Why Those Who Follow Narcissists Don’t Know Any Better?

Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

Narcissism is now a world-wide pandemic. Narcissists have infiltrated society for one primary reason. Their emotional food supply is abundant. And like any predatory animal, when the food supply is plentiful, the population of predators rise. And the world, I am sad to report, has accepted that it is perfectly fine for members of our species to prey on our own children and on our own kind to serve the depraved. Impersonal relationships facilitated by social media appear, at least in small part, to have fueled the fire.

Being a parent, a politician, a psychologist, a President, a boss, a doctor, a surgeon or whatever does not exempt a person from being evil or having malintent. In fact, narcissism is now rampant in “good deed” communities like politics, the medical community, churches, and even fundraising organizations where many emotional manipulators can exist cloaked for years going unnoticed, while they abuse their authority and provide illusions of generosity and “goodness” and feed off the unlimited supply of power and energy of innocent but vulnerable members of the community while hiding true intentions of superiority, entitlement, domination, and self-righteousness.

Kathy Krajco, a formidable pioneer in educating the world on narcissism and narcissistic abuse, describes in What Makes Narcissists Tick how the “helping professions” that supply an abundance of vulnerable prey attract pathological narcissists and warns us about the serious problem narcissism poses in the public sector and private nonprofit institutions that use the do-gooder and moral elitist facade to cloak their true self-righteous intentions to not do good but to be “seen as doing good” and “show how good they are by pointing at someone else and telling them how bad they are.” Politics, she points out, “is an ideal arena for narcissists…the list of them who have conned whole nations to become dictators is breathtaking.” This is also what makes Democracies vulnerable to tyranny, traitors, demagogues who exploit the emotional weaknesses of the public to feed their depraved need for power.

Narcissists are even posing as healers on social media. What better people to target than the vulnerable wounded ones they harmed who admittedly need help and whom they continue to abuse and exploit “by proxy” by posing as a healers? What a novel idea, right? Well, it is not so novel. It may be pretty new to Facebook but narcissists infiltrated the medical and psychological professions a long long time ago like pedophiles infiltrated the priesthood.

“Why,” you may think, “would anyone do these horrible things?” The answer is simple. They want to direct our time, energy, money, and power to them. To do this effectively, they must get us to feel shame for meeting even our basic needs, and acting on our human rights, and not care for other folks and to fear or hate them instead. You may now think, “how can someone get another person to not care for themselves and others and to fear and hate them?”

Well, sadly, lots easier than you may think if you are vulnerable to lies and they get you to believe that the person you care about is an undeserving moocher, a threat to you, and convince you through lies, false threats, and character assassination that all of you are not worthy of better. More so, they get you to believe only they can save you from these fake threats, only they decide who is worthy of resources, only they can alleviate your fears and only they are worthy of your attention and adulation. How do they do this? Again the answer is pretty simple. They lie.

Narcissists Lie to Steal Power

Narcissists, bullies, psychopaths are pathological liars. (As a side note, I would love to see their pants actually catch fire). Why? The answer again is simple! They have to be and want to be. It is just part of their natural and parasitic nature. They are just naturally wired for cheating, lying, exploiting, and betraying. They are what I refer to as “The Lacks.” They lack all it takes to be loyal, committed, honest, mutually respectful, influential, and caring that drive the health of all relationships and our peaceful co-existence with others. They also lack the compassion and ability to obligate in trust to other humans who, instead, in their disordered minds they believe they are entitled to exploit.

Learn more here about the natural but parasitic nature of narcissists.

People lie to achieve a goal: “We lie if honesty won’t work,” says researcher Tim Levine. Well, lying is a very effective defense mechanism we humans use to, in a nutshell, get others to believe what we want and need them to believe to benefit ourselves. We all have different needs and compete for resources and must be creative on how we acquire what we need and want and, for pathological narcissists, what they believe they are entitled to.

“Narcissists, bullies, psychopaths and demagogues are pathological liars. (As a side note, I do wish their pants would catch fire). Why? The answer again is simple! They have to be and want to be. It is just a part of their natural and parasitic nature.”

Narcissists intentionally and chronically lie for three primary reasons: to attract, distract, and manipulate power from their prey. They bomb us with lies and irrational beliefs to skew our perceptions of their power and worth and our own (male or female) and others’ personal power and worth. They frequently surround themselves with a posse of low-character “flying monkeys” who support them in the “lie bombing.” They target the primary beliefs that trigger our fears and shame related to our self-esteem, personal power, ability to delay personal gratification, lovability, and safety. In short, these are the primary beliefs that support our personal joy, health, power, and happiness. So they lie pathologically to create doubt, confusion, uncertainty, and chaos so they can manipulate us more effectively. They are emotional moochers. This tactic like the old bait and switch is as old as the hills, but nevertheless, is very effective.

Convincing you that you or others in need are weak, of less value, or are a danger, a threat, are effective tactics to make you appear less believable, weak, and unworthy and therefore less human. And ultimately by getting you to believe the lies, they can more easily get you to abandon your natural desire to care for, empathize and help yourself and others. They manipulate you to believe that you and the vulnerable are not worthy of your basic rights to life, liberty, and happiness because you are “moochers” who are stealing from those more worthy when they, in reality, are the “moochers.” Remember The Wizard of Oz, nothing but smoke and mirrors controlled by a wizard you were instructed not to pay attention to? Well, while anecdotal, it is based in reality.

