Ignoring the Narcissist may be difficult, but in the end, well worth the struggle
After extended exposure to narcissists, you begin realizing that they have taken up residence inside your mind. A narcissist’s controlling, entitled attitudes and behaviors annoy you greatly, yes. And you wish to be free of their manipulations and ever-present criticism and unsolicited advice. But in the midst of that annoyed feeling, it dawns on you that you have been trained to filter too much of your life through that person, and ignoring the narcissist seems impossible.
When you are with that person, or even when that person is not present, you question:
“Is he (she) going to get mad at me?”
“If I am too distinct, is it going to create new problems?”
“What does it take to keep this person off my back?”
“Will I ever please this person?”
Narcissists need to be the most important person in any relationship.
They have an insatiable need for superiority and the way they find it is to keep you feeling less-than. You represent supply to them. To them, you exist to keep prop up their egos. That’s the way it is in the world of the narcissist.
Lost on the narcissist is the notion that you are free to be whoever you choose to be. They honestly believe it is their prerogative (or duty) to direct your life, letting know if and when you meet the appropriate standard. And, of course, you know who has written the Book of Standards.
Instead of running your thoughts, feelings, and decisions through that narcissist’s filter, what if you decided to go your own way? What if you ignored the narcissist?
It can be a delightful thought to start ignoring the narcissist. After all, they are so sanctimonious, thinking they can do a better job running your life than you could do. But…ignoring the narcissist could come with a price. They have all sorts of tricks up their sleeve they could use if you don’t bow to them. They might rage. They can give the silent treatment. They can withhold affection or favors. They could run a smear campaign. They can go into high control with money.
And when they do (or threaten to do) these things, you can go back to those haunting questions, wondering what will be next.
But at some point, you will need to ask yourself these 5 different questions:
“Do I really have to have the narcissist’s approval before I can think, or feel, or decide as I wish?”
“How did I let myself get caught in this trap? Where’s the exit?”
“Even if the narcissist becomes angry, do I have the right (or better yet, the responsibility) to make my own decisions?”
“When I am chided for being me, is it even necessary to defend or rationalize? That has gotten me nowhere in the past.”
“And what about my self respect? Do I have to forfeit that just to keep a self-serving narcissist appeased?”
There are other traits you will need to embrace as you break away from a narcissist’s grip and start ignoring the narcissist:
Assertiveness, boundaries, self-confidence, calm firmness, and resolve…to name just a few.
But before you can build upon those, let’s agree that it begins when you turn off the filter the narcissist expects you to use. That filter is not there for your benefit, and it inhibits you from being the person you were meant to be.
When it is clear that have been derailed by a bullying or uncaring narcissist, your initial step toward clean independence is to resolve to listen foremost to your own inner voice. That means you will need to ignore, or at the very least, sidestep the misinformation fed to you by the narcissist. They have no intention of guiding you toward any good place.
Les Carter, Ph.D.
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I can’t begin to put into words how much your insights into my beginnings as a highly sensitive child being ignored, criticized, hurt with cruel, unnecessarily harsh words from mom, to becoming (unconsciously) an empath drawn to a narcissist husband, who broke my ❤️ With his cruel words + actions towards me, shortly right after having said, ‘I do’! …healing in a most powerful way now, + with your wise words, especially! 🙏 thank you.
Here’s a fun question for you. My ex shows a lot of CN tendencies. I’m not a trained clinician, so I’m not going to diagnose her. I just know that when I live as if, things go much better. Now that I am not living with her, my children take the brunt of her disregard, are home alone until 2AM while she love bombs her new supply, and live on a roller coaster of future faking.
The question, I want my children to have a good relationship with their mother. I want them to be safe in building that relationship and give them strategies for making that happen. It would be easier to just tell them what they are dealing with as opposed to giving them strategies for each problem. We deal with mama’s chills, body aches, fever, nausea, and cough as all separate things, but it would be easier if we could just tell them she has the flu. It would be easier, but it seems unwise, mean, and counterproductive to my goal of helping them to maintain a good and necessary relationship with her.
What to do?
It has been educational and impossible to duplicate because the one consistency is Dr. Carter. What an excellent textbook covering the Intro, types of Narcissism with examples of each, our responses to and attitudes about Narcissist, Narcissistic behavior and more. Dr. Les Carter does incredible job of identifying, labeling elements of Narcissism, and has an extremely pleasant voice and tone.
Thank you very much again Dr. Carter!
It was a blessing when I came upon your YouTube channel just because I was looking into narcissistic abuse to understand it better.
I like the way you take complicated emotions and bring them down to earth where my mind and my heart can understand them and begin to make sense of them more completely.
I just want you to know, aside from the 40 years you spent in practice, this might be the most important thing you have ever done.
Being that I am A bright person, with a positive attitude and a good hard it took me decades to come to grips with the fact that once family members would actually set out to hurt me! I think the actual acceptance of that has been the hardest part! I have not only lost the love of my mother, with all her faults, but now she has made my older sister and my twin brother the flying monkeys! I feel like I have lost my whole family now because they were all I had.
While I still speak to my twin brother, I could see he has been brainwashed by my mother into believing I am not a good person he has always known me to be as his twin sister. I am also mourning the friendship of my twin Somewhat I thought I would have for the rest of my life as a friend and confidant.