All About You
I do find it fascinating that you take everything so personally. You complain about the amount of time which I spend playing a strategy game on my laptop or fiddling with my iphone. I am enjoying playing that game or connecting with people through social media on my Iphone, it is nothing against you. Just because I spend an entire afternoon cleaning, waxing and polishing my car, you go into a sulk. Why? The fact I really like my new car and take pride in keeping it looking good is surely a good thing isn’t it? You automatically assume that it is some kind of slur against you because I am outside buffing the bodywork and not sitting talking to you. I choose to go to the match with a few friends rather than go shopping with you and there is an almighty bust-up. Why is that? I like watching sport and shopping does not really interest me. In fact, I prefer to do my shopping online or if I do go to the stores, I go alone. That way I know what I want, I can go an buy it and then leave. In and out. The best method and preferable to dawdling along behind slow-walking people in a mall. Yet you seem to regard this choice of mine as some kind of stain against your character. It is not.
Even when we have one of our frequent arguments and I hurl insults at you, you always take them to heart. You should not do so. I may criticise your haircut or the jumper you are wearing, I may seize on a character trait and make that a source of a scathing remark against you and you go to pieces. There is no need. I do not actually see you. You are but an object to me and I insult everybody. I have no prejudices, I hate everybody equally. You happen to bear the brunt of these remarks because you spend more time with me. I do the same in the workplace or amongst certain friends. It is not personal to you at all, I am merely pressing the button on the relevant appliance to ensure that I am getting my fix of fuel. For some reason, you descend into a spiral of despair and question your self-esteem and worry about your self-worth. You sit with a trusted circle and recount the torments and insults (why do that? You are just pulling the scab off the wound) as you question why is it you that I am so awful to. It isn’t you. I have no concept of you. You and all the over appliances blur into one. You are machines for the production and provision of fuel. Perhaps if you started to remember that that is the case you would feel less troubled by my behaviour and remarks in the future. Try it, you never know you might just for once stop thinking that it is all about you.
30 thoughts on “All About You”
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This post invokes the emotions I feel when I listen to: ♫ “How do You Feel” by 311 ♫
It’s brutally and I’m a sense .early honest way for you to say it..but I get the meaning and thank you…gotta learn it isn’t wasn’t and will never be me…thnxs for real,grumpybear👍
Or to eat smh
You know we all wake up running, either to be eaten or to say
Thanks HG, mine would tell me always use logic and you will always win. My guess that was my warning cause things got very interesting soon after.
Very much the case RMG.
It never was about me, now was it? No and the above is the perfect illustration to keep that target in their place now isn’t it? I remember my ex telling me, “Oh you can’t pay attention to half what I say, I don’t mean most of what I say anyway, you know I am an idiot!” “I am just teasing you most of the time, just ignore me!” Translation: I am going to continue to hurt your feelings, and I am not responsible for that, don’t ask me to be responsible and don’t complain about it, let me say as I please, and everything will get along just fine.
Thanks for the responses, the support we give each other on this forum is worth more than gold. After all, sanity is everything.
It is crushing to have to admit that your own family have a dysfunctional view of what love means, as in, I will only love you when you fuel me.
Just today, NM text me to ask why haven’t I text much (meaning 5 times a day). I thought where do I start to tell you why I have decided to respond when it damn well suits ME, not just because you expect me too.
Persephone, you are right, Einstein said, insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting to get a different result. They will never be able to give me what I need the most, unconditional love and validation.
Steeviann made me laugh, slip something into the IV. SO tempted.
HG has an amazing ability to know both sides, something that should be applauded. I suggest that we also know both sides. I am not out to convince HG to change, as there Is a great relevance in what HG proposes, If it works, why change anything. If we can remove the emotion and apply logic (as HG does) we too can WIN.
It does NOT mean we become soul murderers, it means we too can take a breath, think, and apply cold hard logic to our situations and be able to say words that we have been trained NOT to say, and that is:
How can I benefit ME?
keep on keeping on xx
Thank you RNM.
So someone else is on the receiving end of this now? Will someone always be? Then why all the hate/malign hoovers directed toward me?
This article is helpful 🙂
Glad you think so TT, it is of course all about the fuel.
Wow, thank you… I think.
I stopped taking things personally many years ago. My son’s behaviour has enabled me to become a master at ignoring unacceptable behaviour, walking away and acting from a cool logically standpoint.
I admit I find it hard work when I could quite cheerfully shake a few people warmly by the throat but I have never been afraid of hard work.
I remind myself all the time that they need to behave like this to feel better about themselves and it is they not I that are the automaton devoid of positive emotions and needing to leech from me.
What is wrong with your son? One of my sons is borderline on the Narc side. I always keep him in check. He can be brutal. I am his main target. He was raised as the golden child. He is well accomplished. Just resigned from his job, making 90K a year at 25 yrs young, to build a company with two other engineers, his degree is in EE. Their brains are very different than the norm.
I think I raised a monster at times. Last week he was being an ass to me and said he had to teach me to accept it so I can handle negative BS as everyone is a yes man around me. Narc speak………I am going to save you.
