Stop Being Nice to a Narcissist – Do THIS Instead

This is especially true if you’re codependent and carry unresolved family of origin wounds and trauma. By the time their mask starts to slip and their true intentions are revealed, you’re often already hooked, which can make breaking away incredibly difficult, if not excruciatingly painful. As a result, you end up running the cycle of abuse—idealize, devalue, and discard—on repeat until you decide you’ve had enough and commit to your own personal healing and recovery work.

In the meantime, what’s going on in the dysfunctional dynamic between you and the narcissist is working for them, not you. While you run around in circles trying to be nice enough, good enough, kind enough, patient enough, and loving enough in hopes of gaining their love, validation, and approval—things they do not have to give—nothing changes. In fact, things only continue to get worse until you finally begin to recognize the patterns of behavior for what they are and decide to take better care of yourself.

This moment of clarity and shift in the relationship dynamic has to come from you. What’s going on is working for the narcissist, so if you want anything to change, that change has to come from you. It begins with recognizing a few fundamental truths. First, you can’t change the narcissist, no matter how nice you are, and they aren’t going to change. There is no amount of niceness that will help you get your needs met in a relationship with a destructive narcissist. You’re going to have to drop the magical thinking and start living in reality, no matter how uncomfortable that reality may be right now. Telling yourself the honest truth is the one thing that will help you, as difficult as that may be.

Some people, especially codependent empaths who have yet to do their own healing and recovery work, make the mistake of believing that if they can just be patient, kind, tolerant, more loving, sympathetic, empathetic, communicate better, and appeal to logic and a moral compass, they will somehow crack the code and get what they want and need. But that’s an illusion—a delusional one at that. Remember, narcissists are running a completely different agenda, one that has nothing to do with your comfort, preferences, desires, or well-being.

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