Coping Styles: Narcissist Abuses "Loved" Ones Despite Abandonment Anxiety

Everything You Need to Know about Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Abuse - click on this link: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq...

The narcissist abuses his intimate partners, significant others, and nearest and dearest because it helps him to regulate his excruciating abandonment anxiety in 4 ways:

(1) Devaluing others restores his sense of superiority and grandiosity;

(2) He preempts his own abandonment by precipitating it and, thus, controlling the situation;

(3) His abusive conduct helps him to learn more about his "loved" ones by observing their reactions and this added information alleviates his anxiety;

(4) Abuse works: it leads to the modification of the victims' behavior and to submissiveness.

There are 5 effective coping styles:

(1) Submissiveness;

(2) Counterdependent/conflictive stance;

(3) Mirroring;

(4) Collusion;

(5) Displacement (redirecting the abuse at third parties) which is a form of cultish shared psychosis.

(From the book "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited" by Sam Vaknin - Click on this link to purchase the print book, or 16 e-books, or 3 DVDs with 16 hours of video lectures on narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/the...)