They turn the story around to make it seem like you are at fault, deflecting attention and blame away from them to make you feel guilty. This type of emotional manipulation is called gaslighting.
One of the most common examples of deflection is when someone changes the subject in the middle of an argument. Specifically, if their behavior is called into question, the deflector will redirect the conversation to focus on something the other person did wrong.
If someone is intentionally distorting reality to make you feel like what you're seeing or feeling isn't real, you could be a victim of gaslighting. Gaslighting can come from a romantic partner, a boss, a family member, a doctor or anyone else in a position of power.
When someone turns something around on you, you can call this the word deflection. This is one of the many defense mechanisms in which they knowingly or unknowingly remove their guilt and place it on you. An example of this is someone making your feel bad even though they are clearly in the wrong.
They then go on to play with difficult emotions like shock, awe, and guilt to maintain control over their victim. Narcissists also gaslight or practice master manipulation, weakening and destabilizing their victims; finally, they utilize positive and negative emotions or moments to trick others.
Remain calm and neutral. Avoid becoming defensive, accusatory, or critical in response to deflection. Gently redirect the conversation back to the original topic, using open-ended questions to encourage the person to share their thoughts and feelings. Validate the person's feelings.
Manipulative narcissists can turn people against you by bringing one or more additional people into an argument, spat, or disagreement that was originally just between you and the narcissist.
Narcissistic Disappointment: They cannot understand why you would want to stay the way you are. When you resist their suggestions, they feel insulted — as if you have criticized them, not the other way around. They become angry, want to punish you, and may begin to get nasty.
Overview. Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others.
Blame-shifting or “blaming the victim” is a form of context switching and crazy making. When you are confronting them on something they did or attempting to set boundaries, they switch the whole focus back to you, and thus put you on the defensive.
There are four primary types of gaslighting behaviors: the straight-up lie, reality manipulation, scapegoating and coercion. Last week we looked at the straight-up lie and reality manipulation. This week we are going to focus on scapegoating and coercion.
Narcissistic controlling behavior occurs because they feel they're entitled to get whatever they want through whatever means necessary. Therefore, they tend to endlessly badger you with opinions, questions, and demands.
A person with narcissistic personality or narcissistic traits frequently uses manipulation tactics to influence and control others. Common examples of this include gaslighting, triangulation, love bombing, and many others.
Blame-shifting examples
Your partner has done something to upset you, and instead of apologizing they act like they're the victim and paint you as a bad person. Your partner minimizes or invalidates your feelings, so the problem is no longer their behavior, but rather the fact that you got upset.
They are often driven from agitation into an aggressive rage with a simple trigger. Any small play against their ego, perfectionism, or a slight action against their image of self-worth, may be enough to trigger narcissistic rage.
As a general rule, you can expect narcissistic rage, gaslighting and projection when you confront the narcissist in your life because by confronting them, you contradict their identity and expose all of the negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions that they've worked so hard to hide.
It's not uncommon for a narcissist to stalk and harass those who break up with them, to release intimate photos or texts (also known as “revenge porn”) of their former significant others, or to go out of their way to slander the work of someone who does not confirm their grandiose view of themselves as all-knowing.
- When it comes to humiliation, a narcissist does that on every occasion they can possibly do it to get a lift in their ego, to feel high and they humiliate you by passing comment on different things that are related with you, for example, you may be wearing something and they could pass comment on, you know, ...
Deflecting can be used as an unintentional defense mechanism from psychological trauma – or it could be a very malicious and deliberate way to cause harm.
Deflection could also be a form of narcissistic abuse. A person with narcissistic traits may go to any lengths to seem as perfect as possible, including criticizing others who give them negative feedback. Emotional abuse: With emotional abuse, deflection can go both ways.