domestic abuser or narcissist: what should be the focus?

They’re sexy, charismatic, powerful and funny, the soul of the party; they’re also full of entitlement and power, and if these -often fiercely controlling- entitlements are not met they can fly into a rage at you.

Then they don’t seem that sexy; they seem intimating and scary to you and you often want to do what they say. And you feel frightened when you are with them. Perhaps you should do, it may just be your fear that’s keeping you alive to what’s really happening.

We’ve all met them-we all in fact share traits with them to a lesser extent-narcissists. Perhaps we have not met the clinical variety (although you probably have without knowing it) but the more culturally developed who are arrogant, self-centred, self-important, manipulative, and genuinely lacking in empathy.

While they may not be great at compassion or sensitivity (towards others), they preen themselves and are geniuses at making everything about them and justifying their overblown sense of entitlement. You will never please them and they will act like psychic vampires, sucking you dry of any robust sense of selfhood.

In reality there is a great big ball of pain and existential terror at their centre.

But the behaviours of some narcissists is so close to the description and definition of domestic violence used frequently across various agencies across the land (e.g. https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/ ) as to be almost indistinct.

But having identified your controlling partner as narcissistically inclined and abusive, what now should you focus on?

I believe the focus should be on the behaviour, not the underlying psychological condition, i.e. the abuse not the narcissism.

Here’s why:

You need all the help you can get right now to leaver you out of the situation you are in (you cannot live with a person who is this controlling; you can exist, but it will seldom be what you will call a life) and this help may be from