Although it’s dangerous to become a part of any activity involving a narcissist, there are some things that you must not do with them at any cost. These are a big no-no. If you get entangled with the narcissist because of these activities, they know for sure a lot of pain is coming your way. What are these things? So, the topic for today’s article is “Seven Things You Must Never Do with a Narcissist.”
Number 1: Never get involved with a narcissist financially in any manner.
Do not loan them money. Could you not get into a partnership with them? Do not start a business. Please do not do anything that involves money because they are money-hungry and do not have a working moral compass. Their conscience would not push them to be fair to you monetarily. They will cheat you. They will surely deceive you, and you will lose it all. What makes it worse? They won’t feel any remorse about cheating you.
They think your money is their money. As your partner, as your parent, as your friend, they feel entitled to get it all, so they try their level best to lure you into the trap and steal it away. They will ask you to burn all your savings and invest it in their startup; something they claim is so unique. When in reality, their ideas have no uniqueness whatsoever. It’s their grandiosity that tells them, “Oh, nobody has ever thought about this thing in this way.”
They want you to trust in them. They want you to believe in them, and that is what you do as a partner, as a parent, as a child, and as a friend. But when it comes to returns, when it comes to getting your money back, you do not receive even a penny. When taking from you, they will swear on their dead mother. They will swear on everything they can and promise that they are going to give it back within a month. But then, when it comes to receiving it, they are nowhere to be found.
Number 2: Do not believe anything they say.
Believe the opposite of it if you want to know the truth. Believe the opposite of what the narcissist tells you. For example, if they tell you they love you, if they tell you they’re going to be there for you, if they tell you that they’ve always wished the best for you, if they tell you they will do everything to save their family, if they tell you that they are deeply interested in taking care of your children, believe the opposite.
They don’t love you. They do not care about your children. They have never been there, and they won’t be there for you. If you want to know the truth, understand that a narcissist always lies, and behind those lies lies the truth. Do not believe anything they say without solid evidence. In our culture, it’s said the tongue does not have a bone, so you can say whatever you want to. You can make up things. Just because someone seems trustworthy does not necessarily mean they are, so do not take their words as they are.
Do not eat it up. Always take it with a pinch of salt and get it documented. For example, if you are involved in a co-parenting situation, do not believe them when they say, “Oh, let’s solve this outside of the court system, and let’s bring it up in a mutual setting where it’s only you and me. Why involve strangers?” Because they are going to for sure use that thing against you in the most dangerous ways. Believing them in any setting is like believing Satan promising you Heaven, promising you freedom.
Number 3: Do not ever think of going to therapy with them.
I can categorically tell you that there is no therapy out there, no counselor out there, that can change your narcissistic partner, your narcissistic parent. No family intervention has been created so far that can effectively change the dynamics. There are only two possibilities: one, either the therapist will unknowingly or knowingly sometimes become an enabler, and they’ll be used through triangulation, or they will call out the narcissist, which will irritate them, and they will walk out on them.
They will just leave in pure agony and anguish. Going to therapy with a narcissist is like going to a torture chamber because you will be astonished by the act they will perform, by the mask they’ll put on. They will either become the victim of their circumstances and paint you as the perpetrator, or they will get the worst form of reaction out of you to justify how you are the abuser and all issues lie within you.
Number 4: Do not believe their hopeless hope.
Narcissists are known for creating scenarios that make you think there is potential, but that potential remains unmanifested. That never becomes your reality. So, don’t think about what you can be with them, be it your narcissistic partner or parent. Focus on what you are with them because that is what matters. And what you are with them is constant; it does not change. What changes in your condition? Think about who you were before meeting them and how miserable you have become now after staying for such a long time in this relationship.
Think about all the pain that you have been through and think about all the ways it has destroyed your life. That is the constant change happening. Remember, a person’s words mean nothing until they match their actions. Always try to find the incongruencies, and quite surprisingly, you will notice that a narcissist is nothing but a living, breathing incongruency. What does that mean? That simply means who they act to be, who they try to become, does not match who they are.
What they say is just words; it’s like they put you in a trance by taking you somewhere, by transporting you into a possible future that you can have with them, and that gives you hope that maybe it is just their imagination that they are transporting into your head. Don’t make it your reality. See them for who they are, not who they pretend to be.
Number 5: Do not believe all the nasty names they call you.
They may comment on your body, on how you look. They may call you fat. They may call you ugly. They may call you stupid, idiot. They may call you pathetic. They may call you needy. I mean, what I am using here is just the mildest version of what happens, and I can’t use all the names here, but you know what I’m talking about. What they are calling you is who they are.
Remember, a narcissist’s accusations are confessions. If you want to know the truth, take notice of what they are accusing you of being. And remember, that’s not who you are; that is what they feel towards themselves, and you are nothing but a distorted self-perception of theirs. What does that mean? That simply means that they do not hate the real you. When they met you, they created an idealized snapshot of yours, something they thought you were—this perfect, flawless doormat.
But then what you are did not match who they thought you were, and that is what led to devaluation. So, what they’re hating is their perception of who you are, their self through you, because they’re projecting their hatred on you. What does that make you? An extension of their false self. They do not see you. They do not love you. They do not know you. Think about this, sit with this, and you will understand that you have been with a stranger. You were born to a human being who has been nothing but a stranger to you.
Number 6: Do not give them access to your personal life.
Do not tell them your pain points. Do not tell them everything that hurts you or your wants, needs, and desires because they use that information against you. I know for a lot of us it’s already late; you may have already done that. I get it, and feeling guilty about not knowing better is not going to solve the problem. It’s just that you have to stop doing it because it becomes a part of trauma bonding.
When we are trauma-bonded with narcissists, logically, we know what we shouldn’t do, but when we feel vulnerable and we think they’re changing, we tell them everything. We just regress to an older version of us, hoping that being vulnerable and telling them what hurts us will change them, but that gives them more ammunition to use against you.
Understand that a narcissist wants to know what’s going on in your heart, what is going on in your mind, and the difference between the two so that they can weaponize that confusion as well. They know how to keep you trapped by intermittently reinforcing you with positive treatments and how to keep you psychologically bonded to them.
Number 7: Do not fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy.
What is that? That simply means when somebody has invested a lot of money, a lot of time, years, love, and effort into something in this case, a relationship the problems they are facing now, they minimize because what they have invested in their mind seems to be a lot more than the negative impacts of the thing they are so attached to.
We are afraid to lose our relationship with the narcissist because we are terrified of losing it all, of finding out that everything that we put into this was wasted like it was a lie from the beginning. It makes us feel like a fool. It makes us feel like we have wasted our life. That is what the sunk cost fallacy is in this context. It’s like holding on to something that does not move, it does not do anything at all. Just tying that rope around your hand is only hurting your hand; it’s not changing what you are holding on to.
That is what happens, and it’s true, there is grief in all of this. There’s grief in realizing that all those years were truly wasted, that it was nothing but a lie, that I’ll have to restart my life. I get it, but it’s never too late to start again. When and if you leave, there’s hope for you even if it feels there is none. But if you stay, there is decay, and there is death nothing beyond that.
