Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group

Common Behaviours of a Narcissist:

‘Me versus You’ mentality;

Competitiveness;

‘Tit for tat’ retaliations;

Striving for the ‘spotlight’ and attention;

Excessive generosity to outside people;

Uncomfortable when others are incurring attention or praise;

If can’t be centre of attention will either discredit or leave the experience;

May fake illnesses or problems to procure attention / sympathy;

Abusive verbal behaviour when angered or insecure;

Tendency toward violent and even criminal behaviour;

Inappropriate and inapplicable language in front of women and children;

Dark moods that affect others;

False promises;

Glorifies and falsifies achievements past and present;

Expects to be recognised and praised;

Finds others not complying with wants intolerable;

Extreme sensitivity to criticism;

Extreme defensiveness when confronted;

Pathological lying;

Disdain for rules, regulations, decency and morality;

Childish outbursts and behaviour;

Very little consideration for how behaviour affects others;

Extremely lack of compassion or sensitivity towards love partners (and others') problems;

Grossly unsupportive to familiars in times of need;

Brushes incidences under the carpet;

Uses allies real or imagined to back up claims and arguments;

Uses guilt and manipulation to influence love partners;

Doesn’t trust love partners;

Tendency towards jealousy and possessiveness;

Capable of sexually degrading name calling;

Can steal, harm or hide property to sabotage love partners;

Uses vengeance, threats and intimidation to control ;

Uses excessive charm and manipulation to control;

Little (if any) sense of conscience;

Discredits love partners to gain attention / sympathy from others;

Will ‘attack’ when confronted or questioned;

Emotionally punishes love partners when feeling insecure;

Emotionally punishes love partners when they are struggling with issues, losses, grief or challenges;

Employs unpredictable and unaccountable behaviour;

Capable of ‘disgusting’ behaviour to gain the upper hand and control a situation;

Feels powerful and fulfilled when creating powerlessness in another;

Gross failure to apologise or have sympathy after creating tears, distress or trauma to the love partner.


Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse that is used by narcissists that is deeply insidious and difficult to pinpoint. It works by instilling confusion. If you are being gaslighted you will lose trust in your senses, identity and common environment.

A narcissist will dodge accountability in a discussion in a variety of ways.

Telling you repetitively to lower your voice;

Interrupting you with unrelated conversation;

Telling you to let them finish what they are saying whilst continuing to be psychologically and verbally abusive;

Making references to allies and unrelated people;

Telling you the matter is resolved without validating the conversation in a way that allows you to feel resolved;

Asking if you are happy to get that off your chest and then changing the topic;

Throwing in an abusive unrelated comment to anger or upset you;

Refusing to discuss the issue with you;

Bringing up an issue they are unhappy about, and treating that as the focus of conversation.

The narcissist will tell you:

What you are feeling and thinking;

An interaction that you believed was decent with another person actually had agendas connected to it.

Your body language appears suggestive to other people.

A friend or family member has made certain references about you.

You were seen in a certain place acting inappropriately.

You said or did something (you weren’t aware of) when tired, distracted, unaware, intoxicated or asleep.

Certain information was discovered about you.

Certain people (you thought were loyal) are now agreeing about your faults.

The incident (created by the narcissist) was your fault, or merely a perception based on your paranoia or unstable emotions.

An excuse for the incidence based on a ‘story’ that extracts guilt from you, whereby you feel awful for making the ‘judgement’ you did.

Other people perceive you as bossy, controlling, manipulative, uncaring, incapable etc. (defective in some way).

Love partners feel a heightened state of anxiety. There is no ability to feel safe under these conditions.

Where normal people love others and empathize with them, the narcissist loves his False Self and identifies with it to the exclusion of all else – his True Self included.

All these are forms of abuse. "
Posted on 11/07/09, 06:11 pm