Narcissistic Personality - Forcing Submission to Abuse

Forcing Submission to Abuse

Home Contents

Life with a narcissist is a never-ending put-down. How does he or she force the other members of the family to put up with it?

The narcissist just does whatever it takes to make them submit to her abuse. Any complaint goes in one ear and out the other, as if unhearing it annihilates it. Then the narcissist flies in the face of the complaint by repeating the offense, more forcefully and with contempt. She thus trains her family to submit by teaching them that demanding better treatment only gets them worse treatment.

What if that doesn't work? To repulse any further insistence that she treat them with respect, she just throws a temper tantrum.

One might as well try to talk into the blast of a foghorn. Sheer volume and irrationality can silence the other party, because nobody beyond the age of reason will degrade themselves by getting down to her three-year-old spoiled-brat-throwing-a-fit level to argue with her. Nonetheless, terror tactics, like hateful looks and a threatening posture in a menacing advance, or even windmilling fists, may be part of the tantrum.

Every narcissist I have known has such uncanny skill in perverting the course of logic that every statement one makes bounces off his or her forehead twisted a full 180 degrees. They grab some word near the front of your sentence and blast off with it in God-knows-what direction to yell you down in a whirlwind of bewilderment.

One might as well argue with a cantankerous three-year-old.

And the Projection Machine gets going like crazy. I mean really crazy.

For example, here's how one man I knew reacted to any complaint about his insulting treatment of others or his jumping all over his kid for trying to get attention: he always bawled "WAAH!" Get off my BAAAAACK!"

That's right, he told the jumped on party to get off his back!

Presumably this crackpot thought he was imitating the person complaining to him about his insulting treatment of her. He was making her out to be the big baby ... in the very act of bawling like a big baby for her to get off his baaaaack! Projection of his big babyhood in the very act of being a big baby.

So, give it up. Narcissists do not permit you to communicate with them. They pervert everything and just blast it back in your face. Not one word you say can get through that wall of flak. To twist everything a full 180 degrees, they use anti-rationality and acting crazy as debating tactics.

I think they have a fear of communication taking place and frantically try to block it. So, trying to have a talk with them makes as much sense as trying to have a talk with a dumb beast.

You get nothing but Nimrodian nonsense out of them. It's enough to make the head spin. The offender makes the offended the offender. There's no end to this shit. There is no getting through that irrational wall of flak. They will do anything to make you give up and be silent.

Presumably that's because, as I mentioned above, narcissists want their unanswered say. When they accuse you, you mustn't answer the accusation. When they insult you, you mustn't answer to tell them not to insult you. When they treat you abusively, you mustn't answer to complain about it. You must shut up and docilely submit to it.

For, remember, you are worthy of NO attention, no regard, no consideration, and so forth. They won't even listen to you speak.

Narcissists are desperate to shut you up so you don't answer them, lest human voices wake them there in the Land of Pretend and they drown.

How desperate? So desperate that they go nuts if you won't shut up. From what I've seen and heard, it's common for them to threaten to call the police on a family member who won't just shut up and take it but insists on a chance to speak.

To deny you your right to speak, the narcissist just blabbers at the top of her lungs to drown you out. Or refuses to stay put and listen. She obdurately refuses to let you say anything she doesn't want you say. If it's not in her script, she won't let you say it.

You are supposed to shut up and just bend over for her abuse, to play along and pretend with her that she is God Almighty and you are dirt who deserves to be treated like that.

Do it or she will get so obnoxious that it will make you scream.

Narcissists throw temper tantrums because their personality development was arrested (at least in some aspects) at the stage of three-year-old. Again, let's remember what Mark Twain said about an infant's temper tantrum:

I was nine days old at the time, and had noticed that if a pin was sticking in me and I advertised it in the usual fashion, I was lovingly petted and coddled and pitied in a most agreeable way and got a ration between meals besides. It was human nature to want to get these riches, and I fell. I lied about the pin — advertising one when there wasn't any.

In other words, a temper tantrum is just a baby's lie. Baby acts enraged, like something is killing him. Why? To command your attention and control your behavior.

You can tell it's a lie — a melodramatic acting job — because Baby turns it on and off as if by throwing a switch. It's just his way of saying, "Don't go there" when you do something other than he wants you to. His way of saying, "Pet and coddle and humor me if you want any peace."

That's exactly what a narcissist does. And, like an infant, he is liable to hit you in one of his fits — in the same mindless state of mind as an infant hits its mother: as though you are but an object, a naughty toy, not a human being.

So, in a crucible, such as a home, the only way to coexist with a narcissist is to just let the brat have his way. He wants all the toys in his corner of the room so that nobody else can have any.

Often he is the man of the family. Since nothing short of beating him up for it could make him share his drug, his wife and children have no recourse. Nevertheless, if the man of the family is a real man, who will not use physical force on a woman or child, a narcissistic wife can be just as big a bully as the stereotypical narcissistic father.

The situation is better today, now that we are rid of the religious and social taboos against divorce that formerly doomed a narcissist's family to the hell that is his home. Also, today women have earning power, which allows them to escape without condemning their children to poverty. Nonetheless, the narcissists I have known had ingenious, even diabolical ways of trapping their spouse and making him or her financially dependent. For example, they immediately get their spouse pregnant and keep her pregnant so that, by the time Dr. Jekyll's mask is off, she has several babies and no job. Or, they seek out a woman who already has several young children, heroically insist that she quit working, and cunningly manipulate the situation to burn the bridges behind her. Or they stealthily calumniate their prey to get them fired and destroy their career, then play the part of a rescuer to support them. The prey is usually a spouse, but it can be a child, a sibling, a parent, or any other unfortunate person who can't just walk away.

Though allowing a narcissist to get away with it is a big mistake, people do this because of their GOOD qualities. Indeed, the narcissist preys on the good qualities of normal, decent people. It is their GOODNESS that betrays them.

That's because normal, decent people don't like to fight. Also, they are rational and therefore know that the narcissist himself is the one degraded by the stupid game he plays, not them. Moreover, they have self-respect, so they can't bring themselves to stoop to the level he brings an argument down to. So, they rise above it, allowing the overgrown child to have his way in treating them without respect.

Unfortunately, thus, they spoil the brat, teaching him that his tactics work.

Since he can't live up to the basic standards of decency, they allow God the lower set of standards he needs, expecting no better behavior from him. Quite correctly, they see that he is inferior and incapable of better behavior. But there is a terrible pitfall in thus allowing him to relate to them inappropriately, as though he deserves all attention and they are insignificant. Thus, the whole family engages in tragic role playing that insidiously stamps its face on their character.

No wonder the narcissist gets grandiose delusions and believes that he really is something special. No wonder he takes on a dominant character becomes a domineering person.

And no wonder that his family becomes docile, even to the point of reduction to a state of victimhood. In fact, in a Christian society, they are pressured by outside forces to do so, because their anger (which is a feeling, not an act of the free will) is somehow regarded as a sin, and docile victimhood is somehow touted as a Christian virtue. Though it takes strong people to take narcissistic abuse, submitting docilely to it is bad for the backbone.

And the double standard thus established is insidious. By expecting no better behavior from the narcissist, his family makes him infallible. That is, he cannot be faulted for anything he does. So, who is to blame for his behavior then? You guessed it — the victim.

© 2004 � 2008, Kathleen Krajco � all rights reserved worldwide.
The URL of this page is: http://www.narcissism.operationdoubles.com/forcingsubmissiontoabuse.htm.
It was last updated on 3/9/2008.
SITEMAP | INDEX
Email a friend about this site.