Mind Games – Part One
We love to conquer. Nowhere is off limits to our kind. Your mind is no exception to that mentality. The repeated application of mind games and the impact this had are both consequence which live long in the memory of those who have experienced them as a consequence of being entangled with us. I repeatedly state that the games are always being played. I doubt few would disagree with that statement. You ought to be aware however that the deployment of mind games, whilst always a factor in the narcissistic relationship, is not as deliberate as you may first imagine. In the case of the Lesser Narcissist, the mind games are collateral. They are a consequence of his instinctive behaviours, his reactions and pre-determined methodologies. He lacks the cognitive function to engage in the purposeful mental torment, but instead what arises as mind games is side-effect of the way that he behaves. As for the Mid-Range, well the application of mind games will sometimes manifest as deliberate but for the most part, he is similar to the Lesser and that these mind games occur as a consequence of the way he is engineered to think and to behave. It is with the Greater where the true twisted behaviour manifests as not only are the mind games a consequence of what we do, we also purposefully engage in them because we know how effective they are at achieving what we want and also because we are excellent at deploying them.
The imposition of bewilderment on a shattered and exhausted mind possesses a deftness of touch which is far superior to the brutish application of a fist to a cheek. The conjuring of confusion from the use of words alone is a highlight of the Greater’s manipulative repertoire. Accordingly, the mind games which arise from entanglement with a Lesser or a Mid-Range arise because of the various defence mechanisms those types of narcissist deploy. The Greater regards the playing of mind games as an essential part of the narcissistic relationship, one which is considered noble, important and a hallmark of his sophisticated abuse.
These mind games are varied and effective. Anybody who has been on the receiving end of them will testify as to the horrible impact that they have in creating doubt, fear, worry, anxiety, submission and a sense of helplessness. What are some of these mind games?
- Second Guessing. The act of making you forget about your own needs because you are conditioned to think about our needs first in order to avoid some dreadful repercussion if you do not so. You apply your mind over and over to assessing the situation and trying to gauge how you should respond, what you should do next, what you should organise, how you should look, how you should behave in order to avoid some other abuse.
- Pre-occupation. By making ourselves so central to your existence and the only thing which matters you find that you are always wondering about us. What are we doing right now? Who are we with? What are we doing? This does not necessarily occur just in the devaluation. As the seeds of addiction are sown during the seduction, you find your mind is focused on us more and more. This is the laying of the groundwork to have you forget about your own needs and indeed who you are as the focus of your attention becomes all about us.
- Mirroring. We convince you that you are falling in love with the most wonderful and fantastic person you have ever met. This is achieved by mirroring what you want in the object of your affection. By meeting this need on so many different fronts, you become helpless to falling in love with what you believe us to be.
- Obsessing. By engaging in the vague, the vapid and the amorphous we have you start obsessing over us. Once again the focus moves on to us as you ask yourself what did he mean by that comment? Why is he late? Why did he just do that? You look for clues which are non-existent and seek answers which are not there, reading too much into what are often innocuous scenarios.
- Gas Lighting. The infamous act of causing you to doubt your own reality and is invariably the cumulative effect of many different types of mind game. You end up doubting yourself and accepting our false reality as the true reality instead.
- Jettison. The act of having you think that you are about to be discarded. Comments will be made which suggest that we are dissatisfied with you, that we are tired of you and that we have interests elsewhere. Nothing is said outright, there is nothing concrete, but the signs are there that you are going to be discarded. Aren’t they?
- Jealousy. “But she is just a friend.” “How can I be having an affair when we only meet during daylight.” “You are reading too much into it.” The appearance of somebody who we talk about a lot, spend time with and appear to admire is designed to bring about jealousy in you and undermine your self-confidence.
- Mea Culpa. The complexity and absurdity of our behaviour means that you are unable to fathom out what is actually going on. This results in you needing to find some kind of answer in order to give you piece of mind and therefore since you have no ground to question us, you decide you must be at fault and being to blame yourself. After all, nobody gets furious for no obvious reason do they? You must have done something wrong to provoke us. It is your fault.
- Projection. The intentional movement of our faults and unpleasant behaviours from us to you. The accusation that you engage in the very behaviour which we undertake ourself.
- Character Assassination. The unmerited and savage attack on you, criticising you for any number of things; how you walk, how you talk, your hair colour, who your friends are; how you made the coffee this morning. Anything and everything about you will be attacked even though you cannot see the basis of doing so.
