What is the best Revenge against a Narcissist?

image by Daniel Clarke

.

.

What is the best revenge against a narcissist?

This question is a search term which someone used online which brought them to my blog. Whether they found what they were looking for or not, I don’t know.

And I don’t know what the best revenge against a narcissist is.

I could relate my own experiences of the narcissists whom I have know and had to live with and deal with. But I did not go down the revenge route, other than the living well is the best revenge path (and it took me ages to figure that out and then do it).

I could say – Don’t go down this path, it is not recommended by me, not if you’re dealing with a real narcissist, someone with NPD, rather than just someone whom you think is a narcissist but isn’t one. If they are a real narcissist – you’ll be sorry. If they aren’t a real narcissist, you’ll be sorry in a very different kind of way.

I could scroll through my memory banks for times when people managed to get the upper hand over my parents. It’s not that difficult to remember those times as I usually ended up paying for someone else’s victory rather painfully, and painful memories are hard to forget (I’ve tried a billion times to do so… sometimes it is better to let them be as is, or use them in a constructive, inspiring way). Recalling what those people did to get their victory over my parents is harder than recalling the consequences of it.

My parents, like most narcissists (narcissists in this case = people with NPD rather than those who are very narcissistic but don’t have NPD), did not like losing in any way, shape or form, and for a narcissist just about anything can be considered a loss. Their egos are huge, hyper-sensitive and very prone to being damaged by the slightest thing, which is why they can go from sugary sweet or immensely charming to viciously vitriolic in a blink of an eye.

For those who’ve used the search term – How to piss off a narcissist – or variations on that theme. That is the easiest thing in the world to do if you’re dealing with a real narcissist because narcissists are always pissed off even when they seem to be in a good mood. That good mood is a superficial veneer which covers an inner seething. That good mood may seem genuine, and sometimes it is if they’ve had a dose of ego boost, but it can vanish very quickly as they use it up hungrily and need more and more at ever higher doses. If they don’t get their next dose, or if it isn’t enough to satisfy them, their fragile ego, they may spiral into a pit of fury, despair, fear, self-pity, and many other causes for intense drama into which they will suck everyone around them like a black hole.

If someone is ‘hard to piss off’, then they are probably not a narcissist at all. They could be a sociopath, or they could be a regular person (who isn’t perfect, may have made a mistake, disappointed or hurt you… you’re not perfect either) being immensely patient, empathic, and understanding about your attempts to piss them off… and they may begin to wonder if perhaps you’re a narcissist in this scenario.

.

.

.

.

Someone getting a victory over a narcissist tends to trigger all those things which lead to the black hole mood. And if the victor thinks they can get far and fast enough away from the consequences of their victory over a narcissist… maybe they can, but appearances can be deceiving, and the narcissist is not the only one who deceives with appearances. We can all do it, and do it to ourselves not just others, especially when we aren’t seeing clearly for whatever reason.

My parents tended to get obsessed by those who scored a victory over them, and would spend an inordinate amount of time plotting their revenge to get back at the person who had bested them.

I got to be the fly on the wall (stuck in the room with no way out), the captured audience (the Stockholm Syndrome child), of not only their rage and fury, misery, hate and engulfing self-pity, but also their plots to get revenge on the victor. Narcissists love to talk and talk and talk and talk, about the same thing over and over and over and over again. When they are focused on one person, they will discuss that person to death, often also plotting their demise and smiling with pleasure at their own fantasies, while feeling perfectly justified doing it. In the land of a real narcissist, the bad guy is everyone else, they are the hero of their own story and reality. Their reality is the only reality. Anyone who disagrees is a villain.

If you want to never ever get a narcissist out of your life, out of your head, out of your heart, out from under your skin, then engage them in one of their favourite pasttimes – the revenge games. They will thrive, feeding off your obsession with them. They don’t mind if you hate them, hate is synonymous with love to them and they often prefer that kind of love, as long as you make them the focal point of your life, attention, passion, mind, body, heart and soul.

