Did my ex-covert narcissist intend to hurt me, or is their behavior unconscious?

By Elinor Greenberg

There is one question that I have been asked by virtually everyone who has had a serious romantic relationship with a person who turned out to have a Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

Did they mean to hurt me?

This question comes in many forms. If you have been hurt by a Narcissistic mate, you have probably wondered some of the following things:

Did they want to hurt me?

Did they do that on purpose?

Do they understand how painful this is to me?

Do they even care what I feel as long as they get their way?

How can they say they love me and still say and do such awful things to me?

The answer is more complicated than a simple “yes” or “no.” The short answer is that sometimes they did mean to hurt you and sometimes they were so focused on their own needs and feelings that they did not take the time to think about how you might be affected by their actions.

4 Main Factors Contribute to this Situation:

People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder lack:

“Whole Object Relations” and “Object Constancy.

Emotional empathy.

A sense of proportion.

Timing.

These four things interact to create many situations where the Narcissistic mate is likely to hurt their mate’s feelings—-sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident.

Lack of Whole Object Relations and Object Constancy

Please bear with me while I explain these terms. These are very unfortunate names for very useful concepts. It is almost impossible to understand the pattern of behavior and attitudes that we call Narcissistic Personality Disorder without first understanding these concepts.

Whole Object Relations: This is the ability to see oneself and other people as having both liked and disliked traits and behaviors. “Whole Object Relations” allows us to form stable, realistic, and integrated pictures of people in our mind.

This is somewhat analogous to our experience of the Moon. As the Moon goes through its phases, at most we only see half of it at any time. When we only see a crecent moon, we are still aware that the rest of the moon still exists.

All-Good vs. All-Bad: Without “Whole Object Relations” people can only see the other person as all-good or all-bad. It is as if the other side of the person ceases to exist, including the past history with that side. It fades into the unseen background, while the part that is noticed becomes a bright shiny figure that dominates the person’s view of the situation.

In the case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

All-Good = Perfect, special, unique, flawless,of high status, and entitled to special treatment.

All-Bad= Flawed, worthless, inadequate, low status, and entitled to nothing.

Object Constancy: This is the ability to maintain positive feelings towards oneself and others while you are feeling angry, hurt, disappointed, or frustrated with yourself or someone else.

Without this ability, it is impossible to maintain stable feelings towards anyone. The moment you are disappointed by them, all good feelings disappear, and all you are aware of is your hatred.

Emotional Empathy

Emotional Empathy; Emotional empathy is the capacity to feel what someone else is feeling. If you have emotional empathy, you will find it hard to enjoy yourself when someone that you care about is hurting.

Narcissists have little or no emotional empathy. They not only do not feel bad for you when something goes wrong in your life, they are likely to become annoyed with you because you are less available to them.

Intellectual Empathy: Narcissists can have Intellectual empathy. This means that, if they stop to think sbout it, they may be able to imagine what you are feeling.

Unlike emotional empathy which is immediate and instinctive, intellectual empathy requires the Narcissistic person to stop and think about your feelings. Narcissists are very self-centered. Even when they can figure out what you are feeling, they may not really care. Some go through the motions of pretending to care because they know it is the normal thing to do—but it is work.

Example—Sara and the Ski Trip

Sara went on a ski trip with her Narcissistic boyfriend Jordon. They both love to ski and had been looking forward to this trip for a long time. On one of their ski runs, Sara fell very hard and herniated a disc in her back. She was in excruciating pain, had to sit in the Emergency Room of a local hospital for two hours waiting to get an MRI, and finally saw a doctor.

Jordon accompanied Sara to the ER and waited with her. Instead of trying to soothe and comfort her, he expressed his annoyance: “I can’t believe that you did this! We are missing a whole day of skiing because of you.”

When the doctor told her she would have to rest for a few weeks instead of skiing, Jordon said: “Well it is my vacation too and I am going to ski. I hope you don’t expect me to stay all day in the lodge with you.”

Sara was very hurt by Jordon’s response.

Did Jordon mean to hurt Sara?

No, Jordon was focused on his own needs and his disappointment that his plans for a lovely ski vacation were being disrupted. His lack of emotional empathy made him indifferent to Sara’s pain and how his words might be affecting her.

Timing: Some of the hurt that Narcissists cause is related to their need to express their negative feelings about you, or something that you have done, the very moment that they feel them.

Instead of waiting till a convenient time for both of you to discuss an issue calmly, many people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder insist on letting their partner know right now all the bad things that they have done.

They do not take into consideration anything about the larger field (everything else that is going on in their partner’s life).

A Sense of Proportion: Most people have a sense of proportion. What I mean by that is their response to negative events are proportionate to the seriousness of the event. Narcissists often react to minor events, like being made to wait on line or not getting exactly what they want when they want it, almost as strongly as getting slapped in the face.

