How to Protect Yourself From A Narcissist

Before I begin, I want to apologize that I didn’t post anything last week. I was having work done on my house and things became so busy I didn’t get everything done. Thank you for understanding. I saw this article this week and felt strongly that I needed to share it in my blog: https://pairedlife.com/problems/How-to-Avoid-Becoming-a-Victim-of-a-Malignant-Narcissist. As I read this article, I realized I could have avoided a lot of heartache if I would have had information about narcissism (and all Cluster B disorders – borderline, narcissist, histrionic, and sociopath) earlier. As I read it, I kept having flashbacks to times I met people who have the characteristics of narcissists as described in this article. Under the section in this article titled “Why Did the Narcissist Choose You?” it says they are drawn to empathetic types. I talked in previous blog posts about how I spent a lifetime being ridiculed as being “too nice.” I also told how one group of friends told me I had the word Victim on my forehead, and with each growth spurt they removed a letter until I was only im. Once I became im, I was too healed to serve their dysfunctional purposes anymore, so I moved on to greener pastures. I’m still recovering from being a doormat, but during the days when I was the “too nice” Victim, ictim, ctim – of course I attracted narcissists and other Cluster B personalities. How could I not? I needed to change me in order to keep myself safer. One section of this article is titled “You Come From a Family Background of Narcissism.” In that section, it describes how people who were raised among narcissists or who have narcissists in their history will not see the behavior as abnormal and will be drawn to the familiar. I think I’ve said that several times so far in this blog, because that has definitely been my reality. Narcissists from my youth broke my radar. A big part of my personal self-improvement has been learning to fix that radar and not accept narcissist abuse, i.e, learning to set boundaries. As I read this article, I thought of my employment situations. I was very successful any time I worked in an environment that didn’t have a narcissist who spotted me as a potential target. My first job out of high school, I even worked for a lady who became like an Aunt to me. Some people might have called her a second Mom, but I had such a great Mom I can’t call anyone that; therefore, this boss was like a very caring Aunt. She helped me excel in my job, get placed in another job that had tuition assistance even though she didn’t want to lose me (she cared so much about me that my future was more important than her immediate needs), and helped me get into college and create a better future for myself. There were no problems the entire time I worked for her. I excelled in the new job she got for me all of the years I worked at a remote location. When that location closed and I was moved to the main office, my path was paved for me my first day on the job. A woman I worked with came to me on my lunch break and said in her friendliest tone, “Hi, Rhonda. I’m so glad you're going to be working here. I just know we’re going to be the best of friends. I’m looking forward to being your good friend. Because I care about you and our friendship so much, I want to let you know that I think you look beautiful today. Your dress is gorgeous and you look great in it. I do want to warn you; however, that your style is more like what would be acceptable in our New York office. It is too Vogue for this small-town office. If you want to succeed, you're going to have to dress more frumpy. I already overheard our boss talking about how inappropriate your attire was this morning, so I just wanted to give you a warning.” I was too much of a doormat then to go ask my boss if he had a problem with my attire. I was pleasantly surprised when later that same day he complimented my appearance, told me he loved my dress, and said he wished more women in his employee took that much care with their appearance. I was understandably confused. After a few years of the hell she went out of her way to create for me and the damage she did to my reputation with her lies and rumors, my boss recognized that I was good at art and graphics. He gave me a promotion to another floor to be a graphic designer, and that got me away from her. There were not any narcissists in my new department. I once again excelled – to the point that many employees begged me to stay when I accepted a better offer with another company several years later.

