In this podcast, we’ll explore this very complex—yet easy to understand—topic. If you’re interested in this topic, you’re probably dealing with one or more narcissists rather than suspecting that you might be one yourself, so this podcast is geared toward that perspective. I’ll explain later why that’s more likely.
The goal is for you to develop a deep understanding of narcissism and your own role—combined with a few insights and “tricks”—so that you’ll be able to hold your ground, no matter what the narcissist does.
It’s important to me to state right at the outset that this is not about condemning the narcissist. From a higher perspective, there are no perpetrators and victims, but rather an invitation to find inner balance—which, however, is often only possible through the path of self-awareness.
These days, the word “narcissism” is used very frequently—and often unjustifiably. It has frequently become a kind of insult or is deliberately used to discredit others. Not everyone who has a strong sense of self-confidence is a narcissist.
In addition, there are varying degrees of narcissism—ranging from very pronounced to very mild. Thus, while the following examples and points apply to all narcissists, they are present to varying degrees.
The goal is simply to clarify what behavioral patterns and instincts are at work within him, so that we can then understand how these interactions play out and, ultimately, the possibility of his own liberation. In the end, I explain what drives the narcissist and answer the question of whether he is hopelessly lost or whether he, too, can experience healing.
And it’s also important for me to say, before we begin, that while I’m talking about narcissists, I’m not limiting this to men. There are roughly as many female narcissists as there are male ones. Although men are diagnosed as narcissists more often, this is partly because they tend to exhibit “grandiosity narcissism,” which is dominant and easier to recognize, while women tend toward “vulnerable or covert narcissism.”
A narcissist—what exactly is that?
Narcissists have a strong need for admiration, power, control, and recognition, and they know how to get them.
They keep steering the conversation back to themselves and are constantly seeking validation, which causes their brain to release dopamine as part of its “reward system.” So it feels good and right to keep doing this.
Low tolerance for criticism—they typically react angrily and defensively to any kind of criticism, or are remarkably skilled at appearing to accept it at first, only to twist it so that others suddenly find themselves on the receiving end of the criticism.
Narcissists don’t reflect; they don’t consider whether they’re in the wrong, whether they were unkind, or what their behavior has done to others. It would be nice to just call them “cheeky,” because one day they can completely tear you down emotionally, and the next day they’ll come along with a flippant remark and a charming smile, as if nothing had happened. For them, nothing did.
They tend to view self-reflection or consideration for others as a weakness that they can take advantage of.
In general, narcissists identify others’ vulnerabilities and exploit them to gain control. Sometimes this amounts to outright exploitation of others for personal gain—depending on how severe the narcissism is. As a rule, however, narcissists are unaware of just how manipulative and harmful their behavior actually is—precisely because they do not reflect on themselves.
They also have little to no empathy. At best, they can only pretend to have it.
Narcissists relieve their own tension by shaming, belittling, insulting, or making others feel guilty. This makes them feel good in the moment, which isn't necessarily done with malicious intent.
This game just keeps starting over and over again.
Narcissism—in short—stems from internal distortions and emotional wounds. Although narcissists generally come across as strong and self-assured, they are very fragile on the inside, especially when others are strong. One could say that narcissism is a suit of armor made up of various layers of the ego. But we’ll come back to that in more detail later.
How does he treat you?
Perhaps you've already noticed a few things. Narcissism becomes even more apparent in close relationships, especially within families and romantic partnerships. I'd like to list a few examples:
He feeds off your energy by making accusations, portraying himself in a favorable light, emphasizing how great he is, what he’s capable of, or even everything he’s had to endure, etc.
He wants to create dramas that aren't really dramas at all.
Treats you condescendingly, like a child, and says things like “you’re so sensitive,” “don’t always take everything so personally,” blames you by saying “after everything I’ve done for you,” tries to belittle you with comments like “it’s your fault,” “you messed this up again,” “it’s all your fault that things went wrong again,” etc.
Often, they're just taunts and provocations meant to get you to lose your cool.
