The 5 Reasons The Narcissist Devalues You
You will be familiar with the fact that one day you are cock of the walk and the next day you are a feather duster. You are atop the pedestal and in a flash you have been thrown from it and you are lying in the dust as we stand over you berating you. The sudden switch from hero to zero, from princess to pauper, from “good person” to “bad person” is perhaps the most confusing, bewildering and upsetting part of our behaviour. People cannot comprehend why they were being feted as the love of our life on Monday and then by Tuesday they are the devil incarnate. It is something which causes (and of course we want this) victims of our nefarious behaviour to cling to us in order to get an answer, to receive an explanation and some kind of reasoning which will allow them to make sense of what has happened. They are unlikely to accept it, the emotional hold of the seduction and the golden period prevents acceptance of this sudden fall from grace for a very long time, but if you are able to understand why it happened, you are able to move yourself forward with greater speed than you would otherwise. Our reasons may appear illogical to you based on your world view but at least you have some reasons and that is more than you would usually ever receive from our kind as we plough on with your devaluation offering no cogent or realistic explanation for this sudden switch. I am not explaining why we devalue you (fuel, control, reinforcement of our need for superiority and self-worth). I am explaining what is it that makes us love you then hate you in the blink of an eye. What causes this sudden change, this 180-degree swing, this volte face, this switch? You will be given no answer or if you are they will not be anything to do with the real reason why we suddenly idealise you then devalue you. These false reasons are wheeled out to make you remain all the more, pursuing an elusive point as we continue to drain you of negative fuel until we decide you are to be disengaged from. Thus, here are the five reasons that are the triggers for the devaluation.
- Stale
The fundamental reason for seducing you is to gather your potent and positive fuel. In the beginning and for some time afterwards we are invigorated by this precious fuel that you supply to us. We are reliant on it, we want and need it and we marvel at the fuel you provide us. This may last months or it may even last years dependent on our demands and your ability to fulfil them. Your complacency however causes the fuel to become stale to us. You may not regard yourself as having done anything wrong. We understand that according to your view of how a healthy and mature relationship should progress that after a dizzying, honeymoon period the relationship moves to a deep-seated position where that initial buzz of excitement has faded to be replaced by something long-lasting, substantial and fulfilling. Should you appreciate your relationship with us with this mind set, it results in us seeing you as complacent. You may regard it as a natural and understandable, indeed potentially necessary progression. We do not. Your failure to admire us in the way you once did (or at least the manifestation of this admiration), your demonstration of love, adoration and such like becomes lessened. You may not think that you love us any less but it is the way that appears to us that matters. This change manifests as complacency to us and it makes your fuel become stale, less potent and this in turn threatens to weaken us. In order to defend ourselves we must immediately switch to the devaluation and extract the negative fuel from you which will power us to the extent we want and demand.
- Disobedience
Our sense of entitlement, inability to recognise and respect boundaries and huge need for control means that we have to have you do what we want. This control arises through the application of the incentive, the carrot approach, when we have seduced you and the golden period is in play. Through the application of wonderful and loving behaviour we cause you to do what we want by providing fuel and carrying out our wishes. We have delighted you and you want to please us in return. We provide you with the love you desire and you respond by complying with our requirements. When you stop submitting to this benign control then we will switch and commence the devaluation. You may, when viewed objectively by others, be correct in not doing what we want, taking an alternative course of action and doing something else but to us that is irrelevant. You are challenging our control and this cannot be countenanced. In order to stamp out this uprising before it gains traction and undermines our careful operation that has been constructed to control you and gain fuel from you, we must tighten our control, remove the dissent and increase our grip on you. This is when the devaluation begins. We move from benign dictator to malign tyrant.
