3 Red Flags of Narcissistic Grooming Behaviour
Narcissism and narcissist spotting information has been a hot topic over the last few years as people are coming to learn about the influence of developmental trauma, attachment style and early childhood adversity on relationship health. The reason hacking narcissism is important in preventing exploitation and power abuse is that while we can be pretty good at spotting obvious and overt forms of narcissistic behaviour, it's a lot harder to notice the subtle, covert behaviours that hook people into disempowering and dissatisfying relationships.
Grooming is a term often used to describe deliberate, planned and predatory behaviour to seek and recruit specific people to exploit and abuse them.
Grooming here is more subtle, inconspicuous, gradual and motivated by a need to maintain a facade of importance through forming an emotional connection with those who are more naive and could benefit financially, professionally, romantically or socially with the narcissistic person's support.
The emotional connection is necessary to build your trust in them so you can play a part in fulfilling their personal and/or professional agenda by making you believe they're capable, willing & necessary to fulfil your own agenda. This sets the victim up for exploitation.
Here are the 3 main grooming behaviours:
Significance: you're singled out and given their undivided attention so you feel special, significant, valued and important, including sharing sacred info rarely shared with others.
Lovebombing: they give you gifts in the form of exclusive training, education experiences, professional development opportunities, access to exclusive communities & resources or their attention on your work.
Connection: they orchestrate ways to be alone with you, including pressuring you to break prior arrangements, to reinforce the first two steps.
All the 3 grooming points make up the red flag, not just one.
These behaviours comprise the second step of a six step narcissism playbook and play into the bigger picture of what’s in store for you if you form an emotional bond with the person.
Sometimes our desire to get ahead can cloud our judgement and override some of our individual values. In gaining awareness of the drivers behind other people’s behaviour to want to connect with any of us, narcissism hacking is becoming aware of when we might engage in these behaviours to connect with others…and refraining from doing it.
I hope this and other pieces support each of us to examine our motives and course correct so that we don’t do exploitative things unto others that has been done to any of us and our self-examinations are done with self-compassion.
Thank you for reading,
Nathalie Martinek, PhD
The Narcissism Hacker
Another excellent piece signposting us to the toxic behaviour of narcissts.
The narcissist I last worked with did all of these and more:
Confided his life story and fears;
Promised he would change the inequalities I faced in my role;
Took me for coffee during a conference;
Complained about the other narcissist in the team;
Developed a 'them and us' pact against the others;
Stayed glued to my side at another conference;
Left evening events to walk me back;
Claimed he fought the organisation to retain me when he was doing his best to get me out.
Beware the wolf in sheep's clothing!
The sad fact is that without such a toxic working environment (NHS, medical Royal College) he would not have had such persuasion, but I was tired of the systemic abuse and he used that as his bait.
I have never heard of "grooming" outside of a sexual exploitation context. I have never seen it, and I cannot help but to think, why not simply enjoy it and tell someone who tries to exploit you afterwards to orally clean your reproductive organs? This seems like an easy-to-control situation.
Perhaps I have experienced it but was of a temperament that made abuse unlikely? I have had women try to get into my good graces, but mostly no harm came from it.
Most of the abuse I see women wield usually involves double-dipping with regards to social behavior (treat me like a man when it benefits me, treat me like a traditional woman when that benefits me). That and stereotypical manipulation. Women on average are way better at this than men, but also very few men engage in such behavior unless they are good because the consequences are often, if not always violent. Most of the "abuse" I have seen towards trans men relates to this. They have no clue what kind of behavior is acceptable. They say terrible things then are surprised when the obvious consequences arrive (common examples are insulting a man's family (men never do this unless they want to fight), publicly belittling a man, or bizarrely, taunting young, angry, terrifyingly muscular lads into a fight, then crying and complaining that such an outcome was not their intention).
Much like the imaginary crime of "gaslighting," I just have trouble believing that such activity exists. Now, I know sex offenders do this with female children, but adults engaging in such behavior in a professional setting sounds far-fetched, but perhaps I have been lucky and never observed it.