Wednesday, January 28, 2009

How Do They Do It?

I found this to be a truly insightful and inspired piece of writing; I think it is more important to know how they do it than why they do it. This is truly food for thought. A lot of it certainly fits with my experience. ~Invicta

Author: *

Date: October 10, 2000 6:08 AM

Subject: Perhaps not in the overt case.

Welcome to planet psychopath, although entirely human I was raised here and lived most of my life here so let me be your tour guide. While some of these people are not true psychopaths most of their mindset is essentially psychopathic in nature.

To tell a beautiful warm loving woman that it is "her loss" if she declines to supplement the usual diet of pornography and cybersex IS VERBAL ABUSE.

Just not of the overt conventional kind. I also find myself wondering how many of the real people here have suffered pretty conventional verbal abuse and ceased to see it as such?

However politely someone tells you you are useless and inadequate when this is not true, you have been verbally abused. When someone lies to you they use words to abuse you, they steal reality from you. That is verbal abuse.

A lot of these people regard being caught, pinned down by the nature of their actions as an error to be avoided.

They are experts at unmissable implication, manipulating the connotations of everything they say. A favourite game is to use covert abuse, playing on your triggers, you worst fears, comparing you (in a completely invalid way) to that which you most despise, all kinds of games that would mean nothing to an observer, they provoke you into what will be seen as overt abuse. In extreme cases to the point where they can use every system intended to protect your rights as a weapon against you and they do.

Never try to interpret them by the standards that would apply to yourself. That is the biggest mistake you could make.

You know the way that someone ineffectual will sometimes try to make themselves feel smarter by putting YOU down as ineffectual?

The overall, really deep grained, agenda of most of them is to prove themselves warm and human by "proving" (mainly to themselves) that you are as bad as they are or worse.

Always focus on the games AS games, sleight of hand, coercion.

Study HOW they are doing it, not WHY. "Why" won't help you at all, and YOUR WELLBEING is too important to waste time in futility.

I think it is possible that their actual motivation does not translate into normal, healthy human terms at all.

There are many different causes. Nature, injury (physical or deeper), learned behaviour....but once a person lives that way they CANNOT change, because they cannot perceive what it is they must change to. The transition would render them far more helpless than other people. Without having a notion what they are to change TO, I do not see that many would physically survive it.

Within this is a hint of another frequent motivation. That of studying you to "BECOME" you. It doesn't work, because they only capable of perceiving the surface behaviours, not the underlying nature that motivates them. So that everything about you genuinely appears "senseless" and self destructive to them.

At heart they BELIEVE you are just like them, because they cannot conceive of anything else, they have no option.

When you care about your child, they THINK you are just ensuring no one can accuse you of being "uncaring"......as they would be

When you are hurt, they really think you are making a move in a game, raising the stakes.

People often ask, in one way or another "can they be hurt?" I would be more inclined to ask if they can tell the difference between hurting and not hurting. I am not sure they can. They aren't hurting you, they are playing a complex game, your pain is like the reward noise in "packman" or "space invaders" to them, it tells them they are getting ahead. Some get warmer fuzzies than others from it is all. The pain of another is a control point in most games (except they are all played to very individual rules).

hey do not communicate information, they manipulate reactions. Even in the smallest ways. Any information that does pass is incidental, not the point, or the focus of their behaviours.

The worst of it is that they GENUINELY believe you are playing the same game against them, because they cannot conceive of anything beyond that, or any other form of motivation you could possibly have.

What would an N think reading this?

Most probably: "That's a neat line, must see how I can use it".

Or if they pertain to me personally: "Ok, nice one, now......what countermove?"

That is how alien they are. It is also why I advocate isolation from the greater society as soon as it is realistically possible. They won't suffer, they'll hardly notice the difference except in terms of the restriction of movement, and stigma. But a far larger quantity of people in the greater society will cease to suffer, and never suffer again.

That objective would, in itself, be completely meaningless to an N. Because at heart they believe everyone is just like them, playing the same game, they just want to be the winner.

In the meanwhile get yourself free, and if you have time after that, protect anyone you can.

In the past, polio, smallpox were a part of life you had to accept and avoid at all costs, until someone found a way to change that.

"Narcissism", "Antisocial" and all other forms of psychopathic mindset should be seen the same way.

If the one you believed you loved with all your heart were a smallpox carrier, you would not let that one raise your children, nor try to share your life fully with that one.

It IS much the same. Except that a smallpox carrier would be unlikely to attempt to entrap or coerce you.

Unless, of course, he were also an N from planet psychopath.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you - an informative and genuinely helpful article (although some of the gender-biased language could definitely change - what is it with this web and the assumption that bad guys are always male?).

