Some Possible Things to Say to Narcissists (an alternative to the DEEP method)

 (edited with new information at the bottom of the post)

If you must engage with narcissists, these replies may or may not help. 

Sometimes the gray rock method can't work, especially in a divorce where children are involved, so someone dreamt up the "yellow rock method". This alternative runs along the same lines, except it replaces the DEEP method instead of the gray rock method. 

As with anything you want to say to narcissists, it is always good to take these ideas to a domestic violence counselor before proceeding because narcissism can sometimes come with psychopathy and put you in danger of more of their rage, or violence, and escalation of abuse in general. 

Narcissists don't like to feel that their power and control of you is being undermined or slipping away, and they can rage and punish you over that. 

Psychopaths don't like to think that they don't hoodwink you and can abuse you over that. 

So be careful. 

In some circumstances these may work to get the narcissist to respond in ways they are not used to. It also takes control away from them, and gives you more of it. As they try to control what the conversation is about, what you are allowed to talk to them about and deciding when you should be silenced by them, you decide how much engagement you want with them instead by keeping the conversation on topic, making sure it's not just going to be a shaming session about your character (which most narcissists often revert to when they are not getting their way, when they feel minimized, when they feel insecure about how much you can be manipulated by them, when they feel insecure that you're seeing past their carefully crafted image and reputation). 

This method by-passes all of that. 

I found these on Facebook by someone who calls himself "Psychology Scholar". Like all alternative methods, even the "yellow rock method", it was most likely thought up by an average person who had to deal with a narcissist and couldn't do a full DEEP method. 

So let's get into it.

Following is what you can say to bring the conversation to a healthier level. It's not what they are used to, but it might help to disarm their propensity to start drama, arguments, getting their own way, projecting their own personality traits on to you, and keep you from falling into the trap of reacting and feeding them "negative narcissistic supply":

* "That's your opinion. Not a fact."
   This keeps them from assessing based on opinions. It keeps them from assassinating your character (at least in your presence), and getting into a place where they are attacking what ever qualities they think you possess.
     Usually when narcissists attack you, they are unsure about their ability to dominate you and their hierarchical standing is at stake. It takes away their ability to control you, dominate you and hurt you. By making it "their opinion" only, it disarms their ability to put you on the defensive, of getting narcissistic supply via seeing you hurt, and makes them look like "the weak one" because they are operating from opinions and not facts.
     Most narcissists act on opinions anyway, based on their own emotions, so you are making it obvious that you know what they are doing.

* "I'm not explaining myself again."
     This is a type of DEEP method, but you are telling them that your "explaining yourself" has a time-boundary, and that you've stopped, and that you aren't giving them any more of it. 
     They may keep going into all kinds of paranoid fantasies about you, or try to convince you that you need to explain some more because they can't go on "limited facts" (breaking your boundary, which is also a test to see if they can break boundaries with you in general).
     But assuming it doesn't head off into that direction, with the more reasonable narcissists this method can stop them from twisting your words, getting into circular arguments to confuse or confound you, getting you defending yourself, explaining yourself, engaging with them in their argument tactics, and taking what they are saying personally. You just end your part of the argument by saying you are not going to explain yourself again and again, that you've given them enough explanations, and if they don't want to consider what you've said, then that it's up to them, but that you are done with going into it further.
     The less information you give narcissists, the better. They exploit information at some point to hurt you or sabotage you. 
     They may keep their end of an argument going, but if you don't respond, they'll be disappointed, wear themselves out and quit.
     If they bait you to keep you engaged, if you keep saying "I've explained myself and therefore have nothing more to say" then it can deflate them in terms of getting more drama and emotional reactions out of the situation.

