Escaping The Narcissist’s Sado-Masochistic World

A narcissistic relationship begins in a utopian state of wonder and bliss, before devolving into a hellscape of ritualistic humiliation, rejection and abuse. As the months pass, the narcissist’s attitude grows colder, their comments more biting, and their abuses more painful. Even the sex can become rougher and more crude.

As the target’s self-esteem plummets from their treatment, the narcissist amps up the abuse into a sadistic fervour, which further erodes the target’s self-esteem, hence reinforcing the cycle.

This raises the question: If someone treats you so badly and disrespectfully, why not just walk away?

Those who know what a trauma bond is understand why a target puts up with abuse. Those who know what a sunk-cost fallacy is understand that the more the target invests, the more likely they are to remain, hoping for an eventual return on their investment. The target’s (magical) reasoning is that the more love they show the narcissist, the more it will heal them both and lead to a happy ending. To the outside observer, however, the target seems like a masochist begging for pain. And in some ways, they would be right.

Welcome to the sado-masochistic world of the narcissist.

Venturing Into The Darkness

So what gives? Why does a narcissist devolve into emotional, sexual and physical sadism? What is fuelling this horrible behaviour? And long before the target invested their mind, body, soul and finances into the relationship, long before the trauma bond set in, why did the target accept the punishment doled out by the narcissist?

The answer lies in two places: The narcissist’s unconscious, and the target’s unconscious. Deep inside both lies a mysterious figure, acting from the shadows, infecting the narcissist and target’s every decision, helping to reinforce the sado-masochistic cycle as it devolves into a chaotic storm of confusion, humiliation and pain.

Every narcissistic relationship has a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ person. The narcissist knows exactly which one they are, and ensures their ‘goodness’ by provoking the target’s ‘badness’ through shaming, criticising, ridiculing, undermining and attacking the target.

For their part, the target contributes to their ‘badness’ or ‘lessness’ by sublimating themselves to the narcissist. They see little wrong with allowing the narcissist to control their life, have their way in bed, and be the judge of all they do. The target inherently believes that they are less capable and less intelligent than the narcissist. Caught in their idealisation, the target sees the narcissist as the divine answer to all the ‘badness’ they carry inside — even when they are not aware of the fact.

Popular psychology talks a lot about the ‘critical voice’ in people’s heads. This incessant tormenter questions your every decision, judges every facet about you, and reminds you in no uncertain terms how inferior, incompetent and horrible you are.

Thoughts are tangible to the light of awareness. In the practice of mindfulness, where one directs their focus inside, thought is typically the first layer which arises to consciousness. This explains the hyper-fixation on the critical voice.

Some people grew up with vocally-critical parents. As a result, scolding comments such as “You stupid child!”, “You’ll never amount to anything!” and “You’re pathetic!” ring in the abused child’s mind.

For others, the negativity emanating from within is not so sharply expressed. These people rarely hear a critical voice. Instead, they may experience a painful unease; a vague sense of being ‘bad’, broken or inferior somehow. This might manifest as a heaviness in their chest, a tension in their jaw, a gnawing anxiety, a desperation to be accepted, or a tendency to want to isolate themselves.

To muddy the waters further, behaviours can arise which are rooted in a self-perception of inferiority, incompetence and ‘badness’. People-pleasers supplicate and place themselves last, assuming the ‘lower’ position in all interactions. Putting yourself down, pretending to be overly lovable, averting eye contact and refusing help from others are some other ways inadequacy can be expressed.

Whether it is through mind, body or behaviour, this gnawing sense of inadequacy emanates from a singular source which often escapes awareness: The ‘bad child’ inside.

How We Become ‘Bad’

In the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein, a ‘bad object’ is an early, introjected self-representation perceived as having negative qualities.

Who is the judge of ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ in this world? Anti-heroes such as Tony Soprano, Don Draper and Harley Quinn are some of the most loved characters in film and television — despite their heinousness. One person’s idea of immorality is another’s idea of power. In a world where we cannot help but become enthralled by the audacity of narcissistic and psychopathic behaviour, the concept of good and bad is an ever-elusive thing to capture.

Yet in the world of a child, good and bad are simple to gauge: Your parent is the judge, jury and executioner — without exception.

Because of their vulnerable state of helplessness, a child remains on the precipice of terror and death. Their very survival depends on the whims of the parent. To cope with this precarious state of affairs, the child splits their reality into a binary all-good/all-bad perspective. Anything or anyone that meets the child’s needs for sustenance, love, attention and nurture is deemed good, and everything else is repulsive and must be dismissed. This is demonstrated in the child who is quick to throw a temper tantrum, then quickly appeased when they get their way.