Example—Maria and her Licensing Exam

Maria had just finished getting her degree in social work and doing her two required internships. She has been studying for weeks for her State’s Licensing exam. Right now, passing this exam is temporarily the most important thing in Maria’s life. Jose, her Narcissistic boyfriend, lives with her and knows how important it is for Maria to pass her exam.

Maria had planned to go to bed early and get as much rest as possible the night before the big exam. Unfortunately, just as she was getting ready to go to bed, Jose came in and said, “We are out of beer. You know I like a beer in the evening. How could you let this happen?”

Maria was taken aback that Jose was making such a fuss about her not having beer in the fridge right when she was trying to calm down and get to bed early. “I’m sorry. I know beer is important to you, but I have been too busy studying to do any shopping. We can restock the fridge and get you anything you want after my exam.”

Instead of accepting Maria’s apology, Jose escalates the fight. “This is just another instance of you showing that you don’t really care about my feelings. I feel really dismissed by you!”

Maria cannot believe that Jose is picking a fight over beer on the night before the most important exam of her life. When she says: “Please, Jose, let me go to sleep.” He says, “I’m going out to buy my own beer because you obviously couldn’t care less about how I feel. Everything is about you and your precious exam.” He stomps out leaving Maria stunned, awake, and crying.

Did Jose mean to hurt Maria?

Jose was angry with Maria for putting her own needs first. His lack of a sense of proportion about the importance of his getting a beer versus Maria needing to study for her licensing exam made his anger seem justified. He did want to hurt Maria because he felt neglected by her.

A non-Narcissist might have felt neglected as well, but they would have taken timing into consideration and delayed having the “I feel you are ignoring my needs” discussion till after Maria’s exam.

Jose’s lack of “Object Constancy” and lack of emotional empathy also played a role in their fight. As soon as Jose was disappointed when he discovered that they were out of beer, his good feelings toward Maria disappeared and she became the enemy. This, plus his lack of emotional empathy, made him willing to sabotage Maria, even if it caused her to fail her exam.

Punchline: The typical deficits that are associated with Narcissistic Personality Disorder increase the likelihood that Narcissists will hurt their mate. Sometimes this is simply an unintentional byproduct of their self-centeredness. Other times it is quite intentional and is usually payback for some behavior that has angered or disappointed them. In that situation, they do know that they are hurting you, but they simply do not care.

I don’t know what’s going on out in space since I’ve never been there. I have however looked at footage distributed by Nasa that is pretty glitchy and fake looking. Here I present to you yet another example. 

Here are some cats singing about the downfall of Hillary Clinton. 

There’s a story going around that a Trump ally named Qanon is informing the people that corruption is being addressed right now. Aspects of the story don’t look congruent to me so I’m just watching how events progress. Here is a map that is supposed to show how darkness has come upon us.

https://throughthelookingglassnews.wordpress.com/2017/11/24/qanon-learn-to-read-the-map-hd/amp/?__twitter_impression=true 

Here is Ed talking about Star Wars and the hero’s journey. My project is meant to be the hero’s journey, live on the net.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

The maker of this video could be a bit more sensitive but I think this video has a lot of helpful information about discerning deception in the mainstream media. 

What kind of upbringing will make a person a narcissist?

Lydia Colton

An abusive upbringing. Emotional, physical, or sexual abuse or severe neglect.

A lot of the times, people erroneously assume that helicopter parenting and spoiling a child and failing to discipline a child result in the child growing up into a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD.)

This is false. It is true that helicoptering, spoiling, and failing to discipline children can cause them to develop into narcissistic adults with feelings of entitlement and arrogance.

However, narcissism and NPD are two very different things, despite the misleading name of NPD. Even a very narcissistic individual is not someone with NPD just because they are very narcissistic.

NPD is a specific set of traits and behaviors that are highly dysfunctional for the individual (and toxic to those around an untreated one.)

NPD develops as a result of not having the basic childhood needs of safety, protection, and nurturance met.

Unfathomably to me, many people take for granted that they are functional adults, and seem to assume they magically manifested such functionality in themselves. This is deceptive; humans are not born knowing how to be functional adults. If you don’t believe me, go look at a toddler.

Childhood is comprised of several developmental stages that are navigated in order. In order to navigate a level of childhood development successfully, the preceding levels must have already been navigated successfully. Each level that is not successfully navigated results in the proceeding levels also not being successfully navigated. You can’t build a tower of blocks starting with the fifth level block. Such is childhood development, where stages have critical time periods within which the skill must be developed. (See: The case of Genie, a victim of severe childhood abuse and neglect who could never be taught language because she did not learn it in her early years during the critical stage for acquisition of this skill.)

