When a narcissistic type (most cyberpaths & predators are NARCISSISTIC and/ or SOCIOPATHIC) launches one of his surprise attacks, a normal person's first reaction is to assume it's a misunderstanding and try to resolve it. That's her first mistake. She does this because she assumes she is dealing with a normal human being, who must have felt offended by something.But a narcissist evades and discourages your attempts to find out why he's mad.
Typically he does this with a reply that is a reply to something other than what you said. So, to an observer who entered at your question it would seem that you are like two actors saying lines from the scripts of different plays. In fact, that is essentially what's happening. Remember, the narcissist has the personality of a little child, who does not distinguish between reality and fantasy. So, his off-the-wall reply IS a line from a script, the fiction about this incident that he is imagining.
This is how the verbal exchange typically plays out. You ask why he's mad. He has no answer that he dares acknowledge, so the question is a threat to his delusions. At all costs, he must protect them. So, he annihilates your question by acting as though you never asked it. You get a comeback that replies to something other than what you said.
That's his way of crossing out your words and revising them. Typically his non-answer hurls an incitatory insult, hurtful flippant comment or wild accusation. It's bait to draw you off the scent.
His favorite wild accusation is that YOU are always hurling wild accusations at him. Before you know it, this living, breathing Projection Machine is acting out a fictitious script in which YOU are the one who got mad, YOU are the one "flying into one of your rages" over nothing.
And he is doing his best to make it so. He is trying to outrage you. Moreover, outraging you will really make him feel grand about how mightily he vaunted himself on you.
Victims typically report that the narcissist twists everything so fast and furiously that it makes their heads spin.
Sanity will get no further with him on these points than it did on the first point. For, he ain't all there. He's off in his own little world, simultaneously writing the play and acting out the part of the hero in it.
If you contradict these lies (by telling the truth), he will do whatever is necessary to cram them down your throat. (sounds like Beckstead, Thomas & Dunetz/ YidwithLid, Gash, Jacoby, Hicks)
Like a three-year-old, volume is his weapon of choice: He will scream to yell you down and silence you. Or post lies & smear about you all over the web. If that doesn't work, he'll probably get physical. (if he stalks you he will find a way to make it look like YOU are the stalker! Including reporting YOU to the police)
Also, narcissists relentlessly block communication by yanking a conversation bewilderingly off track every which way at once. They say it's "not a good idea" that you two talk. Maybe their girlfriend, wife or boss (or THERAPIST!) doesn't want you talking anymore to each other. Convenient way to duck out of the truth and a real apology.
They LOVE when THEY'VE involved you in infidelity - they BLAME you for the whole thing, say you "KNEW WHAT YOU WERE GETTING INTO" or "IT WAS JUST A GAME AND SHE KNEW IT" and then say their counselor, pastor, rabbi, priest says that "you have to stop speaking to her." Makes it really easy for them, don't it?So, rarely can you say afterwards what a rage or an argument was even about. Usually it's some vague rendition of you just being the way you are. And the narcissist says he doesn't have to put up with that. Its HIS story - or it's NO STORY!!
You can't even just try to smooth it over with some form of appeasement. You try to take down postings about them, say you're sorry too, offer to talk - but NOOOOOOO! That's about as effective as it was with Adolf Hitler. His eyes light up at that — vroom! — he just shifts into high gear and runs you over. In other words, he just gets madder.
Because you gave an inch, he takes a mile.
He acts like he's the one who is outraged, but that's part of the farce produced by his Magical Thinking Machine. You are the one subjected to outrage.
This is a willful and wanton outrage. Their aim is to outrage you, to break you down into burning outraged tears. That's victory for the bully.
The reason all this outrages you is because it is an outrage. Especially in trying to cram his lies about you down your throat. That's extreme perversity — making someone bend over for it.
And, if you have any respect for Truth, his willful and wanton contempt for it is another outrage.
So, don't let anybody send you on a guilt trip over this. First, you did nothing to provoke it except get caught in his cross hairs.Second, don't let any airhead who just mouths whatever nonsense blows in the wind today tell you that you shouldn't be angry or to "just let it go."
It is absurd to regard feelings as wrong or sinful. If a person gets burnt, there's something wrong with him if he doesn't feel burnt. Feelings are not a matter of choice, an act of the will. We can lie about them. We can deny/repress them. But we can't change them.
Know your anger. Because it's dangerous to repress it. Doing so just banishes it to the subconscious where it still motivates your behavior like an unseen puppet master.
Know your anger, so you can deal with it appropriately and temper it with reason and good judgment.
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He sees himself as right, the victim, or the only one that knows anything at all. He sees you as the re-victimizer of him, wonderful and yet horrible, needed and yet hated, smart yet dependent on him, in need of his brilliance, faulty without him, as pathological as he is... and the list goes on.
Pathology is the inability to change and sustain change, grow in any meaningful way, or develop insight about how one's behavior effects other. If he can't change he projects his inability on you and makes it YOUR fault or YOUR inability to change that is the problem in the relationship. He acts as if he should not be asked to change or he has changed when he hasn't. He makes you 'think' that you asked for something huge and wrong for him to change OR that what needs changing is only you and nothing in him.
If he can't grow in any meaningful way, he projects his non-growth onto the relationship and suggests it's the relationship stagnation you are really experiencing. If you could only GROW to accept him in all his pathology, then the relationship would thrive. If he can't develop insight about how his behavior effects others, he projects his undeveloped insight on you and says these are your traits. And you simply don't understand 'what you are doing to him.' All his anger is yours, all his deviancy is yours, you are just as sick as he is which is why you are a great match, all his lying is yours, all his manipulations are yours.
That's because in pathology they are MASTER PROJECTORS. It is in fact, one of the 'symptoms' of pathology. They take all their pathological attributes and say they are YOURS.
The Master Projection he uses causes similar symptoms as people who have been held captive, thrust into cults, or held prisoner in other people's belief systems. These are intensely programmed beliefs that are not 'removed' simply because you break up.
