Narcissists have a remarkable ability to draw you into non-productive arguments, to frustrate you, to intimidate you, to make you feel like you’re in the wrong, to cause that anger and resentment, to make you feel like you can’t do anything right by them, to sabotage your life, anyway they can, when you have plans, and they go all out to disrupt these plans for you while blaming you, to shame you, criticise you, mock you, to judge you, and get those around you to question your intentions, morals and ethics and not those of the narcissist, narcissists have a knack for making you feel so bad, that you change your behaviour to what works in their favour.
So just how do you put a narcissist in their place?
1. No Contact.
One of the best and most effective ways to put a narcissist in their place is to go no contact, to fall silent on them, to block and delete them, to leave them to go and live their life while you go and live your life. More often than not, when you fall silent on a narcissistic person, some will up their games, they will try to love bomb you back into their games, make false promises of change, future fakes, or guilt trips, or they’ll try to smear your name and sabotage you any way they can, to get that attention from you, to gain that validation that they matter to you, that they’re important to you, so some narcissistic people will play nice and start doing all the things they once promised to do, yet failed to deliver on. Other narcissistic people will begin taking badly of you in the hopes you’ll go to them and ask them to stop, which makes them feel superior, smug and in control. Asking them to stop doesn’t work, the more you communicate with them, the more they learn exactly what gets you going, and the further they’ll push things to wind you up. So no contact is the best method to put a narcissist in their place. Just remain silent towards them. The silence isn’t the silent treatment to manipulate them into living life on your terms. It’s to let them be free while you free yourself of them. No contact isn’t always possible.
2. Limited contact and grey rock.
Grey rock is business-like communication, don’t give them any form of emotional response, don’t tell them what your plans are, and don’t tell them what you’re doing, as when they have that information, they use it against you to sabotage you when they don’t have that information they struggle to use it against you, the more information a narcissist has on you, the more they’ll use that information against to punish you, to hurt you, to sabotage you.
3. recognise the game they’re playing and no longer play.
It’s not that easy to recognise the game they’re playing and no longer play it. However, once we realise they need us to play that game with them, it becomes easier to no longer play. Sometimes we can be in that place of frustration, anger and resentment, making us want to get one over on them. Normal feelings when someone is playing the games that a narcissistic person plays with you, and one of the best ways to get one over a narcissist is to recognise that game and no longer play. Leave them to it and remain silent. When it comes to narcissistic people, if they’re not getting their needs met by you, they’re often going to attack you in some way to get you to react to them, so they can play the victim to the circumstances they created.
4. Don’t attack back.
It’s human nature, it’s natural, it’s normal when someone just keeps chipping away at you, baiting you, goading you, provoking you, belittling you too, to at some point snapback out at them, attack them, when someone is constantly insulting you, at some point you might turn around and insult them, to which a narcissist is going to morph into the victim in front of your eyes, not only are they going to morph into the victim in front of your eyes they’re going to tell everyone what a horrible person you are, to get their enablers and flying monkeys onto their side, to isolate you from people, so when a narcissist is attacking you, recognise their game, and don’t attack back, once you attack back, you’ve played into their hands, they’re doing these things to gain that reaction from you so they can blame everything on you.
5. Don’t take responsibility for things you’re not responsible for.
Narcissistic people don’t do responsibility. Nothing is ever their fault. Instead, they find a scapegoat to blame, and the narcissist is going to go all out to shame you into feeling like you’re the one that’s in the wrong so that the narcissist can escape any consequences for their actions. It’s difficult when you do take responsibility for who you are as a person, not to take responsibility when someone is shifting the blame over to you. Narcissistic people need you to take responsibility for the things they’ve done so that they can get away with their behaviour. So no longer take responsibility for the things you’re not responsible for.
