7 Ways to Repel a Narcissist


It’s not uncommon for a person, once they experience a relationship with a narcissist, to vehemently want to avoid or prevent a repeat.

What best guarantees that your relationship wont turn into another dance of codependency and narcissism?

In part, your success has to do with identifying certain red flags, based on understanding what narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is (versus narcissistic traits), as well as what codependency is, and in particular the ones that unwittingly yet directly feed and supply energy to narcissism.

The best protection or what best repels narcissism, however, has to do with what traits naturally repel a narcissist, and those are traits of persons committed to living and connecting authentically to life in and around them.

Thus, the secret of repelling narcissism is to cultivate traits of authenticity that naturally neutralize or cut off what supplies energy to begin with. A person naturally repels a narcissist when they are authentically:

Connected to own mind and body

Persons who repel narcissists are authentically transparent and happy in their body and own skin, that is, they have a visceral connection to their body, they know what they want, and most importantly, who they want to be and how they want to show up in relation others, but first and foremost in relation to themselves. This allows them to live, to breathe and, thus, to respond to the narcissist’s tactics, as they would to other life promptings, primarily, from a place of love — and not fear. They are repelled by those they cannot emotionally diminish and crush with certain crazy- or chaos-making antics, to include gaslighting; and the reason they have no power in this case is because authentic persons do not need anyone else’s permission to be themselves … and this frees them to let others be themselves. Since the narcissist thrives on low energy power of instilling others with fear and shame, this does not “work” for them. A person who knows how to remain authentically grounded in their own mind and body and skin naturally neutralizes the false sense of power the narcissist depends on to feel worthwhile.

Grounded in own knowledge and understanding

When a person is authentic, they know and understand themselves, as human beings, thus they are genuinely happy with who they are, not in an arrogant way, rather because they know they are on a path of growth and transformation that is available to all humans, and that fully accepting self, warts and graces, is critical to becoming ever the ever better versions of self we all yearn for and aspire to realize deep inside. Authenticity makes a person independent of the narcissist’s scornful opinions and views of them, and the world in general. Because they don’t fall into the trap of trying to change how a narcissist feels about them, the narcissist recoils. The power of a narcissist’s fear-based tactics is neutralized because they cannot find gaps and holes to work in their deceipt, instill fear, shake up another’s common sense, make them feel crazy, etc. In other words, they are the epitome of what a narcissist fears, and regards as a threat to their existence.

Driven from within, an inner-locus of control

An authentic person knows that life and happiness are an inside-out job, and in practice this mindset allows them to have the peace of mind and presence they need, accordingly, to respond with emotional detachment to the problems and issues that are the narcissist’s alone to own and heal. They can separate what is their own stuff to own and heal, and what is the narcissist’s, and have cultivated an ability to self-activate their body’s relaxation response. And thus, try as they may, the narcissist fails to activate the survival response of an authentic person’s body. Narcissists look for easy prey who will collude with them to prop up their false-image. The fragile, wounded ego of a narcissist is much too fragile to withstand solid evidence an authentic person presents, that: the narcissist does NOT have omnipotent control over (all) others. Their worst fear is that their false-self — of pretending they belong to a select, “ideal” and superhuman group versus everyone else in the crazy and inferior majority — will be exposed.

Determined to grow and transform fears to assets

An authentic person sees right through the fragile and false-self of the narcissist for what it is: a fragile ego with fear of intimacy problems and arrested their emotional development. Unlike the codependent, an authentically connected person can afford to feel compassion for the plight of the narcissist … staying emotionally detached with an understanding that no human being can heal or rescue another, that ultimately, to heal self, the narcissist must somehow accept the problem behaviors and beliefs that are theirs alone to own and heal. To heal, however, the narcissist would have to let go of their “false self,” which means to allow a radical shift to occur in the belief system they hold that feeds their sense of superiority and entitlement. Naturally, this is nearly an impossible task, but only because this would mean the narcissist would want to shift away from associating with a false sense of “power,” i.e., a belief in the use of fear-based tactics of crushing and diminishing others as evidence of superiority, and instead to an understanding that this limiting belief keeps them wounded, fragile, suffering, dependent on sucking life out of others to feel alive, and thus pushes their loved ones away.

