The Stare
The eyes feature prominently in an engagement with another person. You look into someone’s eyes to read them, to allow them to read you, you look away from someone in order to convey certain emotions, you fail to meet somebody’s gaze to convey others. I have written about the eyes of our kind previously but let us turn to a specific element of the use of eyes in the narcissistic dynamic and that is the stare.
Ordinarily, staring at another person is considered to be rude and ill-mannered, although it may denote fascination and even infatuation, but even that stare from a besotted admirer can be regarded as rude, never mind the unending gaze of a passer-by who cannot believe what he or she is witnessing. The stare when deployed by our kind takes on a different application altogether and it manifests at different times during your engagement with us.
- The Stare in Seduction
It is not used by all of our kind, but if you have been subjected to it, you will know it and you will remember it well. It was the time when those brilliant blue eyes locked with your own eyes and stared deep inside of you. Those flashing emerald eyes appeared transfixed as they stared at you. The rich brown eyes which seemed to melt as they gazed at you UNwavering. Whatever colour our eyes are, when you first received that seductive stare, the colour seemed to become brighter, the light shone in them and the intensity of our gaze was immense. It was not so much as being looked at, but rather an event in itself. Our steady stare was unusual as you probably had not experienced it from anyone else previously. You wanted to look away, torn between a sense of discomfort but the mesmerising quality of our eyes kept you looking back into them.
At that moment, our relentless gaze told you that you and only you mattered. There was nothing else of consequence in the universe. The background drained away, the surrounding sounds became muted and all distractions were removed. We wanted to show you that our devotion to you was beyond anything else. Only by allowing us to stare at you for such a long time were we able to convey the depths of our love, the vastness of our desire for you, the sheer scale of our need to be with you. Time slowed and then stood still, your skin tingled from the experience of this tantalising stare. Your breath caught in your lungs, your face seemed to flush and the wave of addiction washed across you, sending a shiver up and down your spine, around your neck and twisting your stomach. In that instant we became your universe as we showed you the world in our eyes.
Yet, what you really looked on as those two eyes continued to bore deep into you, was yourself. We commenced this engagement by knowing that to stare at you for an unconventional length of time would make you feel both uncomfortable and captivated so that you would then show us what was in your eyes. You would reveal to us your desire, your love, your hopes, your wants and your dedication. All we did was mirror back at you what you showed to us, amplified through the auspices of the mimicry for which we have become known. In that moment as we held your gaze from across the table, or after that kiss, or as we lay on top of you, we showed you yourself and thus sowed the seeds that caused you to fall in love with us, but really it was with yourself. That is why your love became something beyond anything that you had ever experienced before. That is why it was deep, powerful and absolute, because your subconscious saw what it wanted to see and this fired-up powerful and immense responses in you.
The world whirled in our eyes, your world. We offered limitless possibilities through the promise we mirrored back at you and by keeping you in this gaze we told you that we wanted you above anything and everything else. We wanted you. We wanted you. We wanted YOU.
- The Stare in Devaluation: Neutrality
In ‘Why Does He Seem Like A Different Person’, I explained about the stranger setting where the person who once lit up your life, becomes like a stranger, almost robotic. This is a change which occurs as the devaluation begins. It is not always present as some of our kind move straight into the dark abuses of the devaluation from the off, but there is a precursor to this when the person who once walked in with a cheery smile and a kiss, just enters and sits down, devoid of any prevailing emotion.
If you experience this, then you may also experience the stare at this juncture. This will be a hollow gaze which is accentuated by the blank expression that accompanies it. It is not a look of confusion or misapprehension; it is not a look of dimwittedness but is instead the empty stare of an empty person. You are looking at the void that exists within all of our kind. This represents the crossroads. The seductive stare glowed, fizzed and shone with the fabricated positive emotions which would cause you to respond with positive fuel. That has gone. The darkness of the devaluation has not yet commenced and its drawing of the negative fuel. Instead, you are looking at the in-between. The eyes which are devoid of warmth or hatred, empty of passion or malice, just a blank stare which conveys the void within.
