It's time for another ask me anything video.
Today, at QueenBeeing.com, we're going to be answering a question from a survivor who asked me to discuss the neediness that I mentioned in a previous video
on aging narcissists.
So that's exactly what we're talking about today at QueenBeeing.com - Aging Narcissists and Their Neediness,
so let's get started. (Closed captioning provided by Athena Moberg and
CPTSDfoundation.org). My name is Angie atkinson and on this channel,
I offer free, daily video coaching to help you discover, understand and overcome
narcissistic abuse and toxic relationships. I like to call it toxic relationship rehab. So that sounds good to you,
hit that subscribe button and let's get going. Needy narcissism is something that we see in probably many narcissists, right?,
but we see it frequently in aging narcissists for obvious reasons - we all need more help as we get older,
but in this case we're talking about the need for
narcissistic supply, which in case you weren't aware is a Freudian term that basically defines a mechanism in a person who is requiring
you know, the constant attention, the admiration,
thr affirmation, all of that stuff.
They need attention from other people in order to secure their own little ego, because they tend to have very low self-esteem,
because as they age their self-esteem may wane and they may not have had a lot of self esteem
to begin with. The concept has been described by
psychologist Otto Fenichel in 1938,
he
introduced this theory to describe a kind of admiration that was
used as almost a de sustenance of food from their environment or a person and that it was necessary for their self-esteem.
Now this was built on a Freudian concept as I mentioned - of
narcissistic satisfaction as well as on the work of Psychoanalyst Karl Abraham. Fenichel believed that narcissistic
need came from their early childhood in which children were able to
maintain a sense of equilibrium based on the sort of support of their parents. Fenichel of course, identified 2 different strategies
that would be used for obtaining this supply, including aggression and ingratiation. Of course, these are e completely different approaches,
but could later develop into either sadistic or submissive behaviors in adulthood. Now interestingly enough,
Psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg,
actually considered a malignant assist to be primarily
identified by the fact that they had no regard for other people unless they could be idealized sources of
narcissistic supply. Now Heinz Kohut, another psychologist said he saw those people with NPD as
disintegrating mentally if they were cut off from their source of narcissistic supply which is basically the collapsed narcissist described.
What's interesting is that all of these points lead to the conclusion that people providing supply are treated like an extension of the narcissist,
so no personal boundaries are ever recognized for those people. In fact, many times, the narcissist doesn't even really see them as
individual people, they see them as simply a piece of themselves.
The fact is there are certain qualities that a narcissist looks for in a victim. They choose victims and then they go on
to charm them, seduce them,
push them, mold them, put them into their little victim box, right?,
Narcissist, because they're not capable of normal human love. They love people for what they do for them, as opposed to who they are.
One of the things that they do is they feel very angry and frustrated
at people who enjoy life, because they, even though they seem to enjoy their lives generally don't.
Of course, I'm not talking about specifically material things,
a lot of narcissists have plenty of material things not all of them,
but a lot of them do I'm talking about deeper things, like empathy, like sensitivity, like goals,
creativity, different things that you want to do with your life, passion.
A lot of the time narcissist will go after someone who have a strong passion or a strong fire inside of them,
but as we all know narcissus have a way of switching from the amazing, light seeming, fun to be around
person that we first met to becoming
incredibly critical, very dismissive of people they claimed to love and of course this just feeds our
confusion and our self-doubt, right?.
Narcissistic supply keeps the narcissist from sort of falling apart and revealing their true self to themselves and or the world around them.
The overly needy behavior of the aging narcissist will make us feel overwhelmed and exhausted by them, just to be around them is
incredibly overwhelming. Look everybody has a little bit of selfishness, okay, that's how we get up out of bed in the morning,
it's narcissism. Narcissism at its purest level is simply
self-interest and we all have a little bit of that, but it's a matter of how much we have, how little we have and in
which areas that this falls. Here are some of the ways that
narcissists as they age become increasingly needy, take a look.
Narcissist use us like a drug and narcissist have this way of sucking the life from you,
don't they?. For example, maybe you've experienced a situation where the narcissisttries to argue with you when you don't feel like arguing,
repeatedly you foil them, again and again and again, finally you probably give up and kind of retreat off into blessed
dissociation, where you're just not really even there anymore.