- See Through
If we apprehend that you are working us out. If we perceive that you have been influenced by another source and you are joining the dots. If we gauge that you are beginning to realise what we are and what we are doing, then we must strike first in order to shock and awe you into submission once more and dispel your fabrications. You may well be right but we are not going to accept you being right. We will switch to the devaluation in order to unleash all those manipulations which will confuse you, drain you and most of all make out that it is all your fault. We have done nothing wrong other than love you with a perfect love and instead you have brought this on yourself through your lies about what we are and your treachery. We cannot allow you to unmask us and therefore we will assault you with a frenzied devaluation which gives you no option other than to try and defend yourself so you lose sight of your goal of seeing through us. We will make you feel guilty, cruel and heartless in the hope of tapping into your empathic traits so you stop what you have been doing and concentrate on putting things right between us, mending the relationship and showing that you care. The commencement of the devaluation when you are uncovering what we are is a massive distraction exercise designed to protect us and harm you.
- The Hoover Opportunity
This is not a hoover against you. Instead it is the opportunity which suddenly arises to hoover a predecessor. This person may have been dis-engaged from and moved away from our sphere of influence or they have escaped and done likewise, but now something has happened whereby they have come back into our sphere of influence. The promise of that sweet and powerful hoover fuel will outweigh the positive fuel that you are currently providing us with. The prospect of getting this hoover fuel means that we want to focus our attention on the predecessor and hoover them. We will not get shot of you, not yet, because that will leave us in in-between primary sources of fuel. Instead, we commence the hoover to seduce again your predecessor and thus because they have appeared on the horizon they make you look like the less desirable option. This causes us to question why we are with you, to regard you as a mistake and therefore we switch to devaluing you as we begin the seduction of them once again. Should the hoover fail, expect the golden period to be reinstated for you, with another sudden switch. Should it succeed and we begin to tie the predecessor back to us once more with the hoover fuel beginning to flow, you can expect the devaluation to worsen as you hurtle towards being dis-engaged from.
A sudden switch to devaluation may indeed herald the fact that a predecessor has appeared on our radar and we are hoovering that person at your expense.
- Total Control
You are aware that we want to control you. This is fundamental to the dynamic between us. Yet, as a further example of the double standards that we engage in we want to control you and if you disobey us we will commence your devaluation but furthermore if we believe we have obtained total control over you then we will similarly commence your devaluation because we know that you will do anything that we want and we will just use you to validate ourselves in the event that other, more exciting prospects do not fuel us during the course of the day. You become relegated to the reliable and dependable, because you are actually doing precisely what we want, but through our warped logic, this equates to you no longer being special. Thus we need to make you special to us once again and we do this through devaluation. We will not cast you aside when we have achieved total control, not at all. This state of affairs brings with it considerable benefits but they will now be channelled through the filter of devaluation and not idealisation. It is symptomatic of the bizarre (when judged from your perspective) logic we apply that when you finally do the very thing we want, we turn against you and begin your devaluation.
How do you deal with all of this? The short answer is you cannot. Any of these five reasons may suddenly apply without warning and your devaluation starts. You cannot avoid it and you could not avoid it. You did nothing wrong, but you did everything wrong from our world view. There is nothing you can do to avoid this happening, because once the trigger happens, the devaluation will follow. The thing you can draw the greatest solace from however is that in knowing this is how we are, in knowing that there was nothing you can do or you could have done to have changed the outcome, you at least now have this knowledge and through it you can attain freedom from the doubt, uncertainty and sheer bewilderment of wondering why it happened.