This will cause you to become confused. It will have you ask whether everything is alright and have you wondering what has happened. You will be mystified as to where those mesmeric and scintillating gazes have gone. Why are you no longer looked at with that piercing and uplifting look? Where have we gone? If we had a soul, it is as if it has been sucked from within us, leaving only this husk behind. You cannot complain that you are being badly treated, since no abuses have yet been deployed against you. This empty and robotic stare is a warning of what is to come and should you see it in those you engage with, heed it and make good your departure because it is signaling to you that a far worse stare awaits you.
- The Stare in Devaluation: Malice
This, perhaps, is the stare that most associate with our kind. When you are subjected to our malicious stare, our eyes darken, emphasised by the contortion of our features which makes us appear like something else. The glowing greens, brilliant blues and blissful browns have vanished. The glinting grey eyes are no more, the halcyon hazel has been banished and instead a dark and glowering black has taken their place.
This gaze will cause you to shrink back under its impact. The hatred that is embodied in the ink darkness will turn you cold, send ice through your heart and is enough to even cause you to burst into tears. Terror will grip you because when this stare is deployed against you, you are seeing the evil in our core. The pure, unadulterated hatred which we have for you. It is seething, dense and vicious. It bears down on you, reminding you of your weaknesses and vulnerabilities, a blackened glare which keeps on driving at you, pressing down on you, forcing you to feel small and wretched.
You may have caught the occasional malicious glance from us, just a flash of hatred, but that is something else. Those glimpses were warnings which could only be used for an instant to avoid detection by third parties and the fracturing of the façade. This is a stare. Sometimes it may be accompanied by hissed words of threat and insult. Sometimes it is cloaked in silence, the balefulness a clear warning that a period of silence will now be visiting you.
The person that you thought we were will be utterly absent. Your world has been annihilated in an instant and replaced by two orbs of glinting black, which tell you that you are hated. Totally hated and that much worse will be visited on you in conjunction with this stare of concentrated evil.
- The Stare in the Discard
This is perhaps witnessed if you are actually told of your discard. More often, it appears post discard when you try to see us, to plead with us for answers, to beg us to take you back and so forth. This stare is one of pure contempt. Disdain and distaste for you. How on earth did we come to couple with one so weak, so pathetic and so disgusting as you. You make us shudder to think that we once even looked at you with favour, love and longing. The shame we feel at choosing someone like you is thrust to one side to be overridden by a contemptuous stare, that is designed to weaken you in your tracks and tell you that in no uncertain terms we want nothing to do with you. We have someone far better. This stare is to urge you to keep away and to forbid you from reminding us that we once promised you the world. We do not want to remember such matters. Somebody else receives those promises now. You are an unfortunate reminder of a part of us which we prefer to keep locked away and this stare conveys this through contempt and loathing.
- The Stare in the Hoover
The Malign Follow-Up Hoover as you would expect applies the same approach as the malicious stare detailed above. Should we make contact with you for the purposes of trying to convince you to return to us, whether it is post-discard or post-escape, we will look to hold your gaze once again. This time those eyes of ours will shine again but with hope, longing and contrition. Vulnerability, sorrow and remorse may appear to loom large in the rounded and pleading gaze which we now hold you in.
Once more this is pure artifice. All we are doing is mirroring what you show to us. The hope that we might have seen the error of our ways. The longing for us to come to the realisation that we have done wrong. The sorrow for a person who must behave in this manner. The remorse that you engaged with someone so vile. The longing that you have for the golden period to shine once again. It is all manufactured as we mirror back to you what we see but for the purposes of hoodwinking you once again and with mealy-mouthed assurances and never to be delivered promises, we hook you back into our grasp.
The stare is a prominent weapon when we engage with you. It is a device that fabricates those emotions we do not possess and allows you to see the reality of who you have entangled with when you look up on the emptiness and shrink from the malice.
