3 Tips to Avoid a Narcissist
Love-Yourself-More Monday Mindbody Wellness Clarity Tip #23
Dear Awesome Woman,
I’m sharing with you 3 tips to avoid a Narcissist. If you use these you can prevent a lot of emotional pain and trauma for yourself. If you’ve been a victim of a Narcissist, don’t feel too bad because they are talented actors and actresses who can hide their true colors for a long time. It is never your fault. And yet, I know for me, when I look back in time to when I first met a Narcissist, I see from this distance of knowledge and experience that the red flags were waving high and strong. I just missed them.
Whether the Narcissist is a co-worker, potential friend, potential partner or potential boss, you have a higher chance of avoiding being slimed by them if you have the practice of doing these 3 things:
Tip #1: Listen To Your Body, Not Your Mind
I say this often in my newsletters and I’ll repeat it here: your mind can lie and rationalize the bad behavior of other people. Your body cannot.
If something feels funky it is funky. It’s up to you to decipher it, but not ignore it.
When a Narcissist says something nasty about someone else, or says something put-downy to you, it’s not a mistake. Their modus operandi is control and power. They are extremely manipulative. Your body will register the incongruence between the smile on their face and the words coming out of their mouth. Pay attention to the drop in your stomach, the tightening of your chest, the furrow of your brows. Something doesn’t feel right because it is not.
Once I tuned into this truth and got my wise discernment on, I decided that I only wanted to surround myself with kind people. Kind people can make mistakes for sure, but there is no power-over thing going on. Just human foibles. Check the newsletter from a few weeks ago, ‘Circles of Trust’ to decide how vulnerable you would like to be with someone, but a relationship with a Narcissist does not allow for vulnerability which would be used against you. The fear that your stomach or chest feels is real.
Tip #2: Hold Yourself in High Regard
This is actually what Narcissists do — they hold themselves in high regard. We can learn this one tip from them because holding yourself in high regard is a good thing. Just not to the extent that a Narcissist does.
As psychologist, Craig Malkin, says it is healthy to have a healthy dose of narcissism. He calls people who don’t — Echoists. While people with extreme Narcissism are addicted to feeling special and will do anything (including manipulate or lie) to feel special, Echoists are afraid of feeling special. This puts them at a danger of attracting extreme Narcissists because they may hide their voices and feel unworthy.
Having a little bit of healthy narcissism — a feeling of specialness, a moderate level of wearing rose colored glasses with a somewhat high (or at least warm) regard for oneself — will make a person feel positive towards themselves enough that a Narcissist may not get their hooks in them.
Again, if you’ve been a victim of a Narcissist, don’t blame yourself — they are very adept at being charming and manipulative. And yet to prevent it from happening again, paying attention to your body’s clues (Tip #1) and feeling that you are special and unique (Tip #2), can be a very healthy thing indeed.
Tip #3: Ask Yourself A Few Questions
- Do they respect your boundaries? Judith Orloff says if you want to test someone that you suspect is a Narcissist you can tell them that you’re unavailable. See what they do with that. Are they respectful or do they do what Susan Forward calls, ‘emotional blackmail’? Do they try to test your limits (were not talking about a toddler or a teenager here) or put you down to get their way?
2. Do they thrive on conflict? Some people love drama — is this co-worker, potential friend or partner one of those? Do they love to talk behind people’s backs?
3. Are they reliable where they do what they say they will do? Or do they continuously break trust and then make excuses? This may not be a Narcissist, but it’s a good idea to keep in mind the accountability factor — are mistakes owned up to, are changes made? Do you feel a power-over thing happening? Again, pay attention to your body’s clues.
4. And this is a Brene Brown question: “Do they choose what is right over what is fun, fast or easy?” How is their integrity?
With these 3 tips, you’ll hopefully be able to avoid getting involved with a Narcissist. Even if they charm their way into your life or a friend’s life (feel free to forward this to a friend), you’ll be able to get out of the interactions a lot quicker if you pay attention to your body’s clues, hold yourself in high regard and ask yourself a few direct questions.
Needing help? I invite you to schedule your Free Clarity Call today. As a Somatic Healer and Clarity Coach, I help empower women to trust themselves through the wisdom of their body and intuition. Goal setting, relationship health, marriage tune-up, career decisions, Mindbody pain relief, trauma processing is all accomplished through an integrated somatic process in person or over the phone.Through learning to trust the wisdom of their bodies, emotions, and souls, women discover a clear, healthy path to empowerment, vitality and joy. Looking forward to connecting :) Download your free eguide: ‘Escape From the Borderline/Narcissist’s Web’ here.
Sending blessings,
Miriam Racquel (Meryl)
Somatic Healer & Clarity Coach
