7 Lies A Narcissist Wants You To Believe Are True
So they can better control you
by
Suzanna Quintana
Cognitive dissonance: psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.
Or as I describe it: Confused as fuck.
Or: Daily life with a narcissist.
It’s that feeling of complete befuddlement. Of feeling left behind, unable to catch up, crippled by self-doubt and paranoia. I must be going crazy takes up center space in your head.
Narcissists create a world where two plus two equals four only some of the time. Then they try and convince you it’s actually five and repeat the lie so often you start to believe it until they switch their answer and go back to four, denying they ever said differently.
Why do narcissists do this?
Because they have an endgame, which is to keep you under control so you will continue to take their abuse. To do this, they keep you in a state of uncertainty and use confusion as a weapon against you.
Cognitive dissonance is the gun.
Lies are the bullets loaded in it.
Lie #1 – Nobody else will want you
If I had a dollar for every time my ex told me how no other man would put up with me, I’d still be writing this article but from my villa in the south of France instead.
A narcissist will have you believe all of your good qualities have been lost. According to them, your looks have faded, your personality and desirability are nowhere to be found, you’re too much trouble and too sensitive and thin-skinned and can’t take a joke and No one else will ever want you so consider yourself lucky to have anyone at all.
The truth is, they know exactly how amazing you are. This is why they targeted you in the first place and why they go to so much effort to try and convince you otherwise.
Lie #2 – You won’t survive without them
My ex and I built our businesses from the ground up, our success was dependent on our team effort. Yet he often would share his worst-case scenario and ask, What would you do if something happened to me? How will you survive? as if him dying would suddenly render me incompetent and incapable to continue what I’d already been doing for years.
When my response of “I’ll be fine, honey, don’t you worry” wasn’t sufficient (and the small smile on my lips didn’t help), I feigned horror and nodded my head in agreement. Oh, I don’t know how I’ll ever survive without you! I’d say a million times over.
Again, if I had a dollar…(I can almost smell the grapes from my French vineyard)
The truth is, a narcissist knows that not only will you survive without them, but you’ll probably thrive without their abuse in your life anymore.
Lie #3 – Everybody loves them
That’s why people gravitate toward me, Suzanna. I’m fun to be around, I know how to have a good time. I can’t help it. People just like me. I never heard from other people as to whether this was true, yet I believed him because of how many times he said it. And because I knew how charming he could be, especially with women. How alluring. How slick.
The truth is, narcissists have to tell you how great they are because they are superficial soul-sucking chasms of emptiness (too nice?) who believe everyone they meet adores them, even when the opposite is often true. A narcissist will crown themselves and pretend they earned the title when in fact hardly anyone voted.
Lie #4 – You’re emotionally and mentally unstable
Narcissists use gaslighting to separate you from your intuition and make you doubt who you are so that you’ll be more likely to become dependent on them to tell you. Then they push and push and push — like a finger poking you in the chest — until you react so they can stand back and say, See, just as I said, you’re crazy.
The truth is, your reactions to a narcissist’s abuse are totally normal and to be expected. The only emotionally and mentally unstable one is the narcissist who finds joy in pushing other people’s pain points.
Lie #5 – People are talking about you
Narcissists love a good triangulation. In order to make you jealous or insecure, they’ll pretend to be “just the messenger” and relate what others are saying about you. They’ll make you doubt every relationship you have, even with friends and family, with the goal of distancing you from those you are closest to the point where you stop talking to anyone about anything.
The truth is, narcissists are back-stabbing, double-dealing, two-faced con artists (still too nice?) who get their kicks from lighting people’s fuses and then standing back and watching the explosion.
Lie #6 – You’re a terrible parent
It’s been nine years since I left my abusive marriage to a clinically diagnosed narcissist. Nine years of being a single parent and raising my kids without any emotional or physical help from their father. In that nine years, I have never received a compliment, support, or an ounce of gratitude. Instead, I have hundreds of emails telling me what a terrible mother I am.
It’s called projection and it’s what narcissists do best.
The truth is, my ex knows what a good mother I am. Narcissists are the ones who make terrible parents because of their inability to care about anyone — even their own children — more than themselves. But they make great armchair parents, sitting on their asses and criticizing you who is doing all the work to raise your kids.
Lie #7 – They’ve changed
Narcissists love to flaunt their new supply and try to hurt you by insinuating that they’ve changed. Or during the hoovering process (when they try with the might of a Hoover vacuum to suck you back in) they’ll loudly proclaim: You’ll see, I’ve changed!
The truth is, a narcissist doesn’t change for anyone new, they just make better sheep’s clothing to hide the wolf within. That’s not to say a narcissist can’t change. But when they do, that change is for the worse.
Lies are the best tools a narcissist has to keep someone who loves them under control. Lies keep you in a perpetual state of confusion and self-doubt because when you hear the same ones over and over again, you can’t help but start to believe them.
Lies also enable the narcissist to keep being exactly as they are: empathy-void, cold-hearted, ruthless, snake-in-the-grass emotional vampires who are incapable of telling the truth.
And I’m still being nice.
A big thank you to Suzanna for this insightful article!!
