Swati Prakash

Top Tarot Healing and Wiccan Expert

Tag: narcissism

  • Spot The Early Signs of Covert Narcissistic Abuse

    Spot The Early Signs of Covert Narcissistic Abuse

    Spot The Early Signs of Narcissistic Abuse:

    Article by Swati Prakash http://www.askswati.com (Energy healing and intuitive courses available.)

    1. The person has a roving eye or flirts with multiple people including you but does not commit and stays neutral. Alternatively they can get too close too fast and overshare or expect you to commit very early on so as not to lose you without you having your say. In either case your feelings will be suppressed and not allowed to be let out.
    2. Tries to lead you on to believing they are into you and pull out later and repeat the cycle a few times to keep you guessing. They want you to think you are this big prize you should be after.
    3. Blow hot blow cold attitude. Warm and caring one day and cold and indifferent another day.
    4. Make you confused by playing mind games.
    5. Triangulation: Bringing a third person in whom they express an interest just to make you feel jealous or unwanted.
    6. Manipulative behaviour: Trying to keep you on the side while they date others or hit on others. Also lack ethics and can cheat if they begin dating you.
    7. Try to get you emotionally involved by building a trauma bond: you may cry when they hurt you and then they suddenly treat you well to keep you wanting them and repeat the cycle to give you highs and lows.
    8. Breadcrumbing: They give you small presents or send you a drink or something of less value just to keep to thinking that maybe you will be loved in the future if you remain patient.
    9. They don’t like you looking too beautiful or glamorous except for them so that you don’t attract anyone else.
    10. They use you to boost their ego by showing you off and by flirting with you in front of others when you do look good.
    11. They don’t follow their heart or get too emotionally involved as if they are stone cold internally. But might want sex or special attention from you in order to use you.
    12. Act too important and treat you like someone less important. Say certain things to hurt you.
    13. Don’t compliment you or don’t return your compliments well. May also say bad things, insult or be rude to you.
    14. Deliberately choose you so they have someone with a good level of positive energy to hurt and destroy. They target successful or bright personalities.
    15. They lack self esteem and may appear vulnerable if they are covert narcissists.
    16. Their aim is to hurt you..they do not know love or emotional depth in the true sense but are in it to destroy a good soul especially an empath or a healer.
    17. Passive aggressive language to mock you slyly or indirectly.
    18. Always look at their eyes…they will be caught looking away or as if they are hiding something.
    19. Can really choose a vulnerable person to hurt carefully…so they find more about you in order to know your weaknesses. Also they try to know your strengths so that can turn them against you by talking ill of you and calling you a Narcissist by reverse blaming later on once they do abuse you so that you feel guilty for just being good at something or beautiful or intelligent.

    Remember their mission is to break you down. They are not loving or kind beings. It might be better to stay single than to be emotionally involved with a Narcissist. They are everywhere.

  • 20 Ways of Pinpointing an Abuser

    20 Ways of Pinpointing an Abuser

    How to identify a Narcissistic Abuser for your safety:

    As a Wiccan healer who has direct experience in dealing with abuse, harm, and violence in relationship life, I can help you identify negative behaviour and distance yourself from the same.
    An example is identifying narcissistic abusers. Narcissism is a superiority complex that stems from a deep lack of love and compassion.

    1. Remember that humans who are staunch non vegans are usually narcissistic people overall as they lack empathy and compassion for others and think they are superior and entitled, while ‘animals’ are below ‘humans: A separation based on illusion. Those humans who are normal are capable of learning how to respect animals of other species, as well as other humans, equally. Remember that those vegans who only respect non human animal rights, might also at times, be narcissistic or abusive towards humans and can harm humans, but that would be unusual. Sadly some altruistic narcissistic people exist who masquerade around as charitable leaders.

    2. Those who regard other humans as ‘lower’ to them, or less important, and try to harm to hurt others deliberately in interpersonal behaviour are narcissistic. The harm is a real one. A Narcissistic abuser has actually hurt others physically or mentally in significant ways and immorally so. Please don’t judge others as narcissistic just like that, without reason, or out of misunderstanding, as a Narcissist will opine that their victims were narcissistic.

    3. The Narcissist is delusional and usually pretends that others harmed them and brainwashes others into believing in their version which is never factual. Therefore it gets very difficult to pinpoint who the Narcissist is.
    Thankfully there are some significant personality traits that give them away.
    It is their aura, it just feels dark or negative. Even if they dress well or look well turned out, something in them is repulsive or off putting. Use your intuition.

