POWER by Shahida Arabi is a incredible read into living and healing from narcissist abuse. It’s covert and insidious way of how it destroys your life and how you can begin to heal from it and create a thriving positive life. Below are (a lot) of my favorite quotations from the book. 

 

The children who become narcissistic are often: children of narcissistic parents, adopted children who are overindulged by their adoptive parent, children of successful parents, especially is the child lacks the same ability as their parents, overindulged, wealthy children, and children of divorce. 

Narcissism can be produced by overvaluation of the child, allowing the child to remain like a child forever without any consequences or without any basis in objective reality for their presumed perfection. 

Observe the warrior who has walked through fire and survived, time and time again, and lived to tell the tale. Those who can rebuild themselves from the light of their own strength and willpower are truly the powerful ones. 

This story begins with a well-constructed mask and premeditated murder. 

When the mask slips, you notice that something is not quite right. You rationalize it and minimize it hoping it was just an off-color comment or a misunderstanding. You dismiss their rage as “a bad day”. 

As time goes on, there is engineering of a new false reality for you to live in where you are doubtful of your own inner voice. They begin to twist and turn your strengths into flaws, your talents into travesties, your compassion into naivete. Their mind is a playground of malice. 

They hope their intermittent kindness will numb the cruelty of the callous words and the actions that add up bit by bit to subtract from your daily joy. 

They rejoice in the gradual slump of your shoulders as they begin to feast on your pain. The virus has found a host; the leech has secured a new life source. 

They can operate in extremely manipulative ways within the context of intimate relationships due to their deceitfulness, lack of empathy, and their tendency to be interpersonally exploitative. 

Narcissists mirror and mimic their potential supply’s feelings, values, hobbies and interests to manufacture this “soulmate” effect. They “love bomb” their partners, devalue them, then discard them. That is narcissistic abuse.  

You have to understand that the man or woman in the beginning of the relationship never truly existed. 

Gaslighting is a technique abusers use to convince you that your perception of the abuse is inaccurate. It is a tactic where they replace factual information with false information. They gaslight their partners into believing the abuse isn’t real by denying, minimizing, or rationalizing the abuse. They also deflect any conversations about accountability using circular conversations and word salad to avoid being held accountable for their actions. It works to distort and erode your sense of reality; it eats away at your ability to trust yourself and inevitably disables you from feeling justified in calling out abuse and mistreatment. 

Projection is another tactic used by narcissists. It is a defense mechanism used to displace responsibility. Instead of admitting that self-improvement may be in order, they prefer that their victims take responsibility for their behavior and feel ashamed of themselves. They project any toxic shame they have about themselves onto another. 

They blameshift and project their malignant traits onto their partners. They play the “blameshift game” where the world at large is blamed for everything that’s wrong with them.  They use a false charismatic self to make their victim look like the “crazy” ones. It’s almost as if they hand off their own traits and shortcomings to their victims as if to say, “Here, take my pathology. I don’t want it”. 

Be prepared for epic mindfuckery rather than conversational mindfulness. They discredit, confuse and frustrate you, distract you from the main problem and make you feel guilty. DO NOT FEED THE NARCISSIST SUPPLY! Instead- supply yourself with the confirmation that their abusive behavior is the problem, not you. 

They plant the very seeds in your mind that will lead you to your own destruction. 

A narcissistic abuser can lead survivors to feel depressed, anxious, constantly on edge, and worthless. 

They will covertly and overtly put you down through cruel verbal abuse and manipulative behaviors to isolate and demean you. 

A narcissist will literally translate your strengths into perceived flaws. Once you were “confident and sexy”, but now you’re “cocky and vain”.” They will degrade, minimize, and ignore what you accomplish, now acting as if it means nothing to them and as if it is of little importance or value to the world. 

They will threaten to ruin your reputation and they will often sabotage major events as well as support networks you may have, attempting to turn everyone against you. They seek to destroy you in every way possible so that you, in turn, destroy and sabotage yourself. They have ludicrous expectations. 

Narcissistic abuse is rife with emotional neglect, stealth, and unbelievable acts of murder and violence- only, most of it can never be traced back to the perpetrator because there may be no visible bloodshed. This abuse is brimming with psychological mind games. 

The victim’s choice to stay in the relationship may not be a choice led by agency, but by fear. They may threaten to leave the victim or ruin the victims life in some way if you do not comply with their wishes. 

They control every aspect of their partner’s life to the point where they isolate them from family and friends. This includes sabotaging the victim’s friendships, familial relationships, important life events or your goals and aspirations. 

They create a sense of chronic insecurity in their victims, causing the victim to walk on eggshells and increase their efforts to please their abusive partner. Narcissists escape accountability for their actions. 

They are masters of rewriting reality so that YOU appear to be the abuser rather than them. 

