What Happens When You're Too Strong for a Narcissist?
Transcript from video
How do you reason with the unreasonable?
How do you come to an agreement with those who are highly disagreeable?
How do you negotiate with selfish?
How do you convince the deluded?
How do you get through to those who seem determined to play stupid?
These are questions I asked during a recent livestream where I was discussing staying grounded in reality, managing your boundaries and not engaging with narcissistic people on their terms. Following that I thought it might be interesting to look at what happens to a narcissist when someone starts to show self-confidence, speaks with clarity and enforces their boundaries. When someone sees them for what they really are and will no longer play their rigged games. When a narcissist realises none of their usual tactics work and they have lost control over you.
Well to begin with it is worth remembering pretty much everything about a narcissist is fake. Many of their behaviours are aimed at protecting a false and fragile sense of self. They need others to validate that they are superior, flawless and deserving of attention and special treatment. The only way they can get that is through controlling and manipulating others to collude with their delusions because there’s little to nothing based in reality.
So when someone sees through the false façade, will no longer collude with the delusions of grandeur, give them the attention they crave, what we might see is something of an identity crisis. They can begin to lose control of themselves as well. But I think the first thing a narcissist will experience is denial. Not just denial in the sense that they feign confusion or innocence. The denial is internal. They reject anything that contradicts their version of themselves. In a word, they deny reality.
So when someone begins to assert themselves, answer back with facts, says ‘no,’ doesn’t play along with their fantasies, their sense of self begins to crumble. So they reject the idea they have done anything wrong, because that would mean having to face themselves honestly and that would be too painful. What we often are desperate attempts to regain some kind of control, to defend their fragile sense of self.
This is one of the reasons you’re met with deflection and crazy sideshows when you try to explain the impact of their behaviour. They’ll try to convince themselves, and you, this is only temporary, there’s something going on with you, you’ll come round soon and things will go back to the way they were.
When you stop playing along by their rules and begin to defy them, they might believe someone has turned you against them. They’ll look for someone to blame. Your friends, family, your therapist. Anyone but them. One of the reasons narcissistic people isolate their targets from their social support network is they fear others seeing what’s going on and saying something. So when someone begins to break away, that’s what they believe has happened. They had control over you, someone else now does and has poisoned you against them. There’s no way you could be making these decisions by yourself.
An example would be someone I knew years ago had a difficult relationship with her narcissistic mother. When she decided to go no contact, the mother text me to saying her daughter wasn’t talking to her and demanded to know what I’d said to her. I later found out she had sent the same kind of message to other people in her daughter’s friendship group looking for a culprit. The daughter cutting contact had nothing to do with her own bad behaviour.
Secondly we see fear. When they see someone is serious about telling them ‘no’, doesn’t back down, won’t play their games and won’t be controlled, that’s when the fear can kick in – and fear for different reasons. Narcissists need an audience, they need constant attention, often referred to as narcissistic supply – and they depend on others for this supply because they can’t give it to themselves. The thought of losing a source of supply can bring up fear. There is an irony in how they need you more than you need them, yet they behave as if they’re doing you a favour by allowing you into their company.
But the more confident and determined they see someone, when they see no anger, urgency or desperation in them. When they see someone able to keep their sense of reality and integrity, the fear rises. When their manipulation and gaslighting isn’t working, and this can bring up a sense of powerlessness.
They fear being nothing, being alone, and when people stop feeding them attention they not getting what they need to function.
Also, if they have no control over someone or control over who they’re talking too there can be a fear of being exposed for their actions and behaviours. The fear can bring up panic and acts of desperation. They can swing between insults, promises to change and threats. There can be bribery, for example offering to take you on holiday. But you turn the offer down, and they book it anyway expecting you to give in. When you don’t give in you face insults and accusations of being ungrateful for not wanting something you refused in the first place. There could be threats of consequences if you don’t get back in line, threats to expose your secrets to others.
Next they’ll try to rationalise what’s going on with you. There’s clearly something wrong with you. You’ve problems at work, you’ve historical issues with your family, what’s going on with you is all rooted in your childhood, nothing to do with them. They’ll speak to others, telling them how mean and irrational you’re behaving, especially after all they’ve done for you, but they’re worried about you. Oh, and Dave can’t believe you’re acting like this.
