The moment you stay calm is the moment a narcissist panics — and what they do next is never accidental. If staying calm made things worse, let’s go over why. Calmness doesn’t stop a narcissist — it tells them they’re losing control. Today, I will discuss what narcissists do after your calmness stops working. 

If you read my last blog, you learned why your calmness triggers narcissistic rage. Calmness isn’t peace to a narcissist. Your calmness is a loss of their control.  In that blog, I discussed how your calmness removes their emotional supply.  Narcissists regulate their self-esteem through your reactions. When reactions disappear, they feel exposed and this doesn’t bring a sense of relief to them. So, when calmness stops working, they don’t reflect. They escalate.

As the narcissist starts to spin out of control from your calmness, they go through 3 Phases to regain control.

The first phase is Escalation Through Provocation. When you are calm, and the narcissist feels more exposed and at risk of narcissistic injury, they must escalate through provocation.  The narcissist must try harder to get any reaction from you.  They may use subtle jabs which are disguised as “jokes”.  They gaslight you by rewriting past events to provoke confusion.  And they push boundaries they know matter to you. They believe the reaction is still there — they just haven’t found the right button yet.

The second phase in their engagement is Rage, Cruelty, or Emotional Punishment.  Your calmness triggers their fragile ego and becomes an ego injury. During this phase, you may see the narcissist display sudden anger which seemingly comes out of nowhere. They will engage in personal attacks which are meant to wound you emotionally.  They may even give the silent treatment or emotionally withdraw from you. This isn’t about the topic that led to them getting upset. It’s about dominance restoration. They aren’t reacting to your words — they’re reacting to your emotional independence.

The third phase in their engagement is Retaliation and Image Control. When control can’t be restored privately, they manage it publicly. This is when the narcissist uses the smear campaign, plays the victim to others, or paints you as “cold”, “cruel”, or “changed”. If they can’t control you, they try to control how others see you.  When you don’t follow the narrative they have carefully crafted for you, they will enlist others to get you back onto the script they have written for you.

The 3 Phases of Control from the narcissist are scary when you are in the middle of them.  You feel out of control and the narcissist takes away your voice.   Don’t let them create this emotional response in you and most importantly don’t try to justify or explain your actions.  Quite simply, they don’t care. Escalation is not failure — it’s confirmation. The more composed you are, the clearer their loss of control becomes. Your calm didn’t cause this. It revealed it.

Calmness doesn’t change a narcissist.  It changes what they’re able to do to you. 

If you want to know how to stay calm without putting yourself in danger, that’s what I’ll break down next.