3 People to Know if You’re a Victim of a Narcissistic Smear Campaign
The sooner you meet these people, the better protected you’ll be
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Out of the corner of your eye, you see acquaintances point at you and whisper. This is perhaps your first inkling that something is wrong.
People you’re supposedly friends with give you funny looks. They shy away from you. They “just happen to have to get up and leave” the minute you take a seat next to them.
Finally, a friend — a true friend — gives you a heads-up. Someone has been gossiping about you all throughout your friend group or community. They’ve been taking minor, meaningless things that happened, exaggerating them, blowing them up into massive transgressions you made. Where exaggeration fails, they outright lie about you.
The person spreading the rumors seems to be playing the victim, trying to turn people against you, trying to take your own support network and leave you with nothing. Worst of all, the person engaging in all this gossip is someone you believed thought a lot of you. Previously, they seemed to idealize you, to have you on a pedestal.
If any of this rings true, you may be the victim of a narcissistic smear campaign. The effects of such a campaign can be far-reaching and can be devastating to a victim’s psyche.
In this article, we will look at three allies you need to find. These allies can help you minimize the damage, both the psychological effects and the damage to your reputation.
Before we get started: Things you must understand about the smear campaign
It’s already further along than you realize
Have you ever seen the pest control commercial that says, “For every one cockroach you see in your house, there’s 10 more that you don’t see”?
That applies to narcissistic smear campaigns. By the time you are aware the narcissist is trashing your good name to one person, they have most likely trashed you to 10 more.
You see, even back when they were love-bombing you, making you feel like the most special person in the world, they were making an index…
