The Five Ways Narcissists Keep You Feeling Stuck

Wherever you are in your narcissistic recovery journey, it’s important for you to recognize the ways in which narcissists use certain tactics to keep you mentally and emotionally stuck.  These tactics can be subtle or overt and ultimately serve one purpose: To keep the focus exclusively on the narcissist. 

Remember, narcissists are primarily focused on getting their needs met, at the expense of yours.  Not every narcissist is malignant, but many of them use the same behaviors and mind games to prevent their own deep sense of shame, unworthiness, and low self-esteem from rising to consciousness. 

If you are in a relationship with a narcissist in any capacity, I urge you to be aware of these behaviors so that you can stay rooted in your own sense of self and not be swept up in the confusion that narcissists bring. 

Gaslighting

The first and most obvious tactic narcissists use is gaslighting.  That is when a narcissist flips the script on you in ways that would make you believe that you are the one in the wrong, are at fault, or have completely misunderstood them or the situation.  This is often used as a way to keep you foggy and confused about what is actually going on.

Gaslighting can happen when you attempt to share a feeling you’re having or express some kind of boundary back to the narcissist and they hear that as a threat against themselves.  It could be as benign as you letting them know that you can’t take their call until the weekend.  A narcissist who’s using gaslighting might say something like, “I’m not even calling you that much. I don’t understand what the problem is” or “What are you talking about? You are the one who calls ME!” or “You’re being completely unreasonable. I’m your mother, don’t you care about me?”. 

It can be really easy to doubt yourself or discount your needs/feelings when you’re being gaslit.  Your job, however, is to stay firmly planted in your boundaries and acknowledge that what you are feeling or experiencing is correct. 

If you find yourself slipping into doubt, take a minute and externalize the problem to imagine it happening to someone else.  Let’s say this was a friend of yours who told their mom that they could only talk on the weekend because they were busy or because that’s a healthy boundary for them.  If their mother (or father, sister, boss, whoever the narcissist is), responded to them in the way yours did, would you doubt them? Or would you encourage them to stay committed to their needs, whatever they may be?

One suggestion I have for you is to write out all the ways in which the narcissist in your life gaslights you.  What are the clues they give away that tells you they’re gaslighting you? What do they tend to say and how do you tend to feel when this is happening?

Why do narcissists use gaslighting as often as they do? Because only the perspective of the narcissist is considered valid.  If someone else asserts their perspective and it’s vastly different from the narcissists, then they will need to find a way to confuse and befuddle the other out of their frame of reference. 

Let’s pretend that I only want to see myself as superior, never in the wrong, and completely without faults and a friend tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings. I’m going to need to find a way to keep my sense of self intact.  That means, I cannot admit to being in the wrong, having faults, or feeling inferior (ashamed) and will need to find a way to twist the narrative so that the other person feels all of those things instead.  This is essentially what narcissists do when they gaslight. Some do it maliciously, whereas others use it unconsciously. Either way, the effect is the same.

Mood Changes

Narcissists have unstable moods and you don’t always know when it’s going to change or why.  This keeps you on the hook and it’s very difficult to relax or engage in your own life when you’re constantly anticipating the moods of the narcissist.  Essentially, narcissists are always trying to shield themselves from their inner pain, but they mistakenly believe that external events, including other people, cause them pain. They cannot realize that their own defenses around feeling vulnerable are the actual root of their pain, as they serve to keep them disconnected from the part of the self that is feeling scared, threatened, or hurt.

If something falls outside of the narcissists control and negatively affects them, they don’t have the internal resources available to self-soothe or regulate themselves.  Their moods can change on a dime and suddenly they go from being charming to explosive.  If you’re married to a narcissist or have a narcissistic parent, this type of mood change can make you feel unstable your self. You might take up habits around assuming responsibility of their feelings to prevent it from happening (or if it has happened, that it’s your responsibility to soothe them). Because narcissists believe everything is happening to them, they will likely blame their resulting mood change on you, making you believe that you truly are at fault for how they feel.

Don’t take the bait. Of course, all of us have the capacity to influence how someone feels, but narcissists take this to the extreme and will make you feel as though you have more power than you actually do. Narcissists are perpetually looking for someone to latch onto as a way to sustain their self-image. This leaves them highly vulnerable to shifts in mood and behavior because other people cannot, in reality, be available to them 24/7 in the way they require.

Demands and Threats

When narcissists do not get their way, or are getting too close to their own buried sense of inadequacy, they will resort to demands and threats, as a last-ditch effort to find balance again.  When narcissists make demands of others, what they’re really trying to do is subjugate the other into submission. Narcissists do not want others to be subjects in their own rights; they want them to be more like objects that they can control and manipulate. 

