The Dozen of Dismay

You are people of emotion. Not only do you experience a wide range of emotions, both good and bad, you experience emotion frequently. Your emotional output is heightened, intense and superior to that of “normal” people. You allow emotions to govern you, you are very much in touch with them and you will struggle to keep them under control, masked and hidden. These qualities which apply to the empath, super empath and co-dependent in increasing amounts make you the ideal targets for us. This is for two reasons. The first, naturally, is because your copious emotional output amounts to delicious and potent fuel for us. Our lifeblood. You are necessary to sustain our existence for it is through you that we are able to gain a sense of existence, your fuel powering what we are, what we wish to portray and that which we wish to banish. Fuel is the most important factor, but it is not the sole factor. The second reason why we require such emotional individuals to connect with (and especially in the role as intimate partner primary source) is that your emotional condition allows us to exert control over you. The exertion of control allows us to maintain our sense of superiority. This superiority allows us to paralyse you and keep you in this emotional state. Thus the cycle continues until such time as the emotional output drops below that level which is acceptable to us. By ensuring that you remain emotional, we prevent you from seeing the reality of what is happening to you. We ensure that your decision making is not borne of cool, hard logic. You are prevented from moving forward. You are prevented from escaping us. This is why so much of our manipulative behaviour is focused on provoking emotional responses from you. For fuel and for control. We must control our environment if we are to exist and this means controlling our appliances, including you as primary source.

As with so much of the narcissistic entanglement, the preservation of an emotional state is achieved through steps which we take but also as a consequence of traits which are particularly evident in your kind, as compared to normal people. These actions and traits combine through our daily interactions. They permeate everything that we say and do. Our manipulation relies on the existence of these items in order to maximise their effect and keep you in an emotional state. These actions and traits exist in the entanglement between my kind and your kind so that the dance continues, the hold is maintained and the emotion pours forth. We look to apply these actions in all our manipulations. We look to capitalise on these traits in you. Together there is an effective combination which ultimately creates your dismay and thus the emotional state we crave in you. There are twelve of these actions and traits; six from us and six from you.

1. Generalising. We use this to maintain our superiority and belittle you. By generalising we make it sound as if we are the ones who can do no wrong and you are the ones who are always in the wrong. Thus we will make comments such as: –

“You never tell me that you love me.”

“I always am the one who has to sort things out.”

“Everybody thinks that you are horrible to me.”

“You never let me do what you want.”

Such broad brush and wide-ranging allegations are issued with total conviction in order to have considerable effect on you.

2. Future Prediction. You are apt to base what you think the future should be based on what has happened already. This invariably means that because you have experienced the joy and wonder of the golden period that you expect that the relationship should continue in a similar vein in the future and thus you have a raised (and ultimately unrealistic) expectation by placing your hopes and decisions on the past rather than the present.
3. Past Transgressions. We revel in raking up the past about you in order to suggest that you have done something wrong. If you have committed some wrong in the past (whether it is minor or major in nature) we are always able to remember it and we will keep digging it up. We never bury anything dead. We will also invent past transgressions which we perceive you to have committed, after all, you are not doing what we want, you are no longer idealised and therefore you must have done something wrong, yes? These inventions will be vague and amorphous in nature.
4. Black and White Thinking. A dizzying and disorientating response to the perceived criticism which you hurl at us repeatedly so that you will be hero one moment, then zero the next. We do not operate in the grey when it comes to our view of you and others. You are either white or black. Then white again. Before becoming black once more. Often in the space of minutes.
5. Closed Mind. We operate with a closed mind. We know best. We know the right things to do. We do not listen to anybody, least of all you, because you are a traitor, a moron and a fool. This prevents us from dealing with your challenges and heads off any sensible and credible suggestions you may happen to make about a situation which might undermine our sense of superiority
6. Catastrophic Thinking. You engage in this as a consequence of an inherent nature to be like this but we engender and cultivate it through our conditioning of you. Since our responses when devaluing you are disproportionate (from your perspective) you then become used to the fact that when something goes wrong, it will go very wrong indeed. This causes you to always assume the worst which increases your anxiety and emotional responses.
7. Irrational Fear. Again as a consequence of the mind games that we play with you, you find yourself second-guessing, questioning and obsessing over everything that is said and done which result in your acquiring an irrational fear. You will find something to worry about in the slightest remark or expression. Once upon a time you will never have done so, but your entanglement with us causes this to happen and with it the emotion flows.
8. Projection. We project repeatedly by accusing you of doing the very things which we are guilty of ourselves. This is an instinctive response by us and is not only a form of defence but it also causes you to be put on the back foot as you seek to justify your own behaviour and find yourself bewildered to be accused of the act yourselves. Your response is one of astonishment, amazement, upset and annoyance. All good for the emotional quota.
9. Blame-shifting. Another stock behaviour of our kind borne out of our need to avoid culpability for anything, which accords with our sense of entitlement. Thus it is always somebody else’s fault. Usually yours. This allows us to castigate you and causes you to react in a similar way to when we project.
10. Never Looking Back. We are too busy driving forward to contemplate our navels and mull over events. We do not operate in this manner, but you do. Your propensity to reflect, consider and assess means that you dwell on matters for too far long and in so doing you paralyse yourselves.
11. Mea Culpa. Not only do we blame you for everything you also engage in blaming yourself. You need to find answers to why things happen and if we are blame-shifting and rejection any suggestion that it is down to us, you then have a habit of accepting that you must be at fault somehow. It gets worse however. You do not just shrug and accept you are to blame, but you beat yourselves up trying to figure out what it is, spending time and energy working out why you are at fault.
12. The Fixer. Your desire to fix everything, to heal and make good, means that you cannot walk away readily from situation where you would do well to do so. Instead you remain in the firing lane, in the furnace, in the midst of battle as the manipulations continue and with it the increased emotion that follows.

A dozen reasons. Six from us. Six from you. Twelve acts and conditions which result in your continued emotional state.