narcissistic abuse
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Five Signs of a Vulnerable Narcissist
The vulnerable narcissist can be difficult to detect. Like a covert narcissist or one who hides his or her tendencies behind a façade of good behavior while undermining others, the vulnerable narcissist has his or her own façade. As the name suggests, the vulnerable narcissist hides behind a façade of weakness. The other two types are easier to detect. After all, a grandiose narcissist is always tooting his own horn and a malignant one has a mean streak a mile wide. My first run-in with a vulnerable narcissist was actually a literary one. C.S. Lewis describes one in his book, The Screwtape Letters, very effectively as the mother of the…
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Your Abusive Spouse: When to Leave
Leave your abusive spouse now. Before anyone protests the sanctity of the marriage vow, let me say that I don’t take this answer lightly. And let me qualify the term, abusive spouse. Most people are occasionally emotionally ‘abusive’. These days that term is loosely bandied about and it can be difficult to ferret out what one or another individual means by it. Ironically, many abusers accuse their spouses of abusive behavior in an attempt to deflect their own wrongdoing. So let’s be clear by what this term really entails. Many people shut down, withdraw, lose their temper, and sulk. As humans, we are sometimes passive-aggressive, over-step a boundary, or let…
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Five Signs of a Covert Narcissist: Judas Iscariot
The marks of a covert narcissist are not very different from those of most narcs. They all wish to appear as important and particularly righteous or better than others. The main difference is that a covert narcissist lacks the aggression and the overt behaviors of most narcs. Generally passive-aggressive, the covert narcissist often plays the victim while quietly undermining others. The covert narcissist does in secret what most other narcissists do in the open. But the signs of any narcissist remain the same. Here is a short list: A personal sense of grandiosity A fantasy life that revolves around being influential, famous, and/or important A frequent exaggeration of their intelligence…
