The narcissist must win at all costs. They need to maintain their belief that they are better than everyone else, and they don’t consider, or care, who they must hurt in the process. To always win, the narcissist must set you up for failure. In their game of control and manipulation they must arrange the rules in their favor so that they don’t risk losing. To lose exposes them to shame and then narcissistic injury and this is something they can’t tolerate. One way the narcissist sets you up for failure is through double-bind communication.
Double bind communication is a dilemma in communication where someone receives two or more conflicting pieces of information, where one piece of information negates the other. The issue is the person cannot resolve the dilemma that is presented because either choice they make will be wrong due to the conflicting pieces of information. Double bind communication places the recipient in a no-win situation. The double bind is used by the narcissist to control and keep the recipient guessing on what to do. This is a form of manipulation.
For the double bind from the narcissist to be effective, the recipient must not be able to recognize the presence of conflicting information. The person wants to meet the demands of the narcissist but doesn’t recognize that this would not be possible because they fail to see, in the moment, the conflicting information. This leads to anxiety in the recipient. With double-bind communication, it is not just a few situations here and there where you feel like you don’t know how to respond, or the other person gets upset with your response. The double-bind communication seen in narcissists is a continuous pattern of manipulation that is meant to control you and your responses.
Let’s look at an example of double-bind communication you may get from the narcissist. Tonight, your narcissist asks you where you would like to go for dinner. They know you had a long work week and want you to make the choice to help you relax at the end of the week. From the outset, you might feel uneasy because the narcissist doesn’t often ask for your input without some strings attached. But, things have been going well between you two so you come up with a restaurant which the narcissist agrees to.
As you are heading to the restaurant, the narcissist starts to tell you how you only consider yourself and not what they want. They tell you how you pick things for your own benefit, and you “know” they don’t like the restaurant you chose. You offer to go somewhere else that they prefer but they say no and continue to the restaurant they are complaining about. Despite their complaining, and your offer to choose somewhere else, they still go to that restaurant.
The following week, the narcissist is upset with you again and uses your choice of restaurant the previous week as another way you are self-centered and only think of yourself. This interaction is an example of the double-bind communication. The narcissist set you up for failure by letting you choose a restaurant, knowing that whatever choice you made they wouldn’t like because it wasn’t what they would have chosen. The narcissist then uses your choice against you in various other situations as a way to ensure you know you made a decision that was counter to what they wanted.
On one hand they said you can choose the restaurant, but on the other hand, no matter what choice you made, it would have been wrong. There was no way you could have won in this situation. It was a set-up so that the narcissist could use this situation as a way to put you down and make you the problem. This is what double-bind communication does. It makes it impossible for you to make the right choice, even for the small things in life. The narcissist is always looking for ways to make you the problem and to boost their narcissistic supply. If you feel like no matter what you say or do with the narcissist is ever right, trust yourself and don’t let the narcissist suggest otherwise.