Everyone writes in such depth about narcissists and tries their best to explain their behavior, but no one ever talks about their enablers; the ones who facilitate the abusers, the ones behind them who unknowingly support it and allow it to continue.
These are your other half, so to speak, and are just as responsible as the narcissist, at least for their neglect. They don’t willingly choose to be abused by them, but they support it and do nothing about it to protect others or themselves.
And no other type of enabler is more enabling and integral to the abuse, and thus able to do more to stop it by opposing it, than the victims of narcissists. This is because narcissists are very demanding, high-maintenance, and ruthless in getting their needs met right now. They rely heavily on their facilitators and their support to function. Or perhaps more accurately, those that abusers abuse and take the brunt of the abuse.
I am willing to accept that more people fall into this category than the first, and if we were to approach and address this problem assertively, there would be far fewer people tolerating and allowing narcissistic behavior, perpetuating and enabling it. Keep going.
Abuse hurts abusers and enablers, but so does empowerment. I’m willing to bet that it does more harm than abuse simply because it allows and encourages abuse to continue, thus creating more abuse in the world. It is a source of encouragement.
If you know of or are willingly involved with a narcissist in any way, you must be an enabler. Let’s find out if you are.
1. You are expected to overaccommodate and sacrifice for them, but you get nothing in return and are never appreciated for it.
You put the needs of others before your own, at your expense. You also hurt the people who really need you by putting the narcissist’s needs before theirs.
Another way of saying this is that you don’t do anything yourself because you’re always pleasing someone else. You are too busy meeting someone else’s needs (read demands) to meet your own or even care for someone who depends solely on you, such as children.
It also means that you are preoccupied with the affairs of others and neglect your own, or even that you ignore your own prejudices in the service of others. You feel powerless in your ability to admit and then identify your real problems, such as abuse, let alone resolve them yourself.
Narcissists resist persistently, eternally and ruthlessly. They will do anything to make sure that you can’t stop what they’re doing and that they don’t have to change. It’s all running away, it’s a race, and they have to be in front of you at all times. That’s all they care about.
They’re just running away, running away everywhere to somewhere else in every way they can because they just can’t handle it. We don’t know what they’re feeling, what do we know? But I’m sure it’s not our job to stay and feel the pain, and spread it around, magnifying it and making it worse through your empowerment.
Another sign is that you are too accommodating and give in to their demands, no matter how much it costs you personally or at all costs.
You will tell yourself that you are a good person by doing what they ask, when they ask, and you will continue to put up with them, and you will convince yourself of it.
When they get abusive, you’ll tell yourself they mean well but don’t know how to express themselves carefully. In other words, you will phrase the abuse in loving terms, because that’s what you need to believe in order to excuse yourself from having to do anything about it.
Truth be told, and you already know that, so you can guess what I’m about to tell you, is that you’re actually helping them by supporting their fantasy and abusing yourself.
You are their achievement and complicity in the abuse. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t feel that way. They make you think you’re a champion for putting up with them and doing the right thing, doing whatever you have to to help and protect everyone by sacrificing yourself and putting their needs before your own.
What you are actually doing is supporting a dysfunctional cycle and regressive pattern of behavior that all depends on what frame of mind they are in.
They are making a fool of you because you don’t realize that their issues and problems are just tricks to put you in a position of pain and agony, so you will fight to make it right while they sit on their throne, waiting and complaining when they do a thing. bad work
They convince you that they are good for you and so you stay. But they don’t really do any good at all, they actively seek harm and continue to do so, like a parasite, until you die and they have to find someone else. That sounds really dramatic, but it’s true; they are preparing for life by having someone else carry their problems.
Since we can’t help but be judged and everyone seems to have an opinion about you that they simply have to share with someone else these days, chances are you’ll come across what someone else thinks of you and not like.
The enabler is paralyzed by fear of being judged by others and seeks to correct their mistake and apologize to the person, even if they are in fact right, which is likely since enablers do very little in the way of deliberately hurting others. others. people, just negligence and convenient denial.
You will be too focused and preoccupied with the needs of others, especially when they are artificial and designed to divert your attention from something and channel it towards them; manipulation and dependency, learned helplessness.
How do you know if that’s what they’re doing for sure? It is always the same and it never changes, because they never change.
They never improve themselves and therefore never improve their problems. They are always stuck in the same place, at the same time, and with the same mindset. You never find functional ways to deal with them because they are not functional, they are dysfunctional.
