“His speech is smooth as butter, yet war is in his heart; his words are more soothing than oil, yet they are drawn swords.” (Psalms 55:21)
Triangulation is a manipulative tactic the narcissist uses to create drama or conflict involving three people. A common example would be the narcissist, his wife and another female, maybe the girlfriend. What would happen is that the narcissist would pitch one against the other. It might be a situation where all three go out to dinner and the narcissist would be more attentive to the other female and would almost completely ignore the wife.
He would pay compliments to the female and express awe at the other female’s accomplishments making the wife feel unattractive, insecure, uncomfortable and jealous. After the dinner, the wife would discuss her feelings with the husband and he would dismiss it and claim that she is misreading the situation or is jealous. The goal for the narcissist is to cause the wife to develop low self esteem, insecurities and jealousy.
I have had to counsel wives whose husbands have behaved in the above manner. It’s an emotionally destructive and manipulative act designed to devalue and invalidate the partner.
Another instance of triangulation is the narcissist uses another person against the victim. For example, a if there is a disagreement between a narcissist and his victim, the narcissist will say that he spoke to someone else and they agree with him. Usually the other person is someone whom the victim holds in high esteem or respect. The narcissist obviously would be lying, but his victim is unaware of this and concedes the disagreement to the narcissist. In short the narcissist wins the argument.
What the narcissist will also do is tell his girlfriend that he is no longer in love with his wife and that the wife does not understand him like she does. He will be feeding the girlfriend lies and everything she wants to hear. The girlfriend gets sucked into his lies. And then when he’s bored or the relationship starts to fizzle out, to spike things up he would abruptly discontinue his relationship with the girlfriend and go back to the wife. And he starts feeding the wife lies and stories about the girlfriend and the girlfriend starts begging him to come back. And it goes back and forth; a cycle of abuse, with the narcissist in control of the women’s emotions.
The ultimate goal of the narcissist is to create conflict between two people, to control and gain attention(supply). They take pleasure at people’s hurt feelings. They have no empathy or compassion for others. The best remedy against these tactics is to ignore their actions. They want attention and supply so deny them any whatsoever.
First of all, I’d like to mention that I’m no expert on this topic at all, I’m just a person who has found themselves confronting circumstances that I have never had to deal with before and I’m just trying to make sense of it all. I’m just a lay person sharing information I discovered because of what I was going through in my family. Like I said previously, I decided to do some research on the topic after learning that my family member was a narcissist and these are some of the information that I discovered on the internet.
The term ‘Narcissism’ and ‘Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)’has been used by psychologists to describe someone with an extreme preoccupation with satisfying self/ selfishness/self gratification. According to experts most sufferers of NPD are men, but women suffer from it also.
Psychologists have concluded that for a person to be diagnosed as suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder he must present with five or more of the following traits:
• A grandiose sense of self importance (e.g exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognised as superior without commensurate achievements). • A preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power brilliance, beauty, or ideal love • Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions). • Requires excessive admiration. • Has a sense of entitlement, i.e unreasonable expectations of especially favourable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations. • Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends. • Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognise or identify with the feelings and needs of others. • Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her. • Shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes. (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed))
During my research I found out that this personality disorder develops due to some trauma suffered during the narcissist’s early developmental stages of their life, that’s during the formative early years. During our formative years, we learn certain skills that help us later on in life such as, reading, writing etc, we also learn learn other important skills such as learning how to regulate and control our emotions and other coping strategies. However if the environment is not conducive to learning and developing the latter important skill, then an personality disorder may develop.This trauma could be emotional, sexual psychological abuse and or neglect.( Trauma, by definition, is any experiences that has caused psychological injury or pain)
This trauma happened before the stage when the young child would have learnt emotional development like empathy and compassion for others.. Because his emotional development was stunted and he did not learn normal emotional responses, they can get out of control with their own emotions. That’s why when an adult narcissists feelings flares up, he behaves like a little child, because he did not learn how to respond in a normal way.
The narcissists parents were emotionally or physically unavailable and the needs of the child were ignored and or rejected and in some cases one of the parents, one of the parents (or both) is a narcissist. Because the child’s needs are not met by either parent, the child begins to focus more on his own needs, on his own world to the exclusion of everyone else. He learns to take care of only himself. There is no one to guide the child to teach him empathy and how to care for people other than himself, he becomes more and more focused on himself (Hence the extreme selfishness in narcissists) As they grow older and reach out to their parents for acceptance, validation, approval they are often rejected. Based on what I knew about my cousin and his background ,it certainly seems very accurate.
