Many people ask this question, and when we are in the trenches with a narcissist, we absolutely want to outsmart them. We want to win, to beat them—because we’ve been hurt. It’s devastating to realize that someone who was supposed to love and care for us has the ability to betray us so deeply.
Hurt people often hurt others because they are in pain. It’s completely normal to want to strike back, to outsmart a narcissist, or to do so simply for your own protection and defense. However, in all the years that I have been helping people recover from narcissistic abuse, I have never seen anyone successfully outsmart a narcissist. I want to deeply explain the psychological reasons for this.
A narcissist is a boundary-less individual with no conscience, driven by a highly energized ego. If you attempt to battle a narcissist on their level, it’s like fighting someone armed with grenades, napalm, and an atomic bomb. It’s a losing game because the narcissist would rather self-destruct and take you down with them than admit defeat.
This is because a narcissist’s ego is monstrously insecure. If you get the upper hand, their ego perceives it as annihilation. As a result, they will stop at nothing to render you powerless, to ensure they win. A narcissist knows exactly how to manipulate your fears, pain, and insecurities—especially the parts of you that are still trying to hold them accountable for love, approval, or security.
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If you try to outsmart a narcissist from a place of logic or ego, you are engaging in a battle where only the biggest ego wins. Unless your ego has completely overshadowed your true self, the narcissist will ultimately come out on top, leaving you emotionally shattered. They are experts at identifying your deepest wounds and exploiting them.
The key to truly defeating a narcissist is not through outsmarting them, but through healing yourself. Narcissists serve as catalysts, exposing our unconscious wounds. Rather than seeking to beat them at their own game, we need to recognize the deeper lesson they bring: an opportunity to heal our past traumas, childhood wounds, and limiting beliefs.
When we stop holding the narcissist responsible for our pain and start focusing on our own healing, we cut off the supply they thrive on. At first, this is difficult, as our deepest wounds are activated. But when we commit to self-partnering—meaning we take full responsibility for our own healing—we remove ourselves from the narcissist’s control.
The irony is that once we shift our focus inward and heal, we naturally “outsmart” the narcissist—not through manipulation, but by stepping into a higher level of awareness where their tactics no longer work on us.
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