    4. Their eyes give them away…it is the way they look, in insulting, angry, or maleficent ways, either sideways while talking to someone they hate, or narrowing their eyes to indicate their anger or meanness against the victim.

    5. The way their eyes become round, pop out, and they smile in victorious ways when proving their judgemental point to someone and while criticising others. ‘See, I was right’ is what they say animatedly. Their preoccupation is to judge others. Like they have nothing better to do. It’s always about people.

    6. The way they hang out with those who gossip and talk bad about the same people who they hate and the way they talk for hours against these victims. They usually hate good people or others who are normal, happy, beautiful, positive, successful, or trying to do well. They have a jealous mentality and wish that good people lose their health, wealth, fame, goodwill, or happiness, as they lack abundance and success consciousness.

    7. The amount of time they waste being grumpy and angry. Unable to change their mood or behaviour in a timely way. Sometimes for years.They lack a joyful disposition. Their smiles, if any are fake and not from within the heart. Their apology is any is also false and a hoovering mechanism to control you and keep you involved in their repetitive dramas.

    8. Their body language…aggressive movements, pointed finger while speaking, speaking with teeth gritted, upset tone, negativity, saying ‘huh’, walking up and down angrily, way of handling things around them as if they are throwing things, shouting, speaking as of they are scolding or irritable. They lack loving kindness, grace, gratitude, and gentleness.

    9. Their lack of sensitivity to how someone else feels, or what someone else wants to do. They go on doing what they want and lack intuition and empathy.

    10. They way they want to control events and relationships and the way they want others to schedule things as per their timetable, or want people to obey them entirely and not be included in decision making. You are never an equal. They are like the boss or teacher. They are in control and the world must revolve around them.

    11. Strong expectations from others to be ‘perfect’ and doing things a certain way instead of allowing uniqueness, individuality, and personal flaws, or mistakes. They are unusually intolerant of others.

    12. Tantrums and mood swings that can be explosive …and they blame it on others. They say ‘you should not have said anything to me’, ‘you made me hurt you’ or ‘its impossible to have a conversation with you’ or call you names by projecting their traits on to you.

    13. Reverse blaming is a significant aspect of this behaviour. They lack self reflection on their part in the situation. Therefore they make up a false narrative and stick to it. They try to get sympathy from others by acting as if they are being victimized, but refuse to see how they were harming or hurting others.

    14. Heart is not used often. They can be hot headed, rash, and bad mouthed. Pleasantness and genuine loving warmth are not their strongest trait.

    15. Condescending and disrespectful attitude reflecting that ‘they don’t care’, or ‘why should they care’, thereby minimising your worth. They are not thankful for you, for your work, your talents, your support, or your inputs, but expect you praise them for what they do.

    16. Lack of good listening skills. Talking too much and draining energy out of others, even if others seem to not be interested or are tired, sleepy, unwell, etc. They are just not alert to what someone else might feel, need, or want, emotionally or physically. At times they also take away money and your valuables and not just your time. But usually they are emotional and energy vampires who feed off energy of others.

    17. They will have a few friends whom they keep around by pretending to care about them so that they have some flying monkeys or enablers to spread hate with or to seek support from in continuing their behaviour. Some of these people are cunning themselves, while others are vulnerable and easily manipulated.

    18. They can be cheats in romantic relationships. They are never satisfied with one person and don’t display loyalty. They might want sexual relationships with someone else while being married or in a committed relationship. The person they are with is like a puppet or servant.

    19. They train people over time to love them, do things for them, expect bad behaviour from them, get used to their demands, to satisfy their needs, to be there for them. They might even have a generous supply, or a ‘harem’ to feed from.

    20. You will feel so much better when not in their presence. You will realise you were just ‘used’ to them, to having them around due to a trauma bond, and were infact used ‘by’ them. You might have even absorbed or reflected some of their attitudes, traits, or energy.
    You will see for yourself that you will indeed be a better version of yourself on your own, as if a negative energy has left you when you are not with them. A sense of relief and peace of mind.

