What is “baiting”? (Glossary of Narcissistic Relationships)

 

  • One of the last things I told my Narc before we separated was, “the reason you are so cruel and mean to me is because when you look at me I am EVERYTHING you are not.”

 

  • Dr.often brings me to tears I feel like she is the only person who truly gets it. I’m gobsmacked by the accuracy of her descriptions.
  • I love how once you show you are fighting against baiting, narcissists will start trying anything to get a rise out of you.
  • My sympathies to any human being on this earth that has had or is having to deal with one of these insecure monsters. Learn everything there is to know about this personality disorder because if you don’t you will be destroyed. Learn to seek out your weaknesses and grow from them. Do your best to stay in a positive emotion no matter how much negative dark energy they throw at you.
  • One thing that a narcissist tell you when you’re beginning to analyze the situation is that ” you’re paranoid” or ” you’re crazy”
  • Her final act of baiting was close to the end of a 7 year relationship and was with her at the wheel of an automobile with me as a passenger on a busy Interstate freeway. I had already been Grey Rocking and not taking the bait and she was in need of a hit of supply. Her driving quickly became aggressive and dangerous. It scared the crap out of me and I knew she was trying to get me to react. As tough as it was I just kept my mouth shut knowing there was really no right or wrong choice I could make in this situation. After this wild ride I never put myself in such a dangerous situation with her again and left the relationship soon afterwards.
  • I caught that smirk on my parent narc many many years ago. It was almost like my narc was having an inner conversation congratulating herself for getting me upset. It was so blatant I just starred at her in disbelief and disgust. She came out of her self-congratulatory trance and saw the look on my face and suddenly went off on a tangent screaming that I thought I was better than her and how horrible I was. Truth is she was right, in that moment I realized how sick she was, and that none of it was my fault. That’s the first time I realized the sick game she was playing and that I needed to get out. Years later I stumbled upon stories of people with toxic narcissism and Dr. Ramani and finally connected the dots. What a relief to know I’m not alone and not a crazy loser!
  • “Once they’ve stepped away, once they’ve disappeared, the moment you’re alone, cry and yell it out. Just don’t let them see it. Don’t give them that satisfaction.” What Dr. Ramani said right there is so important. Took me almost 50 years to realize that the only time I saw my malignant family member narcissist thrown off guard and unsure of herself was when I appeared unfazed in the face of her narcissism. It is an empowering feelimg. She was able to control the narrative when I would get angry, or sad, or become frustrated, or desperate, or if I tried to get through to her. And narcissists definitely get pleasure and satisfaction out of that. But the first time my response was calm and I let everything roll off my back unbothered, I saw her lose her composure. It was amazing to see a pro in manipulation become almost flustered. When you do this the first time, it may be the most empowering feeling you’ll ever have. And it’s ok if you are caught off guard again because you will already know what to do. And you will get better and more comfortable at it. And like Dr. Ramani said, if you need to yell or cry and get it off your chest, because they probably will try to do something spiteful or trifling, just never let them see it affect you and it doesn’t matter how old you are. You can do it!
  • It helped to record the narc’s episodes and listen to them when getting soft and sucked back in the vicious cycle. The narc’s new friends (future victims) that didn’t believe me because they had not experience the sociopathic episodes yet, were shocked. Yes that smooth charming, well spoken person, can be the most emotionally and mentally abusive individual if you don’t let her be in full control.
  • Thank you! I just resigned from a committee because of this exact thing. One of the members was baiting and triangulating and as soon as I recognized what was going on, I understood that this was going to be the status quo and I walked. The bizarre thing was that it was all volunteer work and there was zero status to be gained. The power play accomplished nothing but making it impossible to do the work. It’s hard because you want to tell people they’re being played, but you know they won’t believe you. But I can protect me and refuse to participate.
  • I know this video is a year old, but listening to it I’m hearing his voice again all over again. Word-for-word you nailed it. Now nearly two years after I left the relationship, it still hurts to hear those same words. He took it all the way, and when I didn’t respond, he then ramped it up, flinging ridiculous accusations at me, causing me to refute his claims when he struck that nerve. That was his touchdown moment. Sometimes I feel no closer to healing than I did in the weeks that followed my exodus. Yet I have to remind myself, look how far I’ve come in moving on! Look what I did in 2 years, things I dared not do before! It’s a struggle, the gift that keeps on giving. Thank you, Dr. Ramani, for getting me to this point! 💜
  • Following an argument with my narcissistic husband I was once ordered to visit a behavioural therapist on the grounds I was deranged, that I that had a ‘darkness’ in me and that I needed help.. I only went along with it to shut him up and get away for a while. I already knew I wasn’t the crazy one in the marriage. Anyway, following my description of him on an average day, the therapist asked me to invite him along for the next session lol. When I told my husband that the therapist would love to see him the following week and that there was nothing for him to be scared of, the sessions were cancelled and the subject of me being crazy / possessed was dropped 😂 (well, until his next meltdown happened).
  • When dealing with narcs, I find it useful to turn the tables. Instead of getting defensive, I remind them that they are bothered by an issue within themselves, not with me. They should fix that issue. Perhaps therapy? Watch them go nuts! Be calm. Tell them to calm down. Be woke and leave the conversation as soon as they attack you. You are not the problem-do not be the victim, either. Bullies like a victim- do not be one. Do NOT get defensive. My sister and mother love to start a big fight, then when I got riled up, I could watch them smiling. I would shut down to avoid this. I learned to approach them like crazy people and calmly smile, shake my head and ask them what drama they endured today. Again, they went nuts because they feed on chaos. It takes practice and training, but you can live with them if you have to. Don’t engage in defense.