The cognitive dissonance that results in being in love with an emotional predator is enhanced by the false mask the narcissist presents to the world. 

With a malignant, abusive narcissist, it couldn’t have worked out, no matter what. 

The victim is left wondering how a person could lack basic empathy, respect, and compassion. 

Narcissists manipulate their victims back into the relationship or into interacting with them again in order to maintain power and control, not because they actually care about the victim. 

Narcissists convince their partners that they are the pathological ones in need of help, which further gaslights them into thinking that they are the problem in the relationship. 

If you bring up to a narcissist abuser that their behavior is unacceptable for example, they will often make blanket generalizations about your hypersensitivity  or say something like, “You’re always too sensitive”. It’s possible that you are oversensitive at times, but it is also possible that the abuser is also insensitive and cruel the majority of the time. 

They deliberately misrepresent your thoughts and feelings to the point of absurdity. They take your lived experiences and translate them into character flaws. They invalidate your right to have thoughts and emotions. They create diversion and cognitive distortions and are notorious for putting words in your mouth. 

So long as a person can blameshift and digress from their own behavior, they have succeeded in convincing you that you should be “shamed” for giving them any sort of realistic feedback. 

The difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism is the presence of a personal attack and impossible standards. 

They point out one irrelevant fact or one thing you did wrong and develop a hyperfocus on it to divert. 

They undermine your credibility and intelligence in any way they possibly can. They sneak in covert and overt put downs about your qualities. They may even isolate you from friends and family and make you financially dependent on them. You’re essentially trained like Pavlov’s dogs, over time to become afraid of doing the very things that once made your life fulfilling. 

Your happiness represents everything they feel they cannot have in their emotionally shallow lives.

If you learn that you can get validation, respect and love from other sources besides the toxic person, what’s to keep you from leaving them? To toxic people, a little conditioning can go a long way to keep you walking on eggshells and falling just short or your big dreams. 

If they can’t control the way you see yourself, then they start to control how others see you. A smear campaign is launched to sabotage your reputation and slander your name so that you won’t have a support network to fall back on. 

A victim is an abusive relationship with a narcissist often doesn’t know what’s being said about them during the relationship, but they eventually find out the falsehoods shortly after they’ve been discarded. 

You will one day be the ex-partner they degrade to their new source of supply. 

Another diversion tactic they use is known as aggressive jabs disguised as jokes. They make malicious remarks at your expense. They say they are dressed up as “just jokes” so that they can get away with saying appalling things while still maintaining an innocent, cool demeanor. If you say anything back, you are accused of having no sense of humor. It’s a way to divert from their cruelty and onto your perceived sensitivity. 

They will often say, you are “too sensitive”. 

They are surgeons of madness, they seek to exacerbate wounds, not heal them. 

They love to maintain control in whatever way they can. They isolate you, maintain control over your finances and social networks. 

They have a need to be the best. They are usually pompous critics, usually incapable of the same efforts they criticize in others. 

Their contemptuous smirk and sadistic gleam in their eyes gives them away. A toxic person gains pleasure from hurting you and being able to get away with it. 

They live for the power because it is the only power they have in their empty lives. As the relationship moves forward, they begin to devalue their victims. 

 

1 in 25 people in the US are estimated to be sociopaths. They are unable to empathize with others. It can be eerily by how normal they may seem. 

It is unsettling to know that the one who purports to love and care about you, actually cannot stand seeing you happy. They feel entitled to sabotage you. It is like being a frog in slowly boiling water- you don’t realize what you’re in for until it’s too late. It can take years to understand what is going on, how you are being gaslighted, and many of us don’t want to believe our partners who claim to love us are capable of such deceit and malice. 

Is it any wonder it takes almost forever for victims to extricate themselves from a malignant person who continually manipulates them?

All of their victims are still objects, still sources of supply.

Criteria for a malignant narcissist

• Never admits to being wrong
• Avoids emotions, empathy and accountability
• Rages if anyone challenges their false sense of superiority
• Childish when they don’t get their way
• Instills doubt in their victims
• Stonewalls during conflicts
• Smears and slanders you
• In denial and gaslights you
• Subjects you to the silent treatment
• Triangulates you and tears you down

Malignant narcissistic abusers know exactly what they’re doing- and they like it. Narcissistic Personality Disorder reveals the characteristics and traits of very low empathy, remorse, callous indifference and sadistic pleasure in harming others. 

Narcissists are highly entitled and convey a false sense of superiority that inevitably translates into dysfunctional, abusive patterns in intimate relationships. They use gaslighting, emotional invalidation, minimization, and rationalization. They know exactly how to manage their emotions and control themselves depending on what they need. 

You become their main source of supply- their daily emotional punching bag.