They’ll try to analyse you by watching YouTube videos, searching online for anything they can diagnose you with, and present you with their findings. “Look at this, you have attachment issues”, “It says here you’re avoidant”, “According to this ten minute video you’re a narcissist, and the guy in the video is an expert.”
They try to convince you there’s something wrong with you because their tactics aren’t working. That’s the only possible explanation for why you don’t want to be treated like crap anymore.
Number four, we often see a change in tactics, and the more desperate they feel the more erratic they can become. The tactics are poorly thought out and reactive. They can swing from promises of a wonderful future to bizarre accusations of conspiring against them. Regardless of the tactic they are all aimed at provoking some kind of emotional reaction, trying to provoke any kind of engagement.
They need you to keep defending yourself, explaining yourself, to keep arguing. They fear losing the engagement. Bad attention is better than none at all. Your reaction, your engagement, positive or negative feeds them.
They’ll show upset, make accusations of betrayal. They might show a false confidence, pretend they don’t care, which can very quickly swing to outrage when you show you don’t care either. They might make threats of harming themselves, harming others.
What you often find is due to their fear of losing your engagement, the less you react, the more the provocation increases.
There is also anger. How dare you refuse them, they are entitled to your compliance, and they can become very vindictive. You’ve hurt them, betrayed them, and in their minds they believe they are entitled to some kind of revenge. They believe their pain, their desperation gives them moral immunity. So anything they do to hurt or punish is your fault. You made them do it. You don’t get to move on and thrive, you don’t get any peace unless it’s on their terms. Because of their own emptiness and shame they want you to spend the rest of your days regretting the pain you caused them. That pain by the way, was probably caused by not playing their rigged games anymore.
They’ll attack your reputation, your social support network, in some cases even your job. As the expression goes, when they can’t control you anymore they’ll try to control how others see you.
Even though it can be awful to be on the wrong of narcissistic vindictiveness, many of the revenge tactics are badly thought out, childlike and poorly delivered.
Number five is a desperate need to try keep you destabilised. Narcissists generally control others through psychological and emotional manipulation. Through getting them to doubt their perceptions, their memory, their own reality and they do this through a process colloquially known as gaslighting. When someone is able to stay grounded and trust their own perception there can be an increase in ways to get them to doubt themselves.
“What about the time you were wrong about this?” Or, “What about the time you did that?” They’ll rewrite history, use others to try to triangulate you.
This works on different levels in the sense that their trying to keep you off balance, plant seeds of doubt, and it’s not only to punish you by painting you as a crazy villain but to reinforce their own delusions. But ultimately it’s about trying to get you to re engage with them on their terms by trying to explain and justify yourself, even if it’s through third parties.
Next, when a narcissist is losing control over someone, because of their desperate need for attention, sympathy and validation, among other things they’ll tell others their version of you and what happened. For instance how badly you treated them, they gave you everything and you dumped them. You’re the narcissist. This is commonly referred to as a smear campaign. They’re really rewriting the relationship into a version which not only suits them, but also to pre-empt anything you might say about them. Remember they fear being exposed.
They’ll tell tales to elicit questions, attention and sympathy from others. And the more people they tell, in their mind the more true they think it becomes.
Lastly, when they see you not engaging in their drama, feeding their ego or meeting their need for attention, like a parasite they’ll discard you and look for a new host. A new supply, someone new to feed off. Remember they can’t be alone. Narcissism can’t function without an audience, a supply. An expression I once heard was no one falls in love quicker than a narcissist with no supply.
So to summarise, narcissistic people live in their own preferred version of reality where they are always superior and entitled to special attention and treatment. Other people are only there for their benefit. When you refuse to participate in their delusions and fantasies, when you stop trying to help them, bring out the best in them, make everything better for them, when you refuse to give them any attention, when you don’t even argue or try to explain yourself this can bring up a lot of things like confusion, denial, fear, anger,
They’ll do whatever they have to, to try to regain some kind of control. If not dominance, then at least some kind of influence in your life. Their behaviours are largely aimed at preventing them from having to admit to themselves they lost.
To paraphrase the original questions, ‘How do you win against a narcissist, especially when all their games are rigged in their favour?’ You win by not playing them at all. You realise the only power they ever had over you was through deception, exploiting your kindness, patience, compassion and your hope someday they’ll deliver on their false promises. You don’t need their approval and you don’t have to become like them. You just realise they needed you more than you needed them.
Watch the video here: