Dealing with the Proof
Proof. The empathic individual has certain traits which mean gathering proof and exhibiting that proof to the narcissist and other parties is highly important. An empathic person is honest, decent, believes in the truth and has to have the truth known. This is not done from any sense of gloating or about showing how clever and virtuous the empathic person is. The empath operates this way because: –
- They want the truth to be known by third parties;
- They want to demonstrate that they are correct;
- They want to preserve their self-worth by showing the truth of the situation;
- They want to show other people that the narcissist is in the wrong;
- They want to demonstrate to the narcissist that what the narcissist has done or said is wrong. This is often done to try to help the narcissist, to heal and to fix, rather than engage in point scoring;
- It is done to preserve their sanity in the face of the false reality and all its manipulations which are deployed by our kind.
It often takes an empathic person a considerable amount of time to realise that merely explaining what has happened to our kind gets them absolutely nowhere. You may know precisely what has happened but if your recollection of events, no matter how accurate, does not accord with what we require, challenges us, stops us achieving our aims or worst of all constitutes a criticism, we will do anything and everything we can to distort your truth.
I use the phrase ‘your truth’ because it is always important to keep in mind that with each and every situation there is the Empathic Perspective and there is the Narcissistic Perspective. For example, you serve food for everybody and you start with the person nearest to you and this results in our kind being served last. From the Empathic Perspective, you regard this action as the most practical and the politest. From the Narcissistic Perspective, we view this as a criticism; we should have been served first. This criticism results in us being wounded, this causes the ignition of our fury and we may storm out of the dining room through our cold fury or we may fling the plate at the wall as a manifestation of heated fury, either actions occurring in order to draw fuel to heal the wound that has been created by your criticism of us.
Thus, you have the same event but two different perspectives. If you tried to explain to us that you had served people ahead of us because of practicality all you would be doing is repeating the criticism to us and igniting the fury once again. We will only have regard to our perspective and in the ensuing conversation we would engage in deflection, projection, blame-shifting, word salad and other manipulations to reject what you are asserting. From your perspective it appears innocuous, an over-reaction on our part, but from our perspective our response is completely justified.
What of a situation whereby you suspect we have been cheating with somebody else? Let us assume you have followed us and saw us pick up another woman who we embrace in our car and then head off to some secluded spot, a hotel or another location for the purposes of the tryst. You do not confront us but observe and then wait for our return that evening. You decide to remain calm and when we walk in through the door you state,
“You are cheating on me with a blonde-haired woman. I saw you pick her up this afternoon, kiss her and then I followed you to The Happy Ending Motel and saw you go in a room together.”
If you said this angrily, we would draw fuel from your reaction. We would recognize that this is an opportunity to gain more fuel from you and therefore we would look for ways to provoke you further. You are also challenging us. Whilst it does not manifest as a criticism, we still do not appreciate you trying to challenge our superiority and our entitlement to do as we please.
If you made this comment in a calm and neutral manner, you do not provide us with any fuel. You are also criticising us.
You have seen what has happened. It is not hearsay but you have witnessed our behaviour and you have told us so, providing sufficient detail to confirm its legitimacy. What might you hear in response? There are many different replies.
Denial “No I haven’t. I have been at work all afternoon.” Yes, we will be this brazen. Lies come easily to us.
Deflection. “Yes I was dropping a colleague off. She is staying there for a few days and we needed to talk about a project. You know the new plans for the development in the Old Quarter, well we are involved in that now and we need to put a proposal together in a very short time.” On we go talking about something else.
Projection. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong, not like you and that fellow, what is he called, Mike, I saw you getting close to him last week when you went for coffee.” This may or may not be true, it does not matter. It serves to draw a reaction from you and allows us to move the conversation away from what we have done.
Blame-Shift. “Who do you think you are following me? Who gives you the right to do that? There is something wrong with you. I am sick of you trying to control me.”
Blame-Shift. “So what if I am seeing somebody else, if you put out more than once in a blue moon, I wouldn’t have to go elsewhere would I? I am sick of working hard and coming in to this kind of crap.”
Disappearance – we just turn around and walk back out and disappear to some bolt hole for a few days.
Denial and Projection “I think you are mistaken, are you imagining things again? You keep doing this.”
Deflection and Gas Lighting “Oh that, nothing to worry about there, she is new to the company and I was showing her to where she is staying until her new apartment is ready. I know her from the Southern Office, so I greeted her with a kiss, that was all. Anyway, I told you I was doing this last week, don’t you remember? Yes, I told you all about it over dinner, you must have forgotten again. You seem to be doing that a lot recently.”
Verbal assault “Who do you fucking think you are? You are a miserable old cow. Creeping around watching what I am doing. Jesus, you are so fucking sad, I am sick of you. Look at the state of you.” Cue a tirade of insults which may escalate into breaking things and even attacking you.
No matter how you try to point out to us that you have seen us, you know what you saw, you know what the other woman looks like we will not hear what you are saying.
If you keep going and do so in an emotional manner, all we focus on is the fuel that we are giving you and continuing to provoke you to get more fuel.
If you do it without providing fuel, all we hear is the criticism. This wounds us and forces us to seek fuel from you (or if you continue not to provide it we will be forced to withdraw and seek fuel elsewhere).
We will not accept what you are saying, no matter how convincing you are and no matter how much detail you provide. You will be accused of making it up, reading something into nothing, taking it the wrong way, being confused, being mistaken along with all and more of the other manipulations mentioned above.
What about providing some independent evidence to us? What if you have evidence from our phone, in a document, an e-mail, a sound recording or a video? You decide to show us a video of what we did that afternoon in the hope and expectation that we must surely accept what we have done. It is there, recorded and on the screen. How will we respond?
Once again, depending on the way you have conveyed this to us, you will have either provided fuel (telling us there is more) and you have challenged us or you have criticised us. Our perspective means we need fuel, we want fuel, we need to assert our superiority, we need to maintain control, we need to keep you submissive and manipulated. Astonishing as it may seem, you can expect reactions akin to those above and these as well: –
- We will tell you the footage has been edited to make us look bad;
- We will say that the footage does not show the whole picture and is taken out of context;
- We will say it is somebody who looks like us but isn’t us;
- We will try to delete the footage;
- We will damage the device on which the footage is held;
- We will produce some different evidence which points to some imagined transgression on your part and focus on that instead;
If you have independent evidence of any kind, its production engenders the same response as detailed above because we look at it from an entirely different perspective. You can expect the independent evidence to be attacked, tampered with or destroyed along with the plethora of manipulations that have been described above.
You may think that showing our kind definitive proof of our wrongdoing would cause us to hold our hands up and admit we have been caught. It does not work with our kind in that way. We have been designed to see things in a different way so that we will respond to protect ourselves from your criticism (or to draw more fuel and head off your challenge) and that is what we see and hear – criticism and/or fuel. These devices and manipulations occur because: –
- We are never at fault;
- We are superior to you;
- We must be in control;
- We are omnipotent;
- You are inferior;
- We are entitled to do what we want;
- We need fuel; and
- We hate criticism.
Save your independent evidence for the third parties. Save your breath and your sanity.
The only thing you will ever prove is how predictable, as narcissists, we are, when are confronted with proof.
40 thoughts on “Dealing with the Proof”
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I’m at a loss… I listened to this sometime ago but it’s really been driven deep within my soul as of late. What was I thinking? I came back after his ‘discard’… 3 months of silence and halfway across the country… divorce papers 2 days from finalization! I knew better! What is it within me that NEEDS to prove myself worthy?? To HIM? Jesus Christ!
Reblogged this on Speak Out 4 Others .
My ex said ‘now i have to tell you everybody i f**k?’ – during devaluation. I cried. Three hrs later, he said he was kidding, that he doesn’t have the time for that, and hugged me.
I didn’t know abt narcissism then. I couldn’t understand why he did not feel loyalty towards me. Now i know he was scared of intimacy. Recently after i confronted him abt narcissism, and he finally accepted it one month later, he told me that being physically close gives him anxiety. I think the casual sex with women he meets online reduced the intimacy factor for him. He felt powerful. With me, there was so much love, looking into each other’s eyes, hugging, touching, holding hands etc. that he couldn’t handle it and felt inadequate.
I remember a time, after the ex-MN retired from our place of employment, when I looked at his wifes’ schedule (she currently works there, as well) on the work computer to see if she had any time off that might be of some concern to me. I noticed she was taking a week and a half of PTO (in 3 weeks), which made me think there was a possiblity that they were going someplace together (it wouldn’t surprise me, it happened all the time – at least 4 times a year – what an idiot I was). Through my own investigative work (becoming a cat burglar and sneaking into her office early one morning and looking on her personal calendar), I discovered they were in fact going to Korea. When I told him I saw his wife’s work schedule (he always knew I could see it), I asked him where they were going and he acted like he had no clue what I was talking about. I told him I overheard her saying something about going to Korea and he told me, “I know nothing about that”. He was adamant, he knew nothing about it. But because I now had solid proof, there was no way in hell I was going to let it slide. I continued to ask him about it for three weeks (at times with fuel, others without), and every time, the same type of response, “if she has something planned, I know nothing about it”. “She doesn’t tell me what she’s doing”, which I knew was total bullshit. There were a couple of times, he almost had me convinced that he may be telling the truth, but luckily for me, I still had the proof. In the end, the day before they were to leave, he finally confessed. After asking him (without emotions, other than concern), why he was so damned and determined not to tell me the truth, especially since I already knew it; and after telling him that I promised I wouldn’t get mad, he finally told me that, yes, they were going to Korea. I could see it so clearly, in his face, that it was almost painful for him to tell me, but he did. I was almost expecting him to say, “BUT, I just found out this morning”, but he never did. He said he was sorry, it’s just that he didn’t want to upset me again, like he had so many times before. I also have to say, as often as I brought it up to him, during that three week period, he never once got angry with me. What are your thoughts, HG?
P.S. – It was quite exhilarating being a cat burglar … haha 🙂
I stayed in a hostel last year where the owner was known to behave in incredible ways in the whole town. I discovered bed bugs in my bed the first night. Told her, she said oh no, that was an insect.
2nd night I couldn’t sleep so well and caught some small and some fat bed bugs in a zipper bag. I showed her the next morning and she said ‘no’, there weren’t any. She came with her loyal house keeper to my room to take a look at the bed. (You seldom see the bed bugs in day light). There was crawling over the bed right in front of our eyes. She said no, there weren’t any. *lol*
Got my money back anyways through booking agency after threatening with health bureau, taking the zipper back with the bugs with me. 😉
PERFECT timing! Thank you for this, HG!
I caught my narc cheating – on Christmas Day no less. Yes, I confronted him, but I was quite neutral and stood my ground. Not surprisingly, he disappeared and I haven’t heard from him since he last message of “I think we need to disengage for awhile…” I remained firm in my “no contact” since then (and have even blocked his number) so I’m hoping he has gone away permanently.
THEY ARE NEVER GONE forever. I had a friend accidentally trying to hoover me after 12 years! Handsome and charming and so bloody good in bed… oh he tried so hard… The best thing in HGs work is… learning how to recognise a Narcissist. … I’m at the stage where I can analyse people from the past and see who was a Narcissist and who wasn’t/isn’t.
I recorded an argument that we were having over proof I had found. I sent it to him. He was pissed. He minimized the fight of course, even said at times he found it amusing. Later when we would argue he’d say, let me get out my phone so I can record this. I think he may have fueled me a little when he would say that because I knew just how bad his ass was chapped. LMAO
I wouldn’t have thought to record it if I hadn’t started questioning myself. Did I misinterpret what he said? I swear he said he felt a,b, and c and he wanted x,y, and z. I think I needed something to go back on. After I read your book Manipulation, I could name each thing in that recording that he was doing. It is amazing what a girl will go back to in the name of a good fuck; mind included.
How about when a survivor presents proof to a victim (she’s been with him for 18 years). SHE came up with deluded reasons why the proof couldn’t be so. It was like she shared his psychopathy.
Also, I took him to court with proof in black and white. Months of harassing me to have his child in text messages. Moths of faking like he cared after the fact.
What does a narc do when it’s written down in black and white and presented to a judge? His fear of exposure stopped him from attending but wanted to be present by phone. Unfortunately the judge overruled my wish the second time that he not attend my phone – but in a way it was good because she asked him yes/no questions which he was forced to answer without explanation. We got that deluded sycophant good and proper.
And now – because he pays, how has he changed the story in his own mind to escape being told what to do? To cope with his inability to control the situation? I do wonder how his defence mechanism is working now that I forced accountability.
It amuses me to no end how after writing my memoir, loaded with proof, and bringing it to my Narc’s attention that it exists (along with this blog) she actually had the nerve to threaten me in the last email I ever got from her. I wasn’t expecting contrition or an apology, or even a polite message going our separate ways. After seven years, I get a threat.
An empty one, mind you, but it still hurt me. No matter how predictable it was. I don’t know whether she sent me that message before or after reading the memoir, but it doesn’t matter. I didn’t do this for her sake, I did it for mine. Perhaps somewhere in the dark, twisted depths of her scarred mind, it will resonate. Whether it does or not no longer concerns me.
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
🙂 Great! Sophia
I’d like to read your memoir
Excellent timing, HG! Did you time this purposefully?
PurpleRibbon!!! This is a very detailed reason to not seek the abuser’s ownership of their wrong doings to you….timing is impeccable as we exchanged about this today about the futility in getting a narcissist to feel true remorse for wrong doings.
Indy- with most respect, he will own it, be it by third parties, be it by those he least expects, he will own it eventually. He doesn’t know yet, but he has put the noose around his own neck. I have patience. Oscar Pistorious and many more, own it eventually, by their freedom being taken from them. Very timely posts from HG I admit. HG says it how it is, they will deny and deny however as HG also expresses a risk to their fascade is a very tender point and as tender as to a smear of our self-preservation by them. He may never feel remorse for what he has done, but he will own it in the sense that there will be consequences. Thank you and I know you mean well <3
PRH,
Oh, I now understand what you mean by own. You mean legally own….ahhh, I see. Yes, that is possible, if he doesn’t have an amazing attorney or connections legally. Or do you mean Karmic justice? Either way, my best to you on that journey. Please be safe and sending healing vibes your way.
