10 Ways Narcissists Make YOU Look Like The Problem

why is it that victims of narcissistic abuse either end up thinking that they're the abuser or that no one will believe them if this topic resonates with you there's a chance that you've gone back and forth and thinking that this person is a narcissist and you know what maybe I was wrong maybe they're not so let's look at what a narcissist really is a narcissist is someone who believes that they're special they think they're better than everyone even if they don't actually come out and say it you'll see it in actions and how they treat people and they really don't care about other people's feelings especially when those feelings are inconvenient for them so this is evidence of the narcissist not having a lot of emotional empathy and a narcissist even if they're covert and more outwardly vulnerable they're going to project a certain level of confidence especially in certain areas of their life but the narcissist is going to be very deeply insecure and you'll always find evidence in this in the way that they treat you so if you're trying to figure out if someone in your life is a narcissist you're always going to be looking for patterns of behavior it's not just one phase in their life where they act a little bit selfish and it's not oneoff things that they do but if they are exhibiting these behaviors specifically and they are showing no signs of changing it doesn't really matter if they're a true narcissist or not they're showing you that they really don't have a lot of respect for you and that in my op is a lot more important than whether they could be diagnosed with a personality disorder or not so how do narcissist make you look like the bad guy or feel like the bad guy well the reason why you might feel like the bad guy is because narcissists don't always show their true colors so they may have a very different public Persona than private Persona or they may be more consistent yet the real abuse that goes on behind the scenes the things that they say and do behind the scenes no one in their life otherwise would believe that they were doing this so if you were to tell someone that this person said something to you or did something they would say I can't believe that that person would actually do that that doesn't sound like them at all and so this does two things it makes you feel isolated it makes you feel like you're the only one who knows and no one's going to believe you and the second thing it does is it makes you question whether you're the problem because if no one else is seeing this side of this person you start to think maybe it's you it's something that you're doing that's bringing out this ugliness in the other person and if you are dealing with a narcissist they will do everything they can to reinforce that belief that it is you that's the problem and not them so another reason narcissists make you feel like you're the problem is because they're very quick to shame you narcissists have a lot of trouble with dealing with their own shame and they have a lot of it and so whenever someone has trouble dealing with parts of themselves with aspects of themselves they're almost always going to judge other people for those same things so if they have trouble facing shame they are going to put it on you and make sure that you face your own shame it's a form of projection that narcissists are really good at but whenever you make a mistake or if you do something you shouldn't have done maybe you get emotional and you get angry and you lash out in anger they're going to make sure that you feel shame for it and they're not not going to let you forget it so like I mentioned earlier when we're talking about narcissists it's important to look at the whole person and look at patterns of behavior and how they're treating you this is something that a narcissist doesn't really do a narcissist will see you as all good are all bad they have a very black and white way of viewing the world and the people in their lives so if you do something that they do not approve of or maybe it's something that's objectively not great and you don't even approve of it but they're going to make make sure that you feel as bad as you possibly can about it because in that moment you are all bad they're not really capable of seeing you as a person who made a little mistake in that moment your mistake defines you and they're going to make sure that you feel that and if you're somebody who's insecure and if you're somebody who does carry around some shame this is going to hit pretty deep and you're going to really internalize that external shaming of you and take on that shame so regardless of what the other person does or their role in anything that happened the shame makes you want to retreat and makes you beat yourself up and that's exactly what it's designed to do so now let's talk about blame shifting we already talked about shame in a general sense but narcissists take blame shifting to the next level and they throw extra toppings on top of it right a narcissist will not just shift blame but they will will Gaslight you and they will add shame onto the pile so let's look at an example let's say a narcissist got caught cheating they are very likely to Gaslight you and to make you think like it never happened right like you didn't see what you saw the evidence wasn't there or it wasn't substantial enough to really make that claim that they were cheating and then comes the shame thrown on top of the pile and they will accuse you of being a bad person for accusing them so they might say something like what is wrong with you why are you so paranoid or why are you so jealous what's wrong with you that you go around throwing accusations like this and just imagine the audacity it takes to do something like that when you are behind the scenes you know doing all the things that you're being accused of and then turning it around on somebody else and blaming and shaming them for actually calling out your behavior it takes a special kind of person so so another reason why you might feel like the bad guy is because the narcissist has selective Amnesia and they expect you to have the very same selective Amnesia that they have so again going back to the example where the narcissist is cheating or it could be anything else it could be a a narcissistic parent who went and told your deepest