Trapped : The Car
Control.
We need to control everything around us. This must be done so we can gain fuel. This must be done because our natural paranoia causes us to need to exert our will on those around us, before they can do so to us and undoubtedly with catastrophic consequences. Only by exerting control can we be sure and satisfied that the order of things will be as we require it to be. We hate to be subject to the control of others. That reminds us of matters which are best left alone.
This need and desire for control causes us to adjust our manipulations so that we can engineer situations where we can achieve total control. Total control arises when we have you trapped.
This concept of trapping you works on several levels. The widest level is within the confines of the Narcissistic Relationship. This is why we regard your entanglement with us as being permanent. We chose you and now you belong to us. You have no say in this of course, why would you when you are not of our calibre? The idea of trapping you continues in terms of the Formal Relationship. This is why we move swiftly to proclaim you as our boyfriend, fiancee, partner, wife and so forth. The application of this labelling is more than just a convenient way of referring to you. We trap you during seduction with the illusion that we create. We trap you during devaluation through the application of our machinations to ensure that you remain stuck and confused. We place traps all around you so they snap close and hold you tight. We get you pregnant, we isolate you from your friends, we make you give up your job so you become financially dependent on us (although we will naturally complain about you leeching off us later on), we stop you seeing your family, we smear people to you and you to them so you are cut adrift from your support networks. On and on it goes the placing and laying of these traps at varying levels so you remain trapped.
This trapping continues within the various stages of the narcissistic cycle. Most often this manifests when we are devaluing you. In keeping with the need to have total control, we want to engineer situations where you are under our control, unable to escape us and thus we can exact our machinations against you and extract what we want from you. To do this, we create Situational Traps and there are many of them which I shall detail to you over the course of various articles, but we shall begin with a Situational Trap which is a favourite of ours; the car.
We will naturally be at the wheel after all the car is ours (whether it might be in your name is irrelevant) and so we have to be the one driving. We choose where we are going, the speed at which we go, the controls of the car are under our charge. You are sat besides us, seatbelt on, buckled in to your seat as the world flashes by. You cannot escape us. You cannot jump from the car. You might unclip your seatbelt and climb into the back of the vehicle, if you are nimble enough, although we will stop you from trying to do that. You are in the hotseat, right next to us and we know it.
You may we well cuffed to a chair in some dingy basement, with a single bright light shining in your face for the interrogation and treatment will be of a similar nature. The journey may have begun pleasantly enough but if this is a trip which is taking place during the devaluation period, all it takes is for your to blunder in to criticising us and then our fury ignites and the nastiness commences. With you trapped we know that we have you all to ourselves. There is nowhere for you to go. With a Mid-Ranger or a Greater, you will be lured into the vehicle purely for the purposes of us being to rely on the Situational Trap. The behaviour which has offended us may have taken place earlier, in some instances days earlier and with plotting mind firing away, we avail ourselves of the opportunity to coerce you to go on a journey with us. It will undoubtedly be under some false pretence; a picnic, a drive to the coast, a trip to the shopping mall. Once you are in, the seat belt is on and the central locking clicks, then you are our prisoner. The smile we wore fades in an instant and the fury which we have kept under control is now allowed to the surface. This enables us to draw fuel form your reactions, your pleading, your questioning, your puzzled expression, the fright in your eyes and such like. We may well have placed your bag in the boot which contains your ‘phone so you cannot call anybody. If you try to reach for your ‘phone, it will be snatched from you and thrown to one side, quite possibly from the moving vehicle as we ensure that you are isolated and trapped.
You cannot go anywhere. There is nobody to ask for help. You cannot move out of this confined space. Thus we have placed you in this Situation Trap which is allowing us to exert complete and utter control over you, enabling us to do as we please, for howsoever long we choose and accordingly, such total control is very much an outcome that we aim for.
When we have you to ourselves in this manner, so begins the unpleasant treatment which is all designed to ensure you remain subjected to our power and for you to give us fuel. There are many different ways we exert this when we have you trapped in the passenger seat besides us and these are some of those ways:-
- Driving at an excessive speed and/or recklessly;
- Slamming the breaks on causing you to jolt forward, then accelerating, then braking hard again, catapulting you back and forth;
- Braking hard when you are about to take a drink so it spills;
- Turning up the music extremely loud;
- Cross-examining you relentlessly about something you have done or not done;
- Administering a silent treatment;
- Telling you at the outset of the journey that we are going somewhere and then driving in a different direction or past the destination and refusing to explain where we are going;
- Assaulting you physically as we drive;
- Driving at night in an unlit area and switching the lights on and off;
- Swerving violently over the road, overtaking at dangerous places;
- Repeatedly insulting you;
- Shouting at you;
- Poking you as we question you.
- Driving into the middle of nowhere in silence, save for a baleful glare that we keep giving you;
- Threatening to drive us both off a cliff and heading towards such an area;
- Threatening to throw you from the car whilst it is moving;
- Circular conversations;
- Lengthy monologues about ourselves which have you bored to tears.
The effect of this behaviour will vary in intensity. Sometimes it is purely to frustrate you because we have not gone to the place that was promised. On other occasions it is to allow us to talk at you and question you so you are made to feel bored or uncomfortable. Then again, the nastiness and intimidation is increased whereby the intention is to terrify you and have you scared witless.
Having behaved in this manner and left you terrified, shaking and scared, we may well purposefully drive into an area where the traffic is slower and there are other cars around to test you to see if you try to escape us or attract attention from somebody else. We will be waiting for you to test our control and if you do, there will be further repercussions.
Repeated applications of this behaviour will eventually condition you to the point that you dread being told that
“We are going for a drive.”
Since you have come to know only too well that it is far more than just going for a drive. It is placing you in a cell right next to us, a cell from which you are unable to move or escape and thus we can apply our twisted machinations against you all in the name of fuel and further control.
You are trapped and it is to drive you insane.
23 thoughts on “Trapped : The Car”
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Buckle up!
It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Eyes down, stay quiet.
Just gotta get there. Let me out!
Oh that’s right it wasnt just the painfully long, boring monologue that i was subject to. I had forgotten,( or chosen to forget) how scary it was when he was mad and driving..Thanks HG
I’ve hopped out in traffic or at lights on multiple occasions. You see, I read Escape and Revenge and did exactly what you suggested. Blow after blow after blow. Today I’m sure he misses the days all I did was hop out of the vehicle. I’m stronger and ready for more if he comes anywhere near me. I’ve spared two of his sources, for now.
One more thing, I love Narcissist: Seduction. I wasn’t expecting a novel. More more more!
I hate this.
HG, Thank you for your gift of your work, I just found your blog last night in relation to the Chris Watts case. I’m looking forward to reading your works and learning more. I’m an empathetic intuitive infj and in the past many claws have sunk into me but I have been able to recognize the games and strategies early on and remove myself. It is actually really fun to see through the mask even though the the treatment from them is totally unbearable at the same time. I have a hard time letting things go especially injustice. I want to ask you more about the different types of empaths, and learn more about the classes you use here. Thanks again.
After reading more I feel like I am a super empath, and infj personality has a lot of narcissistic parallels or interpreted that way. I throughly enjoy fucking with people who have fucked with me first, knowing their next move before they do. When I come across a shitty system, I system bust and leave, loving the dumb look on their face as their games failed. I’ll smile and feel happy but over and over I’ll relive the anger and hate for them, like ptsd I’ll get flashbacks of them being assholes. I don’t want to be pushed to that place but if they start it, then the art of war has begun and I have always been capable of operating from that place, I just don’t want to have to be that way.
Hello Kristin and welcome, I am pleased you are finding my work useful.
There are four schools of empath – Standard (most empaths), Co-Dependent (moderately common), Super (rare) and Contagion (very rare).
The cadres include – Carrier, Saviour, Martyr, Geyser, Magnet
Martyr? That must be a joke.
I searched for martyr empath just to make sure I hadn’t missed an article about the Martyr cadre but only Goldinarc and the three empaths popped up. Did you mean doormat? Have you changed the name?
I am not even sure right now that the Doormat is an empath cadre.
Time for me to go to bed.
See Chained.
Hg- I am reading your book Fury (for the 3rd time) and you talk about your mother and her brother both being narcs. Do you know anything about your mother’s parents? I would be interested to know who of her parents the narcissism came from.
I do. Her father.
HG is there a particular type of empathic person that you find controlling your fury difficult with?
You say that you need control but what if you don’t get the control you want?
I have had so many of them I have lost count, but even when it is my boss who is narcissistic I become the target for malignant hoovering and I won’t be controlled and they go to lengths I wouldn’t even dream of to upset me and still expect me to do what they want, but anybody else can say no and it’s ok but if I do they cannot handle it I can take it for years and have even thought it weakens me I keep strong enough to keep taking it or leave , discarding me won’t make me chase after them either
No, but a Super Empath is (by definition) going to push matters harder, but for an Ultra such as I, I manage to keep that fury under control – these days.
The car is still also the worst place for me. Current narc in my life finally drove us in his Car to a nice place. Started with playing the opposite of the kind of music I like though he had claimed he loved it, too, choosing the exact music I Had told him I hated and an ex had played in constant loops.
He continued to provoke a fight at the beach, then wanted to go somewhere else when back in the car, when I wanted to go Home. When I finally gave in he said he didn’t feel like going anywhere and drove home.
This article brings back terrible memories. Flashback to the beginning of the relationship with a ULN. I expressed a fear of going over a bridge and being submerged, in a vehicle, underwater. Soon after he bought me a tool that could cut a seatbelt and break a window in an emergency in an attempt to win my “trust.”
Fast forward ten years later to “I’m gonna drive us all over this fucking bridge if u don’t shut the fuck up.” That’s him, my daughter and I in the car.
Don’t tell the narcissist your greatest fears.
Jess, what an unforgivable way to treat you and your daughter.
It is a very low act to take a person’s vulnerabilities and use them as a sword against their heart.
I am so sorry to hear of his cruelty and for the impact it has had your lives.
Forgive me, but may I suggest you get out of the car and let him drive off the bridge all by himself?
Sarah xo
I’m sorry Jess, that is terrible – and poignant.
Absolutely, Jess, that is the one thing you can rely on in a narc, using your fears and what you have told him about previous Traumas and abuse against you.
Jess
Yup, definitely a lesser.
Thank you all. I hope the things I write help someone.
Very Very true. ANYthing you say can, and will be used against you in a narc court of law.
My babydaddy would do what I thought was the strangest thing; I’d be getting the kids ready to go out, and if the kids were ready before he was , I would take them to the car and get them strapped into the car seats and get the car turned on for the heat or the air conditioning or whatever and just wait in the car with them- figuring he would not be long. He’d come out five or 10 minutes later and he would have an absolute rage fit! I could never quite understand, but I think the gist of it was that I had the nerve to get the kids into the car before he was ready. Which in itself never made sense to me because what’s so offensive about that? Also he could never tell me exactly how long it was going to take him to get ready – so I would just get the kids ready and Rather than have them wait around the house and eventually take off all their shoes and clothes because they were bored from waiting , I would just take them to the car. and wait with them there. He seemed to think I was doing it to piss him off or to rush him. But that was never the case and no matter how I tried to explain he didn’t believe me, and he would just scream and insult me for half the drive to wherever we were going . It was horrific .
I have not yet totally identified him as a narcissist but I sure would love to know what the hell was going on here. If he’s a narc-then I assume that this was me wounding / attacking his entitlement and superiority?
You wounded him by doing something without his say so AND doing so without needing his input or assistance – on the basis that he was a narcissist.