Narcissists don’t just give you a hard time, they sincerely want to damage your self-esteem. They want you to doubt yourself. But the covert narcissist will earn your trust first in order to do this more effectively.
A very disturbing trait of narcissists, typically those with strong envy and psychopathic tendencies, is their ability to mimic the people they envy while simultaneously trying to destroy them. Often called mirroring, where a narcissist mimics someone else's personality, mannerisms, interests, and even life choices. This isn’t done out of admiration but rather out of a need to consume that person’s identity and then replace them. It’s almost like psychological identity theft. At the same time, they seek to undermine the original person through gaslighting, lies, and smear campaigns. They attack the very person they are copying, trying to break their confidence and make them question their own identity. By eliminating the original they ”take ownership” of the traits they are mimicking. It is profoundly disturbing when you witness someone doing this to you.
There is a predatory pattern so creepy it shows you how completely detached and inhuman some people can be.
The narcissist finds someone with something real and authentic and that authenticity triggers something in them.
They’re drawn to it because they want it for themselves and they resent it at the same time because they know they’ll never have it naturally. So they decide to take it.
They target them, study them, mimic them, diminish, devalue and smear campaign them,
and try to pass a counterfeit off as the original.
And then, before the person they’re mimicking can say a word, the smear campaign begins.
This is where most people misread what’s happening.
They assume the smear is retaliation because thats how the psycho portrays it.
It isn’t.
It’s preemptive narrative control.
The narcissist needs the audience to see the original as unstable, obsessed, abusive, dangerous or bitter before the original has a chance to speak. That way when the truth surfaces, it’s made to look like jealousy.
The mimicry and the smear campaign are not two separate moves. They are one operation.
They trained you to fear their disappointment.
So you confused keeping them happy with keeping yourself safe.
Healing begins when you realize:
Someone else’s displeasure is not an emergency.