You’ll need a lot of stamina, determination, perseverance and a willingness to do and say things which require a lack of conscience, empathy, sympathy or concern for consequences. You’ll need to stay angry, miserable, and in continuous pain for however long it takes, which won’t be hard as the narcissist in your life will nourish you well in this area – they will turn everything in your life, within and without you, into a wasteland. Your heart will become hard and black like charcoal, and will burn and burn with an eternally dark flame.

.

.

Tete a Tete by Laurie Lipton

.

.

They will blame you for all of it, and you won’t be able to shake the thought that in a way they are right about that. That will hurt… perhaps more than anything else. The thought that you may be a part of what they have been doing to you will be a parasitic doubt which will eat you up from the inside out.

Why didn’t you just walk away? What made you stay and engage in a battle which is never-ending? Why can’t you let go of the narcissist? Go No Contact as recommended?

Some things are easier said than done, some advice is easier to give than receive and even harder to apply, some things are easier asked than answered.

And once you’ve engaged in open war with a narcissist… can you stop? Won’t that be letting them win? And what if they won’t let you stop or let them win? What if they won’t let you go? What if you tried to go and only engaged in battle because they wouldn’t let you go?

And what if you can win this? What if victory is just over the horizon, around the next corner, the finish line is up ahead (next to the end of the rainbow)… and you give up just moments before you could have claimed victory (and a pot of gold)?

And what if you actually manage to be victorious and serve a narcissist their just desserts?

Whatever you do, don’t be fooled by an apparent victory. If the narcissist goes silent, retreats and appears to have accepted your superior skills of vengeance over theirs… like with everything else that a narcissist does, this is just a facade. They are regrouping their forces, rethinking their tactics, and researching new ways to get back at you. This battle isn’t over even if the fat lady sings, that’s just an intermission… or a sly tactic to lull you into false security.

The moment you relax, resting on your laurels, they’ll be back with a sneak attack.

They may have used the time during which you thought you’d won and were celebrating and relaxing to find your weak spot, an area which you thought was safe, which you’d hidden from them somewhere where they would never find it.

.

.

.

.

They may have moved in on your territory socially, and slowly taken over, infiltrating themselves into every nook and cranny which you thought was yours and was free from them. Such as befriending your best friend, slowly poisoning their mind against you. And even if your best friend is aware of this person, who and what they are,  there are no guarantees that this will protect you or your friend.

They may have joined a club to which you belong, and where you go to relax and recuperate from your battle with the narcissist. It may even be a place where you go to get support. If you’re part of a victim of narcissists support group – the narcissist may well turn up there with their own story about being a victim of a narcissist, and if you recognise yourself in their stories, they’ll enjoy that, they have you exactly where they want you, cornered and unable to move. And they may well believe that you are the narcissist in the relationship, it explains a lot to them about the way you have behaved and the manner in which you’ve been treating them. They’ll find it easier to convince others in the support group about you being the narcissist than you will be at doing the same about them, and it won’t matter if you’ve been a long time member of this group and they’ve only just joined, in fact that may work to their advantage.

If a narcissist accuses you of being the narcissist, they will do it far more effectively than you. Anything you can do, they can do it too… they can do it better and worse – because they’ve done the research, the same research you’ve done, only narcissists listen differently than non-narcissists do, they absorb information in a way which causes it to become a part of them. They become the information. They will have studied every trait which defines a victim of a narcissist and they will embody every trait, until they are the ultimate victim who has experienced more pain and abuse than any other victim ever. They are very competitive and victimhood is a fierce competition for them, one which they intend to win, and they will stop at nothing to win it.

So, in your quest for vengeance against a narcissist, you may end up becoming the very monster which you were fighting. And the narcissist will win… again.

.

.

.

.

