The Ten Narcissistic Commandments
1. I am right. You are wrong.
Everything I say and do is founded in the logic of my world and it follows that is has to be right. It equally follows therefore that whatever you say and do is wrong. I cannot ever allow you to be seen to be right because that means I am ceding control to somebody whom I regard as inferior. This undermines my sense of superiority. Maintaining this state of me being right and you being wrong requires various manipulative techniques including blame-shifting, projection, denial and deflection. Of course I am relying on your need to be understood and your desire to change me that you will always approach this stance of mine head on. My position will seem illogical to you and you will react to it and keep doing so.
2. There is no you and me. There is only me.
You are purely an extension of myself. I want to subsume everything about you into me. This is part of the reason why I seduce you with such totality. I am unable to discern where you begin and where I end. I regard you as an appliance that is to be plugged into me and is there to do my bidding, providing me with fuel, looking after me and responding to everything that I command. I forbid you to act independently of me, have interests beyond me and to interact with others. I am what is important. You must focus on me and only me. Your needs become secondary to my needs.
3. Do as I say, not as I do.
Do not question me. Who are you to question someone as brilliant as me? Know your place. Submit to me and carry out my whims. Accede to my commands. I am entitled to do as I please and therefore any contradiction in my behaviour is a mistaken belief on your part. You may regard what I say and do as hypocrisy but you are wrong once again. This is pragmatism on my part and that is why I succeed whilst you fail.
4. One is never enough
Such is my might that one of you is not enough to sustain me. It is my right to gain fuel from all those that I interact with. This means I will be unfaithful but my infidelity is purely a means to an end. By all means react to my affairs and indiscretions, for it is all excellent fuel for me, but you will not stop me from taking another. Expect to be triangulated with other people and objects, for my appetite is so vast I must have many supply lines of fuel and this means you will become a cog inside a vast machine, as wheels turn within wheels.
5. Your pain is my gain
I cannot exist without drawing negative fuel from you at some point. It is retribution for your failings. There is no hope for an alternative. Your devaluation will happen as it has with many before you and those who are yet to come. It is a process and your agony, hurt and distress is purely part of the necessary equation to sustain me. It is drawn from you through many machinations, some you may see and others you will not.
6. You are worthless yet I will never leave you alone
You are inferior to me and that inferiority infuriates me since I am reminded that I must depend on someone weak and pathetic. This in turn generates hatred and despising of this chained situation I find myself in. I will cast you to one side once you have served your purpose and my disgust for you can no longer be tolerated. This is not the end however because I will always return to exhibit my power to draw you back one again and suck further fuel from you.
7. I am everywhere. I am everything
I am omnipotent and omniscient. I have my spies and errand boys all around as they feed me information about you which I can then use against you and to further my agendas. I have my Lieutenants carrying out my orders without question. I instil myself in every aspect of your life, making you see me, hear me and smell me, even after I am no longer physically near you. I imbue my essence into so much that my toxic memory pervades you for years after you have been cast aside, allowing me to return triumphant, as if nothing ever happened, to draw you into my false world once more.
8. The games are always being played.
The quest for fuel is unending. To achieve this I must engage in repeated and sustained manipulations and machinations. You and others are but pawns on my giant chessboard as I move you hither and thither in order to achieve my aims. I plot, plan and scheme before I organise, arrange and orchestrate. Each and every day I must engage in these nefarious games in order to secure my existence and as my chosen primary appliance you will be caught in this malicious web, right in the centre. My game-playing means nothing is as it seems, that truth is a stranger to me and lies flow from my mouth as easily as expelled breath.
9. I will never change
I will issue false promises of changing, empty protestations that I shall seek help and perfidious declarations of knowing I need to alter my behaviour but I never shall. I deny what I am, although for the most part I know full well what I am. I see no reason to change. Why should I when this how I have been created? Why should I when this is all I know? Why should I when it is all your fault anyway?
10. Fuel is the rule.
Fuel is at the centre of everything that I do. My actions and decisions are based on acquiring the precious resource. My interaction with strangers, minions, acquaintances and friends is all hinged on the gathering of fuel. The way in which I deal with colleagues and family is always based on the greatest potential for the collection of fuel. My thoughts are invaded with the need to gain fuel, my actions are dictated by the requirement to garner fuel. Fuel is the reason you were chosen. Fuel is the reason you were seduced, debased and discarded. Fuel is why I came back. Again and again.
Fuel is everything.
42 thoughts on “The Ten Narcissistic Commandments”
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If perhaps the universe is speaking. Would I question because of gaslighting or am I the npd or my partner. Or are we both
I remember – after just a year of marriage, I noticed my now EX rewashing dishes I had just washed. When I asked him what he was doing he said ” I have to rewash your dishes a lot you don’t do it correct” Same with laundry, cooking, ANYTHING he could find. When I’d get upset he would say “You just too easy to upset – I’m trying to help you” When I asked why he married me if he thought I didn’t do much correct he replied “I ask myself that very question” REALLY — Lucky for me I didn’t marry him until I was 40 so I had other relationships to base sanity on…. I was out the door!
