SEVEN MIND GAMES PLAYED BY THE NARCISSIST

a common theme that I hear in my counseling office is the theme of agony there are times when people will come into my office and they'll talk with me about the pain and just the the misery that sometimes they can experience once they figured out that somebody that they wanted to have a close relationship with turned out to be very narcissistic these people can say well as best I could whether it's with my parents or my marriage partner or a dating relationship or a business associate or a friend or someone of that nature they'll say you know I I had good intentions with that person but I didn't really know how to think like a narcissist and as their as a result they kind of played me like a fiddle and then as the days and weeks and years can pile up it's like man I just feel like I've been run over my Mack truck what am I supposed to do well in this video I'm gonna want to talk with you about some of the mind games that narcissists play so that as you are trying to make your way through some of these primary relationships you'll be aware of what you need to watch for and so I'm hoping that you won't get so pulled in that you wind up losing your entire self in the process or if you have been with someone who's narcissistic I want you to be able to see what these mind games are so that you can adjust and make corrections and move on in a much healthier kind of way narcissists are manipulators they love to figure out what your weak spots might be or what your vulnerabilities are and they will try to figure out how to put you in a position to where you're doing their bidding it's what we call a narcissistic supply and frankly they don't particularly care what you think or feel and if you wind up feeling hurt or angry and all that defensive or disgusted it's like hey that's that's your problem and if you're saying but you're the one that's creating it in me it's like uh-huh no don't put that on me and so they don't take responsibility for themselves but they will continue playing games so let's let's just get right to it I've identified seven mind games that narcissists will play and I want you two to figure out how you can respond to these in such a way that you don't just continue playing along on your end of the equation now the first mind game is the narcissist will say I want you to learn how to trust me so many times narcissists sometimes at the beginning of the relationship but often during times as the relationship has had some some lengths to it they can act very friendly they can show themselves to be interested they'll ask questions about who you are and what you feel and what you're up to and they may say some very supportive kind of things to you and you can think man this is really nice this person is really into me and so you open up and you talk with them about who you are and what you feel and they can just say yeah tell me a little bit more about that well in a healthy relationship ideally that's exactly what we want to do but with the narcissist it's a mind game it's like well what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get you two to pour out your heart and soul and by the way you'll notice they won't do it in Reverse or if they do it's of a pseudo nature I want you to pour out your heart and your soul to me because I'm taking notes and I'm gonna start figuring out and you know where you heard or what your needs are and it's gonna come back a little later on and it's going to bite you but many times these people can start out by being very trustworthy and friendly and on your team a second mind game that these people can play is they can begin to establish an upper hand over you once they kind of bring you in and they let you presume that they're pleasant and friendly and on your side you'll notice a certain criticism starts coming in why did you do it that way or I don't think you should have said it this way or no no no that you shouldn't have done this I'm right and you need to listen to what I have to say or I can do that better than you or I no more than yuna they may not say it that way but that's kind of the way they come across and so as you get to know the narcissist you find that these people are quite self-confident and they have an inflated sense of their own sense of correctness and then if you try to speak anything different it's like well no I don't need to listen to you just just pay attention to me they can drop back to game number one and it's like you just need to know I look at life a whole lot better than the average person out there you're gonna have to trust me now a third mind game that they play with you as you get to know them and as you get to be pulled more and more into their confidences they begin to instill fear in you they like it when you fear them now they can be very stubborn they can be very judgmental they can offer strong emotion and some of that criticism that they might originally start out with becomes hard anger and you can get to the place to where you think well if I tell them this about myself or if I reveal that truth about me they're gonna blow up at me and they're gonna get mad I just need to light hem my preferences and do what they tell me to do because I don't want to have to deal with all of the difficulty and I've had some people that have talked with me who in many other respects are very confident people themselves but they've told me it's like well with the narcissist forget it it's not worth it if I try to show my uniqueness and if I try to express myself for what I am it's just going to create more problems that it solves and that's the fear that's kind of been put on the inside of them and it's seeped in to where it becomes a part of their response style well 1/4 mind game is they can sabotage you behind your back you see as you get to know them and they get to learn about your trends and tendencies part of their game that that keeps them in the superior position is they'd like to isolate you from other individuals they don't particularly want you to have strong allies or supporters and so many times these people will speak about you without you even realizing it and it tends not to be very flattering for example let's suppose that it's a family setting and that narcissist talks to some of your relatives who may have just given you a compliment and the narcissist may say well I know that you are impressed by the stand such that this person did but actually behind the scenes there's quite a few other things that you just don't know and and then they go into a story about how you blew it or you made a mistake or you did something wrong or you said something about them but in doing so they're they're trying to keep people from from having too much of a strong confidence in you why because that keeps