Number 8: Chronic disrespect.
Now, you know this trait, because you’ve likely been treated to a healthy dose of indifference at the very least, if not to a regular dose of emotional and verbal abuse, or God forbid, worse. They criticize every little thing about you. Nothing is ever good enough. They minimize the effort you put into caring for, raising the children, and managing the household. They invalidate you and your feelings at every opportunity. They even mock and shame you in front of others in particular, their own friends and family if they think they can get away with it. They take cheap shots as a means of keeping you in line and propping themselves up with a full sense of superiority.
They know full well the more you tolerate their disrespect, the less you respect yourself, and that serves them as you’re more likely to stay put and continue to take the abuse if your self-esteem is in the toilet, which is the inevitable outcome of being on the receiving end of such chronic and ongoing disrespect. It’s hard to love, value, honor, and care for yourself in any real way when you allow yourself to be mistreated in this fashion for any length of time.
And let me give you some tough love here. Your high tolerance for inappropriate behavior and emotional abuse does not make you a good, kind, loving, and highly spiritual person. It makes you a doormat and an enabler of his abusive ways. And I promise you, that is not what God intended for you. If this is you, the truth is you have work to do. And the sooner you do your work, the sooner you can live the life you were actually meant to live, so give yourself the gift. You deserve it.
Recommended: Healing from Hidden Abuse: A Journey Through the Stages of Recovery from Psychological Abuse.
Number 9: They are emotionally manipulative.
And one way this shows up with a narcissist is they behave badly, and then blame you for their bad behavior. If you weren’t so this, or if you were more of that, then they wouldn’t have to be so awful. It’s all your fault that they treat you the way they do. Always, no matter what has gone on, or how badly they’ve behaved, you’re the one to blame. They also manipulate you with guilt and shame to keep you compliant and under control.
Again, nothing you ever do is good enough, and anything you’ve shared with them about yourself, your family, and your past, can and will be used against you. They use your disclosures, your past, your pain, and your trauma, to hurt, diminish, demean, manipulate, dominate, and as I said, control you. It’s emotional manipulation. If you have any self-respect, this will inevitably drive you to the point of preparing to end the relationship and leave them entirely. Upon which he then reels you back in with love-bombing, false promises, and future faking.
And make no mistake, like I said, this is pure emotional manipulation through the narcissistic abuse cycle, which goes as follows: Idealize, devalue, and discard. And you are being emotionally manipulated through all three stages of this cycle. And if this resonates with you, it’s important that you realize the degree to which you are being manipulated, as well as the extent to which you need to heal from the effects of long-term exposure to this insidious form of narcissistic abuse.
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