Narcissistic mirroring and mimicking
is a manipulative tactic used by the narcissists in order to seduce,
secure their sources of supply, groom them with an ill intention into
the narcissistic abuse cycle and create a fake bond and a false intimacy
with their future victims. With mirroring their targets, they pretend
to be likeable, they want to impress their targets and they create a
false sense of safety. They will tell you whatever you would like to
hear and show you whatever they might feel you want to see. The
narcissists are a great observers. First, the narcissistic predators
gather the data about their targets by analyzing, scanning, studying,
stalking, investigating their targets and also obsessing about them.
Then the narcissists mirror back all the target´s likes, dislikes,
desires,
wants, needs to create a false sense of familiarity. The narcissist are
like the parrots who repeat everything after others. They are the echo
in the cave - when you shout loudly your name, your name and your own
voice comes back to you but in a distorted way. The narcissistic
mirroring is an illusion and a trap. Sooner or later, the "false self
mask" eventually slips off and the victims are in an utter shock of what
is right in
front of them - the narcissists are not
even close to the person they pretended to be in the beginning or
through the entire relationships.
The
narcissists suffer from "magical thinking" thus they do not live in a reality and they are sucking an innocent
people into their world of illusion and fantasy. The narcissistic
mirroring is the most intense during the love bombing stage but
continues also through the whole relationship until the "false self
mask" slips off. The narcissists are masters in creating the "perfect
customized persona" based on
the gained data about their targets and present themselves as the
perfect match for their victims. When the victims meet the narcissists,
they feel like they just met their ultimate soulmates, twinflames and
their best friends (while in fact, they are walking like a little calf
to their own slaughters). The victims basically felt in love with
themselves, the narcissists are only a mirror being held in front of
the victims reflecting back all the victim´s good qualities.
The
narcissists manufacture a fake personality and they are capable to be
completely different personality with each person they meet. They are
the chameleons of the society. They keep their "false self mask" in tact
till they bleed people dry, till they extract all the narcissistic
supply they can or reach their goal. Once the targets have nothing else
to offer or if the narcissists get bored, the "false self mask" slips
off, the narcissists reveal their true color and move on onto the next
future victims. The narcissists rush their targets into the
relationships on the light speed because they know they are a fraud, they
know that at some point their "false self mask" will slip off and that's
why they feel the urgency to trap their victims as soon as possible
before it happens. The narcissists rush everything on purpose because
they don´t want the victims to have an appropriate space and enough time
to think about what is really going on. Once the victims realize they
have been trapped in the toxic relationships, its already too late for
them to get out safely or at all.
Healthy mirroring vs. unhealthy narcissistic mirroring:
Mirroring
occurs even in a social interactions between healthy people. The
healthy people mirror each other and they do it on a subconscious level,
they do not even think about it consciously when they are doing so.
Mirroring helps us to connect to other people. When you meet someone for
the first time, you smile at them and they smile at you back. The
difference between the healthy mirroring and the unhealthy narcissistic
mirroring is that while the healthy people mirror each other with a good
intention and to introduce each other´s authentic and unique "true
selves", the narcissists mirror others with an ill intention in order to
lure them into the abuse cycle and they present their "false self" (or
better to say "no self" - no consciousness, no empathy) to others. They copy other people´s uniqueness
while they have no mirror reflection. The narcissists are taking the
mirroring into a completely another level. The narcissistic mirroring is
full of broken pieces of the mirror and a distorted twisted reality.
Narcissists do not have a capacity to mirror others in a healthy way
neither the skills to receive the mirroring back.
The narcissist´s false self mask, lack of personality and lack of sense of self:
The
narcissists are children trapped in the adult´s bodies - they are
emotionally undeveloped on the level of the children and their identity
has not been developed in their
childhood because they have not been properly mirrored by their
mothers/caregivers in the crucial time of development. They mimic, copy
and mirror others with the skills of the children. They never grew up
into their own person and identity. They do not know who they are. There
is no "true self" behind the "false self mask". They basically do not exist. They copy others to
appear likeable to them to avoid possible painful rejection they deadly
fear and to avoid being their own selves as they hate themselves and
they feel a deep shame for who they are. They hate others for the
"luxury" of being their authentic selves, or even for the "luxury" of
being just ordinary.
Behind the "false self mask"
there is only an empty painful void. Without the mask, the narcissists
have a flat shallow affect and no depth. You can´t go deeper with the
narcissists than to stay on the surface. They are fraud with no sense of
self and they use shallow superficial charm to compensate for their
lack of emotional richness and no genuine interpersonal skills. Due to
their emptiness and no identity, they have no reflection in their own
mirror thus they are not capable to reflect a real identity to others
either. The narcissists are an empty shells. Instead, they are copying
others and they go as far as stealing other people´s intellectual properties, their whole identities.