- Blame-Shifting. The defensive step of ensuring that we are never to blame or held accountable. Anything that goes wrong, any incorrect behaviour, any mishap is all down to you. You caused it, you brought it about, you made it happen. Even though you cannot see any factual basis for the accusation that has been flung your way, this will not stop it happening.
- Authoritative Denial. We do not just deny, we deny with such conviction, determination and authority that surely only someone who does this is someone who has to be right, yes?
- Gaseous Smear Campaigns. You are being spoken about, whispered about and slurs cast against your name, at least you think that is the case. You seem to be receiving strange glances and hear snickering when you walk by certain people, but you never hear anything concrete or certain. You might be mis-hearing, you might be mis-reading, it may just be paranoia. Trying to work out if you are being smeared is like trying to catch a gas with your bare hands.
- Silent Treatments. The staple of the narcissistic arsenal. Why is he silent? Why has he vanished? What have you done wrong? When will he speak to me again?
- Double Standards. We are so pleasant and wonderful to everybody else. People speak so highly of us, yet when the front door is closed we turn into a monster with you. Is it real? Perhaps you are taking it out of context and exaggerating or maybe you are doing something which causes this to happen and nobody else does?
- Amnesia. We deny having ever done something or said something even though you are positive, well fairly certain, okay, at least reasonably sure, we did say it. It works both ways as we accuse you of having a faulty memory as we tell you we told you last week we would be going out tonight, why can you not remember these things? Are you doing it in order to annoy us? Of course you are.
- Losing Your Mind. We label you as crazy, unhinged, a maniac who is need of help. Good Lord, everybody thinks it of you and we are a saint for putting up with this behaviour for so long. We tell you often, arrange for you to get help, see a doctor or a therapist and accompany you to explain to them how you are losing your marbles. Are we making all of this up in order to disturb you further, or then again, might you just be losing your mind after enduring all of this?
15 thoughts on “Mind Games – Part One”
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My Mid-Range half sister loved these mind games. And when she did these things, she had this annoying expression like she thought she was just so clever and sophisticated.
Character Assassination – She would say criticisms here and there but the first time that I thought she was really weird was when we both wanted an item from our dad. Our brother’s solution was a coin toss and I won in the coin toss. She was so distraught. It was a really cool item and a great conversational piece and she really wanted it badly. When it was just me and her at the front porch she started going on about how I am so self-centered, that I don’t even do anything for people around me etc. etc. And she mentioned different examples and I explained myself in each of those situations that she mentioned and I was so drained explaining myself to her that I started to cry from the thought that my sister didn’t like me at all and I felt being wrongly judged. I was crying nonstop and when I looked at her she was smiling and looked refreshed! I told her that I will work on the things that she mentioned and I noticed that she was beaming and looking rejuvenated. Now I understand that my fuel healed her wound of having to coin toss with me when she believed she was more entitled to that item than I was. I still think that her face was such a weird reaction to this day.
Gas Lighting – She did this a lot. One example, she said an attack to me and my husband was there in the living room with her and I was in a different room but I heard it. I confronted her about it and she denied that she has said it. She was trying to get my husband to agree with her that she didn’t say it and we were both looking at him. He could feel the pressure and he said that he did hear her say it but he looked so confused at what was going on. She said. “Did I?” But she never admitted to saying it. She would also come up with something untrue to distract from an issue that we were arguing about. Like we were arguing about something then in the middle of the argument she would say, “And by the way, you left the door open when you came by my house (our dad’s house, we all owned it but she called it her house). How many times did I tell you not to leave the door open because things can be stolen.” Then I would say that it never happened, I never leave the door open but then it took me away from the original argument.
Amnesia – This was really hurtful, when I did stuff for her and she acted like she had no memory of it. When she didn’t have a car anymore, she asked me to take her to San Francisco to meet a friend and we can do fun stuff there as well. I did and she told me so many times how much fun she had although to be quite honest I didn’t have fun. She was like an energy vampire the whole time. Also, her friend in San Francisco was a really opinionated liberal, which I respect, but when I voiced out my views because he kept on talking about politics, my sister was looking at me like I didn’t know what I was talking about. It was about Obamacare and my husband happened to be a doctor but she was looking at me like everything that I was saying was not as smart as her friend’s opinions who was a computer technician. She even had to explain to me in a very slow and pandering way what a “sound bite” means and I cut her off in the middle of her explanation, “I know what a sound bite means!” Then she looked at me with her big eyeballs like I am out of control and scary. So I was so exhausted the whole time and she said she had so much fun. Then a few months later she told me about this trip that she had with her friend to the same place in San Francisco and asked me if I have ever been there. I was shocked because how can she forget that we have both been there just a few months ago and she said that she had so much fun. And then she went on and on about how much she enjoys this friend’s company and she will never forget their trip to San Francisco together.
