04/23/2026
Why You Should Care About Narcissistic Abuse:
Understanding Cognitive Dissonance and How it Keeps You Enabling Abusers
As many of you know I've been sharing more online here about my experience falling into the trap of a predatory narcissist.
I have had multiple people reach out to me in the past few months to share about their experiences in relationship with an abusive narcissist. All of the abusers are spiritual teachers, intimacy coaches or consciousness leaders.
These are people you are following. Supporting. Cheering on. Learning From. Taking Medicine from.
People whose words and energy you are imbibing.
People who are running game on you and you have not the slightest clue whats happening.
You share and promote their work.
You help them grow their audience and trustability.
The stories I have heard about what happens behind closed doors, who these people actually are and what they do when no one is watching would make your hair stand on end. �
The trauma and horror these people inflict on their closest intimates is severe, dangerous and causes immense damage to the body, mind and spirit.
I have spent hours talking to these survivors and listening carefully to their experiences. All of them so closely matching my own.
And yet……
Sometimes I will look up their abuser online and watch a video to observe their public facade.
I want to study them and my reaction to them.
Can I detect any mental illness? Maliciousness? Evil? Duplicity?
Can I locate the monster that I know lurks underneath?
The answer is:
No.
Not at all.
In fact, despite hearing hours and hours of stories and recovery processes from their victims, which so closely mirror my own story, I find myself watching these videos and thinking: but they seem so normal. Actually, they seem pretty great.
Despite what I know I struggle to grok the reality.
I see charming, sensitive, wise, deep, self aware people.
Surely it couldn't have REALLY been that bad, could it?
Such is the cognitive dissonance that occurs when we are confronted with this complex issue of human beings operating from debilitated conscience who wear a golden seductive cloak that hides a dangerous monster.
We can't really actually believe that someone would be that terrible. Especially when they have captivated us with their shiny facade.
Even more so when they appear to be altruistic, helpful, spiritual and wise.
So the human psyche makes up stories to make sense of this cognitive dissonance.
The two primary stories being:
-The victim is lying, exaggerating, confused, mistaken, or (with a nice spiritual twist) "Caught in their own wounding"
-The narcissist is just like everyone else: Simply a wounded person who sometimes unconsciously and unintentionally hurts someones feelings. In other words: it cant really be THAT bad. Surely they are just a human being who sometimes makes mistakes, like all of us.
These two stories form the primary feedback from “the world” when a survivor finally has the guts to speak out. The gas lighting effect of this feedback is so re-traumatizing that it leads them to stay silent.
Which ensures the Narcissist continues to go on playing their game.
The abuser has created a world in which who they actually are doesn’t actually exist, therefore they can continue to go forth undetected.
Its a tough pill to swallow. No one really wants to believe that this kind of thing exists. It's too much. Too confusing. It just doesn't add up to the way we have been taught reality is supposed to work. It doesn't fit with our ideas about the basic goodness in the world.
And it especially doesn't make sense when the Narcissist is giving you wonderful special attention and being a delightful helpful supportive person with you.
H.G Tudor who is himself a high level Narcissist and writes books explaining the inner workings of "his kind" explains this phenomena as the Narcissists fuel matrix.
The Narcissist survives only through obtaining and siphoning fuel (life force energy) from other humans. They see people as mere appliances in their fuel machine. They have no capacity to self source which is why they cannot be alone and tend to deflate into empty, lifeless, depression type states when they are not able to feed on others.
Positive fuel and attention is good.
Negative fuel and attention is the best.
In the Narcissists fuel machine, eliciting fuel from you is behind every single action they take. Giving them fuel is your function.
H.G also explains that the eliciting of negative fuel, through cruelty, abuse and psychological and emotional torture is something they reserve for their PRIMARY fuel appliance. The primary fuel appliance is most often the intimate partner. Sometimes a child or family member. This negative fuel is the most life giving for them.
Everyone else falls into Secondary or Tursery appliances. These non primary fuel producers only see the glowing side of the Narcissist and provide only positive fuel (praise adoration appreciation etc)
These are the real suckers in the Narcissists game. Because they will defend and protect the Narcissist on the off chance the Primary Fuel Source should ever come forward and reveal what actually happens when no one else is watching.
Even I, who have been studying these dynamics, who lived through it and who whole heartedly believe the stories I'm hearing from survivors. Even I struggle with the cognitive dissonance. I look and I see- How can it really be that bad?
This cognitive dissonance is what the Narcissist is counting on to keep their game running. That, and the fact that they know deep down we don't want to give into the idea that "their kind" even exists at all.
Make no mistake about it. They do exist.
And you are following them and adoring them and being used as an appliance in their fuel matrix.
Make no mistake about it. When a victim finally has the sanity and clarity of mind to draw a line in the sand and say: I know what you are I know what you are doing and it is WRONG- this is a sign of HEALING and evolution and maturity.
�Unfortunately, most people will reflect that the victim ought to take a higher road approach (because blame and right and wrong is so simplistic and reactionary) when in fact the “higher road” approach is exactly what the victim HAS been doing that has kept them inside of the mind control spell of the Narcissist. The “high road” approach is exactly the view the Narcissist counts on you and the world taking in order to keep their game running.
This is not something the human psyche can easily grasp. And if we ever want to actually disrupt the predators agenda and support the escape, healing and recovery for their prey, we need to start listening and learning.
Imagine all of the people who are quarantined with their abuser right now.
It's time to wake up and listen.
In Narcissist land, things are not at all what they seem.
From HG Tudor:
“To make you my puppet I engage on a two-pronged approach. Firstly, I make you utterly dependent on me. I open the doors and let you look upon heaven. That way you are in awe of what I can give you and you want it, oh you really, really want it. Secondly, I will then remove every method of support both real and potential that you might rely on to try and recover your free will so that you have nobody to turn to. Thus, as you look on heaven entranced and enraptured, I am opening the trapdoor to hell right under your feet.
That is what it is all about. Making you my puppet. This is my aim. This is the means to my end of obtaining my fuel from you. As you will no doubt becoming familiar with, the means always justifies the end. Accordingly, by ensuring you become my puppet I am in the optimum position to control you to extract every drop of fuel I can from you. I need to control you so that you admire me when I want it. I need to control you so that I can pull the strings and make you jerk to my tune. I am the puppet master.”
― H G Tudor, Confessions of a Narcissist
From George Simon, renowned therapist treating character disturbed people:
“What our intuition tells us a manipulator is really like challenges everything we’ve been taught to believe about human nature. We’ve been inundated with a psychology that has us viewing people with problems, at least to some degree, as afraid, insecure or “hung-up.” So, while our gut tells us we’re dealing with a ruthless conniver, our head tells us they must be really frightened, wounded, or self-doubting “underneath.” What’s more, most of us generally hate to think of ourselves as callous and insensitive people. We hesitate to make harsh or negative judgments about others. We want to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe they don’t really harbor the malevolent intentions we suspect. We’re more apt to doubt and blame ourselves for daring to believe what our gut tells us about our manipulator’s character.”
― George K. Simon Jr., In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People.
- Maya Luna
