It has taken me a lifetime to understand and finally break my addiction to narcissistic men – those charming men who demonstrate a persistent pattern of grandiosity, an exaggerated sense of self-importance, a sense of entitlement, an excessive need for admiration, exemplified by a chaotic, fiery emotionality that ultimately violates, invades, and diminishes those people they say they care about and interact with.
As a seasoned coach, trainer, and facilitator, I wrongly assumed I could apply my empathic, caring, and supportive wisdom to help them self-regulate and manage any potentially damaging, negative impact on me and others. As a result, I came to believe that being a professional meant taking an objective approach; being tolerant and empathic about misbehaviours; being compassionate about their deficit needs and values violations; making excuses for them; accepting their toxic behaviours; and taking responsibility for resolving conflicts.
What it’s really about is learning to respond effectively to narcissistic behaviours.
This misconception has left me feeling drained, depleted, belittled, and unsafe, as I had really naively and unknowingly allowed myself to be controlled and manipulated and risked losing myself as a result of false assumptions. I learned a powerful life lesson: some people are incapable of truly loving anyone other than themselves, and I don’t have to save, fix, tolerate, or collude with them in any way whatsoever, no matter how hard they poke, push, or try to belittle me. I just have to learn to respond effectively to narcissistic behaviours.
- The Narcissistic Dad
Being number four of five siblings, four girls and one son, we were seduced by an overly controlling, highly competitive father who, in our eyes, could do no wrong. Despite growing up in a dysfunctional family where our individual needs, feelings, and competence were constantly invalidated and exploited. Especially when it suited his need to manipulate, control, grandstand, and win, or when he required one of us to step up and deal with our troublesome mother when he was unable to do so.
I became a people-pleaser on a lifelong quest to make my mother wrong and my dad happy. I carried it into how I treated other people because that’s what I was used to, until I realised what it cost me to placate my dad’s controlling and competitive nature and ultimate betrayal of me.
- The Narcissistic Lover
In my mid-twenties, I met my fabulous, amazingly handsome, and beguiling designer boyfriend. He lived by the creed: say yes to your mother, then do what you like! I was initially love-bombed into an intense, fast-moving relationship, and I naively believed I had found my soulmate and became fully emotionally invested, with the promise of a shared future. Yet the following six years were full of lies, deceit, and betrayal, causing me to doubt and neglect myself in service to his narrative. His charm and constant need for a steady stream of validation, compliments, and attention fed his fragile ego, filling his internal emptiness and deep lack of confidence. These were masked by grandiosity, monumental infidelity, and later, a cocaine addiction.
When I finally found the courage to end and exit this toxic relationship, it felt like I gave up part of my heart to finally leave. I had to learn how to reclaim my authentic self and rekindle my inner light; I invested in establishing a new sense of self, rebuilding my strength, and keeping moving into the unknown toward something better. It wasn’t an easy gig; I learned to become a more discerning, confident, courageous, compassionate, and curious professional.
- The Narcissistic Partner
Towards the end of my distinguished global corporate career, I encountered my final, most difficult and challenging narcissistic teacher. He lived by the creed: for argument’s sake, and then had to fight to win over everyone and lord over everything. I realised that I still had much to learn in mastering a professional relationship with a manipulative, controlling, and arrogant person who constantly tested my limits, violated my trust, and repeatedly invaded my space. A destructive default pattern emerged as a result of his chaotic lack of focus and self-discipline, emotional outbursts, which were further distorted by nasty jokes, mean-spirited comments and emails, and a series of bad, wilful, belittling, and diminishing behaviours.
What finally awakened me to the depth of the toxicity in our relationship was his complete lack of empathy and my, up until then, unacknowledged feelings of being in a constantly unsafe space. I was emotionally drained, mentally fatigued, and physically exhausted as a result of his constant need for combat, conflict, and dismissal of my contribution and value. In a rare moment of personal disclosure, when he shared what he described as his imposter syndrome, I finally realised I had to fully let go of the relationship, end it, and even exit the business. Because I had no control over, or responsibility for, his internal state of deep inner chaos, his unacknowledged hurt child, his fake public persona, nor for filling his internal emptiness by continuing to excuse and placate what has been revealed as a fraudulent way of being.
The biggest step involved taking back my personal power and my authentic self by stepping away, setting firm boundaries, and staying silent despite the huge personal and financial cost. You can also take back your personal power by responding effectively to narcissistic behaviours.
Strategies for responding effectively to narcissistic behaviours
- No matter how deeply they hook you in, push or poke you with a nasty joke or comment, take a deep breath, and no matter how angry or frustrated you feel, don’t be reactive.
- Don’t engage; ground yourself to stay calm, and be mindful of your own and their emotional state.
- Make a conscious choice not to placate them, offer solutions, give them the benefit of your doubt, or try to be reasonable and objective.
- Do not collude with them in any way; just stay silent.
- Set and sustain firm boundaries, get agreement, call out any broken agreements.
Here are some great one-liners I have been experimenting with to help establish clarity and distance that are assertively powerful:
- It is not my responsibility to solve that probelm/deal with that issue.
- I will not be spoken to that way.
- How you are feeling about this issue/situation is not my problem.
- I am not interested in your opinion of me.
- This conversation is over.
I hope that, like me, you will no longer need to serve the narcissist’s narrative or play their game by assertively telling the truth and identifying the signs. This will enable you to focus on reigniting your inner light, reawakening your emotional energy and empathy, kindling your inner strength, recovering from your mental fog, and living in integrity with your values and chosen way of being.
I also found this online video resource really infromative and useful.
