If Someone Says These 3 Things, They’re Manipulating You
In a Nutshell
Narcissists manipulate through love-bombing followed by intermittent reinforcement, gaslighting, and blame-shifting to maintain control and extract validation. Radical acceptance—that their behavior will not meaningfully change—is the critical turning point for victims, who must then rebuild their identity through basic self-attunement, efficacy-building activities, and 90/10 investment in healthy relationships. While some narcissists can make progress with sustained, humble therapy, most drop out, and victims should stop waiting for change and instead focus on their own recovery.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Narcissism is a personality style, not a disorder in itself. It is considered a maladaptive personality style because it puts people at odds with others and is not good for their relationships. Narcissistic personality disorder occurs when a person presents with narcissistic patterns such as low and variable empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, envy, admiration and validation seeking, egocentricity, and selfishness. These patterns must be chronic and pervasive, showing up across a whole bunch of different relationships. The diagnosis is only made by a licensed and trained therapist who determines that the patterns are consistent and across situations.
The vast majority of people with this personality style are never diagnosed because they never enter a practitioner's office. Many clinicians avoid issuing the diagnosis because it feels stigmatizing. People can range from mildly narcissistic and emotionally immature to severely malignant, coercive, and manipulative.
Having narcissistic personality disorder does not necessarily mean the narcissism is more severe than in people who are never diagnosed. The public conversation should simply refer to it as narcissism, focusing on how these personality styles harm people in relationships.
Narcissistic people have always existed and have made history. Approximately 75% of people written about in history books were probably quite narcissistic. Narcissistic people are often responsible for some of the greatest innovations, though the advice is to let them innovate without dating them. There is an out-of-the-boxness to them and a fantasy they feel compelled to create.
People have been doing narcissistic things to partners, children, and family members since time immemorial. There was a universal radical acceptance that some people are just really jerky. History books contain kings who were ogres and horrific invaders who were the narcissists of their time. The key message is that instead of blaming yourself and wondering what you could do, it is not you, and you should not turn your life into a human sacrifice to please or win over an unwinnable person.
People attract narcissists because they are attractive, which may include physical beauty, physique, or social status. What is attractive to narcissists may not be attractive to others. Many people who enter these relationships are strong, know who they are, and were well put together when they met the narcissistic person. Narcissistic people are attracted to people who will give them supply, which may include physical attractiveness, status, or praise. Being a nice person and praising someone could make you attractive to them.
The key is knowing how to get off the carousel before it starts going too fast, rather than stopping being yourself.
Narcissistic people have traits including entitlement, lack of empathy, grandiosity, arrogance, and selfishness. A narcissistic person can be thought of as a volcano with bubbling lava representing shame and insecurity. The plug on the volcano is the entitlement, grandiosity, and claims of perfection. When something pushes the lid aside, such as feedback, criticism, or things not going their way, the lava spills out as rage and anger because their shame has been shown.
The patterns that show up include manipulation, invalidation of the other person, minimization of what another person is going through, gaslighting, rage and reactivity, future faking where promises are made and broken to keep a person on the hook, blame shifting, deceit, betrayal, lying, infidelity, and neglect where they give less and less to the relationship.
Everything in the relationship is about them getting supply and validation. They have no interest in the needs, wants, and subjective reality of the other person. Over time, the other person is considered an inconvenience.
In adult narcissistic relationships, whether intimate or friendship, the early phase is very idealized and seductive. This is called love bombing, where they win you over with gestures, tactics, attunement, and attention. The intense attention may include learning things about you that will later be turned around and used against you. This is often a point of devastation when vulnerability is later met with shaming and humiliation.
The love bombing phase moves into a pattern of 10 good things to one bad thing, which over time comes to a one-to-one ratio. This back and forth of good and bad, hot and cold, creates the origin of the trauma bond. People fall into justifying and blaming themselves because it was so great initially.
Narcissistic people are novelty seeking and get bored easily. Over time, there can be a process of discard where they no longer fulfill the roles and responsibilities of a close relationship, which include empathy, compassion, kindness, attunement, and self-awareness.
If you decide to leave or they decide to leave, a cat and mouse game of hoovering can occur where they pull you back to see how you are doing. They may even try to disrupt your happiness if they see you are doing well.
One of the most primal human needs is attachment. Human beings are tribal and evolved in social groups. In childhood, the need for attachment is everything, and a child with an un-attuned or abusive parent does not have the option to leave. The child must hold the parent in esteem, which means the child learns to devalue themselves and be everything the parent wants at the detriment of their own needs.
In adulthood, justifications come easily and are reinforced by the world saying relationships are tough. The people who tend to get more stuck are the more empathic people, who are more likely to make excuses and justifications. We do not like the tension of inconsistency within ourselves, so we justify to relieve that tension and maintain the status quo.
Over time, many survivors reach a point where they do not care where they wake up as long as it is not in that relationship. The longer a person is in a narcissistic relationship, the more they have to abandon themselves. Empathetic people may still be concerned about whether the narcissistic person is okay.
Survivors consistently show problematic levels of rumination, regret, anxiety, sadness, self-blame, self-doubt, hypervigilance, and social anxiety. Some may develop clinical depression, but most do not. The empathy is almost functioning as a trauma response in some survivors.
The goal is to heal without losing the empathic, responsive, compassionate part. This is not an amputation but rather about pulling the shame off of empathy and becoming more discerning.
It is possible to disengage from someone and still empathize with them. The balancing act of retaining empathy when you have been hurt is difficult work. Repeatedly forgiving a repeat perpetrator actually harms the forgiver according to scientific research, and forgiveness is not necessary to heal.
