7. Victim playing.
The narcissist will not take accountability for their actions. Instead, they will blame you, they will lie, they will make false accusations, and they will exaggerate your thoughts and mistakes while minimizing or denying their own. This is how they evade accountability, this is how they avoid any consequences for their actions; by passing the blame onto someone else, by holding you accountable.
And they do that by playing the victim, by acting as though you did something to them. They will often blame you for the very things that they caused, the very things that they did to you- It’s projection. They disown the parts of themselves that they don’t like and assign them to you. This is designed to make you question yourself, and it’s designed to make you take responsibility to create the situation while protecting the narcissist’s fragile sense of self.
8. Smear campaign.
If you don’t fall for the narcissist victim playing, they believe that someone else will. So they manipulate other people, they show them the false character, in the hopes that they will buy into the illusion. They will tell them horrible things about you, bring up things that you can find in them, and bring up things from the past. They will fabricate stories, and say whatever they think will make you look bad while acting as though they did the best they could- they try to help you. This is designed to punish you for not complying with their agenda, and it’s also designed to take the focus off of them and all of the faults they made.
Narcissists run from accountability. They don’t want to deal with the shame, and they don’t want to deal with the consequences of their actions. When you cause a narcissistic injury, it resurfaces everything that the narcissist tried to bury within, everything they despise about themselves, everything that they cannot control.
Recommended: Healing from Hidden Abuse: A Journey Through the Stages of Recovery from Psychological Abuse.
When you cause a narcissistic injury, it may seem like the narcissist hates you, but they actually hate everything that you are resurfacing about themselves. That’s what they’re in opposition to, that’s what they’re running from because it’s something they don’t want to accept- It’s something they don’t want to deal with. But the truth is that when you cause an injury, it really has nothing to do with you. All they see is the ghost of everything they once were, everything they hated about themselves, everything they tried to hide, and nothing makes the narcissist angrier than that.
Read More: 15 Things Never to Do With a Narcissist (Be Careful!)
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