 

  • My children’s father was a master at this. I became the crazy one who overreacted to his sick manipulative actions. Then he became the perfect parent who “never badmouthed” me and l the unreliable one. Frequently, such as having the children ask me if they could go skiing on the weekend they are to be with me then holding back child support so we were not able to financially do such activities. And of course l took the bait for soo long. It was actually his parents who came to my support. May they rest in peace. It’s taken me 45 years to just now understand this, thank you 🙏🏾

 

  • When I was with a narcissist woman I kept a journal and documented what was going on and detailing things. I did it to reassure myself that I wasn’t going nuts or imagining things. When I finally went to a therapist my journal was very valuable in helping me leave the relationships and recover more quickly. I highly recommended keeping a journal for all of you that are in a toxic relationship.
  • I literally burst into tears when I heard this. You nailed it to the “t.”

 

  • This reminds me of my mother, especially the part where she accused me of things I didn’t do. When I moved far away, she tried to bait me, mostly by going after my boyfriend (making wild accusations about him), I kept ignoring her. When I was younger her baiting would work on me, and then she would gaslight. “Look at you! You’re always so angry!”, then she would go into full denial mood when I pointed out how she had just been acting. She would suddenly be all calm and claim, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not doing anything, you are. I’m just standing here.”

 

If Donald Trump starts a “Patriot Party”, then how would its platform and policies be different from those of the Republican Party?

So let’s think about this seriously for a minute.

What could Trump get out of a new party?

Trump loves attention, chaos and suckers giving him money he doesn’t have to return or do anything for.

If he forms a party, a lot of his current followers will at minimum pay a lot of attention to him and show up at his rallies to get their infusion of emotional gratification by being with people who hate the same things and people that they hate. All the news networks will continue to report about him. Fox News, OANN and Breitbart won’t take the spotlight off of him. He’ll get the attention he needs like normal people need oxygen and water.

If he forms a party, he’ll take perhaps 10–15% of the electorate with him. His final job approval rating was 29%, but a lot of those people are tribal Republicans who loved Trump, not random people off the street. 10–15%, however, is enough to screw up political calculus in enormous numbers of states, which is of course sufficient to get lots of news and analyst attention (like this question and these answers, but writ large and glowing). Massive disruptions in electoral balance are chaos. He’ll have Republican families split down the middle and feuding. He’ll have Republicans fighting Republicans, with some joining him and some attacking him. He’ll revel in it. All that chaos, all his doing.

If he forms a party, he’ll be able to continue to spread his messages of chaos, disunity, hatred and white grievance. He’ll say that the Republican deep state kept him from meeting the needs of his flock, and while he’ll be pretty generic, the most extreme elements of the right such as the Proud Boys and the militias will think he’s talking directly to them. They’ll be even more emboldened, and buy into the notion that he’s their leader. There will be more right-wing extremism and insurrectionist acts inflamed by his rhetoric. More chaos.

And he’ll create a secular prosperity gospel movement, with him as the megachurch owner. He’ll invoke god, but it will mostly be the god of bling, the literal golden calf. He’ll undoubtedly continue to have all the evangelical leaders show up along with the pillow guy at his events and in his media drops, to give the illusion that he cares about Christians. And he’ll have all of those people send him money. He’ll get churches donating to him. He’ll get white Christian business owners donating to him. He’ll get a bunch of lottery-ticket scratching poor white people sending him their money. And he won’t have to give them a thing in return except feeding the howling void of biased ignorance inside them with things that make them feel good about themselves by pointing at all of the people they hate and supporting their loathing of them.

It will be a reality-tv political party, World Wrestling Entertainment-quality mental pablum, with all the histrionics and flamboyance, but none of the athletics. A lot of Americans will latch onto that and suck mightily at the teat of bile and disinformation. The Republicans have spent over 60 years creating and feeding those ignorant wedges, and Trump exploited them to take their party away from them in 2015. Now that he’s free of the inconvenience of actually having to do the job of President — however fitfully, poorly and incompetently — he’s free to exploit those wedges for the remainder of his life.

And he’ll have lots of help. Trump has no problem attracting venal, amoral people, leeches in human form, to his efforts. They arrogantly think that they’ll be able to get in, make their millions off the drippings from the table, and escape with their mostly non-existent souls and reputations intact.

