Proxy Recruitment and Abuse By Proxy

Abuse By Proxy:

And Other Tools of Torture for the Machiavellian Sadist

An effective technique that’s often deployed by the sadist is what is known as abuse by proxy. This is when the perpetrator of the abuse recruits Lieutenants to, sometimes unwittingly, do his bidding. The benefits of this strategy is that it allows the abuser to enjoy the sick pleasure he finds in the pain of his target, while simultaneously feeling the gratification that comes from getting away with cleverly manipulating others into doing his dirty work. It keeps the abuser further and further away from the target’s sight and keeps the target’s focus on the second in command rather than the source of the abuse. For these kinds of people, power trips like this are irresistible.

https://selfknowledgedaily.com/abuse-by-proxy-534ab3d2cff0

Proxy Recruitment

Definition:

Proxy Recruitment - A way of controlling or abusing another person by manipulating other people into unwittingly backing “doing the dirty work”

Puppet-Making

Sometimes attempts to control someone or abuse them are fairly obvious, with Proxy Recruitment however, manipulation of others is used to achieve the same aim in a highly secretive way.

Friends, colleagues, family members, acquaintances and authority figures may be drawn into the perpetrator’s game plan through false accusations of abuse, smear campaigns or distortion campaigns, and these people are then encouraged to take up the perpetrator’s cause against the victim.

Flying Monkeys

In an iconic scene from The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch sends a troupe of Flying Monkeys in pursuit of Dorothy. The term Flying Monkeys has evolved to represent any proxy, recruited by an abusive person to assist them in controlling their victim.

How it Works

Proxy recruitment can be an extremely powerful way of establishing control over another person. It forces the victim into a defensive posture - justifying themselves or denying false claims to friends, family, neighbors, acquaintances and authority figures. It often attempts to reverse roles in the eyes of others - casting the abuser as the victim and portraying the victim as the real abuser. It also deflects attention away from the abuser and provides cover or justification for further abuse to occur.

Proxy Recruitment is much easier if the abuser assumes a position of authority. Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram demonstrated that people will often perform an irrational act if instructed to do so by an authority figure, even if that act is unkind or cruel to another person.

Proxy recruitment isn’t just a tactic used by people with Personality Disorders. It is a universal reaction to recruit allies when engaged in a conflict situation – however when it involves misrepresenting the truth or causing deliberate harm, it is a form of toxic and abusive behavior.

Source: Out of the Fog 

Narcissists: Making Others Do Their Dirty Work

By Linda Martinez-Lewi, Ph.D.

Narcissists beneath it all are cowards and phonies. Despite their psychological shallowness they perpetrate tremendous damage on other human beings—emotional, financial, mental. Pernicious lying, deceptions and manipulations are part of their psychological dna. For most narcissists their image is uppermost in their minds at all times. How they appear to others, how many followers they are accumulating, how much praise and adulation they are receiving and how wonderful people believe they are—these are their touchstones. I have communicated with many of those who were married to narcissists who were stunned by their partner’s ability to maintain a pristine public image while privately causing severe trauma, emotional distress and even terror to members of his/her family, business partners, etc.

Narcissists who succeed in the world preserve their pristine images by having favored members of their tight inner circle do their dirty work. Whether it is bringing down a business competitor by stealth and intimidation, using corps of attorneys to break down a former spouse who is asking for child support and custody arrangements, narcissists find the best follower, the most devoted—to carry out their malicious goals. I have had contact with many of their victims, especially their discarded and broken spouses, partners and children. The damage that they do is immeasurable. Part of the insidious problem is that the current culture rewards narcissistic behaviors–“I’ve got mine; the hell with you.” The narcissistic style of acting superior, being over-entitled and a laser focus on outward appearance and “image” has become pervasive in many stratas of our culture today.

Those who have survived the narcissist and are prevailing by moving forward with their lives despite all of the pain they are suffered, deserve our deep respect and empathy. These individuals are real. They come without facade, artifice or hidden agendas. Visit my website: www.thenarcissistinyourlife.com.  

Good, to the point article. Narcissists do recruit others to do their dirty work. It’s surprising how many so-called professional women in positions of authority are so willing to pile on with the MN abusers. Methinks they must be up to no good, and acting in collusion with the sociopath for their own personal gain.

This is how I found out that my dad died - thanks to the scumbag lawyer who has made a fortune taking advantage of a "vulnerable" Estate. I guess after all the money the sociopath sent your way; you owed her a "favor."

