More than anyone else, a narcissist knows how to make you feel affirmed, needed and important.
It’s how they control and use you to feed their own need to feel affirmed, needed and important – at your own peril because ultimately they consume you to advance their own self-serving agenda.
Whether in your personal life, church, job or wherever …
Don’t be co-dependent. You deserve better.
Crossroad Junction 
I agree though I wonder if its more a case that they manipulate your feelings and perception… such that once your eyes are opened their attempts to stroke your ego fall flat. What was previously seen as sincere or authentic, is now seen as superficial and manipulative.
shalom
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My background studies in college were psychology/biological psychology and the deeper I delved the deeper the anti-social behavior became. I could diagnose just about every one including myself. I was told to move away from negative people, Passive Aggressive types, Bi-polar types, Social-path types…soon I was left with “my” type. When I began to abandon all this and re-discovered my true identity in Christ, there has come with it a “freedom” and even if people (and they do) manipulate me in one way or the other, it is only when I turn to Christ, move away from the visible and turn to the invisible realm of God, that I discover I am already delivered from these personality types and no amount of cognitive psychology can give me true peace. I have been deal with a very disturbed Passive Aggressive person the last couple of years and it is a known fact that most of these people are extremely intelligent and clever. I might out wit them for awhile but in the end I tire of the whole thing. For me to just jump into the lap of Jesus, realize He is “lavishing His love on me,” that I am totally accepted by Him and absolutely complete in Him, a New Creation with New Life…I understand what Jesus meant, when he said, “If the Son sets you free, then you are free indeed.” Bruce Owens
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