48 thoughts on “The Stare”
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Hello Billy, you are right. He does it for himself. He does it for his own narcissistic aims. And I am a person who attacks him very often. I am not submissive, sometimes I am very aggressive and cold towards him. And sometimes I even try to manipulate him. But I must be fair, he really helps other people to get out of the situation and helps them to recognise dangers to get involved with a narcissist . He probably will never change. That is too late. But if you listen to him and that is s for free, you can learn to avoid these people or to lessen the damage that a narcissist will cause to you.
Thanks Mona for your honesty. I feel exactly the same way as you do!
HG, I think its great that you are so incredibly articulate, and obviously highly intellectual also; so much so that you can delve into your own mindset, and explain your true self to your online community with such description. It is helpful; but it is also opportunistic. A narcissist writing information for the non- narcissist is not approaching other people’s pain with empathy, concern or love. As you’ve said yourself the narcissist doesn’t have empathy, pretends to be concerned and can’t show love. Your lack of empathy can be read in your reply to me; if one was to read between the lines, which I have because I grew up in a narcissistic family system, and am an expert at reading between the lines.
Instead, the narcissist would approach an opportunity such as this (your online community) with a ‘whats in it for me attitude,’ because thats what narcissist’s do. You know no other way. Its all about the narc…….
So HG….my question to you is are you a self-proclaimed narcissist? Its actually a deep concern to me actually. Because I read all of these comments from genuine kind people (your readers) who come on this site to read you work, because of the intensity, depth and absolute understanding of such an illness. The reason you describe it so well is because, well you are one of these people. It upsets me actually, because after having been with one whom is so sick I know that a true narcissist would not care less about the people making the comments on your site, and would not give a rats about the inner turmoil these psychopaths cause. Instead the grandiosity would escalate because of the comments, and the need for more idolisation and attention would also escalate.
I am a child of a psychopathic mother. My brother is also a psychopath, and my ex is a psychopath. All I can say is that I have absolutely no respect for pure evil, and if this is you, and you taking advantage of good people by giving them knowledge of the rottenness of what lies deep within, well than please stop. Sam Vatkin is another one. I just can’t stand it. The narcissist comes out and start educating people about who they truely are, and what to look out for; without actually trying to change. It hurts me that the self-proclaimed narcissist can do this, when there are so many of us living in emotional devastation because of people like you. Than, you have the audacity to go and make money out of a condition belonging to you which destroys lives. Just don’t
Hello Billie80,
1. Please identify where people are being taken advantage of where they are at long last receiving answers to the questions that have gone round and round in their minds? Where they can finally see a way forward? Where they can at last move out of the confusion that has plagued them for so long?
2. Please identify which of these statements evidence someone being taken advantage of
“If it was not for you HG I would have killed myself by now.”
“Nobody has helped me understand and deal with my narcissist in the way you have.”
“I wish you had been available 20 years ago HG”
“I wasted thousands on therapy which did not give me the answers and gave me wrong answers and then I found you.”
I understand your stance but thousands of people are harnessing the power that the brutal truth of my honesty provides. Keep reading and you will see the outcome for yourself.
Hi Billie.
I’m not one for defending HG, he can manage perfectly well without help from anyone, however as some people know on here I was abused by a narcissist for many years. I was living the emotional devastation you describe the reason being is that I DESPERATELY needed answers no amount of counseling had provided simply because a great deal of councilors fail to identify what we are dealing with .
Fast forward to January 2016 & still searching for answers I found the blog. Slowly & with unpaid advice from HG I finally found what I was looking for and the fog started to clear, without it Iam absolutely 100% sure I would have fallen into the hands of a narcissist again but as he says with knowledge comes power.
I have never met or spoken with HG but the blog has changed my life as it’s done for countless others, that can only be a good thing .. cant it ?
NNS .
Hello not so sad! I am so glad that HG’s blog is of help to you. There is some great information on this site, I do agree. However, for myself, the information has triggered me. I am sick to death of narcissism!
Hi Billie .
Thank you for replying .