Narcissists also like to play the “savior” by trying to convince you that “I know you better than you know yourself,” “I know what’s good for you,” “I just want what’s best for you,” “no one loves you more than I do,” and so on.
He also likes to twist your own words around so that what comes out is always something different from what you meant. The back-and-forth over clarifying things drains so many of your resources that you end up completely drained and still not understood (because that was never the narcissist’s intention in the first place). It’s a brilliant strategy to keep the conversation from ever getting deeper, to never let it reach the point that’s dangerous for him. Because of all these self-inflicted misunderstandings, you remain stuck on the surface, constantly having to explain yourself, and you waste energy that goes directly to him.
Especially when you make decisions that aren't in the narcissist's best interest, they always come out with certain phrases meant to make you feel insecure again, like, "Hmm, if you say so, but I don't have a good feeling about this," or "You're just doing your own thing anyway and don't need me."
His mind thrives on repetition, in which his patterns mesh perfectly with yours—for example, his accusations align perfectly with your inner feelings of guilt, his supposed strength with your inferiority complexes, and so on.
He has power and control over you once you get involved. The fear, guilt, inferiority complexes, or whatever else you release can be directly siphoned off as energy.
All of this causes you to lose confidence in yourself, to feel weak and needy—or even guilty, anxious, and inferior. You often doubt yourself, your own judgment, your own perceptions, and your intuition.
I’d like to include a link here to one of my older podcasts; it’s called “The Battle for Life Energy.” While it doesn’t directly address narcissism, it explains in detail—with many examples—how we lose energy throughout the day in various situations, how we can reclaim it when necessary, and how we can achieve better balance.
How do you deal with him? Your journey to yourself…
By constantly having to explain, defend, and justify yourself, you’re wasting a tremendous amount of energy that flows to him, making him feel even more powerful. It’s as if you were turning all the heaters up to full in the winter while opening all the windows. Your challenge is to be much, much more mindful of your energy and to act consciously from within yourself rather than simply reacting to his narcissistic outbursts.
Carl Jung once said that the only thing a narcissist fears is your indifference. It’s not your anger, your distancing yourself, or your arguments. All of that plays right into their hands. The only thing that can disarm them is indifference.
Not every action deserves a reaction.
Not every attack deserves a defense.
Of course, it’s not as simple as just being able to behave differently, because these reaction patterns are triggers that are deeply ingrained within you. That’s why only a deep healing process within you—a journey into your True Self—can save you. You can free yourself from the very triggers that the narcissist sets off by tracing them back to their root.
Observe what the narcissist reflects back to you. What typical narcissistic strategies does he use? Drama to get attention? Why do you react to it? Where have you seen this before, and why does it resonate with you? Does he make accusations? Why do you explain and defend yourself? What is the root cause—where do these feelings of guilt stem from? Does he belittle you? Where have you seen this before? Were there people who behaved this way toward you when you were a child?
Take a look at your inferiority complexes, fears, and feelings of guilt, and transform their root causes—then you’ll no longer resonate with the narcissist’s behavioral patterns!
Narcissists very often use the drama triangle, in which they alternately take on the roles of the persecutor, the victim, and then the rescuer. This can be very confusing, and if you simply react, the persecutor pushes you into the role of the victim, the victim into the role of the rescuer, and so on—so you become a pawn rather than acting of your own free will. In this case, it’s important to see through the drama triangle, see through the roles, and understand that you ARE none of them—you’re merely playing roles that are thrust upon you. You can step out of it and rise above the drama triangle. Then you’ll recognize its roles but remain largely unaffected by them.
Don't analyze the narcissist—analyze yourself.
Nothing is set in stone; you can heal from within, free yourself, and then gradually experience the uplifting sensation of the narcissist’s patterns and strategies sliding off you like water off a Teflon coating. The buttons he used to be able to push no longer exist.
The more at peace you are with yourself, the more clearly you’ll suddenly see his patterns, his strategies, and his wounds. And you’ll be able to leave them with him, instead of feeding him with your precious life energy.
Practical tips that can help you gracefully hold your ground in tense situations:
Trust your own perceptions; don't let anyone convince you that you're wrong, too sensitive, etc.
