A Poisoned Pen
“Dear Victim,
That greeting is now more applicable than ever as you are now about to experience my devaluation of you. Why am I doing this? Well, there is the void inside of me. I know it is there and I can feel it. It makes me feel restless, then weak, then as if I am collapsing in on myself, being consumed by the black hole that sits at the centre of my being. The only way I know how to stop this happening is to fill up on emotional content from other people and in particular you. The more emotional attention I get, so much the better. The terror of oblivion soon vanishes and then the weakness fades. It does not take too long for the sensation of restlessness to evaporate and then I am on the up once more. I feel empowered, omnipotent and capable of anything. The more of this emotional content that keeps coming my way then the greater my sense of power becomes, the greater my capability to achieve and I am then that which I know myself to be. That weakened individual is not me. That is just the product of the cruelties of the world that have been heaped up against me. That is the outcome of the malice and treachery that I have to deal with. That is what created that weak individual and I do not recognise him. He has no standing with me and I banish him so readily when I receive the emotional attention which I am entitled to. You once were really, really good at giving me this emotional attention. You did it in a positive way. You loved me in a way that nobody else has done (at least so far as in that I care to remember) and I know that you still love me but there is something different now and the void is making its presence known more than it ought to and certainly more than I want it to. I know what to do though. I always know what to do. I need to flick the switch and now cause that torrent of negative emotional attention to come from you. It is easily done. I know lots of ways of doing it. What makes it even better is that the change from adoration to abhorrence is so marked, such a contrast that your reaction is increased, magnified and boosted. This means all the more of your negative emotional reactions for me to drink in. I have a toolkit full of various manipulations. I have been using some of the tools on you already, although you were so blinded by the brilliance of my seduction you did not notice. It will be different now. Some of the tools are very subtle and you will have no idea that I am controlling you. Others are pretty brutal and you won’t be able to miss them. I wish you hadn’t changed but it has happened. I don’t delight in doing this you know; I just have to do it. It is necessary for my survival and I am of course more important than you, or at least, that is what I keep telling myself. After all, that has to be true hasn’t it? If you were more important than me, you would not find yourself in this situation would you? You wouldn’t be about to face systematic abuse which will leave you hurt, upset, bewildered, exhausted, worried, anxious, terrified, puzzled and near broken. I’m not the one who is going to suffer. You are. You might consider this a punishment for failing to keep up the correct standard of emotional attention that I need. If you do, so be it. Punishment or not, it has to happen because I have to fill that void. Being able to extract such negative emotional attention from you stands as a true measure of my power over you and this is what all of this is about, power. I have to feel powerful because if I do not then I vanish and I do not want that to ever happen. I have realised that the only way that I am able to feel powerful is by harnessing the emotional responses of other people and yours most of all. I suppose you do have some importance then don’t you, just not as much as me.
Don’t take it personally. I have done this to plenty of other people like you. I thought they would prove effective in providing me the emotional attention but despite my best endeavours, careful selection and giving nature, they still malfunctioned. It is very disappointing. In order to fix the situation, I need to change the nature of my interaction with you so that I hurt you. There are thousands of ways of doing this. I may call you names, I may stop having sex with you, I may punch you, I may take your money away, I may stop you seeing your friends, I may just stand and stare at you, I may stop speaking to you, I may disappear, I may have an affair well probably more than one, I may not offer any help to you around the house, I may hide your possessions, I may smash things up, I may disagree with you repeatedly and so much more. There are so many different ways to extract that negative emotional attention. Think of it like a torturer just trying to extract information. He does not care about who you are, he just wants his goal; the information. I am just the same. You do not matter to me. I am not doing this because of who you are, it is what you have failed to do and my goal is to get your negative emotional attention and to do so repeatedly.
