This is understanding today's narcissist.

Brought to you in part by psychcentral.com.

And now here's your host, Christine Hammond.

Welcome back to our narcissistic abuse tactics.

And so today is part four of what we're going to call emotional abuse.

This is one of those areas that can be very difficult to understand because emotional abuse, again, is not something that you see.

It's not like you're getting physically hit by someone.

What it is is it's an emotion that's taken and used against you.

So if you are feeling anxious, for example,

the anxiety is used against you at any moment in order to manipulate you and control you

into doing something you don't want to do. So I'll give you this example. The conversation starts

with a narcissist having some starts with some good intentions over some issue that needs to be addressed.

So like, for instance, they want to talk to you about how the kitchen isn't being clean the way that they want it.

Done.

So knowing the propensity of overreaction um you like are very

nice to them you're very kind and listening to what they have to say and what their concerns are

at first the narcissist takes everything you say in stride so then you relax you kind of let your guard

down and then all of a sudden happens

in insignificant comment just like maybe you glanced away or you wouldn't fully paying attention to

them all of a sudden they say you're ignoring me you're not paying attention to me and they accuse you

of things that are so far out of what's actually happening. You become very emotional

and then you start to react. Your spouse in turn, your the narcissistic spouse in turn,

...