It’s hard when you can’t remove toxic people from your life when you’re unable to go no contact with them. Therefore we need rules in order to be able to deal with the chaos that they bring into our lives. This is rule five stand your ground.
Knowing your beliefs, knowing your values and standing by them, no longer letting the narcissist take advantage of your kindness, your forgiveness, your compassion, recognise who they are and what they are trying to do and staying true to you. Know you have every right to live life on your terms. You’re not doing that to hurt or manipulate them.
Refuse to be a doormat to them, as whenever you don’t give in to them, they will try to guilt trip you into doing what they want you to do, which in the long run is going to leave you feeling bad.
Safely face your fears and overcome them, do not let narcissistic people know how you feel, and do not let them know what you are doing as a narcissist will use your feelings against you, they’ll use your routines against you, to further manipulate you. A narcissist uses your intentions and motives against you to manipulate you by claiming that you’re the one that’s been unreasonable, you’re the one being irrational, narcissistic people are some of the most unreasonable and irrational people you could ever meet, and to hide this from you, they’re going to project onto you by making you feel that you’re the one that’s been irrational and unreasonable so that you back down and give in to them and they get their own way. When they’re trying to get you to back down, you really need to stand in there and hold your ground.
One criteria of their disorder are that they require excessive admiration. Narcissistic people require that attention from other people to feel better about themselves. They’re looking for that external gratification to feel better about who they are as a person, recognise this and refuse to comply, refuse to play into their hands, no longer play their games and remember by explaining to them what you’re doing, or how you’re feeling, explaining to them how their behaviour is wrong or how their behaviour is hurting you they take this as a fact that they matter to you, that you care about them. They will use this to their advantage. Acknowledgement of the narcissist’s unbelievable behaviour acknowledgement of the narcissist’s unbelievable actions gives the narcissist themselves their credibility. However, showing no interest towards a narcissist who is seeking excessive admiration can cause a narcissistic injury, so always keep yourself safe. A narcissist is going to double down when you stop giving them the attention that they believe they’re entitled to.
A sense of entitlement is another one of their criteria, so they believe they’re entitled to your attention. When they’re no longer getting this, this can make the narcissistic person feel insecure, so they might double down and up their manipulative methods to get at you. Always stay safe, and continue to stand your ground. At some point, when the narcissist Is not getting the attention they believe they’re entitled to, they are going to get bored of you. If you need to call the police, do not pre-warn a narcissistic person. This gives them a chance to up their games. Just do what you need to do to stand your ground and to stay safe.
Don’t explain yourself to narcissistic people. The more you explain yourself to them, the more they take advantage of your explanations, the more they feel like they’re important, and the more they will come after you.
Becoming indifferent, show a lack of interest, show a lack of concern, show a lack of sympathy. Narcissistic people use indifference for power and control to manipulate those around them, those they claim they love and care about, yet when somebody’s going through a painful experience in their life, a narcissistic person will not show them the sympathetic attention they require because the narcissist believes the attention should be on themselves instead they will try and one up you to get the attention on to themselves.
A narcissist will often talk about how they’ve suffered far worse because a narcissist is after that sympathetic attention. Some narcissistic people use indifference for power and control as well as punishment. You’re not using indifference to control them or have power over them, or to punish them. Your motive behind your indifference is to escape them to break free from them to break free from their manipulation by no longer showing them any interest in their mistreatment of you by letting them go and live their life while you go and live yours.
You kind of have to show a narcissist indifference because any explanations you give them usually falls on deaf ears unless it’s an explanation that they can use against you. Then they will pay attention so they can use your explanations against you to manipulate you further. Any justification, any explanation of your opinions, any explanation of your feelings, any explanation of your boundaries if it doesn’t match how the narcissist wants to control the situation explaining yourself to them is going to fall on deaf ears once you’ve made a choice to stand your ground, be firm, once you’ve made a choice to stand to your beliefs stand to your values, what you have to do is stick with it because as soon as you give a narcissist an inch, they will take a mile, you might have learned this through previous experience that as soon as you think they’re not that bad and let them get away with something, they go after more as soon as you give them one thing, they try to take more. They are incredibly exploitative self-entitled people who are always seeking more.
