4 Ways to Disarm the Narcissist

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel oh this is dr. Grande today's question asks if I can talk about ways to disarm the narcissist so answer this question by looking at the four ways to this form the narcissist now not all these ideas are good ideas right I don't endorse them but they are techniques or strategies that may have some level of effectiveness so narcissists direct their wrath and other destructive behavior toward various people in their lives here I'm really emphasizing a narcissist in a work setting or some other social setting similar to work but not necessarily inside of a romantic relationship because options there are a little bit different than what we see in a work setting now sometimes narcissists choose people to harm for specific reasons other times it's just that you happen to be around so there's a target component to their destructive behavior like a eat seeking missile and a non targeted component like a weapon that spreads radiation and you're affected simply because you're too close to the weapon disarming the narcissist is a little complex can we really disarm a narcissist or can we simply reduce the chance of them hurting us so I'm using the word disarm but it's really more can we reduce the risk now sometimes you can't do anything to change a narcissist other times certain behavioral strategies can help mitigate the destruction caused by a narcissist and again I'm reviewing for here so number one in this list is detachment now one of the main things interferes with the storming of narcissist actually has nothing to do with the narcissists themselves it has to do with a belief in the idea that there should be justice that life is fair or that it should be fair good things happen to good people bad things happen to bad people it's a fundamental principle in morality ethics and the law so the challenge here is we have potentially effective strategies to deal with narcissist but they require acknowledging that life is not fair they require discomfort and people with that so sometimes there really isn't much of a buy-in to these different strategies in addition to violating a sense of justice victims of narcissist feel like the narcissists are attacking them personally if it wasn't personal it really wouldn't matter as much for example we see in clinical settings like outpatient mental health settings sometimes individuals have disorders or just circumstances in their life that lead to certain behaviors like they may insult counselors and other staff but counselors really don't worry about it a lot they know it's not personal they know it's not about the counselor it's about the clients situation the client may be angry distress intoxicated have some sort of illness associated with psychosis something like that so they're hearing the same words potentially like arrogant behavior or manipulative behavior things like that but they're not reacting again they know that it has nothing to do with them so again there's concern over the personal nature of the attacks of a narcissist but are they personal does the narcissist really know what they're doing in some sense of course the answer's yes they know right from wrong they know that their behavior causes pain but in another sense they don't really understand the motivations behind their own behavior they really don't understand why they're doing it at a deep-down level narcissists victimized people for a variety of reasons but none of them have to do with carefully evaluating the substance of a person and making a judgement based on that and this would really be required for somebody to attack another personally narcissists go out of their way to make it seem like it's personal but they don't have the assessment capabilities to understand who you are as a person in the first place in a sense one of the skills the narcissist has is to attack somebody and make that person believe that it's personal when it's not which only makes their manipulation and other tactics more effective so this first item detaching in order to discern the narcissists again isn't about doing anything to a narcissist it is about relating to the narcissist at all instead it's understanding that it's not personal you may have been targeted at random you may have been targeted because we were simply in proximity you may have been targeted because you represent a value or a truth that is unacceptable to a narcissist by attacking other people the narcissist is attacking a part of themselves that they do not like they are trying to get a sense of security stability and self-worth other people may represent insecurity and instability and may question the worth of the narcissist other people may force the narcissist to face the truth and the narcissist cannot allow that that's not even optional there must be complete denial at least in the case of like perfect grandiose narcissist now when you're talking about vulnerable narcissism we can see aggression that's externalized and internalized so they're gonna act out against a victim and they're going to act inward aggressively toward themselves so this first item detachment is really about having a mindset that allows you to take the appropriate actions to disarm the narcissist a mindset that attaches your emotions from their actions it allows you to understand that their attacks have nothing to do with you they don't really know you they can't understand you and they won't invest energy and empathy it's really about preventing their own pain and this is where we get the word toxic it's actually an appropriate term for the situation for dealing with a narcissist the narcissist is toxic to themselves they are at the center of the toxicity but they're also toxic to those around them so with narcissism everyone is suffering so detachment is a prerequisite for the other three items I'm going to cover here in this video but it may be a method of disarming a narcissist by itself for some detachment may be enough so moving to item number two this is admiration right so this is giving admiration to the narcissist this is generally I think a bad idea but it's important understand because you will see it used people will adapt to a narcissist by doing this at least on occasion so to use this particular strategy admiration of course we have to have detachment in place first what we see with admiration is it tends to be an effective strategy to prevent narcissist from attacking but many people really can't bring themselves to do it it seems phony disingenuous and indicates weakness and for some people I think they almost get physically sick or have physical pain when they have to tell a narcissist who's hurting them that they are great and wonderful fundamentally again it violates our sense of justice and of course