love bombing by narcissists and sociopaths

Note: when I talk about narcissists and sociopaths (Antisocial Personality Disorder), I am talking about the clinical condition in the DSM. See my post on what abuse is and who perpetrates it HERE.

Here is an excellent article about how narcissists groom people to believe they are soul mates.

In this post, author Alex Miles describes the love bombing manipulative tactic as:

... initially carried out through excessive phone calls, text messages, emails, the constant desire to be in close contact whether virtual or physical and the desire to be connected almost every moment of every day ...

... Love bombers are masters at flattery; they will constantly be telling their target how much they adore them, how beautiful they are, how funny, talented, special, precious and any other sweet nothing they can think of. Love bombers will make their partner feel as though they are the only person in the world for them, telling them how grateful they are to finally be understood, what terrible previous relationships they had, how they have found the love of their lives and that they are for-sure certified soul mates ...

Love bombing by narcissists and sociopaths is fraudulent because it is designed to draw a person into a loving, trusting relationship without the intentions of making the relationship loving or trustworthy. Love bombing for narcissists is about obtaining narcissistic supply (attention, flattery and power and control over people) and for sociopaths it is about obtaining IOUs (guilt trips, control, exploitation, extortions, blackmail, and either brutal shaming kinds of discards or vengeful retaliations over the sociopath's need for absolute dominance and sadism in the relationship).

The fact that it is a fraudulent set-up can deeply wound and shock its victims.

You will know that the love-bombing-idealizing-"can't-live-without-you" person is a narcissist or sociopath if they suddenly switch off the love, i.e. stop the behavior without warning and become hyper critical, rejecting and prickly instead. In addition, the reasons for stopping the flow of love with silent treatments and criticisms won't make sense, as most people with normal constitutions know that genuine love cannot be so easily turned off like a faucet. In fact, the person who professed to love you so madly becomes cruel, edgy, dismissive and sometimes even seething. At its core, love bombing is about psychological splitting.

Narcissists and sociopaths do this to see if you will try to please and placate them (i.e. the victim giving the perpetrator what they want).

In fact, the cruelty gets worse and worse over time (sometimes in a short amount of time, sometimes over years) to see how many and what kinds of excuses, lies, gaslighting, degradation, bullying and dodging the victim will endure before backing away and breaking free from narcissistic or sociopathic bonds. In that way, victims are treated like lab rats where the scientists amp the voltage on the electricity on the rats to see how much pain they will withstand while still accepting bonding with their electrocutors.

In fact, real life (without the rats) reveals that victims of child abuse will typically endure the pain the longest and at the higher levels with their partners because they were taught by their abusive parents to normalize abuse. That is a classic textbook fact that has been studied extensively. It puts them in considerably more danger than people who come from normal supportive families.

If the victim came from a very protective normal family with a lot of inter-generational support, the victim will exit the relationship early on, much earlier than the victims of child abuse, thereby surviving the incidents much better.

Narcissists and sociopaths do not necessarily know these facts, so their experiments with amp-ing up the pain and cruelty on their victims, and figuring out when to enact their discards are purely for self serving, trauma bonding purposes.

The cruelty of love bombing followed by a discard feels very much like date rape. The trauma from the experience is extremely similar in duration and in terms of how it feels for victims. In other words, they accept the relationship (or date), and are brutally treated and abused (or raped) by their perpetrator.

However in terms of society's attitudes, date rape is taken much more seriously where an arrest can made, and where the staff at a hospital can help intervene to get the victim the help she (or he) needs.

With brutal love-bombing-idealization, devalue, discard treatment from a narcissist or sociopath, the victim has no real support from any kind of authority unless he or she goes searching for it. Traumatized victims tend to self-isolate, so it is often very hard to get the help needed. This puts victims at an extreme disadvantage in terms of feeling safe from their perpetrators compared to date rape victims.

If the love-bombing-idealization, devalue, discard treatment came from a parent, the trauma is even more pronounced than it is between partners because it is in a children's DNA to trust a parent to care about them, at least when they are still a child. Love bombing and idealizations from previously abusive parents should never be trusted. Parents love bomb their children out of their own insecurities: this is very common when the child is not sticking to the role the narc parent prescribed (highly successful scapegoats and failure criminal addicted goldens are highly challenging for a narc parent and love bombing gets them back into their children's lives to get the roles straightened out, or so they hope). Children who are in the public eye may make previously abusive rejecting parents highly uncomfortable where love bombing seems like the perfect antidote to avoid the fall-out of being exposed. Children who are highly successful in law or law enforcement may also make abusive parents uncomfortable enough to love bomb. These are all highly manipulative and untrustworthy, but many children fall for love bombing (at least once), if only to have a relationship that they have never had with their parent, a loving relationship. Most will eventually find out that the love was not real at all.

Why narcissists use love bombing:

The love bombing maneuver is the first move in a narcissist's bag of awful tricks and one he (or she) is most comfortable with and provides the most satisfaction in terms of obtaining narcissistic supply. It is gratifying to the narcissist that it often works, and that victims are so easily susceptible to it.

It most resembles seduction, but it is more insidious if only because there is a brutal ending to the seduction.

The targets chosen for love bombing tend to have low self esteem, are uneasy about their own decision-making capabilities, are susceptible to being talked into things, are highly empathetic, seem gullible, and were most likely groomed in childhood to believe they deserved abuse and/or abandonment (and are therefore love starved). They might have also been taught as children that they didn't deserve boundaries of privacy either (therefore were/are open to inappropriate interrogations and enmeshment). They may not, as children, had any true ownership and decision-making power over their own toys, projects or clothes.

The narcissist can find that indecisive, insecure empaths bend to his will a lot more easily than other types of people, so that is why they are chosen. Adult children of child abuse are hand-picked by narcissists and sociopaths as soul mates because they seem like the easiest targets to persuade -- in all kinds of ways. One reason why narcissists and sociopaths feel that victims of child abuse are their soul mates is that they think that the victim of child abuse will put the narcissist at the center of their world and attention, just like the target put their abusive parent at the center of their world when they were growing up. The narcissist slowly inserts the power and control into the relationship, like a poison, including making decisions for the victim. They try out making their "soul mates" walk on eggshells first, then perhaps a little love starving or silent treatment here and there, taking away friends and family slowly and deliberately too (isolation), testing gaslighting strategies and trauma bonding strategies after that, and eventually when they have their victims into a state of bondage and confusion, they explain away the abuse with blaming, blame shifting, confusing flipped tales, deflections, nit picking, projection, lectures and dodging (in other words, word salad arguments). This strips the victim of autonomy, thinking for himself and control over his own life, the same way the parents took these things away from the victim when he (or she) was a child.

In fact, the abusive partner tries to groom his lover into a child-like marionette for himself.

Effective cult leaders love bomb in order to obtain new recruits and getting people to worship them.

Why sociopaths use love bombing:

Sociopaths use love bombing in order to get what they want from the other person. They don't demand flattery and adulation so much as exploitation. They want to get as much as they can for as little as they can. They use what ever power they have at their disposal to get more out of a situation than they give.

Sociopaths are notorious for price bargaining and expect IOUs over any kindness or mercy at all. In the movie "Shelter", about the homeless in new York City, a man lets a homeless woman sleep on a hard concrete boiler room floor in a building so long as she provides him with sex (the sex is demeaning and sometimes brutal as well). There is a power imbalance, and the man uses his power over the desperate homeless woman who is caught outside in a raging snow storm with nowhere to sleep for the night, and exploits the situation for his own gratitude: it is typical sociopathic exploitative behavior with a degrading IOU attached to it.