As I said, arrogant, but not wrong in many cases about making millions. There are innumerable people who will line up to carve off as much of the proceedings of the long con into their coffers as possible. There’s been a steady conveyor line of them coming and going over the past 6 years, in and out of the Trump camp, in and out of Trump’s favor. Many of them will end up bankrupt because they’ll foolishly think that they can make deals and contracts with Trump and have them honored, greed blinding them to Trump’s entire history. He’ll con them too.

So how will this be different than the Republican Party?

Well, the RNC completely caved to Trump. Prior to the primaries last summer, they voted to be Trump’s lapdogs and support whatever he wanted, while continuing to block anything from the Democratic Party because partisan nonsense.

WHEREAS, The RNC enthusiastically supports President Trump and continues to reject the policy positions of the Obama-Biden Administration, as well as those espoused by the Democratic National Committee today; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda;

RESOVLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention;

The Republican Party Platform, 2020 – Ballotpedia

Yeah, covfefe-level typo and all. Truly an inspiring document, laying out their positive vision for America. (Sarcasm mode off). It’s remarkable how sycophantic it is, which is probably why the RNC no longer allows people to see it on their site, and people like me have to cite it from Ballotpedia and other independent sources now.

So what are their options?

The first choice is to out-Trump Trump.

That would be to have Tom Cotton or Matt Gaetz or Tucker Carlson be the new Donald Trump, attacking him, attempting to be even more Trump-like than Trump. More brazen, more ignorant, more crude, more jingoistic, more nationalistic, more fact-free, more hating. That’s an entirely possible and probable path for the GOP. They aren’t winning Red states with reasonable and thoughtful policies, after all.

The second choice is to pivot to being a 21st Century center-right party.

The GOP has an amazing history, which they started unravelling in 1956 with In God We Trust. They were the party that freed the slaves, voted 76% to give women the vote, supported a strong Fourth Estate, were strongly for separation of church and state, were good fiscal managers of government, started the EPA, fought polio to the ground and established the national parks.

They could return to their roots, but in a 21st Century context. They could rebuild themselves as a credible alternative to the Democratic Party. They could accept climate change and offer center-right policies that were seriously thought through and communicated. They could reject the anti-vaxxers, leaving them to Trump. They could maintain an ecumenical council to gain the thoughts of religious groups, but stop pandering 24/7 to evangelicals. They could reject educational policies which intentionally made things horrible for the bottom 40% of the socioeconomic classes. They could embrace universal health care, something every western democracy has successfully done, something which has better outcomes at much lower costs. They could embrace police reform and demilitarization, but with differentiation.

They could embrace the better angels of their nature, returning to Lincoln for inspiration and guidance. They could look to the Angela Merkels of the world, right-wing leaders who are fully present in this century, not pining for a mythically glorious 1950s. They could reject the identity politics of being the party of white, Christian male grievance and embrace the vast diversity of America.

If they did that, they could carve off some of the Democratic Party’s more conservative members such as Klobuchar, Manchin and Edwards. They could make inroads into the cities. They could turn some purple states Red again, reversing the tide of history that’s seen them losing ground for decades.

The clearest sign that they would actually do this is if they vote to both impeach Trump in the Senate, and further invoke the option of disqualifying him for ever running for office again. This wouldn’t prevent Trump from pretending he was running, but it would divorce him utterly from the Republicans and limit the damage he could do politically to them in the future. I’m sure that at least three Republicans are advocating for this path out of the hundreds in Washington. It should be hundreds of the hundreds.

I think the Republicans becoming a 21st Century center right party is as likely as Trump fading quietly and humbly into the background, but they could do it.

Their last choice is to re-embrace Trump.

Instead of leaving him to kill their party, they reach out and negotiate to keep him in the fold. They promise him riches and adulation. They surround him with their organization and they stick their probing noses even further up the deep, deep divide between his buttocks.

This is basically the first choice, but with Trump as the even more Trumpy leader, leaving Gaetz, Cotton and Carlson frustrated from coupus interruptus. And then the spectacle continues, with even more craven and abject sycophancy from Republican leaders.

They preserve their electoral chances. All they give up is everything.

And Mitt Romney, while he talks a good game, would undoubtedly stay in the party, continue to be a gadfly with no power or influence and continue to get elected in Utah. A few more Republican congress members and Senators would elect to not run again over the next six years, and be replaced by even more craven Trump acolytes.


The only good choice for the Republicans is option 2. But the history of the past 70 years tells us that when presented with choices, they’ve inevitably taken the worst one for the long-term, but the one that gives them another shot for the next election cycle.

It’s been seven decades of craven weakness and unwise choices, not moral strength and foresight. There’s no reason to believe that they will change now.

Michael Cohen: There will never be a peaceful transition of power if Trump loses

Former personal attorney to President Trump Michael Cohen and CNN’s Don Lemon discuss President Trump’s unwillingness to say he would accept the election results and the peaceful transfer of power should Joe Biden win the presidency in November.