Tip Three: Protect yourself.
It’s very important when you’re in a relationship with somebody with narcissistic personality disorder that you use boundaries to protect yourself. Remember, the boundaries may not change their behavior, but you can use them to protect yourself emotionally, physically, well, legally, financially, and structurally. With boundaries, we often want the other person to acknowledge that it’s a healthy boundary or that it’s worthwhile. That is just not going to happen with a narcissist.
Narcissists can take things to an extreme. I worked with a woman not very long ago who had a family member who was taking out loans in her name, signing her name to his bank statements, and she did not want to go to the police on him. She kept trying to talk to him about how he couldn’t do this, and he would completely deflect by telling her that she had enough money or she could do it because of this reason or that reason, completely not acknowledging that what he was doing was illegal and abusive. It’s very hard to think about needing to take legal steps against a family member, but sometimes the boundaries really require you to protect yourself because if you’re simply trying to navigate it by getting the other person to understand what they’re doing wrong, narcissists don’t think they’re doing anything wrong ever, which leads us back to that “as is” because they’ll never change because they don’t think it’s their problem.
A Book: Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men.
I’m going to pause just for a second here because we often don’t set boundaries with people because of the way we feel about ourselves. Sometimes we have a positive self-image of like, “I’m always nice and caring, and therefore I should always be nice and caring.” Or sometimes we have a negative self-image. Both of those things can contribute to not setting boundaries. And if you want to know more about how to set boundaries with a narcissist, then this article here is for you.
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