Lmao! Aren’t they just so helpful? This is a little different, but my mid-ranger would insist on “helping” me cook. Argh!! He would stand over my shoulder, tell me I’m doing everything wrong, insist I do everything his stupid way and then eventually turn me into his sous chef. Can you just go away and let me cook something in peace? I promise you won’t be able to tell that I chopped the onions incorrectly.
I finally started insisting that he not “help” me during the last few weeks we were together. I think it stunned him. Silent treatments ensued.
I have to say that while my Greater insisted that any wife of his would learn to cook well and often, at least he let me cook in peace.
The kitchen is such a serene place these days…
Why you didn’t let him make the homework?
Sick, no doubt about it. Evil, no doubt about that either. Evil to the core, Satan…of that I’m sure…
Will it ever end or must u die for ur release?
Die. Hard for me to wrap my head around that answer, but my ex thinks he owns me.
Thank you so much for sharing this precious information. I have been engaged to a lesser narc for the whole last year and escaped in an impulse rather than by a constructed scenario. I changed jobs, changed houses, blocked him on cell phone, social media, e-mail etc for a month. My doubt is – when we broke up he offered two comments: “I feel bad that I lied to you many times saying I would always be with you” and “I guess we were not meant for each other”. Now I have mixed feelings because on the one side, he is hoovering and on the other, he himself stated we were not meant to each other, therefore implying he accepted the break up, probably already having granted a new source of supply. I am confused… your thoughts? Am I in danger?
He did not accept the break-up he is just conning you into thinking that that is the case. You are at risk.
Thank You, I’ll watch my back.
Carol Yes Your In Danger ,Pay Attention ,LEARN and Study ,
Run for your dear life and DON’T EVER look back. They’re not people, they’re parasites. My experience is quite different, she is my brother’s adopted daughter, she is not blood related, THANK GOD! She was a lovely little girl once, BUT she’s no different than her Mother. Her Mother once stole from me, and so has this parasite, obviously this is what they are taught, they were DRAGGED up, not BROUGHT up. They have destroyed our family. We had a fantastic family life, wonderful parents and a happy childhood. Since my brother married this “THING” he calls a….(wife??) it’s all gone. There has been no contact with him for Ten years or more. TEN YEARS!! So now he’s decided he has no family. His loss.
I cut ties with the parasite I once thought of as a niece. Over the few months or so I thought we were close, I started to see the MASK slip. To cut a LONG story short, I dropped her like a hot coal when I found out she stole, not just from me, but her other friend’s too!! Infuriating at the time, BUT! we ALL FOUR of us, have the last laugh 😀 We have all become Friends!! AND we are NOT as weak and stupid as she THINKS we are! Yes, she’s tried the Hoover tac-tic they’re famous for, it hasn’t worked, it never will. Let her lead the very sad existence she calls a life. She will shrivel up, eventually. My reply was meant to be short, it is compared to what she has done, it’s just the tip of the iceberg!!
SQUASH THES PARASITES OUT OF YOUR LIFE AND INTO OBLIVION.
Reading this put me right back in the hell I was in 21 years ago with a psychopathic narcissist. So accurate.
This gave me chills. I was married to a narc for 12 years. You NAILED it…and SO eloquently. If you’ve had the displeasure of loving a narc, this will speak to your soul. If you’ve never experienced dealing with a narc, reading this should definitely make you run for the hills. Recovery from narcissistic abuse is a long and winding road that can take years. You lose important parts of yourself, some that you can never get back. Thank you for this.
You are welcome.
I think a NARC mum is like a vampire, when you grow up with one, you learn to feed on blood too, and other food seems inadequate. Still, I think with the level of your honesty, you’ll find a more satisfying food.
What’s fuel? How does fuel feel? What do you use it for? Why don’t you have it inside you x
PLease read the article The Prime Aims and the book ‘Fuel’.
Wow need to put that on my home screen
Can he have some degree of empathy if he is a narcissist? Are there some with higher or lower degrees of narcissism? They can’t all be like you can they? I think I have been with a narcissist for 11 years. This is a huge eye opener and it’s hard for me to wrap my head around it
If Mid Range of Greater it will be the faked cognitive empathy.
We have no emotional empathy and no emotional contagion.
I’ve never met anyone as vicious as these people.
Well, if it took HG until his early 20s to figure it out about his mother, I guess all if us wonderful “supply” should give ourselves a big break. At least our time it took to figure it out stemmed from a place of good hearts.
