The Narcissist – Up Close and Personal

When I first started blogging…

on a blog which is now defunct…

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I used this as an avatar

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I didn’t set out to write about narcissists at all. It didn’t even cross my mind. It didn’t even occur to me to write about my parents, my childhood, my issues, my life, my experiences… in fact that was the last thing I considered doing.

And at first I didn’t do any of what I do now. That blog lived and died to give birth to this one… that’s a weird thing to say, I say weird things…

I’m not the only one… who says and does weird shit…

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My introduction to participating in Social Media was a gift, a silly X-mas present given to me by my partner. He created Facebook and Twitter accounts for me, then handed them over to me. I was horrified, yet it was kind of sweet of him. It was a challenge of sorts, it was also an invitation to join him in something he enjoyed, and thought I might also enjoy… once I stopped pretending it was anathema to me.

I thought he’d completely lost his mind, he knew I was painfully shy, a committed Introvert, a hermit through and through, and that my preferred way of internetting was as a lurker (one who hates cookies and other things that track your online activities – I’m not doing anything dodgy that I know of, I just hate being, feeling, watched – spend enough time with a narcissist and you too will hate being and feeling watched that closely, even if when they first began doing it it made you feel important, special, worth observing).

Some time later, after I got over myself… he ended up thinking that I’d completely lost my mind, and a small fraction of him regretted giving me that silly gift because it ended up consuming me for a while.

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I’m one of those people who could be labeled an extremist if that didn’t have sinister connotations. I’m not particularly devoted to the extremes I visit – I am only visiting to check things out for myself. I never trust anything anyone tells me… well, I do.. but I don’t. Let’s just say, I accept that they think they’re telling the truth, I appreciate their experiences shared, but… I just need to check things out for myself, have my own up close and personal experience.

Don’t put your fingers in the electricity socket, you say while your hair is on end and still burning, curls of smoke making pretty designs… hmmm… why?… I hadn’t thought of doing that, but now you’ve mentioned it… let me see…

Pzzzzzt!!!!!

Okay… now I get what you’re saying… doh!

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If you like what I do on my blog… you can thank my partner, and then niece for that. He started things and she encouraged them to go where I would have never gone with it. She observed what I did on Facebook and suggested I get a tumblr. I laughed… what an idea! Blogging! And at my age!?! Nah!… sometime later…. after telling myself not to be such an old fuddy-duddy… Yeah, Baby!

I went a bit OTT in my sudden immersion into social media, did too much, freaked myself out, burned out, and then deleted everything. That is a rather narcissist style of doing social media and things.

The typical narcissist on social media will wipe themselves off the face of the earth, Twittercide, Facebookcide, Bloggicide, etc, when things don’t turn out as perfectly as they wanted it to. If their facade ain’t working, they ditch it and ditch you in the process – it’s not about you, it’s all about them.

They wipe the old social media self out and begin again. Reinvent themselves. Reappear in a new form. This time the new form will live up to their high ideals!

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That wasn’t why I did what I did… but it might have come across that way. It might have been… doing what I was taught to do, and still hadn’t quite stopped doing.

I pissed quite a few people off, offended them by discarding them when I deleted all my social media. I wasn’t thinking about them when I did that, how my actions would affect them, I was completely wrapped up in myself… and I wanted out. I don’t regret deleting everything, but I do… regret doing it the way I did it. I feel really shitty about the knock on effect of it, how it affected others. I wish I’d thought things through a bit more rationally and empathically… I wish I’d had the experience which it gave me before it gave it to me.

I have learned my lesson, and have made amends where I can, as best as I can… which is probably not good enough, but it’ll do, for now. What I’ve learned has influenced what I do now.

Whenever this all gets too much for me… I pause to consider things, people beyond myself. My blog isn’t just about me… even if it seems that way to me. Don’t blow everything and everyone up just because you’re having a bad day, and that bad day feels like a bad year, a bad life… and you want to blow that, yourself, up.

I’m sure you’ve had those kind of days, we all do at some point… it’s probably easier to count the days when we don’t feel like that.

When we want to be kind and rewind. OMG, I effed up so badly on that test, if I could start over from scratch I’d totally ace it! I went the wrong way, if I could have a do-over, I’d go the right way! This time I won’t say that thing which hurt that person, I won’t choose door number one, I’ll go through the door which actually has a prize behind it rather than a booby trap for a boob like me!

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But we can’t always be kind, and we certainly can’t rewind, we know that, we have to keep going and learn, do better, be better… if that’s possible… however we need to cut ourselves some slack along the way to betterness. Sometimes you just can’t be and do better… that’s okay, you’re human… and others have a way of understanding that. When we work with others, we can work together to help each other. I may be crap at this, but someone else is awesome at it, and maybe they’re crap at something at which I’m awesome – pool those abilities, join forces, and see what happens.

