They leave nothing behind. The lies get everywhere. “Oh you have a label for us now? We are also victims! Please normalize our disorder and remove the stigma,” they say.
Gaslighting takes place even at the level of denial of its whole existence. Narcissists try to pose as kind and harmless people and then say there’s no such thing as narcissistic abuse. It’s just bad people and it has nothing to do with narcissists. Be careful, it is all part of the plan, the gaslighting, and the manipulation.
The problem is that the issue is so closed from every direction imaginable it’s almost impossible to make a narcissist realize that they have a serious problem. One thing you might be getting wrong here is believing that you can turn someone normal into a narcissist by prolonged abuse, which cannot happen. You may feel insecure or lack empathy towards others because they have no idea what real suffering looks like, because you’ve been exposed to the real deal torture, but that is more like having cPTSD, and lack of confidence due to constant criticism. You don’t have Narcissistic personality disorder if these are the only issues you’re struggling with. But when you believe it’s okay to abuse others without remorse to get your supply, in this case you may be a narcissist. That is indefensible. You cannot have NPD and not abuse others, even if you wanted to.
Just as the term gender has evolved to mean a whole different story than the term biological sex, the term narcissist has changed to cover a different thing than just a bunch of insecure people with overinflated egos. It now means abusers of all types who use these techniques described by recovery experts. There can’t be a narcissist that doesn’t or won’t abuse others. It’s impossible. If someone happens to be a narcissist that never hurts anyone, then this person is in fact not a narcissist. This person only has some traits that fall under the category of narcissistic personality disorder, but doesn’t qualify for the diagnosis. It is then called narcissistic tendencies, which can be formed or developed under pressure of abuse for years, but still does not make the person have narcissistic personality disorder. Victims don’t become narcissists, nor empaths. These are disorders that are irrespective of the person’s previous history. The same might be said about sociopathy, psychopathy, and antisocial personality disorder. A bad environment exposes, triggers, and exacerbates these conditions. It doesn’t create them from scratch. There are bad people in this world. Science tries to study them just as it tries to study everything else. The presence of a scientific categorization and characterization of these disorders is not discrimination. It’s an understanding of what is.