3 Ways a Narcopath Uses People
Until they are of no further use......
This blog is written for female survivors of male perpetrators.
There are essentially three uses a narcissistic sociopath has for the people around him.
You were used by a narcopath because you were:
Supply (you have personal, sexual or professional prowess, financial resources, practical provisions such as home car or tools, friends or networking influence that are useful to him)
Enabling (your wish to please, keep the peace, avoid conflict, profit or benefit are being used to coerce and manipulate you, vis-a-vis your generosity kindness ambition greed)
Cover (your own reputation, skill, position in society reflect favourably on the narcopath by association or can be used to deflect blame if he is ever caught)
Narcissists and sociopaths are incapable of bonding. They do not feel the pull of familial and friendship bonds in the same way that you or I do. They do not understand concepts of duty, responsibility, loyalty or honour, except in as much as those qualities reflect on their public reputation or the way they are perceived. They can only mimic these qualities if it serves their purposes.
People, to them, are highly disposable. Once a person has fulfilled their useful purpose as cover, supply or enabler they are discarded. To be fair to narcopaths everywhere, they are being joined in this behaviour the world over. It is becoming normalised in an increasingly individualistic society. It can make the real narcopaths pretty hard to pick!
Take the analogy of a small child. This child is at the very epicentre of his or her own universe. He feels entitled to have his wants met instantaneously and without compromise. A yellow one simply will not do when it is a red one he wants. And yet he will forfeit the delayed gratification of a pile of red ones if he is satisfied that a single yellow one is the best he can get NOW. It becomes his primary focus into which he pours all his energy.
He quickly learns that in order to get the yellow one now, he must manipulate everyone around him. The person who never denies him anything (enabler). The person who has the yellow one (supply). He might decide to steal it and blame the theft on someone else (cover). Or he will invite someone more 'trustworthy' to be complicit in the theft on the promise of sharing the spoils even though sharing is less than ideal (cover and supply).
Most of us grow out of this phase of life. We learn that a pile of red ones later on is worth the discipline of waiting or striving. We learn that using and discarding people who enable our journey will cause others to mistrust or disrespect us and that we will wear out our welcome over time (if we stay in the same village). Our conscience grows to prevent us from destroying, defrauding or stealing from others for our own fleeting gratification, especially if we are likely to get caught.
Narcopaths somehow manage to climb all the ladders of life by using others so skilfully that they rarely slide down any snakes. It is those around them that get the snakes on life’s game-board. Narcopaths become skilful at having their immediate needs met whilst deflecting blame, coercing others into moral compromise, disguising their selfishness and cowardice with loud proclamations of charity and false bravado.
Narcissists are consummate self-publicists. Sociopaths are consummate manipulators. And they both share with their child counterpart, narcissistic rage. This rage will be expressed by an overt toddler tantrum (violence or verbal abuse), simmering passive aggression (stonewalling) or sophisticated covert punishment of the perceived offender in the form of triangulation, gas lighting, fraud and smear campaigns.
A fear even greater than not having his own needs met is that of being uncovered. Intelligent 'successful' , or ‘high functioning’ psychopaths skilfully move through life covering their tracks to avoid discovery. Less intelligent ‘unsuccessful’ sociopaths end up in gaol. Simple.
So how do we identify these types in our personal landscape? Many theorists suggest that it is nigh on impossible until the damage has already been done. Whilst we might recognise from the periphery that a friend or work colleague is the object of clever manipulation, it is much harder to identify when we are suffering the same fate. Since central to the sociopathic scam is our own trust, respect or love.
We often cannot quite put our finger on why we remain loyal to people or why we don't trust someone. Life gets in the way of continual re-assessment of our interpersonal relationships for most of us. We just carry on regardless. Why would someone we trust lie to us? Why would someone foster antagonisms towards us from our friends, co-workers and family? Why would someone betray the trust we have placed in them after they have ‘proved’ to us that they are trustworthy?
For most of us, the idea that we are slowly being used and our lives torn apart without our awareness is preposterous. And no one is about to warn us. It's not the done thing to tell a friend her husband is having an affair, or share our suspicions that her business partner is ripping her off is it? Well, is it? Hmmmm. Another conundrum. Depends on your friends I guess…..
So narcopaths change locations, jobs, mates, friends, countries, states, towns, homes, partners with monotonous regularity. Pathological liars, they can only manage their complex personal PR for so long until the various worlds around them collide. This requires more and more thought and energy if they stay in the village. They move through life, exhausting supply after supply, and only take with them those people who are sufficiently distant and unaware as to be useful cover, and those who are sufficiently loyal ignorant and trusting as to be useful enablers from time to time. People who can give them character references, professional success, admiration and adoration because they have not been used, destroyed and discarded or because they have not uncovered the true Mr Hyde nature of charming ‘decent’ Dr Jekyll. Those most of us would call ‘distant friends’. Or family.
By now, most readers will recognise the personality I am describing. They might be as many as 1 in 25 of us, remember. And those of you who have not been sufficiently wise and aware as to avoid such toxic people might be wondering how best to now extricate them from your life. My experience, other than NO CONTACT is to place as much physical distance between yourself and this toxic person as you possibly can, as often as you possibly can. If your own professionalism, loyalty or compassion prevents you from cutting your ties with such toxicity altogether, then my advice remains the same.
Stay away from them as much as possible. Communicate as little as possible. Remove yourself from their orbit little by little, even though you know their toxicity will fall on someone else. And do whatever is necessary to distance yourself without becoming the target of his toxic rage. Move carefully and cautiously. He is likely as ruthless as he is remorseless. And he does not feel remorse. He cannot.
If you recognise yourself as supply, move immediately to protect whatever it is you have that he wants. If you can see that you are cover (your own respectability, trustworthiness, talent or competency can cover for his lack of these things), examine the complex minutiae of lies and false impressions, untangle them piece by piece and no longer associate with the parasite. If you see yourself as an enabler of such a person, then set new boundaries - rein in your generosity and kindness and don’t jump so high when he asks you to.
If you see that you have been repeatedly used to enable the use and destruction of others, then STOP! You will not be rewarded. You will not be taken along for an exciting and gratifying ride. You will be used and dumped!
If you can see that you were all these things to a narcissistic sociopath then you were the perfect target. The ideal prey. Let go of blaming yourself or absorbing the blame of others. Let go of any concern you have that by removing toxic people from your life you are behaving just like a sociopath! (Lots of victims report these concerns)
Acting out of self-protection is quite different from acting out of self-gratification and self-aggrandisement. Take your poor wounded Soul in your own loving embrace and rest your attention on the courage-to-overcome that lies buried under a pile of confusion. You can now learn and grow and become courageous and compassionate enough to ensure that you never fall prey to another predator in your life.
© Margot MacCallum
