The Expanded Narcissistic Truths – No. 4
The silent treatment is a well-known and highly effective manipulation that we deploy against our victims. Easy to do, low in energy expenditure, a passive aggressive measure which is the mainstay manipulation of the Mid-Range Narcissist although it will be used by all of our kind. It comes in two varieties; the Present Silent Treatment (we remain physical proximate but ignore you or stay silent and glare at you) or the Absent Silent Treatment where we vanish. The former is excellent at drawing fuel and asserting control whilst the latter achieves both those aims and allows us to take effectively a time out and use that time to court an alternative source, invariably unbeknown to you.
The primary purpose of a silent treatment, like most of our manipulations, is the drawing of fuel from you. You become concerned that we will not speak to you, upset that we are not responding, angry that we remain sat there ignoring you. You are worried that you have not heard from us, distraught at our absence, fuming at our disappearance and whether you are talking to us directly, sending messages, leaving voicemails or turning up at some place where you hope to find us, you are invariably frothing with Proximate Fuel which we lap up. We also benefit from doses of Thought Fuel too.
Whilst that is the instinctive aim of the silent treatment in its many forms from Icy Glare, Cold Shoulder, Incredible Sulk, Invisible Person through to The Ghost, what is actually going through our mind when it is deployed? What is behind the statement above that the use of the silent treatment is our way of killing you?
A silent treatment appears most often as an instinctive manifestation of cold fury as a consequence of you wounding our kind. It may also be used by the higher functioning of our kind as a stand alone measure when there is no wounding and is part of a calculated response designed to further our aims.
Thus the Lesser, whilst far more prone to applying heated fury, is wounded by a perceived criticism and sits silently, staring at the television as his ignited cold fury manifests and you keep providing fuel as you ask him what is wrong. Eventually, the provision of your fuel will heal the wound you have caused and the fury abates and he will just turn and talk to you acting as if nothing has happened. Whilst he is sat there ignoring you his Present Silent Treatment arises because he wishes you dead as a consequence of your traitorous behaviour in criticising him. However, if you are dead then you will not provide fuel and as a consequence this instinctive response is a further example of the contradictory behaviour we engage in, purely to fulfil our needs.
The Lesser wishes you dead. However he also needs your fuel. If you are dead, there is no fuel. Of course, there are occasions where the Lesser loses control and lashes out and actually will kill as a consequence. Where that does not happen, your figurative death is still desired but your fuel must also be gathered. Accordingly, a silent treatment satisfies both of these diametrically opposed consequences. You are treated as dead because you are being ignored but the fuel is still provided.
The Mid-Ranger has a similar instinctive response. He also wishes you dead for your disgraceful and disloyal criticism of him. Of course, he also needs your fuel and given his passive aggressive nature, he is far removed from actually doing something that would kill you. Thus, the silent treatment appeals to him especially. He is not bold enough to drive a knife into you to kill you, so instead he slinks away, coward that he is and slays you through an Absent Silent Treatment. In his mind he satisfies the need to punish you through this ‘death’ yet at the same time he garners fuel from your desperate voicemail messages asking him where he is.
Both the Lesser and especially the Mid-Ranger will use various forms of the Silent Treatment as a means to achieve this killing and it is an instinctive response. The Greater rarely uses the Silent Treatment in an instinctive way. Instead, the Greater recognises its effectiveness from the perspective of using it in a calculated method by which manipulation can be achieved. He will use a brief silent period for the purposes of testing someone, even though he is not wounded. He will decide that somebody needs to learn a lesson in terms of who is in control and whilst he is not wounded, he deems it appropriate to deploy the silent treatment so the victim is subjected to further control. The Greater’s response is not one of wanting you dead; that is the knee-jerk reaction of the Lesser and the Mid-Ranger, that hatred and fury rising as they rail at your audacity in wounding them, their disgust for your craven ways after all they do for you and such is the vitriol towards you that is pumping around their bodies, they wish you dead and the silent treatment is an instinctive way of achieving that whilst catering to the need to exert control and draw fuel. The Greater sees the silent treatment as a way of slaying those elements of your character which you hold dear.
You want to help people. If that person evades you, you cannot help.
You want the truth. If that person has vanished, you can gain no answers to establish why they have done what they have done.
You wish to give them love, but you cannot because they have ghosted you and left you feeling pain instead.
You want to listen and ascertain what the problem is, yet if we will not talk to you, how can you do that?
It is also extremely effective against empathic people. It absolutely gets under the skin of most empathic people. True, there will be some, who, after a time, realise what it is and in turn embrace the respite that comes with such a silence and do not react to it. However, most empathic individuals hate it. They cannot stand the response, the imposition of guilt that it generates, the confusion, the uncertainty caused by a failure to respond (is he just busy or is he ignoring me – a frequent dilemma that causes considerable consternation to the empathic individual ( see Should I Get in Touch )) Accordingly, the Greater knowing just how effective a manipulation this is, will use it as part of his or her ongoing campaign of control as opposed to an instinctive reaction. We Greaters see it as a way to kill your resistance to our control.
