Do you find you are always trying to explain yourself to the narcissist? You feel misheard, misunderstood, and invalidated so you try to explain how you feel and why you feel that way. The problem is, the narcissist doesn’t listen and quite frankly they don’t care. They may outright ignore what you are saying or gaslight to convince you that your thoughts and feelings are incorrect. But this just makes you want to explain more of your perspective in an effort to get the narcissist to understand you. Why do you want to explain yourself to the narcissist when you know it won’t matter?
Remember, the narcissist likes to keep you feeling uncertain about your own reality because they need to fabricate a reality for you that best benefits them. The narcissist has absolutely no interest in allowing you to feel secure in the relationship, and this is why relationships with narcissists are toxic. They create chaos and make you feel insecure as a way to maintain control over you. The more control they have, the easier you are to manipulate.
A primary tool by which the narcissist controls is through gaslighting. The narcissist will tell you that you are misremembering things or are crazy for how you think about something. They want you to doubt your own thoughts and feelings because then they can introduce an alternate belief that will benefit them. So, when you know what happened and the narcissist tries to gaslight you and tell you that you are wrong, it is only natural you want to defend yourself and try to get them to understand the truth.
When we are told that we are wrong we want to explain ourselves so that we can be understood and also be supported in our decisions. When you are trying to explain yourself to someone who is gaslighting you, however, you will become more and more confused. The gaslighter isn’t trying to understand you. They are trying to confuse you. They use word salad and other communication tactics so you lose focus on what you are trying to say. They may even rage to activate your emotions so that you feel more confused. Then, you start to explain your own confusion and you lose focus on what the actual issue even was. This makes you feel more defensive and wanting to explain yourself more to get out of this tangled mess of thoughts and accusations you find yourself in.
Add in the fact that narcissists lack empathy. They can’t take your perspective on the situation, so they don’t have the ability to understand where you are coming from. You are explaining yourself as a way to be heard and understood while the narcissist is only thinking of themselves and what they need to say and do so that they can protect themselves against shame and narcissistic injury.
As you are trying hard to express yourself and feel validated in your own experiences, the narcissist is only thinking of themselves and how things will benefit them. They aren’t listening to your words and processing what changes they can make to prevent similar situations in the future. They are listening to your words to find things they can use against you in that moment, or in the future.
The narcissist is happiest when they see other people struggling. The more you explain yourself the more their narcissistic ego is inflated. Don’t give them the fuel they need to feel better about themselves as you progressively feel worse about yourself. If you find yourself trying to explain yourself to the narcissist, step back and ask yourself why you are trying to get them to understand and whether your explanation of the situation in the past has led to any benefits. If not, then this time isn’t going to be any different. The best thing you can do for yourself is step away and let the narcissist think what they want, because at the end of the day that is what they will do anyways.