I know what you mean about triggers , awful aren’t they. I still get them quite often but they don’t bother me as much as they used to 🙂
I hope in time you can use the site in the same way as many of us have & seize the power! as HG often says.
There’s loads of lovely posters here if you just want to vent too.
Nice to chat with you & hope to see you posting again soon .
NNS 🙂
H.G. you’re killing me. What I just read is the one thing that bothers me the most about my soon upcoming discard. His eyes, and the way he used to look at me, was like nothing I have ever seen. Its What I miss the most. And what I keep remembering every time I get the strength to try to leave. I can’t read anymore tonight. This just confirmed I’m living in a nightmare. I was trying to find the departure eminent but I couldn’t find it.
🙁
Can you confirm then that you really do hate us from the minute you meet us save for benefits to yourself?
I can confirm that we do not hate you from the minute we meet you.
So true!
Thank you for bringing up this subject, HG. Some time ago I read the sociopath stare might mean, among other things, that they would like to murder their victim physically or that they are plotting their social destruction. It says predators want to control their victims by affecting them *on a biological level* and most of us are unaware this exists in human psychology. If the stare scares the victim seeing it, then it means real danger.
I have the feeling this is what the malignant sociopath targeting me wants: to destroy me and not only socially but also physically.
She won’t take her eyes off me every time she sees me, as if she can’t look away. Her stare is extremely intense and penetrating. It is more than just showing power. It is frightening.
(There was never a relationship between us. She lives next door but we have never been friends or anything.)
I do not look at her at all and just pretend she is not there. Does she think I am a coward not looking her in the eye? What do you think I should do when she is staring so intensely at me, HG? Thank you so much in advance for reading and for your valuable help.
You should continue to ignore her EB, she is staring at you because she wants to intimidate you into providing a reaction. Have a read of Manipulated for more on intimidation and Escape for how to deal with it.
Hello HG, thank you very much for your help. Your advice and guidance is priceless. I have just had a look at Intimidation (Manipulated) and how to deal with it (Escape).
You are right, she is using intimidation (and also other techniques you described in Manipulated). She and her lieutenants want to wear me down with attrition. I feel I am not welcome and I think they want me to move out of this place. She’s not from here, either, but she behaves as if she had more rights than me.
Although I have never reacted to any of *her* provocations (I did react to some of her lieutenants’ provocations in the past), she has not stopped doing it. It is still difficult to understand how someone I have never had any kind of relationship with (we have never been in each other’s house, we have never had a cup of coffee together) can be so obsessed and fixated with me for over a decade.
I will definitely read both Manipulated and Escape again. Reading them just once is not enough to process all the important information and advice you have included.
You are most welcome EB.
He stared constantly into my eyes, however, I am by nature a shy person and over time I learned how to look people in the eye extremely well in preparation for interviews and such. I stared back intensly, matched his stare and he’d break – and tell me to stop staring at him. It’s probably the only thing I could get over on him…
Interesting Stephanie, did he explain why he wanted you to stop?
Why would a narcissist want to stop looking into one’s eyes? Is there any explanation? Do you know the reason?
Hello Forgotten, it would be to demean you. Once when he or she gazed into your eyes, you were made to feel wonderful. By refusing to do so, you are being denied something you liked and made to feel bad, thus fuel is provided.
I vividly remember the first “Stare in Seduction” …it was during a moment of intimacy. One, I’ll NEVER forget! Succeeding in my escape. I was reading an article where they suggested taking a photograph and isolating just the “eyes”. I did and the results were startling! I was staring directly into the abyss of pure evil! Naturally, these looks of utter disdain come accompanied with a smirk. Again …many thanks HG for another brilliant introspection!
Yep —
Those cold, dead eyes gettin’ all judgey about seemingly nothin’ (but my mere existence) were annoying.
I’d just walk out and leave. No emo *fuel* was worth that disturbed person —
Normally, I avoid eye contact with just anyone. I will meet a stare in extreme circumstances. The color of my eyes combined with the intensity of the return stare usually causes the other to look away.