Don't argue; just say, "That's an interesting point of view," or "That's your opinion; I see it differently."
Observe instead of reacting right away. Stay calm. Be aware that he's trying to test you and draw you out.
As you go through all of this, observe yourself as well and notice where you’re still attached. There, with THEKI, you can transform everything that still disturbs your peace. In this way, it becomes your playing field—it is no longer his.
Don't fall for his games! Keeping your emotional distance is the best thing you can do to hold your ground and make him turn his attention back on himself. He can't feed off your energy.
Your inner peace is his biggest trigger. You’re cutting him off from his “drug.” He can no longer feed off your emotional reactions (your anger, sadness, confusion, insecurity, etc.) because you’re no longer giving away your energy. You’re holding onto it.
He wants to provoke you, throw you off balance, so he can have power over you. But if you don't react emotionally, you're like Teflon to him—he can't get a hold of you, can't find a way to get to you, and is left with nothing but himself.
A narcissist wants to have power over you by triggering you. The fewer trigger points you have, the more uncontrollable you become to him. Strictly speaking, you could control him right now, but you have no interest in doing so—which irritates him even more.
He may also occasionally play the role of the supposed victim to throw you even further off balance—“You’ve hurt me,” “You’re so selfish,” etc.—but these aren’t genuine feelings; they’re part of his defense mechanism. Always be aware of this; it helps you avoid falling into those roles.
Set your boundaries; hold your ground.
You are not responsible for his emotions.
You are only responsible for yourself.
Hold your ground.
Outward appearances are very important to narcissists. But if you show that “I don’t really care about that” or “I don’t need that to be happy,” you’re taking away their basis for making themselves look great and feeling important. In any case, you can’t be impressed by that anymore.
The clearer you keep your boundaries, the more you’ll serve as a mirror for him. If you stay calm and communicate, “This isn’t my problem” or “I don’t feel like dealing with this right now/don’t have time for this,” then he’ll be forced to turn inward.
This stirs up a mixture of anger and despair within him, because his script no longer works and he doesn't have another one. Perhaps he'll react with even more accusations, with contempt, anger—whatever.
Maybe you won’t even react anymore. You won’t explain yourself or justify your actions; you’ll just stay calm or smile. You understand what’s going on inside him, but you won’t get drawn into it anymore. You won’t accept the blame, and you won’t desperately try to save the relationship.
You might also decide to walk away from the situation—or even the entire relationship—if it has become too toxic. You are no longer a victim; you are no longer helpless and at the mercy of others. You are in control of your own life again.
Be sure to realize this: You are neither cold nor unfriendly when you maintain your personal space and ensure its energetic purity. In this case, the problem doesn’t lie with you, but with the narcissist, who can’t handle it because it puts him at a disadvantage when he can no longer feed off your emotions.
The Last Trick
If you manage to develop this strength more and more, and the narcissist realizes that you’ve become stronger and he’s losing control over you, he may resort to one last “emergency plan”: He’ll try to convince you that the way you’ve changed is toxic and that you urgently need help. That you’ve become cold and emotionless, selfish, even narcissistic. He’ll paint the “good times” you spent together in the most beautiful light and imply that this happiness was only possible with the person you used to be. So you have to go back to being that way, because he can’t relate to the new version of you. If none of that works, he might even try to trigger your willingness to help by creating a serious crisis of his own making and breaking through your resistance by the back door—for example, he might get sick, lose his job, or whatever, so that you have to help him or can’t leave him. He won’t become tougher; instead, he’ll become softer, more vulnerable—he might even be as sweet as sugar now.
That’s the moment when you might forget the boundaries and strengths you’ve worked so hard to establish and believe that he’s finally changed. Because part of you might still be hoping that he will change—or that he has already changed. And that all the time and all the discussions you’ve had with him were worth it after all.
He’ll portray himself as “reformed,” engage in self-criticism, and this is precisely an important phase during which you should remain fully aware, because this phase isn’t really genuine. It’s one of the most dangerous forms of manipulation, because you believe that the moment you’ve been waiting for so long has finally arrived. In this way, he draws you back into his reach, into his sphere of influence.
