Fighting Shame with Shame

For the longest time, I hesitated to use shame against shamers. It’s *entrenched* in society that this is morally wrong. The conversation goes like this, over and over,

“Women are lazy parasites!”

“You’re an abusive misogynist!”

“Oh are you JUDGING me? Hypocrite!”

I argue elsewhere that this system inherently allows abusers to stay in power. They get to wield punishment and shame, but the response to them is considered “immoral,” “going to their level,” “the low road,” etc. And, so. You have truly evil people who are allowed to go unaccountable, never reined in. They are allowed to use and shame and punishment. But we’re not allowed to respond. As much as people like to think some kind of karma eventually fixes this, it doesn’t. It lets abusers be in power. We are run by narcissists, abusers, and psychopaths. And we’re ordered to put on a smile about it and be grateful about it.

Whenever you’re in a rock and hard place like this, there is ALWAYS some weird trick about life that doesn’t allow the unhappy state to go on. It seems like you can never get out of this problem. The shamers shame. To stop them, you need to use shame. But shame is what you are trying to stop. It seems like an impossible problem to solve. But it’s not. If you study human nature and hard, you’ll always find some answer, showing life is more complicated than anyone ever grants.

I learned from watching Sam Vaknin’s Youtube channel that narcissists actually crave mortification. A narcissist feels absolutely nothing inside. So if he is mortified, he at least feels something. It’s better than nothing. They apparently live their whole life chasing excitement, wanting a sense of feeling alive, perhaps feeling genuinely loved by an admirable person. But they just constantly come up short. Have you ever met a person with serious Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Underneath all that charm is an utter dead zombie. They can’t keep it up 24/7, especially not as they age. They can snap into place to pose for a photo. But their mask slips more and more and more as their energy wanes. If you see them, you’ll see them checking out every so often, sinking into their chair or the couch, their eyes glazed over, with a look of total vacancy. They just plain aren’t home.

When I learned that they actually CRAVE mortification (read: shame), it was a total game changer in how I handle them. I’ve been gripped by the question, “How do we heal narcissism?” They run the world. I had previously thought we either defeat them (somehow) or heal them. I thought some new, weird way of healing them just hadn’t been discovered yet. In large part, I have quite conceded that they indeed cannot be healed. They must be defeated. And, in the weird twist of life, going full on combat with them is the only way to make any marginal change with them (to heal them).

Don’t hesitate to put a narcissist in their place. I’ve had MANY “successful” encounters with them since adopting this view. When they mock or belittle me, I utterly throw it back at them. If they actually crave shame, I give it to them. If they post something insulting towards me, I make sure to blast it to the world: entirely to shame them. One, for instance, accused me of something. He had no proof whatsoever. First of all, I threw THAT at him. His own philosophy said you come to conclusions with proof. And he had none. I kept demanding not an apology to me, but a recognition of his own bad trait, his lack of reason, a deviation from his own purported moral system. I took a screen shot of his statement and posted it. He backtracked BIG time. He sent me an email apologizing to me; his accusation was indeed unfounded. They are awed by strength. To them, it’s a matter of who is more confident, who throws around the insults harder and better. Do it.

Sure, deep down, a narcissist has a LOT of pain. They feel utterly unworthy. They constantly must hear from others what they think of the narcissist, because they have no idea where they stand. Although this part of them is ever present, they guard it like a 3-headed dog. In a healthy state of affairs, life events, including and especially negative ones, penetrates a person as to change them. If you get dumped by a boyfriend or girlfriend, it might cause some introspection to change somehow. For a narcissist, this doesn’t happen. They can’t and won’t let pain touch them. Because of their own pain. It stands as a buffer between the outer world and their inner world. The only way to penetrate them is right through this layer. It sounds crazy, but I promise you: it DOES work.

Narcissists run the world. When a pastor gets up and says “hurt people hurt,” this is to engender compassion for those doing the hurting, i.e., him. He’s manipulating you. Although they preach to never “play victim,” the narcissist will play the biggest victim around and evoke as much pity, for him, as possible. Adopt a position of dominance around them. Use shame. Wipe your floor with them. I promise you. It is BOTH the only way to (marginally) heal them AND, ultimately, defeat them.

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