it's deceptive so there's an ethical and moral concern to it but as far as I know there's no law against telling people that they are great when in fact they're not great maybe there needs to be I don't know but that's a discussion for another time in order to effectively use praise it does have to seem genuine the narcissist will know when praise is perfunctory and inauthentic when you're just saying it because you want to get them off your back one way to get around this is to use a method like email or text messaging to transmit information regularly sending a narcissist messages that indicate how much you appreciate their skills characteristics abilities generosity insight when the narcissist tells you how great they are you respond by saying you're being modest you're really much greater than that one of the compliments that the narcissist really likes the most is when they are called modest and great at the same time if a narcissist believes that you are their biggest fan they'll be less likely to defame you employee gaslighting make false allegations against you and commit other offenses consistent with narcissism it's actually really just a simple value proposition the narcissist has a desire to cause pain there is a sadistic component to narcissism causing pain brings them pleasure but they also want the excessive admiration so if the value of your admiration exceeds the value of their desire to cause pain they may just leave you alone now I mentioned that this particular technique this admiration technique is deceptive that's one problem with it another problem is that it strengthens the narcissist and makes a victim look weak and unaware ultimately this method may help the potential victim but it won't help everybody else it actually fails if everyone uses it right so if everyone is admiring the narcissist they're going to have a lot of strength from that and they're gonna have to target somebody eventually so somebody's still going to be the victim so this is one method where if everyone goes in on it again it will not succeed now moving on to the third method to disarm the narcissist this one is the deterrent method also known as the most costly target method this strategy to disarm the narcissist is completely different from the excessive admiration strategy this is a strategy designed to alter the value proposition in another way the cost of attacking you exceeds the value that the narcissist gets from causing pain so how can this be done well here the individual would have to hold the narcissist accountable at every turn so careful documentation keeping every email and every communication full accountability complaining as often as required responding strongly to false allegations socially a no-nonsense zero-tolerance approach if the narcissist takes something you work to get it back it can be explicitly stated as well there's no deceptive component to this method you can tell the narcissist that you are going to try to deter their inappropriate behavior now just like many people can't stand to praise the narcissist many cannot maintain the deterrence strategy either it's exhausting time-consuming it seems antagonistic so like disagreeable you have to always be ready to defend yourself it can be isolating and there's a risk that the narcissist will play the victim when you use this method particularly if dealing with a vulnerable narcissist this strategy is most effective when everyone uses it so unlike the admiration strategy but the risk of the narcissist playing the victim dramatically increases if everyone uses this strategy and that's because it can seem like bullying so really it can backfire so the key here with this strategy is to be fair and just not harmful not aggressive not overly sensitive not angry the strategy requires detachment just as much as the other strategies if the narcissist does something good are correct recognize that they have to do something bad hold them accountable this relationship has a strong boundary but contact is allowed actually necessary with this particular method so it's not the same as creating distance which brings me to the fourth and final way to disarm the narcissist the distance method this method is simple but of course not always possible for example if you're looking at a work scenario where the narcissist is a supervisor creating distance may not be an option here we see a strong boundary but contact is limited so the narcissistic behavior is ignored the potential victim is unfazed they offer no reaction no reinforcement of the behavior so in a way it's really like behavior modification responding only when behavior is positive or neutral and ignoring the negative just like the the turrent method it can be explicitly stated so you can say to a narcissist hey when you act like a narcissist I'm not going to talk to you the advantages here it may draw less attention than the deterrent method may be able to fly under the radar with this particular method problems well it's like a defense without offense so the narcissist may just keep trying to attack the defenses and never really experiencing any type of counter-attack so in a sense they can just keep trying to manipulate or to harm as much as they like also it may be more difficult than deterrent because now you're enduring everything without reacting and even though reacting is difficult sometimes not reacting is actually more difficult and it still seems a little bit like bullying particularly if a lot of people use it together so looking at these four ways to dishonor narcissist I think detachment makes sense much of the time it's internal you do it for yourself no one has to know you don't really change in terms of what you do to the narcissist or with the narcissist or what you say to them the other methods here have really distinct shortcomings they all have their place I suppose in given situations but they have again some serious disadvantages unfortunately narcissists are difficult to manage even with perfect boundaries narcissism exposure always comes at a cost so we know whenever I talk about topics like disarming the narcissist there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate really interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this description on serving the narcissus to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 441,470

Keywords: Narcissism, narcissistic, narcissistic envy, envy, jealousy, toxic relationship, dark triad, narcissist, love, narcissistic love, narcissistic personality disorder, blame shifting, manipulation, arrogance, self-centeredness, special, unique, fantasy, entitlement, grandiosity, requires admiration, relationships, intimacy, psychopathy, Machiavellianism

Id: SRd5LnIEXJM

Length: 13min 23sec (803 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2019