How Narcissists Will Use You To Regulate Their Emotions
First of all, narcissists just want you to believe that it’s YOUR job to regulate their emotions, that it’s your job to prevent them from getting angry. And they do this by conditioning you.
Anytime that you do something they don’t like, they’re gonna punish you with some form of anger. That might manifest in a rage episode or giving the silent treatment. Through the conditioning process, over time, you make the correlation that every time you do XYZ, it makes them angry.
In most cases, XYZ equates to you calling them out for their behavior or trying to hold them accountable for something. And because they’ve made you feel like their anger is your fault and bringing it up is the problem, you will learn over time it’s best not to with the purpose of angering them any further.
And the worst part is…some narcissists will use you as their emotional regulator. By projecting anything they don’t want to feel about themselves onto you, narcissists have created this facade — a perfect image of themselves in their head. When they themselves do something that doesn’t align with their perfect selves, they experience cognitive dissonance.