* "That's not about me."
     This helps stop narcissistic projection. Narcissists assume you are like them and that your character is based on their own traits. This stops them from doing that if you say it enough and differentiate yourself from them.
     If you list your traits and don't bend to their often negative assessments of you, you can't be persuaded to take on their judgements, and you can make a stand that you aren't going to deal with their judgements either. 
     It's important to note that narcissists love to persuade others of dire flaws, but if you disagree with them, and keep stating some of your "real traits", many of them tend to slink off. When I did this myself in a work situation, the narcissist looked like they were "beaten" at their game of nailing me to their proverbial "self esteem cross".
     This person was stealing, but that's another story. At any rate, I reasoned to myself that the reason this person was trying to mess with my self esteem was to get my eyes off of their own "egregious flaw", and to be in a position of ruminating about "my character flaws", and constantly in a position of defending myself. 
     While they don't like the fact that you are your own separate person without their same dire flaws, and can't be influenced in ways that narcissists like to influence others, it can keep them grounded, that you are indeed a separate person from them, especially if you remind them of that fact. 
     In addition, it can give you some peace. 
     It's also a type of boundary (narcissists don't like boundaries, but it's healthiest for their victims if boundaries are set from the very beginning). 

"You're allowed to be upset." - when they are in a rage.
     This separates their emotion from yours, and is another method to keep narcissistic projections at bay.
     They will be upset if they fail to make you upset or to convince you that they are "the real victim". As in the prior saying, it puts a boundary between your emotions and their emotions. It also shuts down their proclivity to distract you from the fact that their emotions show (not just yours).

"Let's stick to one topic." 
     This can help to stop narcissistic "chaos bombing". Narcissists love chaos and bringing in extraneous matters into their arguments as "me attack, you defend" ploys. It also stops them from psychoanalyzing you, stops them from focusing on your tone of voice or facial expressions, stops them from bringing up your childhood, stops them from trying to embarrass you or bringing up things that they think might help them to shame you and break your self esteem, stops them from escalating an argument. You can walk away and say, "You didn't hear me the first time. I said I only wanted to stick to the subject and I'm not interested in the rest of what you are bringing into this."
     Narcissists like to control conversations and what is talked about, and this puts more control into your hands instead. They may do a tit-for-tat and try to dampen down even more of what is discussed, but it is better than listening to "everything but the kitchen sink" types of arguing styles.
     Narcissists don't know how to fight fair, so in a way it shames them about their propensity to bring in subjects that might normally work for them, but aren't working as far as you are concerned. 
     Warning: this can mean they go to others to smear your name because they can't stand that kind of a boundary. They aren't able to get negative narcissistic supply from you, or more chaos and drama, or more power, more control with a boundary that "sticks to the subject." And they detest boundaries anyway. 
     But again, for the more reasonable narcissists (narcissists without all of the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder), it can point them in a direction that is more succinct, more about solving an issue (if they want to solve it). 

"I'm not interested in arguing. I'm interested in solutions."
     You flip the game they try to play completely in terms of "winning their own way".
     It does neither party any good if they get their way all of the time anyway.
     They very rarely have a script for solutions except for what will satisfy them, and it might get them thinking about solutions rather than more arguing. Maybe. At the very least, it shuts the arguments they want to have down. It shuts down contempt, It shuts down them using their handy "self esteem" crucifixion tools. It stops you from tolerating the negativity and "playing the victim" that they bring to arguments. 
     It can also drain their influence over you if you can make this method succinct and focus on positive solutions. 

