They start shifting gears immediately, oscillating between arrogance and self-victimization. At first, they may deny your intelligence outright, dismissing your insights as lucky guesses or irrelevant details. When that doesn’t work, they shift tactics, suddenly claiming they’ve always known what you know. They pretend they were just waiting for you to catch up or that your brilliance was something they helped cultivate. They will revise history in real-time, ensuring that they were either above you or the guiding force behind your achievements.
In the process of undermining you, they become a counterfeit version of you. Suddenly, they start speaking like you, using your words, adopting your opinions, and perhaps even copying your interests. But here’s the catch: they’ll never outright credit you. Instead, they subtly try to push you out of your own expertise. They’ll take your original thoughts, repackage them, and present them to others as if they were the genius behind them. If you’re an academic, they suddenly develop a deep appreciation for research. If you’re a writer, they start writing. If you’re a speaker, they mimic your delivery. It’s a bizarre and insidious form of intellectual theft, but it serves a purpose: to devalue you while elevating themselves.
If you remain distant and silent, not reacting to their nonsense, they will take it to the next level. They’ll subtly start undermining your confidence in your own knowledge. They will correct you on things you already know, challenge you with feigned authority, or act condescendingly when you speak—anything to plant the seed of doubt. “Are you sure about that?” they’ll say with a smug smile, even when they know you’re right. If you correct them, that’s when the rage simmers beneath their mask. They can’t stand being outsmarted, so they do what cowards do best: attack in ways that don’t look like attacks.
6 Things Narcissists Do When You Go No Contact
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