When an individual starts to reclaim their selfhood, prioritize their boundaries, and make stronger attempts at meeting their own needs, this threatens the power dynamic between a narcissist and the other.  In a narcissists mind, only their needs and subjectivity matter, so when this gets threatened, they threaten back. 

A narcissist might demand that you make all kinds of behavioral and interpersonal changes, casting you as the all-bad “other” who is being harmful and will likely accuse you of being callous or self-centered (ironic). Their threats might be overt, like telling you that they’ll write you out of their will, that they’ll never speak to you again, that you’re ruining their lives, etc., or they might be covert, making subtle comments about how you’ll wish you never made that mistake or shutting down and withdrawing.

The best way to handle this is to recognize that something within them is threatening their sense of self, not you. That when they’re making demands, they’re feeling a difficult emotion that they don’t know how to manage. This is not your job to fix or manage.

The Silent Treatment

The silent treatment is one of the most painful forms of punishment that a narcissist can doll out.  When you’re given the silent treatment, you are likely to feel a heavy sense of shame, disorientation, confusion, hurt, anger, and betrayal.  All of your very normal needs for connection in your relationship will go unmet and you will feel at a loss. Narcissists do this to get you to fall back in line and assume the position of the one at fault. If they go silent long enough, the hope is that you’ll relent and apologize for “what you did” and forget that you had feelings or needs of your own.

In some cases, adult children of narcissists or spouses of narcissists, believe that it’s easier to give in than it is to endure the silent treatment.  I empathize a lot with that. As social beings, we need other people to help us feel seen, regulated, and attuned to.  When we are intentionally deprived of that need by the narcissist (or anyone for that matter), our survival instincts kick in and we will do almost anything to make it stop because it can be unbearable. 

In the Still Faced Mother experiment from the mid 2000’s, Dr. Tronick observed that when infants are met with still faces by their mothers, they will attempt to get her attention by being playful, making noises, and doing anything to get her to react. When she continues to not respond by keeping her face still, the infant’s shut down, likely feeling shame and disconnection. 

Even as adults, the silent treatment does the same thing to us. It deprives us from feeling seen, as though being behind a Plexiglas wall where we feel alone and abandoned. If you are being given the silent treatment, immediately give yourself a ton of self-compassion and do something that restores your sense of connection with either yourself or the world (or both). 

Call a friend, go outside, get a coffee; Do something to remind you that you’re not alone and make sure that your self-talk is encouraging, loving, and tender. Offer yourself acknowledgment for how hard this is and give the part of you suffering some caring attention.

Victimization and Martyrdom

Victimization and Martyrdom are two types of attitudes that narcissists will take when they feel wronged (victim) or when they are attempting to appear overwhelmed by how “much” they’re doing (martyr). Adult children or spouses of narcissists are particularly tuned to the frequency of these two channels and are always attempting to avoid setting the narcissist off in either of these directions.

Narcissists may take on an attitude of victimhood when they sense real or perceived attacks against them. “Attacks” can be anything from disagreeing with the narcissist to attempting to meet your own needs over theirs. Sometimes narcissists perceive a difference of opinion as a criticism and react as though the person is shooting daggers rather than words! There may be times when spouses or adult children of narcissists do, in fact, criticize the narcissist for something they’re doing and may mistakenly take those moments to mean that they are “mean” or “cruel”, as the narcissist would have them believe. 

The truth is that narcissists need others to sustain their self-image, so if they perceive the other being unavailable to them, it threatens their sense of self.  If the “other” in this case is displeased with them, holds a different viewpoint, is angry (in a way that is healthy and creates boundaries), or has needs of their own, narcissists have to contend with their self-image being challenged.

To use an analogy, take for instance your phone.  When the battery is running low, you rely on your phone charger to restore the battery to full.  If one day that phone charger stops working, you’re going to panic if you don’t have another charger on standby.  Narcissists sense of self works like that too: they need other people (the phone charger) to sustain them and keep their batteries full. When a person in the narcissists life is no longer available to sustain their self-image, narcissists panic and crash into victimhood.

Similarly, when a narcissist takes an attitude of being a martyr, they are putting themselves in the spotlight by making others aware of just how much they take on, how exhausted they are, how much they do, etc.  This serves as a subtle reminder of their sense of importance and projects a kind of “you should feel bad for me” kind of energy onto others. If you’re a spouse or adult child of a narcissist, you know just how powerful that can be in eliciting your own sense of guilt or anxiety.