Why Me?(…of all the fish in the sea?)
The Narcissistic Sociopath's Victim Profile
This blog is written for female survivors of male perpetrators.
Okay, so if you’re doing your research online to figure out what the hell just happened to you, you’ll find theories of narcissistic abuse that include YOU being co-dependent and YOU having weak boundaries. This victim-blaming rhetoric and the theories about codependents being narcissist magnets may be fair and reasonable in some cases, but how about you contemplate that a bit later in your recovery......when you’ve worked through the shame of blaming yourself for everything.
Let’s sprinkle some water on the fire of this debate and emphasise that narcopaths have an extraordinary capacity for riding roughshod over other people’s boundaries, and using persuasive or manipulative coercion that creates dependency and co-dependency In their intimate others.
This might have been the only relationship in your life where you ended up co-dependent, with annihilated boundaries, so please shift your focus to other things, including your finer qualities that attracted the predator. This evidence is out there in the case studies and not only my clinical opinion. On the whole, narcopaths prey on the kindest, most loyal and generous people. They prey on innocents!
You are not to blame!
Narcopaths choose victims who:
Have something they want (sexual allure, a place to live, money, resources, contacts)
Are highly trusting or innocent (perhaps overly trusting and naive)
Tend to look for the good in people
Are quick to forgive
Are highly 'invested in' relationships with friends, colleagues, family (loyal to the people around them)
Are vulnerable to manipulation due to depression, anxiety, low self esteem, lack of confidence, social isolation, or trauma
Narcissistic Sociopath Viewpoint
“Kindness = Weakness
Trust invites control
Empathy beckons manipulation
Vulnerabilities urge exploitation
Gentleness invites domination”
It is possible, nay probable, that you are what the shrinks call, “other-referencing”. That is, you have somehow grown up to put everybody else’s needs before your own. Or put another way, somehow you have come to believe that if everyone around you is happy and satisfied, that you will become happy and satisfied too. You find that you cannot rest until everyone around you is comfortable. In so doing, you also have a tendency to ignore your own well-being in the service of others. You can reach burn out again and again, and as soon as you regain some energy, you spend it on sorting things out for the people around you again.
No, not every woman is like that. It’s not just a woman thing. But in many cultures, this kind of self-sacrifice is considered virtuous and aspirational. It’s not the desire to be of service that’s a problem, it’s the failure to recognise when we are being taken advantage of.
The other-referencing person may also have under developed internal referencing. That is, they have underdeveloped abilities to self-soothe, self-regulate, self-reference. They may be a bit insecure or anxious in all their relationships, and need a high level of validation, approval or applause just to feel okay about themselves. In other words, they never cultivated the ability to validate, approve of or value themselves. This can make them vulnerable to exploitation by anyone who gives them affirmation, flattery or praise. Exploitative and manipulative people will try to use these things to gain trust and control. In old-fashioned terms, other referencing people are ‘easily influenced’.
(The antidote to this is to train in becoming self-referencing - to learn new skills for an internal dialogue that validates, affirms and encourages ourselves via the practice of self-compassion.)
You might be a rescuer and possibly a bit of a martyr. You may have a tendency to wade into difficult circumstances believing that you can be the person to set things right, ease the tension, solve the problem. You naturally have empathy for other people’s suffering, from the mundane to the extreme. You are quick to pick up on ‘bad vibes’, or to feel other people’s sadness, loneliness, or confusion almost as if it were your own. You may be a Highly Sensitive Person*.
When things cannot be sorted, you might have a tendency to take the responsibility onto your own shoulders, blame yourself for not making enough effort, or feel severely under-appreciated given the effort you make. From there, your mood might descend into any number of pathways from depression and self-loathing to resentment and aggression at not having your own needs met. This might lead to maladaptive behaviours like boozing, spending, or obsessive Facebooking for escape. Or dieting, exercising, botoxing or eating disorders as self -punishment.
These behaviours are subtle responses to threat, so don’t beat yourself up again for being selfish. That just feeds right back into the never-ending loop of the ‘other referencing’ person. It is possible to give yourself love and nurturance and meet your own needs in a wise grown-up way. Maybe you just never figured out how that works. Maybe you never had healthy threat responses modelled for you at any time in your life. So now is the time to cultivate them!
You can learn to become conscious of your own patterning and break your habitual patterns. You can move from self-deception to self-awareness with a new outlook of curious investigation wrapped up in generous doses of loving-kindness towards yourself.
