Things I Think About - The Gaslighting Narcissist
For the last few years, I've been studying mental health. Independent of the classes I'm taking on a variety of topics, I've been reading up a lot on both gaslighting and narcissism. Today I had an "aha" moment.
This is one of those moments that kinda reshaped my worldview in a few ways, which always brings me back to this quote:
"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
T. S. Eliot
In almost every article about gaslighting there's a brief description of the movie where the term originated. It's an excellent explanation of the idea that another person will mess with your sense of reality to undermine both your confidence and self-trust. However, the biggest problem with that movie as the example is that the dude in question has a "nefarious plot" and is intentionally attempting to achieve something by destroying a woman's sense of reality.
But gaslighting is prevalent, and nefarious plots less so. Most of the time, gaslighting is an act of convenience. There is no long term goal. The only goal is to erode someone's confidence and simply get their own way and be allowed to be the person in charge of the situation.
Now, I'm not an expert on narcissism, though I would be curious to present this theory to any said expert and have an in depth conversation, but I now suspect that ALL narcissists use the tactic of gaslighting. They may not be the only people who use the technique, but I would guess that it is inherent to their worldview. They need to be the authority. They need to be in charge. They need to be the most important thing. Their worldview is warped around themselves, so of course they would also need to warp the worldview of anyone around them to reflect their own version of reality.
But the thing that I'm learning about narcissism is that there are a very wide variety of flavors. The grandiose narcissist is the one we all think of by default, and these days I'm pretty sure everyone in our country (if not the entire world) has a very, very clear picture of exactly what that looks like. Though, even then, we might have to adjust that definition to malignant narcissist, as those are the ones that are willing to aggressively break rules and laws and intentionally use others destructively to their own ends.
It's the subtler flavors of narcissism that are more dangerous.
One of the realizations I've had over the last couple years is that my father is a failed narcissist. This type is the one that has no credentials, no respect, no acclaim, and knows it. These types are a constant pity party. They deserve better, but the world just won't give them no respect. It doesn't matter that they've never earned that respect. Hell, in my father's case, he was completely unable to be consistent in anything. He couldn't hold a job. He couldn't take care of his health. He couldn't be relied on, etc, etc, etc.
But even so, the world revolves around them. They are incapable of setting their own ego aside in order to be supportive of someone else. They are always the one who has been wronged. Or at least more wronged. Even if they acknowledge something may have been hard for you, they have a story about how it's even worse for them. Even failure becomes a competition for the attention to be all theirs.
But the type I've really been studying up on is the covert narcissist. And the thing is, everyone has a slightly different definition of this one and how it presents. What I actually suspect is that the more we learn about narcissism, the more flavors and labels we're going to come up with. But I'd like to define the covert narcissist as the one who passes. The one who seems like just your average guy living down the street. But ultimately, their world revolves around them and they need yours to as well.
Which leads me to my aha moment. We're going about defining narcissism backwards. We're attempting to label what they look like in order to be able to identify them, and as I mentioned, I suspect we're going to keep adding labels and flavors.
But I think what we should really be doing is identifying the behavior patterns and TACTICS they use to support the underlying narcissism.
Here are the themes and tactics I've identified so far:
As mentioned above, GASLIGHTING. They need the world to revolve around them and they are willing to distort the reality of others to achieve that end.
They are always the victim. No matter what happens, they are in the right and someone else has wronged them.
Constantly fluctuating justification. Some people refer to the idea of word salad, where they just spew random non-connected ideas with only a vague sense of logic until the person they are talking to gives up attempting to figure out how it all fits together. Thing is, some narcissists are smarter than others and much better at feigning expertise. But the hallmark of this idea is that their reasoning CHANGES. Their explanations, expertise and justifications are inconsistent. Because the point isn't consistency, the point is to always be right and get their way.
Avoidance. They simply cannot be wrong. If someone else makes them uncomfortable or undermines their importance, they will do everything in their power to not have to deal with that person. They will not finish a conversation or debate. They will exit and find other people who back up what they want. There is no point in finding a middle ground. They don't want a middle ground. They want things to be their way. That is the only acceptable outcome.
Footnote to all this. Prior to my divorce, I spent a lot of time protecting and justifying a covert narcissist, and boy do I feel stupid. But he was smart and there was always an explanation and it was simply easy to believe there was something wrong with me and I didn't fit in and was an embarrassment. There was always an explanation, or shall we say constantly fluctuating justification.
For everyone else, please be sure to question his expertise. He knows a bunch of factoids, but as far as I can tell, has no consistent method of applying it to the world or himself. If he's acting like an expert, he wants to be in charge or to have attention. For instance, I can tell you he doesn't have a clue how to deal with or identify actual mental illness, no matter how many things he might have read about it. So ya know, grain of salt. If he's being the expert, he likely has an ulterior motive. Which isn't to imply he is fully aware of his own motives. It's just what he does.
