Narcissistic Abuse Quotes

People that have trust issues only need to look in the mirror. There they will meet the one person that will betray them the most.

A sociopath is one who sees others as impersonal objects to be manipulated to fulfill their own narcissistic needs without any regard for the hurtful consequences of their selfish actions.

A child that’s being abused by its parents doesn’t stop loving its parents, it stops loving itself.

There are only two kinds of people who can drain your energy: those you love, and those you fear. In both instances it is you who let them in. They did not force their way into your aura, or pry their way into your reality experience.

The only people that can't handle the truth are those that suffer so much anxiety that they will live in denial, in order to prevent their illusion from being destroyed and feeling more anxiety.

To deny someone's feelings or experiences it to literally deny their reality.

so often victims end up unnecessarily prolonging their abuse because they buy into the notion that their abuser must be coming from a wounded place and that only patient love and tolerance (and lots of misguided therapy) will help them heal.

Gaslighting is mind control to make victims doubt their reality.

Don’t ever feel bad for making a decision about your own life that upsets other people. You are not responsible for their happiness. You’re responsible for your own happiness. Anyone who wants you to live in misery for their happiness should not be in your life anyway.

Realize that narcissists have an addiction disorder. They are strongly addicted to feeling significant. Like any addict they will do whatever it takes to get this feeling often. That is why they are manipulative and future fakers. They promise change, but can't deliver if it interferes with their addiction. That is why they secure back up supply.

You are not broken and in need of fixing. You are wounded and in need of healing.

In a psychopathic relationship, their strengths are fake and your flaws are manufactured.

If someone’s opinion of you goes from sky-high to rock bottom, this isn’t normal.

But that’s the thing about narcissists. They can try to fool you, with all their heart, but in the end, they’re just fooling themselves.

Emotional abuse is designed to undermine another's sense of self. It is deliberate humiliation, with the intent to seize control of how others feel about themselves.

Yes, the people around us can be insensitive, narcissistic, toxic, and sometimes even abusive, but it is up to us to take that energy on or let it flow through us. No one is responsible for taking away our happiness but us.

Since there was nothing at all I was certain of, since I needed to be provided at every instant with a new confirmation of my existence, since nothing was in my very own, undoubted, sole possession, determined unequivocally only by me — in sober truth a disinherited son — naturally I became unsure even of the thing nearest to me, my own body.

those who get upset for being treated the way that they treat others, will never understand why others treat them the way that they treat others.

But both the narcissist and his partner do not really consider each other. Trapped in the moves of an all-consuming dance macabre, they follow the motions morbidly - semiconscious, desensitized, exhausted, and concerned only with survival.

When we meet and fall into the gravitational pull of a narcissist, we are entering a significant life lesson that involves learning how to create boundaries, self-respect, and resilience. Through trial and error (and a lot of pain), our connection with narcissists teaches us the necessary lessons we need to become mature empaths.

Gaslighting are lies with a purpose to confuse and control.

The narc has been living in denial of their humanity and normal vulnerable feelings for so long there is an entire life time of unexpressed, repressed emotions rotting in the depths of their psyche. This is why they cannot stand to be alone. In that stillness they start to notice the stink coming up from the basement.

I'm not crazy, I was abused. I'm not shy, I'm protecting myself. I'm not bitter, I'm speaking the truth. I'm not hanging onto the past, I've been damaged. I'm not delusional, I lived a nightmare. I'm not weak, I was trusting. I'm not giving up, I'm healing. I'm not incapable of love, I'm giving. I'm not alone. I see you all here. I'm fighting this.

No child can be good enough to evoke love from a highly self-involved parent. Nevertheless, these children come to believe that the price of making a connection is to put other people first and treat them as more important. They think they can keep relationships by being the giver. Children who try to be good enough to win their parents’ love have no way of knowing that unconditional love cannot be bought with conditional behavior.

Emotional abuse can leave a victim feeling like a shell of a person, separated from the true essence of who they naturally are. It also leads to a victim feeling tormented and tortured by their own emotions.

Narcissists are very retaliative if they believe another has achieved what they desire, exposed their insecurities, or refused to be under their control.