I was just informed my dad died.... by a lawyer!

Malignant Narcissists Are Just Bad People

The words "image," "appearance," and "outwardly" are crucial to understanding the morality of evil. While they seem to lack any motivation to BE good, they intensely desire to APPEAR good. Their "goodness" is all on a level of pretense. It is, in effect a lie. This is why they are the"people of the lie."

M. Scott Peck

Narcissist Sympathizers II

By Kathy Krajco

I am often amazed at the cavalier attitude of some clinicians and bystanders toward malignant narcissism. They seem so concerned about how they SOUND that they have no concern left for what they're saying. Indeed, one wonders if these people ever hear themselves.

They are so busy trying to sound like nice people that they utter, utter nonsense. The cruelty of narcissistic abuse is lost on them. It strikes no chord of empathy in them. They hear about it and just mouth-breathe as if to say, "What's so bad about that?"

Obtuseness is invincible. They talk like it's a mere irritation or aggravation. They say we should make nothing of it and not be angry over it. For, the simpletons cannot think morally and therefore must have a list of dos and don'ts as a cheat sheet to distinguish right from wrong.

Fortunately, good therapists would never tell you to repress your feelings. They would tell you that there are times when you have an obligation to get angry, and that failing to is sometimes the morally reprehensible thing to do. Just as failing to fight is sometimes the morally reprehensible thing to do.

But they aren't saying that to SOUND good, so they aren't as loud as the phonies are.

You can read what you need to know about malignant narcissism in the comments here. Those by the children of narcissists.

They are anonymous, so they have no motive to lie, and the stuff they tell that their abusive parent did to them is too bizarre to be made up. It isn't the kind of thing anyone would make up. In fact, it's antithetical to the kind of thing a person would make up. You can see that. It rings true louder than the Liberty Bell.

Read these accounts of narcissistic abuse and weep. Read back through.

I really want people who think that narcissistic abuse is no big deal to do that. And those who think that narcissists are not bad people and will be fine if you just give them a hug, a musical instrument, and a puppy.

These narcissist sympathizers who say that their victims shouldn't abandon the poor narcissist, because that will make poor little him or her so saaaaaaad (to be without a host to parasitize) - people who say that need a lesson that will teach them where to place their misplaced sympathy. Let them be told they are dirt every day in every way by someone close to them for 20 or 30 years. Let them have their reputation, career, and marriage utterly brought to ruin by character assassination. THEN let's see if they still think it's nothing.

Then let's see how well THEY are handling the life they've been dealt.

Thinking it's funny to force your child to do something you warn him in advance you will beat him for? Have you ever heard of anything more perverted and sadistic than that?

I have it from a narcissist herself that mental cruelty is her game.

Rushing your husband's funeral so that one of his children misses it? After you DROVE him to suicide? People who hear that without it twisting their guts have an empathy problem themselves.

This must be why they are so callous - they just don’t see what’s so bad about narcissists.

How Narcissist Sympathizers Help Us Heal
(Image courtesy Q1605) 

And then the narcissist immediately shacks up with somebody else to give the knife in his or her kids a twist. That one not only appears in the comments here, I know of that happening once myself. In fact every narcissist I have known who lost a mate immediately (as quickly as fleas abandon a dead rat in search of a new host) hopped into bed with somebody else.

That should be a clue about something to clueless narcissist sympathizers. A clue about what other people are to a narcissist.

Driving people to drink? Driving people to suicide? No big deal? I'll wager that many, if not most, people driven to suicide are driven by a malignant narcissist. That's absolute power over someone = the power to make them kill themselves. I know of three narcissists who did this and fortunately succeeded only in driving to drink, and a third who I think did it and did succeed in driving a teenager to suicide.

Not murder? Not WORSE than murder?

Narcissists do this as lightly as you step on a bug. That's what human beings are to them.

And in treating human beings as subhuman beings, they are treating them inhumanly and failing to recognize humanity. Which means they don’t know humanity when they see it? If they were human themselves they would recognize and respect the image and likeness of humanity in human beings.

That's what becoming God has done to them. It was a big fall.

If the abundant evidence about psychopaths is any indication, some narcissists come from happy homes. As for those who don't, hey, if they got even with the parent who abused them, that would be natural. But they deify the abusive parent (as soon as they are out of his or her clutches) and take it out on the nicest, lovingest, most vulnerable and defenseless prey they can find.