Obviously this scene has nothing to do with love bombing, but a sociopath may think love bombing is necessary if he wants something from someone with more wealth or social prestige. Love bombing is also used on people who can get him out of jail or prison. He might feel love bombing is necessary to get co-operation for a revenge of some sort. Love bombing might be necessary to take advantage of a situation which the sociopath thinks will provide him with a life of little work, more relaxation, more leisure, more wealth. Power is sought for its own sake, not for the sake of an empathetic vision, though the sociopath might pretend he is an empath to get into a position of power (and later try to stage things, trump up conspiracies, create confusion and chaos to solidify his power).

While sociopaths can try to work up the same kinds of gaslighting and trauma-bonding strategies over their victims that narcissists use, sometimes they take control right away, making a person hostage.

Sociopaths take the path of least resistance to get what they want and love bombing is used only when the sociopath feels it must be used to obtain one of his desires (usually at the expense of the other person).

Love bombing is used for conquest only.

Sociopaths tend to work alone as much as they can. They rarely trust others. They also tend to think that everyone is too stupid to pull off the effective manipulative maneuvers that they deem they are superior at.

How to tell if the love is real or not real

It is sometimes really hard to tell if the love and soul-mate pronouncements are real or not real. The best way to tell is to study the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder (another link) to see if the person love bombing you has any of the traits of these personality disorders, though it is hard to tell in the beginning.

In the meantime, you may want to figure out if all of the love-of-my-life pronouncements are for-real or a scam (before you get hurt). Here is one way to tell:

On narcissists:

Narcissists can't stand any kind or amount of criticism:

The love bombing will stop for narcissists if they feel at all criticized by you, or if you want to take the relationship really slow. Love bombing is also likely to stop when you are comfortable with them, and under their control. If you really want to find out whether you are having a whirl-wind romance with a narcissist, criticize them over something minor (perhaps about creativity, boundaries, respect, empathy, anything that narcissists tend to lack) and see if they blow up at you, or get distant, insulting and rejecting. They cannot stand to be seen as a regular person with flaws. While normal people will bristle over being criticized, and can feel hurt, narcissists will either go on the attack, or feel so wounded and hurt that they will withdraw from you and try to make you feel insecure about their love. You will quickly get the feeling that they cannot handle criticism at all, in any kind of  normal way.

Narcissists tend to lack creativity. They tend to be very formulaic. So, if you are going to criticize them, how they could improve one of their projects with creativity, would be the area to try out the experiment. Watch their expressions.

Narcissists can't stand boundaries and the fact that you think about other people or things other than them:

The other thing that narcissists hate is boundaries. One of the reason they love bomb you and appear to have the greatest sympathy for you is to break through your boundaries and get to know what makes you tick.

Narcissists have a track record of idealize, devalue, discard cycles in their relationships and they pretend they are victims in their past relationships:

Right off: real victims go to therapy, and they are usually in therapy for a long time, and often with other survivors, and they usually get diagnosed with PTSD. They usually read a lot about abuse and have an understanding of the subject. Note: do not confuse therapy with couples counseling which narcissists are sometimes willing to do. We're talking domestic abuse counseling, narcissistic abuse counseling or trauma-related counseling.

Narcissists almost never go to therapy unless their reputations are on the line from public exposure, or they don't want to lose narcissistic supply from a lover or spouse, or they are court-ordered. Narcissists blame others and try to suck in others (empaths) for sympathy for their pretend-victim status.

Narcissists also tend to take up other relationships (especially with their victims' rivals or best friends -- anything that hurts the target) very quickly after a relationship has broken off. They also tend to take extravagant vacations and cruises, or go on expensive shopping sprees, or buy luxury items after the dissolution of their relationships, whereas normal people tend to isolate themselves and get depressed. Real victims also tend to get very skittish about getting into new relationships after they have been victimized and tend to want to go very, very slow: in other words, they are generally NOT the love bombing types of people.

So, if your date (or new friend) has a lot of victim stories, find out if they have gotten treated in therapy for it and how long (get proof). Find out if they just left a relationship (big red flag as real victims don't go hunting for a new relationship or love bomb a new person right after a breakup). Dig into their past to find out if they leave victims behind or if they were victimized because they were groomed to take abuse as a child (child abuse). Are they a scapegoat of their family, or are they a golden child? If they are a scapegoat, they are more likely to be real victims. If they are a golden child be aware that over half of golden children grow up to be bullies with entitlement issues (making them primed to be a narcissist).

If there are also signs of idealize, devalue, discard in their past relationships, you are probably dealing with a love-bombing narcissist who manipulates people.

Narcissists are glib and arrogant:

Most narcissists pretend they are experts and superior at everything and that you need to listen to their expertise, advice and lectures. They also tend to be charming. They give a little too much advice. They pretend to be interested in all of the same things you are interested in (mirroring), but they act as though they have superior knowledge of those interests.

They ask way too many questions of you while not revealing even a tiny fraction of those same subjects about themselves. Do not mistake this manipulation tactic as their being interested or enthralled with you.

On sociopaths:

They are also a Cluster B like a narcissist, so there are some similarities, but the difference is that they don't necessarily go into a rage when you criticize them, they don't have the kind of abuse cycles that narcissists do (they tend to discard you for good and move on to other prey), they don't like societal attention or detection, they tend to fib quite a lot more than narcissists, and they tend to be even more exploitative than narcissists.

Sociopaths look very uncomfortable when a conversation topic turns to empathy.

Watch their facial expressions or boredom when this topic comes up. Rarely will they look engaged or look people in the eye when this topic takes a dominant place. Mostly they look away. If they do engage, they will not be in agreement with an empathetic view-point. Sociopaths are into punishments, retaliation and they make "they deserve what they had coming to them" kinds of statements.

Sociopaths hate it when you want to slow things down

That is because they want what they want, and they want it NOW! The more you slow things down, or show them that they aren't any more important than others in your life, the less they can overtake you with their own agenda. Sociopaths are not good at wait ... and wait .... and wait.

Sociopaths aren't attracted to you when they feel that knowing you is of no benefit to them:

If you think that the person you just got to know is a sociopath, and you want him to disengage, appear really boring, to have nothing that will be of interest to him (finances, connections, compassion for his plight, sex, anything you can think of). Giving back any gifts is also a pretty good idea. Dressing down is another good idea. With sociopaths, you have to appear confident in yourself and your boundaries. They like easy prey, and if you make it clear that your boundaries are firm, that you are surrounded by protection, and that you have nothing to offer them, they usually go away unless they are totally obsessed with you.

If you are an empath, pretend NOT to be an empath. They target empaths by the boatloads for abuse.

If they are obsessed with you, or keep trying to contact you when you have said "no", or they want to make an example of you, call the police (with evidence). Sometimes criticizing them and/or exposing them will usually make them back off too. They may want to retaliate because of the actions you take, but they usually won't if you make it very clear that there is absolutely nothing about you that is of any use to them, including any ego boosts or reciprocity of feelings, and that you are surrounded by other people who love you and protect you.

Also making it known that you don't keep secrets, especially theirs, can work too.

Sociopaths generally insult others a lot (it is their favorite pastime), and especially behind their backs in long cynical, if sometimes humorous condemnations, so if you insult them a little in return, especially if you are the opposite sex, that is a language they understand. Make sure not to get taken in by their escalations of bigger and bigger insults: you just want to send them the one-time message to back off and leave you alone.

Generally, it is not a good idea to insult anyone (it is a form of verbal abuse), but if done right, and once, it can also be one of the few ways sociopaths understand that there is nothing in the relationship for them. Contempt, disgust and disapproval are emotional-type boundaries that tend to work so much better on sociopaths than, say, telling them how hurt you are by their actions and their complete lack of empathy, why you need to be left alone, why you can't seem to tolerate their particular personality or ways of doing things. The former usually gets them going off in another direction, whereas the latter keeps them coming back at you.

Making it very clear that you won't be taken in by ANY love bombing at all, no matter how much they try, and showing disgust about it and them may be a good idea when it comes to the sociopath.

