A paladin of PSSD hurt me to death

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anacleta
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Re: A paladin of PSSD hurt me to death

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i am appalled at what i can find already written in entire articles because it describes resoundingly well what happened. and i have spent months trying to piece together piece by piece doing a lot on my own (but not entirely thank goodness). and i am still stunned at articles like the one i paste below written by a psychotherapist.

I could underline it entirely but I underline some really resounding parts that say what happened.

[To summarize in a few lines: he from the end of last year to the beginning of this year was always ready to respond to my messages, involved me on his own initiative in so many things, filled me with encouragement (not directly romantic messages but plausible deniability, as he did with other women as well), this after i had expressed feelings to him for a couple of years at least. so at the beginning of this year i expressed increasing feelings in response to this sort of love bombing on his part. so much so that I felt confused, frustrated, and distressed, and he did nothing to calm me down or give me reality tips. at one point I decided on my own initiative to try to distance myself BECAUSE I WAS SUFFERING and even told him that he had never done anything wrong to me (haha!...). then, when after 3 weeks of feeling terribly confused and distressed I wrote him back for some clarity, his GHOSTING came. ]


LOVE BOMBING: SEDUCTION AND MANIPULATION

Love bombing is a psychological technique used by narcissistic personalities to emotionally manipulate people. The Narcissist to exert his control initially fills his love object, his victim, with attention, praise and admiration. He does this through loving attitudes to win her trust, friendship, affection and finally her love. Through love bombing, that is, tight and continuous seduction, the narcissist tries to leverage the emotional needs and psychological frailties of the victim. Love bombing includes all those moves and strategies of illusory love for the purpose of enacting real psycho-emotional plagiarism.

When the narcissist is certain that his target has been emotionally "hooked" and has it"trapped," he modifies his strategy. He becomes less available, becomes more distant, cold, and may even abruptly terminate the relationship without explanation (ghosting).

The seduced person finds herself confused and distressed. Rejection, sudden abandonment trigger unresolved childhood traumas, obsessive thoughts and addictive behavior in the victim, all centered on trying to win back the love bomber's affection.

Throughout the deceptive conquest phase, the narcissist presents himself as an ideal partner, the soul mate with whom there is a special understanding, the person with whom one can feel deeply resonant. Representing just the ideal, it is easy to give him, in good faith, unconditional trust. In reality, the love bomber is just hunting for prey and conquest a way to feed his sense of importance and experience suggestive power.

The narcissist can grasp the deepest needs and use them "in a mirror" to such an extent that it is difficult for anyone to remain indifferent. He makes the wooed feel unique, desired, special. He uses "target" words, that is, just what one wants to hear; he shows himself to be sweet, caring, loving, kind, trustworthy and morally upright. This mode encourages the object of seduction to open up, to share dreams and wishes for the future, which the manipulator listens carefully to use that information later.

In essence, a narcissist is adept at understanding the vulnerabilities of others and, through love bombing tactics, getting into the good graces of his victims by displaying a false self.

This process is very rapid. The emotional manipulator knows that he cannot lie for long and can be unmasked so the speed of his seductive process is essential.

This is why we speak of love bombing even though in all of this there are no feelings or falling in love at all except for the victim.

The manipulated seduction process can be summarized in 5 steps:

- Seduction: the victim is courted, praised, flattered and admired;
Isolation: the victim is isolated from family and friends so that the relationship is exclusive and no one can intervene in the manipulative mechanism enacted.
- Control: blind love causes the victim to depend on the manipulator and do what is asked of them having full confidence in the idyllic love they experienced in the previous stages.
- Confusion: the manipulator reinforces the dependence the victim begins to have on him strong from the trust created. He creates confusion in the reconstruction of facts and events, distorts reality in order to put doubts and feed the victim's insecurities.
- Guilt: to doubts and insecurity the narcissist adds emotional instability by assigning blame and responsibility to the victim when things go wrong. The victim often feels uncomfortable and inadequate.

But why does someone creep so far into a person's life to delude them by playing on their weaknesses and hopes and then abruptly and cruelly snatch their dream away without any explanation or warning? The answer is that there are pathological people who are incapable of feeling empathy and caring for others. The narcissist focuses entirely on his own self-interests and is incapable of putting himself "in the shoes" of others. If in addition to the ability to sense what others need, not only on the level of words to be spoken and sterile actions to be performed, but also on the level of emotional experiences, he would not cause so much suffering.

