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FEAR IS THE VIRUS: How Narcissists Try to Hack Your System

When charm is a virus and boundaries are your firewall.

By THE HONED CRONEPublished 3 months ago 2 min read

Imagine, for a moment, that your body, your mind, your very emotional operating system is a pristine, high-end laptop. Sleek, efficient, fully updated. You take care of it. You keep it charged. You even splurge on antivirus software now and then – self-care routines, therapy, meditation, that sort of thing.

Now imagine, on a seemingly innocent day, someone hands you a shiny USB drive. They’re charming. They know all the right buttons to press. “Just plug me in,” they whisper.

And you do.

Congratulations: you’ve just installed malevolent malware on your life.

Because being sexually intimate with a narcissist is exactly that.

First, there’s the overheating. You feel electric, flushed, alive – except that every surge of heat is a calculated drain on your battery. Every emotional spark? An energy siphon disguised as desire.

Then there’s the data theft. Narcissists are emotional hackers. They scan your files, poking at vulnerabilities, probing your passwords, your old traumas, the moments you’ve tucked away. They want to know your weak points so they can exploit them later – or sell them, metaphorically speaking, to some dark corner of the internet called “their ego.”

Meanwhile, spyware quietly installs. You start noticing your thoughts being rerouted. Your feelings rerouted. Even your own body starts glitching – sleepless nights, digestive errors, anxiety pop-ups.

Pop-up alerts flood your screen: “Do you love me?”, “Do you hate me?”, “Am I everything and then some?”, “Am I too much?”, “Nothing at all and suddenly you never wanted me?”, “Warning: Emotional processor overheating.”

You can not transmit what you do not have. But you absolutely can transmit what you do have.

And here’s what almost no one tells you: when your system starts glitching, when anger bursts out of you, when you feel like you’re malfunctioning – that isn’t you being “crazy.” That’s your system responding exactly as it should to an active infection.

Just like an antivirus scanning and isolating a threat, your body and emotions react to being attacked, threatened, belittled, suffocated. Anger is healthy. Anger is life-saving when you’re under attack.

Narcissistic rage – whether overt or covert – is corrosive and life-threatening to your system.

The narcissist – or the virus – isn’t just misbehaving; it’s lying, inverting reality, trying to destroy your system from the inside. And you? You’re innocent. You didn’t “invite” the malware. You were handed an innocent-looking USB stick. It looked shiny. It looked safe. That’s what malware does.

“Enchante?”

But here’s the power shift: the moment you know what’s happening, you can run antivirus. You can quarantine the program. You can eject the drive. You can wipe the system and rebuild.

You learn to build stronger firewalls. You stop granting administrator access to people who haven’t earned your trust. You start updating your internal software not to please others, but to protect your peace.

Healing from a narcissist isn’t just an emotional reboot – it’s a total system upgrade. You install discernment as your default setting. You replace fear with faith. You choose self-respect over approval, clarity over confusion, power over pity.

Dating a narcissist isn’t just a heartbreak – it’s a cybersecurity incident. But the good news? You’re not a victim forever. You’re the IT professional of your own life.

And now? You’re upgraded.

Version 2.0: fireproof, virus-free, sovereign.

#FEARISTHEVIRUS #NarcissistAwareness #ToxicRelationships #EmotionalAbuse #TraumaRecovery #SelfCare #Boundaries #Empowerment #HealingJourney #SurvivorStrong #PsychologicalAbuse #LifeAsAMetaphor #DigitalMetaphor #MalwareMetaphor #UpgradeYourLife

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About the Creator

THE HONED CRONE

Sacred survivor, mythic storyteller, and prophet of the risen feminine. I turn grief, rage, and trauma into art, ritual, and words that ignite courage, truth, and divine power in others.

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