Guard your attention like your life depends on it.
You need to guard your attention around narcissistic people, as narcissistic people tend to feel entitled to your attention and entitled to your reactions as they are more than willing to exploit your emotions to gain a reaction from you, you need to guard your attention. You need to guard your opinions. You need to guard your emotions when dealing with narcissistic people because they will use these as leverage against you to get what they want from you. narcissistic people can be some of the most infuriating people to be around because they lack the empathy to see your point of view. They lack the willingness to care about how their behaviour affects you. They’re looking to exploit you in any way they can to get their needs met, so you need to find a way to protect yourself from their negativity, protect yourself from their baiting by guarding your attention, because if you do not guard your attention around a narcissistic person? Where your attention goes, your energy flows, and they are going to take you down the rabbit hole so deep that you’re stuck in the darkness you’re stuck in the fog so you can’t see what is happening to you.
So you have to pay close attention to what they are doing, so you don’t follow them into their negative emotions, so you don’t follow them into their baiting that they are doing to you, to gain that reaction that they need from you.
You need to guard your attention to avoid that emotional pain from them, avoid that psychological pain from them, and in some cases, to avoid that physical pain from them, you need to keep yourself safe.
Guarding your attention is to protect yourself, and one way to do this is by recognising the game the narcissist is throwing your way and not playing into their hands, Learning to control your thoughts and your feelings so that the narcissist can no longer control them for you to get what they want from you.
Don’t pay attention to their games. We can often be led to believe that by defending ourselves towards them by explaining ourselves to them, By rationalising and justifying ourselves to them, they’re going to see our point of view. They’re not going to see our point of view. They’re not wired up that way. What they are going to do is see this as what they can use to get to us, To gain that attention from you and because they’re getting that attention from you, they then believe that you care about them because you’re supplying them with the attention that they want at that given moment of time if they didn’t want that attention they wouldn’t be playing those games.
Don’t listen to what they are saying when they are intimidating and provoking you, do not listen to what they’re saying. They are going to use the things you care about the most against you because these are the things that you’ll most passionately defend. This says more about who they are as a person, their insecurities the fact that they’re willing to hurt you in that way, to get at you. To get one over on you, it says more about who they are as a person than it ever will who you are as a person. When it’s face-to-face combat with a narcissist, do not look them in the eye just look over the left or right ear, so it seems like you are looking at them, but you’re not looking into their eyes. Do not make eye contact, do not listen to the toxic hurtful things they are spewing out at you, take your mind elsewhere see the conversation as a reason to why you need to distance yourself from them. This is exactly what they’re like. They’re always going to be hurtful to me and those around me, and you’re always going to be toxic towards me. If someone cared about me, they would not be using the things I care about against me to get their own way. This is why I need to distance myself from them. Keep your thought process going on what will help you and not what they are saying to you.
Take your mind is elsewhere, not at them. If you need to smile, say okay. However, focus on what you’re saying, okay too. Other than that, you need to take your mind elsewhere. Don’t internalise what they’re saying. Make sure you don’t agree to anything you don’t agree with.
Recognise when they’re provoking you, when they’re baiting you, when they’re goading you, when they’re insulting you, recognise that is what they are doing to you. They are doing those things to you to gain that reaction from you, and do not give them that reaction. Even if it pulls on your emotions, step away and deal with your emotions when you are not around the narcissist. Do not give them what they want.
When they are intimidating you, you might need to go to the police. When they’re intimidating you, they are intimidating you recognise the threat that they are delivering you and find a safe way out of the situation, Focus your attention on getting out of the situation and not on the situation you are in.
When they’re talking in circles, when they keep bringing it back to something that’s going to upset you, recognise what they are doing and leave them to talk to themselves. When you need important information from them and it can be extremely frustration because it can be medical information that you need or permission that you need to get medical attention for their children, documentation that you need, might be bank details that you need, and they are not going to give it to you, when you need those important documents it can create those emotional reactions from you, when it’s information that you need that a narcissist is simply not going to give to you they’re not going to give you that answer and they’re not giving you that answer because they know they are getting to you, stop asking them, they enjoy not giving people direct answers they enjoy feeding of the attention, follow the right channels if needed to get the information you need bypass the narcissist to get the information you need, find what you can do to get the information you need by going around the narcissist if you need to take it to court take it to court don’t inform them you’re taking them to court just take it to court. You’ve undoubtedly given them enough chances, and they failed to deliver.
Ask for the information you need. If they’re not willing to give it to you, find the proper channels to get the information but do not keep asking them because they then count themselves as special and important to you. They don’t see that they’re being awkward or stubborn, and they’re frustrating you if they do it’s because they want to get at you.
When they’re accusing you of things, when they’re coming at you with unjust accusations, recognise the accusation they’re firing at you, recognise that nine times out of 10 when it comes to a narcissist, their accusations are often confessions, The very thing they are accusing you of is often what they have done to you or what they are thinking of doing to you.
