If you’ve never had the displeasure of dealing with a narcissist, they have a secret weapon they like to use: it’s termed ‘the dog whistle’. A narcissist makes it a point to learn things that will set you off. At some point, they will take that knowledge and use it to elicit a reaction, usually a negative one. If it just so happens to be in a public setting when it happens, everyone else will be oblivious to it because the narcissist knows the intention to is to trigger you and get a reaction, making you look like the crazy one.
Over the past year, the narcissist that I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with learned a few of my pet peeves. Randomly, he would do ‘the dog whistle’ to elicit a reaction. There would be times I react (everyone is prone to a bad day and there were times I’d react).
For the past month, I’ve made it a point to not react since I discovered that by not reacting, you’re not fueling the fire. It took a couple of weeks but he figured out I wasn’t reacting like I was before. As a result, for the past week or so he’s tried amplifying his efforts. Try as he might, I’ve been biting my tongue. I’d rather have a bloody mouth than fuel the fire. It seems to have only intensified his efforts because he’s finding it harder to push my buttons. Since this past Saturday, he’s changed his tactics multiple times. No response whatsoever from my end. The more I ignore him, the harder he tries. I have never met someone as determined as him to bring someone down.
Island of Misfit Mamas 