Do you know what might make a narcissist panic? By the end of this article, you will have four tactics that will send that narcissist into a tizzy and turn the table on them in a way that they normally do to you.
Now if you are dealing with a narcissist, then that narcissist is probably driving you crazy or actually maybe even feeling like insane and you’re thinking, is there any way to make them panic? Yes, there is. But first, let me just go through a couple of the things that they do to you because it’s important to understand that so that you can understand the flip side of it and what makes them panic.
So a couple of their go to things are things like gaslighting. Gaslighting is trying to make you think that you’re crazy. And what they do is they’ll say, “Oh, we talked about that,” or, “Don’t you remember that?” Or, “No, that’s not how that went.” Something like that. And shifting, shifting what they said, shifting what you guys talked about, shifting what you know you said so that it meets their agenda, which is to manipulate you, and to make you think that you’re crazy. So gaslighting is definitely one of their favorite, favorite, favorite tactics.
Another one of their favorite tactics is lying. They are total pathological liars. The crazy thing I think about narcissists is that they will lie about stuff that they don’t even need to lie about. You think to yourself, why are you lying about that? You didn’t even need to lie about that. But the thing is that narcissists think that they need to manipulate everything. They don’t believe that they can get anything just in a normal way. They feel like they have to lie. So they will lie about even things that are readily verifiable, which is the thing that’s pretty crazy. And in a lot of my other videos, I talk about making sure that you document, document, document everything that you do because they will eventually contradict themselves. They will eventually put things in writing that are completely contradictory to what is actually happening or what they’ve said before. Now they’ll have some explanation for it, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t eventually be able to use it against them. Okay. So number two thing that they do on a very regular basis is lie.
The third thing they try to do a lot of is intimidation tactics. So what I mean by that is, is that they will constantly try to make you be afraid. So they intimidate you in all sorts of ways. You’re afraid that they’re going to hurt you. They’re afraid they’re going to expose you. You’re afraid that they’re going to take your kids. They’re very, very, very good at figuring out what your weaknesses are, what means the most to you, and that’s what they’ll go for. So if you’re a mother and you don’t want to lose your kids, they’ll say, “I’m taking the kids and you’ll never see your kids again.” If you are dependent upon this person for support, they’ll say, “I’m going to take everything and leave you in the street.” If you want money from this person, then they’ll use that against you. So whatever they can use against you, they will, and they’ll scare you into thinking like, “Oh my God, my life is going to be so terrible if I cross this person.”
And there’s all different types of intimidation tactics that they use. Some are more violent than others if they’re more of a malignant type of narcissist. Some of them are a little bit more stealth if they’re like a covert narcissist, but all narcissists use the same kinds of tactics. For the most part, gaslighting is definitely one. Lying is definitely one as well, and intimidating you in some ways is one as well.
And another thing that they often try to do is triangulate. This is where they get their flying monkeys involved and they get you to believe that all these other people have lined up a side by side with them supporting them. And if you cross this person or you come out and try to expose them in some way, then you’re going to want be the one that looks crazy and you’re going to be the one that looks insane or you’ll lose all your friends because everybody believes that this person is absolutely wonderful. And so obviously, you’re the one that must be insane. So the term flying monkeys comes back from the Wizard of Oz and it was when the wicked witch had her flying monkeys on her side. And that’s what narcissists do. They all do it. They all try to make you think that they’re like so close to all these other people. And so therefore, you shouldn’t come out and try to say anything bad about this person because everybody else thinks this person is amazing.
I’m sure all these things sound really familiar to you, but in the end, okay, great. What can you do about it? So here’s the not so secret secret about narcissists. That is that they are actually the most scaredy cats on the planet. They have no sense of inner value. I’ve often said they’re like the chocolate Easter bunnies that are hollow inside. They have no sense of internal value whatsoever. So they’ve got to go and get all of their sense of value from the external. And that’s what we call narcissist supply. It’s in the form of compliments, money, prestige, whatever it is that they can get to get attention for themselves on the external. But the thing is they’re super afraid. So if you pushed back on them enough, they will back down.
