Rule 9. Actions Speak Louder Than Words.
Actions speak louder than your words. However, when around a narcissistic person, you want to keep both to yourself. When around a narcissist, you want to hide your genuine intentions from them, as whenever you explain anything to a narcissist, they’re going to twist it and turn it to their advantage. You don’t want to disclose any information to a narcissist about your thoughts, feelings, opinions, or ideas, as a narcissist is going to extract these from you and then, at some point, use them all against you.
It’s very difficult to control our tongues when people are trying to claim we have feelings we do not have or accuse us of having intentions we don’t have, however when it comes to dealing with narcissistic people, your best response, your best line of defence is no response, no defence, leave them to it, they’re only going to believe what they want to anyway, as soon as you get into that conversation with a narcissist, they’re going to draw you into non-productive arguments, leaving you feeling, confused, frustrated, angry, leaving you wide open to their personal attacks on you, as you’ve usually, at some point, unwitting fed them all the information they need about you, that they are, at some point going to use against you. When it comes to dealing with narcissistic people, you need to guard your attention and use the less is more approach, the less information you give them, the more chance you’ve got of protecting who you are as a person.
When it comes to dealing with a narcissistic person, you have got to watch their words and guard your attention around their words, as their words rarely to never match their intentions, and their actions rarely to never match their words. The more you explain to a narcissist about yourself, the more they’re going to take that to mirror you, to future fake with you, to sell you something you’d like in your future, so they can get their needs met in the present. The more you talk to a narcissist, the more they’re going to use what you tell them to seduce you, to influence you into believing and trusting within them, to love bomb you, to gain your admiration, to gain your trust, and on the flip side of that, the more information you give to a narcissist, the more they’ll use that information to coercively control you, to put that fear into you. The more you tell a narcissist about the things you care for the most, the more they know they can use these things against you, as these are the things you’ll most passionately defend. The more you tell a narcissist about the hobbies you enjoy, the more a narcissist will go all out to sabotage these hobbies for you and take them away from you. The more information you feed a narcissist about who you are as a person, the more a narcissist will use that information against you to either seduce you or punish you.
With a narcissist’s words, they’ll lie about their intentions, lie about what they want to distract you from and lie about what they’re actually doing to you.
A Narcissist will come at you with their false sincerity, so you believe you can trust within them. A Narcissist will come at you with that false compromise, so they can use that compromise against you later down the line, with all those, “Remember when I did that for you.” Or so the narcissist can look good to those around them, and when you say no, the narcissist will play the victim of how hard it is to deal with you!
A Narcissist will happily play vulnerable, so you empathise with them, so you feel sorry for them, feel bad for them, show them compassion, and help them out. Narcissistic people do this to gain attention and to hide the fact they are using vulnerabilities that often aren’t even their own, they’re what they did to others they are using these to exploit your kindness, to exploit your compassion, to exploit your willingness to help others, however, more often than not, it’s what a narcissist did to another, yet, they sell it to you as the other did it to them, so you naturally take a disliking to the person the narcissist is claiming hurt them because you are led to believe the other person hurt the narcissist. The narcissist’s words rarely to never match their true intentions. It’s just their words come before their actions, so we are led to believe in them, and then their actions fool us later on.
What a narcissist accuses others of, is often a confession as to that narcissist’s real character.
Watch your own words around a narcissist, and do not disclose personal information to them. You might have already done so when you didn’t realise who they were, what they were or what they were really doing. However, there’s always a new day to start a new approach, to create a new way, so guard your attention around a narcissistic person, as when you stop openly giving them information, a narcissist will use many manipulative mind games to try and encourage you to disclose information to them, guard your information, as the more you explain to them, the more a narcissist will use those very explanations against you.
Never reveal your intentions to a narcissistic person, do not explain anything in detail to a narcissist, explain to yourself, demonstrate to yourself, do not give a narcissist that information about you, do not demonstrate to a narcissist as tempting as it might be, how capable you are of doing something, narcissistic people are incredibly envious people, so if they see you doing well for yourself, they’ll either come back for the hoover, to suck you back into their games, to treat you like dirt and discard you all over again once they’ve taken what they were envious of from you, or they’ll find a way to sabotage it for you. When a narcissist doesn’t know what you’re doing, they can’t prepare their attacks on you, they can’t stop you, and they can’t sabotage you, as they don’t know what you’re up to.
Don’t tell a narcissist your thoughts, feelings or opinions, as they’ll use these against you. They’re going to accuse you of overthinking, being too sensitive or incapable of doing something. A narcissist will plant those seeds of self-doubt within you to stop you. A narcissist will go all out to manipulate your emotions to best serve themselves.
If you tell a narcissist something personal about yourself, a narcissist will deliberately disclose this information to third parties, especially those who gossip, or they’re going to threaten to disclose this information to others to control you coercively into not doing something you wanted to do, or doing something for them you don’t want to do. Do not disclose personal information to a narcissistic person. If you already have done so, you’ve got to come to terms with that, come to peace over your insecurities or vulnerabilities, the information you’ve provided them, and you have to learn to be open to your own mistakes and violations so the narcissist is unable to use them against you, in future don’t disclose anything to them.