    I hope this detailed article helped someone.
    For one to one help, tips, coaching, and advise over phone or video calls, alongside the wisdom of Tarot for relationship advise, please contact me via http://www.askswati.com

  • Glossary of Narcissism to Protect Yourself From Harm

    Two types of people have mental health symptoms. One are those who exhibit difficult behaviours due to their narcissistic, unsociable and abusive personality characteristics or traits (as elucidated in this Glossary). The other are their victims who suffer from physical, financial, mental or emotional harm including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or Depression caused by such beings. While victims seek out therapy and support out of need, abusers are usually resistant to any interventions and often pretend to be victims themselves.

    Narcissism and Antisocial Personality Traits include a large range of behavioural symptoms that you can identify in your own dealings, relationships, or associations with these personality types or in day to day conversations with them. While Narcissists are demarcated by a solid ego and selfishness, Antisocial Personalities in addition include Psychopathy (emotional rigidity), Sadism (being happy if others are sad), and Machiavellian tendencies (exploitative and deceitful), that are less known in media and social media as opposed to Narcissism which is gaining prominence.

    An example of such behaviour traits include social apathy regarding the plight of victim animals in animal agriculture industries, and the behaviour of regarding human life as superior while harming other life unnecessarily and arguing against change. Another example is Domestic Abuse in which most victims agree that the abuser’s seem to have gone to the ‘same school’ as they exhibit such common traits and predictable patterns.

    While many people exhibit such traits from time to time, some people being disordered are marked by these behaviours to a clinical or sub-clinical level. Such personalities can be unchangeable and the best way to protect yourself usually is to identify them and to stay safely away, unemotional about them, and to go no contact if need be.

    Low Moral Compass: Not being able to understand what is good or evil in terms of moral values, kindness, compassion, being decent in behaviour, not hurting or harming others, but instead having own subjective basis or decision making or own set of rules based on convenience.

    Limited Empathy: Deeply lacking the capacity to think from someone else’s point of view when needed, but seeing things usually from their own limited perspective and standpoint rather than of the victim, or the one who is likely to suffer or be harmed.

    Poor Insight: Not being able to look within themselves or their own thoughts, behaviours, or beliefs in an objective or neutral way in order to discern right from wrong, or good from evil, but instead trying to be superficial in order to dismiss their own negative behaviour.

    Minimising: Making their abuse and its effects sound like nothing much happened and the victim is overreacting or being melodramatic or exaggerating something.

    Denial: Completely denying their own actions and its impacts on their victims, and lying that they did nothing wrong or that there is no impact of their behaviour.

    Cognitive Dissonance: Creating a strong yet false story or fictional narrative, oddly different than reality and selling it to themselves and others repeatedly, so that one is hooked on, overly attached to that core belief and unable to hear anything against it or change their patterns of thinking or behaviour.

    Projection: Transferring your own guilt to the victim by projecting your own traits onto them unconsciously, e.g. thinking the victim is at fault, angry, militant, aggressive, lying, and so on.

    Delusional Behaviour: To be completely sold to their own story in order to detach completely from truth or reality and to live in a false reality that has no basis in truth.

    Pretentious: Behaving more important than they are, puffed up chest or false demeanour and facial expressions, or acting cocky, using slang or accents.

    Seductive: Trying to woo you and charm you to trust them, meet them, listen to them, and to be engrossed with their world in order to relate with them.

    Oversharing: Starting a relationship by saying too much, being in love too suddenly, or taking things too fast, or getting intimate, over-interested or saying that they are compatible, right at the beginning, or starting at a very positive note to get you drawn in.

    Flattery: Appeal to your vanity or ego to make you feel obliged to engage with them. Praising you more than required, such as looks, your generosity, your intelligence, your kindness, or how much they admire you, or respect you, so as to get more out of you and to make you feel rewarded for being more sensitive and giving more time or patience to them.

    Sweet Talking: Calming you down by saying sweet words, sugar-coating their intent, or using diplomacy and psychological tactics to convince you that they are nicer than they actually are, e.g. saying honey, sweetie, my lovely, etc., taking you out to a dinner, or treating you well to get what they want.

    Cunning Behaviour: Trying to win favours, support, or deals, by luring you into their plans, and striking a negotiation when they are completely undeserving or wrong, especially when the victim is about to stop the association.

    Jargons: Impressing others with fancy words, vocabulary, words picked up from the internet or dictionary, so that others think they are very clever and smart as well as brighter than they actually are, for example in a job interview, or a date or meeting.