darkest secrets to the entire town right this is inexcusable these are things that we should not do to other people these are both forms of betray Trail and so let's say something like this happened and then you decide that you don't want to end the relationship you want to try to work through it as far as a narcissist is concerned as soon as you sign up to continue their relationship it's over the Slate is clean and that's not really how these things work betrayal Cuts deep and that is something that actually takes a lot of work to get through so even when you notice that patterns are starting starting to repeat and maybe the narcissist is having conversations about you that they shouldn't have or having inappropriate relationships that they shouldn't have if you dare bring up the past they're going to call you out and they're going to make it seem like you're just a bitter jaded person who can't let go of the past and the problem with this is that we've all had experiences where we've had something thrown in our face right like something that you know we did in the past apologized for even did everything that we could to make up for it but then it just keeps coming up and it comes up in the form of an accusation like you always do this meanwhile it's something you did once years ago and it just keeps coming up so none of us like that and we can all relate to that so when we're accused of doing it you might naturally just want to take a moment and self-reflect and think am I being that person am I doing that and because because it's something that we don't like and we judge in other people we don't want to exhibit those traits those characteristics ourselves so even though you have a valid point and even though you're bringing up patterns that are very much existing in the present when someone accuses you of going back and drudging up the past you might think of those moments when other people have done that to you and it might actually get you to back down when you were really on the right track to begin with so another way that a narcissist gets you to feel like the bad guy is that they make unreasonable requests and try to pass them off as though they're perfectly reasonable and here's an example this is something that I know a lot of you have dealt with and I saw it pop up a few times in the comments of one of my videos about how the narcissist acts when you're sick so let's just imagine the scenario where you have the flu you've got a fever maybe 103 104 you know you're eventually going to get better but you feel like you're dying in the moment so you're laid up in bed can't do very much and so the narcissist comes around and you expect them maybe to take care of you and to have a little bit of empathy for your situation instead they see you laying in bed and they think you know what it's a good time for intimacy so they keep pushing and keep pushing and you keep turning it down rejecting and it seems so insane and so foreign like who does that who would even make make that request never mind push it to the point that a narcissist would and then it gets worse because as you keep rejecting they get more and more wounded and then it becomes an argument so now you're in this place that it seems so insane to begin with and there you are defending yourself when really you just want to pull the blanket over your head and go to sleep and you really should be able to do that so this doesn't always just happen with intimacy it can happen happen with so many different things but let's just continue on with this example so a lot of people just end up giving in because it's easier because it avoids the argument and then eventually they can just go back to their lives but giving in sends a message to The Narcissist one that this is a green light to go that they can push and get anything they want any time and two that you put a green stamp of approval on their behavior so now when you're feeling better you can't go back and bring this up again because they will be very quick to tell you that you should take accountability for your own actions and when you get out of a relationship like this and you start reviewing the tapes when you start reviewing all the crazy things that you put up with and that were passed off as normal it's really mindblowing so now here's a way that a narcissist can make you look like the bad guy so if you ever shared your feelings about someone else to a narcissist you probably know that it has come up again in conversation if you've ever been annoyed with somebody and express that to them they might make it seem like you have it out for this person they tend to exaggerate and twist your words or even just share frustrated thoughts or private thoughts that they really shouldn't be sharing with someone else to make it seem like you are the bad guy like you're the person who's mean because once this person hears that you've said unfavorable things about them they're definitely going to have a different opinion of you and now here's a big one now we're going to talk about reactive abuse and this happens very often with narcissists so what they'll do to paint the picture that you are the problem is that they will pull the strings behind the scenes and maybe get you to explode in anger or to act in a way that you're not proud of in front of other people and this Paints the picture that you are the abusive person when when really the other person is behind the scenes pulling the strings and they know exactly what they're doing and they are purposely getting you to react in a certain way in front of other people so they will bait you into arguments or they'll bait you into a reaction they'll talk about something that they know is triggering to you or they'll act in a way that they know is triggering to you maybe they'll act in a way that's exceptionally insensitive and that's been a hot button issue in your relationship and so many people who have had relationship ship with narcissists have been in these moments where it's like you just can't even believe how could somebody who's had so many conversations about this very specific thing just completely seem to forget all of that and throw it out the window and do something so blatantly inconsiderate so blatantly triggering to you it's obvious it's so obvious in hindsight but when you're in it it's hard to explain it's just you just