Toxic individuals such as manipulative, two-timing narcissists, sociopaths and any person with some kind of antisocial characteristics are best known for their selfishness. Their personal interests gravitate around power. And they’ll do whatever it takes to get it.
They are highly driven by malevolent motives to mercilessly hurt others without having a tiny speck of remorse. You see, these individuals are so taken with themselves, they do not see clearly. They are their own center of the universe.
That is why on their malicious quest for the eternal power, they’ll use every manipulative trick up their sleeve to get to their desired goal.
Hopefully, if you are lucky enough you can avoid these traits, however, if you suspect in a person that they are playing you, here are 11 manipulative methods narcissists usually use against you:
1. DEVALUING
A person cultivating narcissistic traits will start their wicked game by taking you way up on 7th heaven and idealizing you until you’re all hooked and addicted to their “perfect “personality.
Then in a blink of an eye, they’ll start devaluing you by insulting and criticizing all your qualities that you thought they admired. Another way they do this is by putting you on a pedestal while attacking someone who threatened their superiority.
2. TRIANGULATION
It is a vicious tactic of bringing a third person in the picture, another perspective in order to validate their actions while invalidating your thoughts.
Triangulation is a horrible way of manipulating one’s thoughts by making them suspect their own sanity. The person that it’s brought to validate their actions is often someone from their closest circle or in the worst case another tricked individual.
This mind game proceeds as they defend their behavior and use the third party as a weapon against your uncertainties until you completely lose your sanity.
3. AGGRESSION
Whatever you do, get as far as you can when a narcissist is about to burst out of aggression. Researchers that are studying narcissistic personality traits say that narcissists show the strongest associations with verbal aggression and the inability to control their behavior whenever it’s triggered.
According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, these are the traits of a psychological abuser:
-Threatening you, intimidating you and making you feel scared, controlling your access to friends and family, controlling your behavior and forcing you to do things you don’t want to do.
4. PLAYING VICTIM
Keep in mind that, they’ve got you all figured out. Every insecurity you have inside yourself, every disturbing sentence that destroys your confidence, or topics that scratch your unhealed wounds. And they exactly know the perfect moment to bring that up.
So, playing the victim and tricking you into thinking they need you is the best way for them to set the trap. Before you know it, they’ll subtly bring a subject that’s hurtful to you justifying themselves that they really “didn’t mean it”.
5. SHAMING
A sadistic narcissist will search for ways to use your insecurities and troubles in their favor. They’ll make you feel ashamed of the things you’re the most insecure and will manipulate you to the point of destroying you.
6. GASLIGHTING
One of their cunning manipulative tactics is convincing you that you are actually imagining things and “You are crazy”. Gaslighting is a vicious method, psychopaths and narcissistic individuals use in order to escape accountability for their actions.
It works by slowly distorting your sense of reality, killing your moral sense of separating the right from the wrong which can eventually end up in you losing your ability to trust your own conscience.
7. BRAINWASHING
Have you ever end up doing things you don’t feel comfortable doing just for the sake of the other person? You feel that if you don’t do the things they asked, you’ve failed them, and you feel guilty of not performing the way you should.
It’s obvious they got you under their claws. They’ve brainwashed you into thinking you have to serve them, otherwise, they’ll get hostile on you.
8. BEHAVING INAPPROPRIATELY
One of their best ways of putting you down and making you feel like less than nothing. A narcissist will not stop at anything. They’ll keep throwing you malicious jokes on your expense about everything that touches you deeply.
They’ll shame you in front of everyone and call it a joke. They’ll attack you with their harmful insults without having any remorse while justifying themselves that you were the one who got them so angry in the first place.
9. MONOPOLIZING CONVERSATION
And if you’ve met a narcissist, you know that there’s no way you could lead a normal dialog with these people. They’ll turn over the conversation and start bragging about themselves, leaving you hanging.
They’ll mercilessly cut you off like your opinions don’t matter at all.
10. NAME CALLING
Narcissists will destroy anything that gets in their way or poses a threat to their “superior” being. Inside their twisted world, they are the only people that are constantly right and anyone who dares to state the opposite will trigger a severe psychotic rage inside them.
When it comes to dealing with these situations, name calling is the lowest of the low a narcissist can get.
They will insult you and criticize your opinions, beliefs and will use every possible way to put you down, just so they can see themselves up once again.
11. PROJECTION
Narcissistic tormentors love to play the “blame shifting” game. A sure sign you are dealing with a toxic and pathological narcissist is that they desperately try to put the blame for their shortcomings on you.
In other words, projection. It is known as their most commonly used weapon and a defensive mechanism in order to avoid responsibility for their own actions.
Instead of being held accountable for things that concern them, narcissists function by blaming others and making them feel ashamed of themselves.
The aftermath: They win, you lose, and the whole world is responsible for everything that’s wrong with them.
I have experienced this twice in my life, from former family members. I’ll add, beware of people who interrogate you and try to force you to answer questions which you have repeatedly told them you don’t wish to tell them. “Normal” people with good intentions won’t continue to pressure you.