They smile sweetly at others right after hurting you. A narcissist smiles sweetly at someone else right after emotionally destroying you. You are still standing there, stunned and hollow, trying to breathe through the pain they just inflicted, and suddenly, they start smiling and talking to others like nothing ever happened. One moment they are fighting with you, unleashing their wrath and rage, and the next, they receive a phone call, and everything about them shifts. Their voice softens, their entire demeanor flips. They sound as if they just drank a hundred bottles of honey. Just seconds ago, they were raging, and now they’re speaking with sugar in their voice, pretending to be gentle and kind. Their entire energy shifts into charm and warmth. This is not random; this is not a coincidence; it is intentional. It is designed to make you feel unworthy, to make you think you are causing the problem, that you don’t have any value. Their smile with others is not kindness, you need to know; no, it’s punishment. It is their way of telling you, “I could be soft, I could be validating, I could be warm, but I choose not to be, not for you,” and that is what makes it unbearable. It humiliates you in the quietest, most violating way possible because the very thing your heart is begging for—decency, recognition, connection—is being handed to a stranger like it means nothing. They’re performing empathy right in front of you to remind you that you no longer qualify for it. What this does to your nervous system is beyond devastating. It puts you into a spiral of shame. You begin to question yourself, you search for what you did wrong, you wonder why you are no longer the chosen one. You start believing that you must be disgusting in their eyes if they can give some kindness to a random person, a person they barely know, then why can’t they give it to you? This is beyond emotional neglect; it is weaponized grace. They deliberately pour their humanity into others as a way to drain it out of you, and the cruelest part is that no one else sees it. To the outside world, they look polite, social, even admirable, but you are the only one who knows that every laugh they give someone else is an arrow through your chest, every compliment they hand out is a rejection aimed directly at you. That smile is not innocent; it’s not genuine; it’s a mask; it’s a message which says, “You are invisible.” Number two:
Subtle Invalidations: Fixing Their Appearance
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