The narcissist´s personality theft and character assassination of their victims:
When
the healthy people mirror each other and interact with each other, they mutually appreciate
and respect each other´s qualities and uniqueness. When healthy
people meet someone who can be a positive role model, they are inspired
by this role model in a positive way but they do not
steal this person´s identity as they posses a stability in their own
personalities. Healthy people are genuinely happy for other´s good
qualities and they want to see them thrive. They get inspired by other
people´s uniqueness and it motivates them to create their own uniqueness
so they can thrive too.
On
the other hand, the narcissists are deeply envious of
good qualities of others and they either want to destroy them or steal them from those people. Healthy people might get inspired by
others but they do
not try to morph completely into someone else and to steal other
people´s uniqueness because they are aware of their own uniqueness.
Healthy people understand that everybody has their own personality, good
qualities and uniqueness. The narcissists obsessively rob and steal
other people´s identities out of the pathological envy. As the
narcissists do not posses any identity, they can become a whole new
person every week or drastically change overnight in order to morph into someone
completely new.
The narcissists steal and copy the victims´s stories and present them as their own
(even they have not been there when the event or situation occurred),
they steal and copy the unique personalities and characters of their victims,
their habits and hobbies, their interests, their sentences, vocabulary,
personal styles, music taste, they steal and copy people´s ideas and
present them as their own, they copy people´s likes and dislikes, sense
of humor and jokes, opinions, talents, belief systems,
emotions, laughs, movements, body languages, tone of their voices and facial
expressions, mannerism and even sicknesses.
The only talent the narcissists posses is being a fraud.
If
a person wants to copy you, its not a flattery. They want to steal your
life and you should never trust that person because if they are not
able to steal your life, they will want to at least destroy your life.
"You can´t be friends with someone who wants your life."- Oprah Winfrey
The victims lose themselves and their personalities in the relationships with the narcissists:
People
who are in a long term relationships with the
narcissists feel robed of their life through the robbery of their own unique authentic
identities and good qualities by the narcissists. They feel violated and
their joy of simply being themselves and doing what makes them happy
and unique is taken away from them by the identity robbery. For the
victims, the identity theft feels like a soul rape. The narcissists rip
off the victim´s spark and shine leaving them behind empty and
worthless. The narcissists taking the toxic narcissistic mirroring into
the extreme level by ripping people off of who they are and what they worked
hard for. After some times spent around the narcissists, the victims
feel like they are losing themselves. This crossing of the boundaries
feels to the victims like a very creepy, annoying and uncomfortable
experience.
The twisted identity transference between the narcissists and their victims:
The narcissists rob people of their good qualities. But they
do not only steal other people´s identities, in the same time, they
transfer and project their toxicity, shadows and bad qualities onto
their victims. In the end, the narcissists become the twisted version of
their victims and the victims become the twisted version of the
narcissists. The narcissists morph into their targets and the targets
are being mold into the representation of the bad qualities of the
narcissists. The narcissists project their shadows onto their victims,
the victims project their light onto the narcissists. The narcissists
suck the light out of their victims and become a caricature imitations
of their victims. The frustration of the narcissists are escalating with
a realization of their incapacity to become their targets. Authenticity
is impossible to copy. After the victims have got
out of the narcissistic relationships, it takes them a long time to reclaim their life and
identities, purge the toxic energy of the narcissists out of their
systems and to feel bright and themselves again.
The narcissist´s envy and hate towards people they copy and admire:
The narcissists mock, put down, minimize, belittle, covertly abuse, give the back handed compliments, invalidate people who posses good qualities and they refuse to acknowledge those people´s good qualities out
of a pathological envy. They copy everything about people they admire
while they are deeply hating them and bad mouthing them. The narcissists
fail to appreciate or thanks to people who inspire them, instead of it
they violate their victims, steal from them, use the victim´s good
qualities against them like a weapon. They do not credit people from
whom they took the inspiration, they even accuse the victims of copycat
of the ideas they actually stole from the victims. The narcissists
discourage and mislead their victims on purpose to prevent the victims
to unfold their full potential. The narcissists do everything in their
power to destroy everything they admire in their victims. They steal the
intellectual properties from the victims, adopt them as their own and
then use those stolen good qualities to outdo the victims. The toxic
twisted adoration and envy of their victims go beyond the obsession.
Whatever inspiration the victims voluntary give to the narcissists to
better them, they will take it and stab the victims in the back with it.
The narcissists are stealing other people´s identities and good qualities to gain the narcissistic supply:
The narcissists always compare themselves to other people and even compare people with other people. They are in a constant competition with others (even if others
did not realize and acknowledge that they are in the competition
with the narcissists). The narcissists compete with everybody for
positive narcissistic supply, especially attention.
Out of the desperation for validation, approval and attention, the narcissists copy and steal other people´s identity, good qualities, emotional and spiritual assets to extract positive narcissistic supply from their audience. The
narcissists are intimidated by the shine of others. The ultimate
purpose in life of the narcissists is to obtain the narcissistic supply.
