• Overt / classic / grandiose

• Covert / vulnerable

• Malignant

• Benign / immature

• Antagonistic

• Communal

The list could go on and it is important to remember that all these both exist on a spectrum and also can co-exist, often manifesting based on the narcissist’s needs and circumstances at the time.

This invariably starts the relationship and is often when the narcissist displays a form of empathy and mirroring behaviours and interests (leading to the idea of you both being a ‘perfect match’). The lovebombing stage is often what keeps you hooked later on, hoping and waiting for it to return.

It can also return as part of a recurring pattern of:

• abusive behaviour (discard)

• apology and amends (lovebombing)

• deteriorating behaviours (devalusing)

that plays out throughout the relationship.

Physical violence is sometimes but not always present in narcissistic abuse, often manifesting as part of the traits of a malignant narcissist. Used as a means of control and shaming, physical abuse is the most easily understood form of abuse societally and yet can leave the victim with complex cognitive dissonance (“how is the person who is meant to love me treating me like this”) and trauma symptoms, for example PTSD and CPTSD.

Power dynamics in a relationship are often played out in sexual issues, that very often form from the earliest days of the relationship.

Sex with a narcissist is often a dissatisfying and one-sided affair leaving you with complex feelings of inadequacy, shame and self-blame. It is also an isolating abusive behaviour as we can find ourselves not being able to discuss it with others, sometimes for decades.

A narcissist invariably wounds verbally and can leave the other person feeling confused, devalued and full of self-doubt.

With tactics like belittling, shaming and word salad (a confused onslaught that you can’t keep up with or respond to), verbal abuse can cause Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and ongoing issues with self-identity and self-esteem.

Many narcissists will use financial power as a means of controlling you, leaving you unhappily depending upon them and having to ‘request and explain’ when you need money.

Financial abuse is often most damaging during the discard phase when a narcissist can be extremely financially manipulative and punishing, particularly in divorce settlements.

Narcissists want control and achieve this with complex, varied and many manipulative techniques.

By distorting your reality, controlling your activities, shaming your behaviours and limiting your choices they, not only control your life, but they also make sure they are always front and centre of your mind.

Intermittent reinforcement is a highly powerful controlling mechanism which hooks in your brain chemicals to work against you.

Stimulating powerful dopamine release during the ‘sweet’ phase and keeping you hooked during the ‘mean’ phase, this behaviour is invariably what sustains the relationship long past its natural end date.

This approach is often at the core of your feelings of uncertainty, unhappiness and yet you will also feel desperate and needy - a clash that can leave you feeling self-critical, co-dependent, despairing and stuck.

Stonewalling is the process by which a narcissist avoids taking responsibility for their actions by refusing to engage.

This can look like:

• the silent treatment

• partial withdrawal

• public vs private alteration in interaction with you

• no eye contact

• complete withdrawal

This process controls the dynamic and disarms your ability to engage with the issue and with them. It is damaging both because it remove your power to act as well as keeping the abuser front of mind.

Denial, deflecting, shaming, blaming and lying - just some of the ways a narcissist might gaslight you into doubting your reality.

After all, once your reality is shaky, your abuser can imprint their version onto you, making you and your reality controlled by them.

Narcissists prefer to isolate their partner as that way they can control the narrative and dynamic of the relationship. Often starting in the earliest days, narcissists will plant seeds of doubt in your mind about friends and family, and slowly begin the process of separating you off.

This can appear in the devaluation stage with triangulation and in the discard phase with tactics such as smear campaigns.

The antidote to this is to connect to others and reclaim your truth, but this is very hard to do once isolated off and when a victim of psychological assaults like gaslighting and projection.

Narcissists thrive on drama (often while saying they despise it) and enjoy bringing other people into their games. This can include:

• playing people off against each other

• telling tales of who said what about you, perhaps with expressions of ‘concern’

• deceiving both parties deliberately

• employing ‘flying monkeys’ to support their viewpoints against yours

• talking about fictional people or scenarios that show how they are desired by other people

• stories about ‘crazy exes’ or people who ‘don’t get them’ that you then perpetually strive to not replicate

All these tactics are designed to foster confusion, jealousy and insecurity. This is often used with most damage during the discard phase, with smear campaigns and social ostracism.

Does everything become your fault?

Do you find yourself apologising when they’ve done something bad?

Defending yourself when you didn’t actually do anything?

Feeling bad for something that wasn’t you?

Worrying that something was 50/50 when you know it wasn’t?