When I went to the new company, I worked for many years in a department that was located at a remote location. I got along well with everyone I worked with. I made many friends with the people who worked around me from various departments and my boss became a good friend. Every time I visited the main office, I spent the day listening to everyone complain in a way I never heard at the remote location, but it never touched me. By some streak of bad luck (or destiny since that led me to leave corporate America and a much better life all the way around – I’ve often felt like God used the final incidents in corporate America to force me onto the path he had planned for me) I had two bosses in a row who had a long history of not being able to get along with their subordinates. The department I left to come to the first of these jobs tried to block me leaving. I was angry about it then, but now I wonder if the CEO who tried to block my departure knew the reputation of that department and was trying to protect me. I don’t know what fueled the problems with the first one, because that situation was quickly handled and she was transferred. The second one was very much like the lady I told about previously in this post who started her deceptions by pretending she was a friend who thought my clothes were beautiful but inappropriate for our office. For the first few months, this new supervisor acted like she was my best friend. People who had experienced problems with her asked me almost daily how I accomplished being so loved by her. While I was her golden child, she talked bad about everyone else in the department to the point that I didn’t know who to trust. She had me convinced I’d accepted a job in Sodom and Gomorrah. She turned on me on a dime and invested everything into ruining my reputation just like she had done to everyone who came before me. It was so bad that I resigned from the company with the very real knowledge that my quick decision could lead to homelessness, but immediately God picked me up and put me on better paths with little effort from me. I will always be grateful for that. Before I left, one manager who was sick of my supervisor showed me an 18-inch high file of problems reported on this woman. This manager said that in public she had to do what she was told, but she was telling me in private that this woman had been a problem long before I came around and would continue to be long after I was gone. She advised me not to take anything that was happening personally. In addition, I received a letter from my supervisor's family after I left that job. They told me she was a diagnosed borderline personality in order to help me heal from what they knew she had done to me. As I thought about my work history after reading this article, I realized I had many more successes than I had failures. Every time I had a failure, it was due to someone approaching me in the ways this article says narcissists approach people. I realized that any time I walked into an environment with a Cluster B personality, they saw something in me that made me their immediate target. I realized I need to stop beating myself up for the failures and needed to keep working hard to strengthen my boundaries. Early in my blog, I admitted that I started my journey of self-improvement as a 100% doormat. I confessed that after years of hard work I was now only a 40% doormat. In the future, I will become a 0% doormat, because I will not stop working on myself until I reach that goal. However, I will admit that during times of trials that made me vulnerable, I have regressed to higher percentages of doormattery (I’m imitating Shakespeare and making up words – lol). Learning to set boundaries and stop repeating the familiar is similar to overcoming an addiction. If you don’t keep working on it, you can regress. If you are going through something that makes you more vulnerable than usual, you can regress. This article talks about how narcissists prey on people who are vulnerable, so you have to be extra careful when you’re vulnerable even if you’ve already done a lot of recovery work. In a previous blog post, I admitted the mistakes I had made to make me vulnerable to dysfunctional people. One of those mistakes was listening to gossip instead of cutting ties with people who spent most of their time talking about other people. That is the mistake I most often make when I am vulnerable, and it is a mistake I’m working hard on not repeating again. I am going to be honest that I am terrified I will repeat that mistake again, because this is such a weak area for me. After the last time I repeated this mistake, I realized I do this, because I grew up in some places where accepting gossip (even if you knew it wasn’t true) made you much safer. I taught myself well how to stay safe. I hope admitting the possibility of repeating that mistake has me terrified may help someone who is facing their own fears to know that the fear of repeating patterns is normal. It may be the thing that keeps us from repeating them. After I left Corporate America, I was vulnerable. I got additional education. While I was in school, I worked as a reading tutor among a group of wonderful people that I still miss. After I got out of school, one of the people I worked with in the job I’d just trained for displayed the characteristics of a narcissist. I remember making the mistake of defending my reputation in my newsletter and client communication because of the lies this person was telling about me. I would never do that again. I should have left immediately, believing that people didn’t believe what she said about me any more than I believed what she said about all of the people in her life and the clients she saw. I left that career to become a full-time family caregiver. After the last person I cared for full-time passed away, I was extremely vulnerable due to being exhausted from repeated caregiving and broken by repeated grief. I entered a religious environment that was otherwise full of wonderful people, many of whom I’m still close to. However, one person from that environment made me her immediate best friend. As my best friend, she spent the first few months I was there warning me about how dysfunctional all of the people there were and how I had to watch my back. She was also telling them lies about me. Her lies convinced people that my exhaustion and grief were my normal state of emotional health, although this backfired on her when time allowed me to heal and people began to compliment how much I’d healed as I returned to my normal. I remember making the mistake of talking to a trusted sounding board for too long. It was not a mistake to find a sounding board, but it was a mistake to keep wearing that sounding board out long after I should have walked away. I will try very hard not to make that mistake again. While I was an exhausted caregiver, I was vulnerable. I saw a woman abusing her kids in the same way my childhood narcissist abused me. I could see myself in her children’s eyes. I let them in hoping I could protect the children, and I did try. The mom immediately made herself my best friend and spent every moment we were together talking bad about people, even her own children. When my father was on his death bed, I was forced to make him the priority over her. She was so angry that he became my priority that she threatened me and admitted she was done with me and was going to tell her kids lies about me to make them hate me, too. I still pray for those kids. While trying to put my life back together after over a decade of ignoring my needs and responsibilities to be a caregivier, I was vulnerable due to the amount of money house repairs were going to cost on top of the medical bills we had already accumulated. We barely escaped losing our home after all we’d already been though, which may have led to homelessness considering how much money we owed medical providers. I joined a healing group during those trials where a leader made me her immediate best friend and talked to me about everyone we mutually knew, only to later reveal she was talking about me to them as well. I spoke to the founder about the misbehavior of a group leader for the safety of future members and the health of the program. That was not a mistake, but continuing to talk after it became apparent that she would continue to play the same role with vulnerable people who might get as hurt as I did was a mistake.