    Deceitful: Lying about their achievements, accomplishments and past background, so as to get a job, promotion, advantage in a social event, relationship, or victory in a battle.

    Future Faking: Overpromising what being with them or trusting them will eventually lead to and giving a false dream or expectation of reality when not really meaning the same, so that you get into bed, live with them, or offer them work, finances or any support that they need. Or making false threats or impressions that they are more capable for harm, more well connected and stronger as an enemy than they actually are.

    False Social Image: Using selfies, makeup, clothing sense, or style, fan following, likes, testimonials, or other techniques, to pretend that they are better than they actually are, or pretending to do things that enhance their social image or lifestyle, when they actually are only gratifying their own ego.

    Co-dependency: Making you so dependent on them that you cannot perceive a life or a moment without their support or relationship and cannot stand your own ground.

    Isolation: Taking you away from your supporters, family, friends, colleagues, or helpers, physically or emotionally, so that you depend solely on them and are unable to find any emotional, practical, or financial support or help when they abuse you. E.g. telling you that no-one really loves you apart from them, or to split your business partnerships or other significant relationships by making you feel upset with others, or make you move away physically from them.

    Alienation: Making others withdraw support towards the actual victim at the crucial moment, and align instead with the abuser, by manipulating others with lies or false impressions, so that the victim has no-one to fall back on. e.g. parental alienation by making children feel more connected emotionally with the narcissistic parent.

    Selfishness: It is always about their self gratification and to make them the key person, such as getting their happiness, career success, wishes fulfilled, enjoyment, travel, sexual satisfaction, and so on, not about yours.

    Controlling behaviour: Make others their puppets to do what they desire, or for everyone’s life to revolve around their plans.

    Narcissistic Supply: To receive something out of someone in order to fulfil own needs or wants, e.g. a vehicle ride, a job offer, romance, children, and then hop on and hop off a relationship or to move on to the next victim, next target, or next destination or goal or adventure in life instead of reflecting on what went wrong and on their own role in it.

    I, Me and Myself: Using these words a lot when making plans and discussing things with you or others based on their desire or ego, and overlooking the needs of others.

    Ego: It is always about what is in it for them, they are not giving, generous or charitable by nature except when they want to appear good for a hidden purpose.

    Give Breadcrumbs: Gifts that do not mean much or are less valuable as a form of abuse, or without much love or special words, or meaning, especially when you are trying to move out or leave or if they abuse you.

    Devaluation: To make you feel worthless and insignificant or unloved, and to put you down.

    Trauma Bonding: To make you long for their company or crave their time or affection by withdrawing and resuming the relationship.

    Humiliation: Degrading you or insulting you by calling you names or ridiculing you with gestures, words, jargons, or abusive behaviour, to make you feel you are stupid.

    Gaslighting: Make you feel you are mentally ill, psychotic, or crazy due to your innate behaviour even if they are the ones causing you to be stressed.

    Silent Treatment: Not talking to you and cold treatment as a form of punishment.

    Self inflation: Making their ego larger than life so as to make them focus on you and to make themselves the centre of drama or attention.

    Tantrums and Melodrama: To draw attention, as well as risky behaviour, suicide, sudden outbursts that are well planned.

    Covert narcissism: To make you pity them and feel sorry for them and to ask for sympathy as a means of getting attention.

    Grandiosity: Making themselves feel more superior by exaggerating facts such as their race, looks, family origins, caste, business, finances, intelligence, certifications, degrees, status, and so on.

    Toxicity: Being too positive in a toxic way or too negative or criticising, inappropriately, so as to make you feel unhappy about yourself and your life and make you stressed up.

    Narcissistic Rage: Sudden anger when you realize what they have done or seem to gather strength in order to express yourself.

    Revenge Tactics: Reacting against you or making allegations and complaints against you if you speak against their abusive behaviour or disclose it or report it. Or using revenge porn, further abuse, fighting at court, or other revenge tactics to get even with you.

    Emotional Blackmail: Make you feel obliged to do things their way or the highway, by making you feel as if something really bad could happen otherwise.

    Threatening: Lying or actually threatening to do something bad against you or your family members to scare you and make you do what they want, with physical weapons or without.

    Intimidation: Acting more superior and aggressive or dangerous in order to make you respect them and obey them and to dominate over you, or terrorise you.

