million women in the United States have been threatened with a gun, and nearly 1 million women have been shot or shot at by an intimate partner.
     According to The Guardian article How the US fails to take away guns from domestic abusers: ‘These deaths are preventable’ by Jennifer Gollan:

     Guns are the No 1 weapon in domestic violence killings in the US – just owning a firearm makes an abuser five times more likely to take a partner’s life. People with a history of violence against a partner, including stalking or strangulation, are also far more likely to go on to commit more heinous acts. Earlier this year, researchers reported that more than two-thirds of recent mass shootings in the US involved perpetrators who killed partners or relatives or had a history of domestic abuse.
     According to The Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban:

     The act bans shipment, transport, possession, ownership, and use of guns or ammunition by individuals convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, or who are under a restraining (protection) order for domestic abuse that falls within the criteria set by 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8).
     However, even if your abuser does not own a lethal weapon, he can still kill you by other means.

An abuser threatens to punish you, kill you, or hurt you by unlawful means:
     A huge red flag. See this article on characteristics of abusers to see if any of these match your abuser. 
     Fantasies that abusers have in terms of violence or emotional abuse should be taken seriously. A lot of abusers have, make, and try to realize their plans in hurting other people.   

An abuser who talks of "taking other people away from you" that you hold close to your heart:
     Again, malignant narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths do this at some point during their escalation of abuse. They can mean it emotionally ("I'll talk bad about you and this person will believe me and never want to have anything to do with you again"), or actually ("I plan to threaten this person, or get rid of this person to hurt you").
     It's a blackmail threat. If you give into the blackmail, the abuse is likely to escalate to very dangerous levels. If you don't give into the blackmail, the abuse can escalate to very dangerous levels too. This situation requires professional help.

Stalking: Stalking is dangerous, and a crime. Stalking, like harassment, is unwanted contact. Go HERE to read about types of stalking. Stalking with rates of post traumatic stress disorder in stalked victims, and rates of murder are discussed in this article HERE.     

An abuser who tells you repeatedly that you mean nothing to them, that you are a waste to the human race, or that you are a waste of time for them:  

     Anyone who tells you this in a close personal relationship is trying to smash your self esteem. But an abuser means it. It is not a threat; it is actually how they view you.
     Abusers who use these statements tend to only be interested in dominating conversations, dominating your every move, shaming you repeatedly, to be nitpickers, rage-a-holics, micro-managers, and criticize people with impunity. It is their way of saying they are not happy with the narcissistic supply they get from you. 
     Most often a person who views you this way will ignore you, abandon you, stonewall, not be interested in what you have to say in the least. They will be bored by you. While it may hurt, it is usually a much more dangerous situation if they still want to be in your life. 
     If this type of abuser is interested, or becomes interested, in what you are doing, in your whereabouts, in finding out details about your life and relationships, or is information-gathering at all, your being a waste of time is a contradiction. But it is also stalking-by-proxy (especially if they have abused you), so beware!
     A person who says that you mean nothing to them, but isn't leaving you alone, is dangerous because they are usually thinking and planning. Thinking and planning means escalating abuse most of the time.
     My own experience with a person who fits this category is that they steal. And not only with one victim. This shows that they are interested enough in you to take from you, but not interested in what you have to say, and definitely not interested in what you have to say about being stolen from.
     People who steal, especially if they knowingly steal personal mementos and things that mean something to you, are usually malignant narcissists, sociopaths, or psychopaths (it's sadistic, after all), unless they are children playing at "stealing", or an adult desperate for food and shelter, or an addict.
     These abusers do not like fairness, or believe in compromise or agreements. They take. They will call other people selfish, but are way beyond their own standards of selfishness. I would say that based on my own experience that you need to guard not only yourself but other things in your life as well. And be happy if they find you not fit for their narcissistic supply needs, and find you boring. 
     Johnny 

HOW TO HANDLE
ESCALATING ABUSE

This is something you should never take on alone, without professional help. As this article from endingviolence.org by Jocelyn Coupal states:

Separation is the most common risk factor present in a domestic homicide (81%).* While leaving may be the best response to a violent relationship it is in leaving without adequate safety planning that the majority of women are killed. 

However, if you stay in the relationship the violence is likely to escalate too, so leaving is what most victims of domestic violence tend to do eventually. 

There are unforeseen dangers in leaving, which is why most victims seek help through their local domestic violence centers and domestic violence shelters. They are usually the most helpful in terms of devising a realistic plan to keep safe. A lot of victims feel emotionally worn out, and often down-play the dangers (it's the mind's way of dealing with the abuse: numbness, plus you are probably being groomed by your abuser that his or her treatment is perfectly normal and that you make him abusive - realize that this is brainwashing on your abuser's part and a very common tactic).

Every abuser is different, and professionals are going to be able to tell how dangerous your situation is by assessing your abusers reactions and your reactions. They will also be able to tell if there might be a personality disorder present in your abuser which raises the risks for you.  

While police can be helpful in telling you what your rights are, they are not always up on how leaving your abuser may effect you, your life, your children's lives and your pets' lives. However, knowing your rights can help with safety measures when you decide to leave the relationship. 

"Will An Abuser Kill You? 11 Signs Abuse May Turn Deadly."
from the administrators of DomesticShelters.org:

"Warning Signs Of An Abusive Relationship Becoming Violent or Ending in Homicide"
by Street Smart Women:

Further reading:

Escalation - by Michael Samsel for Abuse and Relationships blog
     Note: the blog also lists "acts of abuse" as Subtle Control, Manipulation, Basic Coercion, Discouragement, Rage, Deflection, Jealousy, Misogyny, Grooming, Authoritarian Style, Financial Control, Substance Abuse, Stonewalling, Battering, Stalking, Suicide (not out of depression, but to "guilt" the victim), Victim Role (i.e. "playing the victim"), Isolation, Sexual Abuse, Using Children, Legal Abuse, Slipping By - some of the same things I have discussed on this blog too.

