Underminers are the “Debbie Downers” of the world. Debbie Downer is a popular character from Saturday Night Live who always had something negative to say and found some ways to rain on everyone’s parades about everything. Debbie Downers are the party poopers of the world. Felt good about something and then you shared it with Debbie? Well now you feel stupid and terrible about it.
No matter what wonderful thing is going on in your life (according to you, at least), Debbie Downer has something to say to make it not so wonderful…it even seems dumb now. When Debbie feels particularly clever, she will cut you and your efforts down with comments that have seemingly positive words and concepts thrown in to confuse you, gaslight and make your head hurt. This can include comments such as “I wouldn’t do that, it was awful, but good luck to you!”
You think you should feel good from her comments, and it can look like you should, but you don’t. You want to think she meant well but now you feel down. Your excitement and passion is gone. You feel deflated, you doubt yourself and a choice you were making, that you felt interested and enthusiastic about, but after sharing it with Debbie and hearing her cautionary comments, you wonder if you are doing the right thing. You’ve been gaslit!
Debbie doesn’t have your best interests at heart. She is jealous of you and doesn’t want you to get ahead or surpass her. She is competitive and wants you to stay down, below her. She is a light dimmer and a lamp shade. She will never fuel your enthusiasm for anything and couldn’t give a shit about your passions. She will ridicule them…in a nice way, of course. And then you risk feeling excited about your passion. You wonder if it’s silly and a waste of time….for a normal person, like Debbie suggested.
Narcissistic underminers may be the most difficult energy vampires to detect. You have to trust your heart and feelings , rather than your mind at times. Your mind may want to play tricks on you and encourage you to only notice the seemingly nice things they say and to look at others more kindly than they deserve, to your detriment.
Manipulative narcs count on our tricky monkey mind so that we have self-doubt. As long as we have self-doubt, they have power and control over us. When comments “feel” bad, they “are” bad. Trust your intuition.
Particularly when healing from trauma and abuse, we have to be extra cautious about exposing ourselves to “light dimmers” and “lampshades.” While we are particularly vulnerable, raw and tender, we may not have developed our boundaries or they may be weak. We may need to take time to nurse our wounds with extreme self-care for a while, to counter the neglect we endured and tolerated with narcs. We can’t sabotage our healing and growth to people who would try to take down the wounded.
