When you have a narcissist in your life, it can be dizzying. You often feel like you are in an alternate universe where you and the narcissist have two different life experiences and engage in two different conversations. You start to doubt your own reality even though you know what is true. Logically, you know what the narcissist is saying doesn’t make sense; but you are still confused, and the emotions of the situation override your logic. How is it possible that two people who have similar experiences can remember things so differently? Today, I will discuss how narcissists distort the past to make you feel like the crazy one.
As I discuss narcissists, remember this can be anyone with narcissistic traits in your life, including a partner, parent, child, friend, or co-worker. A narcissist is a narcissist regardless of the type of relationship they are in.
The narcissist needs to control everything around them to feel in control of a life they often feel out of control in. They must carefully control what happens to protect against narcissistic injury which comes from feelings of shame. Then, combine this with their lack of empathy and inability to take the perspective of others, and everything becomes about the narcissist and from their own perspective. They can’t consider how their actions affect others and they also can’t modify their own thoughts and feelings based on how someone else might be feeling. The narcissist is self-focused, and everything is about them.
The narcissist keeps a tight control on others’ reality through the use of gaslighting. Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse in which someone tries to convince you that reality is not how you perceive it. This is a method of control and manipulation used by an abuser to gain control over someone. Gaslighting develops slowly, over time, and can often be hard to spot. The abuser begins small in the statements they make, and you oftentimes don’t even notice what is happening.
The gaslighting is meant for you to feel uncertain about your own memories. When the narcissist gaslights, they distort the past. They tell you things didn’t happen as you remember, or maybe didn’t happen at all. They convince you that your own memory is somehow false or flawed. When we feel confused in a situation, we become more focused on that confusion, and this is exactly what the narcissist wants. They want you to be focused on yourself and whether you believe you are going crazy. The more you are focused on yourself, the less you are focused on the narcissist.
The narcissist is an expert at distorting your reality and the more situations they can make you feel crazy in, the more you consider the possibility that you are actually going crazy. Even if you did try to discuss your concerns with the narcissist, they will turn that conversation on you and add-in information which further distorts your reality. The narcissist needs others to feel uncertain in their life so that they can feel more certain in their own.
Gaslighting is a favorite tactic of the narcissist because it makes people feel like they don’t know what is real and what isn’t. And when you are being gaslit, you find yourself defending yourself against the ridiculous accusations being made against you. The focus becomes you defending yourself and not on the actual issues which do exist. This helps the narcissist keep the attention somewhere other than them. And the gaslighting is so effective because even if you have a valid argument in your own defense, the narcissist uses word salad and other manipulation strategies to keep you confused.
The narcissist must distort the past when it doesn’t work in their favor. This is how they can protect against narcissistic injury and then narcissistic collapse. The narcissist carefully controlling their reality is a defense mechanism which helps them keep their narcissistic supply fully inflated. The narcissist will always think of themselves before you and if they need to create a reality which protects them, they will do that even if it destroys you.