I don’t think he is a full on Narc, but there is great potential as he loves to be in control of his emotions and tells me regularly to get a grip.
Shit, I just realized I raised a Narc in the making. He doesn’t get jollies from causing tension or does he?
This is a marvelous post. I wish it could just be so simple.Even if someone got it and could react to you properly, then you would change the rules. It is and always will be a lose- lose with your kind.
Question HG, Has anyone gotten it? Has anyone been what you need for more than a moment?
I can feel your wrath all the way across the ocean. I can feel your disdain flowing through the air. I can see the look you would give in utter disgust.
This comes through with your words that you pen to the page.
Nobody has yet gotten it, but many people have been what I needed for more than a moment, every single one of them actually.
Even us? Your loyal Minions? We help. Do we contribute to your needs? Your faithful readers who run to our computers to read what you have posted to bring us closer to the reality of who we thought we loved, wanted to love or just wanted in our lives are only there to hurt us.
Two-way street. You give us what we need and you take from us what you need. I say win-win for us all.
I agree.
Another insightful post by HG. Blurring the lines between N and N Victim. I can see how Normals could read this and believe the NV is at fault. The victim becomes the apparent perpetrator.
I can relate to this post from NM and Twin NB expert ability to make me the bad mad one. I am apparently a selfish exaggerating liar. Projection is a wonderful thing !.
Recently organised home nursing for NM following a major op. Was that right? Of course not. ” I have to sit around all day waiting for the nurse to call, I don’t want an afternoon shower, I want a shower no later than 10am, why cant they come when I want them too, I have SO many things I have to do?” So, not only have I done wrong, the visiting Nurse is a stupid selfish idiot too. Oh, and other patients are also selfish for wanting the nurse to visit them in the morning, as don’t they know NM needs are far greater and she is far sicker than all those other stupid selfish inconsiderate idiots out there.
As we all know, there is no point explaining to NM that the overworked Nurse has many other people to visit and cant make specific times to visit. As the world revolves around them, they just don’t get it.
Naturally when the Nurse arrives, NM proceeds to tell them how wonderful they are and how grateful she is to receive such wonderful care and my personal favourite, “Of course it doesn’t matter you could only come in the afternoon, I am not doing much” WHAT??
Am I hearing things? Nope, just another classic NM way to devalue me, and put up the façade of niceness and charm to everyone else so they leave the house floating on an a cloud of joy, whilst I am filled once again with the emotions of Hate Rage and Resentment.
This is of course is designed to prevent me from telling anyone the truth, as they wouldn’t believe me anyway.
Whist I am very self aware of these tactics, greatly assisted by HG, I cannot for the life of me accept that my own NM deliberately sets me up to fail and devalue me in such a callous way.
Like a lot of us here, thanks to HG, we get the academic process of devaluation, gas lighting and and all the other soul murdering tactics deployed on to us. However, no matter how many times it is explained, nothing will enable me to truly accept the emotional process and reasoning for these behaviours.
In saying that, I have had a decrease in my HRR, due to HG, explaining the reasoning (in narc speak) for these behaviours.
I have been tempted to say to NM, “I am your son, Why do you hate me so much?.
I will never bother of course, as I will be told, as I have been before sob sob “I cry for you every day” howl howl, So, I will be the bad son for upsetting my poor NM by saying such a terrible thing.
What a stunning surprise !!!!
Thanks Rescuer and you are seizing the power through such observations.
Thanks, sometimes I wonder, however your validation is something I know will never come from my family
NM would get a little special cocktail in her IV.
A good plan !!
RNM,
I believe u. U are not the only one. Hopefully u will realize that u cannot move on until u accept the fact that u were an extension of her and nothing more. As crushing as that is, it is the truth. Until u go no contact and realize u are a grown man and deserve your own life without the abuse, u will continue to people please as u are a kind hearted individual. It is hard to be selfish when u were conditioned from birth to jump through hoops for love. Do u ever think this time it will be different? Get off the hamster wheel. U love them both, they don’t love u the same way. they can’t give u something they don’t have. They really don’t have it. They didn’t get it themselves. U are far better off without their approval. Love thy self.
Fm
Keeping things in perspective, to make choices based not on emotion but on the facts of the situation.
Would that make it challenging to get fuel from this person if they could separate their own emotions from the situation and respond instead of reacting with emotion?
Hello RMG, this is one of the central ways of escaping a narcissist. Operate through logic and you will make better decisions. Respond without emotion, you do not provide fuel. Of course, you are chosen for the fact that your traits leave you mired in emotion and providing fuel and you also find it very difficult to escape this based on the manipulations we deploy.
I thought, though, that the carefully honed insults crafted especially for the specific target were designed to make the ‘object’ spiral into despair. Isn’t that the point? Wear the self-esteem down makes the object easier to control and manage.
So there is a sense in which it is personal, to that person. You listen, watch, see where the gaps and vulnerabilities are, and the best place to stick the knife in order to create maximum impact and fuel.
My ex-psychopath never did anything without his wife. When she wasn’t at work, they were “joined at the hip”.