The Narcissist's Constant Victim Role

Covert narcissists are constant victims. Everyone has done them wrong. Everyone has injured their precious ego at some point or another. The whole world is responsible for their anger, negativity, lack of initiative, lack of motivation, and even their lack of empathy. From the tiniest injury to the grandest, the narcissist continues to be the never-ending victim.

This causes all relationships with the narcissist to be strained and exhausting. When the narcissist plays the victim so well, it leaves you with two roles in life. You are either the therapist or the enemy. You are either the rescuer or the perpetrator. The trouble is that healthy people do not want to play these roles with their loved ones.

Your Role as Therapist

Healthy individuals recognize that they cannot serve as a rescuer to their parent, spouse, adult child, friend, boss, etc. When a person is constantly relying on your approval and validation in order to feel good about themselves, this is not a healthy situation. You are not helping them or yourself. You are not their therapist and should not serve as such. They need to be working on their own problems on their own, just as you should be with yours.

You might think, “But I’m just trying to be supportive? Wouldn’t it be mean to not let them open up to me and talk with me?” I’m not saying you shouldn’t be a supportive friend or family member. It is okay for them to share with you what they are dealing with and what they are learning, as long as they are learning and taking action to work on it for themselves. What are they doing to get healthier and stronger internally? Are they doing anything? It is not okay for them to expect you to make them feel better so they can then go back to ignoring the problem they have. This is an endless and exhausting cycle that will leave you completely drained!

Your Role as Enemy

On the flip side, healthy individuals also do not want to be seen as the constant enemy or perpetrator. A narcissist will play the victim role over and over and over. You begin to feel like their number one enemy. They are extremely good at the victim role and can convince the kindest person in the world that they are to blame for all the narcissist’s problems and unhappiness. Every bad feeling the narcissist has is somehow your fault. This is simply not reality and not healthy.

When they see you as the constant offender, everything you do and say is wrong. For a narcissist, everything is offensive to them. You will apologize over and over to them, even at times when you have no idea what you are apologizing for. You apologize anyways, simply to try to put some peace back in your life.

That peace, however, will be short-lived. There are not enough apologies in the world to satisfy the victim role of a narcissist. Their pain comes from within, and yet they constantly look for external reasons and external solutions. Those solutions will NEVER be good enough. To stop being the perpetrator, you have to set your own boundaries and walk away. They will never stop, so you must!

It is not possible for everything that is wrong with them to be your fault. Please hear these words!! It is not your fault!! You are allowed to be human. You are allowed to do things that maybe you could have done better, to say things that maybe you could have said better. No one decided that you have to be perfect, except the narcissist in your life. They decided you must be perfect and then set you up again and again for failure. Stop playing their game!! Simply walk away.

Of course, they will then blame you for abandoning them. But that is simply not true. You are an adult making an adult decision. Set your boundaries and stick with them.

Narcissistic Abuse Steals Your Free Will

There is no right or wrong when it comes to feelings. Feelings are 'ours' and everyone has a right to feel whatever comes up in their body. We are not robots to be programmed as to what we 'should' or 'shouldn't' feel - that is the beauty of free will.

Unfortunately narcissistic abuse trespasses into our free will as the malignant narcissist attempts to 'program' you to do, be, think, feel, react and/or suppress pieces of yourself according to what suits THEM.

You can feel happy and talented.... as long as they can take credit for it. You cannot feel sad or upset no matter what kind of treatment you undergo - they need you to convince others that they are 'perfect' and can do no wrong. And when your emotional dysregulation bleeds out into the public eye due to the abuse, well - it has nothing to do with THEM but rather it is because YOU have 'issues' and are to blame for your apparent inability to handle their abuse. (The nerve of you!)

There is nothing worse than for a child to be born into a family where his/her authenticity is a crime. It's bad enough to have to face this kind of behavior in adult romantic relationships or work relationships, but a child born into these dynamics suffers daily and their suffering is hidden in plain sight by the charismatic narcissist.

