Defense Mechanisms
When a person is abused, one of the ways they cope with life is by living through defense mechanisms. One of these is called Withdrawal.
Withdrawal means that a person becomes quiet, ignores you, and even physically moves away from you. The narcissist will become distant and aloof from you. Often, detachment, and seeming to look past or through you is a sign of withdrawing.
Insensitivity is another defense mechanism. This is felt in the sense of a "disconnect." Gift-giving is a good indication of this, in that the narcissist will give very odd, unfitting gifts to you. The narcissist will play the "come close, no, get away" borderline-type game.
Projection, is a defense mechanism in which the narcissist will actually accuse you of the very thing they do that is not nice. They believe that, since they MUST be perfect at all times, YOU have to be the one that did the wrong thing, not them.
Besides the above defense mechanisms, narcissists will sometimes do exactly what people want them to do for a time, seeming to be codependent (but this will switch over to them being the controller), they may self-deprecate (put themselves down), they can be very self-sacrificing at first but this will change soon.
Children who are being raised by narcissists will look for "cues" from the parent's face. If mom or dad smile, this means the child is good. If mom punishes, this means the child is bad. This child grows into an adult who has black and white, all-good/all-bad thinking. This child learns that life involves performance to earn someone's affection.
The child of a narcissist may seek constant approval even as an adult, to the point of it becoming very annoying to their partner. They are still seeking that approval from their loved one, because that's how they learned that life was.
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