In childhood, our parents are the only path we have to get our needs met. So in our split state of mind, we deem them all-good. Divine, even. Our parents can do no wrong. We see them this way because if they could do wrong, then our solitary source of survival becomes compromised. This is a terrifying reality to face.

Nonetheless, parents are flawed humans. They can get angry and frustrated. They might fail to attune to our needs and feelings. They can dismiss us, humiliate us, ignore us, rage at us and take away our freedoms.

Parents might carry complex trauma, and they can have personality disturbances such as narcissism, psychopathy, borderline and paranoia. This can lead to them instrumentalising their child to maintain psychological balance. Parents with complex trauma are often in deep pain, and they relieve themselves by passing it on to their children, resulting in ritual humiliation and horrible abuse.

Such mistreatment is more than enough to make a child feel bad about themselves. Yet there is something else, something more insidious, which can make a child feel defective to their bones. Something which poisons their very existence.

An Unwanted Arrival

A question which should be posed to all parents is: When you first found out about the pregnancy, how did you feel?

Most parents would express that they were pleasantly shocked, elated or filled with joy at the news. Yet how many would admit being filled with dread and fear? How many would reveal their seething anger and resentment at the news?

Nobody dares to question a parent’s real feelings about their child, let alone the parent themselves. It is too taboo to consider, too shameful, so terribly wrong. What parent would admit to their child or even to themselves that they resent the child’s existence? None, because a parent knows that their attitude holds the seed of their child’s destiny — whether that be their thriving or downfall.

Unwanted pregnancies are all too common. This is understandable when you consider what a monumental undertaking parenthood is to even the most capable. Accidental pregnancies can happen early in life, when the mother and father do not feel prepared. People can have ambitions for themselves which a pregnancy derails. Others are trapped in unhappy and abusive relationships, and the pregnancy only digs the hole deeper, leaving the new parent drowning in a dystopian hell. And finally, some people simply have no desire to become parents — ever.

Despite all this, society has zero tolerance for arguments against child-rearing. A pregnancy is always a good thing, and anyone who says otherwise is a horrible person. You only have to look at the Roe v. Wade conflict between liberals and conservatives in the US to see how loaded this issue is. The ‘right to life’ has zero tolerance for the right to choose your attitude toward said life. In traditional and ethnic cultures, abortion is seen as a horrible sin. Caught between the tectonic plates of these two realities, a parent faced with an unwanted pregnancy is often forced to repress their feelings and move forward.

Yet when negative emotions go underground, they do not disappear — they simply leak out in all facets of the parent-child relationship. This might show up as resentment and contempt. How the parent looks at the child, speaks to the child, or behaves with the child is affected. The parent’s energy and attitude towards the child become effectively poisoned. This repressed resentment oozes out 24/7. While nothing is actually said, the child subliminally picks up on the truth. Deep in their bones and soul, the child knows they are not wanted. The child’s very existence is an insult — a reminder of how the parent’s life was ruined.

Rather than warmth, love and delight emanating from the parent, the child experiences only coldness. An unwanted child is rarely ever fully supported. Their parent is not curious about them, takes little joy in their presence, and makes minimal effort to get to know the real them.

In the best cases, a parent will begrudgingly yet diligently play a functional role in raising the child, making sure the child is fed, clothed and has the bare necessities to navigate life. However, this empty ritual lacks the ‘soul’ of good parenting. The relationship is forever tainted by the fact that the parent never wanted the child, laying the foundation for a bone-deep sense of inadequacy and unlovability. Of being bad.

An Unholy, Second Birth

Objectively, a cold, spiteful or neglectful parent is bad. Any sane person would admit this. And how do we deal with bad people? We get angry at them, defend ourselves, and in extreme cases, we walk away from them.

In the life and mind of a child, however, this is impossible. The parent must be all-good, after all. And in the child’s binary world, ‘good’ cannot exist without the ‘bad’. Furthermore, to cope with the shame, pain and anger of having an abusive and rejecting parent, relief becomes necessary. Yet the child cannot ‘walk away’. They cannot defend themselves. They cannot even understand what is going on. The child’s clever solution then is to create a dumping ground for this negative energy. An entity. Someone else to take the blowback, who the child can designate as bad.

To achieve this magical, almost occult feat, the child delves deep into their soul. As the pressure builds from a torrent of terror and abuse, the True Self splits into fragments. From this state of flux, the child conjures a ‘bad child’ to direct their pain and anger towards. Every time the parent ignores the child, rejects the child, lashes out at them, stares contemptuously at them or humiliates them, the child points their finger at the ‘bad child’, and directs their shame, anger and terror at them. “You are bad”, they say — but not to themselves. The bad child is to blame. This mantra is like a magic spell. Repeated often enough, it is powerful enough to conjure a Frankenstein from within the Self, who stumbles out of the blackness of the soul to help the child cope with their ordeal. The more neglect, humiliation and abuse the child experiences, the stronger the spell becomes, and the bigger the Frankenstein grows.

