Concept: Narcissists encourage their potential victims to open up to them and reveal their deepest secrets, which they will remember and later use against the victims to support their goals [see Motivations]. When recovering victims go through a discovery process, they often see this pattern and clamp down on any information sharing to avoid perpetuating the process with new information.

How this helps, and the opposite hurts: Withholding information keeps narcissists from raising actual events of personal significance to the recovering victim and using the disclosures against the recovering victim. Since narcissists can’t stop the abuse and recycling old information loses potency with each re-use, they begin to make up information and thus provide evidence of how they’re out of touch with reality. Providing information perpetuates abuse and eliminates the opportunity to push along the discovery process.

Examples:

1. Chuck paused before telling Theresa about running into his friend Jared. Not sure how she could use it against him, he still decides against it because the previous week, he saw a friend, and it started a surprise argument.
2. “I don’t have any preferences for our relationship”
3. “My childhood was boring. I’ll spare you the details.

Advice: Even the most innocuous information may seem like no problem, but narcissists can twist any information into a pretzel to serve their false narratives. Keep any unnecessary information from a narcissist, then observe their pressures to get you to share information or use false accusations.

Home | Rights Theory | Love | Toxic Personalities | Fiction | Charlton’s Ground | About Me

Narcissism Encyclopedia

Red Flags | Motivations | Fears | Techniques | Inabilities | Stages | Enabling

Defenses Against

Assertiveness | Assigning responsibility | Boundary Setting | Gray Rocking | Happiness Focus | Hero’s Journey | Mind Eviction | No Contact | Research | Selective Advice Seeking | Self-Care | Self-Realization | Testing | Therapy