You know intuitively that love is not insulting, criticizing, cheating, and lying. Love does not make you feel suicidal. Love does not mock you for having hurt feelings.

You took advantage of every second that I did not love myself.

Children of narcissists learn that love is abuse. The narcissist teaches them that if someone displeases you, it is okay to harm them and call it love.

Narcissistic abuse is a form of psycho-emotional abuse that takes place when a pathological narcissist targets another individual and exposes them to trauma. It can also manifest as physical, financial, spiritual and sexual abuse.

Gaslighting is an attempt to change the truth.

I found peace of mind when I walked away from small fights not worth fighting. I stopped fighting for people who gossiped about me. I stopped fighting for those who didn't respect me. I quit worrying about those who wouldn't value me for being me.

Psychopaths provide shallow praise and flattery only in order to gain trust. When you actually need emotional support, they will typically offer an empty response—or they will completely ignore you. With time, this conditions you not to bother them with your feelings, even when you need a partner the most, especially during times of tragedy or illness. You will begin to notice that you are never allowed to express anything but positive praise for them.

Narcissistic abusers first idealize their partners, flattering them excessively, giving them all sorts of attention in the form of constant texts and gifts. They share secrets and stories with you to create a special bond; this technique also enables you to feel as if you can share your deepest insecurities and desires with them. Later, they will use your disclosure as ammunition and pick at your weak spots to regain a sense of psychological control.

Psychopaths do not actually feel the love and happiness that they so frequently proclaim. They oscillate between contempt, envy, and boredom. Nothing more.

They gaslight you into believing that your normal reactions to their abuse are the problem—not the abuse itself.

if you find yourself playing detective with someone, you should remove them from your life immediately

Daughters of narcissistic mothers absorb the message “I am valued for what I do, rather than for who I am.

Try to come to a place where you accept your own imperfections. Where it's okay to be less than perfect. Because you are less than perfect; it‟s the human condition. And that's okay!

Their manipulation is psychological and emotionally devastating – and very dangerous, especially considering the brain circuitry for emotional and physical pain are one and the same (Kross, 2011). What a victim feels when they are punched in the stomach can be similar to the pain a victim feels when they are verbally and emotionally abused, and the effects of narcissistic abuse can be crippling and long-lasting, even resulting in symptoms of PTSD or Complex PTSD.

Gaslighting is confusing because they switch to intermittent concern.

An emotionally abusive relationship, in very simplistic terms, is much like standing up in a too hot bath and sinking back in so as not to feel so dizzy.

The man reeks of mental illness. I can taste his pathology... Goes well with my palette.

The fact of the matter is, if you haven’t been in an abusive relationship, you don’t really know what the experience is like. Furthermore, it’s quite hard to predict what you would do in the same situation. I find that the people most vocal about what they would’ve done in the same situation often have no clue what they are talking about – they have never been in the same situation themselves. By invalidating the survivor’s experience, these people are defending an image of themselves that they identify with strength, not realizing that abuse survivors are often the strongest individuals out there. They’ve been belittled, criticized, demeaned, devalued, and yet they’ve still survived. The judgmental ones often have little to no life experience regarding these situations, yet they feel quite comfortable silencing the voices of people who’ve actually been there.

Healing is like an onion. As you process through one layer of trauma to release the pain and heal, a new layer will surface. One layer after another layer will bring up new issues to focus on. Pace yourself. Only focus on one layer at a time.

When children can’t rely on their parents to meet their needs, they cannot develop a sense of safety, trust, or confidence. Trust is a colossal development issue. Without the learning of trust in our early years, we are set up to have a major handicap with believing in ourselves and feeling safe in intimate connections.

One sister may internalize the message and say, “Okay, I will show you what I can do and how worthy I am” and become an overachiever and a perfectionist. The other sister may internalize this message of inferiority and give up, feeling that she can’t make the grade anyway; she becomes an underachiever or engages in some kind of lifelong self-sabotage.

Gaslighting is implanted narratives cloaked in secrecy.

Maybe, the lesson we can all learn from the inner sadness of a Narcissist is to see through our own fabrications, our own illusions so that we can be set free to be real once more.