Maybe he’s using your own healing journey as a “weapon” right now, because if you’re so much further along, then surely you must be able to forgive him, give your relationship another chance, trust him, and so on—and since you’ve managed to heal yourself, surely you can help him, too, and so on. He won’t admit that he feels bad, nor will he be able to show genuine remorse, but he’ll make you feel like you have to be there for him now.
But then, very slowly and almost imperceptibly, he gradually slips back into his old ways. He hasn't really changed. He's just changed his strategy.
It’s important to understand that while you may be emotionally connected to the narcissist, he has little empathy and feels things very differently. He needs your energy—he thrives on it—so your interactions with him are more like “transactions” that he carries out based on his internal programming.
If you leave his life for good, he won’t forget you. He’ll keep reaching out to you spontaneously, implying, “You’re still important to me”—even after a long time has passed. But once again, it’s important to understand the narcissist here, rather than getting lost in romantic interpretations: For him, this isn’t a feeling—it’s a strategy. Maybe he’ll need you one day, so he’s trying to keep you on the hook. Maybe you’ll take the bait again someday—that way, you won’t be able to forget him…
He doesn't like it when you're absent, but that's not real longing. It's a threat to his world—or rather, to his territory. He keeps you on his radar and reenters the picture when the time is right for him. By then, you may have already forgotten how destructive this relationship was …
You only resonate with narcissists
as long as you’re susceptible to manipulation,
because you aren’t grounded in your own power.
The more clearly you’ve sorted things out within yourself,
love yourself, trust yourself, and think and act independently
,
the less likely a narcissist is to have an impact on you.You’re completely uninterested in his
emotional drama
and disarm him with your very presence—
—even without saying a single word.
Can a narcissist be cured?
Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: A narcissist can definitely be healed, and I’ll explain why right away. But if you’re still stuck in the mindset of seeing yourself as a victim of a narcissist, then you’re not the right “savior”—please don’t let yourself be steered into that role. For now, it’s important for you to realize that you won’t heal him with patience, understanding, or all the explanations in the world—because you’re his fuel, not his cure. The patterns must be broken first.
Narcissists generally have a hard time admitting to themselves that they have a problem at all—or that they’re even narcissistic—which is why I didn’t make this podcast for narcissists, but for people who have to deal with them.
But if it ever comes to the point where a narcissist is willing to embark on a healing process, he can definitely—and perhaps even very quickly—be helped. If he is willing to face his own pain, anything is possible.
At first glance, the narcissist doesn’t come across very well in this podcast, but narcissism is ultimately just a collection of very specific layers of the ego that have developed as a result of wounds and distortions—including, and especially, neglect (particularly during childhood). The inflated ego is simply his armor. He alleviates his own discomfort, his own shame, and his own shortcomings through “transactions” with you or with others.
The narcissist isn't strong, even though he appears to be. His facade is incredibly strong, but he can only maintain it as long as others are weak. He must always be better, be able to measure himself against others, and rate himself higher; otherwise, his house of cards will collapse.
It's possible that at some point in his life, showing his feelings was punished—with indifference, shame, or whatever. Ever since then, he has been bottling up his feelings and projecting them onto others.
This is precisely where the key to healing may lie. With THEKI, we uncover the roots of all these layers and transform them. In the case of the narcissist, we delve deeply into these layers of hurt, neglect, emotional coldness, feelings of inferiority, and so on, and transform their underlying causes. At the same time, we strengthen the abilities inherent in every person—such as basic trust, authenticity, and even vulnerability as a strength. In this way, the person can gradually recognize for themselves which destructive behavioral patterns are still at work and decide for themselves to let them go and become increasingly authentic with themselves and others.
Everything that comes into your life,
serves your growth.
Even the narcissist.
Life reaches out to you time and again,
giving you the chance to free yourself from old,
limiting, destructive patterns
.
The narcissist is merely an actor
in the reality you’ve created for yourself.
You have the power to completely reshoot the movie of your reality
.
All it takes is a heartfelt “YES” to yourself.
SANDRA WEBER