30 thoughts on “The 5 Reasons The Narcissist Devalues You”
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I am not an empath or a narc according to your detector test, but I am sick of the narc and have started devaluing him, not on purpose really , it just is that I am stick of his stuff and just can’t seem to control my tongue. He seems fairly happy and complacent with the way things are, but you diagnosed him and I agree he is a narc. I know he was grooming some old and some new sources, and I really didn’t care, it was weird I almost hope he would get involved with one of the and get caught so I could leave more easily. It is just boring. Even the love bombing is boring. It is all boring , there is nothing new ever or anything out of the narc playbook. Its all about him, and well to be honest I am smarter, more interesting, more educated, more informed, more creative (I am a published writer and spoken word artist) he is a child in a man’s body dressed up to look like a man child. He is 45 and feeling left behind by his teen idolizers as a skateboarder(you can’t make this up) He is miserable , and alcoholic who is on disability and constantly seeks approval from the outside by trying to help people with their construction projects. THEY DON”T WANT HIS HELP ONCE THEY KNOW HIM. He is arrogant and bossy , rude, doesn’t listen to what people want, screws shit up bc he can’t focus all the time if he isn’t well fueled. It is just a circle jerk with him. Wash, rinse, repeat. His jokes are boring. He talks or cares about no one but himself. I have spent 6 years with him hoping there was something else underneath. The sex used to be good, but now he is older and drinks way too much and takes too many prescription drugs to even be worth the sex. He is so hammered all the time that it is like having sex with a chihuahua. I used to drink, but seeing him and the way he treated me violating the drunk code of “no drunk left behind” while expecting me to basically carry him when he is drunk? Pssshww. BORING.
He repeats himself in slurred speech 24 7 and of course turns on the charm when he needs fuel (approval in his case) from others, not just women but ,massive praise from people while if they don’t give it he mocks them behind their backs. This is NOT fun. I am not a child. I am a grown woman with cred of my own. I want to just dump him really at this point for being boring. But I am bad at hurting people. I know, I guess he won’t be hurt, but it feels to me like he will. I guess I should just do it before I have to deal with him any more. Otherwise, I just keep being nasty and devaluing him and that doesn’t help me or him. I don’t want to help him. I already raised kids. good kids who know how to be good humans. I don’t need to be turning into a devaluing creep just because I am so used to his crap.
What’s sex with a chihuahua like?
Six to nine inches repeatedly bouncing off of you while snarling and yapping and followed by Taco Bell?
Or do you mean the only thing erect being the ears?
HG, assuming the IPPS is herself a narcissist, would the impact of devaluation be as hard on her as it is on empathic IPPSs?
And how would the narcissistic IPPS react to being discarded, assuming she’s a Mid-ranger?
Thanks.
The no.1 reason behind everything – Narcs can’t process shame and HAVE to project their’s onto you in order to boost their false self-confidence and maintain a perfect self-image to themselves, otherwise the tantrum rage kicks in. Poor bastards.
I kind of got tricked into getting back with him , but into days conversation he wanted see , old pictures and then made comments, like you used to be happy? I told him I am happy, and he is trying too hard to prove its just me. And even though. I last 37lb he is picking on my weight, should I just go no contact, It feels like devaluation.
I lost 30 pounds – stopped drinking – gave him less challenge fuel and yet he kept lying, pushing me out, manipulating me etc. First he would say how fantastic I look , then I had lost my boobs , then I was too skinny I looked like a crow etc
I often told him you liked me more when I was fat , drunk and insulted you .
There is no logic with them and they will use whatever they want and find to reach their aims.
Now I am dating guys who find me fantastic and I feel much younger and better than with him.
There is no logic – not our logic – just their twisted logic to reach their aim.
I must say only 3 weeks of NC and I feel already better .
Exactly how my ‘relationship’ played out. Since becoming aware through your work, I swear half the narcs in this city approach me . . . male and female . . . just to witness me, now a dragonfly, play dead.
Let me cite Investopedia.
You don’t have to be Sir Isaac Newton to know that in investing, as in physics, WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN.
SN – Love this comment !
HG, what about devaluation because the narcissist is jealous? Jealous of one’s real freedom, as opposed to his manufactured freedom, jealous of one’s financial independence, as opposed to his gilded cage, jealous of one’s professional achievements, especially in his own area of expertise, because he could have had those too but he chose a different path, jealous of one’s work life balance, because he doesn’t have the guts to do it, jealous because you have a son who competes with him for your attention, and he has ‘only’ girls, though he would have liked to have a son, jealous that your life is more interesting than his life…
The devaluation occurs first and then this may well manifest in jealousy at all those things you have listed (which hitherto we praised).
