How Narcissists Disrupt our Core Needs Series: Need number five, our need for trust.
The fifth of our six core needs (as mentioned in the first post in this series), is the need for trust. That is, as the dictionary defines it, a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. And how narcissists disrupt this? Oh, let me count the ways!
ONE: Fake promises. I am reminded of the classic Peanuts comic where Lucy holds the football for Charlie Brown to kick. Each time, Lucy promises and swears she will hold it for him, only to pull it away at the last minute. Every single time poor Charlie Brown ends up on his back, regretting his decision to trust her. It is clear that Lucy just can’t help herself, regardless of what she has promised. Charlie Brown, on the other hand? Well, he wants to trust her, no matter what the pattern has been. He badly wants to believe that this time, he’ll actually get to kick the football.
Oh, what a powerful metaphor for narcissistic relationships. Narcissists tend to say whatever they want to get what they want in the moment, whether they mean it or not. Thus, targets all too often become Charlie Brown, hoping against hope that this time the narcissist’s promise will be different. Maybe this time they will follow through. Maybe this time they actually mean it.
These promises have a name in the narcissistic abuse vocabulary. It is called “future faking,” the act of painting picture of a wonderful future for you, but never actually following through. Did they mean it? Maybe they did in the moment, maybe it sounded good to them. Maybe Lucy even thought herself that she wouldn’t pull the football away. But do they follow through or leave you, like Charlie Brown, flat on your back once again?
TWO: Lying, cheating, stealing, etc. Because narcissists are heat-seeking missiles for dopamine, they are ever in search of the next hit, the next adventure, the next new relationship, the next scam, con or fraud. They don’t all seek dopamine the same way, but they all seek it.
The dopamine rush wears off as things become less novel, more familiar. The predictable, while it may feel safe and comfortable to the target, is, well, boring to the narcissist. In personal relationships, you may have started out giving them a charge, but after a while, no matter how wonderful you are, you simply don’t. And thus — an illicit affair? Oooh, exciting. Even more so if they run the risk of being caught.
This also applies to other underhanded behavior. We often wonder why these people don’t just buckle down and work like the rest of us. After all, many of them do have the talent to make money in more typical ways. But typical ways of gaining wealth, attention, and status are again, boring. Far more fun to try it the illicit way. This also gives them a superiority boost when they can fool their targets, who they hold as idiots for being conned.
THREE: Being unpredictable. The crappy thing about narcissists? They aren’t crappy all the time. Just when we may want to give up on them, they give us bread crumbs of attention, which stirs feelings of hope and makes us doubt our own sense of things. This intermittent reinforcement is critical to creating and reinforcing what is known as a trauma bond, a key reason targets stay stuck in destructive relationships.
This erratic behavior also tends to put our nervous systems on high alert. Will they be nice or abusive? We don’t know what to predict, and when we don’t know what to predict we tend to steel ourselves for the worst. When our systems are amped up, clear thinking, planning, and analysis are harder for our brains to manage. We tend to be in survival mode, just trying to get through the day.
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All of this can leave us not knowing if and when to trust, both in and out of toxic relationships. It’s an area we often work on in coaching, in fact. I find my clients need to unpack both when they trusted where they perhaps should not have, as well as learn how to safely trust again. The goal is not to stop trusting, of course — it’s one of our core needs, after all — but when and how to do so safely and with open eyes. No more Lucy and the football, thank you very much!
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In the process of healing and need some support? Contact Ann for one-to-one coaching.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ann Betz is the co-founder of BEabove Leadership and an expert on the intersection of neuroscience, coaching, trauma and human transformation. She speaks, trains and coaches internationally, and writes about neuroscience and coaching as well as relational trauma. Ann is also a published poet who loves cats, rain in the desert, and healthy relationships. She has learned to end relationships with the “Lucys” in her life.
But Now I Know Your Name 