Hello my friends. Today in my childhood trauma recovery from narcissistic abuse, I'm exploring gaslighting tactics narcissists use to make people feel excluded. These include shibboleths and gatekeeping and virtue-signaling. The worst offenders are the "Pick Me" or vulnerable narcissists who try to get people to side with or like them, by slandering or humiliating others.
The Funny Handshake Club shibboleth
A shibboleth, in case you're unfamiliar like I was, is a code word or gesture that identifies group members. Only those who past the test are admitted. This is also called in-group signaling, in which by knowing the secret handshake, proves loyalty. But more often, these gatekeeping games are ways to keep people out rather than in. Vulnerable or covert narcissists love making people feel left out. My narcissistic mother prides herself upon being in some sort of "in crowd" that no one else is. But it's just narcissistic fantasy because she never actually leaves the house and lives Facebook virtual reality. There are about three people who have not gone no contact with her.
The Posturing Imposter
The virtue-signaling Pick Me is most often seen in religious and political groups as well as social media. But like my Facebook warrior mother, it's an empty echo chamber. They're busy preaching to everyone and listening only to themselves. So there is not group but a collection of random finger waggers. They think they're saying what others are thinking but since no one is listening, no one hears anything but their own rants. They're just a club of isolated people wearing team colors.
In-group signaling in the Imaginary In Crowd
My grandiose narcissist parents have never actually lived in reality. They exist in an auto-gaslit world of imagined power, domination and control. In this fantasy cult, they reign supreme and other people hang on their every word. Their off behavior has elements of delusion but it's not delusional. They are not schizophrenic or sociopathic. They just act that way. But they aren't team players. I've always said my parents are soloists, not choir members. And they are also ordained to "preach to the choir" exhorting and calling out sin only they can see, in disturbingly attention-seeking ways. But it is all babble. Because I can see on people's faces that they have no idea what either of them are talking about. And that reinforces the idea that they speak a special ex cathedra language.
Exhibitionism
Both my mom and dad fancied themselves "cool kids" and brave renegades. But they acted like irresponsible, immature goofballs doing all kinds of erratic, illegal, immoral, unprincipled acts. They believe other people admire and are jealous of them when really it was pity or disapproval. They said and did strange things they thought made them sound tough or awesome, but made them look foolish. My mother, at 60, threw a pie in my face at her work picnic, thinking it would make other people laugh. It didn't and she was censured. It took me a lot of work to heal trauma bonding and betrayal blindness to be able to admit that without FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) that I was betraying them.
"Not Like Other Girls" and Gang Symbols
So the irony is that while the "pick me" wants to be seen as special and superior "not like other girls" they also want to be part of a clique. They like ganging up on vulnerable people to assuage their own ineptitude. They need people to score off and their children present perfect targets, being naturally attached to their parents. They use the scapegoat or Broken Vending Machine Child as I, like a voodoo doll, poking pins in her. They humiliate and ridicule her to make themselves feel big and important. Yes, this is disturbing for normal people. But these dark tetrads get off on emotional BDSM.
The Self-Gaslighting Shame Spiral
And the more audacious behavior they get away with the worse they get. I as their Scapegoat Child certainly never spoke up because to do so would incur their narcissistic rage. No one must question and any disagreement is taken as narcissistic insult. And yet they are outrageously insulting. My exhibitionist mother brags that she loves to shock people and that God has given her special entitlement to publicly humiliate people to call them out of sin (!) But narcissists don't age well and as they get older, they become more vulnerable and malignant narcissists. Decades of narcissistic injury and increasing need for narcissistic supply have embittered them. All they know is coercive control so they have no real friends. They've also experienced shame which they can't tolerate. So they blame-shift and play more DARVO.
The Ultimate End Game Game End
All their backstabbing, mobbing, smear campaigns, exploitation, destabilizing and narcissistic abuse come back to bite them with a vengeance. They burn through people they've exploited like grill gas. Ultimately most everyone has to go no contact with them because the relationship is so toxic. They die alone, feeble, frail and furious. And this might lead you to feel sorry for them. But don't. You couldn't stop these logical consequences any more than you can hold back a tsunami.
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