It’s not all bad news though. I will flick the switch and be delightful to you again and provide you with some respite from my seemingly ceaseless horrible behaviour. Don’t be mistaken and think that I am doing that because I care about you or because I have suddenly seen the error of my ways. I know you and others like you see my ways as wrong, but I seem them as necessary. I will offer you some respite so you don’t leave until I decide it is time for you to go. I do it because I feel that the contrasting positive fuel that you will provide – the relief, the joy, the thanks – will serve me well in filling the void. I don’t expect it to last but it will at least stop you from leaving me and allow you some form of recovery before I flick the switch once more and away we go again. You can expect this to go on for as long as I can keep drawing sufficient emotional attention from you. Back and forth we will go. One day good. The next bad. The next good. The next two bad. It will leave you completely baffled, confused and deranged but that suits me fine. That way you won’t be able to think straight. I do not want you making any calm and rational decisions. Heavens no, you might actually work out what I am and decide to get away from me and I cannot have my supremacy and authority challenged in that manner. I say when things happen around here.
I would say sorry for what is about to happen but eventually you will realise that I rarely say that word and if I do I never mean it. I just use it as another way of getting what I want. That’s a fact. It just the way I am. Deal with it. Well, I suppose I had better open up the toolkit and select the first dark instrument to use against you because I am starting to feel restless already and something needs to be fed.
With mechanical action N.Arc x”
21 thoughts on “A Poisoned Pen”
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What happened to the narcissist is neither here nor there it doesn’t matter. Don’t feel bad for them there is no need. These are manipulation tactics used by them.
You got the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard by the way.
I know. Thank you.
I cannot help myself in that I always giggle when you admit, so nonchalantly, to your own marvels and wonders. Ha haha. It’s as if I’ve just being tickled.
What would happen if a narc jumped right into this black hole and was confronted with the void? Maybe there is something behind it. Would he die, would he go crazy or would he become an empath? I’m still searching for a way for you to recover 🙂
The narcissist would not jump into it, the narcissism would stop that happening.
I understand now. Why therapy has never worked for me. Why it won’t work for you. It will never work me being with a normal no better then you being with one. They do not light up my brain the way you do. Do not fill up the void the way you do. Do not validate me the way you do. The sweet dysfunction I call home. You are no more or less fucked up then I. We need each other.
…… Why am I doing this? Well, there is the void inside of me. I know it is there and I can feel it. It makes me feel restless, then weak, then as if I am collapsing in on myself, being consumed by the black hole that sits at the centre of my being. The only way I know how to stop this happening is to fill up on emotional content from other people and in particular you. The more emotional attention I get, so much the better…..
HG,
What you are describing here are the physical sensations of panic when there is imminent danger. The feeling a parent gets when their child is having an accident and might wind up seriously hurt, for example. It compels to act now in order to remove the danger and return to safety.
Feeling insignificant makes you experience panic. You get the urgent need for validation. You need to know you MATTER. NOW.
Positive or negative attention, love or hate, all is accepted when the feeling of insignificance is an all to familiar and overpowering feeling. Just don’t ignore my being. The attention you get (the emotional outpoor) is the fuel that you need to survive.
Your actions have an impact on others. You have power over them.
Being a narcissist you will of course deny the mushy, needy and weak side and emphasize the strong side of you taking control.
Interesting Honey Bee and thanks for your observation. It is a period prior to panic – panic is at a point where reasoned-decision making based on logic has been lost and has given way to emotional thinking. I do not get to that point, it is a prior point. It is however the case that panic will manifest for lower echelon narcissists who are unable to assert control readily enough – not always as they manage to gain fuel and assert control and pull away from panic, but there will be instances where they are not able to do so and this will result in panic manifesting – most notably with LMR and MMR.
You are most welcome, HG.
I was not referring to a prolonged state of panic in which someone has no idea how to handle the situation or get a grip on oneself.
In my perception there is nothing before the panic, All is well, Panic is the first emotion when something goes wrong. It’s a primal instinct aimed at survival. There is no reasoned-decision making that precedes panic.
However, if the events are a regular occurrence then there may be a period that precedes it. You seem to believe that your girlfriends “lost that loving feeling” (let the music play…) before you did. They “malfunction”. So you are prepared for what you are convinced would happen next and you will not allow yourself to be engulfed by panic. So you switch to negative fuel
I think what you saw in your girlfriends is the decline of the hormones of infatuation. That is why the glow in their eyes disappears, The many small and vulnerable threads of infatuation get replaced by stronger and sturdier threads (of love in the beginning stages), which are invisible to you. So you switch to negative energy, which we then perceive as you trying to break the now sturdy threads.