"I'm okay with you not understanding me."
Narcissists won't understand you anyway, and they are not focused on that because power, control and domination are all that they want out of relationships (usually).
     Because they are way more invested in negative judgements about how others act and do things, and in what they think and feel, this lets them know that neither they or you are interested in understanding you.
     They thrive on being admired and obeyed too, and this statement makes it clear that you've given up on admiring and obeying because they don't understand you. You've given up on explaining anything to them any more too.
     Explaining is what exhausts most people when it comes to narcissists (narcissists are not invested in listening anyway), so instead of getting tired, worn down and reactive, it's a way of telling them that you don't give a sh*t as to how they twist the truth, project, blame shift, tell lies and don't listen. 
     Instead of admiring them, you're telling them that you're out of the game they are trying to play at misunderstanding you in order to enact some hostile take-over in terms of creating more perspecticide and negative narcissistic supply around it. 
      Someone who isn't in relationships to understand the perspectives of others is not interested you, in other words. 
     An alternative to this might be "I understand that you don't want to know me or understand me."
     It has been said in many memes, forums and articles that narcissists intentionally misunderstand you in order to manipulate you and to get more information about you to manipulate you. You fall into the habit of explaining yourself where the narcissist gets even more information about you.
     To my way of thinking, I think this is definitely true in situations where they feel they are losing control of others, and has a lot to do with why they erroneously blame with perspecticide, but I really don't think it is true all of the time. 
     Here is an example where they intentionally misunderstand you:
     They are feeling they are losing control over you. You are somewhat financially dependent on them. They want to rock your world by discarding you and withdrawing all financial support. This is done to get you back under their control. They can't figure out what to accuse you of, and to say that they aren't controlling you enough is something they can't allow themselves to say even though it is the truth. So they accuse you of an egregious look on your face (that never happened) they didn't like instead, or that you are thinking critical thoughts about them (perspecticide with erroneous blaming). 
     What they are trying to do in this situation is to coerce you to give them positive narcissistic supply by thinking well of them, and to get back into line where they can control you in a way that satisfies them.
     Here is an example where they are not intentionally misunderstanding you:
     You have returned from a business trip where you got delayed because of bad weather. You spent the weekend in the city where you initially arrived over a weekend. You are accused of staying away too long (on purpose), that it had nothing to do with flight scheduling and bad weather. In fact, they accuse you of having an affair while you were gone. They won't look at the evidence that the airport was snowed in. They decide to punish you by "going missing" themselves. They take up having an affair because they genuinely think you had an affair while you were away from them. Narcissists are often paranoid and they think others are trying to escape them (which can sometimes be true), or hurt them (which tends not to be true), and that they need to punish others in a tit-for-tat way by doing the things they believe you are doing to them. This shows more paranoia, more distrust, more projection than actually trying to misunderstand you. 
     It is often hard for the rest of us to tell the difference to whether narcissists in our own lives are  intentionally trying to misunderstand us or whether they are just paranoid, or into their own paranoia fantasies, projecting, mistrustful, or blindly self serving, or are incapable of understanding us (most narcissists are truly terrible listeners and also cannot get out of a "black and white" mind trap), thus it is hard to tell.
     They tend not to "hear" others very well because of the mistrust of others most narcissists have. 
     At any rate "explaining" in either situation is likely to be exhausting, humiliating, to go nowhere, and often not worth the energy, thus giving up and saying "I'm okay with you misunderstanding me."

IN CONCLUSION
WITH SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT MY OWN EXPERIENCES WITH METHODS

All methods on "how to deal with narcissists" have their issues.

Personally I have come to the conclusion that relationships with narcissists, and even the small progress one gets from these kinds of methods, do not really satisfy any deeper issues with narcissists. If the narcissists are abusive it especially doesn't help because no matter what you do, if they are in an abusive phase, they won't want to give it up and the abuse will escalate.

If they aren't abusive (yet), at best, it keeps the verbal attacks at bay, and that's it, nothing more.

And sometimes the method doesn't even "help" with that, depending on the narcissist. 

What I have found is that the more quiet you are, the more you keep to yourself, the more you put your attention elsewhere, the more bothered they are because they can't control a person doing disappearing acts and not paying attention to them. The more engaged with them you are, the more they take it as an invitation to control and dominate you more and more. 

There is no happy place to sit among the spectrum between engagement and disengagement. I have found that it is always unsettling, always upsetting, with too many "fly-by-your-pants" unstable situations, where nothing works and there is always a negative consequence no matter which way you go.

Eventually you learn to resent the narcissist, or perhaps all narcissists, especially on an emotional level. For those of us who primarily look at the world on an intellectual level, we may not resent them so much as resign ourselves instead to this: "There is nothing that works. I don't want to be close to a person where nothing I do works and where there is that much contempt coming from them. I understand they came from a difficult childhood, but I am not prepared to take up that challenge, and maybe only professional therapists can truly tackle the challenges. I just don't know how to deal with someone who wants to control everything, including most other people."

When a person's main agenda in their relationships is to get power, control and domination, that agenda is not the right reason to be in close personal relationships to begin with. So how can these relationships truly work and thrive?

