Narcissism Recovery Podcast

Intellectualization is a Defense Mechanism designed to protect the individual from facing their anxiety, shame, guilt and other painful emotions. The individual uses their intellect to rationalize and avoid any accountability as well as vulnerability. Narcissistic abusers use their intellect to outsmart victims and shame them for knowing less. It is imperative to walk away from these type of predators and not argue with them. Trusting your gut if you are feeling bullied as not doing so can keep you in the intellectual trance for years and even decades.

Narcissistic abusers abuse others but they are also abusing themselves. In fact, anything that is done to disrespect, mistreat, berate or humiliate the self is considered self abuse. Many people do this and do not realize they are in fact their own abusers. It is important to identify the enemy within and heal the wounded inner child that presents itself as a malicious and abusive inner critic.

Children of narcissists are pitted against each other in order to maintain control by the narcissistic parent. Siblings will start to compete against each other to get the love from the parent. Because narcissists lack any form of unconditional love, the sibling rivalry is manufactured to maintain control and give the narcissistic abuser narcissistic supply. Decades later siblings may still compete against each other and have a deep-seated hatred because they feel they have been robbed their due portion of love and compassion by the parent. They do this not knowing that the entire dysfunction had been created by the narcissistic parent to maintain control.

The Defense Mechanism of Narcissism is one of a false personality in order to protect from facing one’s inner shame, guilt, feelings of worthlessness that reside in the victims true self. The many abuse tactics are designed to manipulate victims to be a source of supply to soothe their inner shame by having power over and controlling victims. The heavily defended narcissistic abuser is using their victims to feel powerful and thus avoid any accountability for their actions. By making others feel less then the narcissist is, for the short term and until these feelings come back, able to defend against their inner shame and guilt.

Religious and Spiritual Narcissists take advantage of victims who are in a low place in their life as well as those who are looking for guidance spiritually in their life. This relates to narcissism because of abusers in this way are able to tap in to their victims vulnerabilities and weaknesses and leave them astray where they are serving as a narcissistic supply for the Narcissistic Abuser. It is important to be aware of those who are guiding with regards to spirituality. Spirituality comes from within and therefore no one has the right to tell you how to serve a higher power.

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Projection is a defense mechanism that is done in order to protect oneself from facing inner feelings that have been deemed unlovable and unacceptable by family, friends, and society. Narcissistic abusers will use this defense mechanism at all times as self reflection and self awareness are severely lacking and therefore will be in desperate need to remove these feelings by projecting them on to family, friends, relatives and society.

Narcissistic Supply is what narcissists’ need to fuel and keep in place their false self and fake world. This can come in many forms and is extracted from unknowing victims in the form of love, money, sex, attention, adoration, and anything that allows for the lie of the false self to be supported and reflected back as real. When the Supply is taken away as in the case of when abusers walk away, the narcissist is left with nothing but their true inner shame and humiliation from an abused past.

When deciding to leave a narcissistic abuser one will need to decide if they can contact their abuser or not. In deciding this it is important to determine how dangerous they are, if they will respect boundaries, and ones ability to maintain optimal health when communicating with the narcissistic abuser. If one needs to communicate with the narcissistic abuser it is important to keep emotions out of it as narcissists will look to exploit emotions.

Pathological Envy differs from jealousy and simply envy in that is seeks to destroy others and their accomplishment because of a deep hate for what others have that is not had by those with pathological envy. Narcissistic abusers are riddled with envy and because of deep inner shame and feeling insecure look to devalue and destroy victims who are successful, are happy, and in possession of things that the narcissistic abuser does not have.