I know I have been smeared brutally in my community (small) by my ex. Slander. Just keeping my head held high.
This is my narc to the T. He is a greater, and he smoothly dishes out several of those tactics simultaneously in a sentence or two or a short conversation. Before I knew what he is, I thought, geez, it’s good I have a level head, or I’m a nice girl, how much of this abuse can I take. Now it doesn’t matter that I can see through it, that I understand him, that I can brush off his malarkey and even tell him just stop, don’t bullshit with me, doesn’t change anything. I still have to learn to kiss up to him, I still walk out of his office worrying he’ll do something to hurt me, regretting it and just feeling polluted by him. I have to choose to be happy and to not allow him to invade any part of me, and the best way surely is to stay out of his space. It feels wonderful not caring what he’s doing anymore. In fact I’m longing to be replaced by a new negative fuel victim, and figure that person either deserves it or, like me, there’s something in their life they need to unlock and discover, the narcissism throughout their life.
Kel,
“Polluted by him” is a perfect way to put it.
HG, my greater’s two favourite accusations are that I am a stalker and crazy. Is that projection?
Correct.
My MRN calls me a stalker all the time. “Stop stalking my Facebook please” he will say.
Then he blocks me from seeing certain posts (yet won’t unfriend me). He then tells our mutual friend about his posts and the friend will text me and say “OMG, did you see MRN’s post?” Knowing full well I did not see anything but he wants to make sure I KNEW about it.
Mind games indeed!
I get it. I accept those things happened. All of the above and more.
I’ve sold myself out for your kind, as I was conditioned since childhood to put up and shut up. I hope if he ever did contact me, could I really resist? That’s a fucking scary thought. It reminds me to do what I need to do for myself.
Since I’m preoccupied with thinking about him, but also wanting to move forward in my life, how can I survive this dichotomy? We share kids together, long term relationship, separated for five years. Yet, here I am.
H.G.,
I haven’t read everything you have published as I was lucky to have found some decent resources in the midst of the discard which helped me to identify my ex BF as a sociopath. Your site would have helped me rationalize sooner but it does continue to help me maintain steadfast in maintaining all of my no contact barriers.
Many times I have noticed you mention (emphasize) how Narcissists such as yourself, utilize social media and technology to manipulate and love bomb your chosen victims. My ex boyfriend was no exception-he was typical in his behavior and I believe him to be a mid level bordering on a greater.
One thing I wanted to mention to your readers is even when a victim asks for proof (or clarification) because she is beginning to notice some things are not adding up, a narcissist will often come up with it to ease your mind. The proof could be a variety of things-but in my experience, this included photo shopped driver’s license, fake mortgage documents, fake family members (I met a mother and a sister who were both impostors), fake work ID badge, fake work schedules, fake employee friends,and thousands of fake photographs taken at work to show me what he was working on-supposedly he was an I.T. specialist. None of it was true. He was married and seeing other women AND men and he was a handyman and new very little about computers. He did know a lot about forging documents. Now how he convinced people to pretend they were his family members I will never know. They were lieutenants perhaps H.G? My narcissist was like all others,a pathological liar-so he often told me he was working in town or nearby, just daring me to stop by and see him, but I never did. He knew I never would. He also knew I would never follow him. In fact, you should also mention to your readers to have their vehicles and devices checked once they are aware of what they are dealing with. Blocking is obvious, but believing they would install a tracker in your car a possibility is not. I had mine checked as a precaution and was embarrassed to even have it done, but there it was, plugged into my on board diagnostics port. I also discovered a device logged into my email, and face book accounts and linked to my google location in my phone. This is something you write about H.G. but it was still hard for me to believe he would actually do such a thing. He knew every thing I was doing and where I was at all times.
Anyway, you can do a lot of checking and still be fooled. I had a background check done early on and nothing came up because of course it was a false identity. I hired a P.I. and that is how I eventually learned who he actually was-I saw him over 5 years. I could not and would not believe any of it except for the fact I had proof. What I want to add to the tips you give out to people H.G. is one thing to protect yourself from narcissists using false identities (which I highly suspect you use H.G)….I mean other than being “H.G.” for this blog…is to RUN THEIR CAR TAGS through the police or P.I. They charge very little to do this and it is worth every penny. Had I only thought to have done this when his behavior seemed odd at times, I could have saved myself a lot of heartache.