Views emotions of vulnerability as power

Whereas a narcissist avoids vulnerable emotions, and views them as weak or inferior, an authentic person understands that we cannot heal what we are not willing to feel and experience, thus, they welcome emotions with open arms as action-messengers, available to access to make better informed choices. The intention to grow, and to do what it takes, allows a person inspired toward authenticity to cultivate their inner capacity to calm self from within, to self activate their body’s relaxation response when an upsetting emotion shows up, to see and understand their body’s emotional signals as vital information, regarding what we are most yearn, need, aspire to realize emotionally. The language of the body is emotion; the language of the higher thinking brain (frontal cortex) is words. In a nutshell, for the mind and the body to work together optimally, as they are designed to do, it is critical to develop our capacity to authentically connect to, feel and respond to our body’s emotions and sensations in healing ways.

Giving and receiving (from love, not fear)

The narcissist feeds on the codependent’s irrational fear that, in order to feel worthwhile and deserving of love, they must please, never disappoint, gain approval of others, and the like. They take full advantage of the determination of another to be seen as kind, as loving, as unselfish, as nice … and move in to shake their sense of security, continually reminding them of how they are failing to obtain a slavish servitude from the codependent partner. When we authentically connect to our emotions, we understand that fear is either presents itself in two basic categories, either as healthy or irrational. Healthy fear is there to guide us, as a companion that reminds us of our purpose and need to connect and bring into fruition our deepest yearnings and aspirations, no matter where we are on our journey in life. In contrast, irrational fears of rejection or abandonment or rejection no longer have a hold on us because we understand them as fears that are there to grow us, to move us to act boldly and courageous, to strengthen our belief in our self and our capacity to become who we are destined to be inside — which never depends on meeting external standards or the narcissist’s expectations.  a lie, it is a illusion of power and illusion of love, an illusion of happiness … There’s nothing real about having to “please” another to feel worthwhile, to deserve to exist; it’s only “real” in early infancy when we absolutely need some assurance of another’s care to physically survive.

Awakened to core inner need to trust self

Truth be told, the only person you absolutely need to trust. This realization that you only need to trust yourself, not another, is not an easy one to understand and apply. We’ve all been conditioned by generations of parenting practices to have an external locus of control, thus, to worry about what others think of our mistakes and failings. This prevents optimal learning, however, as mistakes are critical ways we grow our wisdom and understanding, confidence and belief in ourselves. In order to repel a relationship with a narcissist, we must connect and grow a essential partnership between our observing self and inner self. And this relationship, essentially, must be one based on compassion, which allows us to fail and make mistakes, and to learn from them, for example. The authentic wise-self learns to mistrust the old fear-based, wounded-self programs and stories from past or early childhood traumas and woundings, and also sees them as vital sources of knowledge and understanding and transformation and healing of self and life. The path of wisdom and understanding that an authentic self flourishes and grows is always one that expands our capacity to have compassion for our self — and others.

In sum, narcissists are repelled by persons over whom they have no power, the kind of power they seek is to dominate, to crush, to instill fear and shame, to control with gaslighting and other mind control tactics. The best repellant you can put on is to become authentic in your own mind and body, heart and soul.

Not unlike the vampire myth, when a bright light shines from a person who is authentically connected to their inner resources, they are emotionally detached from any neediness or dependency on the narcissist for approval, caring and security, and thus, the narcissist shrivels or just goes away — or in rare cases, activates them to seek genuine change (which means to use their energy/power to identify and change the limiting beliefs that drive narcissism — so they can learn to partner and collaborate rather than derail, diminish, disempower others).

The best antidote or protection, however, has to do with who you are — or yearn to become, that is, the extent to which you’ve set an intention to live authentically in relation to yourself, which gives you the freedom to relate authentically to life around you, thus others, and in this case: the narcissist.