Sometimes you must give 'em hell

When the perpetrators succeed in demoralising you, it is time to put them in their place

I’ve posted several times that the best way to treat your narcissistic perpetrators is by ignoring them. Sometimes, though, their words bring you down. Especially after an all-night attack. Their strategy is not so much individual insults but to change your entire self-conception. They want you to feel guilty and inadequate (classic abusive inversion). And sometimes it works. Nobody is perfect, we could all work harder, treat people better, and so on. Plus, they will taunt you on the basis of mere thoughts that you’ve had, not actions - making you either have to constantly monitor yourself (not healthy) or be reminded of the sheer degradation of having your mind broken into.

This can all get me down at times, which can make me depressed, immobilised, or worse. So, even though it is essential to not engage with the taunts, you do need mental strategies for turning yourself around. You need to be able to reframe the situation accurately - with they as the villains, and you as the innocent and valuable human being that you are.

My perpetrators have very nasty personalities and I find it helpful to remind them of this. One actually resembles a classic narcissist I once lived with. I allowed him into the house because he is intelligent, articulate, and was part of the social world I was in. He seemed to charm me. But once he was in, he seemed to assume that the entire house belonged to him. One small thing: every morning he would make his coffee with my coffee machine, and leave the milk jug in the sink, unwashed. After several weeks I simply asked him if he could wash it so I didn’t have to clean up after him. He leapt up, shirtfronted me, and shouted ‘You are an ASSHOLE’. He saw my request as ‘character assassination’, which is classic narcissism. Any implication that you might not be perfect and God’s gift in every way, is treated as a threat to the one thing propping up their self-esteem - this vastly inflated self-image that they carry around and gaze at just like Narcissus in the Greek myth. Narcissists aren’t transfixed by their true image, but by a carefully curated image that conveniently covers their deep insecurities. So if you poke a narcissist, you are awakening their repressed pain.

I didn’t think an everyday household request would trigger that, but in hindsight, he’d thought until that moment that I thought he was the same perfect being that he envisages himself as. And was brought crashing down by the milk jug.

As a Targeted Individual, I noticed at the time that his anger towards me made me feel a new sensation in response - I felt under attack, but I could literally feel my blood boiling, around my head and neck. I’d never felt that before. I thought this was a sign that I was being targeted to feel irritable and being prodded to bring on this conflict. That may be true. Later, I thought, when I tried to understand his unbelievable, violent reaction - which also involved stepping inside my personal space, yelling and spitting at me, and doing that childish gesture of ‘blowing raspberries’ with your fingers over your lips - that he himself had been targeted (at least in that moment) to send him into a rage over a trifle.

I suspect now that I am just unusually susceptible to letting narcissists into my life. I may also be somewhat matter-of-fact with people, rather than sandwiching a criticism between two compliments. Surely that shouldn’t be necessary over something so small as the need to clean a dish.

But I digress.

The point I wanted to make was that many mornings I wake up blissfully, having slept well and had entertaining or absorbing dreams. I forget that I am subject to remote neural narcissistic abuse, and it is usually as my mind slowly wakes up that the tinnitus and then the voices (first distant, getting closer) begin. It takes around 5 minutes usually. The voices are inaudible initially but I can already tell they are enraged. Apoplectic. And then they come in and take any thought Im having and turn it into an attack on me. Any connection they can make, they will turn it around on me.

I suppose they come in furious because they’ve been that way all night. I think I am one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have direct dream intervention. But I imagine I have had subconscious abuse all night. And their attitude is that I have been bad, real bad, and I deserve punishment. Obviously playing the wrathful parent. And once I, with regret, remember again that today is going to be another day of constant abuse, part of me makes me feel like I deserve it. And this is what becomes depressing and immobilising. So I will then try to turn things around, and I manage to.

I usually start by assessing their character and my character. I am not involved in a total intimidation and abuse program. I am making my way in this world without having to victimise innocents and hound them to their deaths. So I’d say, they don’t have a platform from which to tell me who I am. Their words mean nothing because they have opted out of society. They operate in the zone of hard-core criminals. They are not better than rapists and murderers. They belong in jail and they will be returned to jail.

They usually come back at me by claiming they won’t get caught, or that, rather than low-life scum they are my social superiors - they went to good schools and they got involved in the military or intelligence where normal morality doesn’t apply and that being a cowardly weasel abuser who might cause innocents to die is actually a revered thing of fabulous status in their circles.

It’s hard to argue about their true status when we don’t know who they are. But we can argue - or push back - against their noxious personalities, because that is evident. The one called ‘Craig’ is very similar to the narcissistic housemate. He is smooth, has a certain charm, is full of himself, and quick to be enraged. He is also like a schoolyard bully cheerleader. The one with the loudest voice and the snappiest insults, egging on others to come join him to traumatise the weakling in the sandpit.

So I remind him of this, and it seems to make him shrink away. Just as I am vulnerable to being made to feel like shit because I have had my character attacked, so can they. When I ‘win’ in rhetorically reminding them of their actual positions, they back off.

I know this might be a tactic of the AI - to give me some relief as a ‘reward’ from it for me having engaged in a defence strategy that it has learned from. But I also believe that it may realise it has lost its platform - I have successfully subject-positioned it (put it in its place) and therefore for the rest of the day I am not going to be intimidated by anything it says.

All I have really done is correct the record, and reposition myself as moral and dignified and them as worth zero, or lower. Which is where we naturally belong given the life choices we’ve made. It is just that they have hypnotised me all night to make me think I am the problem. The classic narcissist reversal.

Don’t buy it. But sometimes to not buy something, you have to throw it back in their face. I wish this wasn’t the case - the ideal is that you ignore them to the point where they fade away to nothing more than a barely-audible ‘radio in the next room’. But, their psychological techniques are able to not just change the contents of your mind, but change how it works, and how you conceive of yourself.

That’s why sometimes you need to position yourself back where you belong. Correct the record. And given that identity is relational, and even more so for narcissists, to restore your rightful place of dignity sometimes needs you to engaged your inner Warrior, and spill some blood.

That can feel good too, and there’s no more deserving victim than the perpetrators of these 21st century Holocaust programs.

Give ‘em hell, and prepare them for what they’ve got coming.