A healthy person has no reason to engage in manipulation or to carry on a relationship in this way. On the other hand, the manipulator carefully selects the people with whom to establish this kind of dynamic; these are usually people who are lacking in affection or particularly in need of a strong figure on whom to depend. Therefore, when the victim finds herself alone and abandoned for no reason she will try everything to get back the seemingly perfect lost relationship. The victim usually feels guilty about the incident and tries to identify limitations or flaws in herself to justify the breakup of the relationship (I am not worthy enough to be loved, I did something wrong...).

In truth, the victim is never at fault for anything. The moment the manipulator is certain that he has aroused important and deep feelings in the 'love object' he loses interest and the decline of the relationship begins.

A manipulative narcissist never really has any interest in creating an emotional relationship; he or she just wants to feel at the center of someone's world. The unconscious goal is to feed one's ego, to fill a deep insecurity of which he himself is unaware, making the other feel small and dependent.

Because the narcissist's emotions are superficial he does not care about the pain he causes; he looks at the pain and desperate gestures the victim makes to mend the relationship as a confirmation of how important and powerful he is. This feeds his ego. It is difficult to react with indifference to a narcissist who abandons but perhaps this is the only reaction that might still arouse some interest in him. Certainly impossible to implement when one is very emotionally involved and not clear that one is inside a psychological game with a "lose-lose" ending.

Getting out of a relational dynamic of this magnitude requires a great deal of self-esteem that the victim of love bombing often does not possess. In such a case it is necessary to get help from friends, family and a specialist in personality disorders and unconscious psychological games.
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anacleta
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Re: A paladin of PSSD hurt me to death

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General reflections.

Cognitive empathy -> understanding others' emotions. narcissists have it abundantly and use it to manipulate others.
Emotional or affective empathy -> "feeling" others' emotions. anaffective narcissists do not have it and exploit that of victims.
Compassionate empathy or empathic sensitivity -> understanding others and having the impetus to help them, do good.


until recently i used to worry about my own narcissism, for example when i thought i was using someone to fantasize, and knowing that there is the overt one and the covert one, the latter also characterized by low self-esteem. i suffered (and suffer) from narcissistic depression, i.e. feeling far from my ideal self and my childhood expectations... but as far as anaffective narcissists and their relational dynamics i knew nothing.

I'm not one to rely on the first guy who comes along...I didn't think I was that clueless...even having studied something in the past about the persuasion techniques of salespeople and mass media was not helpful in this situation.

"Empaths really find it hard to believe that cold, anaffective, dry, unscrupulous people can exist."

that is: if they open your eyes that there is not treasure there but shit like you've never encountered before, and you actually have to admit that this explains a lot...you must not make the mistake of thinking that there is treasure underneath the shit though! it's just shit.

when things have outlined themselves well enough they may become increasingly obvious, even trivial! this becomes much easier if you compare yourself with other people who have experienced the same things or with someone who is an expert in these things. you realize that ultimately it is nothing "original" (although on the other hand a curiosity directed at the specific case remains open).

at the end of the day, the patterns are what they are, they have even already been written, like the criteria for personality disorders, because human personalities and dynamics are variable yes, but up to a point. so, at the end of the day, people who are anaffective narcissists all their lives and grow up that way may find certain ways to get by in the world, they may not find many others (...) to get things done and take pleasure despite that shortcoming.

I suppose they partly interact spontaneously driven by certain desires for gratification (which entirely take the place of even those that are precluded to them) and partly refine techniques to make life easier for themselves, developing the ability to be fake and manipulative. with material things and the psychological satisfaction they get from such schemes they can give meaning to their living even without feeling "little things" like affection, empathy, etc.

somehow, the unhealthy dynamics they give rise to (which appear inexplicable and mysterious, even intriguing to those unfamiliar with that personality type) that hurt other people express the horror of their own condition: the crying of their victims gives voice to the horrible lack that anaffective narcissists cannot even talk about, not being aware of the value of what they lack (moreover, is a relative quality...)

they probably don't feel the lack of what they don't have if they are things they have never experienced and don't suffer from (?). moreover, they see the "affective and sensitive" people who don't tend to win in life because of those "gifts," in fact they are the easiest to beguile and subdue. so what do they have to envy? maybe, from their point of view, affectivity and empathy are characteristics of those who do not realize that they are victims of themselves, those who are weaker and lackluster ... at the same time they tap into those resources of others ("energy vampires").
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anacleta
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Re: A paladin of PSSD hurt me to death

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to stay on the topic of dangerous online psychological and emotional manipulation, a recent news case from my country that struck me.

in 2021 a 24-year-old boy took his own life after corresponding for a year with a "girl" whom he had never met, fell in love, she was all his days and had the prospect of a future with her. he was an introverted, romantic, sensitive, helpless type with no romantic experience, no friends, but according to his parents he was not depressed.
in recent times he had been having strange signals that had made him suspicious, but "she" became angry at his request for clarification and he apologized fearing that he would lose her it is not known precisely how fully he had understood the deception he had fallen victim to at one point before hanging himself in shock.

