The narcissist wants you to experience or be subjected to something bad or unpleasant. They want to watch you experiencing highly unpleasant physical sensations. They want to torture you. Many of their actions or behaviours involve inflicting severe pain on their victims, as a form of punishment or to force them to say or do something. They want you to experience severe physical, mental or emotional suffering. And they want to watch your experience this, they want to watch you going through it. Sometimes they can be careless and push someone over the edge, to the point where they cannot come back. This could be due to severe physical torture, where the victim looses their life. Or it could be from mental or emotional suffering, where the victim develops psychosis. But most narcissists will take note of your pain threshold.
They will study your past experiences and how your brain or physical body responds to suffering in the present moment. This helps them to identify your pain threshold. So most narcissists will understand the magnitude or intensity, the measurable amount of force, that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, result or condition to occur or to be manifested. Many narcissists are sadists, they do get off on your pain and suffering. They derive pleasure, excitement and even sexual gratification from inflicting pain or humiliation on others. They get pleasure from intentionally causing you pain or suffering, spoiling or ruining an opportunity, or a chance of success. They do not feel any concern about it, unless it could be potentially fatal. Even then the concern is not for you, it is more about how they could potentially lose their source of supply. Narcissists want you to experience an extreme state of disturbance, confusion, uncertainty or lack of order. They want to torture you to a point where you can no longer properly assess what is going on, or where you are close to death. Just so they can resuscitate or revive you from the unconsciousness or apparent death, making you active and again able to experience the pain or suffering all over again. In a perfect world, they would receive great satisfaction from repeating this process an indefinite number of times or until you are no longer able to function, or perceive the world around you. Of course, some narcissists have made this a reality and acted it out in real life, due to their poor impulse control. Most narcissists understand the consequences of doing this in real life, but that doesn't stop them from finding alternative methods of achieving the same satisfaction or thrill. They find covert passive aggressive ways of inflicting mental or emotional pain on you. It is more difficult for the outside world to detect, but still gives them the opportunity to cause you to experience an extreme state of disturbance, confusion, uncertainty or lack of order. As empaths or highly sensitive people, when we hurt someone, we might experience guilt, remorse or other feelings of distress. It is a very different experience for sadistic emotional predators like narcissists. When the narcissist causes or observes a person's suffering, it provides them with some form of emotional benefit or a sense of reward. They have a natural motivation to inflict suffering on other people, even going out of their way or at a personal cost. Narcissists will target specific situations where they can exploit, humiliate or take advantage of people for their own personal pleasure.
There is a link between sadistic traits and aggressive behaviour. Narcissists will use aggression to provoke fear within their victims. It provides them with an initial feeling of pleasure or reward. But then they begin to feel negative emotions as they start to reflect on their shame. Narcissists do not want to reflect on their shame, as it is painful for them.
So they will try to distract themselves by seeking more pleasure or reward and causing more pain and suffering in their victim. The pleasure or sense of rewards motivates them to repeat these sadistic, aggressive behaviours. The more they repeat these behaviours, the more it reinforces and promotes a larger pattern of sadism or aggressive behaviour within them. It becomes a part of their character and personality, it becomes a lifestyle as they sink deeper and deeper into addiction.
Narcissists assume the dominant role to release their feelings of frustration or resentment and for once feel like they are in control. They take pride in causing you pain or suffering, spoiling or ruining your opportunities or chances of success. They see them as achievements, something to be proud of. They are pathologically envious and jealous of you and this makes them want to watch you suffer even more. Because in their minds, you are causing them pain by being who you are, or having the qualities, talents or positive traits which you possess. They want to destroy everything good about you until you don't even know who you are any more. Because they are envious and jealous. They can't possess your qualities, talents or positive traits. They can't have what you have, or get what you get. So now they want to destroy you. Your presence makes them feel worthless and insignificant. They compare themselves to you and then feel like they are nothing in comparison. They then feel intense negative emotions such as a hate, anger, envy, jealousy. Frustration, resentment and shame. They experience pain from dealing with these emotions, it is overwhelming for them. They try to release these emotions by dominating the situation, taking control of you.
And then limiting or restricting anything that you might otherwise achieve or obtain, which would cause them further pain or emotional distress. Of course, the reality is that they are not really in control and while their dominant behaviour may initially release their feelings of frustration or resentment, it only makes them experience more shame.