Pushed into a response and then shamed and blamed for it?

Narcissists are experts at shifting the focus so that they become the victims and you are the perpetrator, often to the point where they accuse you of being abusive to them! This distortion of reality is yet another way of controlling your behaviour, attacking your sense of self and avoiding accountability.

One minute you are being told you are so clever, and the next you’re being accused of being stupid. Or perhaps the qualities you were so loved for in the early days are now a source of criticism and put downs.

Narcissists love to shift the ground under your feet, leaving you unsure of how they feel about you. In a true, loving relationship, you will feel safe and secure. This is not the case in a narcissistic relationship where the abuser will leave you destabilised and uncertain.

This often appears during the end of the relationship, where you are criticised for doing (or not doing) the things you had been encouraged (or dissuaded) from doing. Leaving you yet again questioning your reality and your responsibility for what went wrong in the relationship.

The purpose of a narcissist is to fulfil their wants and needs, at the expense of the needs of others. Therefore your boundaries are playthings for them to test, in the early stages, and bulldoze over in the later stages of the relationship.

Whilst you may be simultaneously criticised for being weak, a narcissist will not appreciate any sign of strong boundaries on your part and will work tirelessly to dismantle them, through both overt and covert means.

The recognition and re-establishment of healthy boundaries is a core part of any recovery journey.

If you listen closely to a narcissist, you will learn their insecurities and their shame. They communicate these in their projection onto you of their vulnerabilities and behaviour weaknesses.

Whether it is accusing you of being cold, of being manipulative, of being controlling, or even of being abusive, a narcissist will happily project onto you the very behaviours they are damaging you with.

Whilst overt narcissists may not apologise (though many do, and lavishly so), covert narcissists are adept at the false apology.

Do you recognise this pattern?

• Damaging behaviour

• Apology and promise to change

• Brief period of change

• Damaging behaviour

• Apology and promise to change

• … and so on and on and on

In the end you either give up or stay hooked on the hope that one day the change will stick and you will get that person you fell in love with back for good.

Narcissists use the early stages of a relationship to discover your insecurities and past wounds, and then use these against you during the devaluing stage.

Does your partner or family member bring up hurtful incidents during arguments, designed to wound?

Or perhaps they prod and probe into your vulnerabilities, whilst expressing ‘concern’ for you?

Do they tie your responses into past events and use these as a way of undermining your natural response to their behaviour? (for example, “I see you’re being triggered again because of your childhood.”)

From giant sweeping insults that leave you responsible for things way out of your control, to indirect backhanded comments that insinuate a character assassination, narcissists can shift into shaming you with break neck speed.

They will use past wounds, disclosed secrets, exposed shames and insecurities to make you feel lesser, often in the most subtle and underhand way.

If you find yourself looking at them and wondering if they realise how hurtful their comment was, you’re probably experiencing a passive aggressive put down.

Often this experience of shame and belittling is an insidious and cumulative affair which is so hard to communicate to others, leaving you unhappy but not able to express why without sounding like you’re over-reacting.

The discard phase of the relationship will either appear as one final insult at the close of the relationship or it will re-appear regularly as part of the three part pattern of love-bombing - devaluing - discarding.

Therefore, discarding may look like:

• A sudden negative shift in mood and behaviour

• An abrupt lack of interest in you

• A moving onto a new ‘target’

• The ending of the relationship, often cruelly

Whether it is as part of a repeating pattern or a one off schism, the discard phase is characterised by total lack of compassion or empathy, is often cruel in terms of timings and circumstances, can accompany financial and other forms of abuse, comes alongside a smear campaign or is immediately followed by a period of ‘hoovering’ you back in.

A smear campaign is a means of keeping you socially isolated after the discard and a way of controlling the narrative around the ending of the relationship.

It often involves huge distortions of reality, projection onto you of their behaviours, triangulation, gaslighting and many other damaging controlling techniques.

It can also leave you publicly having to cope with ostracism, lack of understanding and support, as well as having to claim your truth at a time when you are most depleted, emotionally and energetically.

Hoovering is the process whereby a narcissist will attempt to re-engage you in the relationship by 'sucking’ you back in to their zone of influence.

It can show up as overt displays of affection (love-bombing) as well as guilt and shame cycles, emotional and verbal abuse, as well as extreme gaslighting about what happened in the past.

Hoovering is a dangerous and critical time as it often occurs when we are suffering from social isolation and depleted emotional strength.