Sociopaths leave a trail of victims who no longer want to associate with them.

That is because the wounding, threats and betrayal that sociopaths do is great.

If you talk to the sociopath's victims, they usually complain of the sociopath's need for pathological control. Sociopaths don't give up on a "punishment" or other sanction/maltreatment unless they have what they want from you. Sociopaths are also noted for using medications, mind control, cult-like persuasion, brainwashing, forced addiction to alcohol or drugs on their victims, threats, staged incidents, re-telling of the events or feelings of others, scare tactics, or some other penance to control their victims.

"You should never have done that" or "said that" is a typical phrase of the sociopath if and when you look into their past, tell of a past incident you don't like that they were part of, or even contact someone from their past.

If the sociopath has children, most of them try to get out of child support payments at some point during their lives whether they are rich or poor, so that is another sign. In general, sociopaths like to break agreements, promises and boundaries.

All sociopaths tend to be sadistic in some way. They get off  on hurting or punishing others who do not go along with their agendas. They particularly enjoy the punishment of animals and small children. So look into their past for these signs.

Sociopaths have very few, if any, close friends.

Love bombing of a child after the child has been discarded (estranged, shunned, punished by ostracism by a narcissistic or sociopathic parent for a few years):

When narcissistic and sociopathic parents love bomb their estranged children to try to get them back in the family or back into a role again, it is called hoovering. I have yet to do a post on hoovering, but basically it comes down to love bombing with the idealize, devalue, discard cycle of abuse (the idealization stage being the love bombing stage).

Children are often not especially valuable sources of narcissistic supply. Most children do not idealize a parent beyond ten years old. The reason why is that they were meant, by biology, to grow up and move away to start their own families. They are also not good supply because they know too much about their parent, and are usually onto them even when they don't say so. Information within a family is so porous and leaky that the narcissist is more likely to be dealing with shame and depression in the long run, especially in old age, if they try to turn their children into narcissistic supply.

But narcissists are bold and brazen, and most try to make their children into supply anyway, just for the hell of it. They overwhelmingly use triangulation, gaslighting, trauma-bonding, parentifying, infantilizing, perfectionism and word salad arguments as their main on-going weapons against their own children.

Estranged, ostracized, shunned, rejected children are very, very common for narcissistic and sociopathic parents. It is usually the family scapegoats that are left out of the family. In contrast, it is so extremely rare for the rest of the population to treat children the way that abusive parents do. If narcissists or sociopaths are ever exposed about their abuse, they can meet with dismissal and derision from society (and this is when the tear-soaked "I have sinned" public displays come out, along with the love bombing of the children they dumped).

So, as you can see, making children into narcissistic supply for the narcissist has many drawbacks.

Some of the reasons why parents hoover (love bomb) has been talked about earlier, but if you are trying to look for signs to keep from getting into a relationship with a narcissist or sociopath, the following are better tell-tale signs of hoovering children:
* one sign of narcissists and sociopaths is that they are estranged from at least one of their children. This is usually the scapegoat child. They absolutely need a scapegoat to keep the bad deeds they do to others from being exposed and attributed to them, so they adopt one of their children to take all of the blame for their deeds instead. This is the big reason perpetrators pretend to be the victims of their scapegoat estranged children. However, children who are estranged don't make very good garbage cans for blame. Cluster B disordered parents cannot blame someone who is so far outside of the family that no one knows where he lives or what he is doing, has no contact with anyone in the family, so hoovering here and there becomes the way of continuing to effectively scapegoat, especially if there are any eyes on the situation.
* when the golden child is not satisfying them enough, isn't giving them the narcissistic supply they demand -- and they demand A WHOLE LOT, so it is not uncommon for friction to arise with the golden at some point and for an ostracized scapegoat child to be hoovered back in to challenge the golden
* when the golden child dies and all that is left is the scapegoat, so even if the scapegoat has been discarded for years, the narcissist will usually try to hoover the scapegoat back in to take the golden child's place
* the narcissists or sociopath are publicly exposed or they feel they are in danger of being exposed and rush to love bomb their estranged child to keep the child "from talking" (hoping the child will display loyalty to his parent in return for parental love bombing)

Love bombing sentences to estranged children:
* "I always loved you. You are my child, but you didn't see it, so we spent all of those years apart."
* "I really wanted to know you better, but you seemed more comfortable not having a parent in your life."
* "I wanted you back in my life, but you never came back to apologize like I expected you to."
* "I'm not a perfect parent. I make mistakes. So, I asked you to leave and not contact me. Big deal! Get over it! Now I love you! So accept it!"
* "I made a mistake. I really wanted to know you, but (golden child) was so much more persuasive and loving towards me."
* "You and I weren't getting along then, but I loved you the entire time you were gone, so we should just forgive and forget the past."
* "We didn't have the same perspectives. But sometimes perspectives change. And now I see value in you where I didn't before."
* "I thought our relationship was too damaged to fix. So I didn't try. But now I see that it wasn't damaged because my love for you carried on through the years when you were absent."

This is all manipulative B.S. and word salad by the way, and indicative of the honeymoon stage in the cycle of abuse. Narcissists and sociopaths so rarely change their behavior or views that they cannot be counted on to be trustworthy. These kinds of statements show absolutely no awareness, empathy or love of any kind. The only sign of them wanting to really change into a loving human being instead of an abusing or rejecting one is their desire for total rehabilitation (i.e. a commitment to learn about their condition from professionals, reflection into their past and the childhood abuse they endured and genuinely wanting to stop it from continuing down through the generations, on-going therapy with a domestic violence counselor, anger management classes, a commitment to child abuse causes and the healing of its victims, etc). Even if they do all of this, which is extremely doubtful, they can never entirely be counted on in terms of telling the truth about loving their children in any on-going, promise-laden, empathetic way (or their grandchildren either). "A leopard never changes its spots" should always be heeded, I believe, and if they totally surprise you that they have changed (it takes years and years), then they have done themselves a service whether the people around them can put stock in it or not.

With sociopathic parents therapy doesn't make sense because they will take what they learned for more abusive "tricks and tactics". I'm not a believer in sociopaths transforming into anything other than double-trouble sociopaths, with even more sadistic games up their sleeves.

Children of abuse or abandonment should always have their guard up at all times -- my philosophy. If you have PTSD, trying to have a relationship with your abusive parent again or even seeing them, may make your PTSD soar and get so much worse. It's a case-by-case basis. I personally would never share intimate personal details about your life with them under any circumstances.

For more on how narcissists and sociopaths treat their children, you can go to the following posts:

* Narcissists and Children -- my own post
* Sociopaths and Children -- my own post
* Psychopaths are unable to love their own children — here’s why -- by Lindsay Dodgson (this is a good article, however the research on the role of the Golden child is from only one source, and woefully inadequate and inaccurate -- from all of my own studies and research the conclusion is that half of golden children become ultra-empaths and half become bullies/Cluster Bs: see favoritism in the family ... in another post I will address why there are two drastically differing Goldens).

* The Dysfunctional Ways a Family Protects a Narcissist -- by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC, for Psych Central (note: this article has to do with narcissists who stay in one marriage. Cheating narcissists, huge enmeshed families, and broken families with step parents change the dynamic Ms. Hammond talks about quite a bit -- there is actually more hope for breaking the tradition of domestic abuse being passed down the generations when step parents and inlaws enter into a family like this).

Following love bombing by a narcissist or sociopath, there is usually a discard phase, as I have mentioned:

The reasons for discards are spelled out by Dale Archer, M.D. in this Psychology Today article:

1. The devalued partner no longer supplies what attracted the love bomber in the first place. Seeing his partner as exhausted, broke, depressed, or less attractive, the bomber discards her for someone shiny and new.