Sudden
change of personality of the narcissists during the discard stage of
the old source of supply when the narcissists start to mirror the new
source of supply:
The
narcissists have no identity and they use the identity theft of their
old sources of supply as a tool to lure the new sources of supply into
their abusive cycle. The old sources of supply are in an utter shock of
the sudden and drastic change of the personality of the narcissists once
the narcissists start their devaluation and discard process. The
drastic changes in the narcissist´s persona happens overnight to the
point that even when they have been in the relationships with their
victims for decades, the old sources of supply are not able to recognize
the narcissists. Its like going to sleep with one person and wake up
the next morning next to the another person. At this point, the narcissists already started
to mirror the new sources of supply by copying and mirroring their
personality and life. The new sources of supply basically date the old
sources of supply through the narcissists (via proxy).
How to handle the identity theft & the red flags to watch out during the love bombing stage:
Healthy
positive people are very enthusiastic. When they meet the new people,
they immediately want to pour their hearts to those new people. They see
the world through their own eyes, they see the world as pure and
friendly. How shocked they are once they discover that some narcissists
lurking in the shadows of this planet! Here are some tips for dating
nowadays:
Listen
more and speak less. Rather than revealing all secrets about you
already on the first dates, let the other person to reveal as much as
possible about them. Let them speak. Even healthy people love to speak a lot about themselves and do not really listen to what others have to say. Then they often overlook the red flags and what the potential narcissists telling on themselves. Many times the red flags are there already on the first dates. Ask more questions rather than answering more questions. The narcissists are great listeners during the love
bombing because they want to gain the data about their new targets so
they can start to effectively mirror them. Did you notice that once the love bombing is over, the narcissists are
actually terrible listeners? Its because they lack of empathy and they do
not care what you have to say. So, their passionate listening in the love bombing stage is a manipulative tactic. The narcissists do the interrogation of their victims not only to gain the data so they can effectively mirror their victim, but also to gain the data (such as the victim´s secrets, weaknesses, traumatic memories) to use those later on in the devaluation stage to hurt and destroy the victims. Everything you say in the begging to the narcissist will be used against you later on in the devaluation and discard phase.
Protect
yourself from identity theft by uncovering the narcissists already on
the first dates by asking the right questions so you avoid entering the relationship with a narcissist in a first place. Rather than speaking
for hours about your passion for tennis, embroidery,
charity and business, ask them what they are passionate about and
listen carefully. The narcissists are reckless. They never manage to be
interested in anything for too long. This includes also hobbies.
Scan them - how long they have been interested in the particular hobby
they proclaim they do? Couple of weeks (mirroring old source of supply)
or 20 years (genuine interest)? Lets say the person you date is an
artist. Ask him or her the testing questions: Can I see your portfolio? Do
you have an official website? If the person you date is really an
artist for many years, he or she will be able to show you the photos of their art studio, their portfolio with a lot of painted
canvases, they will be capable to go into the depth when talking
about art due to their true expertise. The artworks will posses quality as your person is doing it for many years and know the rules, techniques and materials. Did they suddenly changed the
interests when they met you to match you? Or they keep doing what they
were always doing for the past 20 years? If you said your favorite color
is blue, did they say their favorite color is also blue? If so, do they
own items that are mostly blue? Analyze their clothes, home, items. Why they claim they like blue too? Do you like surfing and
the person you date also love surfing? Ask them to show you some photos of
them surfing or ask them questions that only people who are really enthusiastic about surfing can answer. Do you have a certain belief or are you religious? Do the person you date want to suddenly convert to match you? People do not change the core beliefs overnight and its already a red flag.
Also,
if you are in a long term relationship and your partner suddenly and
drastically change, it might be a red flag. Usually, people do not become interested
overnight about collecting the stamps or parachuting just like that.
Especially if it is out of his or her expertise or usual interest.
Another
tip for dating is: Give it a time to develop a friendship. Do not rush
into any form of relationship or intimacy right away. Why would someone rush you if they are
genuinely and seriously interested in you? People have a tendency to
rush others only when they have an ill intention for them. Otherwise
they will have no issue with patience. The narcissists will show their
true color eventually. Sooner or later. You just have to willing to listen and do not ignore the red flags. Many times, the narcissists are waving the red flags right in front of their victims and the victims might even notice it, but they ignore it because they do not want their fantasy and illusions to destroy.
Another
tip how to cope with identity theft is simple be yourself no matter
what. Let the thieves to be your inspiration to be even more authentic
than you already are and do not let them to steal your shine and ruin
your day. Do not stop being you. You are the original. They can´t steal
from you what God gave it to you. Do not react. Respond. Stand up for yourself. Claim your life by
simply being the most "YOU-est". Eventually, others will start to see
through the narcissist´s facade.
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