Narcissists attack your conscience

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This was another post I just found at Fivehundredpoundpeep’s blog that I just had to repost because there is so much truth here and it really hit home for me. I have experienced this “attack on the conscience” firsthand with a MN mother who seemed to look down or be critical of any genuinely good qualities in others (she called them “insipid” or “weak.”) I don’t ever remember her praising anyone for being altruistic, generous, or kind, but she did admire (and envy) narcissistic, mean, materialistic traits in others.

My MN ex, although on the surface almost the opposite of my vain, always-must-appear-perfect mother (he was a “needy” narc, while she was a histrionic, somatic one), was the same way. He walked on the side of darkness and was attracted to dark things, including the occult and death metal music. He made fun of the positive, wholesome things in life. He made snide remarks about people who believed in God or who lived a clean, moral life–as if his choice to walk on the dark side was better and “cooler.” He actually used the word “uncool” to speak of people who lived moral, functional lives–he was a perpetual 13 year old even into his 50s.

Narcissists Attack Your Conscience
By Fivehundredpoundpeep
http://fivehundredpoundpeeps.blogspot.com/2015/01/narcissists-who-attack-your-conscience.html


Smakintosh is a survivor of narcissistic abuse who has a Youtube channel with many similar videos about narcissism. Although speaking from a Christian perspective, you do not need to be a Christian to appreciate what he has to say.

This video sums up so much to me. This is a video that spoke so much to me, that I have watched it three times. Smakintosh is right about the narcissist’s moral darkening. He is right when he says, “They attack our very consciences.” This is completely true. I think the narcissists do know that something is missing in them and that they hate the “light” and “conscience” in others. Remembering my parents yelling at me for being “too sensitive” as a child, by then they were trying to stamp out the flicker of goodness and a conscience within me. I understand what he means too about this being difficult to express in words.

Spiritually, I had these thoughts as a child, knowing I was different in my core from my parents. I knew I lived among dark individuals who saw the world in a completely different fashion. Destroy or be destroyed. I wanted to help people. They saw this as offensive. I was nothing like them.

Clear consciences are something narcissists hate. They live in the darkness of seared conscience. They do not want good people around them. If anyone is “good”, they want to make them bad just like themselves. They do want people to be the same as them– moral degenerates who live for self gain.

My mother attacked my conscience. My father did as well. I was even told I was not to have my own beliefs a few times which I refused at a very young age and brought forth more of their anger. Smakintosh is right about how narcs prop themselves up as people’s moral authorities. My mother definitely is seen as such within my dysfunctional family. She is seen as the moral authority not God to those people. It is crazy how everything is tested and judged according to HER standards. I watch both siblings living as slaves to these standards, still seeking to please “Mom”. Everything is done with the idea of her watching them and her pleasure or displeasure. What about pleasing God?

Abusive parents will tell you that you are wrong a million times and elevate themselves above you, where they are always right and you are always wrong. This is something they do to people where they will try to separate you from your own conscience and intuition. They try to train you in thinking what they think and believe is above what you think and believe. They do extreme spiritual damage to individuals.. I believe this is one way they gain so much control over entire groups of people. Exploration, discovery and introspection and spiritual yearning is stamped out under many a narcissist’s foot.

I believe God has helped me separate from my narcissists. When I was saved in Jesus Christ, and put God first, I was able to test the narcissists [we need to of course test ourselves as Christians] and see them for what they were. I was able to stand for my own values with God’s help. God broke the chains of the narcissist’s false authority.

10 thoughts on “Narcissists attack your conscience”

  1. Thanks Lucky Otter. My parents like your MN mother looked down on sensitive, gentle, and kind people. I remember it seemed they would take the nicest people and shred them to bits. They would actually call people “weak”. I would get speeches about how I couldn’t cope in the world and needed to “toughen up”. My father would tell me no one cared and there was no such thing as any real friends. I would hear the same things your MN said. I noticed this in my family too, the “winners” and people who got money and who screwed others and came out on top were the ones to be celebrated, not anyone who was giving or kind or lived a life of love. Mine kept a good “appearance”, going to church, and the rest but they never celebrated any positive values. My mother actually would make fun of me, I remember for living in a very small town. This was around the time I got saved and seeking after better ideals in life. She would sneer and call it “Hooterville”. The irony is she grew up in an even smaller town.

    My narcissistic uncle [mother’s brother] loves heavy “death” metal. He is 55 years old and actually goes to Black Sabbath and Marilyn Manson concerts. Marilyn Manson was too dark for me even during my goth days. I know for a fact he denigrates Jesus Christ in his lyrics, and praises Satan. He isn’t an Ozzy Osbourne who is bad enough but even more sinister.

