One of the hardest parts of healing after narcissistic abuse is recovering your sense of self. During the relationship, the abuser did everything in their power to crush you and destroy your personal values and alter your reality. They needed to silence you so they never had to take accountability for their actions.
Here are nine ways a narcissist or sociopath will silence you and degrade you.
Gaslighting
Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic designed to distort and alter your reality. There are various ways a narcissist or toxic person will use gaslighting but the results are all the same. You end up confused and questioning yourself.
Common phrases a gaslighter uses are:
“That didn’t happen.”
“You’re crazy!”
“You never listen to me, do you?”
Gaslighting is one of the most insidious abuse tactics because it works to erode your sense of reality. It causes you to lose your ability to trust yourself and prevents you from feeling justified in calling out abuse and mistreatment.
Projection
This particular defense mechanism is very common in narcissists. Narcissists have a fragile ego and a false inner self. They cannot face their insecurities, because that would mean challenging their grandiose false self-image. So when they feel something that they cannot accept, they reject it in themselves and project it onto someone else — like you.
Narcissist projection can be extremely confusing to experience. It can often seem to come out of nowhere. It’s simply them accusing you of something that they are in fact doing.
Projection is a defense mechanism to a threat. And you calling them out is a threat. They will push their misdeeds onto you because to lie and cheat is not what a perfect person would do. Therefore, you must be the one who is the liar and the cheater.
Word Salad
Oxford dictionary defines word salad as,
a confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases
My abuser regularly used word salad when he was trying to control the conversation and he wanted to shut me down. He used a bunch of unrelated words and concepts all smooshed together, including contradictions and disjointed phrases, or random irrelevant and impromptu comments.
It was exhausting! He was king of word salad.
It is a very deliberate tool designed to silence you. It will leave you entirely unable to follow the narcissist. It is gibberish intended to frustrate the logical progression of a topic. The point is never made and accountability never happens. By using repetition and circular conversations your “talk” goes NOWHERE.
Generalization
Narcissists may act as if they are an expert at communication but in fact, they are very lazy communicators. They lack objectivity so it is impossible for them to take the time to carefully consider a different perspective.
If you are speaking on a topic they know nothing about, they will hate that they have nothing to offer. So they will throw out blanket statements that generalize anything and everything you say.
They decide to put a label on what you are saying and just dismiss your entire perspective simply because they know nothing about the topic.
Generalizations are microaggressions. Perhaps you are a sensitive person. If you bring up to a narcissist that their behavior is hurtful, they will often make blanket generalizations about your hypersensitivity and say, “You are never happy,” or “You’re always too sensitive” rather than addressing the real issues at hand.
Misrepresent Your Feelings
Having differing opinions, and emotions with a narcissist are never allowed. Your lived experiences get turned into character flaws and evidence of your inability to function well in life.
My abuser was constantly reframing what I was saying to make my opinions look ridiculous and sinister. I remember when I was scrolling through Facebook and I learned that a woman I went to school with had breast cancer. I told him “I can not believe she of all people has cancer!” I was genuinely shocked and sad.
In response my abuser said. “Huh? Sounds like you are happy about her having cancer? Did you not like her?”
I was so shocked by what he said that I just stared at him with utter confusion.
Toxic people often presume they know what you’re thinking and feeling. They like to draw conclusions based on their own triggers and distorted view of life. They speak only based on their own delusions and fallacies.
They put words in your mouth, then depict you as having an outlandish viewpoint you don’t really possess.
Deflection
If you try to discuss something you’re unhappy with or find out something is untrue, instead of addressing it or taking responsibility for it, they will quickly deflect and go into attack mode. They quickly shift attention from themselves and bring up something that you may or may not have said or done.
You are left feeling confused as they now demand you answer their accusation. This completely throws you off the original topic.
A narcissist is a person who doesn’t care about understanding you and is dedicated to mischaracterizing you in order to dominate and win an argument.
According to Dr. Less Carter,
Narcissists do not want to be challenged. They do not want to be confronted, nor do they wish to hear that there is a path to take or an opinion to consider that differs. Narcissists are pathologically defensive, and when you disagree, they are unable to discuss it at face value. They consider you to be offensive, which means you must be neutralized.
Narcissists live in a simulated reality and they are very protective of that fake world. You are a threat if you do not fall in line with what they want. Questioning their behavior is NEVER acceptable to them so they will employ any underhanded tactic to shut you up when you try to challenge their distortions.