Unmasking The Narcissist Without Saying a Word
Now, this is not about being a saint. This is a strategy—a very powerful and effective strategy—if you can muster the strength to pull it off.
When you’re dealing with someone who deliberately provokes you, twists, distorts, performs, and recruits allies, and an audience, your reaction is their raw material. Let that sink in for a moment and think about what that means.
If you’ve been snapped at, bullied, blamed, shamed, gaslit, baited, relentlessly criticized, publicly humiliated or embarrassed, lied about, ignored, ghosted, or stonewalled—of course you have feelings. Legitimate feelings—for crying out loud. You’re a human being.
But here’s what you’re going to put into practice moving forward: You are not going to express—never mind process—those feelings in front of the person or people who have a history of weaponizing them.
Let me say that again: you are allowed to feel your feelings. By all means, feel everything, all of it. In fact, it’s very important that you do safely.
Moving forward, you’re just not going to hand them the ammunition they’ll get to use against you. That means no sarcasm, no digs, no passive-aggressive anything, zero emotional outbursts, zero self-righteous speeches—just calm, concise, factual, boring even—and, most importantly, above reproach.
Because when you remain above reproach, their mask will start to slip, and the narcissist’s projections will have nothing to stick to.
Now, is this going to be easy? Hell no. But it is possible once you start focusing on your own healing and recovery work and find a solid support system of people who actually get it—and you start taking good care of yourself.
Until you do that, staying calm and above reproach will feel damn near impossible. But when you commit to doing your own work, staying calm and above reproach is totally doable. That’s just the truth of it.
Which brings us to number two: Relinquish the illusion of control.
Now, admittedly, this one will be hard—very hard—in the beginning, especially for high achievers.
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