2. The devalued partner gets fed up and starts pushing back, demanding reciprocity for sacrifices or defending boundaries, making it clear she refuses to be manipulated anymore. Feeling exposed, the love bomber discards his non-compliant partner for one who doesn’t yet see behind his mask of phony perfection.

3. The love bomber uses the discard as part of the manipulation, fully planning to reconnect in the future. Think of it like devaluation on steroids. He disappears, sometimes without warning, leaving the victim feeling devastated and confused. Then days, and sometimes months later, he reappears, out of the blue, professing undying love and promising to change. Curiously absent in many cases is an apology. Instead, the return is a test of his power and control, a challenge to see if his discarded partner can be conned into another round of abuse. If so, the cycle repeats.

Whether the discard is followed up with a honeymoon phase, largely depends on whether the partner can be honeymooned back into the relationship. If there have been a lot of rounds of the abuse cycle, most partners realize it is a bad habit and start to separate, at least emotionally first. Love does not mean a cycle of idealizations and discards, and most everyone knows that.

For children, the situation can be quite different. While disordered parents expect a round of idealizations and discards with children too, their plans for a cycle of abuse go awry in a way that they don't for partners.

For young children who are discarded, it means going off to live with the other parent or guardian who will have quite a lot more influence than the narcissist (the narcissist can find that love bombing does not work at all on children they want back, that children feel high levels of anxiety and distress with a parent who discards, leading to life long estrangement).

For adult children, a parental discard means spending a lot more time with their own families or peers, which is the natural order of life anyway. The difference is that in normal families, parents have some input, and their input is welcomed and appreciated. Adult children of rejecting narcissistic parents do not want the input of their parent because the adult child does not want their own children to be exposed to experiencing idealizations and discards. This is the main reason for permanent estrangements (note: this does not come from a professional study; it comes from my own observations in forums for survivors of child abuse. Protecting their kids from grandparent discards or watching the grandparent discard is by far the predominant and overwhelming reason for permanent child-parent estrangements).

Children also experience the love bombing/discard experience differently than partners. Most adult children state (from forums again) that they felt that the experience resembled being brought up a mountain (love bombing stage) and then being shoved off of a high cliff once at the top (discard phase). In other words, it was just too painful to repeat again. Many children of narcissistic parents experience discards during the worst points of their lives too (major surgeries, major illnesses, being diagnosed with a life threatening disease, the death of their other parent, losing a child, etc). Parents like this do their discards during traumatic times for a reason: it has to do with the parent trying to get their child to trauma bond with them, which I will cover in another post.

For more on how narcissists apologize in order to love bomb discards, you can read the following post by psychologist Alexander Burgemeester: The Narcissist and Apology.

Always remember that love bombing is abuse!

Author Dale Archer, M.D. spells out the reasons why love bombing is abuse in the same Psychology Today article:

The important thing to remember about love bombing is that it is psychological partner abuse, period. When one person intentionally manipulates and exploits another’s weakness or insecurity, there’s no other word for it. Love is not about controlling who you see or what you do.

Healthy relationships build slowly, and are based on a series of actions, not a flood of words. Love bombers are experts at talking, but when held accountable for their words, they tend to lash out. It’s normal to feel confused, or betrayed, and the urge to make excuses for the love bomber is strong, because they’ve worked hard to tie your self-esteem to their good opinion. And that’s what makes this cycle of idealization, devaluation, and discard so devastating. Love bombers exploit the natural human need for self worth, and turn it into shame, regret, and self-loathing.

Further reading:

Love Bombing: Have You Ever Been the Target? - Spot the Warning Signs of Love Bombing Early and Recover Faster with These Tips -- by Dale Archer M.D. for Psychology Today

Love bombing -- from Wikipedia

** recommended: What It Means When a Narcissist Says “I Love You” -- from the narcissist's point of view (posted by Athena Staik, Ph.D.)

Love Bombing: A Seductive & Manipulative Technique. -- by Alex Miles

** recommended: 5 Ways to Disarm a Love Bombing Sociopath -- from the True Love Scam Recovery website

The Secret Language of Narcissists: How Abusers Manipulate their Victims. -- by popular author, Shahiba Arabi

** recommended: How to Tell the Difference Between Narcissistic Love Bombing and Healthy Romantic Interest -- by Angela Atkinson from the Queen-Being website

Exposed! 11 Lies Love-Bombing Narcissists Tell -- by Kim Saeed

Love Bombing – When It’s Too Good To Be True -- by Melanie Tonia Evens

The sociopath’s “discard” is soul destroying — you learn your “soul mate” is pure fabrication designed to con, exploit, and hurt -- by O.N. Ward from the Love Fraud website

Love Bombing -- from the Dating a Sociopath website

5 Reasons Narcissists Can’t Have Intimate Relationships; No. 3 Is The Main Reason -- by Amanda Greene

What it is like to date a narcissist -- by Kerri Sackville


How and Why Narcissists Are Highly Skilled Abusers -- by Julia Hall

10 Signs You’re Putting Other People on Pedestals -- by Lenora Thompson for Psych Central

Avoiding Toxic People: Gas-Lighting & Love-Bombing -- by Támara Hill, MS, LPC for Psych Central

11 Things NOT To Do With Narcissists -- by Dan Neuharth, PhD MFT

5 Scientific Secrets to Handling a Narcissist -- by Eric Barker (note: the first bit of advice is NOT about how to handle them). The real crux of how to deal with them comes later: it means walking away, starving them of narcissistic supply, not hiring them for jobs, not listening to their "expertise", not getting involved in romantic relationships with them, not trying to parent with them, not getting involved in projects with them, not believing what they have to say, not trying to be close to them, not interact with them, etc -- in conclusion: just walk away).

One trait or behavior does not make a sociopath – look for a pattern of traits and behaviors -- by Donna Anderson

How Cults Work -- by CultWatch (discusses Love Bombing -- a very similar technique to narcissists and sociopaths in terms of how they try to isolate you from family and/or friends)
 
Sex and Aural Energy ("I always say, never sleep with someone you wouldn't want to be" -- part of the article)

How To Tell If Your Partner Truly Loves You -- by Katie and Jay Hendricks

NEW ARTICLES SINCE PUBLISHING

recommended: What Is ‘Love Bombing’? (Grand romantic gestures in the early days of a relationship could be sweet — or a sign you’re dating a narcissist. Here’s how to tell the difference, according to experts.) - by Gina Cherelus for The New York Times 

from SwanWaters.com:

healing from abuse I: realizing the situation is hopeless and saying no to any more abuse

Healing Victory by Lise Winne

(art available for sale HERE)

Healing from abuse is extremely challenging. Most people have PTSD and/or C-PTSD if the abuse went on for a long period of time or started in childhood or was brutal or severe in some way. So, there are two things to heal from: the abuse itself and the trauma-related emotional injuries that manifest as PTSD and/or C-PTSD. Note: C-PTSD can also effect the brain, especially if you grew up with child abuse or child neglect.

Some alcoholics can be become abusive under the influence of alcohol, and I will get to that shortly. However, this post primarily focuses on abusers who have Cluster B personality disorders.

One thing about abusers with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder (who are the Cluster Bs most likely to abuse) is that they are fairly predictable across the board. They are known to practice several types of abuse all at once. It is like they are given a formula to gaslight you, erroneously blame you, rewrite history (including determining how you think, feel and experience events without conferring with you about accuracy -- called perspecticide), expect perfectionism from you (in facial expressions, deeds and motives), punish you for not doing what they want at all times, punish you for not seeing them in an idealized way, run smear campaigns on you, attempt to isolate you from some sort of social group or relationship, financially abuse you in some way, play favorites with children, attempt to put you into a role with rewards and punishments, most usually give you the silent treatment and use word salad arguments to explain away their unethical and immoral treatment of you and others. Not only that, but they are retaliatory and vengeful, highly envious of others, arrogant and haughty,  not empathetic, pathologically manipulative and pretend they are victims. They idealize you and love bomb you, and then when they think you feel loved by them, seek to discard you and destroy you. They live in a world of lies (it is like they concoct a fantasy world for themselves and lies are the perfect way to do that).

