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You can’t change people. And you certainly can’t change a Narcopath. You can only change yourself – and it is in the adopting a different mindset that you will be able to better deal with a Narcopath, and heal yourself from the ordeal of tangling with one.
Who’s the Battle with?
In my dealing with other victims, it is clear that they have a huge battle with their Narcs. I have experienced exactly the same. But victims need to understand two things – that they will never beat the narcissist – not in one that they feel any justice being served, anyway – and that the battle is not actually with the narc, but with themselves. Trying to battle a narc has every chance of sending you insane. Understanding that you are battling yourself stands a chance of finding an acceptable way out. And acceptable is likely to be as good as it is going to get.
The first step is giving up that there is any hope of any meaningful relationship with the narc. It simply won’t happen, and if it does, you are just ensuring that you are a target for the foreseeable future.
The next is to go No Contact. Everyone recommends this – from professionals to victims alike – and everyone who caves in subsequently regrets it. NO contact, or at worst Grey Rock, is a necessity.
Mindset Management
You will never win against a narc. With research, planning and hard work, you might win against yourself.Setting your priorities
Thereafter victims need to work out what their aim needs to be and prioritising accordingly. Challenging for top slot will be:
- Self care – including managing physical and mental health
- Money and wealth management (not to mention preventing theft thereof)
- Validation
- Looking after the kids (in romantic context if joint kids are a factor)
- Understanding NPD
- Securing a support base
- Managing the smear campaign
- Securing a physical home / refuge
- Legal proceedings
- Administration
- Severing ties
This is will all be happening during an extremely difficult period, where they victim may well also be battling C-PTSD and depression issues.
As things settle down and immediate needs are met, so their healing starts.
Revenge
There’s a Chinese proverb that says if you seek revenge, start by digging two graves. And so it is with seeking revenge on a narcissist.
Seeing justice done, karma served etc is naturally what survivors want to see happening. But this is where counter-intuitive thinking is so important. The best thing that you as a victim can do is survive and thrive without the narc anywhere near your life. Not only is this best for you, it is also the worst prison sentence that can be served on your narc.
Narcissist Supply
By battling them, you’re giving them narcissistic supply. It’s negative, for sure, but it’s the vital narcissistic supply that they desperately need. Depending on the context will depend on how they try and maintain an ongoing supply from you:
- For love partners, for examples, it may well be that they have run off with someone who on the face of it is young and attractive, or moneyed etc. They may well be plastering happy pics all over social media. They may well be talking of dreams that you thought that you shared, now being lavished on someone else. But understand this – it’s an entirely false image. First off, all the lovebombing is extremely exhausting for them. Emotionally they are in give mode, and cannot yet be on the take. Underneath they are desperately insecure, their new supply has yet to prove themselves as able to withstand the abuse once the lovebombing stage is over, they are worried if the move was the right one.
- A similar thing with happen with friends.
- For children of Narcopaths, anticipate a regular flurry of messages, calls or posts trying to lay a guilt trip on you, all designed to keep you engaged. All designed to prolong their Victim Narrative.
- In the workplace, anticipate retribution in the form of professional smear campaign, employment tribunal etc.
Whatever the context, they have the stigma of the split from you to manage. They suspect that you are badmouthing them to their friends and the local community (which is what they are doing to you, I’m afraid). They are busy constructing a series of lies to cover their actions – and just trying to remember which lies they’ve told to who is quite a feat.
What they do want to feel comfortable about is that they can rely is on negative narcissistic supply from you. They need to feel important, and that you are devastated by their loss. They need to be reassured that you will still be available should they decide to come back. They need to confirm to themselves that they can still run circles around you in drama. They also need to ensure that they are being perceived as the wounded one by everyone else as part of their Victim Narrative – and so need you to look desperate, crazy, abusive and smothering.
Break Away
So for goodness sake, don’t provide them the vital negative supply that they need. Go No Contact, shut them off, and pretend to both them and the rest of the world that you are not in the least bothered by their loss. It will save your sanity and peace of mind.
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