kindle : The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse (The Narcissism Series Book 1) (Debbie Mirza)

I believe the covert types are by far the most dangerous because of their ability to fly stealth, undetected by normal radar.

Plausible deniability is the covert narcissist’s greatest weapon in their arsenal of gaslighting tools.

They know how to say all the right things, exactly the things that you personally want to hear. They can mirror empathy, concern, and tears better than most Hollywood actors.

With a covert narcissist everything on the surface looks normal and often lovely for months, years, even decades.

When you ask for advice from friends and even professionals, you might only hear people giving the benefit of the doubt to the covert narcissist or worse yet telling you that you’re being paranoid, overreacting, or some other way of blaming the victim.

It’s terrifying when every part of your intuition is telling you something is really wrong, but the covert narcissist and everyone else are telling you that things are just fine, and implying that maybe you are the problem.

Yet when you look back, their behaviors make you question your beliefs about them. As you reflect, you begin to wonder, Could this person really have been controlling and manipulating me for years and I didn’t see it…or were things really my fault and I’m just overdramatizing my experience?

You have a solid belief that has formed over years that this is a good person who cares about you, and at the same time, they are being incredibly cruel and controlling. The cognitive dissonance is dizzying and crazy-making.

On the other hand, covert narcissists tend to be well-liked. They are charming and kind. They appear humble and empathetic.

They can be good listeners and appear to really care. You can feel incredibly loved by them.

They simultaneously make you feel terrible about yourself. They use cloaked tactics that you don’t see for years.

You feel like you must be missing something and you start minimizing the abuse, yourself. If no one else sees it, it must be you who is the problem.

read a lot of books on narcissism, but could not find any on the covert type.

Your Body Knew: Common Illnesses

During the time you were with a CN, your body knew before your conscious mind became aware of the truth of this person and the disguised abuse you were experiencing. The card game was simple, though living with a CN is the furthest thing from simple. The experiment is a great illustration of how much we can trust our body’s responses. Often, those responses manifest as physical or mental illness, like depression.