No one knows how to dish out an insult like a narcissist! It is second nature to them, and they can with ease identify everything negative they think about you without even thinking. This can even be within seconds of you having a pleasant time with them. Things seem to be going well and then the narcissist shows their true colors and starts to list off every negative quality about you they can think of. The narcissistic abuse cycle is in full force and is made up of idealization, devaluation, and then rejection. When things are going well, you are likely in the idealization stage. This is where you can do no wrong and the narcissist seems to love everything about you. However, this can very quickly, and for no obvious reason, switch to the devaluation stage where the narcissist calls out every possible negative thing about you they can think of. The goal during the devaluation stage is for the narcissist to boost their slowly depleting narcissistic supply by putting you down and making you feel self-conscious about yourself, while they feel better about themselves. One way they do this is with body shaming.
During the idealization phase, the narcissist sees their partner as perfect and worthy of their attention. However, as time goes on, the narcissist realizes their partner isn’t perfect. Of course, no one is, but to the narcissist this is earth-shattering news. They want to associate with perfect people as a way to feel better about themselves, but they eventually realize that cannot happen because no one is perfect. Once this realization is made by the narcissist, they will start to devalue their partner by belittling, name calling, and pointing out their imperfections. The narcissist does this so that you start to feel weak and helpless, which allows them to boost their own ego and inflate their ever-waning narcissistic supply. The narcissist is not capable of doing things to make themselves feel good about themselves, so they put others down as a way to feel better.
The more insecure you feel, the easier it is to gaslight, manipulate, and control you. The devaluation stage is instrumental in setting up the future game of control and manipulation the narcissist will use on you. They must beat you down so that you feel little and insignificant, all so they can feel better about themselves.
During the devaluation stage, the narcissist might body shame. They point out every flaw, real or perceived, you have because that is easy to target. This will commonly be things you have already said you don’t like about yourself but also can be things they make up as flaws to use against you. The narcissist will nit-pick every possible insecurity you have and use this to their advantage. For those things you can fix, you try to make changes. However, no matter what you do, they continue to make fun of that flaw, or move to another perceived flaw. The narcissist isn’t interested in learning to like you for you, their only goal is to wear you down and to make you feel more insecure with yourself so that you slowly lose any self-esteem you have. This makes you easier to control because you start to feel more hopeless about your situation and eventually stop trying.
During the devaluation stage, the narcissist can only see the negative. They feel lied to and deceived by you because you are no longer this ideal person they thought you were. This is, of course, of no fault of your own! This is just part of the disturbed narcissistic thinking. However, this is a very important point. During the devaluation stage you are now the enemy, and they must get back at you any way possible. This is why they only see negatives during devaluation. There is nothing you can do right, including change any part of your body, because they aren’t looking to change their view about you. They are looking to beat you down as a way to build themselves up. In their disordered way of thinking, they blame you for being flawed when this was an ideal they came up with about you.
The more the narcissist body shames, the better they feel about themselves and more in control they feel of a situation they feel out of control in. While the devaluation stage, and body shaming, feels very personal, it is not about you. It is 100% about the narcissist. They need to put you down to prevent narcissistic injury which quickly deflates their narcissistic supply. Without a full narcissistic supply, the narcissist further loses their own identity, and they cannot cope in a world they already feel insecure in. It can be difficult to not take the body shaming from the narcissist personally, but in order to maintain your own self-worth, you need to not focus on their words and remember it is about the narcissist’s own insecurity and not about you. They body shame because it makes them feel better and they likely don’t even think the negative things they are saying, they just know it hurts you and when you are hurting, they are happier.