Just got narc’d again

[Pegs11]

I was in a relationship for nine years with a covert narcissist. Finally learned about narcissistic abuse (which hadn’t even been on my radar before as a concept) and extricated myself. Read up as much as I could about narcissism and how to spot and avoid it. Been having a great life since then. Felt like I was finally free of all that fuckery.

Today, however, I fell into a narcissistic trap set by someone I was chatting to on another online discussion platform. Just a random person. But it’s really triggered me.

It all started because I disagreed on a point they’d made.

OH BOY. That was a mistake.

He pulled out every single trick in order to bait me TO THE MAX. The goading and narrative-flipping was unprecedented, he had it all sewn up… pressed all my buttons, all at once. And I didn’t see it at first, so I went ahead and took the bait. But the worst part is, even when I did see it, I carried on arguing with him! Argh!!!! Made the idiotic mistake of trying to argue with his narc logic. Which NEVER WORKS! I ended up feeling utterly humiliated.

I feel so disgusted with him, but more to the point, so disgusted with myself for once again falling prey to such a person. It’s taken me back to a very bad place, emotionally, and I feel like I’ve disintegrated. I feel weak and pathetic and utterly powerless. It’s a horrible, horrible way to feel. It makes me feel sick knowing that there are people who get their kicks out of this.

I am trying to figure out what it is about me that makes me such easy prey... I know I tend to get very angry and defensive when I’m being belittled and patronised, and I really, really struggle to just sit there and take it - even more so after the years I spent just sitting there and taking it from my narc ex. There’s a backlog of defensiveness that’s built up. But today, it seems that defensiveness just got me into more trouble.

I don’t know how to defend myself when I feel an injustice has been done to me. I really, really struggle to just shrug and walk away, it’s too frustrating and feels too unfair.

I guess I’m hoping maybe someone has some wisdom to share, or some insight, or maybe a way I can look at this differently, to pull myself out of this horrible, thick funk I’ve now fallen into.

I attract narcs and abusers too and interestingly they have said that I lack confidence and I am a pushover . I'm not . I'm very quiet but I do push back if I think I'm being disrespected or taken advantage of . To a narc the word No like an insult and personal injury to them , as most of them have never been told no and they hate it when they get it so horribly wrong . It's best not to engage with one and grey rock .

@Beefycurrynight thank you for your reply. I’m so sorry you’ve been impacted by narcissistic abuse too.

I did eventually stop replying, because I realised it was utterly futile and only causing me more harm and him more glee. It was so hard to stop myself though, because he said the most outrageous things in such a tricksy way, it was absolutely infuriating. All the things he accused me of were exactly the things he was doing to me. It was utterly illogical, but somehow he managed to make it look logical.

For example:
He kept luring me off-topic by way of making unfounded and inflammatory accusations about me (calling me disingenuous, a psychopath, a liar, etc, none of which I am), then when I stupidly followed him down that track to defend myself against these comments, he’d immediately switch back to the main topic, making sure he led with something rational and on point… then top that off by accusing me of attempting to distract from the topic because I’m a typical narcissist whose sole aim is to deceive and manipulate people. FFS.

He asked me to disclose personal information about my mental health to prove I wasn’t a psychopath, and when I ignored his request (because I didn’t feel comfortable sharing such details with this twat, and knew he’d take whatever I said and weaponise it), he told me my evasiveness was yet more evidence that I’m a psychopath.

He used the third person to deliver insults, saying things like “to the people reading this, be on your guard against hucksters who are attempting to mislead us all” and when I referred back to them, he said “I never said those things about you” and accused me of misconstruing his words in order to distract and deceive.

ARGHHHHH!!!

Whenever I tried to defend myself he would find a way of flipping things and using things I’d said as a lever to support his accusation that I have antisocial personality disorder. His word trickery both infuriated me to the point of wanting to explode, and made it impossible to defend myself without falling into another of the four billion traps he set for me.

This went on, back and forth, for many hours… and I feel like SUCH a fool for getting swept up in it. I had thought I was wiser than this.

Today I feel really mentally and physically unwell because of the impact this has had on me. I’m a wreck. A lot of people would be able to shrug this off, a lot of people would have immediately seen he was setting traps and not replied. But I had to keep poking the hornet’s nest…

It all comes back to my fury and hurt being triggered when I’m patronised, belittled, ridiculed and not heard. Which clearly I haven’t got very far with processing.