can't believe that this is is happening you can't believe that this is real life and it's like you want to shake this person and just bring them back into reality but the thing is they are in reality but their reality is that they're trying to trigger you they're trying to bait you they're doing these things on purpose and so often especially with a covert narcissist their response will be something like oh oops I'm so sorry I I didn't realize I didn't realize that that was going to upset you or I just didn't think silly me because to everyone else who thinks that this is the first or third or maybe even 15th time that you've encountered this very specific problem and you know that it is the 115th time when you react it's going to look like you are overreacting big time like you have no compassion for this person who just made a mistake once you're out of that situation you're going to see it for what it actually looked like and you're going to to feel like the problem you're going to look like the problem and you're going to start feeling like maybe you are the problem and so this brings us to the next item on the list which is playing victim a narcissist especially a covert narcissist is pretty good at playing the Perpetual victim when it's convenient for them now make no mistake about it narcissists do not want your pity they don't want you feeling sorry for them unless it benefits them so if a narcissist can get a group of people to feel sorry for them and to feel like they are being abused by you and then that pity turns into abuse right so the other people start acting in ways that is abusive to you because they think you deserve it that is fuel for a narcissist so they will play the Perpetual victim as long as it's benefiting them and fueling their need for Supply so this is when you'll see the smear campaign come in and those people people who end up acting in ways that are abusive to you those people who absolutely will not even try to understand your perspective that's what we call the narcissists flying monkeys and I have a video on that that I will link to in the card and the description is if you're dealing with this right now it's really important to understand that Dynamic so another way that a narcissist gets you to feel like the bad guy is the double bind and this is something that we don't talk about very often but I do think it's an important topic so the double bind essentially can be summed up this way you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't there is no winning so narcissists can be very judgmental and very critical if you've been with a narcissist you know this very well and that criticism tends to find its way it tends to find a voice in your own head so before you do anything you start thinking just like that person would think thinking about what that person would say and before long that becomes internalized but the problem is that there's never a right answer so you think well if I do this then this will happen but if I don't do it then that will happen and both are wrong right because that's the experience that you have you feel like you can't make a choice you can't make decisions because no matter what you do you're going to be wrong so another way that narcissist will get you to feel like you're the problem is that they will Gaslight you and they'll do this in various ways we've talked about some of them what I want to talk about right now is how they try to Gaslight you into thinking that you are part of the problem so imagine you have a conversation with a narcissist and it's a very clear conversation and you're pretty passionate about it they want to do something and you are not okay with it right and this conversation it's not about permission right it's about maybe respect so if you do that I am going to have a problem with it right you're very clear in this conversation and you speak your mind and you feel like you've been heard and then the narcissist goes ahead and does it anyway now especially if you're dealing with a more covert or vulnerable narcissist they are very likely to Gaslight you so a more grandiose narcissist might say yeah I know we had that conversation and you need to suck it up I did it anyway but I'm more covert or vulnerable narcissist is much more likely to Gaslight you into believing that you somehow gave the green light that they thought you were on board so they play the role of confused victim right I can't believe you're mad we had this conversation we talked all about this and here you are like yeah did we have the same conversation because we did talk all about it and I made it very clear that this is not something that I am okay with and they may even bring out pieces of the conversation or throw back things small things that you actually said within the conversation so they like to twist things around and narcissists love to Gaslight you and it's possible that even though you believed that you were very very clear when the narcissist is done with this conversation you might actually start doubting yourself and you might think well that little clip that they pulled out from this really long conversation that tiny little clip well I guess I could see how maybe they were confused but really if you look at it as a whole you know what the conversation was all about and it seemed like they understood you at the time again this goes back to that selective Amnesia and so if you've found yourself questioning whether you're the bad guy or if you think other people are looking at you in that way like you're the bad guy there's an important theme that I want to point out here and that is that a relationship with a narcissist really does change you and not in a good way so a relationship with a narcissist at its core is designed to attack your self-worth and through all the tactics and all the self-doubt this is the core reason why we end up feeling like the problem and like no one's going to believe us and I do a deep dive into that and talk through all the many ways that a narcissist attacks your selfworth in the video that's come up on the screen right now

Channel: Common Ego

Views: 77,210

Keywords: Narcissist, Narcissists, blame shifting, covert narcissist, double bind, narcissistic abuse, professional victim, projection, victim mentality

Id: B7TpG2ZZeaU

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 23 2023