One important exercise is the multiple truths exercise where you write everything you feel about the person. A person might write conflicting truths such as hating their mother, acknowledging her tough backstory, feeling sorry for her living alone, wishing she would change, and knowing she will not change. This manifests why survivors are so confused.
It is possible to empathize without forgiving. You can understand why they are the way they are and why they did what they did, while still recognizing that what they did was unforgivable. You can wish them no ill will and have a mild indifference, where good or bad things happening to them are both acceptable. Not forgiving does not mean a lack of empathy because forgiveness reflects the harm done to us.
Radical acceptance is the absolute acceptance that the person's behavior is not going to change significantly enough to make this into a healthy relationship, that the behavior affected you, and that as long as you are in the purview of this behavior, it will keep hurting you. The key element is that this is not going to change, and all decisions from that point forward must be made on that basis.
The core of mental health is flexibility, which is an adaptability, self-awareness, and awareness of others. A mentally healthy person has flexibility in their psyche, like a tree that bends with the wind rather than snapping.
Grandiose narcissists subjectively think of themselves as great people and can maintain a delusional self-schema even after harmful behaviors. Those things are not amenable to change. The addiction may be managed, but the core personality means they are not fit for an intimate relationship where someone will not get hurt.
Radical acceptance is the penny drop moment where people see the path forward differently. It is no longer about waiting for the kids to grow up, a promotion, or grandkids to make things better. This is it. Radical acceptance does not mean signing off on the behavior but seeing it absolutely and painfully clearly.
After radical acceptance, grief comes like a tsunami. Grief is the most human of experiences, and nobody gets to make their grief go quicker. The grief is not just about the relationship ending but about how much of yourself you lost in the relationship.
The starting point is going back to basics. Set a timer three times a day and when the notification comes up, stop and ask how you feel right now. Questions like what do you want on your pizza become places where a person recreates a subjective focus. This is about reorienting to yourself and asking what the temperature is, recognizing that feeling cold is okay even if everyone else has a bathing suit on.
This brings the person back into their body because that is a physical, tangible way of knowing how we feel. Basic decisions like what you want on pizza help get amateur decisions right before working up to larger questions like who am I or what is the goal of my life.
A client once said she just wanted to get to a day where she did not think about them, and that was accepted as where it was right now. Healing involves building up safe, validating, anti-gaslighters in your life who see you and affirm that something was not okay or that someone was disrespectful.
Most survivors are used to being spoken to badly and think it is business as usual. The 90/10 inversion involves putting 90% of yourself into good, reciprocal, loving relationships and only 10% into toxic ones, flipping the usual math.
When oscillating between knowing yourself again and not knowing who you are anymore, embrace the oscillation. It is like a child wobbly on their feet when learning to walk. You are learning this again.
Survivors often internalize the narcissistic voice and gaslighted voice that were used against them. Many are told they're "uppity" for wanting to achieve goals, with statements like "Do you really think you're going to pull that off?" or "I think you're reaching a little too high." These messages become internalized as an inner voice saying "don't be ridiculous, you're never going to be able to do that." The goal is to treat this voice as an "unwanted visitor" rather than making it one's own.
Trauma theory includes the protector-persecutor model, where the persecuting voice attempts to keep a person safe by telling them they're going to fail so they don't try. The approach is to recognize this voice: "Okay, I see what you're trying to do, persecuting voice." This involves radical acceptance that even when the narcissistic person rolls their eyes and says "Oh, big surprise," the response must be "this is a them thing, this is not a me thing." The emotional pain is acknowledged, but the distinction between the narcissist's behavior and one's own worth is maintained.
The oscillation between self-doubt and confidence becomes less severe as survivors build efficacy - the belief they're able to do things. Survivors are encouraged to keep trying new things because building efficacy fosters individuation. Practical examples include grabbing a drill to hang pictures (even with imperfect holes), attempting difficult recipes like soufflés, or learning new skills. When these activities succeed, they create positive feelings that transfer to other life areas.
Recovery involves rehabilitation of self-identity, self-worth, self-confidence, and self-acceptance. For many people whose narcissistic abuse occurred in childhood, this is not a rebuilding process but a building process because their individuated identity never had the opportunity to form.
Understanding narcissism origins reveals that some narcissistic individuals had personality development shaped by adversity, trauma, neglect, loss, chaos, and attachment wounds. Those willing to engage humbly in growth work can make progress through trauma-informed therapy, then moving beyond to reflect on how their actions affect others. This involves "pulling open gates" to see how their protective behaviors impact people around them.
One client example demonstrates progress: after years of work, he recognized "I'm screaming at my girlfriend, and I know it's not okay... she may leave me, and I probably deserve it." Humility is identified as the antidote to narcissism. The hardest realization for narcissistic individuals is accepting that they're ordinary while simultaneously being special like everyone else. This threatens their self-concept, which feels like "removing the cap off the volcano."
Statistics show that 60-70% of narcissistic individuals drop out of therapy prematurely, typically when work becomes vulnerable and "the rubber meets the road." Progress requires gentle, sustained effort rather than aphorisms, with honest confrontation of vulnerability.
While narcissistic individuals can make progress, harm they've caused is often not fully fixable. People in narcissistic relationships frequently fear the narcissist will change for someone else, but this represents years of committed work that rarely occurs. The advice is clear: "You're waiting for a bus that's never going to come. You're waiting for a submarine to show up at a bus stop. You will lose yourself in the process."
Cultural pressures to remain in marriages regardless of conditions contribute to this dynamic. The result is witnessing "a fruit die on the vine" - the horrific loss of human potential through invalidation. Survivors are encouraged to open the "gates" they've kept closed, as their endurance through these relationships is already a gift, and their additional gifts are needed in the world.
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