They are incredibly exploitative people who are always wanting more. They are incredibly envious people who are always wanting more, what we have to recognise that as soon as we make a small allowance for a narcissistic person, it is our situation is the one that’s going to worsen because a narcissist is going to take full advantage when it comes to dealing with narcissistic people the less is more approach, less attention, less explanations, less giving them the things that they believe they’re entitled to as narcissistic people are exploitative people. They will take full advantage of your thoughts, feelings, opinions, and kindness. They will place fear into you, they will make you feel obligated towards them, they will guilt trip you, and they will take full advantage of your emotions. They will take full advantage of your kindness, and they will take full advantage of your forgiveness.
Now, forgiveness is for the individual. If you do not want to forgive somebody, that is your choice. If you don’t want to forgive somebody that hurt you, that is absolutely fine. That is your choice, your life, and your situation. The more you forgive a narcissist, the more a narcissistic person learns how to get away with their behaviour. If you want to forgive them, you can forgive them from a safe distance just don’t forget and don’t give them another chance to hurt you again.
Narcissistic people are not reasonable and they are not rational people and they are going to go all out to make you feel like you’re the unreasonable and irrational one when you begin to stand firm on your ground against them and they are going to try to exploit your feelings they’re going to try to manipulate your emotions they’re going to try and manipulate your opinion, this is when we have to stand with indifference this is when we have to learn to care less about what they think about us and we have to learn to care less about what they’re trying to make us think about ourselves we have to recognise what they are actually trying to do to us and step away from the games we have to learn to care more about the long term, how it’ll affect our feelings in the long term, how something is going to impact us in the long run, care less about the opinions of people on the outside of the situation when you begin to stand your ground with a narcissistic person a narcissist will then lower their manipulation level and go after simple things just a little thing, because once they’ve got you on one thing they can go after more, once they’ve taken the boundary they are going to go after more and to you and people on the outside of the situation things such as I need to pick the kids up 15 minutes early because I need to do this, with genuine people this works, with narcissistic people this doesn’t work, so it doesn’t matter what other people think if you think you’re being a little bit awkward it doesn’t matter if a narcissist is telling you that you’re being awkward, it does not matter. You need to care less about what other people think and care more about the entirety of the situation and the fact that if you do not stand your ground, if you do give them an inch, they are going to take a mile, and your situation is going to worsen.
You cannot control a narcissist’s actions. You can control how you feel about those actions. You can control your opinions about those actions. You can control your reactions to those actions. Yes, we can all hit a moment where we get pushed to the limits, and we snap, and we react. We react badly and react in a manner out of character for us, and on a different day, if things aren’t going off in our own lives, we might not have reacted in that manner, as you can recognise this behaviour a narcissist will use your reactions against you to punish you. Therefore, we have to focus on self-control. We have to focus on how we want to think about the situation and how we feel about the situation. That works to our advantage and not a narcissist’s advantage.
Which is why retreating it’s always very helpful because when we are coming from a place with a calm mind we can make a more logical and rational decision when we jump in with giving a narcissist an answer or a reaction we are not always coming from a place of logic. Narcissists go all out to get you into an emotional state so your choices are coming from emotional reactions which isn’t always in your best interest when they’re guilt tripping you and your decisions are being made based on your feelings of guilt it’s not always in your best interest, more often than not it’s in the narcissists best interest, so learning to stand your ground, then when a narcissist at some point recognises that they’re not going to get what they want from you they will get bored and they will unfortunately move onto somebody new they might keep coming back and trying again and after a year or two years you might think that it’s fine and that it doesn’t affect you, however as soon as they’ve got back in there. They’re going to take that mile, once you’ve made a decision. Make it and stick to it when dealing with narcissistic people. Narcissists are not looking for compromise. They are looking for control.
Save your ability to compromise with people for those who are willing to compromise with you. Use your ability to stand your ground with narcissistic people.
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Elizabeth Shaw is not a Doctor or a therapist. She is a mother of five, a blogger, a survivor of narcissistic abuse, and a life coach, She always recommends you get the support you feel comfortable and happy with. Finding the right support for you. Elizabeth has partnered with BetterHelp (Sponsored.) where you will be matched with a licensed councillor, who specialises in recovery from this kind of abuse.