The Greater’s approach is one where your various good and empathic traits are denied, frustrated and in effected ‘killed’.
Killing somebody is the ultimate expression of power and control. Life has been taken away. Whilst it cannot be denied that our kind do kill, it is, in the scheme of our numbers, rare. It is also a counter-productive act because if we kill our primary source we lose an excellent provider of fuel and bring about a potential fuel crisis as we have to find a new primary source and usually this must occur quickly. Furthermore, there are of course the potential ramifications arising from the commission of murder, albeit, those considerations are often far from our minds when the act of murder occurs.
We want you dead for your treachery. We want you dead because it is the ultimate expression of power and control. Yet we need you very much alive. The silent treatment satisfies both desires and that is why it is our way of killing you.
26 thoughts on “The Expanded Narcissistic Truths – No. 4”
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I’ve been around you all my life without knowing what you were unril recent. With each narc I gain emotional intelligence. I fortunately have an vast range with each and every emotion and I feel deeply all of them. With each year of my life I’ve learned. I thrive and I learn. I am intuitive, and sharp, although caring…so I second guess myself..but a lot less with age. I WILL NOT be broken. They’ve been hard lessons but I’m up for the challenge. I’ve been in contact with lesser, mid and greaters. You speak as if you cannot be beat. I have and will beat the narc at his game. You narcs are resourceful after all….mostly… and serve me just as well in your own way. I welcome your “phases”. I realize it’s always a give and take but I have unlimited supply of “giving” so long as it suits me at this point. I rely on myself fully but I’ll take advantage of an ill favored guest to learn. After all… I bee learning both behaviors from birth (I chose empath) and can see you clearly now. With each hoover Ive gained information, intelligence, and power over your tricks even if just by instinct. There are some fools who think pain is love but there are others who will see your hoover or negative fuel extraction as an advantage and ride your wave taking what they will from you be it mental strength or the like. You can give “fuel” or as I’d like to call it information, too. I just see you as fragile self seeking shells who can be controlled just as easy by our loving and helpful ways. Once you reveal your game, and you always do, you’re predictable and manipulated in our own positive way. I knew exactly when to apply my own “tools” to gain more mental strength and positivity. I have loved each and every narc deeply but knew when enough was enough. This is why you love and hate us. You are not above us… how wrong you are. YOU are less than by way of true emotional intelligence and range. We know so much more because experience life FULLY. We are resilient creatures who draw fuel from our OWN SELVES. WE dont NEED you…you NEED US. Remember that. Light ALWAYS expels the dark. You cannot defeat pure of heart. We always prosper and you.. well you…apparently become victim lessers. How sad for you.
HG Tudor, great article. Perhaps you can clarify some thing for me. Now, it is my understanding that empathic people are prime targets for narcissists, as we are vulnerable in nature, aim to please and have weak boundaries. So I would assume that this type of Target would be ideal for you. You speak of the greater implementing the silent treatment as a means of killing the spirit of this individual. What I want to understand, is if you are killing the spirit and destroying the traits of this empathic target, are they then less attractive to you as a source in general? They can provide you with negative fuel, or as you have indicated, challenge fuel, if such a situation where to apply, but does this mean that you are at a point where you no longer crave positive fuel from this individual and are content with the negative fuel moving forward?
Also, from reading your works, I gather that you see it as rare that the source escape The Narcissist, before they are discarded. I believe that I have accomplished such a task. When he showed up unexpectedly at my house, I had him leave. I changed my phone number, blocked his email and social media and do not have any mutual friends to speak of. Certainly he has paused the relationship many times, which I know for a fact was in part to collect more toys for his collection (as he did even during our “golden period”) but I am the one who inevitably rejected him. It is possible. And I like to think that he is wounded by it, though I do not wish to concern my mind with matters of him.
I kkiced ex narc spouse to the curb. Oh she tried silent treatment and the “oh feel sorry for me” bullshit. I was already on to her…via H.G. telling me everything. She’d counter manipulate me… No no….I’d jerk the rug out from under her. She was screaming at me saying..why are you so mean to me? Maybe because I went Supernova Empath on her shady ass.
Props H.G. 😉
No problem EC, seize the power.
My paternal grandmother did this to me and my twin. She was mad at my dad so she refused to acknowledge us for 4 years. She invited my two older sisters over to her house for holidays and visits, excluding me and my brother. It didn’t bother me at all but it made my dad mad. I used the ST on my brother when I was 13. I refused to talk to him for almost one year; he wrote me an apology and slipped it under my bedroom door, thus ending the ST. I didn’t do it for fuel or control; I did it to protect myself.
