You may be wondering if narcissists ever get hurt. They do. They are in pain all the time and they do not want you to know it. They are constantly trying to cover up the fact that they are in pain. They are layering on this false sense of confidence. They try to make it look like they are confident. They want you to believe that they are confident all the time. In a lot of ways, they have fooled themselves. They got this tiny little scared thing going on inside of themselves and they do not want anyone to see it. They are extremely afraid of being exposed, at all times. How you hurt them is by exposing them. That is when you are going to negotiate with them and the biggest way that you can gain leverage with them. In a lot of ways, it is how you build your case for negotiating with them. You are ethically manipulating the manipulator. You are not trying to hurt them but there are signs that you have hurt them that are going to be built around exposing them in some way. That is what you are going to be looking at because they have this narcissistic injury that is within them. They have a false self that they show the world at all times. Their real self is a scared little child. They really are way more afraid of you than you are of them.
#1) They Withdraw from You and Become Cold and Distant
They become cold and distant and they probably ghost you. The reason that they do this is that they want to regain control back over you again. You have hurt them in some way and they want to get control back over you again so they may ghost you or become cold and distant. They want you to go “oh come on, come back, come back”. They are looking to manipulate you back into the fold.
#2) They Start Making Excuses for Their Bad Behavior
You may see them start pushing off their bad behavior on someone else or lying or denying. That is their MO. You always see them projecting and deflecting, lying and denying. They always try to find a way to avoid fault. You may start seeing them do these things because if you start to expose them then they are almost like caged animals in some ways. If you start to corner them then they are going to start to fight back a little bit.
#3) They Begin to Start Putting All the Blame on You
When you start to see them become unglued and start putting the blame on you, you know that you are starting to hurt them in some way. What’s happened is they’ve been conditioning you since the very first moment that you began a relationship with them. They put you in these situations where they condition you. You must stop the retreat if you are going to shift the dynamic. They are not going to like it. They are going to start to have a tantrum, at least early on. When you start to see that narcissistic rage come out is when you must stand your ground. That is when you start to want to go “oh, God, I am not going to do this” but you must stand your ground.
#4) They Accuse You of Being Selfish and Unsupportive
They are going to start to say things to make you feel guilty. They know how to get under your skin so they may start trying to manipulate back into the fold. They may start to devalue you or criticize you. They are starting to become unglued.
#5) Most importantly, the Full Discard Phase
What happens with narcissists is that you are either for them or against them. If you are against them then you become Public Enemy Number One. They will try to isolate you from your friends and family. They may discard you completely without any explanation. Alternatively, they may start stalking you. They go into full-on meltdown mode. They may also still try to get at you while they move on to some other form of supply. They may use a smear campaign with flying monkeys. They are in desperation mode trying to take you down. It is full-on war; it is all sorts of things. This is where you really have to stand your ground because at the end of the day they will move on to a different form of supply since that is what they have to do. That is how they survive and they will move on to another form of supply, eventually.
You must figure out a strategy in order to create that leverage. That’s the SLAY methodology in a nutshell. To get started, check out http://www.slayyournegotiation.com/rzwebinar and watch the most recent replay right away.