So all those old posts where I'm working through my personal shit and taking all the responsibility on myself and never pointing out the parts where he was playing an ACTIVE ROLE in creating the situation? Yeah, my bad.
This is one of those moments that kinda reshaped my worldview in a few ways, which always brings me back to this quote:
"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
T. S. Eliot
In almost every article about gaslighting there's a brief description of the movie where the term originated. It's an excellent explanation of the idea that another person will mess with your sense of reality to undermine both your confidence and self-trust. However, the biggest problem with that movie as the example is that the dude in question has a "nefarious plot" and is intentionally attempting to achieve something by destroying a woman's sense of reality.
But gaslighting is prevalent, and nefarious plots less so. Most of the time, gaslighting is an act of convenience. There is no long term goal. The only goal is to erode someone's confidence and simply get their own way and be allowed to be the person in charge of the situation.
Now, I'm not an expert on narcissism, though I would be curious to present this theory to any said expert and have an in depth conversation, but I now suspect that ALL narcissists use the tactic of gaslighting. They may not be the only people who use the technique, but I would guess that it is inherent to their worldview. They need to be the authority. They need to be in charge. They need to be the most important thing. Their worldview is warped around themselves, so of course they would also need to warp the worldview of anyone around them to reflect their own version of reality.
But the thing that I'm learning about narcissism is that there are a very wide variety of flavors. The grandiose narcissist is the one we all think of by default, and these days I'm pretty sure everyone in our country (if not the entire world) has a very, very clear picture of exactly what that looks like. Though, even then, we might have to adjust that definition to malignant narcissist, as those are the ones that are willing to aggressively break rules and laws and intentionally use others destructively to their own ends.
It's the subtler flavors of narcissism that are more dangerous.
One of the realizations I've had over the last couple years is that my father is a failed narcissist. This type is the one that has no credentials, no respect, no acclaim, and knows it. These types are a constant pity party. They deserve better, but the world just won't give them no respect. It doesn't matter that they've never earned that respect. Hell, in my father's case, he was completely unable to be consistent in anything. He couldn't hold a job. He couldn't take care of his health. He couldn't be relied on, etc, etc, etc.
But even so, the world revolves around them. They are incapable of setting their own ego aside in order to be supportive of someone else. They are always the one who has been wronged. Or at least more wronged. Even if they acknowledge something may have been hard for you, they have a story about how it's even worse for them. Even failure becomes a competition for the attention to be all theirs.
But the type I've really been studying up on is the covert narcissist. And the thing is, everyone has a slightly different definition of this one and how it presents. What I actually suspect is that the more we learn about narcissism, the more flavors and labels we're going to come up with. But I'd like to define the covert narcissist as the one who passes. The one who seems like just your average guy living down the street. But ultimately, their world revolves around them and they need yours to as well.
Which leads me to my aha moment. We're going about defining narcissism backwards. We're attempting to label what they look like in order to be able to identify them, and as I mentioned, I suspect we're going to keep adding labels and flavors.
But I think what we should really be doing is identifying the behavior patterns and TACTICS they use to support the underlying narcissism.
Here are the themes and tactics I've identified so far:
As mentioned above, GASLIGHTING. They need the world to revolve around them and they are willing to distort the reality of others to achieve that end.
They are always the victim. No matter what happens, they are in the right and someone else has wronged them.
Constantly fluctuating justification. Some people refer to the idea of word salad, where they just spew random non-connected ideas with only a vague sense of logic until the person they are talking to gives up attempting to figure out how it all fits together. Thing is, some narcissists are smarter than others and much better at feigning expertise. But the hallmark of this idea is that their reasoning CHANGES. Their explanations, expertise and justifications are inconsistent. Because the point isn't consistency, the point is to always be right and get their way.
Avoidance. They simply cannot be wrong. If someone else makes them uncomfortable or undermines their importance, they will do everything in their power to not have to deal with that person. They will not finish a conversation or debate. They will exit and find other people who back up what they want. There is no point in finding a middle ground. They don't want a middle ground. They want things to be their way. That is the only acceptable outcome.
Footnote to all this. Prior to my divorce, I spent a lot of time protecting and justifying a covert narcissist, and boy do I feel stupid. But he was smart and there was always an explanation and it was simply easy to believe there was something wrong with me and I didn't fit in and was an embarrassment. There was always an explanation, or shall we say constantly fluctuating justification.
For everyone else, please be sure to question his expertise. He knows a bunch of factoids, but as far as I can tell, has no consistent method of applying it to the world or himself. If he's acting like an expert, he wants to be in charge or to have attention. For instance, I can tell you he doesn't have a clue how to deal with or identify actual mental illness, no matter how many things he might have read about it. So ya know, grain of salt. If he's being the expert, he likely has an ulterior motive. Which isn't to imply he is fully aware of his own motives. It's just what he does.
So all those old posts where I'm working through my personal shit and taking all the responsibility on myself and never pointing out the parts where he was playing an ACTIVE ROLE in creating the situation? Yeah, my bad.