3. Stay focused on the issue.
Again, if you have to engage for whatever reason, there’s no other alternative, then decide that no matter what the narcissist throws at you, you will stay focused on the issue at hand. Narcissists like to spin, twist, distort, and lie outright, as well as lie by omission. And often, when confronted with a legitimate issue, all they have in their toolbox is blame-shifting and mudslinging. Even if they have to make shit up to make their point, they’ll do so. This is often how we discover the true nature of the person we’re dealing with.
All is well until there’s a legitimate issue or a problem to be dealt with. All is well until you try to give them some feedback or attempt to set a reasonable limit or boundary. All is well until you decide to express how you feel about their colossal lack of boundaries and/or the impact their appalling attitudes and behavior are having on you. Rather than dealing with whatever the issue is with a relatively healthy, sane adult, you find yourself on the receiving end of a disproportionate attack, irrational, illogical, and often completely fabricated nonsense, even. The kind of nonsense a narcissist will use every time in order to shift blame and avoid accountability. Relatively healthy people won’t go to these lengths, but narcissists do all day long. And furthermore, given the opportunity, a narcissist will gaslight you as a means of covering their own ass.
Recommended: Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself- By Shahida Arabi.
Going down this crazy-making rabbit hole with a narcissist can and will take a toll, a serious toll, even on the strongest of us. So, don’t go there. It’s not going to get you what you want, and it’s never going to be worth the price you’ll pay. Instead, the trick is to detach, to drop any expectation you have of being seen, heard, validated, or understood. Whatever it takes, stay in your body, breathe, and walk away. Simply say something along the lines of “Feel like I’m not being heard. Let me take a break from this conversation. I’ll be open to coming back to it if and when we can discuss the issue at hand specifically,” then turn on your heel and leave, walk away.
Is this easy to do? No, no one understands better than me the extent to which it can be maddening, to have to deal with an empathy-impaired emotional manipulator who feels entitled to look you dead in the eye and lie to and about you, to your face no less, while blaming and shaming you for all the damage and destruction they bring to the table of the relationship.
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