I think it must tie into control. If the victim is not a co-dependent and has a life apart, the narc doesn’t have full control over the victim’s attention or well being.
I believe I devalued him first because a month after we met, I dumped him sensing he was controlling (I’d only seen him three times but I already knew). I actually fell asleep one morning while he was emailing me. Told him I had, that it was going nowhere, and anyway I was leaving the country for five months, which I didn’t tell him until the moment of the dump. I felt guilty about it! Haha. That’s my ET.
He pursued me while I was away, until he suddenly pulled the rug out from under me. I then pulled the rug out from under him in return when he tried to triangulate and I said, good luck! I don’t compete with other women and you’re a control freak anyway.
At the height of one of our reconnections almost a year later, I devalued him again when I told him I was fine with an affair, that I only wanted relationship ‘lite.’ (Again, not competing.) His tone changed completely. Why? Because he wanted me to fight for him and I didn’t, again. I then decided I didn’t want to be in an affair anymore. That’s when I escaped.
So there’s the ‘romantic’ stuff – he couldn’t control me and he resented my ability to come and go as I pleased (he always complained that ‘everyone’ always wanted to know where he was). The chaos increased as all of this went on of course, and I got more confused and upset. There I was, giving him what he wanted but in reference to your post about what ‘your kind’ 🙂 want, I didn’t really have a clue…
Then there is the work stuff. His pity hoovers post escape asked for my support for professional decisions he made. I gave it in spades and he said it meant a lot to him. So I know he respects me! But I have a lot going on and was never in a position to give him my full attention. I am not his mother or his wife (I hate being married and I already have a kid, thank you very much).
The things that should have interested him simply on an intellectual level he would never ask about, even though I know he respects me (as above) and a lot of what I do overlaps with his expertise.
He’s a very smart guy and we have a lot in common. So why the disinterest? Especially because I would have welcomed his insights (admiration).
Because he is jealous again that I have a life apart from him, which reminds him of what he does not have and means he cannot control me. He can manipulate me to no end, but control me? Never. That’s my answer and I am sticking to it! 🙂
Sorry this is so long but there are so many dimensions to this and I need it all to make sense to me…
“A gilded cage” always reminds me of Lady Hale. She was right a gilded cage is still a cage, it affords no real freedom.
I always wondered if the cycles of devaluation were sometimes a projection of the narcissist’s inner dialogue. So when they devalued themselves?; when the creature would speak of how worthless they are etc, that they then project this outwardly to the person they are with. So in turn that person is devalued / put down with malice to equal out the balance, and push down the self critical voice; making the narcissist feel better in that moment. I’m probably wrong, but certainly a thought that resonated when I was entangled with a narcissist.
I believe you are most right, Quasi – ask ANY real mental-health professional. It’s one of the basic rules of life – what you don’t like in others, you really don’t like in yourself.
I think you are right, Quasi. I always sensed how fragile my narc was. I told him he was like glass – nothing to grab onto but capable of being shattered by a pebble. I just posted a way too long commentary on jealousy but your comments fit right in. Ignoring all dimensions of the other person (a form of devaluation) allows the narc to feel better about himself.
He disvalued me, When I found out about the main supply and eventually contacted her. I first thought the Narc. was looking for a woman to be part of a open relationship. I never done that, was not sure what was his angle. NOPE it was a bullshit play to my bullshit question. She would NEVER be part of that. I wonder how many STD are flying around when it comes to Narc. being careless sexing it up with just abut anyone that get trapped in the spider web. Hmmmm HG Tudor, do they worry of getting STD, I was after I found out how many women. uggg the worst of the worst
I am so devalued now !! :))
I recognized who he is big time and he knows it
He has lost control over me – yeah !!!
