HIGHLIGHT: Autopilot Engaged! Reflexive Reactions In Narcissists

追加: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]It's not a matter of skill or effort or who is smarter or who can create the most clever trap or the best strategy.

[00:00:07]You are playing by a fundamentally different set of rules than a narcissist is playing by and despite your best efforts, you are not going to be able to change that. It would be akin to changing your entire psychological makeup. Attempting to adopt the same tactics as the narcissist does not somehow make the narcissist foreign, even alien psychology attainable for you and it does not close the gap of their advantage over you in this because of that. It is what it is.

[00:00:37]This is why trying to outsmart narcissists is a futile endeavor. Not only is intelligence not even really a relevant factor here, you can only use the tools that you can use based on the brain that you have and these tools are not effective for the job that you're trying to do. They don't work.

[00:00:55]This is not a situation that operates on logic and reason and maneuvering or strategy. Therefore, using your innate tools of logic and reason and maneuvering and strategy to try to counter that is not going to work.

[00:01:09]Anyone who has ever tried it can tell you. This can seem confusing to some people. Aren't narcissists doing maneuvering of their own? Aren't narcissists intentionally manipulating and choosing strategies? To a point, perhaps yes, but it's very important to understand that the responses of narcissists are actually reflexive to a pretty large degree.

[00:01:30]Narcissists are choosing actions, whether they believe their actions are a choice or not, many do not, based on their reactions to reflexive emotional responses they are having to what's going on. For example, a perceived threat to their control provokes immediate fear and then rage. A perceived rejection provokes immediate shame. This is the driver behind their actions. This surface level appearance of strategizing or plotting doesn't really matter.

[00:01:58]Anyone who has dealt with a narcissist for any period of time knows that their reactions to their own disproportionately intense emotions are the basis for everything. Because of that, logic and reason are not really a part of this equation, no matter how it looks. Therefore, logic and reason are not effective antidotes here. In point of fact, they do nothing. They accomplish nothing. These things are useless in this situation because narcissists do not recognize them as having any inherent meaning or value.

[00:02:27]Just as narcissists are not bound by the truth or the reality, logic and reason and facts are just more information for a narcissist to twist and leverage or to use to trap victims into validating and defending against crazy conclusions and false interpretations.

[00:02:45]This is a big part of why trying to outthink or outwit narcissists is understandable, but it's misguided. It's not going to work. You are using logic and reason and they're not. You are bound by the truth and by reality and they're not.

[00:03:02]It's also due in large part to the instability of their affect, identity and overall personality. You can't pin narcissists down and if they can't be reliably predicted or understood, they can't really be outsmarted in any meaningful way. You may be able to succeed at times, but the reality is that these personalities are generally so irrational and so unstable, it's not possible to consistently outwit them.

[00:03:28]You can't outsmart crazy.