How Cunning Narcissists Can Be

I have my blog comments set up so I have to approve comments from anyone who hasn’t commented before.  It’s been a useful feature for protecting it from the narcissists in my life as well as weeding out spam.  Thankfully most comments don’t meet that criteria, so rarely is there a comment I don’t approve.  Recently though I had one.  I didn’t approve the comment primarily because I didn’t want anyone new to learning about narcissism to read it & fall for the manipulation in it.  I was simply going to ignore it but I realized it could be an excellent teaching tool.

I won’t share the comment word for word, only parts of it that can be useful for educational purposes.

It started out saying that my article was “insightful.”  Sounds nice, doesn’t it?  But, in true narcissist form, it was an attempt to gain my trust.  Narcissists aren’t ones to complement others to be nice.  Consider love bombing.  It involves lots of complements which lures victims in.  Even if the relationship isn’t romantic, narcissists are very complimentary at first since it helps gain their victims’ trust & create a bond between them.

From there, the commenter said that a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder suffers more than their victims because they have C-PTSD from childhood which lead to them developing NPD.  Then this person explained the disorder.  This is clearly an attempt to appear superior to me by being much more knowledgeable than me on this topic.  The topic I’ve been writing about since about 2011, by the way.  I’m not saying I know everything about narcissism of course, because I definitely don’t.  But, look at this situation for a moment.  Why would anyone talk condescendingly to someone who clearly has plenty of experience & knowledge on a topic?  It’s not as if this person said they have studied it for years, are in the mental health field or even mentioned a past relationship with a narcissist.  No evidence of anything like that was given.  I was just supposed to take them at their word, believing they know much more than me.  That is typical narcissist behavior – they expect to be believed & even revered simply because they are them. 

The person then went on to defend narcissists, saying they are simply unaware of the suffering their behavior causes due to physical issues with their brain, & if I understand at all what goes on in their minds, I will agree.  Rather snarky, right?  The mask was coming off at this point.

They then went on to say that anger is normal, but sometimes anger “can turn you & your actions evil.”  This comment is interesting because it’s trying to lure me back in while insulting me all in one sentence!  Talk about crazy making!  The person validated my anger at narcissists then called me evil.  They didn’t say anger can turn “a person” or “a person’s actions” evil.  They said “you,” which seemed aimed directly at me, not talking about people in general, yet there is plausible deniability in that sentence.  Maybe this person aimed it at me, or maybe they were simply saying any person’s anger can do this to them.  Narcissists love plausible deniability, because it allows them to be hateful while appearing innocent, & if their target says anything, they look petty or even crazy.  Looking at the context of this particular situation though, I tend to believe it was aimed at me. 

They also went on to say I need to understand the intricacies of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, how the narcissist (not sure which one in my life they are referring to) was a victim of child abuse & how doing so will set me free from the resentment I obviously feel.  Why would any person have such sympathy for one person for being a victim of abuse who went on to abuse others yet have so little sympathy for another who also was abused yet did NOT go on to abuse others?  That is very typical narcissist logic.  Normal people see just how intensely wrong that is, but narcissists don’t.  They are always right, victims are always wrong.

The commenter ended by saying I’m in a losing situation followed by a laughing emoji.  In fact, on a hunch I googled this emoji.  It’s called “face with tears of joy” & is used to show someone laughing so hard they have tears in their eyes.  Pretty disturbing when you think about it.  Someone who says they think I am in such a bad way would find it so funny they would not only laugh but to the point of tears.  I think that sums up narcissists beautifully.  They are more than happy, they are simply elated when their victims suffer. 

Just for the record, not only did I not approve the comment, I blocked the commenter from accessing my blog.

I hope this helps give you some insight into just how subtle & wicked narcissists can be.  The more you know, the better prepared you can be when you have to deal with these people.