Also, if you are hurt by them, it is extremely rare for them to apologize unless they have been "publicly found out" or are in danger of it, and even then they will try to cover up what they have done with dodging, deflecting, splitting hairs and excusing themselves.

They are so ingrained in these "habits" that it is unrealistic to expect them to change at all. Most abusers are ultra-rigid. They do not change, nor do they want to change. Blaming their victims is their easy way out of culpability and self reflection. If anything, by all survivor accounts, abusers actually get worse over time. Within relationships, they escalate abuse as well. This is because very few abusers seek therapy or express a desire to change (they believe their victims need to change and be punished instead, to their liking). A very miniscule number of them wake up to the fact that they are not like others, that their lives are in tatters, that many people seem to back off from them, so they seek therapy sometimes under those conditions. Even then, some extremely traumatic event usually has to take place first before they seek to understand anything at all about themselves or others beyond their own projections and hopes for live marionettes. The high majority of abusers (who tend to have Cluster B personality disorders) do not think about a thing except where their next hit of narcissistic supply is going to come from. Narcissistic supply basically boils down to attention, flattery, and their hopes and dreams of absolute power, control and domination over someone, anyone, everyone.

Some alcoholics are abusive too. If they are abusive only when they drink, it is a sign that drinking is the main culprit. If they are still abusive during dry periods, or after being rehabilitated for a year or more, then it is likely they have a Cluster B personality disorder in addition to being an alcoholic.

One reason why most people can no longer accept narcissists and sociopaths (both from the Cluster B spectrum of personality disorders) into their lives is because of the wounding they do. The wounds they inflict tend to be deep, because they spend a lot of time interrogating you and studying you to get a sense of how they can traumatize you, plus draw you in (mirroring and love bombing). They tend to be sadists who try to do the most damage at the worst times of your life.

Some survivors may live with Stockholm Syndrome until they can get away, but living with chronic or ever-debilitating PTSD is not tolerable for most people. The only people who are able to withstand relationships with abusers and not get hurt are other abusers  -- because they too have very few emotional feelings, have predatory minds and play one-ups-man manipulative games themselves (with the most cunning manipulative abusers winning).

So, the first order to heal from PTSD is getting away from abusers. Many domestic violence therapists push clients to go no contact to keep the client from getting further traumatized and further disabled from PTSD. PTSD has a way of getting worse, and it can get much worse, and faster, with continued contact.

Some therapists suggest that if the narcissist in your life is a parent, you can try very limited contact, at first, in big crowds. Big holiday events or a wedding with a lot of people around is considered to be "very limited contact." Whether your PTSD flares up or not is one way to tell if you need to go no contact. Most survivors of narcissistic parents find that even limiting contact to texting and e-mail can cause PTSD symptoms. It's your body and mind's way of telling you that you can only take so much abuse and stress. All human beings have a limited capacity in terms of exposure to abuse and sensitive empathetic people have more limitations in that regard than others.

One reason why narcs target empaths is because they seem to make the easiest prey. On the other hand, they lose that prey very quickly. So narcs, from everything I have seen and read, mostly (but not always) spend their old age with fellow narcs just because fellow narcs can endure the unethical displays. They do not care whether someone displays dishonesty, manipulating, stealing, cheating or immoral behavior because they are that way themselves; they keep their focus on what ever prize they might get from associating with the narc (kind of like two thieves trying to out-wit each other). It is seen as a challenge to dominate or hoodwink another narc.

My comment in parentheses "(but not always)" will be discussed in another post. In short, there are narcs (the cult leader types) who actually prefer empaths to other narcs and will be a lot more careful and wily not to lose or scare away that source of narcissistic supply even while they dominate and play head games and favorites - they are always in competitions themselves, and expect other to compete too. They do this while shamming everyone by appearing humble and like an ultra-empath who only has equality and his disciples in mind. They prefer empaths because they deem them to be more exploitable, easier to brainwash. They also deem empaths to perceive good, honesty and exemplary intentions in everyone and every action. Empaths by nature are more about people-pleasing and taking care of others than any fellow Cluster B will be. Even so, empaths can be hurt by sublimating themselves and their needs so deeply that they can act like brainwashed robot zombies who hang on to every word, even wild fantasies that the narc is God (again, think of cults). Empaths can also put themselves at risk and danger too (especially if the narc ever gets paranoid and retaliatory, which a lot of narcs tend to do eventually).

While paranoia keeps many narcs from escalating abuse with "loved ones" who have defected or who are on the edge of defecting, the more defectors there are, the more risk in terms of social standing and the ability to attract more followers. Narcs and sociopaths have been known to be scrutinized and/or tracked because narcs (and cult leaders) are notorious for using child abuse, and allowing child abuse especially if "loved ones" or "concerned ones" have contacted law enforcement, social services or mental health professionals and have some evidence. They have especially been known to allow sexual abuse of minors to go unchallenged (and some of them even condone the practice). The narcissists on the malignant end of narcissism can even partake in the sexual abuse of minors.

When narcissists know their defectors are talking and they are being watched, their paranoia can go off the rails. Most put their remaining "loyal" members under greater surveillance and control, and therefor at greater risk, and some commit murder-suicide. Again think of cults and cult leaders: Jim Jones, David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite, Shoko Asahara, Charles Manson, Warren Jeffs and to some degree Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (or some of the people who he anointed to be first in line to deal with the public). 

This is not to scare you, but to make you aware that most abusive families are like cults. In the eyes of abusive leaders of families, you are either totally loyal, a living marionette (worthwhile for them) or you are the enemy (someone to be shunned, or disapproved of, or abandoned, or hated, ridiculed, demonized). That is because abusers look at people in black and white terms.

In this Atlantic Monthly article by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, survivor Teri Buford O'Shea talks about Jim Jones's cult, Jonestown, and tells how Jones's paranoia manifested (and you might see some parallels):

... he was very paranoid. He could not accept the fact that one person would leave him, ever. He had us all sign papers -- Jim called them compromises. They were blank sheets of paper, or typed sheets of paper that he'd cover up while we signed our name. He had something he could blackmail all of us with. One guy tried to leave and Jim said he'd use his paper against him so he'd never see his children again. So he came back. The thing was, too, that Jim would not let children off the compound. So if you were going to leave, you were leaving your child. There was no way of getting a child out of Jonestown.

And if people did defect, Jim said he'd send them things that had poison on them.

I think any survivor of abuse can relate to how abusive people go on the attack if they think you might leave their control, or dare to want to live your own life, or talk about or show people how you were treated, or how they held things in hostage: pets, children, personal property, love, belonging, birthdays, weddings, money, acknowledgement, respect, the ability to talk and get your perspectives across, etc. 

She also talks about how drugs were used to control members of the Jonestown cult (a not uncommon practice among child abusers as well):

... I learned after the massacre that he drugged people on the outpost there to keep them from trying to leave, to keep them from trying to dissent, to control them in different ways, all unbeknownst to the masses ... 

One of the ways Jim Jones tried to induce paranoia into his followers (the non-defectors) was to paint an altered reality to get the followers to comply with him even more (a not uncommon practice among domestic abusers either):

Then he would tell us that in the United States, African Americans were being herded into concentration camps, that there was genocide on the streets. They were coming to kill and torture us because we'd chosen what he called the socialist track. He said they were on their way.

We didn't know this at the time, but he'd set up people who would shoot into the jungle to make us feel as if we were under attack. And there were other people who were set up to run and get shot -- with rubber bullets, though we didn't know it at the time. So there you were, in the middle of the jungle. Shots were being fired, and people were surrounding you with guns.