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

Domestic violence against women: Recognize patterns, seek help (Domestic violence is a serious threat for many women. Know the signs of an abusive relationship and how to leave a dangerous situation.) - by Mayo Clinic Staff for the Mayo Clinic

Spotting the Signs - Before Someone Dies - by Jocelyn Coupal for Ending Violence

 
Stop! 9 WARNING Signs That You May Be in a Dangerous Relationship - by Royale Scuderi for LifeHack.org

4 Signs That a Relationship Could Become Dangerous (Jealousy, isolation, and more red flags.) - by Abigail Brenner, MD for Psychology Today

Signs That Indicate a Relationship Could Turn Violent - by Buddy T, reviewed by Carly Snyder, MD for Very Well Mind

16 Warning Signs Your Partner is Dangerous - by Cyril Abello for Inspiring Tips 

Tell-Tale Signs of Dangerous Relationships - by the administrators of Meet Mindful

Is your partner making you feel unsafe? - by the administrators of Family Violence

Five Ways a Narcissist Comes Unglued - by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC, medically reviewed by Scientific Advisory Board for Psych Central

In Control: Dangerous Relationships and How They End in Murder - by Jane Mockton Smith (Bloomsbury Publishing)

When Men Murder Women (Interpersonal Violence) - by R. Emerson Dobash and Russell P. Dobash (Oxford University Press)

No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us - by Rachel Louise Snyder (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Recover and Rebuild Domestic Violence Workbook: Moving On from Partner Abuse - by Stacie Freudenberg, PsyD (Rockridge Press)

Healing the Trauma of Abuse: A Women's Workbook - by Mary Ellen Copeland, MS, MA and Maxine Harris, PhD (New Harbinger Publications)

Gaslighting: A Step-by-Step Recovery Guide to Heal from Emotional Abuse and Build Healthy Relationships - by Deborah Vinall, PsyD, LMFT (Rockridge Press)

Recovery from Gaslighting & Narcissistic Abuse, Codependency & Complex PTSD (3 in 1): Emotional Abuse, People-Pleasing and Trauma vs. Emotional Regulation, Mindfulness, Independence and Self-Caring - by Don Barlow (independently published, but very high ratings)

Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself - by Shahida Arabi (CreateSpace Independent Publishing) - a bestseller book on narcissistic abuse

Raised by a Narcissist: Understanding and Recovery for Adult Children of Narcissists - by Alan Chatting (Audible)

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents - by Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD (Audible Books)

Effects of Narcissistic Abuse - by Arlin Cuncic, medically reviewed by David Susman, PhD for Very Well Mind

This Is What Narcissistic Abuse Looks Like - by Marissa Pomerance for The Candidly

How do narcissists control you? How do they react when they can’t control you? - by Taylor Bennett for Thrive Works

How to Handle Narcissistic Abuse (Narcissists want power. Learn not to react to abuse, but to be strategic.) - by Kaja Perina for Psychology Today

Here's how to stop an argument with a narcissist from spinning out of control - by Lindsay Dodgson for Business Insider

excerpt:

     Elinor Greenberg, a therapist who wrote the book "Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety," told Business Insider that fighting with a narcissist is a completely different experience to regular relationship quarrels.
     They are wired to be abusive because they're so hypersensitive and completely lack empathy, so they are primed to take offense and misunderstand someone else's needs and points of view ...
     ... Narcissists love talking about themselves, or expressing just how much more they know about something than you do. So, in a similar way you might distract a baby with a set of keys, you can dangle a new topic in front of their face to veer the conversation away from conflict. This might not be that effective in the midst of a fierce row, but if you do it after some time has passed, the narcissist will probably take the bait.

What is a Narcissistic Abuse Cycle & How Does It Work? - by Silvi Saxena, MBA, MSW, LSW, CCTP, OSW-C, reviewed by Naveed Saleh, MD, MS

The Narcissistic Abuse Cycle: Idealization, Devaluation, Rejection - by Michael G. Quirke, MFT for MichaelGQuirke.com

The Target of Narcissistic Rage? Steps to Take Now - by Michael G. Quirke, MFT for MichaelGQuirke.com

Signs You Had a Narcissistic Parent & What Trauma Treatment Can Do to Help - by Michael G. Quirke, MFT for MichaelGQuirke.com

At the Mercy of a Narcissist? Don’t Dismiss Signs of Narcissistic Abuse - by Michael G. Quirke, MFT for MichaelGQuirke.com

Narcissistic Relationship -Why It’s So Hard to Be Happy - by Michael G. Quirke, MFT for MichaelGQuirk.com

How Life with a Narcissist Can Contribute to C-PTSD - by Michael G. Quirke, MFT for MichaelGQuirk.com

Understanding Complex PTSD: What Is It? What Are the Signs? - by Michael G. Quirke, MFT for MichaelGQuirk.com

How To Help Someone With Complex PTSD (CPTSD) - by Michael G. Quirke, MFT for MichaelGQuirk.com

Why Use EMDR for PTSD and Complex Trauma Symptoms? - by Michael G. Quirke, MFT for MichaelGQuirk.com

Complex PTSD Symptoms- How They Take Over Your Life - by Michael G. Quirke, MFT for MichaelGQuirk.com

Complex PTSD and Dissociation: How the Mind Copes with Trauma - by Michael G. Quirke, MFT for MichaelGQuirk.com