How Narcissists Weaponize Neurodivergence
- Elle Dee
- Oct 17
- 6 min read
Updated: Oct 20
I didn’t fall for a narcissist because I was naïve.
Or desperate. Or unhealed.
I fell because she didn’t flinch when I showed her how my brain worked.
Cnt wanted the backstory behind my routines,
the mechanics of my shutdowns,
the meaning inside those long pauses
before I could speak.
She said being trusted with that kind of honesty meant everything to her.
And I believed her.
Because in the beginning, it felt like care.
Like connection.
Like I’d finally found someone who didn’t just tolerate my neurology -
but wanted to understand it.
I didn’t know I was handing her every tool she’d need to dismantle me.
She didn't love me. She was learning me.
Cnt didn’t just listen.
She studied.
But never for my sake.
It was always for her own.
She learned what short-circuited my speech.
What made me fold instead of fight.
What details my brain would cling to -
and which ones I’d lose under pressure.
When I said I needed time, she created urgency.
When I said I needed clarity, she introduced chaos.
And when I finally broke down, she told me I was weak.
Too sensitive. Too needy.
Cnt made mental notes on every trait that made me easier to manipulate,
easier to exhaust and easier to deplete.
It was calculated.
It was cruel.
And for a long time,
it worked.
She took my transparency and turned it into shame.
It was rarely because of what I said -
but for saying anything at all.
I wasn’t punished for doing something wrong.
I was punished for expressing.
For wanting.
For being a person who needed -
from her, from life, even from myself.
If I set a boundary, I was rigid.
If I asked to be paid - or repaid - I was greedy.
If I got upset, I was “just having a meltdown.”
If I tried to explain that I was struggling,
I was too much.
Too sensitive.
Too controlling.
It never felt like care.
Or safety.
Or even basic kindness.
Because it was none of those.
It was ownership.
Every strategy began with lies
Cnt didn’t always care about being right.
Sometimes, her strategy depended on lies so absurd
they couldn’t be believed -
and that was the point.
She knew I’d get stuck on the inaccuracies -
caught in the dissonance of things that made no sense.
So she’d say things so outrageously false, so reversed,
so clearly her own behavior twisted back at me,
that my brain would lock.
And just like that -
the conversation was over.
Not because I refused to engage,
but because I literally couldn’t. Cnt knew how to make sure of that
any time it served her.
Weaponizing my fears was the ultimate control
She knew my pull toward fairness -
how I fixate on equity,
to take more than I’ve given.
So she built a story -
one that stretched across years of our relationship.
In her version, she was the one used and unappreciated.
The martyr who held everything together.
The only thing standing between me
and a life of failure, loneliness, and collapse.
But stories like hers survive on repetition,
not truth.
From the beginning of the restaurant,
she resisted nearly every responsibility
that should have been hers -
work, finances, even basic commitments.
And as she let them fall,
I stepped in,
telling myself it was temporary -
that I could fix it,
that if I just worked harder,
she’d meet me halfway.
That imbalance wasn’t imagined.
It’s documented in her own countersuit -
her words turning the imbalance
into the absurdity it really was.
I never believed her story of me as the taker.
It made too much a mockery
of how our lives actually looked.
But still -
I couldn't stop measuring myself against it.
Right up until I was gone.
It was all with intention
In the year and a half since I left,
I’ve come to understand something simple and brutal.
Cnt never wanted a girlfriend who wouldn’t leave.
She wanted one who couldn’t.
And that’s where her energy went.
Not toward connection.
Not toward trust.
Toward control -
and the more absolute, the better.
So she dismantled my routines,
cut off my support systems,
and twisted every relationship I had -
new or old—into something suspect or shameful.
Bit by bit,
I found myself relying on her -
on her choices, her timing, her approval -
for everything that touched my life,
including my own money.
Eventually, the independence
I’d spent a lifetime building
was gone.
And I’m still not sure
what I told myself
was happening instead.
The hardest part of all
This is the part that’s hardest to say:
I helped her do it.
She wouldn’t have gotten as far as she did
if I hadn’t handed her the tools myself.
I wasn’t vulnerable to someone like her
because I believed I deserved so little.
I was vulnerable because -
for the first time in my life -
I knew I deserved more.
It's why I freely offered the truth of me,
proudly, without apology -
the parts I’d spent years learning to name,
to explain,
to hold with care.
It felt like trust.
It felt like connection.
It felt like finally choosing a life
that matched my worth.
And that is the twist that still steals my breath:
the dismantling that followed
was not proof of my weakness,
but of my growth.
I entered this love braver, steadier, clearer -
and she used that clarity like a key.
Had she been a person building toward the good -
toward strengthening, widening, tending -
my openness might have become what I'd intended.
Instead, Cnt was studying not my heart,
but my access points.
My value was never me -
this human being I so trustingly offered her.
It was access itself -
a doorway she could walk through
to take the next part of me
she’d found a use for.
.
This is what it looks like
If the person who says they love you
always seems to know exactly how to push you to the edge -
it may be time to ask harder questions.
Are they learning you
to love you better -
to meet you where you live?
Or are they learning you
so they can use what they know
to hold you in place?
Do they notice the points where you bend,
where you break,
where silence takes hold -
to offer comfort, or to tighten their grip?
I let Cnt's desire to understand me
vouch for more than it ever should have.
It felt consistent.
It felt sincere.
And it probably was.
But I never asked what was motivating it.
I never paused to consider
that her investment in knowing me
might not be for me.
That’s the part I missed -
and the part that made it possible
for her to strand me
without a home,
without a phone,
without enough money to get to safety.
What I'm sharing next
This story is part of a larger project I’m working on -
pattern reversals,
and the psychological siege
that helped me finally tap into the courage to save myself.
🤎🪶 Preview the Table of Contents here ➳
🤎🪶 Pre-order the full version (with free bonuses) here ➳
And thank you for taking steps to keep yourself safe.
🤎Elle
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