Undermining is a form of Narcissistic Abuse most commonly practiced by Covert Narcissists, competitive thinkers with a passive-aggressive streak, Malignant Narcissists, controlling parents, manipulative lovers, toxic friends, and abominable family members. When a person engages in the act of striving to undermine another, they seek to erode any confidence or faith that a targeted mark might have in themselves, in an idea, or in a project. The goal of undermining is to do damage to or otherwise weaken a social adversary or targeted abuse victim. It’s highly effective as a psychological and emotional abuse tactic — to always have something negative or undermining to say about something — because such remarks tend to leak into another person’s mind, ultimately wreaking havoc on their emotional body, in the cruelest and most unloving of ways.
Undermining does not tend to happen from the outside of a social circle looking in; instead, betrayal of human moral support and “advisor” trust happens by Machiavellian speakers and petty, narrow-minded, egocentric, Sadistic, and passive-aggressive people striving to ultimately control their closest friends and family members. After all, if a person is a toxic thinker who seeks constant attention and companionship in life, why would they want to encourage friends or family to do well at something in life? Doing well would mean the targeted mark might actually wake up, smell the coffee, figure out what the Gray Rock is cooking, and actually end up with both the mean and self-confidence to leave.
As such, if they pat their industrious friend on the back and say things like, “I think it’s really cool what you are doing and I certainly admire your ambition. It must be really hard to keep wasting so much time and energy throwing your heart into a project that no one is ever going to care about or want to see. I mean seriously, don’t you think it’s time you found a real job or a new hobby? I mean, after all… it must get really tiring not to ever actually accomplish anything. Don’t you think about that sometimes? I mean how different your life would be if you just stopped spending all your time trying to make your business work when you know it is never going to be a real success? I mean, seriously. Who really cares about ABC an XYZ that your company or service is actually offering. I simply cannot imagine anybody being willing to pay you to do that. After all, how do you expect to make money? Even if you do make money, it’s not a real job, you know. No matter what, everyone is going to keep looking down on you. You must feel like such a failure. I know a guy whose company is hiring. It’s an entry-level position. I don’t know what you are going to put on your resume since telecommuting is not real work. You’ll just have to think of something. I am sure if you play your cards right he’ll be willing to overlook that you have not worked a real job shift in years. After all, unless you are willing to work bankers hours, you don’t have a real job, life or career anyways, do you? No one with any class or character works at night… especially not swing shift or graveyard shift, either. Only riff-raff take jobs and work from home or get degrees in things that leave them forced to work the night shift. By the way, my generation was the greatest. Your generation is a bunch of lazy, no good, no account losers. Speaking of losers, have you heard lately from your significant other? What about the kids? How are they doing? I am sure they are struggling to deal with the embarrassment of what you do for a career. Have you even considered their needs instead of your own? How do you think it makes them feel to have a person like you as their [mother or father]? I see you have been gaining weight lately. You look tired. Are you getting enough sleep? Your clothes are wrinkled. Oh, never mind — just hurry up and get to that job interview. If you’d just be willing to listen to what other people say once in a while, you would not come across as such an unlikable person and total failure.”
And the list goes on. Bottom line, when a person chooses to undermine the self-esteem and self-confidence of another person, they will do or say anything they can think of to cause paralyzing anxiety in the mind of their intended abuse target. Some do it to control, while other’s do it to get off on having control. No matter what the abusive speaker’s reasoning, logic, or intent, their manipulative words reveal nothing about their intended victims and everything Cluster B about them.
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