Happiness Focus - Dan Cassenti, Novelist

Concept: Dealing with narcissists is life-draining. Their severely diminished capacity for happiness and their need to take up all the oxygen in the room leaves their victims in constant stress when in a narcissist’s presence. To counter this life drain, recovering victims can go out of their way to regain energy. This may include having fun with friends, taking a solo walk through nature, or engaging in hobbies. A happiness focus is not limited to time away from narcissists. Recovering victims can turn things around when in the presence of narcissists by not letting the stress and despair narcissists feel get to them. Activities may include humming a happy song, feeling good about not being narcissistic, and focusing on spending time with anyone else who might be around at the time who doesn’t suffer from narcissism.

How this helps and the opposite hurts: Not only does the focus on happiness recharge recovering victims, but it can help them get to the discard phase in narcissistic relationships. Narcissists who see happiness in their recovering victims realize that they have progressed from coming out from under their control. They react by inflicting abusive techniques to bring recovering victims back under their control. These attempts take energy from narcissists. They regain the energy when successful but do not when they fail. A history of enough failed attempts makes them stop altogether. Victims who let narcissists drain their happiness can expect continued and worsening (because narcissists are encouraged by techniques that result in success) abuse.

Examples:

“It’s a great thing to disagree! Diversity of thought is a wonderful thing about life, and I embrace it.”
Frank shut the door behind him as his wife yelled at him and headed to his car so he could meet his best friend for dinner.
While with her narcissistic husband, Jane always hums to herself rather than listening to his abusive words.

Advice: When in a narcissistic relationship where complete abandonment is not an option, always show up when you must be there with them with reminders to yourself of not having to live as a narcissistic person, which will help promote a positive attitude about yourself. Please don’t force yourself to think you like being there (as a rule, we shouldn’t try to trick our emotions, which doesn’t work and dissociates us from reality), but we can feel genuine happiness through positive affirmations.

Narcissism Encyclopedia

Defenses Against