Devalue Phase

During this stage of the "relationship", the narcissist devalues the victim and basically tries to convince the victim that abuse is not abuse, it's either a deserved punishment for something the victim has supposedly done wrong or accidental (due to a misunderstanding), or it's due to the circumstances, or it is not happening at all, it is the victim who has issues, is oversensitive or crazy (gaslighting).
It is the victim or other people who are to blame, if anything is even admitted at all.
Believing this and not seeing abuse as abuse, is what keeps the victim trapped.
Self-doubting, reasoning, hoping, suffering.

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How Does the Narcissist Devalue and Abuse?

There is a spectrum of this behavior and there are different types of narcissists and only some are actually aware of what they are doing to others and have malicious intent. Others are just doing it and don't have malicious intent, yet they are doing it and it causes harm. They will not change, but turn everything around on others, if they are told what they are doing.

Narcissistic abuse has it's own vocabulary in addition to the commonly used words, to enable a description of the abuse. Sometimes the commonly used words or phrases are describing a part of the narcissists behaviour.

e.g. a narcissist could also be described with these terms: manipulator, con artist, social chameleon, deceiver, victim player. These words are partly describing a narcissist.

e.g. "commitment phobic" is describing someone who won't commit to a relationship which is longterm and monogamous. This is describing a part of the narcissists behaviour.


Some of the words used to describe narcissistic abuse are:

gas lighting,  creating self doubt or crazy making or brainwashing
plausible deniability,  reality twisting
narcissistic abusive cycle, sweet and mean treatment or ups and downs or hot and cold treatment
trauma bond, Stockholm Syndrome
emotional addiction
spoon-feeding, giving someone just enough of a dose of "love"/attention/hope to keep them around or stringing someone along or power game
dog-whistling,  picking on someone unobserved by others, so that only the abused understands the attack
cognitive dissonance, holding on to conflicting beliefs about the same person in your head
triangulating, or making someone feel jealous or making someone feel second best/unimportant/  insignificant/unworthy or putting someone on the back bench
scapegoating, making someone else carry your emotional baggage for you                           Projective identification,  splitting, scapegoating
projection, "seeing" your own flaws or faults in someone else
narcissistic supply, someone elses emotions that fill a void inside the narcissist and give the narcissist a feeling of power and significance
positive narcissistic supply, attention, admiration etc.
negatvie narcissistic supply, devastation, fear etc.
slander, lying about someone else to ruin their connections with other people

manipulation, blaming, shaming, opening up old traumas

Narcissistic abuse is essentially very much about scapegoating someone else into carrying the narcissists emotional baggage for them. Putting their own bad feelings INTO someone else. Making someone else actually feel their own bad feelings. Putting someone else lower than them, so they can feel a little better. It's the narcissists way of dealing with trauma. It's the "easy way out".

A Narcissist Wants You to Live Their Childhood Trauma for Them

From Surviving to Thriving!! - How Narcissists REALLY feel about themselves

A narcissist wants to give all their own negative feelings or flaws to someone else. This video explains how a narcissists set up works.

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Turning everything round on the victim

The narcissist turns everything around on the other person and never takes responsibility for his actions. He focuses on the victims reaction to abuse and blames the victim for it. It puts the victim on the defensive and is a distraction from the abuse. He can then slander the victim to the surrounding people and show "proof" of his slander. "See what I mean, look at this or that behavior from her/him". It also gives the narcissist negative supply, if the victim gets caught up in defending herself.
The narcissist can never be the one who is in the wrong. He will always turn everything onto the other person. He will not honestly apologize for anything he has done, but might do so to manipulate.

Inner integration - Responding vs. Reacting (Avoid the Narcissists Trap and Learn a Valuable Life Skill

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This video is giving the antidote to very many of the abusers manipulations, since the manipulations are all about getting the target to be emotional or emotionally off balance.

Inner Integration

 From Surviving to Thriving!! - How a narcissist uses DARVO and how to Protect yourself 

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Taking narcissistic supply from the victim by controlling the victims feelings 

This means making the victim feel good feelings or bad feelings, the more intense the better. The good feelings, like admiration and praise are positive narcissistic supply, bad feeling are negative narcissistic supply.

The narcissist wants to control the victims feelings.

Slander

The slander of the target starts in the devalue phase. The narcissist propagandizes himself and collects a small group of people around him, who are brainwashed into thinking he/she is great, good, kind, etc. While he cultivates this little cult around himself, he also isolates the target from his/her support network through slander on the one hand, by placing certain ideas into the heads of the people who are around the target and through brainwashing the victim on the other hand.

The slander of the victim, is damage control, so that the narcissist can maintain his positive public image (and of course his false grandiose self image). This is essential for the narcissist (and they have neither caring, nor conscience that should stop them from doing this), because they need to be able to obtain future narcissistic supply and this is hard to do if the surroundings have been warned by previous victims. The victim needs to appear as the crazy, unstable one and since they have upset the victim with their abuse, they then turn around and focus on the victims response to the abuse and present the victim as the one who has something wrong with them. The only thing wrong with the victim, is the narcissist !!

