What Happens to a Narcissist When You Stop Caring?

Transcript from video

Narcissists are generally not that worried about your anger. They're not really bothered by your pleas or your distress either. They’re not even that interested in just your basic needs. What does concern them however, what worries them is something that can be so quiet yet so powerful at the same time, and that is when you just don't give a damn anymore. You're done. You’ve had enough.

You have truly stopped caring. You see them as a waste of your time and energy, and you know you’re better off without them. They have nothing you want, nothing you need. You don't want to try reason with them anymore. Your disinterest, your indifference can shatter the shaky foundation their false, often deluded sense entitlement is built on.

Them not being the most important person in your life can lead to their unravelling. You no longer pay attention to their drama, you don’t try to solve their problems anymore. When you no longer engage with them on their terms they’re faced something of a crisis. They begin to experience what’s known as narcissistic depletion.

Your not being interested, can be worse than any attack or insult, because they feel irrelevant to you. Because despite their arrogance and sense of superiority, narcissists need other people to prop up their false and fragile sense of self. They need others to admire, envy and validate them to feel any sense of worth. This is usually referred to as narcissistic supply.

Even if they can’t get positive attention they’ll settle for negative attention. For instance when you were angry they felt they had control over your emotions. When you were sad, disappointed or frightened they felt powerful because they could affect you. When you tied yourself up in knots trying to get them to understand the pain they were causing, every reaction, every engagement was supply. You were feeding them. Every argument, every time you tried to reassure them, your frustration, your pleading, even your misery showed them they were important, relevant and powerful. When that stops, they start to fall apart.

They can’t push any more buttons to elicit a reaction or pull any more strings to manipulate you. They feel depleted, and that’s crushing for them.

Now indifference isn’t about giving the silent treatment, even though a narcissistic person might accuse you of that because that's probably what they would do in order to punish. Nor is it even pretending you don’t care. This is something different. There is an internal shift, you have clarity. You see them for what they really are. They can’t bait you any more with promises. They can’t get a rise out of you with their little digs and cruel humour.They have lied, criticised, sabotaged or rejected you for the last time. Their best efforts to provoke, trigger, even flatter you are met with calm dismissal.

You’ve no time for their nonsensical logic, their circular reasoning. You see the chaos and drama as pointless. You’ve no interest in anything they have to say. You don’t care where they are or what they’re doing, even who they’re doing it with. They are too much hard work. Their rigged psychological games are just tedious.

So what happens to a narcissist when you stop giving a damn? Well firstly, to a narcissist your not caring is worse than you hating them. At least if you hate them you’re still feeding them, there is still some kind of attention some kind of interaction, even if it’s heated. But indifference tells them they don't matter. They’re not just losing a supply, their whole false reality feels under threat.

It shows they are not entitled to your attention, your devotion. Their approval means nothing. How they feel isn’t really that big a deal to you. So they can feel powerless, insignificant.

When they face indifference, they’re not just going to feel angry or upset, they might start to panic. Because without external admiration and validation, they may have to face something terrifying, themselves.

Narcissism cannot function without others to validate their false reality. They need others collude with their fantasies of being special and entitled, and they get a sense of control through your behaviours and reactions. So when you stop reacting you’re showing them they have no influence over you. They can’t threaten you, they can’t flatter you. They can’t coerce you. They don’t interest you.

They can feel confused because you’ve become unpredictable, you’re not reacting the way you're supposed to, and this can be very unsettling as they face their own insecurities. They may also have to face the consequences of their actions and this can bring up feelings shame and inadequacy, and your calmness to their drama doesn’t just tell them you don’t care about them, to a narcissist it feels like they’re not worth caring about,

This is something they have been fighting against for as long as they can remember in the most maladaptive ways. Their sense of self is dependent on others thinking highly of them, envying them. Not getting any attention, especially from someone who was once maybe their main supply,

can reinforce that fear of unworthiness. Their psychological defences begin to crumble, emotionally they can begin to collapse.

They can become desperate and chaotic. Because not only do their usual manipulation tactics not work, neither do any new ones they try to think up. You’re not taking the bait and this can bring up frustration because they just keep missing and hitting the wall.

Typically, they might step things up a gear, start delivering on some of the promises they made previously but never kept. They begin what’s known as hoovering, this is trying to suck you back into their orbit. There might be desperate apologies, declarations of love and devotion, promises of change. Promises of a wonderful future. Promises of expensive gifts. But these aren't really about love or genuine remorse for how they treated you. It's about fearing having to face their own shame, the loss of control, the loss of supply.

In some cases they might even fake some kind of crisis to get some kind of sympathy or concern. They might try to tug on your heart strings, asking “Where did it all go wrong?”Even though you probably told them a thousand times. Trying to remind you of the good times, but never mentioning the bad. They might ask if you want to start again, try to make it work this time. But you've nothing left to try because nothing ever worked, and even if it did, you don't care. You just don't want anymore to do with them.

Quite commonly they’ll try to also enlist others in their cause. Contacting friends and family to either try to talk you round, or to ruin your reputation. Either way, it’s to try to cut off your social support network, in some cases believing you’ll be so desperate you'll have to go back to them.

Now when narcissists are emotionally wounded they can go into a rage.But this doesn’t necessarily have to be explosive anger, though it can be. There could be threats, insults, name calling and screaming at you. They could be yelling about how much they don’t care that you don’t care whilst trying to intimidate you into caring. But there can also be passive aggressive remarks, intense criticism, or increased attempts to belittle or devalue you. Bickering, trying to start arguments, anything to get any kind of reaction, anything to get you engage on an emotional level, just to feel some kind of control.

However the rage manifests it comes from their deep sense of injury and helplessness which is intensifying their sense of shame. Next comes the actual collapse. When nothing they do works, they can experience a shame based depression. They can feel deflated, lack motivation, have low energy, or be highly anxious, usually a combination of all these things. There can be an increase in self destructive and impulsive behaviour as they struggle to regain some kind of relevance.

In their pain, a new victim story can emerge where they try to elicit sympathy. Not just necessarily from you but from anyone who will listen because they are desperately looking for a new supply, As I said earlier narcissism cannot function without others to prop up their deluded sense of self.

Now even if they do get a new supply of some kind, it doesn’t mean they forget the narcissistic wound you inflicted on them by no longer colluding with them. You saw through them, and that can feel threatening. So they might move on, find someone new, but that wound stays with them and might even haunt them. They can fantasise about ways to try to get you to re engage, even if they’re with someone else. But they’ll also fantasise about how they might punish you because your being better off without them can be a reminder of what a drain they really are. Narcissists have a long memory and can hold grudges for years, even decades.

Lastly, due to their low resolution all or nothing thinking, narcissists can struggle to grasp that your becoming indifferent isn’t about hurting them or beating them somehow. It's about detaching yourself from their toxicity and reclaiming your own sense of self, regaining your peace of mind. So i’s not an act of cruelty, as they may see it, but rather it’s self compassion, and self preservation. it’s liberation from an unhealthy dynamic. The way they crumble when you stop caring shows how, despite their behaviour, right from the very beginning, they needed you more than you needed them.

Now the journey to indifference isn’t always an easy one, it’s not the flick of a switch. It comes from clarity after experiencing a lot of pain and confusion.

Realising you are not responsible for their feelings, you’re not responsible for managing their triggers for them. It comes when you realise you deserve to be treated with decency and you begin to focus on healing, finding a way forward in life where you are no longer desperate for their ever elusive approval. It’s when you stop being a supporting cast member in their constant drama and instead become the protagonist of your own story. As I often say, seeing a counsellor can be a good place to start this journey.