3 Manipulation Tactics Narcissists Use To Destabilize You

3 Manipulation Tactics Narcissists Use To Destabilize You

Toxic people, such as narcissists and sociopaths, engage in toxic behaviors that are unable to adapt in healthy relationships, causing a lot of harm and abuse to their intimate partners, family members and friends. Therefore, they use a large number of toxic methods that distort the reality of their victims and cause them harm in order to achieve their interests.

Narcissists are self-absorbed. So they manipulate their loved ones, and they engage in deceptive behaviors for profit. No matter how much we try to stay away from these deluded individuals, we also fall victim to their manipulation.

So how do they accomplish this manipulative behavior? How do narcissists control you? What tactics do they use? 

Here are 3 ways narcissists use to gain control over their goals:

Love Bombing

Love bombing is the practice of showering a victim with excessive affection and attention in order to gain control or significantly influence their behavior. The love bomber's attention might feel good, but the motive is all about manipulation.

Often a narcissist, “bombs” you with an amount of affection, flattery, gifts, and praise early in the relationship in order to win over your attention for the purpose of being able to control you. 

“People with narcissistic personality disorder typically have such a low sense of security in themselves that they get their self-esteem from external validation,” “Since they feel so out of control, they try to control others in order to feel better about themselves.”

What separates love bombing from just regular honeymoon feelings is an abrupt switch—one moment they may be totally idealizing their partner, and the next, they'll cut them down to size in an effort to control them.

Gaslighting

“Gaslighting" is a tactic of narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths,” Christine Scott-Hudson, Licensed Psychotherapist, explains. It is a manipulative behavior designed for self-gain, It is designed to weaken, trick, and destabilize the victim. Gaslighters will deny they said something or did something that you know they said or did. They move through the world dishonestly.”

Gaslighting is a manipulative tactic that can be described in different variations of three words: “That didn’t happen,” “You imagined it,” and “Are you crazy?” Gaslighting is perhaps one of the most insidious manipulative tactics out there because it works to distort and erode your sense of reality; it eats away at your ability to trust yourself and inevitably disables you from feeling justified in calling out abuse and mistreatment.

Hot and cold blowing

"Hot and cold blowing" is characteristic of narcissism, a red flag.

Where the narcissist acts with you as if he is infatuated with your company and your conversations one day, and then ignores you or blows you out the next day (as if you are teasing him), he shows that he is guided by his own momentary and volatile whims and emotions.

He talks to you because he wants your attention, and he's not interested in giving you his attention. He only cares about getting what he wants from you, and not giving you anything, or how his behavior affects you.

When he gets attention from someone or something else, they receive a "supply" and don't need to get it from you, so you don't find it not present or available. He's too 'busy' ... (captures or attracts his ego elsewhere, including work, or trying to get someone else's attention

Related Article:

5 Signs of a Covert Introvert Narcissist and how to respond

sources:
thoughtcatalog.com
thriveworks.com