If you don’t believe me, that narcissists can infiltrate groups for victims of narcissists, be they ACoN groups or otherwise… there are plenty of stories told by others, on other blogs, about this out there online. Use your search engine, use it wisely.

And narcissists can be those offering you a cure to heal from narcissistic abuse. So, be careful. Trust your instincts, trust your intuition, trust yourself before you trust someone else and what they are offering you, especially if they are offering you a miracle cure – a favourite of narcissists.

I’m not going to link you to the articles which I have come across pertaining to this issue, as I don’t want to get caught up in a narcissist drama – I’ve had enough of that to last me several lifetimes, and hopefully I’ve finally learned my lesson, or one of many lessons which real narcissists teach inadvertently. I will however suggest watching – Web Therapy (this links you to the wiki page, which links you to the official site – videos are available for free online) – by Lisa Kudrow, Don Roos and Dan Bucatinsky. This type of fiction… reflects reality rather well, and really isn’t fiction at all.

Of course none of this is relevant if the narcissist whom you are fighting, against whom you wanted revenge, is not an actual narcissist.

‘Narcissist’ has become a popular and trendy accusation for people we find annoying, mostly because they were being selfish by not making us the centre of their attention and universe. They wouldn’t be who we wanted them to be and wouldn’t do what we wanted them to do for us. That’s annoying, that annoyance caused us pain, that must make them a narcissist.

A great example of this dynamic is in the film – Don Jon (2013) by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

.

.

.

.

It is the story of a rather narcissistic young man who is living his life with little thought for anything other than getting his rocks off, notches on his bed post which feed his ego, having a fit body and seeing himself as being rather great from the outside, using the people around him to support his self-image. Then one day he meets a young woman who turns his world upside down. She is smart, beautiful, charismatic, and… in love with romantic films. She wants him to become the ideal she has of what a man should be for her – someone who does everything she tells him to do and makes her feel good about herself because of it. She is a narcissist, most likely a real one, the NPD kind of narcissist. She dumps him the moment he disappoints her expectations of him. He has done her wrong… she does absolutely nothing wrong. She’s perfect… he’s not = discard. She has no empathy or sympathy for him or anyone else. This experience forces him to self-reflect and look deeper into himself and how he is living his life. It is an excellent film, and has a poignant ending.

Please be careful when accusing someone of being a narcissist. Pause… and reflect… and self-reflect. If they have caused you pain you may experience them as being a narcissist, but that does not mean that they are a real narcissist. Don’t let the pain do your thinking, feeling and talking for you. Pain is a very narcissistic experience and we can end up causing more pain, passing our wound on to others in a similar manner that real narcissists do.

We all make mistakes… learn from them, use them to inspire, constructively…

.

.

.

.

Rather than seeking revenge on a narcissist… figure out what living well means to you. Stop focusing your attention on them… redirect it onto yourself.

I know it’s hard… but consider yourself the best investment you’ll ever make in life. The most important relationship which you’ll ever have, the one which affects and influences all your other relationships, is the one which you have with yourself.

Take care of yourself.

.

.

.

Update 2017 – I have recently come across an excellent blog (which also has a Youtube channel for those who prefer the spoken word, and the author of the blog has written books for those who prefer books).

This is the blog – Knowing the Narcissist

This is his Youtube channel – Knowing the Narcissist – Youtube

The author is a Narcissist – he states this in his bio, but before you run away, pause a minute, many victims of Narcissists have claimed to have found healing and help in their recovery through reading his posts (read the comments on his posts). I find his posts to be informative. In his posts he explains the Narcissist from the perspective of a Narcissist, and the Narcissist’s victims from the perspective of a Narcissist (and he gives detailed information about the different types and levels of Narcissists) – this is often what is missing for those trying to heal themselves after Narcissistic Abuse.

He is also rather patient, compassionate, and understanding for a Narcissist. Please be respectful – do not go there to bash a Narcissist, he is not your Narcissist.

Thank you for visiting. Take care of yourselves. Best wishes.