First of all… thank you, HG for all of the information. I am learning the reasons why my mother has never loved me. I have a question that may seem strange….at times when I’ve gone no contact, I’ve reinstated contact because I felt sorry for her… I’m an only child, my mother was an only child, and I have one daughter who is 31. A very very small family. My mother is very healthy right now ( age 76), but what is my moral, ethical responsibility to her if she becomes disabled, or dementia, or whatever else may befall her? I am a nurse and had wonderful, loving grandparents and I believe that growing up with them for 12 years probably saved me. I just don’t know what the right thing to do is…. I guess I’m feeling guilty? Thanks, HG
No. 6 In the eyes of the narcissist / Sociopath, he/ she might see us as pathetically weak but the truth of the matter is, the narcissist is the one who has that trait. Hence the reason why heor/ she has to latch on to people.
I knew none of this while dealing with the ex narc, but I have you to thank, HG, for this understanding of what I was dealing with — a very smart, conniving, manipulative, punitive and crazy-making narc. If only I’d known it then.
Instead I constantly and repeatedly bucked the system. “Why do you get to go through my cabinets and in my fridge and take what you want, and I’m not allowed to do the same thing at your house?” “How come you’re always right and I’m always wrong?” “Who do you think you are?”
No! Who in THE hell did I think I was, questioning His Greatness about these things?!??! He would outright tell me, “you can’t do what I do, because I’m me.”
The more I learned his egocentric ways, the more I countered them, unknowingly bringing more maltreatment from His Greatness down on my head.
The sad thing is … No. 5. I could not have changed a thing about the course or outcome of the “relationship” no matter what I did or didn’t do, because, in the end it had to hurt, and it did . (I read your blog about just that.) There’s no avoiding the negative fuel he would draw from me, the devaluing, the confusion.
The. Discard.
(I know you use another term, HG, but this is how it feels. Like being thrown away.)
I texted him last night. He said I’d always be his baby. Thank all that is good and right in the world that we are hundreds of miles apart.
Should also ask…. is there such a thing as a narc magnet? I grew up with one, I was the scapegoat my sibling was & still is golden. I seem to have attracted them to me throughout adulthood like a blood donor to a vampire?
Hello Marmalade, please see the article NarcMagnet.
Good evening HG, may I ask- I’ve read that narcs can’t jump or switch schools or cadres as basically they are what they are but in your opinion is it possible for a co-dependent to effectively ‘wake up’ and move towards empath/super empath?
Thanks in advance.
No. The co-dependency remains but what they are able to do is to implement methods to ensure (as far as possible) that their co-dependency does not cause any susceptibility going forward. The co-dependent has very few and low narcissistic traits and a lot of empathic traits which are medium to strong in nature. This lack of narcissistic traits in at appreciable degree is the reason for their status as co-dependent.
I understand.
That’s very interesting and not the answer I expected actually! (Just when I think I’ve got things sussed…..)
Lots to think about there.
Thank you very much for your time HG.
You are welcome.
Thank you HG. Just learning after 4O years experience. Crazy really. Apparently learning from the best here, according to your followers! how old were you when you realized your mum was a narc? Were you affected in the text book way being one yourself?
In my early twenties.
Hello HG, my first day here…. You must know my mother, a fellow N, (what kind I have yet to learn). Reading your article I could hear her say every word to me. Am in the process of ridding her from what she’s made my sometimes very sad world. Removing all her power over me isn’t going to be easy. Although my 2 youngest children did it years ago. My eldest has just learned what she is, (of her own accord) and is in the process of moving away from her too. The children don’t seem scared yet I’m terrified! I have always known she’s a narc but have to do something now as it’s affecting my children and grandchildren. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Hello Marmalade and welcome on board. I would recommend that you read the various blog articles and also start with reading Fuel, Manipulated, Why, Devil’s Toolkit and Fury as this will create a solid foundation for you understanding what has happened and why so you can then move on to countering the impact. The key to understanding is to read and there is plenty of material on my blog and in my books to assist you in that regard.
Reblogged this on Perfectlyfadeddelusions.
“Harder,” I said. “Harder!” as my hands gripped his desk tightly…
HG: “Alright,” he said. “What’s the gross national product of Nicaragua?”
#50ShardsOfTudor
Ha ha! That’s comedy gold Sarah Jane. Thanks for the laugh, much appreciated.
Excellent summary for “beginners” to learn, know & understand
oh god. beginners. lol. sad but true.
Ms Brown and Sarabella,
Oh god, beginners. It’s me. So glad I have today off of work so I can let this this all sink in as I feel sick to my stomach when I read these “Commandments”, and there is nothing I can do to change it…
Can’t believe I have been living in denial and refusing to open my eyes. I’m fricken smarter than this.