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Cope with Vindictive Narcissists

Uploaded 1/12/2011, approx. 2 minute read

My name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.

Narcissists are often vindictive. They stalk, they harass, they intimidate. Basically, there are only two ways of coping with vindictive narcissists, either to frighten them or to lure them.

Start with frightening them.

Narcissists live in a constant state of repressed aggression. Envy, hatred, and rage. They firmly believe that everyone else is precisely like them. As a result, they are paranoid, suspicious, scared, labile, and unpredictable.

Frightening the narcissist is a powerful behavior modification tool. If sufficiently deterred, the narcissist promptly disengages, gives up everything he fought for, sometimes makes amends.

To act effectively, one has to identify the vulnerabilities and susceptibilities of the narcissist, the chinks in his armor, and strike repeated escalating blows at them, till the narcissist lets go and vanishes.

Example. If the narcissist has a secret, one should use this fact to threaten him. One should drop cryptic hints that there are mysterious witnesses to the events and recently revealed evidence.

The narcissist is a very vivid imagination. Let his imagination do the work for you.

The narcissist may have been involved in tax evasion, malpractice, child abuse, infidelity and adultery. There are so many possibilities which offer a rich vein of attack.

If done cleverly, noncommittally, gradually and increasingly, the narcissist crumbles, disengages, detaches, and disappears. It lowers his profile thoroughly in the hope of avoiding hurt, pain, and criminal persecution.

Most narcissists have been known to disown and abandon a whole pathological narcissistic space. In other words, they have been known to relocate, in response to a well-focused campaign by their victims.

Thus, the narcissist may leave town, change his job, abandon the field of professional interest, and avoid friends and acquaintances, only to relieve the unrelenting pressure exerted on him by his victims.

I repeat, most of the drama takes place in the paranoid mind of the narcissist. His imagination runs anarch. He finds himself snarled by horrifying scenarios pursued by the vilest certainties that form in his fertile, fibrile mind.

The narcissist is his own worst persecutor or prosecutor. You don't have to do much, except utter a vague reference, make an ominous allusion, delineate a possible turn of events. The narcissist will do the rest for you.

He is like a small child in the dark, generating the very monsters that paralyze him with fear.

Needless to say, emphasize and repeat that all these activities have to be pursued legally, preferably through the good services of law officers and in broad daylight. Done the wrong way, they might constitute extortion or blackmail, harassment, and a host of other criminal offenses.

Be very careful, because you would be treading a thin line between legality and illegality should you choose to frighten the narcissist.

The alternative is, of course, to lure the vindictive narcissist. The other way to neutralize him is to offer him continued narcissistic supply until the war is over and had been won by you.

Deserted by the drive of narcissistic supply, the narcissist immediately becomes tamed, forgets his vindictiveness and triumphantly takes over his new property and territory.

Under the influence of narcissistic supply, the narcissist is unable to tell when he is being manipulated. He is blind, dumb, and deaf.

You can make the narcissist do anything by offering, withholding, or threatening to withhold narcissistic supply.

Adulation, admiration, attention, sex, or subservience are the tools, the weapons in your arsenal in coping with vindictive, dangerous stalkers and paranoia.

If you enjoyed this article, you might like the following:

How Narcissist's Victims Deceive Themselves

Narcissists cannot be cured and are a threat to those around them. Victims of narcissists often confuse shame with guilt and attribute remorsefulness to the narcissist when they are actually feeling shame for failing. Narcissists are attracted to vulnerable people who offer them a secure source of narcissistic supply. Healing is dependent on a sense of security in a relationship, but the narcissist is not interested in healing and would rather invest their energy in obtaining narcissistic supply. Narcissists lack empathy and cannot understand others, making them a danger to those around them.


Can You Love the Narcissist and Rescue Him?

Victims of narcissists often resort to fantasies and self-delusions to cope with their pain, believing that they can rescue the narcissist from their misery and misfortune. However, loving a narcissist is difficult, and any attempt to relate to them emotionally is doomed to failure. Narcissists are addicts in pursuit of gratification through the drug known as narcissistic supply, and they hone in on potential suppliers like cruise missiles. Victims of narcissists can become bitter and self-centered, lacking in empathy, and become more like the narcissist over time.