This is how my ex sociopaths stares went in this order . His blue eyes shine and become so bright I fall in love with him . We talk of marriage and a family . Two months in I look into his eyes I see nothing at all . The blue has now a grey tint . The only life I see is the glare from the reflection of the outside world . He turns into a robot . His voice even becomes hollow and frightening . He becomes distant and is getting further and further away . There is an invisible wall blocking me from getting him to love and open up . This once bright and bubbly and amazing person has turned to stone . I find out he cheated . I end the relationship . During the time we spent after the breakup when I almost went back I saw the black eyes once. No grey no blue pure black . I didn’t even see the white part of the eyes . In that moment I wanted to run and cry and scream all at the same time . His expression was frozen on his face and he didn’t look human . We were parked outside of the gas station at night and I was looking in the console for change while he went in to get a drink . I look up and he was glaring at me through the window . Just frozen . I still have nightmares from those eyes . Sometimes they would also bulge and have a shark look while he grins . Not only did it scare me but it broke my heart seeing first hand how empty and lost he was and still is . It is truly awful when the person you choose to love can’t feel the same love back . You want to help them you want to take care of them and take the love you have in your heart and soul and pour every bit into them . You want to save their life . I don’t know what will fill the void I have tried everything . Nothing worked . I loved him and was faithful and bought him gifts and told him as long as he had me he would never be alone . Mr Tudor where did I go wrong ? What more could I do ?
The simple answer Starr is you did nothing wrong. You became ensnared with one of our kind. You are not the first and you will not be the last. You are still adrift in the emotional sea. This is evident from what you write and also because you are a firm love devotee. You believe so much in love and it breaks you to find that someone else does not. Not only are you hurt by the fact that that is not the case, but your empathic nature means you feel sorry for them because they cannot love. it is understandable. You must read though and build your defences. He is no longer your concern, you are.
Got all the stares, but all got what I call the “bulldog”. He’d get right up in my face, point his finger an inch away and bare his teeth just like a dog and growl as he was screaming at me.
When he did want to make up, he phrased it so that if I understood that it was all my fault and “took a healthy serving of humble pie”, he’d agree to try again but would stay lukewarm with me.
He wouldn’t even look at me once he devalued me. When he was angry with me I saw the malice and hate. When he wants me back I almost see the golden shimmer. Funny how I never noticed before but now I SEE ( ba ha ha). If I ever even have to look at him again and see a twinkle I will know to RUN FOREST RUN!!! Jenny….a narc????
If you find a picture of them cover there mouth and look at just their eyes … Then cover one eye and look and then cover the other eye than look. One eye will look evil…full of hatred! That is the true self! Every one of his pictures had an evil eye… His left eye… Every single picture.. Even the ones he is smiling in!
My glare has backed people off. I feel it. I feel the crazed person I have been and can be. I’m often told my eyes have life and they look like flashing lights when I am happy. When I am raged, I can feel the heat and fire in my eyes. When I am glad, I can feel them, and I can only explain it like this. They feel like sparklers that have been lit. It is a real physical experience for me, and it becomes a sensory experience for whom ever is looking at me.
I am cool like this. 😉
I will fire them up for you!
I dare the stare. I am not frightened. I have looked into some eyes that I believe if I did the wrong thing, it would have cost me my life.
Saturday afternoon I spent what felt like eternity in the shrink’s waiting room (something that happens every month), and a man in the waiting room, someone I’d never seen before in my life, was starting at me like it was thanksgiving day and I was the turkey…I have no idea why.
I don’t recall any special looks from boyfriends, but my father did look at me as though he had me in his gun sights. He loved keeping me under control and under his thumb. It made him feel powerful.
And the minute I could do so, I abandoned him. Let his siblings take care of him, since they were all so
cozy with each other.
The mad stares of the insane do not impress me.
I get the glare, like I just murdered his mother.
When he really wants to upset me, he will stare at me and just as I lift my arm to wave at him he will turn and look away. Then he can say he didn’t ignore me, he just didn’t see me when he clearly did.