“Narcissists bomb us with lies and irrational beliefs to skew our perceptions of our own (male or female) and others’ personal power and worth. The frequently surround themselves with a posse of low-character “flying monkeys” who support them in the “lie bombing.” They target the primary beliefs that trigger our fears and shame related to our our self-esteem, personal power, and safety. In short, these are the primary beliefs that support our personal joy, health, power, and happiness.”

Who are most Vulnerable to Narcissists’ Lies

The people most vulnerable to believing lies are the ones who have not learned:

To separate truth from lies. Instead they essentially were taught to believe everything someone who looks like and who acts like them says and thinks.
To critically think and research and even how to ask questions, probe and inquire.
To act on their curiosity, to explore and seek for answers and engage in probing dialogue internally with themselves or with others.
To source power internally and are dependent on others and not themselves to tell them what they think and do are true and worthy.
To delay gratification.
To use newfound knowledge and meaning to benefit themselves.

Refuting lies with data does not diminish their believability to these folks because they assess the evidence presented to them through a framework of preexisting tribal knowledge of beliefs and prejudices and fears they have been taught and rewarded not to question and perhaps punished for questioning. They live comfortably believing what they think is true with little tolerance and adaptability to challenges to those beliefs. They choose instead to live their lives pain- and fear-based, reactive, and vulnerable to anything that triggers or alleviates their discomfort. So if presented with proven documented information that doesn’t fit comfortably within their inflexible limits of tolerance, they will continue to accept and defend their belief and even aggressively attack the facts presented or their messenger if the facts are threatening enough. In essence, their fear overrides the motivation to use the new information to improve their beliefs and thinking that can help them override the fear and reliably make their lives better.

What Can We All Learn from This

There is a vital lesson for us to all learn.

We cannot ever take for granted what it takes to support order or forget the importance of the balance of power and integrity of character needed in key decision makers in government to ensure not only our personal health and happiness but also peace and harmony and futures of our families, communities, states, society, and world. And we must never forget that acquiring these takes plain hard work and authentic personal power that is earned not stolen. If you lack the ethics, integrity, resilience, compassion, beliefs and maturity of thought and consciousness on which Democracies are founded, the laws that enforce them will have no meaning to you but their power will. And if you study the history of Democracy, you well understand why all authoritarian narcissists are able to come into power. I explore this in much more detail in Terrorism, Politics, and the Pandemic of World-Wide Narcissism. You can also read more here on Plato’s views on tyranny and what threatens a Democracy.

What Can We Do as a Person, a People, a Nation

Well, there is lots we can do and lots we shouldn’t do. At the top of the “do not” list is to hunker down in shame or fear. At the top of the “do” list is to take actions and resist so we can take our power back and maximize the positive impact of the truly good and emotionally healthy people with integrity of character, intellect, and compassion and to stop promoting the evil component of society. So now more than ever it is critical to be intelligent in our choices and to not not let our fears and lack of information and state of our emotional health drive them. We must be vigilant and informed in all our choices and especially in whom we choose to love, associate with, trust, and choose as our lawmakers, senators, the head of state! We can work on improving our own emotional health. As we heal, our children will heal through us. The onus is on the United States government and on us as citizens to ensure we can confidently answer this question as it applies to all personnel running for key elected decision-making roles in government and especially those at the highest levels of government:

“Are these candidates competent and emotionally fit for duty and running an honest campaign from the heart, with authentic loyalty, integrity and duty to the greater good or are they knowingly and intentionally lying and making false promises to their constituents and exploiting their fears to win in order to abuse the authority of the position to benefit themselves?”

How do we achieve this? First, we must heal and educate ourselves on narcissism. As we heal, our children will heal through us. They will develop the empathy, self-worth, self-reliance, and emotional intelligence required to succeed in life, work, and relationships and maximize their power to themselves and to the world. I provide tons of healing information, tools and resources in this Blog, the Yourlifelifter website and Facebook page, and in my book Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips and Tools for Abuse Survivors.

Second, we must learn what authentic power really is and how it applies to all humans regardless of their sex, privilege, or appearance, the tactics emotional manipulators use to con our power from us to benefit them, and what makes us vulnerable to them.

Third, we can stand up to and also stop voting diagnosed pathological narcissists into key political offices. We can be mindful and wise in our choices of those with the integrity of character and other qualities, skills, knowledge and abilities they have worked for and earned that support them being an effective world leader who are competent to make informed decisions based on what is best for others, the country, the world and not just themselves, profoundly weak people who cannot generate their own power and steal that of others.

Why Do Cheaters Cheat?

Educating ourselves about narcissism will allow us easier to recognize them and assess the state of our own emotional health that makes us vulnerable to their manipulation. In this way, we can expose and defuse them. The U. S. government can also start screening the mental and emotional health, along with the financial and character integrity of anyone who is hired into a critical political position no different than what all high risk industries are, by law or ethics, required to do.

This is how we collectively heal and take our power back as people and as a nation and get us back on track to allow us equally and unhindered to act freely on our divine rights we collectively work for, deserve, and pay for to pursue life, liberty, and happiness