A lot of us survivors can relate to this as well, of wanting to get out of the control of someone who does not have our interests at heart, all the while knowing that our escape will probably mean they will try to stage or sabotage something, or that they will want to hurt us for leaving. Some survivors report that their perpetrators tried to make them homeless, or slandered them so much that they were derided by the community of common family and friends (brainwashing):

I was fortunate that I had an opportunity to escape and I took it. Even then, I thought Jim Jones would find me and kill me. I had to get to the point where I didn't care if I died. I just wanted to have my own life, however short it might be. My goal, in fact, was that I wanted to live to be 30 so I could have a rich and full life. Now I have a daughter who's 29, and I'm 60. I've had double what I wished for.

I think it is important to think of the abusive family as a cult, even if it is not as bad as Jonestown, or only practices emotional abuse on its members instead of physical abuse (Jonestown is an extreme example, but I think it is important to look at these kinds of extremes to see where your situation fits within the scope of mild to severe control and abuse).

And by the way, many survivors of abuse and/or prejudice are attracted to cults. I will talk about communes and cults in another post, but suffice it to say that it is important to see the abusive family as an unhealthy cult with a leader. If you are from an abusive family, you will know it because they stage things, scare people, control people and rewrite history (or they rewrite your experiences, feelings and thoughts and believe they have the inalienable right to do so). They tend to have willing followers at first, and threatened followers later. Perhaps you have several narcs or dark triads in your family, all vying for dominance and hierarchical positions, which leaves you on the outside of "the cult of abuse" to live an authentic life.

Some other reasons why the high majority of survivors eventually realize the hopelessness of the situation and move on:

1. Narcs and sociopaths generally do not apologize.
If they do apologize, you need to look at the circumstances around their apology. Do they feel in danger of being exposed? Are they willing to get on-going domestic violence therapy? Are they in need of money? Are they afraid of losing your love, your adulation and control? Are they making excuses for abuse? How much do they want to change their behaviors? If all that they have to say is, "I realize I missed you and couldn't live without you" -- this is usually a sign of hoovering, which is a part of the cycle of abuse (the honeymoon stage).

2. Your children are being effected by abuse (and if you don't have children yet, they will be exposed to it if you are exposed to it, and either learning how to abuse, staying unnaturally quiet and neutral during abusive episodes through shutting down their feelings, or getting PTSD themselves). Even if just one person in a family is being abused, it effects the whole family. That family will have to deal with the PTSD symptoms of the member being abused and it puts tremendous strain on the family.

3. Abuse tends to escalate. It is rare for it to de-escalate.

4. During the escalation process, the abuse will not only intensify, but it is common for different types of abuse to surface. The escalation process happens when the abuser feels he does not have power over the person, so tries to compensate by attempting more and more control over the person.

5. Emotional abuse: you don't have to be hit for abuse to be deadly. Emotional abuse does and can cause suicide ideation. For instance, in child abuse victims (both adults and children) who receive any kind of lengthy silent treatment by a parent, roughly one quarter of them end up committing suicide. Part of the problem may be that society puts a God-like status on parents ("respect your elders", and other kinds of statements not helpful for victims of child abuse).

6. * For survivors of child abuse: If you are a child abuse survivor, your parents probably used shame and/or the silent treatment quite a bit. To count as abuse, the shaming has to be more than once or twice in your life time, and the silent treatment has to be more than a day and happened more than once or twice in your life time too. In other words, shame, isolation and the silent treatment were used on you as "misguided discipline" for your "naughty behavior" (i.e. when your parents thought they were losing control of you), and most likely it continued into adulthood too. Most child abuse does continue into adulthood, and that is a good way to tell if you were abused as a child. In other words, if you are continuing to receive shaming and long bouts of the silent treatment as an adult (and especially if you are not an addict with a violence problem, or a criminal), there is no question that this is abuse.
* Again, if you are being abused by your parents, the abuse will escalate unless they show an unwavering desire to change their behavior towards you. Promises of "I'll never give you the silent treatment again" in my experience, never works and cannot work because abusive behaviors need total rehabilitation. In that way it is like alcoholism in that it takes a concerted on-going effort. Abuse is an ingrained habit and pattern and it takes a lot of work for abusers to stop using it to solve life's problems. It seems that the only chance of a promise like that working is if they are committed to anger management classes and on-going domestic violence therapy, and even then, roughly only a quarter of perpetrators in on-going treatment can maintain it. This should show how hard this habit is to break. Narcissistic and sociopathic parents almost never go to therapy and instead try to focus their attention on smear campaigns instead, trying to convince themselves and others that you, and only you, are the problem. This phenomenon is called the identified patient. In family systems theory the identified patient in narcissistic and sociopathic families is often a scapegoat too.

Because of the escalation of abuse (and the dangers they present), combined with ever-worsening PTSD symptoms is why most survivors seek to escape and set up boundaries, often with the help of the mental health community and/or law enforcement.

When you know that you can't fix the situation and that you need to say "no" to any more abuse, it is the first step in healing. It is the first step in saying "I need to heal, and enduring continual abuse is only making my situation worse."

The majority of domestic violence therapists believe that in order to live without abuse, we need to live without the people who perpetrate it and who insist on continuing to use it. It is the way we survive most effectively from it and begin to work on resolving the PTSD symptoms that resulted from the experiences.

When our liberties are at stake, when our children are at stake for being exposed to toxic narcissism or sociopathy, and when we are treated so badly by our members or spouse, trying to live an authentic life is all that should matter.

And yes, I am a fellow survivor, so I speak of this through experience. I value the authentic life just about more than anything else (except empathy and integrity: they have a higher standing, though I do believe empaths need to be careful about who they show their empathy to and who they serve, as empaths are specifically targeted by the Cluster B personality disordered for control and abuse). 

5 scientific secrets to handling a narcissist -- by Eric Barker

10 toxic people you should avoid like the plague -- by Travis Bradbury

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - Treatment -- Web MD

The Connection Between PTSD and Suicide ... Fear and Isolation are Risk Factors -- by Matthew Tull, PhD

Past abuse and trauma can predict suicide -- Jorge Lopez-Castroman, M.D., Ph.D. from Montpellier University Hospital

Suicide and PTSD - National Center for PTSD

PTSD Raises Suicide Risk In Major Depression -- by Christine Lehmann

Recovering From Narcissistic Abuse Takes Time and Education -- from the blog, Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Flying Monkeys -- Oh My!

perfection in abusive relationships: parents and partners who expect perfectionism, and punish if they are not receiving it

name of cartoon: perfection in abusive relationships 
(an off-shoot of "Erroneous Blaming")
image is © Lise Winne
(for questions regarding use of images or contract an image for your next article
contact: LilacGroveGraphics (att) yahoo.com) 

(Note: a similar post to this one is erroneous blaming and erroneous punishments, with a cartoon that is almost identical. This post repeats a lot of the same subject matter as that post, so if you have read that post, there will be some repeated information -- "perfectionism" is just one of the facets of erroneous blaming)

Usually these kinds of abusers are very demanding. They want what they want, when they want it, and they expect you to perform perfectly for them (and all with accompanying "perfect attitudes").

They make a determination that if you are not performing to their specifications, you will have to pay the consequences: either silent treatments, withdrawing love, withdrawing consideration and kindness, withdrawing money or food, being isolated from your family, or being put through some sort of torture: physical, emotional, sexual, environmental, threats, neglect, it could be anything.

