Why Your Anger Toward Narcissists is a Waste of Time
By: Dr. Jennifer B. Rhodes
Tags: Anxiety, Mental Health, Relationships, Psychology, Narcissism

“The best gifts are never given, but claimed.” ― Warren Ellis

When I was on my psychology internship training at Tulane Medical School, I had a young woman as a patient who really did not seem to understand the severity of her actions. Her child had been taken from her due to significant allegations of abuse and neglect. Unlike many of our other clients who, although were angry and rightfully distrustful of the system, this client seemed to always go on a tirade about how “amazing” she was and how broken everyone in the system was. She denied facts that had been confirmed in video and never answered questions directly. She drove our entire team insane. Every time I worked with her I would leave the session angry and pissed off. “How dare she” was often a phrase that I brought to supervision. I was angry for her child and felt righteous. I slowly started to notice a trend of always wanting to sleep after meeting with her. I thought something was wrong with me and so I requested extra supervision to talk about this case. When it came time to review a videotape of my therapeutic work with this patient, my supervisor laughed approximately five minutes in when the patient called me “autistic.” I stared at my beloved mentor and then she delivered the one sentence that changed my life: “Why are you arguing with a narcissist?”

I sat quietly for a number of minutes and realized, as I sorted through all the patients (and exes) I ever had in my life, every time I am angry it is because there is a narcissist around. Anger is the emotion they elicit from highly sensitive people. In psychology land we call this projective identification — when a client’s issues are so strong that they actually get people to enact the very emotion they refuse to acknowledge in themselves. It is one step past projecting — they actually get you to act out the very thing they can’t tolerate in themselves. If we get angry, they can stay in their denial and blame us for being “emotionally unstable.”

As my learning progressed, my supervisor told me to begin reading about the long term treatment of narcissism. And I was shocked. It seemed that the most successful therapists were the ones who quite literally said nothing to these people until the narcissist got angry enough to ask why they were wasting time in treatment. The consensus was that it would only be at that moment treatment could possibly begin and the narcissist would have to choose it and many of them do not choose to move forward (drop out rate can be over 60%). My client who was in court ordered treatment obviously was not going to choose to work on herself but we would have to try anyway.

There is a highly erroneous myth floating around that narcissists do not get better. We tend to conflate narcissistic traits and psychopathic traits quite often — which is understandable as there are many overlaps but psychopathic individuals are more dangerous. However, as a society, we are not doing ourselves any good by getting angry with any of them. It is in fact what they desire and it is the the reason why many of them don’t seek help for a very long period of time — the emotions of other people seem more in need of psychological intervention than their rigid personality traits. In their minds, there is nothing wrong with them if what they see around them are people who get “triggered” easily. When we stand our ground in an assertive manner, we are actually providing the therapeutic intervention narcissists need to one day choose to prioritize psychotherapy (psychopaths are a whole different story).

Why Our Emotional Freedom is Necessary to Deal with Difficult Personalities

“Experience is not what happens to you — it’s how you interpret what happens to you.” — Aldous Huxley

Narcissists and highly anxious, very sensitive individuals seem to always find each other. The pairing makes sense — both extremes represent the totality of the toxic insecurity spectrum and thus can balance each other out. The problem is that we are so focused on the narcissist for being wrong and wanting to change that person that we miss our own wake up call. If we work on our own emotional security, narcissists not only become easier to deal with, they are less likely to be attracted to us. Narcissists often show up in our life to give us the opportunity to find our voice and to work on discovering our emotional freedom.

Our personal journeys with dealing with narcissists is often not easy. Many of us have been victimized by family members, only then to be exposed to it in our everyday lives as adults. Narcissism has become such a common word that people in my profession have started to re-think what the disorder is really about. The shocking truth, however, is that narcissistic traits can also be seen in highly anxious individuals. Whenever we are absorbed in our own pain and suffering we start shutting off from the rest of the world. It is not uncommon for highly anxious people to be accused, often maliciously, for being “narcissistic” when they are simply trying to heal a lifetime of anxiety.

So we have a choice. We can focus our energy on being angry and wishing that the other person will change (which they have zero motivation to do so) or we can welcome the opportunity to get more serious about our personal development work. You are most certainly not alone on embarking on the journey.

