Quote:
Originally Posted by waiting4
My ex did that all the time, unfortuneatly I was not aware of it, even as he told me once 'I like to get reactions from people and I'll do things deliberately just to see how they'll react'....I thought it was more a kind of manipulation, and to a point it was....but eventually, I realized it was also his way to gauge his emotional responses. He would then parrot them back depending on the situation.
It makes me sad for him now, at the time I thought he was mean as hell. He could be, of course, but nothing was done without a reason, even if he couldn't articulate it, nor even consciously see he was doing it.
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What an insightful thread. I've been working towards a possible reuniting of sorts with my NPD sister, 7 years older than me and someone I looked up to from earliest childhood, but who toyed with my affection for years. I suppose I was way too convenient an outlet for her to gaslight. She eventually got so good at it that I couldn't be around her anymore.
To be able to understand more objectively though, what it is she's really trying to do, as opposed to having only feeling toyed with to focus on, could I think go a long way towards my being able to deal with that aspect of her behavior.
I hadn't looked at it in quite those terms.
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“We use our minds not to discover facts but to hide them. One of things the screen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean, the ins and outs of it, its interiors. Like a veil thrown over the skin to secure its modesty, the screen partially removes from the mind the inner states of the body, those that constitute the flow of life as it wanders in the journey of each day.”
— Antonio R. Damasio, “The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness” (p.28)
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