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    • I never liked death metal. As for Marilyn Manson, while I can’t stand his music, rumor has it the Satan worship thing is all an act and he was bullied in school and is anything but a narcissist. In fact he suffers from very low self esteem. I’m not a fan though and don’t enjoy the satanic messages in his music, even if they are in jest.

      Ozzy Osbourne fried his brains on drugs. Ever watch that reality show on MTV–“The Osbournes”? Poor Ozzy was such a dolt. I liked his wife Sharon though.

      That Hooterville comment your mother said sounds EXACTLY like something my mother would have said. She was always putting people down as being trailer trash, low class, hicks, slumdwellers, etc.
      I guess that would include me.

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      • Yeah you wonder which ones do it for an act and attention? I still think its a bad influence either way but wonder about a guy in his 50s whose into that sort of thing. LOL I did watch the Osbournes in the 90s, Ozzy’s brain was totally fried. He has to have full blown dementia by now. I am shocked he is still alive.

        Yes sounds like your mother was the same in mocking the poor. It was meant to diss me, hey when I lived in the big metro city, I was urban scum according to them and then when I move to a very small remote rural town, I guess I was a hayseed or something. LOL Well that is narcs for you.

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        • I remember when we had to move into a trailer park. I wish I could have seen the look on my mother’s face. I remember telling her, and she just said, “….ohhh…really?”
          That was all. She was probably making an ewww face and telling everyone her daughter was trailer trash.

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  2. I am blown away by this post. As I’m writing my memoir, piecing together the memories of my childhood and teenage years, I have begun to see things in a new light. One of my recent revelations was that my mother seemed to hate me for my good qualities. She tried to tear down and destroy anything good that was in me, all the while trying to convince me, and everyone else, that my good qualities were fake.

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    • I felt the same way when I read this. When I think back, I cannot remember one time when my MN mother ever praised me for any of my good qualities, and she said they were fake too– “oh, that’s not really you.” She didn’t even know who SHE really was–how dare she presume to tell me who I wasn’t. What a mindfuck that was. ANother one was, “oh, why do you want to do THAT /act like THAT?” about something I wanted to do that was positive. Another biggie was, “oh, you can’t do that” (meaning I wouldn’t know how) or “oh, you won’t like that.”

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  3. When I was 6, I brought my mother a fistful of wild flowers that I had picked from the vacant lot next door. She yelled: “Get those chigger-filled weeds out of this house right now! What are you trying to do, give me hay fever?”

    When I was 7, I tried to surprise my parents by scrubbing their private bathroom with Ajax. My mother yelled at me for wasting her cleanser and for failing to rinse perfectly. “You did this just to make more work for me!” she insisted.

    When I was 8, I brought my parents breakfast in bed one Saturday morning. I’ll bet you can guess what my mother accused me of: “You’re trying to give us food poisoning!”

    This is just a small sample from my childhood memories. The verbal and physical abuse became exponentially worse, the older I got.

    It’s amazing how deep this type of hurt goes, isn’t it?

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    • Those are horrible. The story about the flowers that she yelled at you for being weeds is especially said, I am not sure why. I guess because it was an experssion of your love for her and she rejected it.
      Narcissists can’t accept love. They will throw it back in your face. You try to be good, they will turn it into something bad.

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      • Thank you, oh, wow, you really do get it about the flowers. I haven’t told that story to too many people, but the few I have told, none of them seemed to really get it.

        I remember how happy I was, running around the field, picking out the prettiest flowers, anticipating how surprised my mother would be when I handed them to her. She was going to love the flowers, that’s what I thought. When I decided I had enough, I came in the back door, holding the flowers behind my back. I went into the living room where she was sitting, and I said “Mama!” to make her look up, then I brought my hand with the flowers around in front of me with a big smile and said “These are for you!” That’s when she yelled, telling me to get the “chigger-filled weeds” out of the house this instant, and accused me of trying to give her hay fever. I felt so crushed. I remember wondering what hay fever was and what were chiggers, as I took the flowers back outside and threw them away like she had told me to.

        When my oldest son was 4 or 5, he came in from playing one day and with a big smile he handed me a fistfull of leaves that had fallen off the trees during the previous autumn, weeks or maybe months before. They were dry, brown, crumbling, and not even a little pretty. “I have flowers for you, Mama!” my little boy said.

        Remembering how my mother had reacted to my fistfull of spring wildflowers (which really were pretty!), I hugged my sweet boy and thanked him for the beautiful flowers. Then I put them in a vase on the kitchen table. It didn’t cost me a thing and I didn’t get any chiggers or hay fever from doing that, you know what I mean?

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