A narcissist, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of an empath. Emotionally, narcissists are like brick walls who see and hear others but fail to understand or relate to them. As a result of their emotional shallowness, narcissists are essentially devoid of all empathy or compassion for other people. Lacking empathy, a narcissist is a very destructive and dangerous person to be around.

After the fog lifts and you awaken to the truth about abuse, the narcissist and flying monkeys will minimize the facts about what took place. They will discredit you. They will undermine your own perception. They will accuse you of being insane. Even if you took the time to explain yourself, they will cast all blame onto you.

With you, the psychopath acts covert, ambiguous, condescending, and always trying to keep you doubting the relationship.

Gaslighting qualifies as a form of emotional abuse that involves denying a person’s experience and making statements, such as “that never happened,” “you’re too sensitive,” or “this isn’t that big a deal.

The psychopath is constantly provoking drama, rivalries, and competitions. What separates them from everyday drama queens is their ability to appear innocent in all of it. They make subtle suggestions, then sit back and watch as others go down in flames for them.

(a quote from a survivor) Information was key. Once you begin waking up to what has been happening around you the whole time you can begin stopping the cycle which angers the Narcissist to an interesting boiling point

In the narcissist's world being accepted or cared for (not to mention loved) is a foreign language. It is meaningless or even repellent. One might recite the most delicate haiku in Japanese and it would still remain utterly meaningless to a non-speaker of Japanese. This does not diminish the value of the haiku or of the Japanese language, needless to say. But it means nothing to the non-speaker. Narcissists damage and hurt but they do so offhandedly and naturally, as an afterthought… They are aware of what they are doing to others - but they do not care.

Healing from psychopathic abuse is a long journey. It is neither linear nor logical. You can expect to swing back and forth between stages, perhaps even inventing a few of your own along the way. It is unlike the traditional stages of grief, because you have not truly lost anything—instead, you have gained everything. You just don’t know it yet.

The Psychopath Free Pledge: 1. I will never beg or plead for someone else again. Any man or woman who brings me to that level is not worth my heart. 2. I will never tolerate criticisms about my body, age, weight, job, or any other insecurities I might have. Good partners won't put me down, they'll raise me up. 3. I will take a step back from my relationship once every month to make sure that I am being respected and loved, not flattered and love-bombed. 4. I will always ask myself the question: "Would I ever treat someone else like this?" If the answer is no, then I don't deserve to be treated like that either. 5. I will trust my gut. If I get a bad feeling, I won't try to push it away and make excuses. I will trust myself. 6. I understand that it is better to be single than in a toxic relationship. 7. I will not be spoken to in a condescending or sarcastic way. Loving partners will not patronize me. 8. I will not allow my partner to call me jealous, crazy, or any other form of projection. 9. My relationships will be mutual and equal at all times. Love is not about control and power. 10. If I ever feel unsure about any of these steps, I will seek out help from a friend, support forum, or therapist. I will not act on impulsive decisions.

You cannot circle around the pain and discover the happiness you deserve. You must travel through the pain and embrace all of the challenging feelings and difficult ups and downs that are the essence of the grieving process. For a long time, it may seem as if you will always be hurting . . . until one day you will find that you turned a corner and found a lovely new world you never could have imagined.

Your path may be painful, but it is also special. The universe has different plans for you. Remember, there are others who have permanently destroyed any path to the spiritual world. Psychopaths have no place there, and it is why they hate empathetic beings. You are a nagging reminder of something they will never find. They will die here in the material world, with no deeper connection to this great universe.

People pleasing does make it easier to ignore the red flags of abusive relationships at the very early stages especially with covert manipulators. We can also become conditioned to continually “please” if we’re used to walking on eggshells around our abuser.

Psychopaths project and blame you for their own behavior. They accuse you of being negative when they are the most negative people in the world. They gaslight you into believing that your normal reactions to their abuse are the problem—not the abuse itself. When you feel angry and hurt because of their silent treatment, broken promises, lying, or cheating, there is something wrong with you. When you call them out on their dishonest behavior, you’re the abnormal one who is too sensitive, too critical, and always focusing on the negative.

