The narcissistic serial bully 

By Joanie Bentz, BS, M.Ed., LBS, CCBP

Bullies come in all shapes and sizes, and can be anyone in your family, circle of friends or work environment. But how do we define a serial bully? 

The word serial means episodical, or appearing regularly. “A serial bully is a type of person who tends to try and constantly harass or offend people by trying to become more dominant and controlling over them,” according to Depression-guide.com.

The key idea here is “constantly harass.” It’s a pattern of behavior that occurs in intervals and successively as a means to some type of gratification, which varies, depending on the bully’s goals. 

To be clear, the serial bully does not bully by accident or because they are having a bad day. The serial bully wishes to intentionally harm their targets.

A narcissist is a type of bully. At the core of bullying is narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), which is a cluster B personality disorder. These types of bullies also tend to be more Machiavellian in nature and highly egocentric. 

Serial killers as a comparison

The term serial killer has not been around that long. The FBI originally came up with this term in the 1970s to profile a specific type of criminal. 

Serial killers obtain psychological gratification in planning to kill a target and taking that target’s life while utilizing varied tactics to evade detection. Some examples would be Richard Rameriz, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.

Similarly, the serial bully searches for an unsuspecting target, however, murder is usually not the objective. The serial bully targets someone who is emotionally or physically vulnerable, or someone who is typically good-natured and highly empathetic. 

Why do serial bullies target this type of person and for what end?

Let’s examine the narcissist who engages in serial bullying, what the bullying obtains for the narcissist, and how the objective of bullying is achieved.

What are the objectives of the serial bully?

Here are three reasons why serial bullies engage in their destructive behavior.

1. Power

The serial bully craves dominance over people due to their heightened sense of self-importance. However, the serial bully carefully chooses specific people to dominate and decides when to dominate them. A workplace boss or supervisor almost always gets away with this behavior due to the nature of their job, which is to oversee and manage their employees. Serial bullies almost always operate under the guise of care, concern or authority, so that their control tactics are not detected as easily.

2. Control

Serial bullies cause their targets to question their perceptions in order to maintain the balance of power. They will use psychological manipulation tactics and gaslighting, which in turn prompts the targets to seek answers from the serial bully, fruitlessly. These interactions will eventually inflict trauma on the targets without gaining closure on unanswered questions, needs and wants. 

For instance, a bully loves excluding and ignoring people to control them. The target is confused as to why they were not invited to a party or a dinner that the bully is organizing. In reality, the bully is informing others that the target never responded to the invitation and tries to convince the target that the invitation must have been lost.

3. Enslavement

At some point, the target is caught in the spider’s web of lies and deceit that the serial bully manufactured. Due to the unpredictability of the serial bully’s behaviors, the target is in a constant state of dread, uncertain of the serial bully’s next move. 

The target becomes a prisoner of the bully, having no one to turn to for support and care. This enslaves them in an “hostage situation” of a relationship, which ceases to be voluntary on the target’s part. The target thinks no one will believe them if they speak the truth about being isolated from their support network.

How serial bullies achieve their objectives

If you’re the target of a serial bully, you may experience the following:

1. Disempowerment

The serial bully wants complete power over you and will strip you of any sense of control over your life choices. This is done by a steady pattern of criticism of your ideas and invalidation of your emotions and perceptions.

Emotional blackmail is also a common tactic. A good example would be a family member intentionally meddling in your affairs to gain recognition and validation from outsiders, when in fact, the family member is sabotaging your endeavors through insincere advice and misleading suggestions. In realty, the bully is cleverly enacting a smear campaign which will occur by causing the you to make bad choices and feel powerless, which will ruin your reputation.

2. Fear

If you have witnessed the serial bully in a rage, it is usually to scare you into complying to their demands, regardless of how silly or unreasonable those demands may be. 

A spouse screaming at his wife that she neglected to make the beds is a good example. The rage can cause a frightening downward spiral of healthy communication with the husband. The wife realizes how hard she works and puts her best efforts forward, but he is focusing on trivial things that normally should not cause the type of anger he displayed. 

The goal is to get the target emotionally exhausted and in a constant state of hypervigilance. That way, she is easier to dominate and will “give in” to keep the peace.

3. Embarrassment and shame

The serial bully loves to ridicule you subtly to others and share information that you would prefer remains private. This usually occurs in front of you, so as to seem as a joke. 

Embarrassment and shame can occur in other situations as well, when the serial bully wants you to feel bad for what he thinks you did or did not do. Sometimes, you may feel a need to defend yourself, which will project insecurity to others involved in the conversation. At times, this may provoke you to anger, which will make you look unhinged. The serial bully will always deny your perception and say you are overreacting.

4. Guilt

When you begin making choices that are observed as being independent and healthy, the serial bully will make you feel bad for thinking of yourself. 

They need to maintain the strong grip of control. They believe that you are to function with only their needs in mind, and any deviation from this mindset is an affront to their ego. 

Don’t tell the bullies that you “can’t talk right now” when they call or want to have a conversation– or have already proceeded to inflict you with their word salad of confusion. They will never respect your boundaries and constantly overstep them to get their needs met. You scramble and begin to believe that doing something with friends or alone is selfish.

What does the serial bully obtain?

Through their constant mistreatment of you, the serial bully obtains satisfaction in knowing that they were able to socially terrorize you. Your reaction to their bullying, and your downfall, makes the bully feel elevated and euphoric. Does this sound like doing drugs? Well, it is a similar pattern. 

Read more: Standing up to the bully

The satisfaction they feel is their “supply” —their drug of choice, because they are malignant narcissists and have an addiction problem. Their addiction is harming others because they have no identity and have perpetual self-loathing.

When you begin to feel unglued and helpless, when you seek mental health treatment, the serial bully was successful in derailing your self-sufficiency and ability to make reasonable adult decisions. 

Narcissistic serial bullies cannot find helpful and acceptable ways to increase their own self-esteem and better themselves because they don’t think it’s necessary. That would require self-examination, which they avoid, because it will expose the truth of their behavior. 

Trying to control others is so much easier and creates a smoke and mirrors effect like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain of deceit, while overseeing their pathetic self-constructed kingdom of one.

Learn more: Tools for navigating narcissists and other manipulative people