Many people cut me a lot of slack for being an a-hole twat at social media (they forgave me… for something I still haven’t fogiven myself for)… they’ve taught me to be better at it by… admitting I sucked at it and… made all the mistakes which I wasn’t the first to make… sharing their views, themselves, by confronting me… with compassion – Dude, you effed up, it’s okay… learn from it, try again, this time… remember that even if you’re doing the whole social media in a room by yourself, we’re all alone but… you’re not alone… we’re all alone together.

Sometimes even when it’s an awful day… it can be beautiful when others open it up for you…

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Narcissists, on the other hand, don’t know that… they think they can just delete, rewind and start over. And over, and over, and over… They move around in a circle, resetting… reset artists who wonder why doing the same thing over and over keeps getting them the same results! What’s the problem with everyone else!?!

The narcissist online will conclude that they are doing everything right, and what is wrong with the results they get is due to everyone else online. If their follower count isn’t growing exponentially every time they tweet or post, and their every burp and fart shared publicly isn’t being massively ‘Liked’ and going viral, it’s due to the masses being idiots.

If the masses are idiots, then the narcissist will make them pay for it – enter the ‘donate’ button. Or some other money-making way to profit from it, scheme.

Yes, plenty of people use the ‘donate’ button or something like it to help them, they’re not asking for anything, but if you enjoy their work, and can give a little to encourage them… no problem there. It’s up to you.

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But a narcissist will word things differently and make you feel… bad about not giving them your hard earned cash, how selfish of you, they’ll appeal to your pity and its knock on effect… or they’ll make money from your clicks and views of their social media sites whether you agree to it or not… and if you’re clicking to view them because you hate them – haha, either way, they win!

Some narcissists can only handle being adored and anything less than that causes them to shrivel up… basically start again with a new facade after deleting the old one (and they don’t just do this online, it’s just more obvious online).

Other narcissists prefer to be hated, because hate is a more powerful a version of love (obsession) than being adored. If you hate them, you’ll keep coming back for more. If you only love them, you might get bored – haterz never get bored of hating, and a new one is born every minute, every second! Ka-ching for them!

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They feed off your hate, and feed it because they feed on it, on you hating them. It’s much harder to forget someone you hate… they are under your skin like some parasite or virus which no antidote can get rid of… you might even try compromising your immune system to get rid of them… how flattering is that!?! You’re basically willing to risk dying to kill them! You must truly love them, they’re so important, aren’t they!?!

It can drive you nuts… trying to deal with a narcissist who has their hooks in you…

I went NC from my parents many years ago… it helped somewhat to do that, but… the damage had already been done, and in some ways going NC made it worse. I thought I was free… but I was forced to face the fact that I had absorbed them into my system.

I lived in greater fear of them after I went NC than when they were in my face, on the phone, in my life bringing their drama and expecting me to get involved, fix it, make things better… as much as I was a constant puddle of mud when they were in my life… when they weren’t… I was still a puddle of mud, only one which had no purpose… and feared that, feared all that comes when you realise that your entire life is built around narcissists, and now they’re gone… you’re nothing, even more of a nothing than when they were there making you feel how much of a nothing you were.

It’s a hard one to explain… but someone somewhere can explain it… while I was NC and trying to deal with the repercussions of that… which at times were more brutal than being stuck in narcissist hell…

You get so used to narcissist abuse… you really don’t know how to deal with it not being a part of your life anymore… sometimes you become the narcissist who abuses yourself as they did just to ease the pain of not being abused by narcissists anymore… it’s seriously effed up logic… in some ways I was more effed up when I went NC, than before I did that… because I had to face the narcissist hell within, no longer distracted by the narcissist hell on the outside.

I struggled with that… more than I was willing to admit…

Then…

I happened upon this book – Going Mad to Stay Sane…

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“The experience of suffering throughout life can be so consistent, that it becomes idntfied with one’s very being. Suffering becomes a way of knowing oneself and to be deprived of this suffering then constitutes a source of acute anxiety.”

– Andy White (Narcissism and the Fruit of Suffering)

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It is not an easy read… but sometimes easy isn’t healthy…

In a world full of narcissists… easy is becoming a narcissist or becoming the lackey of narcissists… that’s not healthy… and in the long term it is anything but easy. The goal posts are always moving… it starts off easy… to lull you into a false sense of security… in the end you’re never safe, and everything you say and do is wrong… but right is just here, no, here, no here, no, here… what is wrong with you!?! It’s here!!! Not here, here!!!

Many write ups about narcissists… about the effect of narcissists on us… offer us a placebo… it’s not your fault (it’s not)… it’s all their fault (um… yeah, a lot of it is)… but how does knowing this help you when dealing with the narcissist in your life. So, it’s not your fault, it’s all their fault, but… what are you supposed to do with that when they keep denying culpability and shifting the blame onto you, and… when they decide you’re the narcissist, read the same stuff you read and tell you that – it’s all your fault, nothing is their fault (like they’ve always told you).

They want closure (not) from you… for you to apologise for everything you’ve done to them, for all the abuse you have abused them with… while you’re trying to do the same with them.

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Anything you can do… they can do too… and better because they don’t have the doubts that you do to trip them up on their righteous path.

You keep wondering if… you attracted a narcissist because of something wrong with you (they never wonder that genuinely, although they will fake it).

