Do Narcissists Know They’re Hurting Their Victims?
They lie, deny, and come up with alibi’s; so yes, they know exactly what they’re doing.
Abuse makes you want to hide away from the world, it becomes a strange place, something you remember being a part of, but can no longer relate to.
You think you’re fine, when you’re not getting abused everything seems normal, but you just know something isn’t right. It’s not a clear and obvious thing like you’d expect abuse to be — get hit, leave, right?
Looking back, I would rather have swapped the psychological torment, which he used multiple times in a day, with a cut or bruise or another night in hospital.
Those cuts, bruises, and nights in the hospital trying to keep my baby in my belly longer so he had a better chance were physical signs of what was happening, but the emotional symptoms of abuse meant I couldn’t see, feel, hear, or understand that my children and I were being abused.
I’d heard of dissociation and cognitive dissonance having studied psychology, but I couldn’t comprehend it, till I felt it. A trauma bond is created through the process of intermittent reinforcement or being abused, then being praised or supported through the abuse they actually inflicted.
This trauma bond and the dissociation and cognitive dissonance have far greater power than the love or fear that many believe chains victims to their abusers.
Dissociation protects our minds from the damage of extremely painful events. We dissociate or separate ourselves from actions or events that our minds can not handle. It’s the same protective mechanism drug addicts use when denying they have an addiction.
Similarly, cognitive dissonance protects us from facing conflicting thoughts such as ‘knowing that the abuse is not ok’, yet ‘staying and accepting it’, this can be seen when a victim minimizes, re-interprets, and justifies the abuse and the abuser.
Heather Plett discusses another interesting mind trick we play on ourselves called the “tend and befriend” trauma response, common in women, where we would tend to the needs of others and make a friend rather than an enemy, even when the “tended and befriended” do not deserve it.
Such trauma responses can keep people in abusive relationships for years, even when they do leave, if the emotional and neurological dysfunction is not healed, victims will find themselves in a cycle of abusive relationships.
Our neural circuitry is far more malleable as children than in later life. As you can imagine, a child brought up using psychological techniques to protect themselves from abuse has a far greater risk of continuing that cycle into their adult life.
I mention in “Narcissists vs Sociopaths” that one difference between the two disorders is that narcissists do not intentionally go out of their way to harm others. However, narcissistic lack of empathy, arrogance, and intense desire for admiration does harm others and they lack the empathy to be bothered about whether it hurts the other person, or not.
Also, narcissists are emotionally reactive and exploitative, particularly when their ego is under threat, causing aggression which leads to abuse. So, while a person with anti-social personality disorder deliberately hurts others, a person with narcissistic personality disorder hurts others, mostly, in their attempt to maintain their false image. Some common narcissistic (both overt and covert) tactics include:
- Pathological lying.
- Blaming.
- Threatening.
- Isolating.
- Manipulation & Control.
- Projection.
- Triangulation.
- Smear Campaigns.
- Ghosting.
- Cheating.
- Gaslighting.
- Threatening to commit suicide.
- Playing the victim.
These tactics are briefly explained here:
Another strategy that narcissists may employ is playing the perfect partner in front of the victim's family and friends, they may even show excessive interest in pleasing those close to the victim, this prevents the victim from reaching out to family and friends, believing that they might side with the narcissist.
Covert narcissists can seem more like sociopaths because they go to extreme lengths to disguise their excessive self-interest causing considerable harm to their unsuspecting victims as Family & Marriage therapist, Weena Cullins, explains here:
Narcissists are aware of their traits, to an extent, and they also recognize when others perceive their narcissistic traits. People with narcissistic tendencies go to a lot of trouble to hide the pain they cause others, so do not think because they’re suffering from a cluster B personality disorder, that they’ve got an excuse for abuse. There are no excuses for abuse.
I recommend the following from fellow Medium authors, Darlene Lancer and Suzanna Quintana for those suffering from Narcissistic Abuse.
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