Narcissists love to pretend to be the victim, while villainizing the true victim.

Example from "Pride and Prejudice" of a narcissist flattering and slandering:

Wickham, the narcissist, flattering and slandering

Darcy, telling the truth.

Plausible deniability - Feeling like the teacher Bernie ?

The Incredibles - At the Principal's office. This is humorous example of plausible deniability.

The Incredibles are a superhero family and have super powers that they must hide. Dash is an extremely fast runner but has to conceal this from others.

Similarly, the narcissist hides his narcissism behind a good as gold public image, a facade, so that only the target or those closest to him know this hidden side of him.

The narcissist does things to get emotions out of the target (good or bad).
The more intense these emotions are, the better.

Dash is getting an emotional reaction out of the teacher and then hiding behind plausible deniability. He is denying his actions and the more the teacher gets emotional and upset, the more the teacher looks like he's the crazy one.

Plausible deniability can be very frustrating. Worse then that, it can be crazy making and confusing, if even the victim is not quite sure if they are being abused or not !  If the victim is made to believe that s/he has issues and it is the victims issues that are the problem.

It is done to throw the victim or other people who could support the victim off the narcissists track and to turn everything around on the victim and make the victim look and feel like the crazy one.

Gas lighting

Plausible deniability is a kind of gas lighting, where the narcissist hides behind plausible explanations, which make the abuse appear as if it is not really abuse.

For example:

you misunderstood me, you're oversensitive, it never happened, you're crazy, you're the one hurting me, why are you so aggressive?, look at how upset you are this really isn't normal, you have issues etc. 

These are all statements which are made to deny the abuse plausibly. The dangerous thing about the abuser hiding the abuse behind these kind of statements is, that the victim may or may not become aware that these statements made by the abuser are cover ups for emotionally abusive behaviour.

This kind of gaslighting can interfere with the victims perception of normal people, who are being genuine and who aren't hiding abuse behind a statement like: I think we just had a misunderstanding.

Conversely the victim can be perceived by other people, as if the victim is reacting over the top and being unfair to the abuser, because people may only witness one abusive incident hidden behind plausible deniability and not understand that these things are happening consistently.

Most people would not do what the narcissist does, so their denial can seem very plausible. They set up situations, where they can retreat into plausible deniability, if questioned or confronted.

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Dissociating      

The Incredibles - Family dinner scene 

Mr. Incredible is dissociating in this scene. Dissociating is one of the coping mechanisms for dealing with abuse. It means to be physically present, but far away in your mind.

Projection

In my opinion the "projective identification" and the victims "introjective identification" are the absolute worst part of narcissistic abuse. Here is where the narcissist plants his own bad feelings into the victim. His fears, his hurt and bruised feelings, his shame, bad feelings about certain past events and even his emotional addictions. All the feelings he doesn't want to own, his unaccepted flaws and characteristics get projected outward and INTO the victim.
A reason he does this is because he wants someone else to feel worse than he is feeling, to make himself feel a little better. To put someone beneath him, to raise himself up.

If the narcissist is a parent, the scape goat child is the child who has to endure all of this. The child is made to feel and own these projected things. The child is then slandered to all who will listen. "The poor narcissistic parent is suffering with this unstable, stubborn, difficult (or any other flaw) child."

These videos give some very profound insights about the way a narcissist projects INTO a target. This is more than the common projection, where a person sees good or bad things in another person, that aren't really there, but that are actually there in the observing person. This goes a step further. Here the narcissist is actually literally putting those projected feelings (his own bad feelings), or his flaws inside the target and making the target actually feel these feelings and own them as if they were hers/his and then behave as if they were hers/his. Feeling them exactly the same way a target would normally feel her own feelings, but these are not her own, these are the narcissists feelings (!) which the narcissist wants the target to feel and then to behave accordingly.
"You are the one with these flaws"
If the narcissist feels e.g.weak or insignificant, he can't own those feelings, someone else must be weaker and more insignificant, so that he is not.

Sam Vaknin, Projective identification and victims introjective identification

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Golden Child and Scapegoat Black Sheep: Narcissistic Parent's Projected Splitting

Emotional addiction

Another slightly different example of projecting something INTO a target is the projection of his own emotional addiction. His own addiction is to narcissistic supply. The narcissist creates an emotional addiction in the victim to the intense emotional highs which he manufactures for the victim. Those highs of the victim and the praise and attention from the victim give him positive supply. These highs create an emotional addiction in the victim, who then becomes emotionally addicted to the narcissist. The emotional addiction is very real and even physical (hormones). This addiction is used against the victim, to make the victim put up with the devalue and abuse. It is used as a way to control the victim, who is the source of the narcissistic supply, to which the narcissist is addicted.

The relationship starts off with a big emotional high for the victim. The highs after that are dosed (spoon-feeding) and are given between the lows of abuse. The victim is now treated like a drug addict getting his/her fix and the narcissist is in control of the victims emotional state.

Inner Integration - Why Does Narcissistic Abuse Get Worse?