Narcissists are mostly trying to manipulate you into a sycophantic position and every time they do that successfully, you are growing more and more unhappy, a lesser version of yourself, giving up pieces of yourself, eventually giving up your convictions and personality, disgusted that you've become a sycophant to a cruel, deceptive, unethical tyrant, and sad that you are a robot, and if not a robot, "a rejected piece of trash" they throw out. And there aren't many choices other than those. None of it adds up to happiness, health, peace, feeling loved and in love, feeling trust and trusted - and what's the point of a life of that?

You are either going to fight for yourself and for your autonomy from them, or you are going to go all in on being treated as their a## kisser, and in the meantime gaslighted and insulted while you do so. You are going to be told what you are allowed to discuss, where you are allowed to go, how you're allowed to dress, whom to see and not see, and how you phrase things, and being taught how to please them constantly, dealing with triangulation, insults, sabotage, devaluations, discards and even their sadism in some cases. 

To me, that's all a nightmare I do not want to live through again (or again, and again, and again as that choice clearly is about that). 

To me, any kind of close personal relationship where one person is that dominating is not workable. Any relationship where one person is never open to compromise on any level, or listening, or where the person has to get their way all of the time is not workable. Any close personal relationship that hurts as  much as it does with narcissists is too painful to continue.

I don't want to be around narcissists any more.

This doesn't mean you have to come to the conclusion I came to. You can figure out what is best for you. I don't fault people for trying, and trying, and trying, to the point of obsession and total exhaustion, because I have tried too, mostly through pointless explaining, and a pointless full time lifestyle of "pleasing a narcissist" giving up just about everything that made me autonomous.  

With pleasing behaviors, I found worse outcomes, not better ones.

Same with explaining: in explaining, I found worse outcomes, not better ones.

With pleasing behaviors I found that they took it as an excuse to control me even more and add in insults if I wasn't doing things to "their perfection" - quite painful. A lot of survivors have "drowning dreams" when they get to this stage, and I had plenty of those. 

In explaining, I was trying to bypass their tendencies to put their spin on what they thought was going on. When all I received was more perspecticide no matter how much I tried to get them to listen, it again became pointless. I came to the conclusion that there was absolutely nothing to talk about any more.

With sociopaths, you get to a point of not wanting to engage in lightening speed, because not only do they want to control you, most want to hurt you too (and usually "take" something away from you or use you in some manner).  

With narcissists it goes a bit slower, but ends up in a similar place.

I found the lack of empathy in both narcissists and sociopaths too hard to deal with too. 

I was aware in Kindergarten that when exposed to a lot of other children I was suddenly thrust into their own pain narratives and perspectives. Automatically, seeing a scraped up knee of another child meant that my own knee would burn and ache. And for a long time.

Even when I tried to "will it away".

And even when that child was no longer in my presence.

As I got little older, I tried to stop feeling transferred pain. I tried to "toughen up" as I was told to do by elders, even entreated by other kids to partake in bullying myself, but I was never successful at minimizing the pain others went through, and therefor ineffective at toughening up or bullying with any conviction. I was called a "weirdo" for this HSP trait, more than anything else in my childhood. It made me feel like an outsider, a loner with a lone condition.

It wasn't helped by others I thought I could confide in about it:
"I'm so glad I'm not you! I couldn't stand that!"
"You have to stop that to defend yourself and get somewhere in life! You can't go on like this!"
"Ha, ha! You have to be a weakling then!" 
"You're going to be bullied with that going on!"

As I got older, I wondered how they could have that attitude. They don't want to have the feelings I have because they couldn't hurt people as well as they wanted? What? That seemed to be truly awful, and because I was looked at as being "weak", I stopped talking about it. Only as an adult I found that some other people went through what I did in this regard, and also felt like a freak in childhood. 

In some ways it led me to writing this blog decades later. 

Likewise, in Kindergarten I had burning sensations in my scalp for days when I saw one child try to rip out the hair of another child.

So being around people at a young age who didn't feel any empathy at all, let alone any "transferred  pain" from the pain of others, and who exploited my vulnerability as a child, seemed like a terrible trap, the kind of trap where I didn't know what to do to get out of, though I tried a lot of different methods, ones I made up, and ones others I discovered I used long before they became published methods, and even tried more methods that are not currently popular today.

