The People Pleaser. A good girl narcissist

funky wrote:Thanks for asking, anagram, but the honest answer is, not great. Still, I've started therapy, so fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed!

Glad to hear from you Funks.Do keep me up to speed with how things go with therapy. You have come so far. That caring pleaser can be the best part of you. Take care Maggs.

As an update to my own daughter in law. She is set to marry again. My son is philosophical. It is for the best.
I spent this morning with him. He has stumbled through the last 18 months since she left.
“ But it was all lies,” was what he said to me just this morning.
I replied, ”Yep.”
The pain of his loss is still felt because he loved her. We both did. She will always be a missing piece in his heart. He is OK with that. He has moved on from the rawness of loss to acceptance.
His D&D had been of the clandestine variety. A third party audience had provided the approval for his devaluation from adored partner to dump. He barely understood what was happening even when he heard the door slam.


Recognizing features of a narcissistic devaluation. The 3 Ds Denial, Distortion and Delusion.

Denial. No need at all for reflection or verification. There is nothing wrong with what she does. It is all justified. Her inner judge can’t be wrong. Her inner judge is better than yours. She knows your motives and intentions better than you do. No need for another perspective. The problem is you. You have to listen and learn from the master.

Distortion. She will seek to confirm her diagnosis of you by selectively reporting or exaggerating and discounting. Her miscuing appears as lies. The distortion permits the venting. The distortion reshapes reality to conform to her internal agenda. The point of evidence is to allow her devaluation of you to continue. The evidence does not lead to problem solving of issues. The evidence is most frequently incorrect. This then creates in the Non the simplistic mindset that some application of logic to highlight false believes will create the fix. It can’t because the evidence isn’t sort to form a conclusion but to confirm it.

Delusion Her perspective will be so devoid of reason that healthy debate cannot be entered. She will act strongly on her perspective just to prove how convinced she is. This makes you more likely to back off.
Her thinking has this delusional quality. There will be an irrational element. Yet it will be defended despite evidence to the contrary.


We might add another D to our list Dismiss or Dominate

This ability to dismiss was a feature of the Ns in my life. I think they were happy to not send logic into any issue they had created. They would let go of a position quite easily.
By contrast, I think WTTS or Storm showed us how deep down the burrow one can go when one’s own delusional thinking takes hold. She had put up an impenetrable barrier to any logical discussion. She dominated with her thinking rather than using dismiss. She had created her own victim mentality. She obsessively ruminated and dissected to prove her perspective right.

So if you recognize denial, distortion and delusion are present. You are on your way to the dump. There is always a need for reflection and verification. Your rightful indignation just might be wrong. How do you diffuse your bucket of resentment without D&D? Not making the list would be a start but probably not realistic. Reassessing your use of labels and stereotypes is another issue to explore. Look for the best in people. No one is perfect. Teaching yourself a healthier way to read people might be a big ask. Still it is important to try. I just hope better understanding can reduce the dysfunctional patterns.

By comparison, a Non way of reading people is likely to be open ended. Just gathering information without any labelling. You trust and then remove the trust as you note an insult returned. The level of poor behaviour has a person, ultimately, define themselves. You then still are viewing the behaviour as unacceptable and not the person per se. They just made a mistake. No pattern of discounting people can ever be noticed as it is never the person but the behaviour that is the trouble. Focusing on the behaviour lets the issue gel as a problem to address. A dump is much less likely as that only translates to moving the problem along to the next connect. A Non can have their list of issues if they are the suffer in silence type. A toxic load of resentment that has festered will find a way of disclose. It is never a good idea to bury your resentment. You need to foster good communication that permits the voicing of concerns. As you never want to start the resentment list budding in you. If you are doing that then that is your problem to address.
This defining relationships through behaviours often sees Nons stay a long time past Walkout as they remain hopeful that the mistake will be addressed. Behaviours can change through mindfulness so the Non clings to this hope. They may love the person dearly just not the behaviours.
So in essence Ns are prone to dump and Nons prone to resent in a relationship due to the way they read people.

I hope this understanding can help those cope with devaluation and possibly reduce the havoc.

Devaluation through narcissistic rage.

I was reading through the threads recently and was struck by the account of Sceneparade. SP had come completely unstuck over a girlfriend leaving for work during a messaging session. The account is one of the best retells of what narcissistic thinking can look like from the inside and the results it inflicts on all parties. (The girlfriend had gone to work in a hurry without properly logging off. She had said,’ love you,’ but that didn’t help)
A momentary hurt feeling triggered a devaluation pool that resided in the subconscious of SP. So devaluation had to proceed to permit the flow of emotion. It created some moments of narcissistic rage, resulting in an instant message of ‘I hate you.’ being sent.

I have since been in contact with Sceneparade. He has been diagnosed as borderline but has suggested he has narcissistic traits. He has consented for me to use him as an example of how he processed his narcissistic rage. I think being borderline, he has been able to supply a very good account of where his thoughts were placed. His trigger may have been abandonment rather than loss of control but his processing was still straight to his own subconscious pool of devaluation. Below is his account of what took place. Thanks Sceneparade for being so open and accepting. I really appreciate it.



1. The rage was instant, reactive, and very powerful. It was like being over taken by another person or personality that I had no control over. There was a part of me that was somewhere in the background watching/hearing and feeling what I was seeing/feeling, but was powerless to intervene. It was like another personality and no matter how much the cognitive part said this isn’t good and potentially damaging for the relationship. I couldn’t intervene. The rage went from a scale 0 to 10 lightning fast. Under such situations there is no build up, its just 0 - 10 instantly. The thought process is "destroy the person who has demeaned me/betrayed/rejected/devalued me, that I will show you I don’t care and will ditch you first" kind of thoughts. Ironically as stated before, to me she wasn’t there, I wasn’t even there. She was just a representation, I guess. I regressed.

