The fourth method for dealing with a narcissist is to mess with their supply in a very specific way. Narcissistic supply is something that the narcissistic personality-disordered individual needs. It is not love, friendship, or an authentic reciprocal relationship with another human being. They need their own version of love and attention, which is highly narcissistic, and it is like shooting up a drug. If you mess with their narcissistic supply, make them feel like they are going to be cut off from that supply, you will create the kind of distress, anguish, and anxiety that a junkie would feel if they felt like they were going to run out of their drug. If you want to aggravate them, the potential threat in this scenario should be that their supply is going to be permanently damaged in a scenario, in an institution, or with a particular individual that they value. They do not value all sources of supply the same, so map which sources of supply they are very dependent on or very attached to and threaten to permanently damage those sources of narcissistic supply by exposing the true nature of the narcissists.
We know that with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, at the level of the personality structure itself, there was an authentic self that was built as a child in response to a very oppressive and abusive environment. A wall was built around themselves to protect themselves, and within that wall is a sort of mirror, a Perseus shield, which distorts truth and everything that goes through. First of all, very little reality actually breaks through this narcissistic shell, but when it does, the little bits of reality that breakthrough the narcissistic shell, that which reaches the little bit of authentic self that is left there, which is mainly dead because the authentic self dies in this isolation and shrivels to almost nothing. The little bits of reality that get through are distorted as they pass through the shield, and they’re reframed, reformatted so that the self that looks out at the world through the shield is looking also through a mirror. That mirror is telling the narcissistic self what the narcissistic self wants to hear, that is the false image.
So, no matter what happens, the narcissist is desperately fighting to restructure what is happening to fit a preexisting fantasy-based narrative of how incredibly amazing they are. What does that mean? It means that generally speaking, in simpler language, there’s the real person, the real narcissist, and then there’s this fake image that they’re pushing out to the world. Why do they push this fake image out to the world? To garner as much narcissistic supply, to become as significant as possible, to develop a false self, and to avoid a narcissistic injury. It’s a defense; it’s defensive. So, they’re pumping this out to generate, let’s say, predominantly to generate an emotional response in the people around them because they’re predominantly feeding off emotions.
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