them in the superior position and so sabotaging other people in their relationship with you keeps them elevated and then it keeps you beholden to them because you have fewer and fewer people that perhaps know and understand you because the narcissist is tripping it all up a fifth mind game is they'll find your flaws and then hold it against you now many times as part of their to trust me kind of mentality you might actually go so far as to say well you know years ago I made this mistake or I had this blunder or I've never really told anybody but but I kind of blew it in this circumstance and they can seem in the moment to being very understanding of you but then later on when they feel like they need to score some points they may come back and recall the flaw that you exposed to them and they'll say I know what your characters like and I know who you are and you're not nearly as good as you think you are do you remember that thing that you told me about that happened two years ago and they can go into all of that and when you say well wait a minute I thought I was talking with you in a way that was was part of a loving and accepting exchange well you realize that's not the way they work it when they say talk with me about who you are it's a game and they're collecting data and then if there's any need for them to forgive you let's suppose you said you know I did something and you know it had some negative repercussions on you oh they will not forgive you because it's like oh I have that many more cannonballs against you that I can shoot at you and so that's the way they operate now a sixth mind game that a narcissist will play is they often portray themselves as a victim they they they need to come across as being blameless blameless they need to come across as being somebody that has very good intentions and so if there is something about them that goes wrong let's say they've made a miscalculation or something happened that they feel embarrassed about instead of saying yeah I kind of blew it what they'll do is they'll say well if something negative happened originating from me the reason is because this person over here did it to me and I would never have made this mistake had this other individual done their fair share of the job and so they just kind of go into a blame game they have to have somebody that they can pin their mistakes on and and that person can be you and then a seventh mind game that these individuals talk about and will play with you is that they talk with you in terms of heavy duty and obligation they speak with you as if life is one long list of rules and regulations I refer to it as the imperative style of thinking you have to you must you've got to and then when you say well I don't want to do things because I have to they'll they'll just double down well you've got to anyway and so they they come at you as if life is a big regulatory mindset that you're supposed to buy into and of course they're the ones that gets to write the regulations now as you look at these different mind games that that the narcissist will play with you you'll recognize that the name of the game for them in the overarching sense is I want you to lose whatever is unique about you and you need to come under my clutches and be what I tell you to be so as you recognize this and as you see that there is much of this game playing that's going on that's trying to take you away from your natural self let's take a look at a few key thoughts as we wrap up here first don't give them the reaction that they want once you begin spotting these games they want you to be afraid they want you to be angry they want you to be defensive because it's like yeah look at how idiotic you're acting you want to learn how to to respond to these folks with a calmness and a steadiness I know there are some folks that they'll say when you when you catch a narcissist and being a narcissist you need to punch him in the nose well you don't need to do that because that's just playing the game of control right back at them now I will say another thought when I said first of all don't play their games or don't give them their reaction but it is reasonable at times to confront them and let them know I'm on to what you have going on and so I'm not against confronting and annex and exposing them for what they are if you say something to the effect of I don't like the way you handle this or you mismanaged this situation or you misrepresented me and they say no I didn't then hold your ground and be willing to call them out and be willing to say this is who I am this is what I believe in and claim your strength and many times people say well I don't know if I can do that well you need to just simply for no other reason than to hear your own self say it because again keeping in mind they want to to strip you of your dignity and by standing up for yourself that's your way of saying well I think of myself in dignified ways and then a third thing that I want to encourage as you respond to this is don't go down argumentative rabbit holes with a narcissist once you're on to their game and once you see that they're putting they're messing with you and they're exploiting and you manipulating you rather than arguing about fine points of what they could have done differently state your willingness to your unwillingness to go along with them state your different preferences live out your your boundaries and your stipulations and then when they want to argue with you the the response is I have nothing more to say now there's a very famous way of explaining the life in these kind of situations as you are thinking about how to respond to this manipulative person and that is let your yes be yes let your no be no narcissists want to keep you in disarray they want to keep you in doubt and confusion about who you are but I'm hoping that there is going to be a mindset in you that says I see what you're up to and I see your games and I choose not to participate and I'm gonna stand upon my yeses I'm gonna stand upon my nose I'm comfortable with who I am can you think like that now I do hope that you enjoy the videos that we have for you beneath the video I have some links to some books that I hope that you'll find to be helpful and we'd invite you to subscribe to our channel here there's the subscribe button and there's actually a little bell there that helps get you notifications so that we can let you know when more videos come up thanks for being a part of our surviving narcissism community

Channel: Surviving Narcissism

Views: 1,739,932

Rating: 4.903749 out of 5

Keywords: narcissism, narcissist, Dr. Les Carter, Manipulators, toxic people, divorce, family conflict, anger, life skills

Id: 6WtsPc3w9XU

Length: 14min 45sec (885 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 12 2018