Abusers like to target people who have something they do not or cannot possess themselves. Narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths are notorious for picking targets that initially boost their egos. It could be the target’s appearance, age, intellect, reputation, religious convictions, career success, family, friends, or something else.

Selective amnesia by harmful people is blame-shifting. According to FreeDictionary.com, “Blame-shifting is when someone shifts the blame from person to person.” The root of blame-shifting is when an abusive person fails to take responsibility for their cruelty.

Imagine the infant who one day cries and gets fed, and the next day cries and goes hungry. One day smiles and is kissed and hugged. The next day smiles and is ignored. This is what psychologists called 'preoccupied or unresolved attachment' with the primary caregiver--usually the mother. There was love one minute and disdain the next. Affection that was given in abundance for no reason and then taken away without cause. The child has no ability to predict or influence the behavior of the parent. The narcissist loves a child only as an extension of herself at first, and then as a loyal subject. So she will tend to the child only when it makes her feel good.

One of the major reasons why empaths and narcissists are attracted to each other is because of the empaths desire to help the narcissist, and the narcissist’s desire to take advantage of the empath’s emotional support. As I mentioned before, pity is our Achilles heel, and we often mistake it for the experience of love.

Because empaths can see the world through their partner’s point of view, they frequently tend to completely mesh with the viewpoints of their abusers. So when an empath is told that he or she is uncaring from a narcissistic partner, the empath will genuinely feel as though they are a horrible person due to the fact that they can feel and embody the emotions of their partners.

Narcissistic cathexis of the child by the mother does not exclude emotional devotion. On the contrary, she loves the child as her self-object, excessively, though not in the manner that he needs, and always on the condition that he presents his "false self." This is no obstacle to the development of intellectual abilities, but it is one to the unfolding of an authentic emotional life.

There was little hope of overpowering the history my father and sister were creating for me. Their account would claim my brothers first, then it would spread to my aunts, uncles, cousins, the whole valley. I had lost an entire kinship, and for what?

Gaslighting their partners into believing the abuse isn't real by denying, minimizing or rationalizing the abuse. This includes deflecting any conversations about accountability using circular conversations and word salad in order to avoid being held accountable for their actions.

So for those who think abuse survivors can simply logically process their situation and get out of and over the situation easily, think again. The parts of our brain that deal with planning, cognition, learning, and decision-making become disconnected with the emotional parts of our brain – they can cease to talk to each other when an individual becomes traumatized. It usually takes a great deal of effort, resources, strength, validation, addressing wounding on all levels of body and mind, for a survivor to become fully empowered to begin to heal from this form of trauma.

You can't imagine fame. You can only ever see it from an outsider and comment on it with the rueful wisdom of a non participant. When it happens to you, it doesn't matter what age or how, it is a very steep learning curve. The imprtanot thing to realize in all of it is that life is short, to protect the ones you love, and not expose yourself to too much abuse or narcissistic reflection gazing and move on. If fame affords me the type of ability to do the kind of work I'm being offered, who am I to complain about the downsides. It's all relative. And this are obviously very high class problems. The way privacy becomes an every shrinking island is inevitable but also manageable and it doesn't necessary have to get that way...

The narcissist, cut off from her spirituality, is one who spends unquantifiable energy supporting and maintaining and utterly and completely fake self, in denial of one's true self, trading it for glamour to compensate for a core of being that is simply wracked,a deep dark cold void; using and abusing others to maintain and sustain the false state. this fake self is contrived in absentia from the connectivity that even the most unaware take for granted. The narcissist doesn't see other human beings.

If unloving mothers were able to see their behavious as abusive, they either would stop behaving that way or they would get help for their dysfunction. But many cannot: instead, they deny it, to themselves, their families, and the world at large, in order to avoid a sense of guilt, to avoid having to make changes in their lives, or to avoid the bruising awareness that they, too, were unloved children.

Many survivors find that they didn’t really know how to express sadness or anger throughout most of their lives. They were instead expected to be a cheerful servant to everyone around them. And so they developed this stubborn light in their hearts that always sought to see the best in everything, no matter how much the evidence pointed to the contrary.

