We’ve all experienced insensitive talkers who dominate conversations with excessive chatter and poor listening. But if you’re treated to regular aggressive ear-bending disguised as “conversation,” you may be dealing with the soul-crushing verbal bullying of narcissistic monologuing.
Not all narcissists engage in overt verbal dominance, but the ones who do can be relentless in their insistence on being heard with little to no reciprocation. Narcissistic monologuing can run the gamut from charming comedy, to professorial lecturing, to endless stories about people you’ve never met and places you’ve never been. But whatever the subject matter or the narcissist’s personal style, the conversation quickly becomes a one-mouth show of overtalking, competitive one-upmanship, and boredom or irritation when you attempt to speak.
Violated Boundaries
Humans are social and cooperative animals designed for the give and take of conversation as a form of sharing, collaborating, and building trust and intimacy. Those of us with emotional empathy and genuine interest in others look for points of connection rather than opportunities for dominance.
When our expectations of respect and reciprocity are violated, we may find ourselves trying harder to create rapport by laughing when we’re not amused or agreeing when we don’t agree. Afterward, we may feel effaced and devalued and wonder why, perhaps blaming ourselves for not being interesting or forceful enough to hold our own in the conversation. With reflection, we may feel humiliated or angry, as if we have been wrestled to the ground with a sock in our mouth when we thought we were chatting with a colleague, friend, parent, sibling, or partner.
Indeed the reality is that in the complex language of human interaction we have been overpowered and invalidated. The narcissist has used us as a mirror to preen at and an object to dominate, not as someone to form a connection with.
Why They Do It
Whether they draw you in with seductive smiles and winks, entertain you with outrageous theatrics, or pin you to the wall with edgy intensity, big-talking narcissists know what they’re doing and will continue to demand your full attention and acquiescence as long as you let them.
They do it because they
- want control,
- need attention,
- see themselves as expert authorities,
- feel greater entitlement to speak,
- don’t care what you have to say unless it relates to them,
- believe they are above codes of fairness and reciprocity, and
- feel powerful making you submit.
How to Handle It
You probably won’t get the narcissist in your life to listen. The ability to genuinely share and care is a developmental milestone the domineering narcissistic personality misses in childhood.
For your own sanity and self-respect, it is best to recognize what you’re dealing with and disengage from a power struggle you will never “win” and didn’t sign on for in the first place.
If the narcissist is someone you can avoid, all the better. If he or she is someone close to you, it may be time to consider whether the relationship is worth the invalidating experience of being routinely bullied into silent submission.
Listen to Julie being interviewed about the narcissistic family on The Addicted Mind Podcast and Narcissist Apocalypse Podcast.
Julie L. Hall is the author of The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free from Hachette Books.
Need support? Julie offers specialized narcissistic abuse recovery coaching to clients around the world.
Related Articles by Julie L. Hall
- Your Narcissistic Mother Hates Your Body, and Here’s Why
- Decoding the True Narcissist: 7 Definitive Traits Explained
- Big Sissies: How and Why Narcissists Get Worse with Age
- Narcissist Parents Are Hurt Machines to Their Children
- What the Narcissist Fears Most
- Understanding Narcissistic Rage and Why It Is Not Your Fault
- The Challenge of Setting Boundaries with Narcissist Parents
- The Dos and Don’ts of CoParenting with a Narcissist Ex
- Why Narcissists Will Never Love You and It’s Dangerous to Love Them
- Horrid and Shocking Things Narcissists Say and Do
- The Overt Versus Covert Narcissist: Both Suck
- Seven Things Narcissists Will Never Do
- The Hidden Trauma of Neglect in the Narcissistic Family
- Enabling the Narcissist: How and Why It Happens
- How Narcissists Torture Others and Believe They’re Right to Do It
- Seven Sure-Fire Ways to Spot a Narcissist
- Maddening and Bizarre Things Narcissists Do Explained
- Behind the Narcissist Mask: The Bully, Coward, Liar and Fraud
- Why You Should Not Feel Sorry for the Narcissist
- Adult Children of Narcissists Face Trauma-Induced Health Risks
- Raised by a Narcissist? 11 Healing Things to Do for Yourself Right Now
