Baiting - Dan Cassenti, Novelist

Concept: Baiting is when narcissists go out of their way to create drama to cause a reaction that they can later use against the victim. Common techniques include hurling unwarranted criticism, making an unfounded accusation, or deliberately triggering a victim’s past traumas. Baiting throws their opponents off their games, so they end up derailed from their usual calm and collected demeanor. Instead, they act from a place that does not include thoughtful construction of an even and beneficial response. This often leads to reacting in a way that makes them look bad, which the narcissist uses as evidence of their problems in a future shaming attempt or within a larger smear campaign.

How this leads to greater control over a victim: Baiting triggers stress and the 4-F response (i.e., fight, flight, fawn, or freeze). Any of these can help a narcissist deepen abuse over you. Fight or flight can create ammunition for psychological warfare as either can cause shaming in the future (e.g., insulting words used in a fight response or a determination of guilt and not wanting to own it in a flight response). Fawn is when the stressed person compliments the narcissist to calm them down, serving the narcissist’s superiority narrative. Freeze holds the victim in place, ensuring the abuse can continue unabated. Narcissists generally aim to create a fight reaction, so you say reactive things that they can recall and use against you, but any of the four F reactions will help them.

Examples:

A dictator screams at his generals for failures in the land war he started, demanding a justification for the results.
A father tells his daughter that he knows she’s been keeping secrets and will punish her every day until she reveals them.
A wife hurls accusations of infidelity just as he appears ready to present evidence of her affair.

Advice: Baiting is an insidious technique raft with deception that creates conflict out of thin air. It can be challenging but take a deep breath and think through your response rather than reacting immediately. This gives you time to shake yourself off from a 4-F reaction and provide a reasoned and calm response (e.g., gray rocking). The narcissist gives the impression that you need to provide them with answers immediately, but there’s no reasonable justification for this. The most beneficial responses are the ones you give time to form.

Narcissism Encyclopedia

Techniques