Come on, everybody knows what that means. They are BAD people. I don't care if it's against your political religion's doctrine to admit that. It's true.

Narcissists are known for making the most mild mannered, gentle, patient, kind, and unassuming people livid with anger. They are known for making people who never hate, hate them with a passion.

Jeez, do you suppose there could be a reason for this?

This is just common sense. Let the phonies (on the Web and in the clinics and the courts) find some new issue to sound holy on and quit making a farce out of this one. Let them find fault to condemn where it is, instead of where it ain't.

PURCHASE A COPY OF HOUSE OF MIRRORS EBOOK AND PAPERBACK HERE!

Narcissist Sympathizers

Narcissist Sympathizers

By Kathy Krajco

What Makes Narcissists Tick

I, for one, am sick of the insult to our intelligence in narcissist sympathizers trying to hand people the line that the poor, poor narcissist doesn't mean to hurt anyone, that they don't know what they are doing, that it just sort of happens, that they think they are behaving normally.

Your brain must be dead if you think that people who abuse ONLY ON THE SLY - behaving like angels when there are witnesses - don't know exactly what they're doing.

To the bullet-headed narcissist sympathizers, I say, "Try real, real hard to understand. Bend a brain cell or two. Repeat to yourself 100 times that "He abuses only in the dark. When other people are watching, he acts like he's full of loving kindness even toward the very one he abuses in the dark."

Maybe if you repeat that simple fact to yourself 100 times, it will sink in. Think. Think real, real hard what it means. Really work at lifting that mental weight. Come on, you can do it. If you try real, real hard you will understand what this simple fact means.

Circumcize your crusty brain, because the average ten-year-old knows that if you hide what you are doing, you know what you are doing and that it's wrong.

Especially when you go to great lengths putting on a phony show of being the exact opposite type of person.

Get a clue: that ain't mental illness; that's just diabolical.

What's more, even the average ten year-old is smart enough to know that if you can control yourself when there are witnesses, you can control yourself when there aren't.

Too complex? Read my lips: that ain't mental illness; that's just sneakiness to get away with wrongdoing.

Sorry, but if you narcissist sympathizers can't see that, no one can enlighten you.

What's more, narcissists are sadistic. The well-known narcissist Sam Vaknin himself often says this. And anyone abused by a narcissist knows it.

Sadism is proof positive of the intent to cause pain.

It is also proof positive of the ability to empathize when the narcissist or psychopath wants to. Unfortunately, the only time they choose to empathize is when calculating what to do to cause maximum pain. You know - the empathy of a professional torturer, used only to feel out what type of treatment will wound most deeply.

The courts know all this too. Psychopaths (who are all narcissists too) and other narcissists flunk with flying colors all the insanity tests. Which is why NPD and psychopathy are no defense and are considered character disorders, not personality disorders.

And the mental health establishment has no credibility on the question, since they call cigarette smoking a mental illness and called homosexuality a mental illness till the day the politically correct wind shifted. How can anyone respect the judgement of a herd like that?

While I won't argue that NPD isn't a mental illness, I see that, if it is, it is far more likely the fruit of thoroughly depraved character, not the cause.

If you must twist your brain into a bowlful of tangled spaghetti to "rationalize" irrational and predatory behavior, you are going to end up with a damaged mind. But it's an EFFECT, not a cause, of vicious behavior.

But, go ahead, narcissist sympathizers. Insult your own intelligence all you want: it's a free country. Just don't expect anything but what you have coming for insulting mine or anyone else's.

PURCHASE A COPY OF HOUSE OF MIRRORS EBOOK AND PAPERBACK HERE! 

What Causes Malignant Narcissism?

What causes malignant narcissism? Who knows? Who cares?

….. The End

Seriously. Does it really matter what causes malignant narcissism? Not to me it doesn’t.

The Answer to the Problem of Evil is to Deter it

  

Here's a good, cut through all the bull sh** article by Kathy Krajco... gleaned from the pages of her site "What Makes Narcissists Tick."

The answer to the problem of evil in the world is to deter it. There. See? Did that take an Einstein? Every child knows this. If somebody punches you, make it cost him. If you don't, expect another punch tomorrow.

I have seen total idiocy among school teachers on this. They think that both kids in a fight are automatically wrong. What simpletons. They need their Commandments boiled down to a cheat sheet of literal dos and don'ts, because they have no moral sense and therefore can't tell right from wrong.