I have been outrageously disobedient
I think my temper tantrum and repeated attack and devaluation of him has made stale … lol … he is fed up with my negative fuel- I became useless , his fuel matrix is low and he needs to chase …
The peace recipe – for now:)
Amen
Ha, me too, OMJ. I became the nastiest person imaginable. LOL. Everything I was holding in came out, including that I was PETRIFIED of him, which I am. He is toxic, poison. He tried to hug me twice the last time we saw each other and I couldn’t do it. I went all stiff.
I exploded in a weird way. I exploded of truth –
My truth ( he has his own) the explosion broke the strings and freed me. At least this is how I feel at the moment .
It’s like if there was no words, sentences, actions , thoughts he was having that I couldn’t put under my big light and have it so bright that it exploded.
He was cornered in every possible way or Thoughts – again from my view and perspective.
I am so black and bad now to him that it created a dig – a separation that was never there in this time with him.
Although I am the one who left – I can feel his disengagement and it feels like a gift now.
The cut of the strings are such a relief- at least the thought that they are cut.
From everything I have read here- one can never be sure she is safe forever but now I am pausing to rebuild me.
I want to be alone – just breath my own air. Clean and pure not filled with lies air.
OMJ, The black will pass and he will likely be back. I also disengaged after spewing venom but mine has kept me on a messaging app. I keep waiting for him to block me or delete me, but it hasn’t happened yet as far as I know. I did give him some positive fuel right at the end because I felt yucky about my own behavior. Maybe that is why. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut!
I don’t feel yukki 🙂 he knows nothing about social media and he is not there – too complicated.
The last exchange was that I owe him for all the greatness he has done for me.
We left it there – he is on the hunt.
I blocked him and he made some way around but is now fully blocked and blocked all his actual and past gf.
I felt bad in the past – but he has been so horrendous that he deserve all this shit and 10 times more !
Great! Keep him blocked forever!
Dear Mr Tudor,
It was when I “confronted” the weasel and my mum on their “accountability” of their actions is when they sort refuge away from me.
They just can’t handle the “truth”.
I thought these people were strong characters in the beginning (which is something I admire, possibly my downfall because I would like to be stronger myself) …. but they ended up cowards!
I may be a sucker for helping people but I’m not the fool they think I am …. their loss not mine!
This is a bloody good article…. explains heaps
Thank you Mr Tudor
Ps …
I just got back from the doctors … I now have a clean bill of health … all vitals are perfect! My mental health is good, I’m sleeping well at night and nooooooo medication whatsoever!
She asked if I needed or wanted therapy … I said already have a therapist, he’s the best …you Mr Tudor
Thank you from the bottom of my heart ❤️
😘
Pps..
not forgetting your amazing support team on this blog … you are all so beautiful and just so kind … you all rock ….my heartfelt thanks
Hugs n kisses to each and everyone 💋🤗
Eternally grateful
Luv bubbles 🍾
💜
HG congratulations on almost reaching 10 million views. We should all do another youtube live chat to celebrate when you reach 10 million.
HG- my midrange ex would out of the blue snap at me and yell mean things like
“What! I can’t understand you when you talk like that!”
“Why can’t you talk clearly?! No for real why can’t you talk clearly?! Seriously what is wrong with you?!?” I feel like we are going to get married and then you are going to tell me the real reason why you can’t talk right!” (when this happened I thought about sarcastically saying oh you mean the stroke but I know he would have actually thought I had one and I would have had to explain the joke)
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life asking you what you just said!”
“uhhhhh it’s eggSAH not egg!” (I say eggs just fine trust me I have asked like 20 different people and they all said I pronounced the ending sound)
and of course like a little empath I would cry and get all upset and completely believe that I talked weird even though I don’t. Is this a form of devaluing me?
It is.
Taylor, eggSAH remainded me of “exile”! Maybe that’s what you wanted to say after all?
(Just my weird joke)
Thanks HG for the gift of knowledge that I could not change the outcome.
Somehow I feel let off the hook after reading this.
It’s a very strange feeling after being in the grips of hell for so long.
Lol, now what?
As an empath, I now realize I cannot heal you.
Now it’s on me to heal myself.