Have you ever been in the situation with a narcissist where you feel all of the things they are saying about you are actually all of the things that are true about themselves? Narcissist use projection to put all of their own nasty and abusive qualities onto you rather than carrying the traits themselves and acknowledging the damage they have done.
Are narcissists aware they are doing this? I believe on some level they know that they hold all of the horrible traits that they project onto you. The reason why they project the qualities and traits is because they cannot bear to know or hold the truth of who they really are internally so as a defensive mechanism (denial) they put the traits onto their victims. They cannot feel that shame of being a horrible person.
In a sense they are outing themselves when they project –when you take a few steps back and acknowledge the irony of it all, it can be quite funny. But in the moment it can feel very painful to hear the narcissist spit from their very mouth that YOU are the abusive narcissistic one.
Being gaslist and brainwashed by the narcissist can be very dangerous – when your mind is so moldable that when you hear them project you really ask yourself the question: AM I REALLY THE NARCISSIST? It takes a strong friend or therapist to help you snap out of it when you ask yourself this question and even start believing it
Other things a narcissist might say about you while projecting their own qualities onto you:
You let me down
You abused me
You are the competitive one
You are controlling
You are not very smart
You are playing mind games with me
You let the kids down
You are not a good parent
You have bad character
And the list could go on and on. I hope this blog post can be used as a reminder that when a narcissist says something horrible about you or calls YOU the narcissist – often times they are just speaking about themselves. Stay close to your support system and check in with those who truly love you when you start to believe the narcissist’s lies. Stay strong!
Comments