They create the perfect world for bullies. You know, like all the bystanders - who have nothing to say about the narcissist's abuse but condemn you the victim for anything you do to try to put a stop to it.

ANYTHING. They condemn you for hitting back. They condemn you for yelling back. They condemn you for countering the character-assassinating lies he is spreading about you - you must let him murder you this way without showing that he is lying by projection, for that would damage the poor little character assassin's good name! Yes, the holier-than-thous are that crazy. They condemn you for abandoning the poor, hurt little dear. If he or she is in your school, after they have condemned you for every other thing you might do to protect yourself, they seal the door to your torture chamber by condemning you for skipping class. In other words, they insist that you present yourself daily to your abuser for more abuse. AND that you submit to it without doing anything in your defense.

Ah, perversity is endless.

When I began teaching, I was shocked (but later understood) when an old colleague of mine said that he never ran to stop a fight. He timed his arrival to make sure the really angry kid got a few licks in. Why? Because he knew that the school administrators were idiots and that both kids would be punished equally with virtually no effort to find out and stop what had caused the fight. Therefore, those few licks were the only deterrent to the jerk who had started the fight by picking on the other kid till he just couldn't take any more (and feel like he had a spine).

In short, we need to speak up and shout down the idiots who keep preaching that self-defense is a sin and that justice is "revenge" and that you must "forgive" the unforgivable = an offense in progress, a denied offense, a continuing offense = an unrepented offense.

Some people, many people, are amoral. They have no moral restraints. Unless you want to be their victim, you had better teach them an object lesson to go find easier prey.

And no, normal people don't get carried away with the freedom to defend themselves. The control-freak religious rulers and social engineers would have us think so, but that is baloney. Normal people HATE conflict. They hate fighting. The only time they are even tempted to fight is when under some sort of attack. We are just like other animals in this. They snarl and snap at an intrusion or offense and two seconds later have forgotten about it.

Why? Because the purpose was DEFENSIVE - to back the other party off. Once that mission is accomplished, it's done. Getting carried away just doesn't happen when DEFENSE is your cause and goal. It's not even a temptation.

The abuser is the one who has other goals, offensive ones that he or she gets carried away with. It's the abnormal people, those who are predators, who get carried away. And what carries them away is a victim lying down for it.

Ironic, eh? Exactly what the holier-than-thous force the victim to do is what causes the victim to eventually snap and go ballistic. I say let people defend themselves. Then they will put an end to abuse when it starts, long before it escalates to such a point.

We need these sanctimonious hypocrites to stop making out people to be evil if they fight back. Or run away. As in divorce or skipping school. You cannot force people to submit to abuse. That is the Sin of Sodom, otherwise known as making someone bend over for it. It violates the Laws of Nature. And common sense.

Beyond that, all we need is for the mental health profession to do its job by making sure the public IS aware of how many predators are out there. Most people have no idea that predators are not rare and that everyone runs into them. If people knew this, they'd be a good deal more careful and would take warning signs seriously.

What a better, safer world it would then be.

Narcissistic Abuse and Anger

I thought I would address the issue of anger and narcissistic abuse by re-posting the best piece of writing that I have come across on the subject. No one said it better than crusader and trail blazer for the victims of narcissistic abuse – Kathy Krajco:

He who angers you controls you.

Baloney.  That popular adage does not pass a basic nonsense check. Look, it says that good boys and girls are so numb that nobody can make them feel any emotion. It is also exactly anti-logical, blaming the victim. It pathologizes you, the victim of the narcissist, instead of the narcissist.

Stuff like that is my pet peeve. Once you start noticing how much political correctness is anti-logic, you can’t help but wonder (with Mark Twain) whether anyone examines an idea before swallowing it whole.

We should be more careful what we let into our minds than what we let into our bodies. Rot adage like that does great added harm to the victims of abuse. First the narcissist outrages you until you want to scream. Then the do-gooders come along and tell you your outrage is a sin. Now, if that ain’t the Sin of Sodom (making someone bend over for it), I don’t know what is.

But don’t take my word for it. Think for yourself.

The reasoning goes like this: So, the narcissist’s abuse is nothing to get angry about? You are to act as though it didn’t happen? In other words, you are to make nothing of it, right?

Wrong. For, if it is nothing, then you are nothing. Why? Because everybody knows that if I bash an object, that’s nothing, but if I bash a human being, that’s something. If I step on a bug, that’s nothing, but if I step on a human being, that’s something.