Anonymous said...

Excellent article. I would advise anyone ensnared in a relationship with a narcissist/psychopath to print the above article out, tack it to the wall where they can see it everyday and carry a copy of it in their purse or wallet because it contains what I beleive to be the core truth and most salient aspect of their disorder.

, "...Never try to interpret them by the standards that would apply to yourself. That is the biggest mistake you could make.",

"..The worst of it is that they GENUINELY believe you are playing the same game against them, because they cannot conceive of anything beyond that, or any other form of motivation you could possibly have. "

The narcissist/psychopath is aware that his victim assumes that he feels and has the same motivations as a normal person. HE DOESN'T, AND HE WILL USE THAT ASSUMPTION AGAINST YOU TIME AND TIME AGAIN.

Remember...hurtful, manipulative actions and lying that happens once, twice, maybe even three times is a mistake. WHEN IT HAPPENS REPEATEDLY, OVER AND OVER AGAIN IT'S A PATTERN.

If you want to know what kind of forest you are walking in, you must look at the forest not the tree.

Unknown said...

Thank you for your article. I have recently started seeing a therapist. My 14 yr old daughter's stepmother is a N (this is told me by my therapist). She verbally abuses me and tries to condemn me every time I have tried to open lines of communication with her. My daughter is living with her and my ex is in Afghanistan. My daughter is not speaking to me. I haven't seen her in 3 months. I have joint custody and could force her but I just won't do that. This N has told my daughter things or something causing her to blame me. Should I be worried? what could some of the consequences be? please help.

OnceSmitten said...

One of the ways my ex would degrade my self esteem was to "compliment" me about things that were very low functioning like that I kept my car clean. She once said that she saw that I kept my car clean and that made her think I was a (worthy or valuable, something like that) person but...then went on to tear me down for not providing some servile function. She also once said that "people like me with skills" which in my case was that I was a CAD designer by trade, or in general, people with "trades" were always employable, unlike executives like herself who had to think for a living. Of course she was basically parasitic in her lifestyle and unemployed. I guess her greatness was just overlooked by the crass and vulgar working class.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for an incredibly helpful blog. I just ended a relationship with an N, and reading this blog and several books on narcissism and abuse have helped me to understand what was happening, and what I need to do to recover. Who knows how long I would have continued being confused and abused without having these references available to enlighten me. (I also recognized my violent, abusive father as having NPD.)

More specifically, thank you for validating my very real urge to "protect anyone [I] can."

Most of my friends don't understand my very urgent desire to warn the woman who my ex is already aggressively pursuing. Having experienced the extensive misery he can cause after charming a woman into falling for him, and having evidence that he treated his previous girlfriend the same abusive way as he treated me, I would feel guilty if I didn't make an effort to warn this other woman. Thankfully, with modern technology, I have a huge pile of evidence of his lying and abusive ways, so she doesn't just have to take my word on anything.

Anyway, thanks again!

Rowan said...

Thank you very much.
80 - 90% of this applies to my step father. I am saddened that there is nothing that you can really do to help the situation other than to get out of it.
As you said: hurtful, manipulative actions are a pattern when it keeps happening. I've had to accept that this is the way he is.
I got a taste of overt, gloves off, narcissim today. After years of "compliments" and subtle abuse and bullying he was confronted. That mask flew off in an instant and we all saw the twisted individual inside.

Anonymous said...

This is brilliant:

"Study HOW they are doing it, not WHY. "Why" won't help you at all, and YOUR WELLBEING is too important to waste time in futility."

I spent many years understanding WHY my mother was the way she was (abusive upbringing), and that kept me stuck in guilt instead of focusing on the way she was treating me (emotionally abusive).

Also, thinking about HOW they are doing it brought to mind one of her arguing tactics. You simply cannot win a point with her because she will just jump tracks illogically and keep jumping around until you give up and stop trying to win the point. All she cares about is winning. Not winning the point but winning the argument. She THINKS she has won just because you have given up. All she has done is overpower you.

And then she chuckles in this throaty sinister way and applauds herself for being so smart.

Anonymous said...

I finally realized my wife of 30 years is a N, and that she didn't really care about the content of an argument and wouldn't remember what the argument was about, it was just important for her to win right then. I realize now that I just need to break this off and get away.

Anonymous said...

When we were breaking up, my N told me that I "can be good and great". I am so happy I answered: "No, I AM good and great, it's my personality." And he kept on talking that I wasn't good and great but that I could be. It's because I was good for him when I forgave everything he did and tried to solve problems, but when I wouldn't step back, when I stood my ground - he told me that.