- What Raging Narcissists Break: A Real-Life Damage List
- The Burden of the Golden Child in the Narcissistic Family
- Narcissism 101: A Glossary of Terms for Understanding the Madness
- The Narcissism Disease Cluster in Families and How to End the Cycle
- A Daughter’s Story of One Hell of a Narcissistic Mother
- The Narcissist Parent’s Psychological Warfare: Parentifying, Idealizing, and Scapegoating
- Raised by Narcissists? Why You Can’t Afford the Wrong Therapist
- 4 Insidious Ways That Narcissistic Abuse Isolates the Victim
- It’s You and Me Baby: Narcissistic Head Games
- Identifying the Covert Narcissist in Your Life: A Checklist
- How and Why Narcissists Are Highly Skilled Abusers
- The Strength of the Narcissistic Family Scapegoat
- Life in the Fun House: Narcissistic Mirroring and Projection
- The Paradox of the Narcissist’s Unrequited Self-Love
- A Golden Child Story of Guilt in the Narcissistic Family
- How to Protect Your Children from Your Narcissist Spouse
- 9 Best of the Worst Narcissist Mothers on Screen
- Understanding the Narcissist’s Disrespect, Envy, and Contempt
- Healing a Sense of Foreshortened Future in Adult Children of Narcissists
- The Narcissist’s Caretakers: Caught Hook, Line, and Sinker
References
Walker, Pete. Complex PTSD: from Surviving to Thriving: a Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma. Lafayette, CA: Azure Coyote, 2013.
Shaw, Daniel. Traumatic Narcissism Relational Systems of Subjugation. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.
Image courtesy of UpChuck_Norris, Creative Commons.
View Comments (8)
This should have been an early warning sign for me, but you can get caught up, especially without boundaries, which I didn't have at the time. Plus, some of them can be very captivating.
I went through this with two histrionics and a narcissist who has some histrionic traits.
I find histrionics to be evolved narcissists in that they have more clever excuses or defences and take the victim stance more when it suits them. But eventually you see that they are not victims at all. They are cheerful bullies (or sad if it suits them) who can strong-arm you without you realizing it in real time.
Superb resource!
Excellent and very helpful. But, it's important and necessary to publish a about the traits of victims of narcissistic people, please. Thanks.
As a person who grew up with narcissistic abuse, I learned to use humor as a weapon against narcissistic bullies. If I was able to mimic/imitate them, or if I could win a battle of wits or perform funnier stories/monologues, I was sometimes able to dismantle the narcissist in the room, but in a lighthearted way. I saw it as fighting fire with fire. But now, I'm not sure if that was the right approach, especially because it makes me feel like a monster myself. Through therapy and reading insightful articles, I learned that it is far healthier to just sit back and observe the narcissist in the room, rather than engage them or compete with them. Focusing my energy on a healthy give and take is something worth working towards, rather than jumping into the ring with a narcissist!
What a wonderful article - much of what you wrote I hadn't really thought of before. I wonder if narcissists use their dialogue to place labels on people? They seem to talk about wonderful so and so and terrible so and so. Right off the bat they give the listener an idea of who the good guys are and definitely talk about who the bad guys are in their lives (according to their perception). It seems many innocent people love listening to gossip from narcissists and often believe what they have to say.
Bingo! To a T.
My goodness.... now I finally understand why I couldn't get a word in edgewise with my husband. He would go on and on for 15-30 minutes at a time and expect me to listen without a word. But when I started talking, he would interrupt and overtalk me. When I said, "it's not fair - you expect me to listen to you uninterrupted, but you won't do the same for me," he'd say what he had to say was important. I'd get furious at the unfairness, he could never see it, and we'd be off to another huge fight....which we never could resolve.
I have a "friend" who always wants to broker "deals" between me and other people. I do free lance art and he will tell me about so-and-so who wants a painting and says he can do the brokering for me because the other guy is such I jerk I shouldn't have to deal with him myself. But these "deals" always go bad somehow and I end up on the losing end. Yet my "friend" keeps reassuring me the next deal will be great because he is Mr. Deal Maker. No. I have had enough. I get it: this is how he puffs up his own ego. That is the deal.