A child that undergoes hidden emotional and psychological manipulation never feels safe and never has the opportunity to TELL anyone that they aren't safe - speaking truth would be too dangerous. So their subconscious mind and their limbic network - the alarm systems of the brain and the autonomic nervous system - kick on in an attempt to keep the child ..... alive.

Happiness is tossed aside as survival is the only thing that matters at the moment. In an effort to help the child survive, the brain develops coping skills that delete, divorce and train the child to do, be, think, feel, react and/or suppress anything that will help lessen the anger, rage, abandonment and pain that comes with living with a malignant narcissistic parent.

These behaviors create deep rooted, conditioned behaviors. The brain attempts to suppress the pain, the abandonment, the fear, the lack of safety - because quite frankly these emotions are too overwhelming for the child. Disconnection and suppression are chosen as the lessor of the two evils - denying the truth vs. acknowledging the truth that the individuals that are supposed to care for you and love you ..... don't.

But out of sight - does not mean out of mind. The fact that our brain suppresses what is too overwhelming to handle - does not mean that the suppressed emotions, fears and memories go away. Rather it means that what is suppressed is stuck in the subconscious mind and as a result our brain is living as if those fears and threats are still imminent whether we are still with the toxic narcissists ..... or not.

Those suppressed emotions are constantly being woken up in our present life and have the ability to wreak havoc on present day relationships. We may outgrow our clothes as we get older - but our subconscious programs as well as anything that the subconscious mind has suppressed - stays in tact. We don't outgrow those subconscious programs nor do they morph into 'better' more empowering programs..... at least not until we take the time to heal it and work through it.

Understanding this is the first step in recovery. We cannot heal what is in our subconscious via our subconscious and/or unconscious mind - we can only heal it by first bringing it into our conscious awareness.

Remember, if you are struggling to work through the side effects of narcissistic abuse and/or childhood trauma, please contact your local counselling service/therapist/support group. You are not alone.

Don't Over-Compensate for the Narcissistic Parent - Renee Swanson

A huge mistake often made by the non-narcissistic parent is over-compensation.

When our co-parent is abusing our children in any way, it is extremely easy to over-compensate by trying to erase all the bad feelings in our child. Our intentions are good. We know that those bad feelings are coming from the way they are being treated. So if we can erase those bad feelings, then maybe we can erase the damage they are suffering. However the results may not be quite what we hope for. One definition of a narcissist is an empty shell wrapped in a façade of grandiosity. That empty shell comes from all the abuse, but the façade of grandiosity comes from the over-compensation.

Empty Shell

Kids cannot emotionally comprehend the abuse of a parent who is supposed to love them. They internalize it, believing that they themselves are to blame. This leaves them feeling worthless and hopeless. These feelings are too overwhelming for kids and leave them numb and closed off to their own feelings. In other words, an empty shell.

Façade of Grandiosity

When the other parent over compensates by telling them how wonderful, beautiful, amazing and so on that they are, this does not line up with the empty feelings they are experiencing. But it feels better, so they try to cling to this. However, this then becomes a false sense of security for them. It is often easier to ignore bad internal feelings than it is to face them. So it is easy to cling to those feelings that they are great and wonderful, even though they don’t truly believe them. They become that empty shell wrapped in a façade of grandiosity.

So how do we help them instead?

Obviously we can’t always or even often change the behavior of our narcissistic counter parent. So we have to focus on our own parenting skills. The goal is to create a healthy sense of self in our child. What does that look like?