Love seems most potent and visible in the beginning stages of a relationship. Once those threads of love are sturdy, love will only show it’s highest intensity and power when loved ones are in dire need or in grave danger. Think of a mother that will fight like a lion to save her child (Unfortunately not all mothers are like that. Some damage their own children).
But let’s think of sadness, anger, resentment and hate … There is no contentment in those, which makes them hard to overlook or conceal and often very visible and fierce. It’s a fierceness you hardly ever get to see in love (although it is there). I think that is why a narcissist shifts to the negative fuel.
To assist you, the narcissist is never utterly content. Greaters get close to that, other schools not as such and therefore there is a sliding scale of restlessness, discomfort, irritation through to panic as a fuel crisis hits. Accordingly, there is a ‘brewing’ period if you will, within the narcissist before panic occurs (if the fuel level ever drops that low). Often panic does not occur because the discomfort etc is what drives the narcissist to seek out fuel (unconsciously) and thus pull away from the onset of panic before it actually occurs.
I loved this. It made me feel the rush I absolutely love.
Thank you!
Suffer?
So I do
In blood in birth in love in death
Suffer?
So you do
In the mirror in dreams at rest and awake
To suffer or to be beautiful
To own the eyes of the beholder
We wish both could be blind but
You would choose beauty
I would rather suffer
Then to be as you
Beautiful poem wounded.
Thank you Lynn!
Lovely and profound, Wounded.
Thank you Nika. I actually thought I’d get teased a bit for my stab at poetry.
A line from one of the most famous films that ever came to the silver screen: ‘It’s not personal, it’s just business’. The Godfather.
So it is with the Narcissist. As you correctly state Mr. Tudor, that void MUST be filled. That deep, black hole where a soul should be needs fuel and without its fuel that monster, which is the ‘False Self’ that was constructed by the Narcissist in order to cope with the unbearable abuse and trauma of their early lives, might cause the Narcissist to have a psychological collapse from which he or she would never recover.
Is there a cure for Narcissistic Personality Disorder? It is a question I have pondered thousands of times since I have been married to my Narcissist husband, and I think that in order for a cure, the Narcissist must first face that which he has buried so deeply in his psyche: The terrible pain that caused him to construct the ‘False Self’ in the first place.
In the case of my husband, he would have to face and acknowledge the horrendous abuse that he endured as a child, and I know that he will never be able to do this.
It is one of dozens of compartments in his mind that he locked many years ago. The doors are firmly closed.
The ‘false Self’ is the one who holds the keys to all that pain and this is the reason that the ‘False Self’ MUST be fed with a constant supply of fuel. Without the ‘False Self’ to carry the weight of all of that terrible emotional pain, the Narcissist might have to confront the horrors of his past, and like I have already said, this would probably result in a psychological breakdown from which he or she would probably never be able to recover.
There have been several occasions where I feel that my husband was quite literally on the verge of telling me about his painful early life……but then the mask goes back on and the ‘False Self’ is there, guarding the secrets, holding it all together.
What would happen if the ‘False Self’ was no longer there? This is another question that I have pondered…….what would be left in its place? I think that what is left is that terrified, abused child……the traumatized little boy that I sometimes see in my husband’s eyes……..the pain that I see in those eyes that makes me go in to the bathroom and sob.
I sob for that child……..I sob for the neglected, unloved, abused little boy who had to create a monster in his mind in order to cope with the horrors of his childhood. The monster that STILL demands to be fed…..that never ending demand for fuel. The terrible cycle that goes on and on, leaving innocent and bewildered victims in its wake.
Destroying lives, causing havoc and chaos…….the monster that must be fed.
Mr. Tudor, thank you for letting me come here and speak about myself and my husband…….because sometimes, the pain and the helplessness and the sheer hopelessness that I feel is overwhelming…………
You, Sir, are a writing machine tonight! Wow! What is your inspiration? -Ms M
I would guess that he is inspired by his new girlfriend.