    Objectification: You are not treated like a person with your own personality, wishes, and needs, but just as an object, or their property, of some economic or personal value or gainfulness to them. Treating you as a commodity to use, or even throw out when unnecessary, spent, or worn out, rather than as a distinct individual.

    Slavery: Using you as a slave who satisfies them or works for them, e.g. providing them sex, food, ego boost, arm candy, meeting needs of their family, working in their office, helping out others in their life, and so on, without any equivalent return to you and often against your true will as an obligation or taking you for granted.

    Exploitation: To use you as a means to an end, especially in a Machiavellian way, to gain a benefit out of you or your work without due credit or enough reward to you so that they receive the credit, result or benefit but not you.

    Lacking Object Constancy: Not being able to retain a bond or a relationship for a reasonable amount of time, even if one is upset or angry or traumatised temporarily and not giving people another chance or an opportunity to change their behaviour or learn something when possible and appropriate.

    Triangulation: Talking about others, so as to make you feel less important or jealous, e.g. family members, an ex, other friends, or colleagues, or someone who have a crush on them, or whom they seem to like.

    Divide and Conquer: Spreading discord within home, group, family, or colleagues, so that people are unable to resonate with a common purpose and the seeds of conflict are sown in order to harm certain victims who are progressively isolated and targeted slyly.

    Enablers: Those who allow narcissists to continue their behaviour by being apologists, and not saying much against them in a clear enough way, to avoid conflict or even placate them, or at times side with them, thereby absorbing their behaviours and letting abuse go on unperturbed. Not being violent themselves but also not taking a stand against violence. At times engaging with them and being peace-able or trying to make victims achieve a compromise against what is good for them.

    Passive Aggression: Tactics to devalue a victim without physical or overt violence by making sly remarks, facial gestures, inappropriate jokes, making a dig, or having a slight go at them in a wrong way.

    Minions: Try to use others to carry out their agenda, to talk against you or gang up against you and pull you down or to speak their words with full faith in them, such as fan club or those used for goodwill or even paid.

    Flying Monkeys: Sending others to warn you, threaten you or harm you, to do their bidding.

    Scapegoating: Treating one child or family member as less important than other, emotional neglect, as opposed to the Golden boy or girl who is valued and appreciated.

    Parentification: To make a child feel more responsible than they are capable of such as making them work, be your assistant, making them do things for you or care for you, and giving you attention and services, sex, food, company, or anything that an adult is expected to do, such as a spouse, especially when in conflict with a spouse.

    Reverse Blaming and Shaming of Victim: Suddenly becoming the victim themselves to get pity of others and to blame the actual victim of narcissism behaviour or any abuse.

    Smear Campaign: To spread false stories and lies about you and make you feel as if you are the bad person, on social media, in social circles, among friends, family, relatives, media and so on.

    Manipulation: Using lies to distort truth and to make others see their point of view with well orchestrated efforts to get everyone to support them.

    Ghosting: Suddenly disappearing on you without any fault of yours to make you feel unwanted or confused and to keep you looking for them.

    Hoovering: Trying to stop the victim from sliding away by sucking them back into the argument, making them feel like they are special, making them feel listened to or giving a false impression that things will change in a more positive direction henceforth.

    False Tears: Crocodile tears to make you feel guilty and to make you feel like you must love them and feel really sorry to them.

    Acting: Practicing what to say in front of the mirror, repeating dialogues of imagined conversations in the mind, preparing well for putting on a show, or behaving like a character from a fictional story or movie.

    Selective Listening: Not focusing on what you are really saying but only on what they would use in their own arguments or agendas, especially against you.

    Love Bombing: Rewarding you when they want to by showering you with affection, presents, hugs, sexual intimacy, kisses, etc., out of the blue.

    Entitlement: Wrongly believing they own you or are supposed to get something out of you or the relationship, whether emotional, sexual, financial, comfort, service, or otherwise.

    Idealization: Making a false expectation of what they want from your association or relationship ideally, so that you feel as if you may not be good enough unless you live up-to their unreasonable or unrealistic standards.

    Self Deprecation or Self Criticism: Making themselves sound very humble and gentle, or well behaved by cleverly using self deprecating terms or by criticising themselves covertly, to make you praise them as a form of reverse psychology tactic.

    Wearing Out: Making you feel so tired, sleep deprived, exhausted, fed up, and stressed that you have no capacity to fight anymore and simply accept defeat or give in to your circumstances.