All of this is pre-consciousness. Awareness and ego emerge gradually after years of life. The ‘bad child’ is formed before time, like a god out of Greek Mythology. It exists in the realm of energy, not the manifested realm of thought and awareness.

As the child gradually grows into a toddler and beyond, and they begin to form conscious memories, their real timeline begins. Their world comes into being, and the light of consciousness dawns like a sunrise. Meanwhile, the ‘bad child’ remains in the shadow of the unconscious, away from the light — as all bad children must. It lurks beneath the ocean of the child’s Self like a sea monster, behind the veil of awareness like a phantom.

With consciousness and ego come new forms of power for the child, and the lid slams shut on the ‘bad child’, casting it into the wilderness of the shadow. There it remains, filled with a mammoth flood of disowned toxic shame, fear, rage, grief and trauma, exerting an irresistible, gravitational pull, threatening to drag the child into its terrifying centre. Out of this prison, a voice whispers to the child: You’re hopeless. Immature. Inadequate. Inferior. Ugly. Weak. You don’t deserve to be happy. Why would anybody love you? Loser.

There the bad child remains. To avoid dealing with this dark reality, all one has to do is remain above the surface — never, ever venturing into the dark place within.

A challenging task indeed.

Badness In Plain Sight

The ‘bad child’ does not disappear when it is relegated to the shadow. It remains ever-present as we move forward with life. Yet the mind has countless strategies to dampen the bad child’s painful emotions:

• Denial And Grandiosity: Any time shame or guilt arise, the child tells themselves that they are fine. Good, actually. Great! The best. Grandiosity becomes the cherry on top of the cake of denial. You never have to feel bad about yourself if you convince yourself that you are immune from inferiority and immorality. Grandiosity tells you that you (and your life) are perfect, or will be perfect in the very near future.

• Dissociation: Feeling bad is not possible if there is nobody there to feel. A person with a bad child will drift into their imagination many times each day, creating an alternative fantasy world where they have the control. This allows them to conjure scenarios of freedom and success, which numbs their underlying shame. Dissociation also involves indulging in mindless distractions such as social media or binge-watching.

• People Pleasing: If you are bad, then others must be good. If others are better than you, then they will never accept you unless you convince them otherwise. People pleasing involves acting charming, doing favours for others without asking, self-deprecating and flattery. No matter how nice you are, however, it is never enough. After all, you remain bad. So when people do not accept you, you double down and act even nicer, until all boundaries are dissolved, and you feel empty, bitter and used.

• Externalising Blame/Playing The Victim: A nice hack to being bad is to deny it and spot the bad people around you instead. I’m not bad, you say. Everyone else is bad! Others are to blame for the things going wrong in your life, but never you. This is paired with playing the victim, where you convince the people around you that you are the unlucky sufferer of constant misfortune, and that you are powerless to stop it.

• Avoidance: Humans have a way of making us feel inferior, of exposing us to our badness. When we become overwhelmed by the world, and our bad child threatens to overrun us, we withdraw and embrace solitude. This allows us to avoid accountability or be in the presence of people ‘better’ than us, which can make us feel less than in comparison. Even if we must be in the presence of others, we resort to aloofness and coldness, closing off our hearts from others to avoid being vulnerable.

• Addiction: Perhaps the most common ‘medicine’ for a bad child is addiction. A person might over-indulge in promiscuous sex, over-spending, over-eating, over-working, drugs, alcohol or any other dopamine-centric activity or substance.

The above are all attempts to regulate one’s mood and deny reality. Those who carry a bad child are forever at risk of being exposed to their repressed toxic shame, rage and trauma. As a result, they tend to resort to fantasy as a way of coping, using their psyche as a form of virtual or augmented reality which brushes over the unpleasantness of life. Such ‘neurodivergent’ people can only relate to other ‘neurodivergents’ who are willing to co-create a fantasy-based world that allows them to bypass their sense of inferiority and badness.

The Sado-Masochistic Dance

Two people carrying a bad child are destined for a painful union. Not only do they need to navigate their own bad child and its accompanying coping mechanisms, but also those of the other person. Neither person can relax and enjoy the connection. They remain forever vigilant, lest their badness be exposed.

This perilous state of affairs would normally end a relationship before it begins. Yet the trauma of the bad child is fuel for fantasy, allowing both people to idealise the other as perfect. Together, the couple creates a fantastical, dopamine-fuelled realm. Nobody can do wrong in this world. For a while, it seems like the problem of the bad child has been resolved. How can you be bad when you’ve found someone who fully accepts you? Who loves you unconditionally?