What’s important to remember is that while human beings in general can engage in toxic behaviors from time to time, abusers use these manipulation tactics as a dominant mode of communication. Toxic people such as malignant narcissists, psychopaths and those with antisocial traits engage in maladaptive behaviors in relationships that ultimately exploit, demean, and hurt their intimate partners, family members, and friends.

Gaslighting is a subtle form of emotional manipulation that often results in the recipient doubting their own perception of reality and their sanity. In addition, gaslighting is a method of manipulation by toxic people to gain power over you. The worst part about gaslighting is that it undermines your self-worth to the point where you’re second-guessing everything.

To any survivor who may be doubting whether what they’ve experienced is truly abuse, remember that emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse will never be, and should never be, considered part of the messy equation of a normal relationship. As both metal health professionals and survivors can attest to, the traumatic highs and lows of being with a narcissist, a sociopath, or a psychopath are not the natural highs and lows of regular relationships. That suggestion is quite damaging to society and to survivors all around the world.

what are your insecurities? Get out a piece of paper and make a list. This will save your life down the road. Once you’re aware of these traits, you will also become aware of the people who try to manipulate them. And even better, you can begin to make changes—to better yourself and improve your life.

Dissociation leaves us disconnected from our memories, our identities and our emotions. It breaks the trauma into digestible components, so that different aspects of the trauma get stored in different compartments in our brain. What happens as a result is that the information from the trauma becomes disorganized and we are not able to integrate these pieces into a coherent narrative and process trauma fully until, hopefully, with the help of a validating, trauma-informed counselor who guides us to the appropriate therapies best suited to our needs, we confront the trauma and triggers in a safe place.

In spite of everything she did that she shouldn't have done, and everything she didn't do that she should have, something that felt like love was in her and she would take it out at times like this and show it to us and make us hunger for more. All of us, each in our own way.

My mother emotionally, physically and mentally abused me in ways that will forever impact me. She gave me breast and vaginal exams until I was seventeen years old. These "exams" made my body stiff with discomfort. I felt violated, yet I had no voice, no ability to express that.

Our Narcissistic Mother told us a Big Lie. She told it subliminally if not in actual words. And The Big Lie was this: If we tried hard enough we could win her approval and her love. If we were good enough, or wise enough, or beautiful enough, or that-magical-unspecified-ingredient enough. In other words, if we achieved perfection, she would love us.

But that’s the magic of alone time! You are completely and 100 percent in control of your own happiness. You can imagine anything you want, transforming a bad mood into a good one. Or maybe you want to feel the bad mood fully, in which case you can cry all you want, and nobody can judge you. When you’re alone, there’s no pressure to be someone you’re not. For a while I actually used to need time alone in order to remember who I was. When we’re constantly surrounded by people—especially toxic influences—it becomes really easy to forget ourselves. We get caught up in drama, gossip, and negativity.

Everyone messes up every now and then, but psychopaths recite excuses more often than they actually follow through with promises. Their actions never match up with their words. You are disappointed so frequently that you feel relieved when they do something decent—they condition you to become grateful for the mediocre.

Empowered Women 101: If they made you an option you will always be an option vs. the person they really wanted. Don't ever settle for someone that makes you go through hell only to stay with you because they don't have the confidence to go get what they really want. Fear will always follow your rules when they know they don't have options that make them stay comfortable. You won't grow real love in this type of a relationship. You will water weeds and call it a garden.

If you think you're going to have a thoughtful discussion with someone who is toxic, be prepared for epic mindfuckery rather than conversational mindfulness. Malignant narcissists and sociopaths use word salad, circular conversations, ad hominem arguments, projection and gas lighting to disorient you and get you off track should you ever disagree with them or challenge them in any way. They do this in order to discredit, confuse and frustrate you, distract you from the main problem and make you feel guilty for being a human being with actual thoughts and feelings that might differ from their own. In their eyes, you are the problem if you happen to exist.