Partners of abusive narcissists show way too much compassion for their abusers and often remain in the abusive cycle so long that they don’t even know who they are by the end of it. 

New research has confirmed that narcissism in children can be caused by overvaluing and spoiling children. Parents who overvalued their children by telling them how special they were actually produced narcissistic children. Children internalized parents’ inflated views of them (i.e. ‘I am superior to others’ and ‘I am entitled to privileges’). NPD is something that is birthed during childhood, probably through an interaction between an existing biological predisposition and environmental factors. These individuals with a personality disorder subject victims to an extreme, chronic devaluation, control, sabotage, and disrespect. 

Overbearing and controlling parents are known to frequently violate the boundaries of their children as well as their privacy. They excessively attempt to control the child’s interests, hobbies, aspirations, relationships and even personality traits through manipulation, threats, as well as verbal, physical or sometimes even sexual abuse. Never allowed to be independent agents, children of narcissistic parents were fed the blue pill of compliance in childhood. 

The emotional and psychological battery children of narcissistic parents endure when going against the expectations and beliefs of the family can be incredibly damaging and have life-long effects on their self image, their agency, and their faith in themselves. 

Accountability for abusers is needed because narcissists don’t respond to empathy, compassion or second chances. They respond to potential consequences. 

Nothing is ever good enough for the narcissist. 

If one must interact with the abuser, they learn the skill of grey rocking. 

Seeing the pain in your face decreases the pain they feel because of the lack of soul they have. Pathological envy is relieved temporarily because for however long the victims’ pain lasts, they feel superior. Their harm is to deliberately confuse, gaslight, distort your sense of self which they have none of. It is about maintaining constant control. 

Extreme narcissists (malignant narcissists & psychopaths) do deliberately and premeditatedly cause harm- and they enjoy it. They love hurting people as a form of narcissistic supply. Now, that is downright devious. 

Control trolling involves covertly putting someone down with an air of contemptuous, condescending “concern”- which barely disguises the knowing smirk and sadistic glint in a narcissist’s eyes when they do it. When they do this, they’re looking to get in a subtle dig without you holding them accountable for it and looking for an easy way to hold you down when you’re climbing to the top or daring to feel too good about yourself. 

Don’t share your success too often unless you want them trying to sabotage it. To narcissists, someone else’s destruction is their own personal win. 

The Debbie Downer Minimizer serves to deflate your joy. It can range from reminding you of what you still haven’t accomplished (“Congrats on the new job. Now you can focus on getting married?”)

Narcissists have a chronic pattern of manipulation, deceit combined with a lack of empathy and remorse for their actions. This type of behavior is intentional, sadistic, and often premeditated. Excessive flattery and attention from a charming manipulator is actually a form of control because it keeps you dependent on their praise. They have a sense of entitlement to your time and presence without regard for your personal preferences, desires, or needs. When your “no” always seems like a negotiation to someone you’re dating….BEWARE. 

Covert manipulators are quite gifted at provocation. As they learn more about you, they are investigating your weak spots and catering their comments towards what they know will hurt you the most. Knowing you’re triggered by their comments gives them a sadistic sense of satisfaction that alleviates their secret sense of inferiority and strokes their delusions of grandeur, control and aptitude. Having control over your emotions also gives them the power to effectively manipulate you and convince you that you don’t deserve any better. 

What was once “playful” sarcasm, now becomes frequent emotional terrorism that questions your right to have an opinion that challenges theirs. 

Gaslighting over time becomes a complex type of psychological torture in which the victim starts to mistrust his or her perceptions of the covert abuse and feels unable to trust their own reality. 

The projection and gaslighting of narcissists is so adept, so sneaky, so conniving, and so utterly convincing, that you are often led to apologize for being alive at all. 

Narcissists are masters of moving the goal posts so that nothing their victims do is ever enough. 

Excessively catering to someone else’s needs before your own is a recipe for a great deal of resentment and lack of fulfillment down the road. Essentially, we need to “love-bomb” ourselves. 

Beware of the superficial charm- “I’ve never felt this way about anyone else,” on a first of second date is not only premature, it’s most likely a lie to impress you. 

As children of narcissistic parents, we internalize the idea that there is always someone better, and you must beat them-starting with your own siblings. Children of narcissistic parents are often turned against their siblings in a competition to vie for the affection and love they always craved but never received. Usually there is a golden child and a scapegoat. Scape-goated rebel children are often truth-seekers who desire an authentic connection with their family members, but fail to remain silent about the abuse that occurs when they do not meet the absurd expectations of their parents. 

Abusers engage in black and white thinking and this results in emotional polarization in the ways they view you. You’re either “the one” when you’re meeting their needs or you’re suddenly the villain if you disappoint them in any way or threaten their fragile sense of superiority. Beware of this “hot and cold” behavior. The abuser gets to have you on your “best behavior” without changing his or her own behavior. 