A Narcissist is going to go all out to invalidate your thoughts, feelings and opinions. A Narcissist will go all out to prove you’re in the wrong, so you doubt yourself, blame yourself, and question yourself so that they never have any consequences to their actions. They can control how you think and how you feel, by subtly planting those seeds of doubt within your mind, if a narcissist knows your plans, they’re going to go all out to sabotage these plans by changing plans on you, if a narcissist knows you’ve got something planned, that they don’t want you to do, they’re going to put as many obstacles in the way as possible to sabotage those plans for you, if they don’t know what you are doing they can not sabotage those for you. Or if a narcissist believes you’re doing something on another day, they’re trying to sabotage that day, and not the actual day, as they don’t know when the actual day is.
Guard your words around narcissistic people, do not give them the information for them to use against you. Narcissists are incredibly envious people so they will go all out to ruin events for other people, if the narcissist doesn’t know about them, they struggle to ruin them.
If you share a child with a narcissist, and we can all be stubborn, we can want to celebrate with our child on their birthday. Narcissists know this, and they’ll use it against you. Just plan to celebrate another day. The child’s birthday is then no longer over in one day, and the narcissist can’t ruin your plans. The same when it comes to celebrating your birthday. A Narcissist will go all out to ruin your birthday. Treat yourself and treat yourself to doing something on a day the narcissist knows nothing about. Choose a day after your birthday, so when your narcissistic friend, parent, partner, siblings etc., tries to spoil your birthday on your birthday, you can focus on what you’ll be doing after your birthday that the narcissist knows nothing about. If you make arrangements with a narcissist, they’ll go all out to break these arrangements on you, and they’ll find a way to blame you.
If you’re going somewhere, a narcissist will lose things or hide things on purpose to stop you. If they don’t know you’re going somewhere, they’re not going to have the ability to realise they need to hide your car keys before you leave. As they don’t know you’re going, yes, it seems manipulative. However, when it comes to dealing with a narcissist, you’re not doing it to manipulate them. It’s to protect yourself from their manipulation. If a narcissist knows you have plans, they’ll go all out to create an argument to put you in a mood before you go.
When using these methods, they’re not for long-term use. They’re temporary measures put in place around a narcissistic parent, sibling, friend, or ex. Or if you need to co-parent Limited contact, avoid giving any information about yourself.
Narcissists draw you into those non-productive arguments because they then feel like they’re important to you like you care about them, they feel special as you’re giving them your attention and time, and they feel like you matter. So by no longer arguing back, you’re showing by your actions that you’re no longer interested in their words. However, a narcissist wants to interpret this in their mind is on them. When it comes to you, you’ve got to recognise that you no longer want to be drawn into non-productive arguments with them, leave them to it, and focus on the things you can do in your life. Not explaining to a narcissist renders them insignificant. It proves to you that you’re no longer willing to give them information about yourself to them that they can use against you. However, if a narcissist wants to read your unwillingness to communicate, defend or explain yourself to them, it is on the narcissist. If they want to accuse you of being selfish, stubborn, or awkward, that is on them. They can think whatever they want about you. You need to prove to yourself by your actions that you’re no longer willing to explain yourself to them, especially those people who always use your thoughts, feelings and opinions against you. Instead, you’re going to explain to yourself why you need to calmly walk away from them and prove to yourself that what they’re saying about you isn’t true.
No longer waste your time. Once you’ve stated your point once, leave then to it. If you’re dealing with court situations, state your point once, in a kind tone, engage in conversation via messages, leave any arguments, don’t insult, stick to the point and save all messages. Stick to the original point to prove how they are the ones unwilling to communicate.
A Narcissist rarely to never will answer your questions, at least not directly, however, they’ll demand you answer theirs, and often you can get them to show this via messages. You can ask them something important and they’ll ignore you, or they’ll go all around the houses to avoid answering that question, they can ask you something, and you can give them a direct answer, however, if it’s not the answer they want, they’ll keep asking you, they don’t accept it, they keep pushing until they get their own way, keep giving them the same answer.
Be boring. When dealing with narcissistic people, be as boring as you can, so if you’ve got a family event. You’re going to be dealing with a narcissist, and you don’t want to seem rude. Talk about whatever the narcissist finds boring. Anything a narcissist finds dull go overboard discussing that, so if they’re not interested in cars, talk about cars. If they’re not interested in gardening, discuss that. If they ask you’re what you’re doing, say, “Nothing much.” Be as boring to the narcissist as you can so they’re no longer interested in you.
Do not let a narcissist know your intentions. When they don’t know your intentions, they can not prepare their defence to attack you, you must learn to become unpredictable to those who once knew your every move while learning to predict their moves.
Stop being open with narcissistic people, and keep a blank expression when talking with them. A narcissist will go all out to mislead you with promises of changed behaviour, mislead them by changing your behaviour around them, no longer giving them any information, and keeping yourself to yourself. When it comes to dealing with a narcissistic person, when it comes to dealing with a narcissist, your actions speak louder than your words, so by no longer playing their games, you’re no longer interested in their games. If a narcissist wishes to up their games, you have got to guard your attention and stand your ground. You’ve got to be careful around a narcissistic person. Always be careful around those who lack empathy.
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