To break this law, you have to bring an audience to the smoke. The narcissist’s power comes from being your secret source of relief. To use this against them, make the act of saving you a public performance they cannot control. When they start a crisis, do not turn to them. Instead, immediately involve your wider circle. If they accidentally ruin a major plan, do not cry in the kitchen with them. Pick up the phone and call a friend, a neighbor, or a professional right in front of the narcissist. Say something like, “I’m so stressed. It seems there has been a major mishap, and the dinner is ruined. Can you help me fix this?” By broadcasting their clumsiness to the people they want to impress, you turn their arson into a public embarrassment. A narcissist will stop setting fires the moment they realize the smoke only serves to signal the world that they are incompetent. You are removing the hero high they get from saving you from the very problems they created.
Then we have the third law, perhaps the most exhausting to live under: the Law of Invisible Puppetry. This is how they trap you without even having to lock a door. The narcissist thinks: I won’t forbid you from seeing your friends or pursuing your dreams. That would make me the obvious villain. Instead, I will simply make the prize of your freedom so high that you eventually choose your own prison. I will pick a fight every time you come home, or I will be sick every time you have a plan until you decide it is just easier to stay home. I will make your life so emotionally expensive that you voluntarily give up just to have a moment of peace.
To counter this, you must apply the strategy of the heavy string. You make the act of pulling your strings physically and mentally exhausting for them. If they make your life difficult to prevent you from being independent, you must tie your compliance to a total loss of your utility to them. This is where you practice strategic incompetence. If they pick a fight that drains you to stop you from going out, you can stay home, but you stop performing all the labor that benefits them. You stop cooking, you stop cleaning, and you stop being their emotional sounding board. When they ask why the house is a mess, you simply say, “The stress of our earlier conversation has left me completely drained to my core. I do not have the energy to handle the house right now.” You are showing them that controlling you results in a direct loss of their own comfort. When the puppet becomes a weight they have to carry, they will eventually let go of a few strings, if not all. They want a toy that performs, not a burden that they have to serve.
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