I have not found any method that truly works wonders with narcissists (or sociopaths, as the latter peppered my childhood more than the former). I haven't experienced anything where you can feel "good", "healthy", and "be at peace" with the outcome. It's always stress, and then more stress, and then too much stress where your whole body has symptoms and the "flight" response kicks in. 

In fact, for me, as long as the other person puts "control" first before empathy, the more the "flight response" kicks in.   

The only thing that seemed to work for me was in adulthood.

I got to know other HSPs and empaths. I gave up on narcissists. I'll let you know, certainly, if I do find something that someone else claims to "truly work wonders" beyond just some sort of "hollowing out" of one's own emotions (self imposed silencing) and dumbing down communications with narcissists to the point of hardly communicating anything at all with them.

In the meantime, the things I mention in this post I've tried for the most part, and haven't liked, and if anything, I preferred the more drastic DEEP method. None of these I'd want to live full time in, only in emergency situations. If it's your cup of tea, "more power to you", as the saying goes. 

What I will ask is if you try this method, or some of what is suggested here, how did it make you feel, and how effective was it? 

(edited on 8/31/25): I actually found some answers as to why the flight response is so strong when people with PTSD come upon others who have no empathy. And having transferred pain, empathy, or emotional triggers and responses when others are in pain is also a PTSD "trait" or "trigger". It's a brain matter. I hope you read that post because it may enlighten you more as to what happens. And it also explains why hoovering for narcissists can be successful for the unaware target. Hoovering for malignant narcissists who generally use coercive control (fear tactics, intimidation, severe punishments for others who are not willing to be controlled) are less able to hoover, and I hope that post explains why.
     To read that post, you can go through this link. 

Another Way to Tell the Difference Between Overt Grandiose Narcissists, Covert Vulnerable Narcissists, Malignant Narcissists and Communal Narcissists: How They Get Narcissistic Supply

I thought this bit of knowledge might be useful in terms of how to tell the difference between a number of types of narcissists. The subject has been discussed by Dr. Ramani Durvasula, Dr. Les Carter, and is something that is taught in graduate schools in terms of the psychology of Cluster B personality disorders.

It is also a well-known way that psychologists tell the difference between the different forms of narcissism. It becomes necessary in order to know clients who are exhibiting narcissistic traits, or clients who are dealing with narcissists in their every day lives. 

So what is this post about?

It is about how particular narcissists get most of their narcissistic supply and what that can tell you in terms of what type of narcissism they have. 

Here is another link about narcissistic supply, which takes you to this link as supply is inexorably linked to narcissistic abuse, neglect, and exploitation, and to round it off to three links, here is another link. All of the articles say the same thing in different ways: it's about the narcissist getting attention, power, control, domination, and indulging in manipulating people to get what they want.  

The manipulations are otherwise known as tactics and many of them can be found in the right hand column of this page and continue to this page. 

This is the simplistic version (for now): 

Overt grandiose narcissists are more about what people assume about narcissism: the extroverted, bragging, charming, charismatic, attention-seeking, arrogant, "have to see it my way", bombastic, overtly "me first" type of narcissist.

Their main source of narcissistic supply is going to be about being the center of attention, that the attention is always on them, telling stories, talking over people, interrupting people, bragging, exaggerating their successes, flaunting fame or money, telling others how smart or beautiful they are, flaunting wealth, flaunting their hand-picked followers and sycophants, getting other people to invest in them personally or financially, appearing like a winner, and if they lose, telling others someone or something sabotaged them, that some sort of system was rigged against them.

They can play the victim to get attention in that way, but generally that's not their style (it's more the narcissistic supply of the covert vulnerable narcissist). They try to focus other people's attention on how popular, smart and God-like they are to other people, and that these other people will lose out if the narcissist is not a total leader, or if they are held accountable for the things they do (which, for all narcissists, will entail some lack of empathy or remorse for their victims). 

Overt grandiose narcissists generally punish others by being cold, rageful and interrupting so that they don't hear your side of things, demanding, commanding, telling you that you have to give them their own way, by trying to talk you into things, that they deserve to be in control (that they are smarter, more charismatic, more persuasive than you could ever hope to be). They are often obnoxious and their punishments are much more obvious in terms of gaining more power and control for themselves.  

