The ABCs of Narcissism 2: the B’s

BDSM, Baiting, Borderline Personality Disorder, Boundaries, Boundary Pushes, Brainwashing and Branding.

Hello! There’s so much to learn about narcissism that, for the moment you finally work out you’ve been a target, victimised and gaslit all this time, I’ve put together a quick reference glossary over a series of articles under each letter of the alphabet to help you understand and begin recovery.

Please note this is a glossary of terms with the briefest of explanations as a very rudimentary introduction to aspects of narcissism for victims who may be trying to understand how they may have been gaslit. They are general and include all possibilities. Their purpose is not to diagnose or label abusers but to help you recognise and give you the current shorthand for destructive patterns, manipulative behaviour and negative personality traits so that you can discuss and put your particular encounter with narcissism down to experience and move on better educated

B is for:

BDSM Bondage and Discipline, Domination and Submission, Sadism and Masochism

There’s the lifestyle popularised in Fifty Shades of Grey, based on mutual interest, consent and respect with the dynamic being an agreed exchange and exploration of power. Then there’s abuse such as we see in the story when Christian has no respect for Anastasia’s boundaries and seeks to manipulate, dominate and control her without ever letting her know where she stands with him or that she has any choice in the matter. In BDSM the submissive calls the shots, outlines boundaries and has the power to end the activity with an agreed safe word. In an abusive relationship the domineering partner takes all the power, their target has never agreed to be their victim. It is not consensual.

Baiting

Like hooking a worm in order to catch a fish, the narcissist will provoke you emotionally to the point that you explode. While you try to justify your outrage/jealousy/anger you are off-kilter and in the game of reacting instead of anticipating and responding as previously discussed. Meanwhile, they remain either cool, calm and collected with no idea why you’re having “one of your episodes”.

They continue switching issues to confuse you while they feed on your reactions, or they outdo you on the emotional front because they “can’t handle” your crazy problems anymore, you need medication/therapy/locking up so that you question your reality. This is classic gaslighting discussed later under G. Your best bet is to ask yourself which emotions they are trying to elicit and for what purpose. There is always an agenda. Then you can start figuring out how to anticipate and respond instead, without feeding them at a cost to your health, happiness and wellbeing. Or you could just cut these people out of your life and spend your time doing things you enjoy.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

The range of behaviours can include poor regulation of emotions with frequent outbursts of anger, impulsive, risky behaviour, intense relationships and manipulation, instability, suicidal ideation and threats of self-harm.

Sounds a lot like Antisocial Personality Disorder doesn’t it? And, as you’ll come across later in this series, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and PTSD. It’s a real shame that these diagnoses are sometimes incorrectly applied, especially when victims of narcissists are so traumatised that their Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is misdiagnosed as BPD because the abuse they’ve suffered at the hands of their victimiser can cause them to act out in this fashion and struggle to identify what is ‘normal’ behaviour. They can be accused of being manipulative as if that’s a ‘sin’ when in fact, if they have resorted to it, like everybody else on the planet who does it to some extent from the cradle, it has been the only way they see to survive an intolerable existence and somehow make it work. The narcissist will then use it to their advantage to reinforce to the victim, friends, family and any source of support for their target, their narrative about how they are really the victim of their in this scenario. See ‘Abuse By Proxy’ and ‘Flying Monkeys’.

Many people find Dialectal Behavioural Therapy (DBT) useful for learning to come to terms with the abuse and understand and express how they feel in healthier ways.

Boundaries

Boundaries are lines in the sand, walls you will not allow to be breached, fences that you self lovingly tend. You are perfectly entitled to draw them up in any way and at any time of your choosing. They set the standard and expectations for how you let yourself be treated.

You may not be aware that such defences exist to be used as you see fit because any emergence of such as you grew up was routinely battered down, or always outlined for you, or been what other people have determined suits their needs for you. You may have always thought that all the abuses you have suffered were a series of isolated events and not realised that there is a pattern and that perpetrators have a clear view of your open access and lack of protective boundaries.

We are not taught as children about healthy boundaries, or to recognise abusive behaviour or relationship red flags, so it’s possible we can spend most of our lives normalising toxic behaviour. Freeing yourself when you can’t see the chains that bind you can take a long time. But it starts with you, putting yourself and your welfare at the centre of your life, moving others out of that centre, building walls to stop them creeping back in, and setting the standards for what you are willing to put up with.

The golden rule for recognising and building healthy boundaries and enjoying the continual changes, adaptations, growth and reinforcing that healthy people develop, is to ask yourself if something is in the least bit irritating. If it is then a boundary has been crossed.

This is particularly hard for victims of narcissism who have been convinced by others that the abuse they’ve suffered “never happened”, that they are the problem, that they have little ability to discern what’s good for them, are poor judges of character, are selfish, can’t take a joke, have little control over their emotions and various other deprecating labels that cause them to doubt their right and ability to manage their own lives.