Of course before long the narcissist pops back in, back out of the room and each time they pop in, they go pick, pick, pick,
pick and you know they're trying to pick a fight,
they're trying to keep going with their negativity.
If you've been doing your research,
you'll know that if you don't respond to them and you use the grey rock method, very often the narcissist
doesn't really know how to handle that, so maybe the narcissist pretends to be light and breezy and everything's fine
and as this is going on, of course, you're feeling this bile kind of building up under the surface, right?.
You practically feel, physically feel the energy as they walk into the room,
feels large and heavy and prickly, it hurts a little bit, with you, an empath, so intense you can almost feel them buzzing with
vindictive venom prepared to strike out at you immediately for any infraction real or
perceived. As they grow tired of being ignored, they need to be the center of attention,
so they go on about the business of blatantly and
shamelessly placing the blame for anything wrong in their lives on you, as their source of primary supply. They call you lazy,
they call you stupid, they call you arrogant, they call you whatever it isthat will hurt you the most.
Definitely not good enough or whatever their version of that is, they pull trigger off your trigger.
Literally anything they can do to get your attention to start the drama up again. Before you know it they're unleashing their
narcissistic rage all over you and they're relieved so suddenly, they're sleeping like a baby
and here you are not knowing which end is up.
So the first thing you can do of course is go rock. If you're still dealing with the
narcissist, whether it's because you're living with them or you're engaged with them in some way, because you have children or some legal issue where
you have to be connected to them, the grey rock method is your best bet. It's difficult.
It can be a little painful for you,
but eventually it causes a narcissist to try a different tactic
to get your attention. The basic way to do the grey rock method is to just not give the
narcissist any emotional reaction at all when they try to attack you or get close to you in any way.
This also works if they're trying to love bomb you or getting close to you,just keep it all business all the time,
so keep that in mind. If you are being gaslighted, if the narcissist is treating you terribly in the relationship,
you simply don't react to them. Other things
you can try; number one, don't give them any attention because they love attention and so whenever they're doing anything hurtful or
disrespectful to you, no attention at all. On the flip side of that, if you're still dealing with the narcissist, you can give them more
attention and positive feedback when they act respectively to you. Number 2; Move on.
Don't hold on to the narcissist, don't expect the narcissistic change, because they won't change, so move on.
Go no contact or low contact as soon as possible, that's gonna be the thing
that's gonna really keep you sane in all of this. It's either actually goin no contact or going low contact or at least
preparing to go no contact. Go to the QueenBeeing.com/Plan and check out my downloads on that page,
they'll be really helpful for you if you're planning your escape.
The next thing you want to do is educate
yourself on narcissistic relationships and narcissistic personality disorder and you're doing that right now by watching this video.
I've also got lots of other resources for you here on this channel as well as at QueenBeeing.com,
BooksAngiewrote.com and Narcissisticabuserecovery.online to name a few. Join SPAN, get some support from fellow
survivors, people who are in various stages of recovery. QueenBeeing.com/SPAN. SAPN stands for, Support for People Affected by Narcissism in
relationships and it is for the survivors not the narcissist, just so you know.
So go to QueenBeeing.com/SPAN, S P A N and join that group, that will also help you to be stronger and more
focused on what you want and not what the narcissist wants. If you focus on healing yourself,
you're gonna be much more likely to be shutting down that abuse in the process, because
narcissists, they don't want you to be happy, they don't want you to be healthy, and they certainly don't want you to be confident.
They work really hard to tear you down,
so if you start building those things within yourself, you will instantly become less attractive to the narcissist.
So just in case that wasn't clear, the only real way to
completely eliminate a narcissist
manipulation, gaslighting and abuse is to go completely no contact, refuse to engage with them on any level or to put it more simply,
the best way, probably the only way to completely, effectively deal with a narcissist is to not deal with a narcissist at all.
Unfortunately, it's not always that easy, so that's why I share the other tips with you that I shared today. Why does this happen?.
Why is it so difficult to deal with a narcissistic gaslighting?.
