Number 8: “I Know You Are Planning Something, Aren’t You?”
I know you are planning something, aren’t you? This line comes out of their nasty mouth when you go quiet, when you stop oversharing, when your eyes no longer give away what’s going on in your head, when you become unpredictable. They don’t like that. Narcissists thrive on access, so when they start losing emotional visibility, they panic. They stress out. They begin projecting their mindset onto you. They assume you’re scheming, hiding, or strategizing not because you are, but because that’s how they operate.
They’re not intuitive; they’re paranoid. And now that they can’t predict your moves, they default to suspicion. This is not about what you’re doing; it’s about what they can no longer read. You don’t need to actually have a plan. The absence of chaos is enough to make them spiral. Silence is threatening because it means they’re not the center anymore. They don’t know what’s going on. They’ve lost access, and now they’re making noise.
Number 9: “This Isn’t You. Someone Else Is Poisoning You Against Me”
This isn’t you. Someone else is poisoning you against me. This is what they say when you stop tolerating the nonsense, when you let your authenticity speak, when you finally start pushing back, standing tall, or walking away. Instead of accepting that you’re waking up to their bad behavior, they deflect. They blame your shift on someone else. It’s never you thinking for yourself; it’s always someone manipulating you.
In my case, my father blamed substance abuse for my changed behavior because he could not understand how I could be different. Why? Well, he had programmed me to be his servant, but then I gave up on playing that role, and that triggered a lot of panic inside him. When they refer to that “someone,” it’s usually an ex, possibly a sibling, a co-worker, or anyone who previously saw through their act and got out.
The narcissist still resents those people because they could not control them either. Now that you’re starting to behave the same way, they group you in with the ones who broke free. What they’re doing here is trying to undo your clarity by making it look like corruption.
They want you to second-guess your instincts because if they can convince you that your truth doesn’t belong to you, they can take it away. Absolute gaslighting. This is isolation on a psychological level. They’re not just afraid of you leaving; they’re afraid of you becoming someone who doesn’t need them anymore.
Number 10: “You Always Ruin Everything”
You always ruin everything. This is their tantrum, their meltdown, the final punch when everything else has failed. When they can’t love-bomb you, can’t guilt-trip you, cannot charm or silence you, that’s when they reach for this line. If they can make you feel like the destroyer, you will automatically fall back into the role of the fixer. This is how they get one last shot at control. They want you to feel like you’re the unstable one, like it’s your fault things are never working, like the chaos follows you, not them. And if you internalize that, they win. You go back to explaining yourself, apologizing, and making up for a mess they created.
Read More: 10 Things That Will Happen During a Narcissistic Collapse
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