Tuesday 21 July 2020

35 Narcissistic Terms



“Hoovering” is a term describing a ploy that occurs when someone with a personality disorder tries to suck an ex-partner back towards them after a period of separation.

Love bombing is the practice of showering a person with excessive affection and attention in order to gain control or significantly influence their behavior. The love bomber's attention might feel good, but the motive is all about manipulation. 

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question what is real, often evoking in them cognitive dissonance and other changes including low self-esteem. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize what is clearly factually true. 

Scapegoating is the practice of singling out a person or group for unmerited blame and consequent negative treatment. Scapegoating may be conducted by individuals against individuals, individuals against groups, groups against individuals, and groups against groups.

Future faking is when a person lies or promises something about your possible future in order to get what they want in the present. It could be as basic as promising that they will call you later, and then never calling. Or it can be promising to go on a vacation with you, and then never taking any steps to make that happen. Or even promising to marry you, carry you off into the sunset, and living happily ever after, all in order to make you complacent and to control you in the present.

Mirroring is the behavior in which one person unconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another. Mirroring often occurs in social situations, particularly in the company of close friends or family. The concept often affects other individuals' notions about the individual that is exhibiting mirroring behaviors, which can lead to the individual building rapport with others.

Mirroring is the subconscious replication of another person's nonverbal signals.[1] This concept takes place in everyday interactions and often goes unnoticed by both the person enacting the mirroring behaviors as well as the individual who is being mirrored. The activation of mirror neurons takes place within the individual who begins to mirror another's movements and allows them a greater connection and understanding with the individual who they are mirroring, as well as allowing the individual who is being mirrored to feel a stronger connection with the other individual. Mirroring is distinct from conscious imitation under the premise that while the latter is a conscious, typically overt effort to copy another person, mirroring is unconsciously done during the act and often goes unnoticed.

Baiting is when someone deliberately acts in a way so as to elicit either an angry or emotional response from the person that they’re interacting with. This is often used between two people where one wants to start an argument, and uses baiting in order to do so.

Flying monkeys is a term used in popular psychology mainly in the context of narcissistic abuse. They are people who act on behalf of a narcissist to a third party, usually for an abusive purpose (e.g., smear campaign). The phrase has also been used to refer to people who act on behalf of a psychopath, for a similar purpose.

Traumatic bonding occurs as the result of ongoing cycles of abuse in which the intermittent reinforcement of reward and punishment creates powerful emotional bonds that are resistant to change. Patrick Carnes developed the term to describe "the misuse of fear, excitement, sexual feelings, and sexual physiology to entangle another person."

What Is Breadcrumbing? Breadcrumbing is when you lead someone on romantically through social media or texting. Think Hansel and Gretel being tempted onwards to their doom by the witch. It basically means they’re stringing you along, but with the help of modern technology.

The relationship cycle typical of extreme narcissistic abuse generally follows a pattern. Individuals in emotionally abusive relationships experience a dizzying whirlwind that includes three stages: idealization, devaluing, and discarding. This cycle can repeat numerous times, spinning a merry-go-round of emotional vertigo for those caught in such relationships.

In the beginning of a romantic relationship with a person affected by narcissism, an individual may describe the initial infatuation stage as “otherworldly.” The emotional high can feel like a drug cocktail as potent as cocaine, heroin, and ecstasy, all rolled into one noxious dose that lasts a few weeks, months, or in some cases a year or slightly more. Targets of narcissistic abuse report feeling as if they have found their soulmate and can’t believe their good fortune that this seductive courtesan has elevated them to soaring heights upon a pedestal. “Love bombing” is a phrase describing this stage, in which the narcissistic person may smother the target with praise, courting, intense sex, vacations, promises of a future together, and designation, essentially, as the most special person ever.

Soon the relationship proceeds into a more comfortable rhythm. Perhaps the sex continues at a high intensity or it may begin to wane a bit. Gradually, the target begins to see bright red flags that indicate a problem in this fantastical paradise. The person with narcissism often may begin—subtly, insidiously, and covertly—to devalue his or her significant other. This may happen via putdowns, gaslighting, intermittently lacking emotional or physical intimacy, withdrawing affection, seductive withholding, inexplicably disappearing from contact, or blaming the target for the narcissistic person’s issues (projection).

Ultimately, the person with narcissism discards his or her dating partner, who served as a source of narcissistic supply to fuel the ego of the individual with narcissistic issues. When the target asks for compromise, reciprocity, empathy, integrity, honesty, and boundaries (all healthy and valid requests that people with extreme narcissistic qualities generally do not engage in), the person with narcissism may decide that the target has lost his or her luster and is tarnished—no longer the “perfect partner” to fluff the ego feathers. Inevitably, the discarding occurs when the person with narcissism either disappears or orchestrates his or her own abandonment by engaging in some form of egregious emotional abuse. The outcome is often shocking for the survivor, unclear as to how someone that he or she fell so deeply in love with could throw it all away.

Triangulation is a manipulation tactic where one person will not communicate directly with another person, instead using a third person to relay communication to the second, thus forming a triangle. It also refers to a form of splitting in which one person manipulates a relationship between two parties by controlling communication between them.

In psychoanalytic theory, Narcissistic supply is a pathological or excessive need for attention or admiration from codependents, or such a need in the orally fixated, that does not take into account the feelings, opinions or preferences of other people.

A narcissist is someone, who is so in love with themselves; that there is no room in them for love from anyone else. So a “ghosting narcissist” is a person so self-absorbed that they simply cannot include anyone else in their lives on an intimate level for any length of time.




Narcissistic Symptoms

• Being overly boastful, exaggerating one's own achievements

• Pretending to be superior to others

• Lack of empathy for others

• Looking down on others as inferior

• Monopolizing conversations

• Impatient, angry, unhappy, depressed or has mood swings when criticized

• Easily disappointed when expected importance is not given

• Always craves for “the best” in everything

• Has a very fragile self- esteem







Narcissistic rage is a psychological construct that describes a reaction to narcissistic injury, which is conceptualized as a perceived threat to a narcissist's self-esteem or self-worth. Narcissistic injury is a phrase used by Sigmund Freud in the 1920s; narcissistic wound and narcissistic blow are further, almost interchangeable terms. The term narcissistic rage was coined by Heinz Kohut in 1972.




Coercive control is a strategic form of ongoing oppression and terrorism used to instill fear. The abuser will use tactics, such as limiting access to money or monitoring all communication, as a controlling effort.

Abusive power and control is the way that an abusive person gains and maintains power and control over another person in order to subject that victim to psychological, physical, sexual, or financial abuse. The motivations of the abuser are varied and can include devaluation, envy, personal gain, personal gratification, psychological projection, or just for the sake of the enjoyment of exercising power and control.

No Contact is a space for healing and reviving yourself, apart from the belittling influences of your former partner or friend. It is an opportunity for you to detach completely from the toxic person while moving forward with your life and effectively pursuing your goals.

Psychological Projection

Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others. For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.

Gray rock is a metaphorical form of no contact. It can be used when you are unable to go no contact immediately or to prepare yourself for full no contact, or in situations where traditional no contact is unlikely to ever be possible.

Boundaries are healthy limits we set between ourselves and other people. They define who we are and who we are not, what we are comfortable with and what we are not. And because we absorb so much of what's happening around us, including the feelings and energies of other people, boundaries are essential for HSPs (highly sensitive persons).




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