Often the point of their abuse and torture is to instill in you that you are not worthwhile (or only as good as they say you are), that they can live without you, and if they are to be kind to you at all, you will have to perform for them: to prove that you can do what they expect of you, "perfectly" and without complaint. You are to regard them as "perfect" as well: often hard to do because most abusers are liars, shams, cheaters, backstabbers, blackmailers, ruthlessly punishing (abusive), and many abusers put you through "love triangles" too. But you are expected to "pretend" to view them as infallible nonetheless, to turn a blind eye, and especially for their audience of superficial friends and "followers" (yes, they believe they have followers who adore them and hang on to every word). If you don't say "perfect" things about them, there is often a severe punishment (i.e. abuse), where they torture you. How they torture you depends on the abuser. They might give you the silent treatment for days, weeks, months or years, they might isolate you and/or try to ruin your reputation, they might withdraw money suddenly, they might poison you, or sexually abuse you, or batter you, or, if you are a child, neglect you (throw you in a basement without food, expect you to live in outside conditions in freezing weather, expect you to be locked in a room for weeks without basic necessities, ration your food, demand endless apologies that they deem to not be "good enough"; again it could be anything!). Most abusers are flattery addicts, unempathetic, lack integrity, which is to say that they are, by and large, hypocrites. 

And almost all of them think that their victims will be learning how to treat them better through these cruel kinds of acts.

In all abusive relationships, an expectation to perform "perfectly" and to speak "perfectly" is always present. "Perfectionism" can, and often means "perfect tone of voice", "perfect words with no complaining or criticism in them", "perfect execution of their demands", "perfect phrasing of words and emotions -- usually they want you to be emotionally flat and always polite" (even though they rarely are), "perfect altruistic motives towards them", and so on.

Abusers are known to punish if they interpret your attitudes, actions and looks as less than perfect. Even if you are doing everything to please them, they are known to say you aren't "perfect enough" as their way to justify more punishments, as abusing is how they feel important and in control. They also see it as their way to get what they need. Abusers even take command of telling you what you are feeling, thinking, and doing and why it is, or is not, good enough (or "a punishable offense"). It is their way of saying that they are in charge of everything: your feelings, your thoughts, your actions, and their interpretations of all of your feelings, thoughts and actions.

This is a part of erroneous blaming, which always goes hand in hand with perfectionism in abusive relationships. Other kinds of abuses including mocking, vilifying, smear campaigns, verbal abuse and gaslighting usually are also part of the arsenal of weapons perpetrators use when expecting perfectionism from their victims.

One of the first signs of an abusive family is that the authority figures tell you what you are thinking and feeling. If you are having an argument with them, they make it known that they don't care what you feel, that your job is to only care what they feel. That is why they usually say "No, you hurt me!" when you tell them that they egregiously hurt you. Abusive people don't care about how they hurt you; if anything they will try to endlessly excuse and justify it.

Abusive parents expect you to perform duties to perfection, even when you are no longer a child, and sometimes even when you are 60. Child abuse is a campaign that is leveraged upon their child for a lifetime unless the family gets help along the way (counseling).

If your parents punish you when you are an adult it is always abuse. The only person who has a right to punish another adult is a court appointed judge or jury in a legal system, or authorities if you are incarcerated, or an officer in a military situation. Sometimes bosses punish workers by firing them, but that can be abusive too if they don't follow legal procedures.

One way to tell if a child may be part of an abusive family is how parents react to their child. For instance, if the child got bullied in school (and yes, victims of child abuse are often the primary targets of school bullying) do they say to their child, "What did you do to get yourself in that mess?" or "What did you do to deserve it?". Note this is a "sign", not a definitive conclusion that they are abusive parents. The point is that non-abusive parents generally say, "I'm concerned," or "Are you okay?" or "How are you doing and how are you feeling about what happened?" or "What can I do to help my child?" They aren't trying to referee the bullying or trying to decide who is at fault right away, or what kind of "less than perfect thoughts, feelings and actions" brought on the bullying. Some abusive parents even argue with their child about how the child is thinking and feeling right in front of school authorities.  

In a post entitled The Perfectionist Tyrant, Sallie Culbreth, M.S. states that many survivors of abuse suffer from self esteem issues from pressures over perfection. Here is an excerpt: 

Perfectionism takes on many forms – from being an over-achiever to being an under-achiever. Perfectionism is a common malady among survivors of abuse, exploitation, and sexual trauma. At its core, it is the relentless drive to avoid powerlessness, but that drive is a tyrant. The tyrant sends you into a panic every time you feel the threat of being exposed as “less than.”

It is vital for you to remember that the experience of abuse educated you about your value. The problem is that those lessons are built around lies and manipulation. Nonetheless, they feel true and, over time, they become enmeshed with how you define your worth.

What do you believe about your worth based on the lessons of abuse? That you have no value. That you’re not good enough. That you’re disposable. That there’s something wrong with you. That you’re only good for one thing. These are the lies that feel very true, but please note: THEY ARE STILL LIES.

Now here’s where it gets dicey: perfectionism is your response to these lies, but it is so extreme that it can impair how you approach life and your ability to function in a healthy way. As I stated at the beginning, perfectionism can manifest in two seemingly opposite behaviors: over-achievement and under-achievement.

Over-achiever perfectionism screams at you that if you don’t work day and night to accomplish everything you do without any mistakes, then you’ll sink into those wretched definitions of the lies and feel completely exposed as a disposable, valueless idiot ...

... Under-achiever perfectionism screams at you that you’ll never be able to attain the goals you’ve set – that you’ll never be good enough – so why bother? You believe that everyone already knows your worth, so why risk failure and face that horrific moment when you’re reminded one more time that you’re “less than” and always will be. You find it easier to never take risks than to risk being less than perfect.

Both of these expressions are based on distorted ideas about self that come from the experience of being abused. It is one of the most insidious and stubborn beliefs that survivors must confront ...

If your parents punish you because of a complaint or a look, it is abuse. It is also about "perfectionism" at its core. Perfectionism is usually abusive because there is an implied threat of a "punishment" behind it: for instance, "If you give me that look I don't like, I'll hurt you!" or "If you complain about me one bit, I'll reject you!" Look to see if they are putting labels on your motives (and remember that these are ALWAYS their ways of perceiving you).

Abusers often interpret your look or speech the way they want to see you, not as who you are. They might see a look and interpret it as something they don't like or as impertinence. All abusers hate even the possibility of impertinence, so they are known to do pre-emptive strikes. Other things they don't like include what they perceive as a look of autonomy from their victims, a look of ingratitude, a look of rebellion, a look of disbelief, a look of appearing superior to them when they expect you to perceive yourself as inferior to them, a critical look, a quizzical look, a look that portrays to them that you might abandon them, a look of rolling your eyes, a look of smirking (which they might interpret as you laughing at them and thinking of them as inferior), and a look of disgust at what they are saying. Victims who have these kinds of thoughts about them are terrifying to them, so they punish over the possibilities first and escalate wildly if they actually become realities (most abusers are personality-disordered). It is because they, themselves want to know their victims look at them at all times as "perfect" and as "superiors" and the only way they know how to keep their victims from growing out of idealizing them is to punish.

Malignant narcissists and sociopaths (who make up the most dangerous abusers) especially have absolutely zero tolerance for anyone who might be slightly or fleetingly feeling in ways they find threatening. They want so badly your childlike gullibility or they feel absolutely threatened by you to the point where they can become either scary or dangerous.

Why scary? Because they make threats. Their threats are NOT to be taken lightly. Even if they take their threats back, and promise not to use them after all, they have a propensity to be unstable, and cannot be counted on to do what they say. Also, if they have a history of severely abusing they are certainly not to be trusted. Severe abuses include silent treatments that last months, erroneous blaming sessions that never seem to end, only letting up on abuse after they see you begging and crying, physical abuse.

