• Praises you highly for your accomplishments initially; uses your accomplishments as a way to associate themselves with you and look good. Likes feeling as if they have the successful girlfriend or boyfriend – while simultaneously resenting you for it.
• Competes with you often; if you bring up what you achieved, they have to bring up something bigger or downgrade what you’ve achieved to make you feel small. Nothing you do is truly special or “impressive” – or, it’s really, really special until the narcissist gets tired of praising you and wants to cut you down a thousand pegs or so.
• Highly competitive in any and every context; will be a sore loser in recreational games, sports, or other activities and resort to immature actions to “win” or insult your ability.
• Will accuse you of being arrogant should you happen to share your happiness or present a healthy confidence in your abilities. They are in fact projecting their own sense of arrogance onto you.
• Behind closed doors (or sometimes even out in the open), devalues and minimizes the things they once praised, making them seem unimportant and lacking because they know they would’ve never been able to accomplish those things themselves. They will emphasize the idea that people are against you, that your contribution isn’t valuable or degrade/ignore accomplishments that are in fact a big deal, all with an innocent or smug look on their face.
• Sabotages important events in your life such as big interviews, projects, deadlines using methods like put-downs, crazymaking arguments that lead to sleep deprivation, pressuring you to spend time with them right beforehand, insulting you, covertly casting doubt onto your abilities and talents, one-upping you and making themselves seem more important, accomplished and talented to stroke their sense of superiority.
• Treats your goals, dreams, and interests with contempt or a condescending attitude, all while bringing the conversation back to them.

SoFail has used outfits like the DM etc. to do all of the above…

By Judah

Narcissists belong in the category of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). This means that while most of them are beautiful and charming, they are deep down rotten to the core and there is no treatment for what ails them. So how do you deal with one? You don’t. You avoid them like the plague — but first, you have to learn to recognize them, which is why I’m here to teach you what to look for. How do you know when you’re dealing with NPD/BPD? — they move quickly to ‘own’ you. Shortly after meeting one, they decide your lives should merge and you should move in together. If the narcissist is a man, he will propose to you within 30 days after meeting you. If the narcissist is a woman, she will pressure you to marry her after a week. This is not normal behavior — and no matter what you think you feel: you are not in the love. No matter what you think you feel, you will never be happy in a relationship with a narcissist. You will always be ‘on edge’ or waiting for the other shoe to drop. If you somehow manage to find a little happiness, your narcissist will make it their priority to make you miserable. Like most narcissists, she firmly believes she is entitled to what is yours. This means your money, your man, your personal property, and sometimes your life. The NPD/BPD individual is an empty, soulless human being who has no empathy or compassion for your feelings. The narcissist is an empty shell who requires external triggers in order to feel human like you. They are ‘The Takers of The World’:

You can easily detect narcissists, including the everyday non-malignant kind, by how they process personal interactions. To a normal person, anything you do for them is a gift, and they will normally thank you for it, and possibly think of a way to reciprocate in kind. To a narcissist, by contrast, anything you do is part of an instant obligation you have to [her], it is never good enough, and you have a permanent responsibility to try harder to please [her]. Your efforts will always [fail], but the narcissist will generously let you try again. And again.

Since there is no cure for narcissism; each incidence will only make her worse. If you are a narcissist enabler, then you are easy prey for a narcissist. Learn how to identify narcissists/borderlines in your life before they identify — and destroy you.

By Gail Meyers

First up in the chronic emotional manipulator’s bag of dirty tricks are pleas for pity, playing the victim, martyrdom, and vilifying the true victim. This is the first dirty trick in this series because of the destruction it can cause. This includes immediate results, as well as cumulative effects over the course of time.

Pleas for pity are a favorite of narcissistic emotional manipulators because compassionate people do not want to see people suffer. Manipulators know this, so they often resort to manipulating with pity in an attempt to get what they want rather than taking the honest approach of simply asking and allowing you to freely answer. The first step for codependents is recognizing when and how they are being manipulated. There is a distinction between helping someone who truly needs it and being played by a narcissistic manipulator.

In the mind of a manipulative narcissist, playing the martyr while vilifying the true victim is like killing two birds with one stone. In my experience, it is used in a vast multitude of situations with various twists depending on the narcissist’s goal of the manipulation. This can be done so subtly that most may not even realize the reality of the situation.