Accepting it was all an illusion was easier for me in a way because I had proof of the deception so in the end I was lucky. I would never date on line again without running a car tag though. And if you begin dating pretty steadily, you need to go where they work and meet friends and family in an acceptable time. Anyone who “travels” to work better be able to produce plane tickets and receipts. All pictures and facebook posts can be made up and located anywhere-what you see on line could all be completely false. My ex took pictures at all the different hotels he was staying at as he traveled for work but in fact, he was taking pictures at different places he was traveling with other women on the days he was not with me, or they were pictures from his work or his WIFE’s work. It was absolutely insane. The bizzaro world of the narcissist. Mine believed he was Frank Abagnale. He is NO Frank Abagnale. Frank actually became someone who served mankind and continues to do so. My Sociopath will live the rest of his life ruining people’s lives, the one thing he quite excels at. When you devote your life to lying, I guess you tend to become an expert. The hardest part for me is I had no frame of reference to begin to understand what these kind of people are capable of-there are so many who believe this could never happen to them. That is usually their downfall. I try to spread the word about the danger but it doesn’t seem to make much impact.
H.G. do you believe one reason there is no remorse amongst your kind is because you believe your victims ALLOWED themselves to be conned and abused- thus it is their fault if they got hurt? The most difficult aspect of it for me is the feeling stupid part. The emotional perspective we have that your kind exploits. i never wanted to live my life cynical, and suspicious of people and never have-until now-losing that part of me has been difficult.
There is no remorse because it is not something we are equipped with and this lack of remorse may well manifest as seeing the victims as stupid and culpable for being conned, but not always because most narcissists do not know what they are and therefore do not see themselves as conning anybody to begin with.
Thank you, H.G.
Yes, of course-no remorse without empathy. My sociopath went to an extreme amount of trouble to maintain his false identity, in addition to hiding his multitude of other sexual partners and his married, ideal family life. He certainly was deliberate in maintaining all of these separate realities so I am certain he was self aware regarding conning all of us. I think it was mostly for his sheer entertainment. His ability to maintain all the lies without mistakes is quite amazing in hindsight.
Anyway, this person turns out goes to church every Sunday, had been married over 32 years, has 2 beautiful daughters, and ministers to the elderly through music and entertainment. The facade is spectacular. The only real hint about his underlying sociopathy is his inability to hold a job. That is the only reason I do not consider him a greater. He is a financial failure on paper. He does however earn money illicitly but I am not sure how. His family is trying to figure that out now.
H.G. I tried sharing one of your posts on another website for Sociopathic victims but it went over like a lead balloon. Several on the site felt you are a writer well versed in narcissism and pretend to be a sociopath to get published. Although as an individual I despise your kind-I don’t really care if you are a hoax or not. What I perceive as valuable is that you promote GOSO. Your whole persona may be a sharade but I stand by your content. No contact is the answer and I appreciate your candor.
It is vital in accepting as victims that we meant nothing to these sociopaths and the relationship was all an illusion. I feel so sad for those who cannot accept that because they cannot be free without acceptance. Even when aware of what they are dealing with, they want to believe they are/were/would/could be the exception. They could love the disorder right out of them. Ha!
Since there appears no real cure is available for your kind, I would like to see you write about preventative measures by early intervention. I think there is even hope for adult narcissists; I think there is exciting breakthroughs in brain research, but even if you could take a pill to become “normal” you would not. Why would you? If I were like you I wouldn’t either. If you cannot feel the pain you deliver upon the rest of us you certainly would have no motivation to change. A lot of us wish we didn’t or couldn’t feel anything at times, especially us super empaths.
Anyway, there are psychological studies on going to detect potential sociopathic/psychopathic children early on and there has been success in turning some around. My sociopath experienced a middle income family, he had a dominant mother but there was no abuse. No over achievers in the family. Just average folks…with the exception of the sociopath. None of the siblings were aware he was one. Curious.
This comment reminds me of a question I had on my list of interview questions. On one of the live streams, someone asked you how to stop terrorism. You answered by giving an example of your house being flooded and looking to turn off the source of the water first. Cleaning it up without stopping the source of the problem being futile. I’m paraphrasing of course.
What is your solution to reduce the creation of narcissists? How do we get to the source of the disorder? Is it a hopeless situation that we must just learn to mitigate?
My niece, who I strongly suspect to be a narcissist, just gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. I want to be happy, but as I type this, tears are in my eyes. He is a perfect, beautiful blank slate. He could be anything, but as time goes on, what will he become? What can I do? She is not the only narc influence that will be in his life. I can’t save him. I feel so helpless.