Charlie Ferrara's List: Honor Thy Mother

• Think they are special, God-touched, or privileged
• Fake sweetness, honor, and good intentions, but deprive them of something they want and look out as they reveal their true selves.
• Lack of empathy colors everything they do.
• May say, “How are you?” when you meet, but they are not interested
• Their blame-shifting creates defensiveness. Then they belittle the defensiveness: “Why are you so angry?”
• Since they shift blame so well & seamlessly, your guilt/insecurity issues stay raw and over-sensitive.
• If you point out an error they made, they go into defensive mode counter any such notion with anger, venting, rage, cold-shoulder, or withdraw
• They are: blowhards, braggarts, blusterers, brow-beaters, bullies, big-headed, and ultimately bogus.
• Make you feel special & then emotional distance themselves in ways that keep you unsure of yourself.
• Groom people via manipulation (charm/rage combo) to sell their reality/rationalizations to others.
• Their sense of self-importance and lack of empathy means that they will often interrupt the conversations of others.
• Very rarely talk about their inner life, memories and dreams, for example.
• ie, using subterfuge and
•   Are stuck in one level of maturity where growth is not an option
• May apologize, but it doesn’t mean a real change in behavior
• See you as extensions of themselves and resist your freedom
•   Find personality weaknesses & exploit them as easily as you & I ride a bicycle
•   React to criticism with anger, blame-shifting, shaming or humiliating others
•   Fail to recognize people’s emotions and feelings
•   Are unpredictable in mood and behavior
•   Become aggressive, hostile, verbally vicious, or withdraws when threatened
•   Rationalize everything to make sure they always come out on top
• Will take advantage of co-workers
•   Will be jealous of others’ success but wear a face of confidence
•   If you share workload with them, expect to do the lion’s share yourself.
• They love to delegate work or projects and then interfere by micro-managing things
•   If things go well, they take the credit; if the work turns out badly, they blame the person they delegated it to.
•   Value religiosity’s rules or business protocol over spiritual growth.
•   Attempt to belittle any version of reality that conflicts with theirs.
•   Have an inability to feel or process or truly understand shame.
•    Don’t use language as communication. It’s for hiding, deflecting, avoiding, masking, & manipulating.
• Their charm is false. Contradict them a few times & you’ll feel their out-of-proportion narcissistic rage.
• Use emotional withdraw to create guilt and compliance.
•   Their subconscious creates a false ego from which to relate to the world. They are their own avatar!
•    Subconsciously real relationships don’t exist for them. We’re all just players on the narcissists stage.
• Their sole subconscious pursuit is to be seen as God’s gift to the world in a certain area or skill set.
•    Early emotional trauma freezes their worldview at that age, making them immature, impatient, inconsiderate.

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• Isn’t that wonderfully apt? The authors add this gem about relationships with narcissists or crazymakers, “You veer between wanting to kill them and wanting to kill yourself.”
• Their time, schedules, energy, drama, and life issues always outweigh yours
   From the book:
• 3 )  They belittle and downplay your needs, emergencies, and requests
   Despite howling over a broken nail, a crazymaker will say your requests for their time or help are just so much drama — a way for you to get attention. They might also add, that you are disrespectfully expecting too much of their good will or prevailing too much on their valuable time.

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• Paranoid narcissists. This type of narcissist feels intense contempt for  him- or herself, but projects it outward onto others. Paranoid  narcissists frequently drive other people away from them by  hypercritical and jealous comments and behaviors.
• • Abortion could have aggrevated this behavior.
• Freud thought that all human  infants pass through a phase of primary narcissism, in which they assume  they are the center of their universe. This phase ends when the baby is  forced by the realities of life to recognize that it does not control its  parents (or other caregivers) but is in fact entirely dependent on them.
• distorted cognition, or knowing
• Still others regard the core problem  as the narcissist's inability to test reality and construct an accurate  view of him- or herself.
• Instead of having a judgmental and overactive  conscience, these patients had a weak or nonexistent code of morals.
• Family therapists  are now reporting on the treatment of families in which the children are  replicating the narcissistic disorders of their parents.
• a pattern of alternating between unrealistic idealization of others and  equally unrealistic devaluation of them
• hypersensitivity to criticism, however mild, or rejection from others
• an unstable view of the self that fluctuates between extremes of  self-praise and self-contempt
• preoccupation with outward appearance, "image," or public opinion rather  than inner reality
• painful emotions based on shame (dislike of who one is)
• On the second level are those who function  satisfactorily in their jobs but seek professional help because they  cannot form healthy relationships or because they feel generally bored and  aimless.

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