Why are they so manipulative and why is it so hard for us to get past it?.
Why do we feel so encumbered by it? And so, so stifled by their manipulation?.
I don't know about you, but very often for me,
I will find myself feeling heavy stress when I'm in the presence of a narcissist,
especially one of his angry or upset with me.
That's just one of the reasons why it's really the only solution to completely liberating yourself from a narcissist is to go no
contact. We also have to talk about the fact that
narcissists, we're sort of addicted to them and they're sort of addicted to us. They feed on our feelings,
they grow stronger when they are able to elicit our feelings from us and of course to a
narcissist, the only thing that ever really matters is their own feeling, iftheir own self-gratification,
their own desire is being met, they don't care if your desires are not met and if they happen to get met, great,
but in some cases, if they know your desires are being met, they will actively work against them.
If you're talking about a family member, a spouse, a co-worker, a friend, another type of romantic
partner, you're going to deal with similar issues, the narcissist will try to dominate you, tear you down emotionally and make you their proverbial ...
they will, I'm not kidding. You are, to a true narcissist nothing more than a source of narcissistic supply. You provide them with admiration, you
provide them with praise, Idolation,
acceptance, pedestial pushing; the thing is they need those things in order to make their false self seem more real to themselves,
they have to sort of
artificially inflate their egos by using your emotions and feelings and if that requires that they tear you down, well
then they'll do it.
If you're not properly, you know pumping up the ego with... I don't know what that was,
if you're not properly pumping up the ego with it, you know
the narcissist will do whatever is necessary to elicit more emotion from you, very often beginning with narcissistic rage or narcissistic injury
and if you're anything like me that stuff is exhausting to you. It feels overwhelming
and upsetting and even if you try to sue them and keep him calm like they want you to, sometimes just makes them more upset.
Intermittent reinforcement keeps us hooked,
because sometimes when we do what they want, we get what we want. We get that love or
concern or whatever it is that we're seeking from the narcissist, acceptance. We find that okay, I can actually make this person happy today.
yay,
because
every now and then they'll be nice to us, every now and then they'll give us a little taste of that person we signed up
for in the first place and that's why we stay hooked, at least part of the reason, there's a much bigger reason than that,
but we'll get to that another day, but the intermittent reinforcement is how they hook us and keep us hooked.
On our end, we provide them the type of supply that they need to create this false image of themselves and to maintain it,
so they feel addicted to us as well,
so it's really a very
toxic situation for us, because of the fact that we feel addicted and I think that's part of the reason that
narcissists end up coming back into our lives even after we've left, because they
need a little fix of our supply even if they've moved on to a new supply,
they may not have properly trained that person yet
or they may not just be quite as good as we are at providing supply,
so the narcissist will go back to the old supply; therefore
they hoover, maneuver, which many of us experience during Valentine's Day, typically. So you can kind of look at
narcissists in this case like a recovering addict, like an addict who can function sort of like a normal person during active addiction,
but then in suberierity, they completely fall apart, but they can do just fine,
I think if they'll just go a hit of their preferred drug. Narcissists are just like that with narcissistic supply.
That's why it's so hard and so important for us to go no-contact because by allowing them to use us as a drug, we
continue to feed their addiction and
basically allow their false personality to continue to exist.Long story short, a needy type narcissist basically
uses people. Everyone in their life is someone who can do something for them. They are users.
They know how to
exploit people. They know how to manipulate people to get what they want and the older they get, their methods might change.
So a woman who was previously really
you know focused on the way she looked and used her sexuality to get what she wants,
well now she might try to cry or act pathetic to get what she wants. Depending on who she is,
she might even still try to use her sexuality. Long story short, the aging narcissist is excessively needy.
So did you identify with any of that?.
This brings me to the question of the day.
And the question of the day is; Do you know an aging narcissist who is emotionally or physically needy and have you found yourself
feeling overwhelmed by them before and if so, how did you deal or how are you handling it?.
Share thoughts, share your ideas, share your experiences in the comments section below and let's talk about it.
I've been doing a thing in my videos where I'm sharing a screen grab of my subscribers in fast motion
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