Good Morning Indy,
Bravery is not a quality of the body. It is of the soul.
Mahatma Gandhi
To live with fear and not be afraid is the final test of maturity.
Edward Weeks
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
Nelson Mandela
The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.
Thucydides
True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld
We must do what we do Indy, for our souls purpose 🙂
Thank you Indy and much healing sent to you and yours <3
Purple Ribbon,
Good Evening from this side of the world!
Thank you for those beautiful reminders from some wise souls.
Sending healing vibes and best wishes~
Sleep well Indy and keep watering your garden, it is full of beauty <3
You say you are omnipotent, but do you also think you are omniscient? Does the latter facilitate you to create a fantasy narrative to rival the real narratives of people’s lives, because you are in all places at all times?
Hello Muster, yes, the need to be all-knowing is part of what drives our behaviour.
Thank you
Sometimes the denial can be entertaining. StepNarc ensnared another one after my Mother finally moved out. The new one was clueless and would hear nothing bad about him of course. We were smeared and she moved in with him. Fast forward about 9 months after she has paid for trips and hes living off her etc -devaluation. He accuses her of cheating on him (he was cheating on her) in front of my siblings. She replies: you live with me and I haven’t been out of the house without you for weeks, when would I have opportunity? My sister said he stared straight ahead for a few seconds until it appeared a light bulb went off and then with great conviction said: At night when I am sleeping you meet with him in the (attached) garage! Cue to her mouth agape and my siblings trying to hold in their laughter (unsuccessfully). Hard to feel sorry for her since she was warned but bought the smear campaign. She was smart enough to leave though.
I’m convinced they’re aliens.
Educate well while young, so as not to experience this later. This should be addressed in high school.
No PreSchool lol
I agree. The sooner the better. Fairy tales read at bedtime or in preschool need to be modernised, in fact, to reflect the new reality of this epidemic!
The origins to many of the fairytales and nursery rhymes were quite wicked and no wonder kids used to go to bed and hide under the covers with some of them left to the imagination! Our schools are introducing classes and they are well overdue that will explore gender inequality, respect and regard, bullying, gender violence but we have a long way to go and one would have thought that it would have been introduced a long time ago. 2017 and not much further advanced, disappointing and many lives lost unnecessarily. Each year increasing.
When I remember the stories I was told, it strikes me that villains usually could be identified by their appearance – the ugly witch, the scruffy-looking robber. It lulls children into a false sense of security!
The vicious ones are the impeccably dressed with good manners, who are blending in. And they are sitting right next to you! The focus should lie on behaviour patterns and words, and if these match! The new classes are a good start! 🙂
Agree Matilda. HG wrote a great article on this.
Interesting thought, Matilda.
Not in the stories by Oscar Wilde, though. 😉
The step-mother in snow-white was the 2nd most beautiful woman though. The 13th fairy in the Sleeping beauty was one of the good fairies, before her pride got hurt. And there are always step-mothers in the fairy tales. The Snow Queen is beautiful.
But the beautiful prince charming … oh, well.
Problem is that the original meaning of the fairy tales got lost, so yes, I guess there must be new ones. Hmm …
If I’m not mistaken, it’s a classical concept in hinduism, too, that beautiful people must have good karma / are superior.
Have not come across that article, PurpleRibbonHealing, will have a look!
Ava101, yes, there surely are exceptions… the tales are all mushed together in my memory… but I remember getting annoyed when the bad ones did not get punished… and said something like ‘the story is not over yet’ when the book was closed!! 😀 … it did not seem fair to the ones who had to suffer… and it certainly was not fair to me, because I *would* get punished if I did anything similar! 🙂 … I was quite a handful, but my Mum knew how to tackle that and she did very, very well! I love my Mum: she is my hero! ❤
There you go, HG, you can write your own children’s storybooks. They can be called Hugs Galore in Tudorville – haha :). You can be damn sure I’d buy them for my grand kids, but you better get started because two of them are already 10 and 12.
Perhaps a project in the making, just keep it clean huh HG 🙂 Must admit I chuckle behind the scenes and that is not good for my asthma currently!
agreed
I agree with you, true.
Please translate
‘if you put out more than once in a blue moon,’
and
‘tryst’?
Once in a blue moon means very rarely.
Tryst is a secret meeting.
Dear Hg, thanks for your insight, It is incredibly useful. When you say “you have been designed to see things in a different way,” what does that mean? Who has designed you that way? My other question is about fuel. Why do you need the fuel? I have a only just started reading your stuff after escaping from what I believe to be a greater covert narcissist and am finding all this fascinating. Thanks, Sam