behind that girl was a man over sixty who was entertaining himself to make him fall in love, continuing to cheat him even after the boy was getting more and more desperate about feeling that he had been deceived, so much so that he was having thoughts of suicide that he communicated: the man then invented "her brother" and "her friend" with other profiles.

the parents, who had remained oblivious to everything, accuse the man in particular for having persisted with his games even in the face of the boy's severe suffering and obvious fragility.

a TV program did a report going to interview the man, who, while fleeing in the street, said "it's not my fault that he had head problems". months after the boy's suicide, it was discovered that the 64-year-old continued to pretend to be a girl by deceiving other guys online. online scam/manipulation phenomenon that is called catfishing.

a few days ago a headline appeared that the man committed suicide with a mix of drugs (possibly due to the pressure he was under from the TV show).

Lots of articles and videos in Italian, this one in English:
https://www.ruetir.com/2022/11/04/danie ... d-suicide/
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anacleta
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Re: A paladin of PSSD hurt me to death

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I have to say that the last vestiges of my trauma are coming to an end, now they rarely reappear and fade quickly.

the fact that i was so overwhelmed about an online contact on the one hand is a sign of how fucking weak i was (emotional needs + propensity to fantasise can be very weak points if exposed to the wrong people). this becomes really evident every time i have a better time when i go out for engagements and to be in good company: thinking back to the whole online affair i say to myself: what an alienation! how did I end up there?!
on the other hand, if I tell myself that in the course of my life I was destined sooner or later to clash with this type of person/personality (the world is teeming with them), it is almost half a blessing to have discovered these dynamics in this way and not in 'real life'.

i read so many terrible experiences of sweet and sensitive people in addictive relationships with manipulative narcissists. many of them continually fall back into the same harmful patterns, even after realising they have been deceived and are being mistreated.
many of these are in marital and family contexts, where the trouble becomes really difficult to unravel and there are repercussions on the children.

This is a little story that moved me, as did several of the responses it got:
My daughter grew up with a narcissistic father.
Do you have similar experiences, or advice?
Before I myself was aware of the situation I was in, I could not understand how my husband could not even give his children free love. He always wanted something in return, always demanded that it was the child who showed him love and dedication regardless.
My daughter grew up like that. She spoke to her father on tiptoes. I could see her thinking about which topic her father would like best before she spoke. When she was 9 years old, she would talk about tiles and wall tiles at dinner (we were renovating our house) in order to have a common interest plan with dad. This always made me infinitely tender. He would say 'you don't love daddy', 'if it weren't for daddy this way, if it weren't for daddy that way' etc etc. In the background total disinterest in her life. For my part I was an attentive and loving mother but always destabilised by this man who kept me in a constant state of tension. And she sensed it. "Let's be quick otherwise then dad, be quiet otherwise then dad...." Etc etc
Today my daughter is 11 years old. Pre-adolescence has begun. Suddenly she has changed. I have also changed because after a threat to raise his hands and a near depression I have gone to total indifference to his emotional blows. But she is no longer that frightened child. She snubs him, avoids him. She ignores him with disarming diplomacy, she dodges her father's moral blackmail with incredible agility. And he obviously destabilises himself.
I am relieved to see that she has learned to defend herself (I tried to warn her as gently as I could). I am saddened that at the age of 11 she has given up having a father. She will never get anything but material good out of it, I know that. But seeing her so disenchanted about it does something to me.
I'm also a bit worried about her future relationships, she's still young, but I certainly didn't set a good example for her.
I feel guilty for not giving these children a decent family.
It sounds like my story...a daughter of the same age. she is 10 years old, and I too think that I have ruined the image she may have in life of a couple, of a man... one day at the lake after he for the umpteenth time tried to ruin our day, and me having blown up, my daughter takes me aside and says: 'mum, you mustn't get angry, the worst thing you can do to him is for him to see us happy'...
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anacleta
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Re: A paladin of PSSD hurt me to death

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however, today I ended up thinking about it.

a year and a half ago I showed my boyfriend some grotesque/tacky things that that individual had published and in which I had collaborated.
my boyfriend said "him? he's crazy". i laughed amused and he responded more seriously "no, no: he's crazy".

i loved feeling so in complicity with the one who seemed like an adorable lunatic out of the box, and who showed appreciation for my weirder ideas.

and this may be what I shed my last tears for.
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anacleta
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Re: A paladin of PSSD hurt me to death

Unread post by anacleta »

uhahahaa! this the story generated in 5 seconds by ChatGPT. made me laugh quite a bit, all the better!

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