Vulnerable covert narcissists are the more shy version of narcissists. Their scheme is primarily doing something obnoxious, hurtful, attention-seeking in a negative way, or neglectful, and "playing the victim" afterward. These narcissists are complainers: they complain they are not being seen as the "great parent", or "great friend" or "great spouse", or "great intelligent would-be leader". They whine about being overlooked in their jobs, in their family, in their friendship circles: in other words, not enough praise and leadership is going to them (and they are adamant that it should). They think they are superior and are being robbed of being seen as "the great authority" that they think they should be, and not being "given proper attention" or "praise" in most of their relationships.

Narcissistic supply for them is about getting pity, and playing "the pity card" constantly, in never-ending cycles. You're supposed to pity them, come to their rescue, pacify them, tell them how great they are again and again, soothe them, flatter them, and it's a never ending role. Sometimes they will want this pity, especially when other people's focus is on you, when you are going through the real tragedy. They have to create a scene that is somehow worse than yours so that the attention goes back to them and their concerns. 

And then when you can't give them your concerns in a kind of all-encompassing way because of issues unfolding in your own life, they will punish you for not coming to their rescue, and they will tell others with tears in their eyes, or in an angry petulant way: "What have I done to deserve this neglect? I've done everything I can to welcome her, and have her part of my life, but look at the way she treats me! I don't deserve this! And she's selfishly decided to focus on her own tragedy which happened two weeks ago! How much time does a person need to get over a tragedy!?"

One reason it is so covert is that not everyone catches on to these manipulations, and before you know it, they are not only using the event they want attention over to smear your good name and intentions, but giving you the silent treatment or discarding you because you failed in some way to give a lot of credence to the next victim story they tell, or told, or because you failed to praise them the way they wanted. And they have "exact ways" they want the praise and soothing to sound.

And of course, discards over not being praised enough with specific requirements of how the praise should sound is crazy-making, and will also rock your world if they do it a lot (and they tend to use it at times that they think are most advantageous to them). 

Covert vulnerable narcissists are much more reactive, hurt and enraged if you criticize them (although they have no trouble criticizing others - they tend to criticize you for years behind your back in a two-faced kind of way, because like all narcissists, they lack empathy and they want excuses for their potential discards - if they've been complaining about you for years, their reasons for a discard won't be as suspect - this is obviously unethical and hypocritical in a long term kind of way). They can and do end relationships over a criticism, their interpretation of criticism, or feeling slighted.

Which is to say that covert narcissists are more likely to use passive aggressive types of punishments in relationships: like the silent treatment, neglect of spouse and children who aren't cheerleading and praising them all of the time, telling false narratives or exaggerated stories with some truth and some lying behind their victims' backs, trying to paint their victims as either cruel, or crazy, or stupid, or ugly behind their backs, and usually indulging in a lot of smear campaigns. These folks are usually much more socially awkward, expect you to pacify and heal them, expect you to make the grand overtures in the relationship to make them feel more special, accepted and powerful. 

Sometimes the silent treatments and discards are "fake discards" as Jason Skidmore of The Nameless Narcissist likes to call them. The narcissistic head game is this (though, again, you may not be aware of it at all): They like people apologizing to them over and over again, even if it's a small matter. The narcissist will blow it up into a huge matter just to insist that an apology is due them. And guess who is always, always the apologizer? You, of course. This makes them feel superior to you, that you must always be the one to apologize (because they want you to believe like any narcissist wants you to believe, that you are the "flawed one" and that they are "the perfect one" in the relationship - "Why else would someone apologize to me all of the time?" they might say, "unless they have a reason to apologize?"). They can also prove that they do nothing wrong because they are never in the position of apologizer themselves.

They take these "facts" to their so-called friends, the people who they spend time disparaging you to behind your back. And part of the game is that if you are discarded by the narcissist in the end, they can prove how flawed you were because you were always apologizing to them.

