Malignant Narcissist As Family Bully

I dug up this article from an excellent website in the UK called BullyOnline . The article has MN sister down to the letter. In fact, it’s the perfect description of every Malignant Narcissist that I’ve had the misfortune to encounter in this life – female MNs in particular.

Bullying in the Family

Dealing with a serial bully, psychopath or sociopath in the family

The Violence committed by a serial bully is almost entirely psychological, for psychological violence leaves no scars and no physical evidence. Most commonly the violence takes the form of verbal abuse and emotional abuse including trivial nit-picking and criticism, constant fault finding combined with a simultaneous refusal to recognize, value, acknowledge and praise. Manipulation, isolation and exclusion are other favourite tactics, as is feigning victimhood, persecution, especially when held accountable.

The objectives of serial bullies are Power, Control, Domination and Subjugation. These are achieved by a number of means including disempowerment, the stimulation of excessive levels of fear, shame, embarrassment and guilt, manipulation (especially of emotions and perceptions), ritual humiliation and constant denial. When you live with someone who is constantly denying what they said or did a day ago, or an hour ago, or even a minute ago, it drives you crazy. When the symptoms of injury to your health start to become apparent, the bully will tell others you have a “mental health problem”. You may be mad, but that is not mad insane, that is mad angry.

Control is a common indicator of the serial bully at home – control of finances, control of movements, control of choice of friends, control of right to work, control over what to think, and so on. All are designed to disempower.

A favourite tactic of the bully in the family is to set people against each other. The benefit to the bully are that:

a)      The bully gains a great deal of gratification (a perverse form of satisfaction) from encouraging and provoking argument, quarrelling and hostility, and then from watching as others engage in adversarial interaction and destructive conflict, and

b)      The ensuing conflict ensures that people’s attention is distracted and diverted away from the cause of the conflict

Bullies within the family, especially female bullies, are masters (mistresses?) of manipulation and are fond of manipulating people through their emotions (eg. guilt) and through their beliefs, attitudes and perceptions. Bullies see any form of vulnerability as an opportunity for manipulation, and are especially prone to those who are emotionally needy. Elderly relatives, those with infirmity, illness, those with the greatest vulnerability, or those who are emotionally needy or behaviorally immature family members are likely to be targets for exploitation.

The family bully encourages and manipulates family members etc. to lie, act dishonourably and dishonestly, withhold information, spread misinformation, and to punish the target for alleged infractions, i.e. the family members become the bully’s unwitting (and sometimes witting) instruments of harassment.

Bullies are adept at distorting peoples’ perceptions with intent to engender a negative view of their target in the minds of family members, neighbours, friends and people in positions of officialdom and authority; this is achieved through undermining, the creation of doubts and suspicions, and the sharing of false concerns, etc. This poisoning of people’s minds is difficult to counter, however explaining the game in a calm articulate manner helps people see through the mask of deceit and to understand how and why they are being used as pawns.

The bully may try to establish an exclusive relationship (based on apparent trust and confidence) with one family member such that they (the bully) are seen as the sole reliable source of information; this may be achieved by portraying the target (and certain other family members) as irresponsible, unstable, undependable, uncaring, unreliable and untrustworthy, perhaps by constant highlighting – using distortion and fabrication – of alleged failures, breaches of trust, lack of reliability, etc. The process is reinforced by inclusion of the occasional piece of juicy gossip about the target’s alleged misdemeanors or untrustworthiness in respect of relationships and communications with people. Mostly, this is PROJECTION. The objective is to manipulate the family member’s perceptions and create a dependency so that the family comes to rely exclusively on the bully and see the bully as the sole source of information whilst distrusting everyone else. Any person who is capable of exposing and breaking the dependency is targeted with venom and will find their name blackened at every opportunity.

When close to being outwitted and exposed, the bully feigns victimhood and turns the focus on themselves – this is another example of manipulating people through their emotions of guilt, e.g. sympathy, feeling sorry etc. Female serial bullies are especially partial to making themselves the centre of attention claiming to be the injured party whilst portraying their target as the villain of the piece. When the target tries to explain the GAME, they are immediately labelled “paranoid”.

The serial bully is easy to spot once you know what you are looking at: Jekyll and Hyde nature, compulsive lying, arrogance, narcissism, attention-seeking, etc. – whilst always charming and plausible, especially when impressionable witnesses are present.

Serial bullies can be male or female – the main difference is that female bullies are more devious, more manipulative, more cunning, more sly, more psychological, more subtle, leave less evidence and will often bully with a smile. Female bullies will often manipulate a male into committing their violence for them. Male bullies tend to be less subtle, have a tendency toward physical aggression, and are generally less clever than female bullies.