Where does this sadistic behaviour come from? I believe that at some point in their lives, they experienced some form of pain or trauma. It is likely to be more than just one experience. These experiences caused the narcissist to experience some form of pain or trauma. By people who may have been sadists, maybe they took pleasure from it, maybe they even smiled or laughed at the narcissist. Or maybe they didn't intend to cause the narcissist any harm. Either way, the narcissist assumed that this was intentionally designed to hurt them. No one was around to comfort the narcissist or validate what they had experienced. Maybe all the narcissist needed at that time, was a hug or someone to tell them that they are going to be ok. And that person was wrong for doing what they did, or maybe they didn't intend to hurt them. Just someone to validate what they had experienced, followed by some form of security or comfort. The narcissist received no security or comfort. Maybe they were told that they were weak or they deserved to experience the pain. From that point on, the narcissist learned a few things. There is nothing wrong with intentionally causing another person pain or suffering. You can find pleasure or excitement in causing or observing someone's pain. They don't have to validate or comfort victims, following a painful or traumatic experience. Or they can even pretend as though they don't notice the pain or suffering that they are causing their victim. You can tell how a person is thinking or feeling by observing their actions and behaviours. By observing a narcissist's out of control or aggressive actions and behaviours, it is obvious that they have experienced severe pain and suffering throughout their lives. And while I can feel or express sympathy for someone who has experienced something like this. At a certain point in your life, you should develop some level of awareness of how your out of control or aggressive actions and behaviours are affecting people. Remember, narcissism is a choice. They choose to act and behave in this way. They act dominant or as though they are in control, but their actions and behaviours demonstrate nothing but weakness and inferiority. Remember, you can tell how a person is thinking or feeling, by observing their actions and behaviours. The narcissist's actions and behaviours demonstrate that they are experiencing hatred, anger, envy and jealousy. Frustration, resentment and shame. The truth is they are too weak to reflect on these emotions and deal with them.
Instead, they choose to project them on to other people, so that they can express those emotions for them. Only weak people engage in these types of behaviours. The narcissist wants to make you suffer, to distract themselves from their own suffering. They want to keep you in a state where they are able to control your emotions or the level of disturbance, confusion, uncertainty or lack of order that you may experience. This is done by restricting or limiting necessities which might affect your energy levels or emotional regulation. Such as food, water, sleep and shelter. Doing certain actions or behaviours that may provoke fear, disturbance or confusion within you. Isolating you so that you have no one to validate your experience or comfort you. Using manipulation tactics such as denial, projection, blame shifting, gaslighting and the double bind. So that they do not have to validate your experience, which they can further use to control you. A lot of this revolves around control and regulating their emotions. When you present yourself to them, when they have to witness your progress or success, your qualities, talents and positive traits. It triggers them to reflect on how they don't have that level of progress or success. They don't possess those qualities, talents or positive traits. When they have to witness you doing what you want to do, or living how you want to live. It triggers them to reflect on how they don't get to do what they want to do. They don't get to live how they want to live. This causes them to feel intense hatred, anger, envy and jealousy towards you. They become frustrated and resentful. To release these emotions, they have to abuse you again and again. Before they abuse you, they start thinking about it and it gives them a feeling of excitement or anticipation. And then when they finally do the action or behaviour, they initially get a feeling of pleasure or reward. However the more they do it, the less pleasurable and rewarding the action or behaviour becomes. They begin to feel empty and dissatisfied. They are left to reflect on their frustration, resentment and shame. This pushes them into an endless cycle where they are constantly repeating the same actions and behaviours, expecting a different result. When all it does is cause them to feel more and more frustration and resentment towards you. As in their minds, you are not able to give them the feeling that they desire or crave. But at the same time they need you, they are dependent on you like a drug. The more they repeat these behaviours, the more it reinforces and promotes a larger pattern of sadism or aggressive behaviour within them.
It becomes a part of their character and personality, it becomes a lifestyle as they sink deeper and deeper into addiction. Never getting out. Years of their lives go by and at some point they might wake up and realise that they have just wasted their entire lives on pointless, meaningless actions and behaviours which resulted in nothing but wasted time. They never experience real life, real relationships. Empathy, compassion, connection. By the time they realise it, they feel that it's too late for them to start working on those qualities now. They would rather take that red pill and go back into the matrix, never experiencing what life is really about.