evile

In therapeutic terms, the behavior when a narcissist’s target finally has enough and blows up is called “reactive abuse” [1]

It’s fairly common, and can lead to dangerous consequences, especially if the abusive narcissist is a woman and the target is a man—it doesn’t matter if she was slapping him around, pinching him, poking him with a stick, yelling and bitching at him all day and all night, not letting him sleep, not letting him leave the room she was in until he finally snapped and struck out at her a single time, what law enforcement, judges, and juries see is a much larger and stronger male who beat a female.

The other negative effect, even if law enforcement is not called, is that the person who engages in reactive abuse ends up feeling deeply humiliated and ashamed of themselves—the behavior they were goaded into exhibiting is not who they are, and not who they want to be. Unlike the narcissist abuser, they have the ability to self-reflect and feel guilt and shame. If they stay with the abuser, this episode of reactive abuse will be used by the narcissist to smear them to friends and family, and to make them feel guilty and ashamed every time the narcissist abuser brings it up—their one episode of lapsed judgement in being out of control will be used as justification for every single act of abuse perpetrated on them by their narcississtic abuser for the remainder of their lives, or the rest of the relationship, whichever ends first.

So, if you raged out at the narcissist in your life, congratulations, you got played. If you allow a narcissist to get your goat, you give them fuel. If you engage with them in any way, you give them fuel. You gave them whatever they demanded right up front? Great, you gave them fuel. You said no? Great, you gave them fuel. You fought with them, you gave them fuel. You finally lost your cool and screamed at them in broad daylight in front of god and everybody? You gave them fuel.

The narcissist really doesn’t care if you give them negative attention or positive attention, the point is that if you give them any attention, they take it as a win.

If they can get you to ‘go off’ in front of people, that gives them a nice story to tell the next source of fuel: that you are an abusive lunatic with anger management problems. So, congratulations, you showed the audience exactly what the narc wanted them to see.

No matter how justified the ‘empath’ may feel in unleashing their fury, the narcissist is not going to change or grow as a result of seeing how distressed and angry their target became. The narcissist is not going to become a better person. The narcissist is not going to apologize for making their target so crazy that they finally exploded. There is absolutely no point in blowing up at such a person, it only gives them fuel and makes the person who blew up feel foolish and ashamed. Not to mention giving the narcissist a nice juicy story to tell to all their friends and flying monkeys about how you ‘attacked’ them ‘for no reason’ and what a terrible person you are!

If you are with someone who regularly causes you to feel so out-of-control of your feelings or behavior so that you ‘rage intensely’ at them, please leave the relationship and avoid that person forever. They are not worth the drama, physical harm, or legal difficulties (including jail time) you may face as a result of being out of control of your emotions and behavior.

Footnotes

[1]

Reactive Abuse (The Narcissist’s Trap)

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