2. The devaluation made me feel like I was reducing her stature as an important person, that she meant nothing to me. Ironically after I re-associated, she meant everything to me and I realised the damage I had done.

3.I didn’t want to control her but dismiss her as irrelevant/beneath me/and I didn’t care about her in anyway. I do though try and control my relationships, which help regulate me, and my thoughts/emotions etc.

When you hear Sceneparade’s account you can better understand how hopeless it would be to try and control this internal tsunami. The trigger to miscue the subconscious was instant and powerful. No processing was taking place in that logical part of the brain that deals with cause and effect. Perhaps knowing you have this devaluation pool inside you that can unleash the Kraken might be helpful. Healing the underlying issues of the subconscious is where therapy is generally required.

Of course people process anger differently. For the People pleaser Ns in my life a quiet burn or smouldering anger gelled to spite rather than rage. The spite had that same get even and diminish quality to it. They would plot out their revenge. I think they would take any convenient opportunity that gave them the win. They would never disclose what they were up to. I often think how tormenting their lives must have been as they were so busy trying to address their own feelings of inferiority by getting even. But perhaps that is really a Non view and they were not tormented at all.

If you have experienced spite, off load a bit and tell us what happened. Sharing helps us all work towards the answers.

I've written before about how I blamed my friends, a few years ago, spitefully and unfairly, for my problems. Well, a couple of days ago, it was bought home to me that being self aware doesn't automatically change my underlying thought patterns.

A man I'd only just met, who was out of work, was saying that he'd been told that he'd make a good journalist, because he was highly literate. He was asking people how to go about becoming a journalist, (or, someone else suggested, any career needing high literacy skills),
a subject about which I knew nothing - nevertheless, his gormlessness/'helplessness' annoyed me.

He didn't seem to have done anything to research the subject. I basically went on about the work being irregular and freelance, how I'd once been interested in it myself, (true, fleetingly), but had been told that you needed to be politically aware, (which I'm not, and I'll bet he isn't either), and willing to work unsociable hours.

As a final blow, I added that most people who were good at English ended up working in offices, and that creative people of any sort usually found it difficult to make a living from their talents.

By now, this quiet man was silent and dejected, then he left. I wouldn't have realised what a hatchet job I'd done, if my friend hadn't looked a bit unhappy and disapproving.

The would be journalist just annoyed me, because he was so gormless and naive - if I'm honest, I saw him as weak, so I think that he bought out the spiteful bully in me. Even more basic than that, his appearance annoyed me - a sort of daft, innocent expression, that might have made some people feel protective, but just made me want to give him a good shake. It was my old, 'telling someone some home truths for his own good' coming through. To be honest, I still think that my advice was sound, but I could have softened the delivery, and added some realistic encouragment.

Has anyone else felt the same way that I did, or behaved similarly?

Funky: God yes. A batch of my friends are just entering college. I've been used to people in their mid-twenties, so I expect the younger friends to have common sense. However, one went to scheduling without an appointment, without checking when placement testing was, unsure of what to bring and unable to take himself to college for the following year. His girlfriend swears that they'll just "figure it out". She stopped responding when I told her it didn't work that way.

She herself is going to school this fall to be a journalist because she wants to write stories. I went on a rant: journalism is very technical writing, and there is more to it than just writing; she would have to engage in politics even though she finds them boring; she has to be professional when she goes to work in pigtails. I did not see her doing well.


Sometimes it's better not to point out what we think, however obvious it may seem. Let them find out on their own. Little lost sheep that they are.

Mavet, I can't reply fully, as I have managed to bugger up my home computer by spilling coffee into the keyboard, then prising off a couple of keys, mucking about, and glueing the keys back on. Amazingly, this has not worked! (And these public computers often won't let me post.)

That would be journalist would laugh if he read this.

Hi Funky and Mavet,
I hear you. There is a fine line between giving a reality check and wiping out someone's hope. I don't think there is an easy answer. Funky probably did what I would think but be too chicken to do. The unemployed guy only had an idea with no direction or initiative to create action. Not a recipe for success. Still what is he to do? When you are unemployed you can have absolutely no direction and creating that out of nothing seems to be very hard.
Interesting that you saw him as weak or gormless first. I think that labeling allowed the door of your own subconscious to open. The label devalues and then he sort of deserves it for being so clueless. Using labels or fitting people to scripts seems to be a common processing style for narcissists. Once the label is in place, all reports just keep confirming the label.
Hope you can treat yourself to a new keyboard Funky.
Mavet. The younger generation are fed the dream it, do it, mantra. Hard work, talent and failure aren't part of that message. Result..Mickey mouse courses and half baked commitment equals drop out.
It goes to show how narcissistic our society is. There is a lot of denial and distortion in the message.

Hello there, Marg. I can still use my keyboard, but it's very slow, as I have to keep cutting and pasting letters.

I told my therapist about that incident with the would be journalist, and some other examples of similiar thinking, and he said that it was one of the sort of boxes that I operate within, of viewing people with contempt, but that I view myself in this way too, at times. We haven't had time to discuss it in depth, yet, but it fits in with what you've written, doesn't it?

I do think that, to an extent, everyone employs those scripts, to find evidence to confirm the analysis that they've already awarded someone, (there's a term for it, confirmation bias or something), but I think that you're saying that narcissists involve projection more, and invention too, aren't you?

(I'll have to give up there, it's taken me about an hour to type that lot!

funky wrote:I'll have to give up there, it's taken me about an hour to type that lot!

There's probably some virtual keyboard tool somewhere in your computer. PM me if you would like help with this.