When they derail you when they come at you with their selective memory, when they claim they never said that believe them and leave them to it. Don’t listen to the promises of people who always forget the promises they made to you. Recognise that they made these promises to get their needs met in the present, and once their needs are met, they’ve got that selective memory, and they’re not interested, so when they’re promising you something, guard your attention. Recognising this is just a game, they’re promising me this because they want me to do that. Do I want to do that? Actually, I don’t mind, so I will. No, I don’t want to do that, so I’m not going to because as soon as I’ve done that, you’re going to forget the promise that you made to me, do not play into the games because with a narcissist. It’s all manipulative psychological gameplays
When they go into the diversion, when they take you onto a whole new topic of conversation, and you might keep bringing it back to the original topic of conversation, the original points. They’re going to divert you onto something else, and no matter how many times you bring it onto the original point, they’re going to divert you onto something else. Recognise what they’re doing, recognise that no matter how much you bring up the original point, they are unable or unwilling to discuss that, and leave them to it. As frustrating as this can be, trying to get closure is going to frustrate you more. Trying to get an answer trying to get to the bottom of a situation with a narcissist is going to frustrate you more. Trying to get a solution and trying to reach a compromise is going to frustrate you more than it is guarding your attention, recognising their behaviour and leaving them to it. The sooner you leave a narcissist alone, the clearer, healthier and happier your life will become.
When a narcissist starts deflecting the conversation back onto you when they start accusing you of being forgetful or not doing something for them, blaming you, claiming that if you hadn’t have done something, recognise that this is them avoiding taking responsibility for their own behaviour, and just because you can hold yourself accountable for your own behaviour doesn’t mean you should hold yourself accountable for their behaviour their behaviour is on them, Your behaviour is on you, now we can be provoked into reacting and when we are emotionally drained, when we are sleep deprived it’s effortless to become emotionally reactive. However, when we can recognise we don’t like how we are behaving around a certain person, we need to learn to distance ourselves from that person because a narcissist will try to bring out the worst in you so that they can play the victim and guilt trip you into doing for them what they originally wanted you to do. That you didn’t want to do, A narcissist might triangulate. They might bring a third person into the situation. They might justify it by saying well, so-and-so is doing it. It doesn’t matter if someone else is doing it. If you don’t approve, that’s your personal values, your personal beliefs. If they cannot respect who you are as a person, you need to distance yourself from them as a person, Because most likely, you respect who they are as a person, and it’s a two-way street if they’re not willing to adapt to that two-way street then you need to distance yourself from them, or if they claim that your brother or sister would do something for them if it’s a narcissistic parent tell him to go and ask your brother and sister if they claim their ex would do something recognise they’re trying to provoke that insecurity within you, and that is on them not you. You do not want to be around people who are trying to provoke insecurities within you. There’s enough in the world to be insecure about without the people in the world who claim to care about you provoking insecurities within you.
A narcissist might fall silent on you. If somebody wants to fall silent on you, respect the silence and leave them to it and focus on you. Focus on the things that you enjoy doing to take your attention away from them being silent. You might want to let them know that i’m here if you want to talk to me and then leave them to it. The more you chase them, the more they believe they’re getting to you, and the more they believe that you care. You’re allowed to care but care by recognising that they want to be silent and leave them to it.
They might start smearing your name when a narcissist can no longer control you. They’re going to go all out to control how other people see you. They are going to discredit your character. They’re going to ruin your reputation any way they can, and it’s very, very easy to want to defend ourselves when people are being offensive towards us. It’s effortless to go and try and defend ourselves. However, more often than not with a narcissistic person they set the stage they’ve set the game that no matter how much we defend ourselves to them, we play straight into their hands, straight into the stories they’re telling others about us, the best way to handle a smear campaign is don’t leave them to it let them say whatever they want to say, and prove to people by our actions that we are not what they are saying about us, guard attention and guard your reaction, those who want to believe the narcissist they’re better off with a narcissist. We’re better off stepping away from those people.
If you need to discuss something with a narcissistic person, state your points and state them once only if they’re going to go through their manipulation tactics. Do not continue the conversation, do not defend yourself to them, don’t justify yourself to them do not explain yourself to them. The more you explain yourself to them, the more they will use those explanations against you to hurt you.
Don’t personalise it. Do not take it personally when they’re insulting you. That is on them that says more about their character than ever will yours when they’re gossiping about people that is on them that says more about their character than it will about those they’re gossiping about.
Disengage from the conversation, disengage from the situation, guard your attention Guard your thoughts Guard your feelings like your life depends on it when around narcissistic people.
Because if you don’t, a narcissist will go all out to take control of your thoughts and feelings to use them for their advantage, so always guard who you are as a person around who they are as a person because if you don’t, they’re going to pull you into their games they’re going to draw you into that negativity. Then they’re going to leave you wondering what on earth has just happened.
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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.