It can transpire overtly or very subtly and covertly. So you may clearly see what the chronic emotional manipulator is doing. You may just know something is wrong, but not be able to put your finger on it. Conversely, you may not see the dirty trick that is being pulled on you until much later or when you learn about the bag of dirty tricks.

Playing the victim while vilifying the true victim can be used to conceal the wrongs of the manipulator, while simultaneously stripping the true victim of their virtue. It allows the narcissist to avoid responsibility while gathering pity. It is essentially taking you down a notch to make the abuser feel superior and in control while making you feel and look bad. Whatever characteristic you value in yourself, or the manipulator envies, will often be the target in this scenario.

For example, you pride yourself on being a generous person, but the manipulator is a con artist. So, the manipulator will rip you off, then accuse you of being a money grubbing thief to anyone who will listen, including you. One favorite I have especially noticed is the totally and completely self-centered manipulator accusing you of being selfish.

Secondly, playing the victim while vilifying the true victim is used to conceal the narcissistic manipulator’s abusive behavior and project the blame onto the true victim. Virtually every abuser I am aware of tries to blame the victim for their abuse in some manner. This cunning and deceitful maneuver is a double whammy.

You first endure their abuse, then they blame you, then you may also endure the societal disapproval or broken relationships for what is actually their behavior, based on the martyr tale lies they spread to conceal their abuse. This can sometimes lead to abuse by proxy as the manipulator triangulates by lying to and involving a third party in the abusive relationship.

Narcissistic Manipulation with Pity 

This is a real-life example of what I repeatedly, although completely inadvertently, caught my narcissistic personality disordered mother doing when I was in my twenties. Poor little narcissist mother has been saving her pennies in hopes that one day she can buy this garden statue. She loves to garden and after looking and looking, this is the perfect finishing touch. She works so hard (as opposed to me who only worked at a desk), but she just has not been able to save enough money for it. She is going to keep saving until one glorious day she is able to buy it.

I was a single mother at the time, but she had her heart set on it. So like a well-programmed adult child of narcissists, I surprised her by buying it for her even though I could not afford to. A couple of weeks later, just in the general course of conversation, my Grandmother tells me how she gave my mother the money to buy a statue she wanted for her garden. She was so excited to finally be able to buy it after saving for it for so long.

One would think that is shameless enough behavior, but it did not stop there. A few days later I hear my aunt tell how she also bought my mother the exact same statue. She works so hard, but she just could not afford to buy it. So my narcissistic mother accepted all three gifts without telling anyone the other two had already given her the statue or the money to buy it. This is just one more example of why I am astounded by those who claim narcissists just do not know what they are doing! She knew exactly what she was doing. This also fits right in with Dr. Scott Peck’s claim of what tightwads narcissists are.

She attacked when she realized I inadvertently discovered her schemes. I really think part of the problem is the average, more honest person just can not grasp the depths of the pathetic behavior. In true narcissistic style, she then set out to convince the two of them this was my negative character trait rather than her repeated manipulative maneuver. Needless to say, I learned the hard way to stop buying her things, especially since I could not really afford to at the time in the first place. However, I do not even know how many times I discovered her pulling this scheme over the years.
 

Narcissists Vilify the True Victims 

In my experience with various emotional manipulators in the extended family, this is an all-time favorite dirty trick. I can not even imagine anyone pulling this off as cunningly and consistently as my narcissistic personality disordered mother. She used it quite a bit with varying little twists.

First and foremost, come hell or high water, my mother wanted to be viewed as the innocent martyr. By this I mean absolutely nothing was ever her fault. Ever. Regardless of what actually happened, she was innocent. Often times she was more than just innocent, she was the long-suffering martyr. To paraphrase Dr. M. Scott Peck, in his book People of the Lie, she was intensely concerned about appearing good but had no desire whatsoever to actually be good. The extreme to which this maneuver was used to accomplish such an appearance is nothing short of astonishing to the average person. No matter who it was or what happened, she was always either the hero or innocent victim in her tall tales.

I am convinced at times she did this purely for her own entertainment. Contrary to popular opinion, this clinical narcissist was not the stereotypical boisterous, bragging loud mouth. My mother was diagnosed by three separate licensed professionals over the course of two decades, but in my opinion, she had a full blown inferiority complex too. While it was obvious to me when she was in public, there was no sign of it in private. I truly believe at times she pulled this dirty trick for no other reason than to relish the feeling of power and superiority I believe it gave her. At other times, the motive was more obvious – that is if you were wise to her true nature.