6. Don’t try to one-up them.
Don’t try to outsmart the narc. Due to the very nature of their behaviour, we can often want to get one over on them, how you one-up a narcissist, how you get one over on a narcissistic person is by going no contact, remaining silent, limited contact, not reacting, not taking responsibility for their behaviour, no longer playing their games, no longer attacking back, that’s how you one-up a narcissist, that’s how you outsmart a narcissist. That’s how you put a narcissist in their place. As when you try to one-up a narcissist, narcissistic people see this as game on, which is why you’ll often notice when you go no contact or remain silent, they escalate their games to gain that response from you. Once they have that response from you, they blame everything on you, they know what gets to you, and they will go there again. They lack the empathy to care for how their behaviour affects you. The more you try to show them how much better of you are without them, the further they’ll go to try and sabotage you. So in a lot of cases, and it can be challenging. However, you’re better off being in the narcissist’s shadows. Let the narcissist live their life while you go and live yours, which they know nothing about, so they can’t ruin it for you. Narcissists leave out information that stops you from making an informed choice. You leave out information that is none of their business as you’re no longer with them.
7. Don’t stop doing the things you enjoy.
Once you stop doing the things you enjoy, it can naturally create that anger, resentment and bitterness within you. That misery within you, and narcissistic people will go all out to stop you from seeing friends and family, to stop you from doing the hobbies they once claimed they enjoyed doing too. They now seek to put you down, insult you, get you to question why you enjoy the things you enjoy, make out they’re boring or pathetic, make you feel stupid for enjoying your hobbies, don’t stop doing the things you enjoy, if you’re still with a narcissistic person, be careful, if you’re out of the situation, be careful, the more they know about you, the more they’ll use against you.
8. Stop explaining.
Don’t explain, you can’t explain to a narcissistic person if it’s not going their way they’re not interested, you can’t explain your feelings to them, they’ll use those feelings against you to hurt you, you can’t explain the things that matter to you, they’ll use those things against you to hurt you, you can’t explain how their behaviour has hurt you, they’ll just gaslight you into doubting, blaming and shaming yourself while they go right ahead and hurt you all the more, you can’t explain how something is affecting your life, as a narcissist will do it all the more, you cant explain what you meant by something, because if it’s not in the narcissists fantasy you’re wrong, you’re lying, you can’t explain how they’re hurting another person, narcissists lack the empathy to care, you can’t explain why you behaved in a certain way as a narcissist isn’t interested, they’re interested in conditioning you to live life on their terms, you can not appeal to the conscience of those who lack one, and you can not have sincere honest open communication with insincere, deceitful, closed-minded people. Every time you explain yourself to narcissistic people, it makes them feel important to you, it makes them feel validated, it makes them feel superior that you feel a need to justify and explain yourself to them. They use those explanations and justifications against you, to punish you, to hurt you all the more.
9. Don’t take their personal attacks personally.
This is incredibly difficult at first as narcissists will make their attacks personal, as this is the best way they can hurt you, punish you, diminish you, or gain a reaction they so desperately require from you. To gain the explanation they need from you, to get you to take responsibility, to get you to play their games, narcissists are going to make it personal. However, it’s nothing to do with who you are as a person and everything to do with who they are as a person. We all have those insecurities and vulnerabilities, things we are really passionate about. We all have those Achilles heels that people can attack, and a narcissistic person will prey upon these to get at you due to their insecurities their ego. After all, they are seeking that external validation because they’re miserable about your happiness and success, so they want to take your happiness and success away from you, as they’re arrogant enough to believe they’re the most important person in the room, and if someone is taking the spotlight away from them, they’re going to destroy it for that person, narcissists have just as many insecurities, they just lack the empathy to care for yours, where you might try to help someone up, narcissists seek to tear everyone else down. Where you seek to encourage and support, due to a narcissist’s envy, they seek to sabotage and destroy, and invalidate, and mock, so don’t take their personal attacks personally. It’s who they are as a person and has nothing to do with who you are as a person. They’re just using who you are as a person so they can pull you down so they can feel superior.
Someone who genuinely cares for you wouldn’t use your insecurities against you, and the more they attack you, they’re creating more opportunities for you to attack back, then once you attack back, they then turn into the victim and go around telling everyone how horrible you are, to turn people against you.
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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.
