To a narcissist, you are a source of supply. Because the narcissist supply is always running out, and they can’t risk being completely empty on supply, they constantly are looking for ways to refill their supply. You are an easy source of supply for the narcissist because there is easy access, and they already know the best way to use you to boost their supply. The narcissist is always looking out for themselves and how they can relieve their own uncomfortable feelings, even if that is at the expense of everyone else. The narcissist will choose to use others if it will somehow benefit them. How does a narcissist use you, to feel better about themselves?
When you think about how a narcissist uses you, you want to remember the narcissist has a fragile ego and low self-esteem. Combine this with their unstable sense of self, and they are incapable of managing life’s stressors on their own. They don’t have the coping tools to be able to manage in a world which is always changing.
They carefully craft their world and design a reality which best suits them. They must control everything around them to feel in control. Due to their unstable senses of self, they are at the mercy of the ever-changing world but don’t know how to manage when changes do happen. Each new obstacle they encounter, and didn’t prepare for, places them at risk of quickly losing their supply. They must protect against the loss of their supply at all costs to prevent narcissist collapse.
The narcissist protects against loss of supply by using you. They can use you in seemingly positive ways, or blatantly negative ways. Either way, the narcissist has used you to feel better about themselves and to protect against loss of their narcissist supply.
The narcissist will use you in a seemingly positive way through love bombing. Love bombing is when the narcissist will shower you with kind words or gifts. They want to make you feel special and as if you are the most important person in their life. You feel like the narcissist loves you and wants to be with you in the relationship. That sounds great, right? The problem is, love bombing is a manipulation tactic used by the narcissist. The love bombing is meant to create a dependence on the narcissist and to also lower your defenses. When someone treats us well, we want to believe they value our time and like being with us, so we think positive thoughts about them. With the narcissist, however, they don’t have any different thoughts about you as a person when they are love bombing you. You are simply seen as an object for them to manipulate to feel better about themselves. If the narcissist is love bombing, that likely means they need something from you.
The narcissist will also use you as a source of supply through the narcissist punishment tactics of rage and silent treatment. Those might look like two different things on the surface, but at the deeper level, they are the same. Both rage and silent treatment are used by the narcissist to shut down communication with you. Both punishment tactics are meant to control the other person. When the narcissist rages, you don’t have a chance to defend yourself, or speak at all, because they are screaming at you. With the silent treatment, you similarly don’t have a chance to be heard and explain yourself because the narcissist shuts down all communication by not engaging in any conversation with you. You can talk and explain yourself, but they provide no communication in return and remain silent.
The narcissist has many ways in which they control, and on the surface they may appear to be very different. Sometimes they appear loving and caring, other times they are yelling and screaming, and there are also times in which they say nothing at all. While these approaches seem different, they are all similar in that they are meant to control and manipulate you. The narcissist will use the control tactic they have decided will best benefit them in the moment. This can’t be predicted by you, and you have no way of knowing what method the narcissist will use today. They choose the tactic that they feel will best boost their narcissistic supply.
While a narcissist is unpredictable most of the time, they are also predictable in their need for intense control of everything and everything around them. If you remember that the narcissist acts to meet their own internal needs, you can keep a healthy distance from the narcissist and protect yourself from abuse by the narcissist, as well as protect yourself from being a source of supply that boosts their ego, which makes it easier for them to abuse you in the future.