Self-awareness

Self-perceptiveness

Self-value

Acceptance of personal strengths and weaknesses

Acceptance of one’s humanness/li>

Emotional Muscle Building

Kids need emotional muscles in life. If you carry your child everywhere, they will never learn to walk on their own. Their own leg muscles will atrophy and, over a long enough period, walking will never be an option for them. If you “fix” everything for them so they never build emotional muscles, then this same thing happens. Quit protecting them from ever feeling disappointment or sadness. Quit protecting them from feeling shame when they deserve it. Quit making them believe that they are above others. Quit rescuing them from the consequences of their actions. Start calling them out on their self-centeredness. Start holding them accountable for their words and actions. Take away their emotional handicaps and create emotional resilience. They are stronger than you think they are. Have confidence in their hearts and in their potential.

Fill the Inner Emptiness

So how do you fill that inner emptiness? Let’s start by looking at how many of us try to fill it and fail. We tell them that they are wonderful. We tell them how great they are, how smart they are, how handsome or pretty they are. None of this ever seemed to work for my kids. They blew it off and never believed me anyways. This is empty praise and does not make help them to fill that emptiness. I teach martial arts to kids. I see this empty praise often at my school. A parent will sit in the viewing chairs, with their nose in their phone. They don’t pay any attention to what their child is doing in the class. In the meantime, I am having to correct their child repeatedly, calling them out for bad behavior and lack of focus. Much to my surprise though, as we dismiss and the child leaves the floor, the parent will happily exclaim, “Great job today son/daughter. You did great!” I want to say, “Did you see the class? Were you watching how they did?” That child knows they were called out and corrected. They may not be able to verbalize this, but they feel that parent’s empty praise for what it is. While they can’t put it into words, they know that it doesn’t feel right. Empty praise makes us feel even emptier.

Teach them the feeling of mattering

When my oldest son was around the age of 10, he had a day that was feeling particularly off to him. He was down and completely unmotivated. He was home all day and completely bored, adding to his lack of motivation. I gave him a small list with a few options of productive things to do. On that list were things like bathe the dogs, vacuum the house, wash the windows, and so on. He decided to bathe the dogs. I was extremely glad he chose that one because it was one chore that I really did not like doing, as it was hard on my back. When he got done, I told him how much I appreciated him doing that and how much it helped me. He actually told me, at that young age, that it had really made him feel better. He felt like he had done something very useful and beneficial. I used this opportunity to teach him about the value of productivity. On his own, he applied this later in his childhood. As any normal kid does, he had other days when he was off. But he noticed it in himself. So, on his own, he chose to go bathe the dogs. He felt the value of this action and felt like he mattered in our world. He did not need a reward of ice cream, money, or anything else. In fact, sometimes those rewards interfere with a child feeling the more internal rewards. He needed to FEEL productive, helpful, and appreciated.

Your kids need to feel that they matter in your world. Don’t do this through excessive praise. This so easily gets shallow and meaningless. They need to have chores and responsibilities. They need to feel like a necessary and valuable part of the family. If it is their job to feed the pets, then they need to feed the pets. When they forget, simply remind them and have them do it. Resist the temptation to just do it for them. I know that is quicker and easier, but it does not teach them responsibility and value. Those pets are relying on your kids for their nourishment. Explain that to your child. Most pets will show great appreciation to the one that feeds them. Let your child experience that. It helps them to feel like they matter, which of course, they do.

You are NOT a superhero!

One final note here. Please remember that you are no different than any other parent struggling through parenthood. I got wrapped up in trying to make sure I did everything right for my kids. I so badly wanted to, as I’m sure you do. I don’t question your desire to be a great parent. That is a wonderful desire. But it is easy to get so caught up in trying to do everything right that we end up making a complete disaster of it. Give yourself permission to be human. You can’t fix everything. You can’t help them with everything. This isn’t all bad. They NEED to learn some things for themselves as well. They NEED to learn to rely on themselves as well. That’s okay. If someone would have just told me what to do in order to ensure my boys have a bright, healthy and happy future, I would have walked through fire for them. Trouble is that there is no blueprint, no sure way, no guidebook with all the answers. You do the best you can and then let them go. Trust your heart and learn to trust theirs too!