Life With An Abusive Half Of The Electorate – Part III

This week, I started going over the political and social aspects of various personality disorders, viewed through the lense of Shahida Arabi’s excellent piece,  “20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You”.

Yesterday it was “Gaslighting” – the narcissistic abuser’s way of trying to convince you not to trust your own lying perceptions, mind and memories.

Today, it’s the trait that helped put this blog on the map: Projection:

Berg’s Seventh Law Is In DSM-V.  Sort Of:   Arabi’s second point is “Projection”; she describes it:

One sure sign of toxicity is when a person is chronically unwilling to see his or her own shortcomings and uses everything in their power to avoid being held accountable for them. This is known as projection. Projection is a defense mechanism used to displace responsibility of one’s negative behavior and traits by attributing them to someone else. It ultimately acts as a digression that avoids ownership and accountability.

Sound familiar?

It’s another term for Berg’s Seventh Law;  “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”.

While we all engage in projection to some extent, according to Narcissistic Personality clinical expert Dr. Martinez-Lewi, the projections of a narcissist are often psychologically abusive.

Like, for example, fretting about an “oncoming wave of right-wing violence” (perhaps by tiki-torch-carrying cartoon figures) while ignoring or cheering on gas-mask-clad “Anti”-fa thugs destroying property and beating up peaceful event-goers.

So yeah – of course it sounds familiar:

Rather than acknowledge their own flaws, imperfections and wrongdoings, malignant narcissists and sociopaths opt to dump their own traits on their unsuspecting suspects in a way that is painful and excessively cruel. Instead of admitting that self-improvement may be in order, they would prefer that their victims take responsibility for their behavior and feel ashamed of themselves. This is a way for a narcissist to project any toxic shame they have about themselves onto another.

And yes, it has resonance in the world of Trump (or Bush, or Reagan) Derangement syndrome:

Narcissistic abusers love to play the “blameshifting game.” Objectives of the game: they win, you lose, and you or the world at large is blamed for everything that’s wrong with them. This way, you get to babysit their fragile ego while you’re thrust into a sea of self-doubt. Fun, right?

Fun – and the status quo in our society.  Especially here in MInnesota.

Solution? Don’t “project” your own sense of compassion or empathy onto a toxic person and don’t own any of the toxic person’s projections either. As manipulation expert and author Dr. George Simon (2010) notes in his book In Sheep’s Clothing, projecting our own conscience and value system onto others has the potential consequence of being met with further exploitation.

TL:dr version: don’t take their crap.

Tomorrow – “Word Sadal”

 

Life With An Abusive Half Of The Electorate – Part II: Social Gaslighting

Yesterday, I introduced you to an article.  “20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You” by Shahida Arabi.

It’s a fairly brilliant piece on coping with people with the variety of personality disorders that are slowly being recognized – sociopathy, narcissism (the two favorite pop-culture “diagnoses” of Donald Trump, among the Trump deranged – which is one reason I’m almost reticent about writing this piece; it’s become “hip” to call people you disagree with sociopaths and narcissists, lately).

But the more I read it – and the more I see the way our nation’s political conversation is going – the more I think it’s a coping mechanism for … well, the rest of us, in dealing with our nation’s socio-political and media ruling classes.

Because my case is this:  The behavior isn’t all that different.

Gaslighting:   Arabi describes “Gaslighting” as follows:

Gaslighting is a manipulative tactic that can be described in different variations of three words: “That didn’t happen,” “You imagined it,” and “Are you crazy?” Gaslighting is perhaps one of the most insidious manipulative tactics out there because it works to distort and erode your sense of reality; it eats away at your ability to trust yourself and inevitably disables you from feeling justified in calling out abuse and mistreatment.

Is a comprehensive rewrite of history – “our entire history is racist”, “Reagan didn’t really have anything to do with bringing down the USSR” – gaslighting?

Does systematically impugning the motives and morality of those who differ from the narrative – “The NRA is a terrorist organisation”, “‘Whitenesss’ is an existential problem” – qualify?

Absolutely:

When a narcissist, sociopath or psychopath gaslights you, you may be prone to gaslighting yourself as a way to reconcile the cognitive dissonance that might arise. Two conflicting beliefs battle it out: is this person right or can I trust what I experienced? A manipulative person will convince you that the former is an inevitable truth while the latter is a sign of dysfunction on your end.

“All of society’s problems trace back to systematic racism/white supremacy/male privilege” – no matter what the actual parties’ actual beliefs, stories, background and motiovations?  That certainly qualifies.

How does one resist?

In order to resist gaslighting, it’s important to ground yourself in your own reality – sometimes writing things down as they happened, telling a friend or reiterating your experience to a support network can help to counteract the gaslighting effect. The power of having a validating community is that it can redirect you from the distorted reality of a malignant person and back to your own inner guidance.

This is true.  And it’s something the gaslighters know, too – because they do their darnedest to shut down that “validating community”; it’s why Big Left is doing its best to remove conservative news and opinion from social media, to push the return of regulations like “The Fairness Doctrine”, to jam down “Net Neutrality” and the like; because like any abusive partner, they know that that support network stands between them and complete brainwashing.

Next installment:  Projection.