HG, what’s the private consultation link on your site? That would be something I’d be interested in.
Hello WM, an announcement concerning that is being prepared but in the meanwhile, if you e-mail me narcissist1909@gmail.com I will explain it for you.
The stare during fury is the scariest one… when You don’t know what it it. It’s not scary anymore thanks to You dear G.! X
Excellet excellent .. i forgot to say in my first comment
This always amazed me … the change of looks from fire to ice to nothing… wow I still cant believe it.
I agree Nikita!! I started out loving her eyes in the seduction phase and then boy how they changed. They change just like everything else, minute to minute.
To look into the eyes of the one who wants you dead, is a memory that nevers fades.
Then to look into eyes the same shade and get lost in them, was like looking into a mirror.
His eyes never frighten me, even when full of rage, not after facing death.
HG this has given me much to think about.
The eyes are the window to the soul.
Or lack thereof.
The Stares. See the picture I posted on you fill up my senses. Your eyes Mirror back good side, bad side, and it’s black and white. We look in the mirror you choose what’s coming back. Pretty deep stuff in that picture. Made it my screen lock for now.
Great post!!! Oh, the stare…my stepson and I go through this daily…when I am trying to figure out the truth, we do the “stare” – if he is lying, the right side of upper lip will curl in this little grin and then I can’t help but laugh – it’s “our way” of communicating. I beat him the other day where I didn’t blink first…of course he says I lost but you know…the stare has become an integral way of us communicating – no words need be spoken because the look says it all 🙂 That and Lokai bracelets – if on right hand, good day – free to talk – if on left hand, wait till bracelet on right hand – it is working for us!
Sarah,
This is the response I promised so many days and days ago. I couldn’t reply on the original post. I might add before I address your original post, that Osiris does not relate to Jesus. There is a false or accidental veneration that has linked the two which I will explain.
Osiris was the Egyptian God married to Isis and was said to reign as king over Egypt. It is said that he was murdered by his brother Set and resurrected from the dead becoming the judge and king of the dead. This is all stemming from Egyptian mythology.
It is interesting to note here that the 10 plagues against Egypt were actually each corresponding to a false god. The plague of boils was against Isis as she was a goddess of healing. Proving she was a false God. The Apis Bull was regarded as the very incarnation of the god Osiris. His mother was the sky goddess Nut who was said to be conceived of as a cow having the stars affixed to her belly, hence the plague of the pestilence on livestock humiliated these gods. Proving that they were false deities and no match for God Almighty. There is some relation to Jesus in the sense that Osiris and Isis have corresponding characteristics of the Babylonian Tammuz and Ishtar. Many scholars consider them to be identical. Mother and Son worship was very popular in Egypt. Isis is often portrayed with the infant Horus on her knees. This representation is so much like that of the Madonna and child that certain ones in Christendom have at times venerated it in ignorance. So there is the accidental tie to Jesus. Tammuz was represented by T. Egyptian sculptures and paintings have the sacred symbol the crux ansata, this is the so called sign of life that looks like the letter T with an oval handle on top and most likely represented the male and female organs of reproduction combined.
“The shape of the [two-beamed cross] had its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being in the shape of the mystic Tau, the initial of his name) in that country and in adjacent lands, including Egypt. By the middle of the 3rd cent. A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was adopted to stand for the cross of Christ.”—An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (London, 1962), W. E. Vine, p. 256.
So do you think that the cross is an idol based on its origins? If so, would the idol be associated with Jesus the son of God Almighty?
Would that violate the Mosaic law at Exodus 20:3-6?
Since this is already lengthy. I will answer the other on a different reply. Hope this gives you some closure on the relation of Osiris and Jesus.
I do like this eye though… it is mesmerizing. I think I can see Metatrons cube in there… and no HG, this is NOT your eye.
> https://youtu.be/ZOqg5bPZ0HE
>
Yes! 🙂
Great descriptions HG…
The only time I saw the dark, empty stare is when he would rage.
I do not want to look into his eyes during the hoover… I am smarter than that…