Narcissists do not like to be responsible or accountable to anyone. When faced with investigative questions that threaten their self-made superior position, they resort to evasive tactics. In this article, the author talks about these eight narcissistic evasive tactics that are often used to deflect other people’s inquiries.

You are not allowed to question a narcissist

To do so is an affront to our concept of superiority and lack of accountability. Your questioning of us may be willful, because you want to know why we do a half-drunken detour at 3 AM or we may perceive her critically interrogating us, even though you didn’t mean to, for example, asking us politely where we were.

We consider this as you suggest to us that we are not allowed to do what we want and be accountable to you in one way or another.

If you engage in willful questioning, it is usually the case (until you become fully aware of what we are and know how to deal with us) that your approach will be the kind that fuels us, even though you challenge us.

You will ask in an annoying way where we have been or express your annoyance when you ask why we didn’t take the trash outside. When there is willful interrogation, we don’t like you to challenge us but because you do it at the same time you’re refueling, our anger doesn’t catch on.

Related: 8 Steps To Recovery After A Controlling Relationship

Instead, we recognize your difficult behavior and determine that this must be addressed and exercise our superiority but at the same time, we also see an opportunity for us to get more fuel.

You might think that because our anger is not ignited, we can accept the fuel provided and admit we were wrong, explain what happened, and allow the matter to be resolved. Any layman can do this and you, as an empathetic individual, will say your essay and with the agreement and decision achieved, draw a line under it and move on.

Such a scenario is of no use to us. You have challenged us and while the anger has not been ignited, we must still maintain our superiority and that means rejecting your challenge. This refusal also presents us with an opportunity to extract fuel from you, by denying your assertion, etc. This is how we assert our superiority and gain fuel.

If you engage in perceived interrogation, it always ignites our anger because you will do so in a fuel-free manner until the perceived criticism arising from your interrogation hurts us, our anger ignites and we strike to demand fuel to heal the wound. because of your criticism. You may have asked us a question but you did it without any agenda attached to it. We don’t see it that way, your simple question about

“Oh, where have you been?” It is interpreted by us as indicating that we are not entitled to do what we want without our first consent. It is delivered without critical fuel, thus wound and chafing flare-up occurs. We must respond again to confirm our superiority but also to gain fuel from you.

Accordingly, whether you’re emotionally asking us questions of usage, whether you’re directly asking them, whether we’re asking to explain ourselves or your question is innocuous, you’ll almost always find that we’re responding in a way that provokes an argument.

We do not want you to question us, whether intentionally or perceived. Our rules do not allow you to do this. Once we do, we must reject your challenge, assert our supremacy and gain fuel (either because we see the opportunity to do so or because we must heal the wound).

What is the result of this?

Spread evasion tactics.

This is why you can never have a reasonable discussion about something that worries you or why we’re off the handle after a seemingly innocent question you’ve asked us that you find annoying and confusing. This is why you find that your fears are unresolved, and you are driven into a state of heightened emotion, confusion, annoyance, and frustration because you refuse to answer what you have asked of us.

These responses on our part are largely instinctive, a reaction to your difficult behavior and the possibility/necessity of fuel. The Great will of course delight in addition to these instinctive responses by layering them with more manipulation and play.

So, what are these evasive tactics?

There are many evasive tactics but below are eight that you will undoubtedly be familiar with. You now know that these responses, hitherto unexplained and bewildering, are instinctive responses designed to meet your challenge to our superiority and to satisfy our need for fuel.

You will no longer be scratching your head at why we do these things when you ask us and instead you should now realize how you fall into the trap just every time you try to engage us.

Why do you fall into this trap? It is because of the innate empathic traits that you are drawn to our machinations through evasive tactics. You love this because you keep doing business with us for the following reasons:

You need to secure the truth of what happened. (Truth Seeker).
You want us to see your point. (need to fix).
want to hear (need to be honest with yourself)
You want precision. (need to be fit)

These sympathetic traits of your cause become entangled each time we deploy our evasion tactics, eight of which are now detailed.

1. drown you
   We will talk to you, we will shout at you, and we will insult you in a lightning reply designed to lead to the fact that since you can no longer be heard, you can no longer challenge us. Hearing is a challenge, we don’t want to hear you anymore and instead will draw fuel from your gestures and expressions because your overall response attracts your frustration and anger.
2. Other people
   This is a kind of evasive tactic, where we shift the topic of conversation to other people to get away from your attack on us. We’ll explain how a co-worker is similarly late and never gets attacked by his wife for making you seem illogical. We’ll rock you by explaining how the ex-partner didn’t make such a fuss about our spending habits.

By comparing you to other people, we are engaging in our classic act of triangulation, to belittle you and make you talk about those other people rather than continuing your attack on us.

3. Delivery but not content
   We will interrupt you again and again because we demand that you be allowed to quit, we accuse you of not letting us express our minds, we tell you that you judge us before we can make our case, we remind you not to interrupt, we don’t raise your voice at us, we ask you to lower your voice or change the tone of your voice.

None of this, of course, addresses the content of what you want to discuss with us, but instead, we neutralize you by having you defend yourself by saying that you don’t interrupt, that you don’t raise your voice, etc. Your challenge gets lost while you’re stuck in these sideshows and all while the passion flows from you.

4. Early decision
   This is one of the classic dribbling tactics for both the junior and middle ranger. The youngest, who lacks the articulated nature to continue the verbal sparring, decides to call the time of “discussion” and thus end the attack. He will announce that the discussion is over and will sign a final act which will result in a sudden fuel surge from you.

He might push you and fear it’s over, or he might attack you with his fists and spit in your face so much that he has enough of your speech and your startled, agonizing response to supply that jet of fuel he needs and then pulls away, convinced that he asserted himself and instinctively avoided any further injury. The medium-term will be announced

“There is nothing else to discuss.”

“I made my point and that’s the end of it.”

“This ends now.”

He then withdraws and exits a silent transaction, gaining fuel after the event and protecting himself, perhaps when he felt the situation was slipping out of him, by withdrawing from the constant challenge or criticism.

Related: The 4 Stages Of A Toxic Relationship That Can Break And Rebuild You

5. Transformation
   We’ll turn the discussion into something else entirely. We may talk about some problems that arise at work, point out that the exterior of the house needs a touch of paint or that we are considering buying a new car. You’ll try to bring the topic back to what you want to discuss, but we’ll keep taking it off-topic again as we establish control over you and your emotional responses fueling us.

6. Excellence
   Do you think we did something wrong? Fortunately for us, we know a lot of other things you’ve done (in our minds) that are much worse, and so we’ll start our interrogations about your behavior to prove that you’re the one who’s at fault and should be questioned, not questioned.

You feel the need to get to the bottom of the matter, and therefore you are out of the way to question us because you are forced to defend yourself.

7. How can you?
   How can you treat us like this after all we’ve done for you / After the week we spent at work / Knowing that our dog just died / Our football team lost the final?

We’ll bring up one typical pity play by pointing out that we either did so much for you and that’s the thanks we got and/or that you’re a heartless cow who resists us when we’re down. Either way, it prompts you to justify your approach and deviates from what you were trying to discuss.

8. Pests
   Why don’t you leave us alone? We just want a simple and quiet life (hypocrisy) but you won’t let us. You have to keep pestering us with questions all the bloody time, just shut up and leave us. This is often used when you engage in “perceived questions” because our sudden response to you just by asking “how are you” leaves you upset and confused.

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