2. Codependency: both support and complement each other’s dysfunctional behavior through their own dysfunctional behavior
From not being able to do anything on your own to needing your permission to do anything, and your approval that you did it “right” (which you never will), dependency runs the gambit from having to be in constant communication with each other until having to take charge and make decisions for others. It goes both ways.
Now that the last part may seem strange, isn’t one person dependent and the other independent? In fact, one is more independent than the other, and that’s you. You are not the one creating the illusion and you are not the one trying to control everything.
What is control? What is control and power over another person’s life? Directing and controlling your life is an illusion, and the purpose of that illusion is to deny its dependence on you. They are with you because you need them, not the other way around. But all of that is a ruse to hide their own dependency and project their problems onto you.
Now it seems strange that they don’t look or act like they are forcing you into a situation, doesn’t it? They’re not technically forcing you to do it, are they? Technically yes, but for a practical matter no.
If you knew what they’re doing and experienced it for what it really is, what they’re thinking and how they see it, you’d see that as strength as well. Keep in mind that they always know this too. They know what is good and right or they wouldn’t be so good at being bad. They just don’t care, or even worse, they like to be mean, malicious, and hurt others.
They don’t “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” per say, they “control…” directing, guiding and directing your behavior, and especially obstructing you, they are your favorite things to do, because it weakens you.But most of all, they will measure your actions so that they produce a specific decision, an anticipated and planned response that they want from you.
Dependency also comes with denial, rationalizations, and excuses for how dependent you really are. You will naturally come up with these to tell yourself that you are in a good place.
3. Negative relationships: You relate to others through hate and conflict, and as a result, you feel bad and you don’t know why.
This is difficult to detect without the input of others.
When you find yourself drawing big lines between yourself and other people you like for lesser reasons, you polarize yourself from other people and make yourself less attractive.
Losing contact with family and friends is a big goal of the narcissist, they are required to become the only source of information, their bridge to reality, or their reality, which doesn’t look much like reality at all.
With narcissists, everything is already settled for you: it’s bad. Black and white thinking, negative bias, negative relationships with others and the outside world, from which you will also feel increasingly isolated, distanced and withdrawn.
You are afraid of success and getting what you deserve. Personal or financial success is their empowerment means they lose control over you, and this means they reward you for being idle and doing nothing at all, it’s what makes them feel more secure and in control of you. They can’t control themselves, so they make up for it by controlling you.
No real actionable steps are taken or progress made towards their stated goals. Nothing ever happens, nothing ever changes. There’s a lot of talk about doing things, but nothing ever comes of it. That’s because they like it the way it is now.
They only attract you and themselves with the prospect of change, but they are too afraid to change and don’t want to change anyway. They like the eternal father-son relationship that you two have, which brings me to the next sign: he switches between who is the father and who is the son all the time. They usually want to be the authority figure you answer to, but when they’re scared, they need you to tell them what to do, or else they can’t function. That is dependency.
You will feel bad but you will not know exactly why. I would pretty much guarantee with almost 90% certainty that you are with a narcissist if this is the case. There are simply no other personality disorders that can do this without you knowing about it, otherwise you will know and notice, or at least suspect it.
Let me ask you something: have you ever been complimented or openly supported? How do they talk about you with other people? Is positive? What do they like and admire about you? What would you say and then say are your best skills? Do you know for sure your answer to any of these questions?
That’s because you’ll never know, they don’t tell you, and they don’t respect you. They don’t even like you. They project every enemy they’ve ever had, anyone who’s ever hurt them because they couldn’t get over what that person did to them, so they hate, and hate, and smoke, and vent in “legitimate” ways, even though they don’t. they are absolutely and totally unacceptable, yet you tolerate them.
They don’t like you, and it’s a good bet you’re used to someone not liking you because you’re putting up with it right now, so this probably isn’t the first, second, or even last time you’re in this situation. .
If you feel something is wrong, it probably is. The reason it gets weird and feels wrong to be suspicious is that narcissists make your feelings taboo and convince you not to listen to them.
With narcissists, their biggest priority is to make you feel insecure about yourself and make you think it’s all an accident.
It’s not an accident, it’s on purpose; they measure your behavior to your own personality to see what effect it has on you, to maximize every effort and do everything possible to hurt, control and bring you down.
Thanks for reading, and remember that it’s never too late: you can always improve your situation and improve emotionally no matter how bad it is.
Thanks for reading, and I hope I have helped you on your journey.