I was having a conversation by e-mail recently with somebody coping with a narcissistic figure in his life. A big part of it was how the narcissist's influence made my friend feel terrible about himself--terrible if he blew up at the narcissist, and terrible if he gave in to the narcissist. A narcissist will always make sure it's your fault: either your fault for getting emotional and blowing up ("What's WRONG with you?!") or your fault for not dancing to the narcissist's tune ("What's WRONG with you?!") Funny enough, somehow it's always "what's wrong with you," isn't it....
This friend had recently made a brave attempt to put the narcissist in his place, which of course evoked wrath and ire from the narcissist, and my friend was doubting himself (of course--that's how the game-plan goes, that's what the narcissist wants).
Here is what I wrote my friend: with names and pronouns deleted. The narcissist is just X.
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I think that was very constructive, your setting that boundary with X. Especially since you are apparently not the first to confront X about such outbursts. It is always helpful when you have external, objective confirmation of your impression, indicating that it's not simply your inability to relate to somebody (whether X or somebody else).
It's not about "chemistry."
Let that objective assurance be your guide and peace in this: the problem is in X and your getting interiorly agitated or personally offended at it makes it neither better nor worse, but is perfectly irrelevant. To put it this way, X's behavior has no more to do with you than it does with me (and X doesn't even know me!).
Mind you, I'm not underplaying how X's behaviors have indeed affected you personally over the years, because you do have interaction with X that I don't have.
But what I DO mean is, the source of that behavior within X has nothing more to do with you than it does with a person X doesn't even know, like me.
Setting your boundary is about freeing yourself not only from X's behaviors but also from "the specter of X" inside your psyche, which is the far more important issue.
Distinguish between the person X and X's "ghost" in your mind. Setting your boundary with the person is wise, and your absolute, mature, grown-up right. But as for the "ghost," i.e., the accumulation of memories, feelings, emotional triggers, that can be harder.
The first step is, I find, to realize that there are never any "ghosts" in my psyche that are really "that person." All our interior "ghosts" are us. My memories of, say, a kid who bullied me in junior high aren't that kid. They're ME...in the act of REMEMBERING. The real kid (pushing 70 now, like me) is who-knows-where doing who-knows-what today. But the mental "package" dressed up as a memory of that kid is a psycho-emotional issue, a "ghost," entirely inside of me, that I'm wrestling with--really, with myself. The kid no longer has anything to do with it, really.
That realization brings a stunning liberation. I suddenly realize I have no emotional or moral debt to that "ghost." Because it's part of me I have an absolute right--an actual, sovereign, "royal" sort of right--to do whatever I want with it. I can crush it up like a used Pepsi can and toss it into the trash heap of oblivion forever. I don't need that thing inside me, so it's gone, done, liquidated for good. Kill the ghost. And life rolls forward like it was never there. It's wonderful.
As for the real live person, whoever it is, whether or not they're still in your life, or for that matter even still alive, they become, in a manner of speaking, an "option." That is, "my relationship with that person is entirely optional, depending on that person's behavior."
Perhaps this sounds un-Christian, but is it really? If there's a cashier at the supermarket who spits in your face every time you check out, are you going to keep going to that checkout line, or even to that supermarket? That's just common sense. You might even "forgive" them but you're not going to shop there anymore. It's just plain common sense.
Sometimes it's simply inevitable that you cut off interaction with a person who simply will not interact with you in any workable way. Forgiveness and the possibility of a continuing workable relationship are actually two different things, and the one doesn't always mean the other.
Sometimes, though, it's inescapable (like in family or work situations) that you will have occasional interactions with that person, but you can make a decision to keep it "all business." That means being physically present when you have no other choice, being socially polite and cordial, like passing the salt when asked and saying "Thank you" when they pass the salt to you, but beyond that being a blank wall, a "dead" resonating board that doesn't resonate anymore. If they try to press buttons or hit triggers it doesn't work because you have no more buttons or triggers inside for them. The most they can get out of you if they insist on trying is, "I'm not interested in that," or simply total silence, not out of fear but out of utter non-interest. They have zero right of entré to your inner world. Certainly not to suggest the least thing to you about how you understand yourself. That's not their place or right any more than it's the place or right of the philodendron on the kitchen counter to do that.
A good analogy: when you hear a dog bark, you think "Well, that's what a dog does," but you don't take it as a personal challenge or comment on your human worth.
That's how I have learned to cope with difficult people in my life, and it's hugely liberating. That mindset will even help you manage things like your tone of voice and inner agitation when you find yourself in inescapable situations, like X directly challenging you on your behavior or how you're relating to X (which in such instances really means, "How dare you not dance when I fire at your feet!"). If need be, we can drily reply, "I'm relating to you just fine, X. It works for me. You do what works for you." It takes sticking to it and not giving up at the first pushback, 'cause there WILL be pushback. This type doesn't give up right away. But they do give up, because the need for an ego-fix is more compelling than the need to keep trying it with you.
Ultimately nobody really has the power to shape your inner psyche beyond the influence you allow them. If you don't allow them, then eventually they learn and adjust to the new reality (and go looking for easier victims).