Why Working Towards Emotional Freedom is Important

If you want to see the damage narcissists can inflict when someone is not fully aware of the emotional cycle, look no further than to our family court system. A divorce often unleashes the fury of a narcissist at extreme detriment to their partner. Yet, few professionals will tell you how to cope with such a situation and simply validate your emotions that yes, your ex is a narcissist. Their solution is to try to punish them when they should be working with to come up with a strategy to help you manage your emotions and grow stronger. Dealing with narcissists in the court system requires validation and training in how to mange your emotions so you can strategically make the best decisions possible. You also cannot plan ahead if you are being controlled by your emotions — a strategy they do count on.

I’ve not only worked with within this system, I’ve had personal experience dealing with the narcissistic men in my family. When they sued me while I was in my twenties over estate issues related to the death of my grandfather (who made his wishes abundantly clear), I knew it would be a long journey and a difficult battle. They had a ton of money and I did not. They were established in their careers and I hadn’t even finished graduate school. It would take six years and a crap ton of outside support to win that lawsuit. My saving grace was an excellent attorney who happened to be married to a psychologist. While my own therapist wanted to validate that my family members were indeed narcissists and to process my feelings (something I was not ready to do in the middle of a lawsuit), it was my attorney who taught me the strategy of not allowing my emotions to interfere in the legal aspects of the case. Like many people, it would take me years to recover from such a trauma but the lessons I learned were of paramount importance: They may be the narcissist but you do have a choice in how you show up to deal with them.

Working towards our personal emotional freedom gives you more options and that space to think clearly is necessary to survive horrific situations like lawsuits.

Don’t Go It Alone

Even if you don’t believe that you have had a personal experience with someone with narcissistic traits, our entire country is now being exposed to the characteristics of a leader with a high conflict personality. If you watch closely, our media and those that contribute to the media, are constantly angry with our country’s leadership. It is no mistake that Donald Trump Jr. released a book entitled Triggered. Once these personality types have stirred the emotions and made the anxious person feel unsettled, they revert to doing the appropriate behaviors they should have done all along (like act like a real President). It is at this point that anxious and emotionally sensitive people need to take back their power yet our media continues to just be angry, incubating us in a culture of negativity. It is not serving us well and will lead to our complete emotional exhaustion at a time we need to be mentally clear to fight for our values.

Learning to regulate your emotions on social media or in front of a narcissistic person takes practice — lots of practice. You will need a support group but not a group that simply seeks to blame and want to punish a narcissist. All that does is increase anger. Rather you want to be around emotionally intelligent people who are all working towards gaining their emotional freedom and want the space to talk about how difficult it is to not react emotionally. The healthier the people you are around while you are healing, the better your long term health will be. Choose your support team wisely.

Why Learning Assertiveness Skills is Needed

Once you have learned to have more control over your emotions so you are choosing to respond rather than react, the key communication skill that needs work is assertiveness. We all have a tendency to allow the anger to slip back in and we tip over to aggressiveness. However, assertiveness means that you set boundaries and state your needs in a powerful manner. It is important to demonstrate that you will not be bulldozed and you do have a voice in the situation.

Many of my clients are actually surprised at how effectively being non-emotional and assertive can be with decreasing conflict with a narcissist. Once they know you cannot be emotionally manipulated, they often move on (sometimes there is a period of escalation which can be very dangerous and this needs to be taken into consideration). They also have a high level of respect for emotionally resilient and strong people. Finding your freedom from your impulsive emotions and demonstrating leadership skills will likely move the conflict to a better place.

In his books and blog articles on high conflict personalities, Bill Eddy, LCSW, JD states that we constantly keep making the mistake of increasing conflict by lacking our own emotional control and for trying to get them to see the error in their ways. Rather than focus on our emotions, it is best to try a more strategic approach. Eddy recommends being Brief, Informative, Friendly, and Firm (BIFF). Based on this information alone, you can see that not only do most individuals go wrong dealing with the HCPs but our entire country is dealing with our leadership incorrectly. We all need to do our part to better learn about this toxic cycle so we can move away from feeling like we are always a victim and to a much more thoughtful and empowered position.