N-Magnet: Narcissist's Ideal Victim?

Narcissists are not drawn to empathic, sensitive people, but rather repelled by them. Victims of narcissistic abuse come in all shapes, sizes, professions, genders, and ages, and there is no specific profile. People should not think of themselves as a "narcissist magnet" and instead review their life in detail to see that they have control over their destiny and can learn from their experiences. Bed relationships, no matter how harrowing, are opportunities to learn lessons.


Narcissist in Court and Litigation

Narcissists are skilled at distorting reality and presenting plausible alternative scenarios, making it difficult to expose their lies in court. However, it is possible to break a narcissist by finding their weak spots and using them to inflict pain. The narcissist is likely to react with rage to any statement that contradicts their inflated perception of themselves or suggests they are not special. They feel entitled to be treated differently from others and cannot tolerate criticism or being told they are not as intelligent or successful as they think they are.


Giving Narcissist Second Chance

Narcissists do not provide closure in relationships and will stalk, cajole, beg, promise, persuade, and ultimately succeed in doing the impossible to get you back. The narcissist will cast all interactions with you in terms of conflicts or competitions to be won. If you have resumed contact because you are manifestly dependent on the narcissist financially or emotionally, the narcissist will pounce on your frailty and exploit your fragility to the maximum. Ultimately, the narcissist will write the inevitable cycle of idealization and devaluation.


Narcissist's Victims' Many Faces

Everyone around the narcissist is bound to become a victim, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. There are three categories of victims: those who suffer from the narcissist's instability, those who are misled by the narcissist's deceiving messages, and those who are intentionally targeted by the narcissist. The narcissist is both sadistic and masochistic, and in hurting others, he always seeks to also hurt himself. The narcissist is ruinous and destructive, and no amount of punishment can restore the balance or provide closure and vindication.


Cope with Narcissists: Abandon or Mirror

The best way to cope with a narcissist is to abandon them or threaten to abandon them. The narcissist is a binary person, and the carrot is also the stick in their case. If they get too close to someone emotionally, they fear abandonment and immediately distance themselves, acting cruelly and bringing about the very abandonment they feared. If one chooses to accept the narcissist, to live with them, to remain in an intimate relationship with them, it is a package deal. All their needs, demands, and requirements are included.


Remain Friends with the Narcissist?

Narcissists are only friendly when they need something from you, such as narcissistic supply, help, support, votes, money, or sex. They also become friendly when they feel threatened and want to smother the threat with pleasantries. Narcissists are also over-friendly when they have just been infused with an overdose of narcissistic supply. Some people prefer to live with narcissists because they have been conditioned to treat narcissistic abuse as background noise and are compensated for the abuse by the thrills provided by living with a narcissist. However, inverted narcissists are typically unhappy and in need of help, which suggests that they are victims who experience the Stockholm Syndrome.


Narcissist's Language as Weapon

Narcissists use language as a weapon of self-defense, to obscure, not to communicate, and to obtain narcissistic supply. They talk at others or lecture them, exchange subtexts, and spawn private languages, prejudices, superstitions, conspiracy theories, rumors, phobias, and hysterias. The rules that govern the narcissist universe are loopholeed, incomprehensible, open to interpretation so wide and so self-contradictory that it renders them meaningless. The narcissist, in this respect, is a great social menace, undermining language itself.


Love Your Narcissist? Make Him Stay, Depend on You (Tips, Resolutions)

In a relationship with a narcissist, it is important to know what not to do and what to do to maintain the relationship. Avoid disagreeing, contradicting, or criticizing the narcissist, and never offer intimacy or challenge their self-image. To make the narcissist dependent on you, listen attentively, agree with everything they say, offer something unique, be patient, and be emotionally and financially independent. It is also crucial to know yourself and set personal boundaries, treating yourself with dignity and demanding respect from others. If the relationship becomes abusive, consider going no-contact and ending the relationship for your own well-being.

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