My cousin described an incident that happened in his childhood, where he used to act out just so he could receive some form of attention even if it was negative. When he was in school, he was naturally very bright and he knew the way to get approval was to do very well in school. That was the only way he could get his father’s approval and approval from authority figures in his life
His mother died when he was very young and his father remarried. His stepmother neglected him and his older sister. His father used to travel a lot, during that time she didn’t care whether he had anything to eat, but she fed her own children. According to him, he would have to find food in the dustbin, or some neighbours would give him something to eat. When his father was around, he didn’t pay any attention to him at all. They basically abandoned him.The only time he ever got attention was when he did well in school or when he misbehaved. He learnt to survive and take care of himself. His father would go on trips abroad and buy clothes and things for the children, but his stepmother would not give him anything. Can you imagine how it would feel to a child where all the children sitting together in the living and things being distributed to each child, but you are the only child exclude?. It is so sad that adults can behave in such a manner.
So in such cases, the child basically has to fend for himself and as he grows older he believes that nobody loves or cares for him and nobody can be trusted because they’re all fake. These thoughts play out in his head all the time and he believes it. The reason why this happens is because if a child is rejected or ignored by the parent then the child believes that there is something wrong with him. (Children, most of the time ,have the tendency blame themselves if anything bad happens in the home.) So the child will begin to believe that they are worthless and damaged.
In the situation where the parent is a narcissist. For example the mother is a narcissist and the child is rejected by the mother and ignored by the father who is trying to cope with the mother’s toxic behaviour. The child learns to take care of himself. The only time they pay attention to him is when people visit, but as soon as they’re gone, both parents revert back to the same behaviour. The parents would give him everything he wants or desires, except for what he needs, which is love, validation and acceptance. Which explains why the child will later on in life conclude that all people are fake and everyone is out to get what they want. The child will associate having everything they want as a sign of love, he has not been taught any different. This also happens to very spoiled children who are given everything they want. They have never been told ‘no’ by their parents. So when they become adults they associate denial with lack of love. As adults they explode in anger when they are denied anything. Very much like a child. Which is why as an adult, they always have an child like view of things of that nature because they have not been instructed by their ‘care givers’ on how to mature and appropriate a healthy outlook on life.
So they grow up as adults on the outside and toddlers on the inside. People with the intellect and experiences of an adult but the emotional capabilities of an infant.
So a narcissist becomes a narcissist through neglect, abandonment, indulgence and abuse.
I did mention in my first blog post, among other things, I would be sharing some personal experiences. This is very hard for me to do because I’m a very private person. But I feel compelled to do so.
I have been a victim. I have been a victim of narcissistic abuse, I didn’t know it at the time, but I knew there was something wrong in my relationship, I couldn’t just place my finger on it. When you’ve always been told that you are the problem, there is the tendency to focus more on oneself; to work on being a better person. But at the same time, I kept thinking that I am not the problem( I believe that is the work of the Holy Spirit). So you are quite conflicted in your self and confused, which is where the devil wants to keep you( he is the author of all confusion) Until the light shines through the darkness, illumination and revelation appears.
It appeared in the form of an article, I read online, which explained in detail, everything I was going through. One day, I can’t remember if I was fasting and praying at the time, I was just thinking about my situation, just blaming myself I kept saying to myself it must have been something I did or have been doing. While I was pondering on these thoughts, I happened to glance on an article written by a female Christian author. In the article she explained narcissism and outlined the symptoms of a person with narcissistic personality disorder. When I read it, it was like a light bulb came on in my head, all the symptoms , the behaviour traits were the things I was experiencing with a family member
I thought I was the problem because I was always told the issues we were facing was all my fault, and I was trying to figure ways I could change; ways to be a better person.
The article mentioned that narcissists were: Pathological liars – Narcissists lie all the time, Blatant lies, in- your- face lies.You know they’re lying, but they do it so convincingly that it would fool any other person. They do this to control people and especially to protect their image. Gas lighters – almost the same as lying- they will tell you they will do something, later on when you question them on it, they will deny they ever said it. If you are a victim of this on a regular basis, you will begin to lose all sense of perception of what is real or false, because they will make you feel as if you’re going crazy. Attention Seekers- they love to be the centre of attention, if you are in conversation with a group of people, they like to be the focus of everyones attention, if the conversation focus changes to someone else they will always steer the conversation towards themselves again. Extremely Selfish/Lack empathy- Narcissists are extremely selfish and uncompassionate people. They lack the ability to empathise, they cannot identify with or feel for other people’s pain, discomfort , suffering. They will not be bothered by it and feel it is an inconvenience to them. Fault finders/blame shifters. Narcissists never accept responsibility for anything. They always put the blame on others, it’s always someone else’s fault.
After reading the article, I just said out loud, ‘Thank You, Jesus!’. It truly wasn’t me after all! I knew it was God that led me to that article. I decided I was going to do some research and find out more about narcissism. I went online, read books, listened to podcasts, I have learned so much. I am a Christian and my faith in God has given me the strength to overcome the tough times. I want to share my experiences and all I’ve learnt with others. Maybe it can help someone who is experiencing or know someone who is experiencing the same issues.
Chosen4Purpose 