You have the absolute and irrefutable right to set your own boundaries. You are you, wonderful, unique, fascinating you. Nobody else gets to decide how you are allowed to feel about anything. If they don’t care about how they hurt you or aren’t inclined to listen or change then you have no duty to waste your precious gift of life upon them. Leave or find a way of accommodating their abuse at an emotionally safe distance, but recognise it as abuse and keep building your fortress. They won’t be ever be dissuaded of their right to own you but they may just find an easier target.

It can be useful to picture building walls in your mind and meditate on reinforcing them as you need. There is a kind of feedback loop you build on as you recognise small victories and develop your skills articulating your values and defending them. You will find yourself naturally drifting away from drama and toxic relationships to more edifying and inspiring spaces. Your time becomes too precious to be wasted on what you begin to recognise as non-productive endeavours.

WARNING

When controlling people come up against your new boundaries they won’t just accept them or go away. They will up the ante and stop at nothing, pull every trick in the book to convince you to abandon your progress. They will call you selfish, cruel, mean, insensitive even abusive.

Many of us are scared to stick to our new found standards of acceptable behaviour because we fear the inevitable attack or that we’ll lose the one-sided and exhausting relationship we’re used to. Just remember that losing abusive people and all the negative emotions they bring to our lives is no loss at all. They are stopping you from discovering your true purpose.

Withdraw, get busy with healthy pursuits, limit your exposure and keep repeating your boundaries and eventually, they’ll either get the message or bring the relationship to a head. Either way, you’re the winner, just stick to your guns.

Unless of course there’s violence involved in which case you must plan carefully and seek the aid of the authorities as there’s no reasoning with an abuser just discussion leading to offering up more ammunition to them about how to hurt you. You must escape or be prepared to live with the consequences of giving up your entire existence and all your amazing potential for someone who doesn’t deserve you.

Boundary Pushes

Emotional manipulators will constantly test your boundaries. Small scale inappropriate joking, teasing, criticising, forgetting important dates or appointments, arriving late, touching, language, spending, sarcasm, may not be recognised as such to begin with, just be a confusing annoyance, but will build up to major transgressions if not dealt with. Once they have been pushed back they may retreat and start again with the small scale attacks so you must be vigilant and keep reinforcing your fortress. They are masters at eroding your boundaries over time even if they seem to be behaving well for a while. Remember, it’s all about them and what they want and they can wait, plotting in the darkness if necessary.

Boundary pushes can be easily shrugged off by manipulators or may be accidental/innocent. In all cases, if you don’t make them clear, people won’t know not to make them again.

Brainwashing

You may think that this is the territory of cult leaders and evil regimes but narcissist’s have a warped view of the world that they need us to buy into at all costs too. They are always the innocent victim and we must protect them at all costs and defend them from their “persecutors” that often include us.

They get us to do that by convincing us slowly over years that everything is our fault for some reason. It’s a slow process that erodes our boundaries, self-esteem and grip on reality. If we point out behaviour that contradicts their view of the world or ‘victimhood’, then it simply “never happened”. This is also called Gaslighting, the term made famous by the classic film Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. He convinces his wife that she’s going mad by manipulating objects around the house in order to cover up the fact he’d murdered her aunt and was searching the attic full of her aunt’s belongings for jewellery. While committing the attempted theft, the old gas lights dimmed and brightened as he turned on the lights in the attic which he entered from next door.

Branding

This is when a partner expects, pushes or bullies the other, their target/victim to show their ‘devotion’ to them by getting a permanent mark made upon their body.

Often it’s a tattoo in the name of the abusive partner. It can be a piercing or scarification. It’s an unremovable declaration to the world that their partner owns them.

Sadly the victim is often blind to the truth that all the declaration actually does is announce to the world that they are a duped victim, that the act is rarely if ever reciprocated and that their ‘devotion’ is only one-sided.

A recent example of this can be seen in the NXIVM cult. The leader Keith Ranniere convinced his girlfriends to recruit other women to be their slaves and through blackmail. Part of the ritual involved using an electric cauterising tool to inscribe a symbol on the pubic bone. What they believed to be a symbol about harnessing nature turned out to be his initials.

Love is not ownership and it is conveyed through acts of kindness, supportive words and language, loving and welcome touch, and time spent listening and learning about each other with a view to enhancing the enjoyment of both lives equally.

Click here to continue:

To Start With The A’s click here:

Coming soon:

The ABCs of Narcissism 5: the C’s Part 2

Cognitive Dissonance, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), Crazy-Making, Crumbs, and the Cycle of Narcissistic Abuse.

References and further reading:

Start Here, and Out of the Fog, by Dana Morningstar.

Coercive Control, by Evan Stark

Invisible Chains, by Lisa Aronson Fontes

The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist, by Debbie Mirza

How to Kill a Narcissist, by JH Simon

Boundaries after a Pathological Relationship, by Adelyn Birch