5 Reason to Not Take a Narcissist Seriously

One of the most self-defeating acts one can undertake is to take a narcissist seriously. One of the core characteristics of narcissists is that they don’t respect themselves per se, they wait for others to respect them first. It’s dangerous when you respect someone that doesn’t respect himself. When you do, it backfires on you and you end up regretting. And the most subtle ways to respect a narcissist is to take him seriously.

Interestingly, a narcissist might not be dealt with effectively when you keep yelling back at him, but when you don’t give his actions too much concern, no matter how tempted you are to, you will always flummox him. His happiness lies in you expressing concern or being hysterical with him.

No narcissist believes in himself, he feeds off the belief others give him. People don’t know they are actually feeding the confidence of the narcissist offending them when they keep responding emotionally—with too much seriousness. However, when you learn to not care or express unnecessary concern about the petty schemes he trying to use against you, he loses confidence in himself and he’ll seldom find enough motivation to come back to you.

Here are 5 reasons why you shouldn’t take narcissists seriously:

An illogical person can only make you like him when you let him negatively influence your emotions and actions. If you don’t want your emotions to be involved in something, don’t focus your mind on it. When you find out that you just keep fussing over something, just take your mind off it and that’s it—it won’t be able to control your emotions.

It doesn’t make sense to be over-reactive over something that’s of little to no importance; illogical people aren’t important people—they shouldn’t be taken seriously. Frankly, it’s like arguing with someone suffering from a psychiatric disorder. If care is not taken, people around you will begin to assume you’re also like him.

To be a person of nobility, your emotions must be stirred only by things of nobility. If you allow petty things, like a narcissist’s remark, to stimulate your emotions, then you’ve just proved to yourself that you’re just as petty as he is. It might be hard; you might really feel like giving a sharp reply, but in the end, you’ll see that it all makes you the more illogical and ignoble.

Come to think of it, if someone could be so irrational to the extent that he doesn’t believes in himself, yet he seems to always find people who surprisingly believes in him, that will make him feel like he’s something special—doesn’t it? When a narcissist begins to feel he’s special, the person who makes him feel that way is always going to suffer for it. It might seem funny, but that’s the way they tell you ‘thanks for believing in me.’

Why does he do that? It’s because he thinks, ‘if I think I’m stupid, and someone respects me in my stupidity, then this person must be more stupid than I am, hence, I will treat him just like he is—stupid and contemptible.’ Have you seen someone who treats you like trash even when you try to please him? That’s exactly how he thinks. He thinks like a narcissist.

Although, majority of people may find themselves tempted to taking advantage of or wrongfully treating someone who chooses to be obsequious towards them. However, if this seems to occur excessively or unrestrained. It’s a sign of having a narcissistic trait.

Since a narcissist feeds off people’s approval of him, he begins to think his irrationality is an expression of rationality because no one seems to act like he’s not being rational by ignoring him; everyone seems to take him seriously. Instead of him thinking he’s wrong, he begins to think others are wrong. And if this continues, he’ll never stop what he’s doing. He’ll keep taunting and discomfiting you because you just make him feel good the more.

No one is able to directly choose how he feels. To choose a particular feeling you’ll have to, first, choose a thought to focus on.. Usually, when a narcissist talks, he never says anything to uplift or make you feel significant, since he doesn’t respect himself, he’ll barely say anything respectable about you. Now is that what you want to focus on?

When you focus your thoughts on how inferior the narcissist is trying to make you feel, you’ll end up feeling that way. The problem with feeling insecure is that it makes you want to feel secure, and you’ll only do it the wrong way every time—fighting. When you try to pull someone down, it’s evidence to the fact that he’s already ahead of you. You need to make up your mind ahead of time whom you’re going to believe—a narcissist’s petty ideas or your own noble ideas.

Your self-perception determines how you perceive other people. If your self-perception is wrong, whatever people do to you will be interpreted wrongly. If you take a narcissist seriously, you’ll inevitably take his words seriously. And if you take his words seriously, you get the wrong picture about yourself, and that makes you always puts you on the defeated side.

Here’s the bane of many people: they believe by fighting back, they can get a narcissist to behave better towards them. Where in fact, nothing can be further from the truth. So they get mad a little bit, and when they see no changes, they get mad a little bit more. And this results in a continuous flow of endless irrationality. They continue to let what they hear determine their actions, instead of ignoring the narcissist altogether.

A narcissist is a person that feels good when you act grumpy. Your grumpiness doesn’t discourage him, it motivates him. Therefore, instead of letting him sway your emotions as he like, just choose not to get involved in any of his shenanigans. That way, you will be able to retain your sanity in the midst of his insanity.