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Opening up old traumas 

This gives the narcissist control over the victims emotional state and also gives him negative supply, allowing him to feed off the victims negative emotions.
If it makes the victim believe that it is his/her old issues which are the problem (more self doubt), then the victim will not leave, but instead look for the problem in herself rather than in the narcissist. Opening up old wounds or traumas gives the narcissist power and control over the victims emotional state. By opening up old wounds, the narcissist can get the victim to do what the narcissist wants, because the victim wants to avoid the pain this causes. ("Stop, stop. I'll do what you want...") It's a power and control thing and bullying and a source of negative supply. And it helps keep the victim emotional, confused and disoriented, rather than rational and calm. Which makes is less likely that she will be able to leave the abusive relationship. It also assists in the slander. "See, she is the one with issues"

Self doubt 

Inner integration - Defence Against The Narcissist

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The longer the victim remains in the relationship with a narcissist the more self doubt is created in the victim. The victim would run for the hills if it wasn't for the self doubt and the doubt of her perceptions of what is going on. The surroundings lack of understanding of narcissistic abuse works against her and in the narcissists favour. The victim was likely raised by a narcissist and thus primed for narcissistic abuse.

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Isolating the victim from her supporters (reality twisting and brainwashing)

In this video HG Tudor gives a sample of what reality twisting looks like. In this case it's purpose is to isolate the victim from those of her friends who can see that something is not right and are trying to warn her and help her to get out of the abusive relationship.

HG Tudor, Knowing the Narcissist - "Just leave him"

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Sweet and mean

Inner Integration - The Narcissistic Abuse cycle: How Narcissists & Psychopaths behave

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The sweet and mean treatment means going back and forth between "love" and abuse, highs and lows, ups and downs, idealization and devaluation.

This causes a lot of pain to the victim.

The ups and downs are happening inside the victim and aren't necessarily visible to the outside observer, unless the victim is crying every few days and very happy on the in between days.

That is definitely a red flag to watch out for, and can be a sign that someone is being narcissistically abused.

In addition to these up an down phases, there are the quick jabs and nasty put downs, which become more and more frequent in the devalue phase.

It can be like the classic abusive cycle (by 1979 Lenore E. Walker): tension building, incident, reconciliation, calm and repeat of cycle.

Or it can be random sweet and mean treatment, dependent on the narcissist perceiving how much the victim can/will take and when he needs to switch back to the sweet, to keep the victim from leaving. (spoon-feeding the sweet).

The mean can be hidden, behind supposed "circumstantial pressure" or other cover ups, which makes the abuse less obvious and more covert.

Dana Morningstar, Thrive after Abuse, mentions as one of the red flags in her red flag series on YouTube, that narcissists quite often accuse their former victims of being manic depressive. This is interesting, because the narcissist is causing an emotional roller coaster for the victim. HE is causing emotional ups and downs and then turning it around on the victim and claiming the victim is manic depressive. While manic depression exists and is a real illness, reacting to the sweet and mean treatment and going up and down emotionally because of the sweet and mean treatment, is NOT manic depression.

The emotional roller coaster

This video describes the emotional ups and downs during narcissistic abuse.

HG Tudor, Knowing the Narcissist

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Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is where a person has to hold two conflicting images of the same person in their mind. It's crazy making. Two opposites that are mutually exclusive, yet they are both there, but they can't be. Their good and their bad side can't both be there, but they are.

The key is, that the love they pretended to have in the beginning of the idealization phase was not real love, it was a need for positive narcissistic supply.

There can be this very strong bond to the abuser. The abuser was manufacturing intense emotional highs for the target, and was totally focused on doing this. But this was not an expression of the abusers intense love, but of the abusers need for narcissistic supply.

They can also draw negative supply from a target to make themselves feel good, so that is what they do, when the target is hooked in, emotionally addicted and when the positive supply is not deemed to be enough anymore by the narcissist.

The victim sees, that someone who they have an intense emotional bond to, is hurting them sometimes. This is a contradiction and not usually possible and causes cognitive dissonance.

"Your loving and wonderful AND your mean and cruel."

Beautiful Monster Ne-Yo

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Assc Direct - The Process Of Manipulation From A Narcissist

Short summary of the main points of this video:

Step 1: trust, illusion (=anestesia, artificial feelings)
Step 2: surgery, dissecting, getting deep into your psyche, information gathering process, looking for weakness
Step 3: experiment: pulling on strings, seeing how well it all works
Step 4: now, they know it works, they’ve attached all the strings, now you’re a puppet

Objective: To secure narc supply and destroy it, once they are done with it.
Reason: jealousy, envy, rage built up in them.

"There is no way they want to let the victim walk away proud, confident and happy. They have to be the cause that you are so messed up mentally, confused and distorted that you cannot move on without them. They create continuous confusion and self doubt, so that the only thing you can think about, is them and what they did to you. It's a false build up, with an eventual destruction that you get from a narcissist."(end quote)

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10 common emotions a victim feels after narcissistic abuse

Dana, Thrive after Abuse

Abusive cycle 

This is a link to Dana's web page: Thrive after abuse. 

The abusive cycle of a narcissistic relationship.

http://www.thriveafterabuse.com/cycle-of-a-narcissistic-relationship/