Twenty five years of my life I was subjected to the silent treatment. They lasted anywhere from a week to two and a half months. He would not say it was abuse. He would say he was just waiting for me to approach him to talk. Everything was my fault anyway. He said as much in a sworn deposition to the court after filing for divorce, best gift her ever gave me. I’m no longer subjected to this treatment, thank goodness.
They are capable of anything and everything and they conspired together.
I work with two lower lessers .
“You want the truth. If that person has vanished, you can gain no answers to establish why they have done what they have done.
You wish to give them love, but you cannot because they have ghosted you and left you feeling pain instead.
You want to listen and ascertain what the problem is, yet if we will not talk to you, how can you do that?”
Well that sums up everything!! Sometimes I wouldn’t even know what triggered the silent treatment. Everything would be hunk dory one day, then the next, Bam! no response to texts, calls, or private messages. This would go on for a whole week, until the next time I saw him at church. Oh how I hated it!! Then I finally turned it around on him before finally telling him I was done with being treated so horribly.
I read this. Now I need to hear it.
What if we give the cold shoulder, Ignore or the silent treatment once disengaged? Does this cause an injury to you?
If we have dis-engaged from you, we would not be looking to interact with you and therefore the occasion for you to give us the cold shoulder etc would not apply.
HG, what about when you haven’t disengaged yet? Say you were giving the silent treatment, the IPSS called you out on your shit, then proceeded to turn the silent treatment around on you? Would that cause injury?
If they called me ‘out on my shit’ they would provide Challenge Fuel most likely. If they then gave us the silent treatment this would then wound us and lead to an ignition of fury.
Phoenix rising…ive done that and imo id rather the fury than the st. Fury gets things going. St is a dead stop.
My ex mid-ranger used absent silent treatments. I do think it’s cowardice.
Absent silent treatment where they go missing is something i wont tolerate. No relationship is worth it to me to put up with that. Very stressful!
He wud do it for 3 days maximum. Of course, i always have access to calling or texting him and he would reply promptly, but i wanted him to text first. So i just waited 3 days instead.
I won’t put up with that shit either. If I don’t hear from a boyfriend for over 24 hours ur dead to me.
You better be in jail, the hospital, or fucking kidnapped
Pussy mid-rangers ….smh
I’ll really give that pussy a reason to mope around…. and feel sorry for himself lmao
“…You want to help people. If that person evades you, you cannot help.
You want the truth. If that person has vanished, you can gain no answers to establish why they have done what they have done.
You wish to give them love, but you cannot because they have ghosted you and left you feeling pain instead.
You want to listen and ascertain what the problem is, yet if we will not talk to you, how can you do that?…”
Yes! The above excerpt was me exactly, HG nailed it. My Ex MRN was excellent in deploying STs , the PSTs had me going crazy- the Icy Glare, Cold Shoulder, Incredible Sulk: but the finale of the discard: AST- Invisible Person through to The Ghost, that was state of the art PBS Masterpiece theater” or BBC/Acorn TV. Excellent, award winning performances!
(so I sing aloud):
Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
-Killing Me Softly -The Fugees
Roberta Flack 🙂
I agree, Jenna. If it’s an instinctive silent treatment, that’s the same as running away because you can’t handle the situation. It is cowardly. Then they can pretend they are in charge by putting the problems out of their mind.
I have a new greater (given his status and lack of victim behaviour I assume him to be a greater, not sure which level yet). He did exactly this, using ST on me to try and bring me under his control. But given I cannot being myself to chase him or question him about his lack of response I just ‘out’ ST’d him.
Of course he then replied eventually. Now clining on to me desperately for fear of not reaping any rewards from the build up in effort on his part over the last 5 or 6 years.
He’s been slowly turning up the heat like im a frog in a pot of water. He could feel it simmering but Then i made it go cold temporarily. I’ll allow it to simmer again.
I’m having so much fun watching him scrabble about.
Hi alexis…ive done the same with my narc when its been his fault for the conflict. I take a step away and take time out. Hes never given me a silent treatment aside from failing to show up 3 times in the 6 yrs. Hes had the same lame excuse. This is something i find deeply troubling. When weve taken a break from each other i let him do the contacting bc hes the one who created the problem most of the time. As soon as you break the ST theyve got you.
Oh my…this is exactly what my ex boyfriend has done to me for the past 4 months straight…I had enough, packed my shit and moved out. The day I moved he begged in every way for me to not go…it almost worked, but I left. we communicated briefly after, and he blame shifted everything on me that I had the problem because I ran away. How he treated me, the physical abuse, the porn addiction, all of it was irrelevant to him as to why I left. I have only been gone a few weeks and have finally stop responding to him and it’s driving him MAD….Poof he needs to disappear.