    Confuse, Distract, Bewilder: To draw attention away from their own behaviour they would confuse others by saying something completely unrelated, or distract attention to a joke, or point out towards superficial or minor issues to make everyone go on a wild goose chase.

    False Apology: Saying sorry in a way that put the victim as the faulty person indirectly, for example, ‘sorry that you lack empathy’, or ‘sorry that you are not emotionally available to me’, ‘sorry that you do not know what you are losing’.

    Physical Violence: Making you fear them using physical hitting, injury, slapping, beating, strangulation, pushing, pulling, shaking, or any other physically hurtful behaviour with or without physical injury.

    Sadism: Making others feel hurt physically or emotionally, or cause trauma, or make someone cry, to feel better about yourself, to feel more powerful, grandiose, capable of harm, or to enjoy the sense of inflicting pain or sorrow on others.

    Masochism: Hurting themselves or attempting suicide, deliberately in order to feel more deserving of love, sympathy, pity, reward, affection, or for any other reason.

    Coercion: Making you feel talked into something you actually did not want to do but were instigated or commanded into doing, or being obliged to co-operate for fear of letting someone down, or making them insecure, hurt, or unwanted, including being coerced into doing something illegal or immoral.

    Sexual Violence: Sexual manipulation by making you drugged or secluded, sexual control or coercion by making you respond in-spite of not actually wanting it, sexual cheating or adultery, sexual intimidation by showing body parts or images forcibly or weapons, forced penetration or rape, sexual harassment by sexting or repeatedly asking for sex or intimacy till you are fed up or give in.

  • 16 Signs of Narcisstic Pattern of Abuse – by Melanie Howarth

    16 Signs of Narcisstic Pattern of Abuse – by Melanie Howarth

    Naricisstic abuse is a phenomena that a lot of us are hearing about off late but it has been a fact of life since millenia. In this article Melaine Howarth, reputed tarot expert who counsels individuals over Tarot and Tea (psychic and healing services), gives us a few pointers to help us distance ourselves permanently from narcissistic abusers by recognising these entwined patterns.

    Narcissism is a trait, the term being inspired by the Greek myth of Narcissus who was in love with his own reflection in water. Narcisisstic abuse on the other hand is about narcissists using other people emotionally and manipulatively towards their own self-serving agenda of drawing all sympathy and attention towards themselves.

    Empaths, healers and kind or compassionate people often are highly attractive to Narcissistic Abusers who present themseves as needing the empathy they demand. When you get drawn into their drama, using a variety of tactics, narcisstic Abusers drain their victims out to focus entirely on themselves and their own myriad needs, sometimes in conjunction with other forms of abuse. These tactics are not limited to the following:

