Debating A Narcissist Is Bad For Your Health

Two phrases you rarely hear from a narcissist are: “I’m sorry” and “I don’t know”.

A narcissist may apologise when they are at risk of losing narcissistic supply. But ultimately, they are sorry because their supply is slipping through their fingers, not because they hurt someone.

However, narcissists never do not know something. To admit a lack of knowledge is to admit lack. To admit lack is to be in touch with one’s shame. And when a narcissist touches on the repressed shame of being neglected, abused and/or instrumentalised throughout childhood, they step on an emotional landmine.

As a result, narcissists never deepen their self-knowledge or wordly wisdom, because truth and reality rarely touch the narcissist’s True Self. To help avoid the risk of admitting a lack of knowledge, the narcissist creates an aura of all-knowingness via their false self. The most comical way they achieve this is by simply declaring ‘I knew that’. Even when our gut tells us otherwise, we avoid petty arguments and just take their word for it, or brush it off.

A more insidious way a narcissist protects themselves from a lack of knowledge is to draw you into an argument or debate. While your primary interest in debating might be to get to the root of truth, the narcissist is looking for the following:

1. They want to avoid being exposed to their shame.

2. They want narcissistic supply.

3. They have negative emotions they wish to be rid of.

Healthy vs Narcissistic Debate

A debate is the perfect playground for the narcissist to achieve all three of the above goals. To begin with, the narcissist will never accept your ideas or build on them. For every statement you make, the narcissist will counter with another statement which has little relevance to the thread you are discussing, or will reframe what you said and appropriate it as their own.

If you do touch on a painful truth, the narcissist will revert to gaslighting by rejecting what you say and then offering an alternative explanation or ‘fact’.

In a healthy debate, both parties are curious about the truth. They may admit they do not know something, or may state their disagreement and explain why. Where they see merit in another person’s ideas, they accept them and integrate them before adding their own contribution to build on the original idea.

Healthy debate is empowering. Narcissistic debate is life-sucking and maddening.

The Endless Cycle Of Despair

A narcissist refuses to accept your ideas, and instead engages in a ‘one-upping’ competition. Eventually, your shame becomes aggravated, and before you know it, you are stuck defending yourself or trying to one-up the narcissist in return.

You burn from the shame, feeling anxious and frustrated. The discomfort grows so strong that you dissociate, and often walk away from the interaction feeling as though you were caught in a washing machine. Little did you know that you sacrificed yourself on the altar of the narcissist.

The Sacrificial Lamb

The narcissist believes themselves to be intellectually superior to you, so it is no skin off their back to engage in a narcissistic debate with you.

You might believe you are getting to the root of a problem, or that you are discussing lofty ideals, but in truth you are merely becoming a source of narcissistic supply and a dumping ground for the narcissist’s negative emotions.

As the narcissist sees you become aggravated, their sense of superiority gets a boost like a snort of cocaine, and they become more relaxed and calm as they feed their unease and pain into you.

By the end of the ‘debate’ or ‘discussion’, the narcissist is left relieved, well-fed (on narcissistic supply) and satisfied, as though they just got a massage. You leave the interaction feeling anxious, sick and upset, as well as empty and deflated.

Why You Fall For The Trap

When debating or discussing anything with a narcissist, consider your true intentions, and of course, theirs. What you might in fact be looking for is:

1. To be right: Do you carry excess shame from the past which compels you to redeem yourself by being ‘right’? Does being right help your self-esteem?

2. To be the saviour: Do you hope to change the narcissist by convincing them of your perspective? To be the one who ‘shows’ the narcissist the ‘better’ way toward health and happiness?

3. The truth: You may just want the truth to have its day. If the truth is going to force the narcissist to see their flaws or their shortcomings, then you are wasting your time.

Remember that a narcissist rarely allows their True Self to be exposed to truth or reality. Their false self is a firewall protecting them. Therefore, you may as well be speaking to a brick wall.

Ultimately, you are only sacrificing yourself as fodder for the narcissist, giving frustrated energy over as narcissistic supply while absorbing all the narcissist’s negative emotions and pain.

The key to debating a narcissist is simple: Let go. Spot the patterns, disengage, regulate your breathing, and look within yourself. The truth is not in your words, but rather within yourself.

For a complete resource on narcissistic abuse recovery, click here.