After that last incident, some really good friends who are very healthy, some of whom are licensed counselors, took me under their wing and helped me start getting back to the level of health I had attained before these situations increased my vulnerability. I’ve recovered enough that I think I’m safer now, but I must always be on my guard.

While being vulnerable, I made the mistake of allowing people to press themselves into the role of my best friend as soon as they met me just like this article advises people not to let happen to them. I also allowed myself to listen to gossip instead of admitting my discomfort level and leaving. As I recovered from exhaustion and grief and regained my own life, I returned to my previous state of recovery and left all of those environments anyway. I didn’t do myself any favors by staying too long. I can’t say that everyone who displayed these patterns was a narcissist, although I found out some did have that diagnosis. I can say that whatever their problem was, they displayed behaviors that were dysfunctional in the same ways that narcissists who had broken my radar displayed them. That is enough of a warning sign that boundaries should immediately go up whether that person has a diagnosis or not.

I have recovered from the vulnerability of caregiving and grief enough that things are getting better. I recently entered a new environment, and a dysfunctional person immediately grabbed onto me inappropriately. When setting boundaries wasn't effective enough, I went to the group leadership. They handled it immediately and effectively. This let me know that not only is my personal growth allowing me to address unhealthy one-on-one situations better, but I am also choosing healthier groups who handle inappropriate behavior correctly and effectively. Even after long-term caregiving made me vulnerable again, I did not stop growing and improving.

I find comfort in the fact that I have the same pattern here that I had in my work history. I had way more successes than failures, and each time I had a failure it was due to me not having the right boundaries with dysfunctional people. I am still very close to the cream of the crop people from all of those environments. On my birthday in January, my phone rang all day so the healthy people from those environments could wish me a happy birthday and tell me how much they missed me.

The fourth paragraph in this article says that being the victim of a narcissist is a horrendous experience. Those who have been a victim know this is an understatement. It is such a horrendous experience that it is hard to get over. If being vulnerable or empathic or narcissists seeming familiar has led more than one of them into your life, you may be devastated to your core. Because of this, it is easier to remember the bad than the good. After reading this article, I took a personal inventory of bad in my life versus good. I discovered that the good people and situations far outweighed the bad ones, and the number of good people and situations increased with each level of healing I attained. Heck, my friend Linde Grace White alone was so wonderful that her friendship more than made up for all of it. My Mom was so good that my relationship with her more than made up for all of it. And, there are many more people who brought many positives in my life. I encourage anyone reading this to do a personal inventory in the form of a good versus bad list, and I think you will find that you attract a lot of good, too. Surely empathic people have to also attract people who find their giving nature beautiful and not just people who want to take advantage of it. I think recognizing how much good you attracted into your life will heal a lot of shame the narcissists left you with, because that is what happened for me.