They are also dangerous because abuse usually escalates regardless, and abuse can also be deadly even if your abuser meant only to hurt you just so far without killing you. They also tend to get ever more sensitive to what your looks and feelings might be portraying as the relationship deepens: if they deem you to be resisting being perfect in the way they want, they can, and do, take abuse to another level. They can graduate from emotional abuse to physical abuse very, very quickly. Some signs to look out for include touch which is at all hostile, pushing, intimidating physical stances where they expect you to walk around them, breaking or smashing property, being rough with material things, destroying gifts you have given them (especially if it is your parents or partner who are destroying your gifts), yelling at you in your personal space (within 6 feet of you), leaning into you to command, lecture or stare you down, clenching their fists while talking to you. These are all the beginning danger signs in terms of physical violence.

Don't make the assumption that you will always be able to follow their demands (i.e. keep safe in that way). Many abusers expect you to eventually fulfill demands that are unethical, dangerous, self-sabotaging, self-sacrificing and self-harming. Almost all victims eventually come to the conclusion that they have to abandon abusive people because of these practices.

Be aware that their interpretation of your "imperfect looks" are really, underneath it all, them feeling threatened by you and afraid of you. What they are really saying is: "don't judge me, don't question me, don't disagree with me, don't investigate who I am or what my motives are, don't feel worthwhile, happy, successful and autonomous without my consent. Only look at me as perfect, please!" Alternatively they can be thinking "Only look at me as perfect, or else you will pay and pay and pay!" They are such utterly paranoid people that if you grimace, they are known to take it very personally, and put vilifying, dark interpretations on it with all kinds of erroneous guilt trips attached, just to scare you from even considering thoughts and feelings that they might not like. They don't ever want to be hurt by your thoughts or feelings and that is the purpose of all of their crazy-making guilt trips, which can often escalate to withdrawals and other punishments, just to make it known to you to keep your thoughts and feelings contained, in the dark recesses of your mind, to yourself, and even deny such feelings if you have them. To them it doesn't really matter whether you never meant to hurt them at all; what matters to them is that you never think to even entertain the possibility of having a thought or feeling that blames them for anything, that makes them culpable for anything, that is at all at odds with how they want to be perceived.

How you look at them, then, can become one huge problem that they feel they cannot ignore. This is the ultimate crux of their retaliations against you (and remember: retaliation in close personal relationships = always abuse).

See my post on erroneous blaming for more information.

Most abusers have personality disorders: Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder. If they aren't making devious plans to physically disable you or to get rid of you, they may have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. If they want to cause you physical pain, or get rid of you, they are likely to have Antisocial Personality Disorder. In other words, narcissists usually emotionally abuse those closest to them (getting rid of you through silent treatments, disabling you socially) and antisocials usually physically abuse those closest to them (getting rid of you by planning your demise, disabling you physically and mentally). Unchecked and unchallenged narcissists can often join the ranks of the Antisocial Personality-disordered (sociopaths). Be aware that alcoholism in some people can mimic Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the difference being that when they give up the bottle entirely (rehab), they stop acting narcissistically.

What you can count on from narcissists and sociopaths is that there will be a lot of projection: they will see you as they are. They might see you as impertinent because they are impertinent; they might see you as someone who looks at their statements in disgust because they typically look at other people's statements in disgust; they might see you as disloyal and unfaithful because they are disloyal and unfaithful; they might see you as hyper-critical or condescending because they are hyper-critical and condescending; they might see you as evil because they are evil.

Unfortunately for victims, abuse for many narcissists and sociopaths is like a heroin fix: they get off on watching you suffer and "get punished" by them, and they get addicted to abuse because they get off on other people suffering. In order to get more satisfaction from abusing you, they escalate abuse. Most emotional and verbal abusers end up physically abusing. Abusers have also been known to make things up about you just to get their fix of abuse. It is just part of the escalation process no matter what you do or say.

When abusers graduate to more and more escalations of abuse, victims often realize there is a pattern and leave their abusers. Abusers then typically make promises to their victims not to abuse again. Unless they are doing an awful lot of therapy, and are treating you with the utmost respect, unless they are willing to respect every single last boundary that you put up, it is a ruse. It is just about them wanting to get their fix again.

Further reading:

In this post entitled Understanding the Trauma of Child Abuse by Richard Gold, he discusses how blame, victimization and the appearance of "perfectionism" often leads to severe trauma for the abused scapegoats of such families:
Excerpts (but the whole article is worth reading):
A child is blamed. It’s important to understand that abuse is not a “simple” hit or sex act. Abuse is coercive. The victim is blamed for the victimization. In the proc­ess, the abuser exerts control in ways that are torturous and terrifying.
A child feels ashamed. It’s important to understand that the failure of kindness and protection in the family is a profound wound to the child. The victim is deeply ashamed at this loss and carries the burden of feeling unlovable.
Beyond the circumstances of fragmentation and a sense of personal defective­ness, that reinforce one another and are further reinforced by blame and shame, there are powerful factors within abusive family systems that reinforce trauma.
Here are some of the factors in abusive family systems that reinforce trauma. Within a family, the abuser may not only be dominant, but idealized. And everyone in the family may measure themselves by the abuser’s moods ...

... Often there is an enforced isolation for the family, where the abuser passes judgment and controls outside contacts. This isolation limits the child victim’s opportunities for understanding and healing. Often in an abusive family there is a parent who is a passive enabler of the abuser, and this role is significant. The enabler makes it possible for the family to be a self-contained system. The en­abler may support or justify the abuser. The enabler may allow or even encour­age the child to serve as a target for abuse ...

... In the end, the abused child may carry the huge burden of preserving the family as an ideal – and therefore may carry a huge burden of guilt for failing in that impossible task ...
... In addition to messages from the parent that the child deserves blame for family problems, there are also significant messages that the parent doesn’t want the child to be happy or to succeed as a person beyond the abusive parent’s limited capabilities. So the child feels guilt and failure for its successes, as well for its victimizations ...

... One powerful theme throughout circumstances of abuse is the theme of secrecy. There are secrets that the child victim keeps from itself. There are secrets that the child victim keeps from the abuser, from the enabler, etc. – and vice versa. There are secrets that the abusive family keeps from society. The abusive family sus­tains itself with falsehoods ...

Narcissists Say “Mistakes Must Not Be Made” -- by Lenora Thompson
Sexual Abuse Takes Toll on Victims by Trish Kinney. Discusses that sexual abuse carries with it not only physical maladies (like cancer and IBS) that can show up years later, but many victims also develop "perfectionist personalities."

The Impact of Child Sexual Abuse on Adolescents by Sanford Health, includes withdrawing from the pain of abuse by trying to be perfectionist, people-pleasers, and overachievers.

Perfectionism plays a role in child abuse and spousal abuse from The Violence and Addiction Equation, Theoretical Conclusions in Sustance Abuse and Relationship Violence book by Christine Wekerle, Anne-Marie Wall   

Healing from Childhood Abuse: Understanding the Effects, Taking Control to Recover by John J. Lemoncelli -- it has a chapter on perfectionism and people-pleasing as being qualities of victims of abuse

Feeling you must be perfect, and perform perfectly can also be a form of self-abuse. This is just one post of many posts.

People obsessed with grammar aren't as nice as everybody else, study suggests by MJ Franklin

A forum topic is raised about "perfectionism" from a mental health provider, who still hasn't had time to heal from her own traumatic childhood ... many other people respond by telling of their experiences as well.

from Miramir.com:

A cool quote by Rebecca Eanes
copyright to respectful owner:

"Does being in a narcissistic relationship make you feel like you can't make a mistake?"
by psychologist Ramani Durvasula:

I thought this video by Scott Bassett was worthwhile (narcissists can't love

and don't really know what to do with it):

Here is another video by Scott Bassett explaining why narcissists need you to feel

that they can live without you, that they are not dependent on anyone

(basically it is fear-based because admitting to themselves

that they need relationships makes them feel weak, inferior and out of command):