Malignant narcissists rarely take full responsibility for their actions and avoid being held accountable whenever possible. They have a shallow range of emotions. 

What is it about invisible battle wounds that we don’t take seriously, especially when it affects the quality of our lives, our happiness, our security, our confidence- everything that makes life worth living in the first place? Why we acted the way we did in an abusive situation is one of the first steps to dissolving some of the toxic self-blame that prevents us from forgiving ourselves and causes us to judge ourselves harshly. 

When trauma survivors encounter stimuli that remind them of their trauma, regardless of how many years have passed, the amygdala reacts as if they are re-experiencing the same event. Traumatic memories are also stored in different parts of the brain than those associated with the reasoning parts of the brain. Trauma can shrink the hippocampus and the amygdala, which affects emotion, memory, and learning. 

Narcissistic or antisocial abusers are masters of playing mind games and covert manipulation. They deny the abuse through gaslighting and present a false image to the world. Survivors are then subjected to a battle within their own minds about whether the reality they experience is truly abuse. A type of cognitive dissonance that society seems to encourage by engaging in victim-blaming. Remember that abusers present a false, charming self to the world and their true self is exposed primarily to their victims after a certain amount of investment has already been placed in the relationship. They use mirroring, love-bombing, devaluing, demeaning, and hurting the victim. 

Narcissists and sociopaths deliberately deceive others with a false mask in the early stages of a relationship. Once they have their partners sufficiently hooked, they begin to “devalue” them and mistreat them in a way that is quite horrific. 

The belittling, condescending remarks and the physical violence abusers subject their victims to leads to a sense of learned helplessness and self-doubt. Abusers manipulate the victims because they enjoy the feelings of power and control. They feel particular joy at bringing down anyone whose accomplishments and traits they envy to reinforce their false sense of superiority. 

Ending the relationship is made even more difficult if trauma from previous relationships or childhood exists. Children who grow up witnessing domestic violence within their own families have been reported to more likely be victims of abusive relationships themselves. After the ending of an abusive relationship, survivors have the great privilege of uncovering their past traumas and the trauma they’ve just experienced and begin to work through them. The ending of this relationship is actually a golden opportunity to heal from the wounds that were never healed in the first place. 

Narcissists don’t just “give” anything freely- they give in order to receive and what they most like to receive is control over the victim. Two main ways a narcissist can use money as a way to control you. Voluntary excessive giving followed by a “you owe me” attitude and the second is through excessive stinginess and an “I’ll give you an allowance attitude”. Make no mistake: a narcissist accounts for every single cent you “owe” them in their delusional minds. It is not really about the money or the gifts. It’s about power. 

If you are a survivor of Complex PTSD you have often experienced the worst of both worlds. Being abused in childhood, only to later re-experience the same abuse in adulthood. 

They try to get their victims back by using fake displays of remorse or shallow apologies that never incorporate changes in behavior or empathy for the victim. 

The entire relationship with a narcissist, a sociopath, or a psychopath is one big set up for you to fail. The moving goal posts, the contradictory words, the compliments merged with callous cruelty- are all deliberately staged so that you view your successes as missteps and your life outside of the narcissist as a false reality, when it is in fact, the other way around. 

Hurting people is a choice. Make no mistake: you did not deserve what you endured. They pathologize and invalidate our emotions to the point where we are left voiceless. When a toxic person love-bombs us and later devalues us, it results in the reinforcing of those wounds as well as new emotional injuries that maim us. We learn to become conditioned to the crumbs of highly conditional love and approval, while expecting much less in the arenas of decency and respect. 

You don’t have to live in someone else’s cesspool of dysfunction. 

Remember, highly manipulative people don’t respond to empathy or compassion. They respond to consequences. 

You learn about boundaries and your values. You recognize the value of authentic people, those rare breeds who wear their heart on their sleeve and bleed integrity instead of exploit that quality in others. When you’ve been through something horrific like this, at the very least you are owed the fruits of its wisdom and the drive it provides you to kick some serious ass. Because there’s nothing more powerful than a survivor tapping into his or her power. There is nothing more powerful than a survivor being motivated to reach their maximum level of success, self-development and self-love- by the very bullies who attempted to disempower them. 

Remember: I may not be where I want to be, but I’ll get there somehow. Where there’s a strong will, there’s a definite way. I will survive. I will thrive. I am the source of my own power. Channel the trauma into transformation!

To heal you need to love and nourish yourself. You will begin to see how capable and resilient you are. You will begin to rely on yourself and those worthy of your trust. You only deserve the good people in your life and while the experiences you had were unfair and you in no way deserved them, you can still use them and channel them into your greatest victories! 

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