Covert manipulators are quite gifted at provocation. As they learn more about you, they are investigating your weak spots and catering their comments towards what they know will hurt you the most. Knowing you’re triggered by their comments gives them a sadistic sense of satisfaction that alleviates their secret sense of inferiority and strokes their delusions of grandeur, control and aptitude. Having control over your emotions also gives them the power to effectively manipulate you and convince you that you don’t deserve any better.

You start to see that you’ve never behaved like this in any other relationship, and it’s not because they were special. It’s because they were actively working against you from the moment they chose you. You look back at all of the things that once made you feel paranoid, now able to see that every instance of abuse & neglect was calculated and intentional. And finally, you come to the horrifying realization that the love of your life—the person you trusted with all your heart—had set you up for failure since the very beginning.

Even when he seems to be interacting with someone else, the narcissist is actually engaged in a self-referential discourse. To the narcissist, all other people are cardboard cutouts, two-dimensional animated cartoon characters, or symbols. They exist only in his inner universe. He is startled when they deviate from the script and prove to be complex and autonomous.

Unlike any other mental disorder, psychopaths are keenly aware of the impact that their behavior has on others. That’s half the fun for them—watching you suffer. They pick up on insecurities and vulnerabilities in a heartbeat, and then make the conscious choice to exploit those qualities. They know right from wrong, and simply choose to steamroll straight through it.

Narcissistic Supply You get discarded as supply for one of two reason: They find you too outspoken about their abuse. They prefer someone that will keep stroking their ego and remain their silent doormat. Or, they found new narcissistic supply. Either way, you can count on the fact that they planned your devaluation phase and smear campaign in advance, so they could get one more ego stroke with your reaction. Narcissists are angry, spiteful takers that don't have empathy, remorse or conscience. They are incapable of unconditional love. Love to them is giving only when it serves them. They gaslight their victims by minimizing the trauma they have caused by blaming others or stating you are too sensitive. They never feel responsible or will admit to what they did to you. They have disordered thinking that is concerned with their needs and ego. It is not uncommon for them to hack their targets, in order to gain information about them. They enjoy mind games and control. This is their dopamine high. The sooner you distance yourself the healthier you will become. Narcissism can't be cured or prayed away. It is a mental disorder that turns the victims of its abuse into mental patients because it causes so much psychological manipulation.

Don't ever believe that Narcissists don't understand they have hurt you. They know exactly what they did and why they did it. The reason they can't stop their abuse is because the narcissistic supply is their addiction. Unlike, drug addicts that need their fix to feel normal, narcissists need to feel significant. This is their addiction. Even if it takes destructive ways to have this emotional balance they will pursue it. Your feelings don't count only the supply does. The greater the supply the greater the drama in your life as they pursue it. So, get over believing they don't understand. They do understand. You just found out and got in the way of their easy access to greater supply than you.

An educational strategy to help you maintain your clear boundaries is the JADE technique. JADE is an acronym and it stands for: J = Justify: Don’t try to justify yourself to toxic people. It’s unproductive. A = Argue: Do not waste your energy arguing with toxic people. D = Defend: Don’t waste your breath trying to defend yourself to those who don’t care. E = Explain: Never explain yourself, especially to those who discredit you. The goal of the JADE technique is to take back your power. To stand up for yourself without needing to defend or explain yourself. It’s essential to not engage in this ridiculous mind-game with abusive people.

The narcissistic mother cannot give her child unconditional love. She’s not capable of being self-less, devoted, warm, mature, or attentive to you. Instead, everything is about her. Life revolves around meeting her unrealistic, immature needs. She expects your undivided attention. Your admiration. Your praises. Your loyalty to her. She demands you to meet her needs no matter how ridiculous they can be.

Emotional abusers condition their victims to feel ashamed, inadequate, and unstable. This is because they are cowards, incapable of healthy relationships with strong and self-respecting individuals. Oftentimes, they choose targets who are unusually successful and idealistic, because these people have more to lose. But abusers cannot control someone with such qualities, and so they break down the target’s self-esteem through belittling, teasing, and manufactured jealousy. The target may have perfectionist tendencies, striving to meet the abuser’s impossible standards. This results in a strange dynamic where the abuser is idealized, despite being lazy, dishonest, and unfaithful, while the victim is devalued, despite putting more effort into this relationship than ever before.