“Socially, a potential cost of self-deception is greater manipulation (and deception) by others. If you are unconscious of your actions and others are conscious, they may manipulate your behaviour without you being aware of it.”
You may have a deeply entrenched belief that everybody is good on the inside? You may have always been quick to forgive: turn the other cheek when you witness bad behaviour. You give people the benefit of the doubt, again, and again, and again to the point of finding yourself exploited, walked over, used as a doormat, a receptacle for everybody else’s blame. You might never have learned how to stop this repeated experience unfolding, and wonder what it is that causes it to happen and what you can change about yourself to stop it happening over and over in many different contexts.
You might have a very deep need to be liked. Sure. Doesn’t everybody?
Maybe you aspire to virtue, and you have a big, open, generous heart that you share with anyone who crosses your path. Or too many bad experiences have hardened your heart to protect your vulnerability. Either way, your first instinct is to trust people. A man is innocent until proven guilty, right? And when they betray that trust, take a little bit of advantage, take a mile from the inch you gave them, you’ll quickly forgive them, turn the other cheek, give them the benefit of the doubt and trust them again. You might even think this ‘blind trust’ is a virtue and therefore unworthy of unpacking by curious self-reflection.
Now you read it, can you also see how these things fed into each other to trap you in a snare set by the untrustworthy love-fraud who was magnetically attracted to someone they could easily use and lie to over and over again? You weren’t to blame for your own exploitation, but you can take some responsibility for tweaking the recipe that makes you tasty prey for predators. You can change the repeating pattern. Take heart.
You are a very loyal person, and that loyalty even keeps you bound to people you suspect might not have your best interests at heart. You figure if you’re more loyal, more trusting, more forgiving, more generous, eventually they’ll appreciate it and return the favour. You have high ‘relational investment’. Interpersonal relationships are extremely important to you at work, at play, in the home. So you are prepared to exhaust yourself investing in these relationships, and because you are always the one to ring, the one to have people over, the one to arrange the staff party, the one to clean up when everybody else is too hung-over, you may not notice that other people don’t give a shit, basically.
Soon, other people – especially the narcopath - will come to expect it of you, and hold you responsible when things don’t happen the way they always have in the past. And you might ask, “how is this my responsibility?” and fail to recognise that you made it your responsibility ages ago! Just being loyal.
It is those very aspects of your character, the very trust, generosity, kindness, loyalty and investment in being liked that attracts predators, exploiters, users and persecutors like flies. A narcopath can pick it a mile away and his extraordinary ability to work out how other people tick (whilst being incapable of honest self-reflection) makes you easy prey. Other people can pick it too. For some people, the urge to exploit kindness, generosity and gullibility is so great that they simply can’t resist the urge to take advantage.
Now is a great time for you to re-assess and re-set your boundaries. Learn to notice boundary violations early and defend yourself against exploitation. Adjust your ‘blind’ trust. Alter your ‘insane’ loyalty. Re-order your list of relationships that are or aren’t worthy of your further investment. Closing doors is a necessary part of any good strategy. Some bridges are well burnt.
ENDNOTE:
In the early days of the aftermath and embarking on recovery, we need to be very careful of other predators. Many studies since psychopathy was identified show that people with tendencies towards parasitic behaviour can sense vulnerabilities and unmet needs in a target instantaneously. If you weren’t already, you are now a beacon for manipulators and exploiters, no matter your ‘I’m fine’ public persona.
Beware of people with whom you feel an instant ‘connection’, as if you’ve known each other for years and automatically understand each other. Trust takes time and mutual effort to build. Beware of interactions that make you walk away feeling ten feet tall – confident, satisfied, kindred-spirits who share opinions and beliefs on almost every subject. Psychopaths are able to tell you exactly what you want to hear at the very first meeting (including outside of the romantic context).
Take careful note of early boundary violations. Promises to communicate or meet that are broken or stretched. Excuses that could be lies. Notice if you are hoping, wishing or planning for another interaction with a person, despite a few minor boundary violations. This could be your conditioned attraction towards exploiters and manipulators. Give the new connection space and time and overcome your natural tendency to be the one who calls. And if you have the opposite problem – a new connection who continually calls, gifts, praises, flatters, follows the story of your daily life – RUN!
“The Highly Sensitive Person”, Elaine N Aron, PhD, Cliff Harwon, USA, 1997
