How to Beat a Narcissist at Their Own Game | Story time - Page 2 of 4

They will call you all the things possible and imaginable, all the bad names, all the labels will be associated with you. Your main job is not to take any of that personally by telling yourself that that is not my truth. It is the projection defense mechanism of the narcissist; it is basically a confession. Every single thing they are saying, they are blaming you for, is nothing but a confession. And what you should do is that you should look for proof for those confessions. If the narcissist says you are destroying our children, know that they are doing it. Now they have given you the clue, they have given you something to work on and find out how they are doing it. That is how you step back. Anytime they go crazy with yelling and screaming and become really loud, you go down, you control the situation. Either you stay silent, and you say something along the lines of, “When you are done, let me know. We can get started with the topic, or we can get started with discussing the problem.” Keep repeating yourself until they realize there is no point in yelling and screaming, that you see through them, that you know what they’re trying to do, and you’re not going to give them that power. Or you say something along the lines of, “I do not respond to that volume,” so that they know they’re done here; there is nothing to manipulate, there is nothing to exploit. You always give monosyllabic answers whenever possible, or one-liners: “We both know that is not what happened,” or “I understand why you think that way, but that is your opinion, and you are entitled to have one. We can both agree to disagree.” Drop it there. Watch them through tantrums but do not respond to those tantrums by reacting.

Remain Decisive

You cannot be reactive, as I was explaining, because your reaction will always be used against you. When I say stay decisive or remain decisive, what I mean by that is to keep your prefrontal cortex, or the part of your brain that enables executive functioning, accessible. And how do you do that? By knowing what’s going on in your body. You need to understand that when we are in a survival state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, we are not able to think properly. We are not able to logically understand things, we are not able to decide, we are not able to plan. Why, you might ask? Because literally, we don’t have access to our prefrontal cortex, this part of the brain, the evolved part of the brain. We stay in this emotional survival part of the brain, and we only know how to react. That is not going to help you here, so you have to always come to your body, know what’s going on, and then, most importantly, you have to relax it intentionally. You have to imagine that this narcissist you’re trying to deal with is like a bulldog that can bite you but is chained; it can only bark, and you can be relaxed, vigilant, not hypervigilant. Your hypervigilance won’t help you; relaxed vigilance will. So, you remain relaxed and vigilant by relaxing your body, by imagining you are a wet noodle, by relaxing your jaw. This is very crucial. I have done it personally; it helps a lot for you to play along. It’s a game of chess; you have to predict what moves will be made before you make a move. So, you have to have your arms relaxed, you have to rest properly, sit properly, and tell yourself that I’m dealing with a toddler. I can handle this; I just do not have to react.