"I think of one of my patients when she discovered her brother was terrorizing their elderly mother with violent threats and financial abuse. When she named the harm, he flipped the script — denying everything and accusing her of being unstable, all while fiercely protecting his “golden boy” image. Under family pressure to stay quiet, she spiraled into rumination. But armed with awareness and support, she stood firm. Like a broken record, she calmly named the harm until her boundary held. It came at a cost, but her brother was eventually removed from their mother’s home.
...
Of the dizzying array of tactics, perhaps the most effective is crisis manufacturing. The constant emergencies aren’t flukes — they’re by design. They keep everyone in survival mode, distracting from deeper issues and ensuring the narcissist stays at the center of attention and control. For my patients who have survived narcissistic abuse, it might be an explosive tantrum, a threat to seek full custody or a frantic late-night call about a (fabricated) mugging. On the national stage, it takes the form of rhetorical escalations, legal threats or emergency declarations designed to dominate the news cycle and overwhelm opposition.
...
But recovery begins when people stop playing along or exhausting energy in cycles of infighting. Instead of spending precious bandwidth on disbelief or outrage, the goal is to name the tactic, call out the harm, cultivate trusted support and let go of what is beyond your control. Persistent engagement in shock, bargaining or rumination often reflects the mind’s attempt to delay the grief associated with profound loss — private and emotional for my patients, social and institutional for our country.
...
First: Stop enabling. Reactive efforts to clean up the damage often backfire, shielding narcissists from accountability and allowing them to retain influence. On a political level, this means pausing to strategize before rushing in to fix the narcissist’s mess. Strategic restraint — like that practiced by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has been criticized for not “swinging at every pitch” — is not weakness. It’s discipline.