During a relationship with a psychopath, you are likely to experience a range of emotions that you’ve never felt before: extreme jealousy, neediness, rage, anxiety, and paranoia. After every outburst, you constantly think to yourself, “If only I hadn’t behaved that way, then maybe they’d be happier with me.” Think again. Those were not your emotions. I repeat: those were not your emotions. They were carefully manufactured by the psychopath in order to make you question your own good nature. Victims are often prone to believe that they can understand, forgive, and absorb all of the problems in a relationship. Essentially, they checkmate themselves by constantly trying to rationalize the abuser’s completely irrational behavior.

Narcissistic fathers leave their daughters with deep doubts about whether a man can love them, since the first important man in their life was so in love with himself that he had no love left for them. If you are a daughter of a narcissistic father you may have withdrawn from men and bound yourself to mother, either overtly or emotionally. Or you may be engaged in a self-destructive attempt to be his kind of girl, whatever that is, as you try desperately to extract his love. Perhaps you have transferred this into a masochistic position with other men, finding a narcissistic man incredibly attractive as you try to master the mystery of winning his love. And narcissistic men appeal to you because you wish you could be that way yourself - assertive, not giving a damn, self-important - but you lack the confidence to do it yourself so you identify with the man who has their quality, even if it's at your expense. (I have often seen this revealed in those instances where a woman has suffered through a degradingly submissive and abusing relationship with a man, or a series of men, and then, gaining the strength to break that kind of bondage, violently overturns the tables and abuses that man, or the next man in her life, as degradingly as she was misused. It's not just revenge, but the release of hidden desire to be powerful and to be able to control father and make him beg for her love.)

Dear Mommy I’m doing really good, I get all A’s in school And I don’t cry at bedtime anymore, Though my new mom said I could. I remember how much you hate tears, You slapped them out of me To make me strong, I think it worked. I learned to use a microscope And my hair grew two inches. It’s pretty, just like yours. I’m not allowed to clean the house, Only my own room, Isn’t that a funny rule? You say kids are so much trouble Getting born, they better pay it back. I’m not supposed to take care Of the other kids, only me, I sort of like it. I still get the hole in my stomach When I do something wrong, I have a saying on my mirror “Kids make mistakes, It’s OK,” I read it every day, Sometimes I even believe it. I wonder if you ever think of me Or if you’re glad the troublemaker’s gone, I never want to see you again. I love you, Mommy.

I am not sure whether you could call this abuse, but when I was (long ago) abroad in the world of dry men, I saw parents, usually upscale and educated and talented and functional and white, patient and loving and supportive and concerned and involved in their children’s lives, profilgate with compliments and diplomatic with constructive criticism, loquacious in their pronouncements of unconditional love for and approval of their children, conforming to every last jot-tittle in any conceivably definition of a good parent, I saw parent after unimpeachable parent who raised kids who were (a) emotionally retarded or (b) lethally self-indulgent or (c) chronically depressed or (d) borderline psychotic or (e) consumed with narcissistic self-loathing or (f) neurotically driven/addicted or (g) variously psychosomatically Disabled or (h) some conjunctive permutation of (a) … (g). Why is this. Why do many parents who seem relentlessly bent on producing children who feel they are good persons deserving of love produce children who grow to feel they are hideous persons not deserving of love who just happen to have lucked into having parents so marvelous that the parents love them even though they are hideous? Is it a sign of abuse if a mother produces a child who believes not that he is innately beautiful and lovable and deserving of magnificent maternal treatment but somehow that he is a hideous unlovable child who has somehow lucked in to having a really magnificent mother? Probably not. But could such a mother then really be all that magnificent, if that’s the child’s view of himself? ...I think, Mrs. Starkly, that I am speaking of Mrs. Avril M.-T. Incandenza, although the woman is so multileveled and indictment-proof that it is difficult to feel comfortable with any sort of univocal accusation of anything. Something just was not right, is the only way to put it. Something creepy, even on the culturally stellar surface.