Keeping Our Sanity, Dealing With a Narcissist - The Hoarse Whisperer

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he Hoarse Whisperer @HoarseWisperer

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Since that thing I wrote about the ouster of FBI Deputy Director McCabe is kinda blowing up my phone, I wanna layer on a little something...
There's debate about how much fear is enough fear - and whether my appearance of relative calm is good, bad or otherwise. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/958403119758618624.html
1/
I'm not unflappable. I just happen to not be easily flapped by Trump-related things.

Here's why:

I understand severe narcissism like Trump's like the back of my hand. Trump is like an old familiar movie.

2/
I've spent egregious amounts of time and money coming to understand what makes someone like Trump tick and how to best manage them and the shit they do.

I do this daily and have been doing it for ten years. Trump ain't new or unpredictable or erratic to me. At all.

3/
The single most important thing that takes forever to accept when dealing with a person with severe narcissistic personality disorder is that you can't get blown about by every breeze.

If they are controlling your emotions, you're losing.

4/
The minute you get to a place when you can look at even awful behaviors with calm detachment, you regain control.

So, I don't get pushed entirely off my moorings by even very stressful days like yest... That took ten years and $10k to get halfway decent at. It ain't easy.

5/
Pivoting back to yest, even though all the sh** that went down was a Crazymaking Deluxe, I just stuck to my knitting:

Looking past the headlines. Not catastrophizing abt things not yet known or certain. Seeking first to understand. One hand clapping. Zen something something.

6/
...and as I've seen in my own life more times than I can count, after doing that, the thing that seemed catastrophic is less so.

If I were FBI Director Chris Wray, I would have pushed Andrew McCabe aside too. His baggage is distracting and can be used to undermine the FBI.

7/
If I were Chris Wray, I would have also appointed someone like David Browdich as the Acting Deputy Director to replace McCabe.

It robs Trump of a distraction. It sends a message to insiders that the place is not being taken over. It puts a poster-boy in a key position.

8/
Beyond all that though, thinking solely of how I manage a narcissist daily, it's also consistent with what it takes to "win" with them.

You don't defeat a narcissist by punching them in the face. You beat them by cutting them off at the knees.

9/
If you find yourself in a tug-of-war with a narcissist, you are already losing.

Instead, you engineer around them. You set the traps that they are absolutely clinically incapable of not stepping right into. You give them rope. Lots of rope.

10/
...and while you're giving them rope, you take away anything they can use against you.

You deprive them of talking points... while letting them pile up more evidence against them.

11/
So, I was less flapped than most yesterday. Yes, I'm worried in general like everyone else. Yes, I feel intense urgency to fight everywhere we can about everything we can influence.

12/
For me though, as of right now though - and until given reason to feel otherwise - the doings within the FBI itself are not atop my list of worries.

My lunch-pail is packed to go to work on protecting Mueller and Rosenstein... and yest's events did nothing to change that.

13/
For me... just me personally... vigilance is good. Urgency is good. A healthy amount of fear is good.

A calm, mercenary focus is even better.

The news cycle ain't gonna tip me over. I plan my work and work my plan and no headline is gonna change that.