You keep doubting yourself… you’re codependent… that’s why narcissists find you attractive… if only you could fix that shit, but codenpendency is one of those things which requires major plumbing works by a professional to fix.

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But what if… you’re not the one who is codependent? Actually it’s the narcissist… but they won’t own up to that unless it’s worth it for them to do so to excuse everything they do and blame it on others…

What if what you think is codependency is just what comes naturally to humans… symbiosis is normal, we need others just as a flower needs a bee to pollinate it. Trust narcissists to make that a bad thing that needs fixing but can never be fixed.

I’m not saying codenpendency is something narcissists invented to shift the blame… although that’s worth considering… narcissists can be therapists too, in fact they rather like that role… however… it’s worth exploring it as real, as a possible part of your puzzle… just be careful with it and gentle with yourself, you’re human… humans need other humans, relationships rely on codependency in its healthy form… remember there are shades of grey in everything and everyone… it’s a human thing.

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A blogger is codependent in a way… without you… at this point this blog would not exist because I’d have given up on it. I’m glad I haven’t, it helps me… so you help me. And if I help you too… this relationship is mutually beneficial, flows both ways.

As a blogger I sometimes get the best of things… but I may also have to deal with the not so best of things… like trolls…

I haven’t had a troll comment on this blog for a long while now (famous last words).

When I first started this particular blog… I had a few… it’s par for the course, people like to test your resolve sometimes… and everyone has issues which they deal with in their own way.

I often see other blogs who blog about narcissism discuss the trolls they get…

Why have trolls been avoiding me (love you for that guys!… probably should not have said that, oops…)…?

Probably because I’m a bit of a wild card. I fess up to being an a-hole, and haven’t taken that holier than thou route which can happen to us when we’re discussing our issues publicly… we all like to be the hero of our own story…

If I was a troll, and I sometimes wish I was because… not going there… but I get some of it… empathy… and some people, really… the temptation to take them down a notch or two… when they think they’re all that…or you think they think they’re all that… and… human stuff spilling over and getting everyone wet by that kind of mud puddle…

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Trolls like to push your buttons… so do narcissists… and as much as having your buttons pushed can be distressing, can cause you to react in a way which you wish you wouldn’t for many reasons… it’s actually really valuable to have your buttons pushed, if you’re willing to pause and examine it.

Even if it’s a troll or a narcissist who prompts you to do that…

A while back I had a bit of a trollish stalker on Twitter… I don’t go on there often enough to care about that kind of thing (my bad), but it did make me sigh heavily. He @ me with something like ‘stupid bitch’. I checked him out, saw that this account was stalking a few females and @ them with things he considered to be ‘abuse’ designed to scare females with macho grrr.

I didn’t @ him back but I did tweet a bit about his @ to me. If he was really stalking me, he’d read it, if he was just messing around, he’d miss the attention. Said I was saddened by his @ because it disappointed my goal. I was aiming for c*** savant and felt I’d missed the mark when all I’d managed to achieve was ‘stupid bitch’.

Being a stupid bitch is child’s play, easy for me… sometimes it comes naturally, sometimes I do it deliberately… being called out for it is… boring… wink wink…

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I grew up with narcissists, the awful truth about yourself is your daily bread… amen. So… being told how awful I am is easy to digest. If you really want to push my buttons, give me IBS, and derail me – tell me you think I’m awesome and wonderful and compliment me… that… still pushes my buttons, effs me up, although I’m beginning to become immune to it.

My system is adjusting (my partner is hoping for a miracle here, and that I’ll somehow stop that bad habit I have of ripping the piss out of myself, as he’s really tired of hearing me do it. He understands, cuts me loads of slack, he loves me – crazy fool – and wants to hear me love myself instead of doing and saying what sounds like hating on self).

Okay… what sounds like I’m hating on myself is actually not that… you might be surprised by how much what appears to be hate is actually love… I’m looking after myself in a way that I learned… fell under a self-hater thus other-haterz radar…

I like to get the hits in first… then I’m ready just in case someone else decides to punch me or play my 45 as though it was a 33 or vice versa (a bit of a fuddy-duddy puzzle for ya)… ahhhh!

Growing up with narcissists… told you that kind of lesson was twisted!

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All that aside…

You guys… you just keep amazing me with how wonderful you are… stop it… no , don’t stop… don’t stop being you… but please stop being so hard on yourselves… want your faith in humanity restored? Just look in the mirror and try not to focus on the blemishes… and if you can’t stop seeing those, see them as part of your beauty!

Our faults, flaws, eff-ups, and so on… they’re more beautiful than the narcissist, troll, etc, in our lives or in us will ever know… that’s what makes us… us… go figure…

If you learn anything from narcissists… learn this… the perfect ideal is a frigging nightmare, the real dream is… just you being you, warts and all!

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I not only grew up with narcissists… it was also the 70’s/80’s… and I happen to be a Capricorn Sun sign… seriously, Karma, you’re taking the piss if you expect me to make sense of this…

Over to you…

… it’s safe to dance here!