    1. Forced Intimacy: Usually at the beginning of a relationship, a person who is a Narcissistic Abuser might want to force themselves upon you, mentally, emotionally and at times using physical intimacy. They might begin the relationship by immediately declaring their affections or love, or expecting you to accept them completely and unconditionally at their sudden, persistent and intimate demands for affection.
    2. Oversharing: They could since the start of the association, share all about their childhood, their previous rejections and emotional hurts, and their life history or family traumas to secure sympathy from you. Be forewarned that if they are complaining about their ex partners or previous interests to you in the beginning, then you might be the next person they will complain about once you begin to move away from them.
    3. Future Faking: Tall promises may be projected by Narcissists to their prospective partners, often convincing you that they will be the ideal person to fulfil your dreams and ambitions, and making you comfortable with an imaginary future where you will be secure and fulfilling all your goals and desires with them.
    4. Triangulation: In case you ever express any loss of confidence in them, they will try to bring in another person, which need may or may not be another romantic interest. For example it could be another member of their family, or a friend, in an attempt to make you feel insecure. They will use this other person to make you feel that you need to vie for their attention or prove your affection, as there is someone else who supports them entirely and you will feel like your are judged.
    5. Managing Down Expectations: Once the relationship is mid-way if you feel that you are losing out on your life goals and plans, and not paying attention to your own needs, they will try to make you feel content with having less of whatever you had initially planned for in your life. They will justify you having to live with them or being part of their life even if it is directly or indirectly harmful to your abundance and best interest.
    6. Shock Tactics: To get more energy and attention from you, especially when you are returning to your senses or trying to move away from them, they will use shock tactics, for example threatening self harm or suicide, or displaying that they are in pain, or showering a lot of false concern. They may also try to gain your respect and gratitude by suddenly declaring something positive so that you gratify them. They will exhibit sudden behaviors that shock you so that you have no idea how to react, and get confused.
    7. Love Bombing: On one hand narcissistic abusers will gratify themselves and make you feel drained, on the other hand they will, in case you try to move away from them, bestow you with flowers, gifts or intimacy when you expect it the least so that you stop waking up from their manipulation and get overwhelmed with their sudden care and concern to yourself, no matter how shortlived.
    8. Plausible Deniablility: Complete denial of all their negative behavior and the possibility that they are at fault is a common factor in narcissistic abuse. These abusers deeply lack empathy towards others and never acknowledge or understand how their behavior affects those who are their victims. They are more likely to blame you instead of accepting their own guilt at any point of time.
    9. Distraction Reaction: Distract, confuse, disorient are the three words that underlie the manipulative urge to control you. The moment you start seeing through them, they suddenly express something that makes you focus on something else entirely so that least attention is given to the important issue of the abuse you are facing, and all attention instead goes to a non-issue that pops up out of nowhere.
    10. Gas Lighting: Telling you that you are crazy, mentally ill, that something is inherently wrong with you, your family members, your child, or another issue that is completely false and yet brought to attention is a tactic used by Narcissist abuser. More often than not, they succeed in gas-lighting you or others by making a convicing propositon based on a false premise so that you feel as if something is actually wrong with you or your supporting family or friends so that you get isolated and shamed.
    11. Guilt Tripping: Making you feel bad about wanting to leave them, making you feel like a terrible person, someone who is not nice to them, lacking ’empathy’ to them, not being supportive, caring or loving enough to them, accusing that you are hurting them, and other forms of strong emotional blackmail is used by narcissistic abusers to keep you from going away.
    12. Confidence Erosion: To reduce your self-importance, narcisstic abusers state things that are negative about you and indicte that you are a ‘loser’, ‘bankrupt’, ‘unsuccessful in life’ and by making you feel worthless by name calling. Your confidence may also be at an all time low simply because your life has indeed been harmed by their overwhelming, all-mighty and omnipresent behavior, they make you as dependent on them as possible and ensure you have no faith left in yourself.
    13. Silent Treatment/ Abandonment: At times when you expose your vulnerabilities, in an attempt to control you, narcissistic abusers will stop talking, show how cold they are, withdraw their symapthy, and leave you to yourself when you may be ill, needing comfort or in pain, or when you express any difficulties with the relationship. It wil feel as if you do not exist at times and your efforts do not matter as you remain unheard.
    14. Victim Mentality: The best defense is offense, seems to be the tactic of Narcissistic Abusers. They will declare to the whole world that they are the victims and you are the one who was actually guity of causing harm to them. They will blame you in every possible way, by showing that you are the abusive partner and even call you a narcissist instead of accepting that you are their victim and they are at fault. They will also declare themselves as mentally depressed, suicidal, in trauma due to your behavior or pretend to be physically hurt by you and complain about your behavior.
    15. Hoovering: Naricssistic Abusers want you to be as trapped as possible and as comfortable and used to their constant presence in your life, so that it is impossible to escape. They will be around you as much as they can if they feel you are moving away and try to monitor your movements.
    16. Control and Control Validation: Not only will Narcissistic Abusers control your psychologically and emotionally using manipulations, lies, melodrama and acting-out, they will also justify their behaviors. For example if they check your emails or intrude upon your social media activities, they may state that they are doing this to protect you, not allowing you to meet others as you are naive and they are keeping you safe from harm. Iterfering in your business or private matters will be justified by saying they are caring, or that you are physically or mentally ill and need their support. As such they will make you feel as controlled, isolated and helpless as possible and get away with it by saying that they are justified in doing so.

    The only way to be safe from the dangers of Narcissistic Abuse is to completely cut off from these individuals, to have no contact whatsoever, and to seek therapy and counselling to make sense of what happened to you. The key to your freedom is to be able to move on without being lured back into fulfilling the endless pit of demands of narcissistic abusers.

     

    Based on inputs from Melanie Howarth.

    melanieMelanie Howarth has been studying and giving Tarot readings for over 30 years and in addition to being a Therapeutic Tarot Practitioner, and a Holistic Health Therapist. https://www.tarotandtea.co.uk