Why Does The Narcissist Compartmentalise Appliances?
As narcissists we often engage in compartmentalisation. This articles concerns how and why we compartmentalise various appliances in our fuel matrices.
We view our lives as a series of compartments. The compartments are linked and there is an archway from one compartment to another but this archway has been bricked up by us and only we know the secret word that will open up the archway and admit us to the next compartment. You will try and search for an opening so that you may move from one compartment to another but your search will be fruitless. You will rhyme off all the passwords you can think of from ‘open sesame’ through to ‘abracadabra’ but none of them will work. There is a simple reason for that. We want you to stay in your compartment until we come back to it. We do not want you interacting with any of our other compartments because then it makes each area harder for us to control. A greater need for control mean more energy expenditure which will mean that there is less available for me to use to gather fuel and that is not something I can allow to happen.
A blissful domestic set-up will be in one compartment where I play the role of doting husband and caring father. To the external observer who looks in on the scene through the Perspex it appears to be a picture of harmony and good relations. Yet the observer cannot hear the shouting nor listen to your sobs as you are on the receiving end of another tirade. The fearful cries and the scathing admonishments fail to air beyond this compartment. You are not able to escape to another place and reveal what is really going on in this compartment. As soon as I depart to the next one then the brickwork closes behind me with lightning quick speed, trapping you where I want you. Of course I will tell you all about what is happening in the other compartments when I return, so that you will be subjected to tales of my magnificence in the work place and anecdotes about the new ‘friend’ I have in order to create some triangulated jealousy from you.
My work compartment show me as all conquering and masterful yet those that have been subjected to my brutal put downs and suffered from my repeated dumping of work on them as I breeze around town are forbidden from escaping this compartment to pollute the carefully constructed image that I have made for myself.
The members at the golf club who find my boasting odious and have seen me mark down a lower score than that which I had achieved on my score card are unable to blacken my name to my admirers beyond this particular place. Instead I depart the golf club and scurry to the bar where I regale my hangers-on with another story of my five under par round which won the competition. They coo over my success oblivious to what has actually gone on.
Home life, work life, mistress, friends, club, family and more are allotted these compartments. In each one I am a god. I rule supreme able to do as I please so that I can carry forth my stories of heroism into another compartment and there drink deep of their admiring fuel.
I spend much of my time ensuring that the inhabitants of each compartment know about one another, to multiply my fuel of course, but rarely shall I ever allow them to cross paths. This might lead to someone squaring the circle and working out what is behind my carefully orchestrated campaigns of divide and conquer. A must never speak to B who must not be allowed to tell C what really happened. I must maintain my constructed world where these people are little more than dolls in a huge segregated dolls’ house. I put them in poses and play with them so that I can create a scenario by which I can brag to others in the next room about. If they ever escaped and managed to follow me through these archways so they could compare what I have said with what has actually happened I would be truly finished. Sometimes this happens and then the compartment must be set ablaze, scorched from the record and denied an existence. Next time this compartment will be refurbished, repainted and with new dolls put in place. I must control everything around me. Everyone in their place and a place for everyone.
22 thoughts on “Why Does The Narcissist Compartmentalise Appliances?”
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Not sure what happens to the compartmentalized individual, from the Nās perspective, when you go no contact?
Prior to NC, I definitely felt I was trapped in a compartment esp. when texts and emails could be flung at me at will and no one else saw these evil darts. I kept all correspondences in case I ever needed them in a situation. Knowing I have them is not something I dwell upon, but if a compartmentalized empath could be helped, or someone was having a problem with him and wanted my point of view, I can offer more than verbal explanations.
How does the N view the NC compartmentalized?
Hello Susan,
Should you impose no contact you will be subjected to hoovers dependent on the Hoover Trigger and the Hoover Execution Criteria. The way you are treated and viewed is described in the articles How No Contact Feels Parts One to Three.
Amazing article thank you, However I will never look at my daughters Barbie Dream House and barbie dolls the same . Each time she will play with it and the dolls it will remind me of this HG .
PatiāI loved barbies. I had the dream house. Iām surprised it never disappeared.
That explains so much. I once planned a surprise party for ex-narc IP (and his wife – I didn’t leave her out). I contacted lots of people from his various compartments (what I now realise are compartments).
He found out about it before it happened and lost his temper completely. He said I had meddled in his life, and crossed the line, and all sorts of other things.
He asked me exactly who I had contacted. He wanted a list. He said he needed to do “damage control.”
I had no idea why he was being like this. Surely a party is a nice thing, right? I was trying to do something lovely for him.
He fell out with me for about 3 weeks after that, and when he started speaking to me afterwards he said I was “chaos personified” and that he was still trying to clean up the mess I’d caused.
I didn’t understand. How could I have caused a mess with something so simple? What what was there to clean up? Those were the thoughts running through my head. It made no sense to me.
I understand now. He was being like this because I had thrown his compartments about.
Just to add… the party never ended up happening.
Policy of truth,
That’s hilarious!
Only three weeks TPOT?!? I canāt believe that wasnāt disengagement for that stunt!
MB
Only three weeks TPOT?!? I canāt believe that wasnāt disengagement for that stunt!
I agree. More like a silent treatment as punishment
HG, would a MRN as well as an empath obsess over what others think of them in certain circumstances (e.g. if they want to be portrayed in a good light,- the empath for genuine reasons, the N for the facade), or is this only something which an empath would do?
Oh dear. Looks like the comment problem is spreading. I couldn’t see anything.
Hahahah that will teach me!
Who said that?
It is all education here, AS 2016. As you were.
Can you answer it though x
Yes thank you.
Sorry HG. Will you answer it though
This one had always confused me as to why my EX-N #3 would seduce me. I was a close inner circle friend for over 25 years. Considered him as a brother, until he seduced me. Our kids grew up together. We worked together. He always wanted me under the same roof as him and his wife during the affair, and either ignored her or was fighting with her all the time, yet refused to leave her. He did seem to compartmentalize two other shelf IPSS’s (from his wife) that he would have sex with. This just does not make sense to me in the context of my situation. Maybe he just wasn’t good at compartmentalization?
A āhuge segregated dollsā house?ā
More like a Huge Haunted House, complete with gaslight and ghosting. BOO! š»
Happy Halloween! š
What happens when compartments merge? Eg starting working together with the IPPS or IPSS, a close friend joining the same golf club, etc. Which mask overrides?
Potential problems dependent on the school of narcissist.
It happened to me. And if it happens to you, pretty you dont know the name of the narc if he is brought up in conversation. It serves you better to play naive.