Do not behave inconsistently. Do not go back on your word. Be firm and resolute.

Impossible Situations

The narcissist engineers impossible, dangerous, unpredictable, unprecedented, or highly specific situations in which he is sorely and indispensably needed. The narcissist, his knowledge, his skills or his traits become only ones applicable, or most useful to coping with these artificial predicaments. It is a form of control by proxy.

TIP

Stay away from such quagmires. Scrutinize every offer and suggestion, no matter how innocuous.

Prepare backup plans. Keep others informed of your whereabouts and appraised of your situation.

Be vigilant and doubting. Do not be gullible and suggestible. Better safe than sorry.

Control by Proxy

If all else fails, narcissist recruits friends, colleagues, mates, family members, authorities, institutions, neighbours, or media – in short, third parties – to do his bidding. He uses them to cajole, coerce, threaten, stalk, offer, retreat, tempt, convince, harass, communicate and otherwise manipulate his target. He controls these unaware instruments exactly as he plans to control his ultimate prey. He employs same mechanisms and devices. And he dumps his props unceremoniously when job is done.

Another form of control by proxy is to engineer situations in which abuse is inflicted upon another person. Such carefully crafted scenarios involve embarrassment and humiliation as well as social sanctions (condemnation, opprobrium, or even physical punishment). Society, or a social group become instruments of narcissist.

TIP

Often abuser's proxies are unaware of their role. Expose him. Inform them. Demonstrate to them how they are being abused, misused, and plain used by abuser.

Trap your abuser. Treat him as he treats you. Involve others. Bring it into open. Nothing like sunshine to disinfest abuse.

Ambient Abuse

The fostering, propagation and enhancement of an atmosphere of fear, intimidation, instability, unpredictability and irritation. There are no acts of traceable or provable explicit abuse, nor any manipulative settings of control. Yet, irksome feeling remains, a disagreeable foreboding, a premonition, a bad omen. This is sometimes called "gaslighting".

In long-term, such an environment erodes one's sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Self-confidence is shaken badly. Often, victims go a paranoid or schizoid and thus are exposed even more to criticism and judgement. The roles are thus reversed: victim is considered mentally disordered and narcissist – suffering soul or victim.

TIP

Run! Get away! Ambient abuse often develops into overt and violent abuse.

You don't owe anyone an explanation – but you owe yourself a life. Bail out of relationship.

The Malignant Optimism of Abused

I often come across sad examples of powers of self-delusion that narcissist provokes in his victims. It is what I call "malignant optimism". People refuse to believe that some questions are unsolvable, some diseases incurable, some disasters inevitable. They see a sign of hope in every fluctuation. They read meaning and patterns into every random occurrence, utterance, or slip. They are deceived by their own pressing need to believe in ultimate victory of good over evil, health over sickness, order over disorder. Life appears otherwise so meaningless, so unjust and so arbitrary…

So, they impose upon it a design, progress, aims, and paths. This is magical thinking.

"If only he tried hard enough", "If he only really wanted to heal", "If only we found right therapy", "If only his defences were down", "There MUST be something good and worthy under hideous facade", "NO ONE can be that evil and destructive", "He must have meant it differently", "God, or a higher being, or spirit, or soul is solution and answer to our prayers", "He is not responsible for what he is - his narcissism is product of a difficult childhood, of abuse, and of his monstrous parents."

The Pollyanna defences of abused are aimed against emerging and horrible understanding that humans are mere specks of dust in a totally indifferent universe, playthings of evil and sadistic forces, of which narcissist is one - and that finally their pain means nothing to anyone but themselves. Nothing whatsoever. It has all been in vain.

The narcissist holds such thinking in barely undisguised contempt. To him, it is a sign of weakness, scent of prey, a gaping vulnerability. He uses and abuses this human need for order, good, and meaning – as he uses and abuses all other human needs. Gullibility, selective blindness, malignant optimism – these are weapons of beast. And abused are hard at work to provide it with its arsenal.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

Yet, even young entrepreneurs often fare badly. They lack necessary business skills, knowledge, supportive infrastructure, or access to credit. The older women cannot work long hours, lack skills and, when officially employed, are expensive, due to burden of still effective social benefits. Thus, women can be mostly found in services, light industry and agriculture - most non lucrative sectors of dilapidated economies of CEE. And speaking of social benefits not yet axed - their quality has deteriorated, access to them has been restricted and supplies are often short. The costs of public goods (mainly health and education) have been transferred from state to households either officially (a result of commercialization of services) or surreptitiously and insidiously (e.g., patients required to purchase their own food, bed sheets and medication when hospitalized).

To blame it all on a botched transition is now in vogue. Yet, many of problems facing wretched women of CEE were evident as early as 30 years ago. The feminization of poverty is not a new phenomenon, nor is feminization of certain professions and attendant decline in both their status and their pay. Under communism, women felt as exhausted and as guilt-ridden as they feel today. They were considered unreliable workers (which they were, what with a lifetime average of 10 abortions and 2 children). Their offspring endured an alienated childhood in brutal and faceless gulag of day care centres maintained by indifferent bureaucrats.

Juvenile delinquency, a high divorce rate, single motherhood and parasitic fathers were all swept under ideological carpet by communism. Even communism's only achievement - inclusionary workforce - was an elaborately crafted illusion for consumption by wide-eyed Western intellectuals. In agrarian societies which preceded communism, women worked no less. And women were not allowed to work night time or shifts or in certain jobs, nor were they paid as much as men in equal functions. Job advertising is sex-specific and sexist to this very day (in stark violation of dead letter Constitutions).

Discarding baby with leaking bathtub has been a hallmark of transition. Communism has done a lot for women (one of its very rare achievements). Some of these foundations were sound and durable and should have been preserved to build upon. Yet apathy of women and zeal of power hungry men converged to yield an old new world: patriarchal, discriminatory and iniquitous. The day of CEE feminism will come. But first, CEE has to become more Westernized.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com