Yet, no matter what, the do-gooders just don’t get it – until they’re the one that gets bashed. Then they see the degrading value judgement in making nothing of it.

By telling you to make nothing of it, they are telling you that abusing you was nothing. That means you are nothing. Indeed, if your abuser bashed your automobile, they wouldn’t tell you to make nothing of it, would they? An automobile is a thing of value, so harm done to it requires reparation. But, harm done to you is nothing, eh? What a dehumanizing value judgement.

And it lands on top of the one the narcissist dumped on you. Feel better now?

First the narcissist got on your back, and now they pile on too. The holier-than-thous should be criticizing the abuser’s behaviour, not the victim’s. There’s a name for people like that, “Job’s Comforters” or “troublesome comforters.” That’s what I mean when I say people saying stuff like this do more harm than good. Pound, pound, pound, they all pound you down with that club that says Doing that to you was nothing = You are nothing. And it’s a sin for you to not cover up for the narcissist by acting like it didn’t happen.

Just what you needed to hear, right? So, whose side are they really on? Whether they realize it or not? Hard to take, isn’t it? What a heartless thing to do to a person already down.

Why can’t they just break down and say that it causes them sorrow to hear what was done to you and that it really sucked? Then all they have to do is act like you mean something to them. Why is that asking too much? Why do you get all that other crap instead?

Sometimes I think they just don’t want your sad little face to rain on their day. I think it’s for their sake that they want you to take Prozac. They just want to make it go away, to act like it didn’t happen.

If it’s a sin to even be angry about degrading treatment, then what can you do to contradict the humiliating value judgement in it? Nothing. If merely feeling an emotion is stepping off the straight-and-narrow, what could they give you permission to do? Nothing!

Ah, it seems to me that the one whose hands they should tie is your abuser, not you. This way they are accessories to mayhem.

The more you think about it, the more ridiculous the moralizing gets, doesn’t it? Parrots who get their morality from prime-time TV thus deny you the most basic human right – the right to protect yourself. Just what kind of a person would docilely accept abuse? A person who thinks anything of him or her – self? A person with any self-respect? Any dignity? Integrity? A backbone? If you are the victim of a narcissist, you know your anger is your assertion of your self-worth.

Sounders like to sound good by making other sound bad for not taking an affront to their human dignity as though it were nothing. Is that not rubbing the victim’s nose in it? That’s what it feels like. It’s no longer just the narcissist abusing you, the whole world piles on to. This is what breaks the victim’s back. Forcing him to join in a zero valuation of himself. The result of this self-betrayal is self-hatred precisely what drives so many victims of narcissists to needing psychiatric help themselves.

So if specious pontifications like the one at the top have you on a guilt trip, get off.

Feelings are not conduct. No clear-thinking person should confuse feelings with conduct. Conduct is a matter of choice. Feelings are not a matter of choice. So, the notion that feelings can be “right” or “wrong” is absurd. They just ARE, period. Indeed, if you get burnt, you should feel burnt. If you don’t, something is wrong with you.

Others should not judge your feelings. I do not understand why those who believe in God are the most prone to do this, for it out-gods their God (who, according to their scriptures, Judges conduct only). Judging feeling is in itself narcissistic behaviour. In doing so, do-gooders are serving as proxy for your abuser.

You can lie about your feelings. You can go into denial about them. And you can even repress them. But you cannot change them.

Denying or repressing feelings is a lie. Now that is a matter of choice, and lying is bad for you. It’s self-delusion. It’s a kind of self-induced hypnosis to a state of emotional numbness. Not mentally healthy.

Repressed feelings are merely submerged to the level of the subconscious. But the subconscious is just subconscious: it isn’t gone. Things buried are still active. They influence and motivate your behaviour without your knowledge. In other words, repressed feelings rule your conduct like an unseen puppet master. Thus, ironically, it is by getting you to deny your anger that the narcissist controls you.

Accept your feelings. Own them. Know them. Experience the tremendous relief and comfort in that. Then you can temper their influence on your conduct with reason and good judgement. You are responsible for your conduct not your feelings. Just because you are angry does not mean you are out of control of yourself as that stupid saying implies. It is the narcissist who has no self-control, not his or her victim.

Your anger, like any pain, will pass. If someone punches you, he is to blame for your pain, not you. By the same token, the one to blame for your anger is the narcissist, not you.