So what causes a narcissist to panic, to feel stunned? Number one, brutal honesty. They expect, because they’re pathological liars, that most people lie too. They really just expect that everybody else is just as bad as they are and they don’t understand what it’s like to be a normal person, that they’ve never been one. So they don’t get that. They don’t get that people out there actually have integrity. They understand the concept of it, but they just really don’t believe that anybody else has it. So if you’re just brutally honest with them, it kind of stuns them and they are not exactly sure what to do with that.
So for example, a covert narcissist is often sick. That’s one of the things that they do. They have this whole shtick that there are, they’re unwell in some way. They can’t work or whatever it is. There’s always some reason to feel sorry for the covert narcissist. And so if one day, they’re super sick and then the next day they show up at something fun, something that they want to actually be involved in because of course they don’t want to miss out on getting attention for themselves, just without any kind of sarcasm or attitude or whatever, just say, “Oh, I’m so surprised that you’re here.” You said you were so sick yesterday and you have to be careful because if you say with any kind of tone whatsoever or they’re like super sensitive, they can sense it no matter what level of sarcasm it is. They’ll feel it. They’ll sense it. Even if it’s not there, they might think it’s there. So just make sure you’re really saying it like as if you’re reporting the news. I always say like just the facts, ma’am. Right. Just, “Oh, I’m surprised you’re here. You said you were so sick yesterday.” They won’t know what to do with that. So brutal honesty is number one. Okay?
Number two is pushing back. This is something that they don’t expect, especially if you’re used to giving in and acquiescing to whatever it is that they want. They will be really surprised and it will make them panic if you push back against them. If they start to realize this person they thought they had total control over is no longer listening to everything that they do or doing everything that they say or buying into everything that they’re selling, it will stun them and it will start to panic them a little bit because they’ll be going, “What’s going on here? Why is this person pushing back against me?” Something like that. Okay, so that’s number two. Okay?
And number three is exposing them. They do not want to be exposed for any reason whatsoever. If you really want to throw a narcissist into panic mode, let them think that they’re going to be exposed or actually expose them. If they’re flying monkeys, find out who they really are. Or if somebody that they respect gets to see some side of them that they don’t want seen, then that’s a really huge way to make a narcissist panic.
So for example, in a mediation situation, if you know something about the narcissist that they don’t want the other side to know, you might subtly say that that fact is going to come out. In my world, it could be that the person has a sexually transmitted disease and they are a doctor in the community. They probably don’t want the world to know that. So especially if they got it by cheating on you and everything else. So sometimes not going to court can be a huge motivator for a narcissist. It can really make them panic if they think that the world is going to see things about them that they have taken painstaking efforts to hide and make sure nobody else knows. So number three is exposing them.
And number four is losing control in any way. So remember what we talked about, that they’re the most scared people on the planet. They’re really like the bullies. You know how in A Christmas Story, that old movie that the little boy fought back against the bully and then the bully ended up running away. You’re really just figuring out what their level is and they’re doing the same thing to you, by the way. So every time you push back a little bit against them, they’ll act up even more. They’ll do more of their lying, more of their control tactics, more of their intimidation, more of their narcissistic rage. It will spurn them because they’ll think, okay, I just need to clamp down a little bit harder against this person so that they’ll behave and get back under my layer of control. Or they might start love bombing again. And then devaluing, love bomb, devalue. They’ll start doing this campaign of love bombing again because they’re trying to get you back into their layer of control. They’re panicking. So losing control is something that really sends them into a tizzy.
And just like if you have a two year old that has a tantrum, they’re conditioning the parents. It’s like, okay, if I scream loud enough, if I have enough of a tantrum here, if I cry loud enough, then mommy and daddy will give me what I want. And if you give in it as a parent to that child, then they’ll know next time, I just need to scream louder. I just need to scream longer and eventually they’ll give into what I want. So what the narcissist is doing is trying to figure out at what level do I need to act at to get this person back into my layer of control. And if you give into that, then they know I just need to be that much louder, that much more awful next time in order to get this person to come back to my layer of control. So if you really want to make a narcissist panic, let them realize that you’re no longer buying in to that stuff. When they start losing control, that’s when they super panic.
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