Now you may ask: But if children in abusive homes do not successfully navigate the stages, then how do they reach adulthood being able to do more than a toddler can do? Good question, I’m glad you asked.

The child’s brain is determined to develop in order to be able to survive. What it does when the basic needs to navigate a stage (and therefore subsequent stages too) are not met, is it comes up with coping mechanisms and defense strategies in order to semi-successfully navigate the stage at the critical time period it must be developed. Imagine you want to build a tower of blocks, but your blocks are misshapen and uneven. You find other little objects, like folded papers or some glue, to attempt to set one block on top of the other despite their misshapenness and uneveness. Now at least you have a tower. Albeit a weird looking janky one.

Enter: Personality Disorders. Personality disorders (PDs) are a set of trauma symptoms and now-maladaptive coping and defense strategies. The coping and defense strategies are the folded paper and the glue; the trauma symptoms are the misshapen and uneven blocks themselves.

But why NPD versus other PDs? Every child is born with a different set of genetics. Every abusive environment is different. Children’s brains will adapt exactly and only exactly how they need to in order to navigate developmental stages. Different situations call for different coping and defense strategies. This is why many PDs share certain criteria (all of them share emotional dysregulation - which is a symptom of trauma) but do not share all of the criteria (because the coping and defense strategies the particular childhood environment called for are necessarily different.) The devil’s in the details. Like the saying goes: Every happy family is the same. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Substitute nurturing for happy, and abusive for unhappy, and there is your reason that there are 10 PDs with some similarities for trauma symptoms, but many differences for the plethora of coping and defense mechanisms variously differing childhood situations demand.

Psychiatry has been very dismissive of the mountains of evidence that neuroscience has produced over the last several decades regarding childhood development, childhood trauma, and personality disorder criteria. Ironically, psychiatry dismisses and minimizes the research of a field that studies in detail the organ psychiatry presumes to treat.

This is a shame, because psychiatry often misleads adults who are suffering from childhood abuse trauma problems. Psychiatry has been misdiagnosing those with abuse histories with mood disorders (like bipolar 2), or poorly categorizing them with personality disorders only. This miscategoriztion of PDs misleads the general public, who starts to believe that trauma/PD effects are either an all or nothing, yes or no deal. Trauma is on a spectrum, as are its effects. This is why it is often difficult to know if someone you love has a PD; they could have abuse trauma, but not rise to the black-or-white yes-line of psychiatry’s PD diagnostic criteria.

Psychiatry often misleads its clients with PDs by misinforming them that they are stuck with their PD forever, and they must take medication to alleviate the symptoms because there is no “cure.” Psychiatry essentially says: “You have a misshapen, uneven, glue-and-paper, jumbled together mess of a personality. You are stuck with it. But we will try to help you try to work with this janky-ass tower of yours.”

This is wrong. There is no need for a cure, because PDs are not a “disease.” And, the tower is not stuck like that - neuroscience has known this for a while. But what does neuroscience know - it only studies the organ psychiatry medicates!

It turns out, you can knock the tower down and rebuild an improved one in its place. But if processing and integrating trauma were truly as simple as striking down a set of blocks, no one would be asking questions about PDs on quora, because there would be none to ask about.

No, it is very, very, very difficult to build a better tower. First, you have to knock the old one down; a better one can’t be built on top of a shaky one. You need to raze the current tower to the ground. You can only raze it piece by piece. First, comes out the paper, piece by piece. Then comes off the glue, glob by glob. Then comes off the blocks for sanding the misshapen edges. Then, you have to clear out the foundation. This takes years of effort and turmoil. After that, you are now ready - to begin to begin.

In terms of more literally what must happen: The individual becomes aware of their trauma, and begins to attempt to lessen their use of maladaptive coping and defense strategies. Then, they begin the deeply arduous work of processing the dissociated emotions from all of those years of terrifying, shame-inducing, rage-eliciting, panic-striking mistreatment at the hands of giants needed for survival. Then the person begins to navigate childhood stages all over again, learning skills like self-regulation and self-esteem building that were never successfully achieved the first go-around.

Not every adult with a history of childhood abuse is able to do this. Not every adult wants to do it. Many adults with childhood abuse histories are able to build a happy and functional life without processing and integrating the trauma; instead they work with the coping and defense mechanisms they have to mitigate the damage such mechanisms will do to them. If their symptoms are not that severe and they are able to control their mechanisms to enough of an extent that they do not harm their lives or those of others, then they can have a stable, comfortable, and functional life. For those who can and do process and integrate their trauma, the road is long and it gets worse before it gets better. Eventually there is a level of freedom one could not have imagined earlier, as one is able to renavigate development in a manner of their own choosing.

This video offers a fresh theory about how occult worship and mind control combine to form tv. The Jayne Mansfield was a satanist narrative is explored.