5 Boundary-Setting Basics with the Narcissists in Your Life

Here are tried and true boundary-setting strategies to protect yourself from narcissistic abuse.

First published on Psychology Today, September 2, 2020 Whether the narcissist in your life is a parent, partner, sibling, or friend, you know all too well the cycle of hurt they put you through. They dominate conversations and glaze over when you attempt to speak. They make outrageous demands but fail to show up when you’re in need. They disparage or attack what you say and do but bristle at the slightest hint of disagreement or criticism. They wear you down with passive-aggressive barbs and gaslight you when you question them about it.

Whatever the particular dynamics of your relationship, the bottom line is that you are constantly working to meet the narcissist’s insatiable need for validation while never feeling genuinely seen or acknowledged in return. You can’t control the narcissist, but you can protect and empower yourself with healthier boundaries in the relationship.

Here are five boundary-setting basics you can begin to implement right now for your safety, sanity, and self-respect.

1. Stop Explaining Yourself

Seriously, just stop, immediately. The narcissist doesn’t care about your thoughts, feelings, reasons, or excuses. This is the nature of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Narcissists do not have empathy or genuine interest in others beyond the service or status others offer them. They are not listening, not thinking about your point of view, and not interested in what you have to say unless it relates back to them in some way. When you explain yourself, you put yourself on the defensive, which is never a good position to be in with a narcissist.

2. Stop Making Yourself Vulnerable

Again, please stop right now. The narcissistic personality sees vulnerability as weakness, period. Those of us with emotional intelligence understand that vulnerability is part of being human and necessary for trust and and intimacy. Through our vulnerability we access our greatest strength and connectedness. But the emotionally primitive narcissist merely sees your vulnerability as an opening for manipulation, one-upmanship, or outright attack. Narcissists view life as a competition or, in more extreme cases, a war zone.

3. Stop Looking for Attunement

Attunement is what we all look for in our relationships, especially with our loved ones and friends. Empathetic mirroring, understanding, and emotional engagement with others is necessary for healthy development. It is essential for the child learning self-regulation, the teenager working on secure individuation, and the adult building intimacy in relationships. Sadly, the narcissistic personality misses attunement in early childhood and remains unwilling or unable to genuinely attune to others later in life. The narcissist craves and often demands attuned attention and empathetic connection from others but does not reciprocate it. Many narcissists actively negate others as a way of feeling superior and in control.

4. Stop Expecting Them to Change

Narcissists can change. But the nature of the personality disorder is a mindset of emotional alienation and delusions of superiority, which shuts out self-reflection and personal responsibility. As much as you may care about the narcissist in your life, it is important to recognize that people with NPD rarely change and only do so if motivated for themselves, not for you or anyone else. As long as you continue to look for change, you keep yourself in the loop of neglect and abuse.

5. Stop Excusing Them

Narcissists know better. Like the rest of us, they know right from wrong, and they know when they’re hurting people. The difference between them and those with empathy and a sense of personal responsibility is that narcissists believe they are above the rules, entitled to special privileges, and justified in their bullying treatment of others. People who overlook or excuse narcissistic behavior normalize and embolden abusers and perpetuate trauma in those abused.

I share these boundary-setting basics with my coaching clients every day. They will help you regain your footing in relation to narcissists in your life and protect you from debilitating cycles of abuse and emotional abandonment.

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.

View Comments (2)

Kathlern says:

December 14, 2020 at 6:10 pm

Thank you for sharing your comprehensive lists of personality disorders who can ruin your life. It took a lifetime to finally understand who these people are. They are impossible to live with. Like a thorn in your path. I realized that the only way to get out of these types is to walk away. As you said, no explanations, just do it. I don't have enough year's in my life left to crawl out of this paper bag.

Heading to Simplicity. :)
Ellen says:

September 28, 2022 at 2:00 pm

Numbers 2 and 3 are the ones I struggle with the most. Vulnerability, emotional honesty and seeking genuine connection with others are just a natural part of who I am and how I lead my life and I often feel like I have to turn those things off when interacting with certain people. And unfortunately, now I am wary of new people. I know it's a process but it's tough going. And often lonely. As an INFP I treasure my solitude (and time with my dog!) but it would be nice to find more people who I click with.
Thank you Julie, for this site you created. It's been enormously helpful for me in making sense of the way I grew up.