However most people aren't aware of the games covert narcissists play, and the power differential in this kind of bullying, even if it is extreme, that often the more powerless person is feeling absolutely forced and terrified if they don't apologize in their trauma bonded way (with lots of terrible repercussions if the victim doesn't apologize in exactly the way the narcissist demands). Trauma bonds are formed with children, or the disabled, or the ill, people who are dependent on them for care and compassion. 

The victim can also be in a co-dependent relationship with the narcissist, where finances, children, a house, and friends are all shared (in other words, it's terrifying "not to apologize", especially if there are threats of repercussions like divorce and taking the children away, which there always tend to be if the covert narcissist insists on an apology and isn't getting one, or one like the one they demand). 

If they can make the case that people are always apologizing to them, and that they are so perfect that they never have to apologize to others, this is how narcissists separate and isolate their victims from not only connections, attention and love from others, but also from respect, knowing the victim's side of things, and so on.

Human beings, even the most intelligent ones among us, are still not bright enough to tell when they are being fooled by this story-line, and can go along with heresy.

This way of smearing their victims right at the start of their relationships with them is also how they get away with playing the victim and getting the pity going towards them than the real victims who are caught out in the cold with very little support. 

Again, it's unethical, and they do get duper's delight if they fool others, a sign that they have a few sociopathic traits (and most covert narcissists do have a few). Once you figure out this very, very common head game of the covert narcissist, the ethics behind the game can be so off-putting that you let them play their silent treatment game by deciding not to apologize, not to converse with them lest you get more head games (and you will), not to get entangled with them. You take yourself out of the game and let the repercussions fall where they will, even if it means starting a new life and giving up on people who believe that all they have to know is heresy from a narcissist to come to a conclusion of who is right and who is wrong.

And by the way, this game is especially destructive to children, and for them, as they are sacrificing the truth, their own dignity, and even being right, every time the covert narcissist wants to play this game with them.

It ties into why children of narcissists often find that they don't know who they really are just after they have a chance to escape in some way. 

It also ties into why so many children who have been abused by a narcissistic parent become extremely introverted. They get to a point where they don't say anything so that they will not have to apologize for anything. 

In the meantime, narcissists will keep inviting people to their endless pity parties, and it will be about how you did them wrong (when you didn't apologize to them for the next false, or blown up, accusation) until people get tired of listening to them rattle on about the subject over years sometimes.

Anyway, I bring this up to say that narcissists get plenty of narcissistic supply not only from holding pity parties, but from coercing vulnerable people into constantly apologizing to them, using passive aggressive abuses like fake discards and silent treatments. 

Communal narcissists tend to be the charitable types of narcissists, and give to causes, but they expect a lot in return such as loyalty and constant praise from their subjects, constant praise from the charity organizations - in other words, they want continual, often public, social recognition for what they do.

Most of us don't require constant praise for "giving"; we give because it is the right thing to do, the moral thing to do because we have "extra to give", and it's the right kind of cause. Some of us are even more humble and give anonymously. Communal narcissists won't have any of that: they require a spotlight on them. 

For them, narcissistic supply is about getting more and more admiration, attention, praise and loyalty, and of getting more and more power too, by showing they can be altruistic with their money and not just self indulgent. If they don't receive every kind of power they want, they punish the organization or the people receiving the donations, and even withhold from giving promised amounts. 

So their main source of narcissistic supply is going to be about being the center of attention in the media, or within a community, or among the rich and famous, or a commune type of setting with followers who praise them all of the time, ready to talk on their behalf for how benevolent they are, for "being their helper and angel of mercy". 

Benevolence is not the negative thing here. The head game here is to give donations in return for what the narcissist wants, which is narcissistic supply. So it's not likely to be "a gift" with no strings attached.

There is always likely to be shaming and lectures by the narcissist involved, and it keeps the culture enraptured with the wealthy and how much good or evil they do.

With malignant narcissism as part of their narcissism, they want to preach, "own" and isolate the people they give charity to. We only have to look at the headlines to see where these narcissists took a wrong turn in their benevolence: Jeffrey Epstein was quite benevolent to underage girls, even to the point of making their dreams of a college education come true, but with one caveat: to get them into silently prostituting themselves for him, or to his wealthy friends and clients; Jim Jones killed his followers via coercive suicide (and his followers were often the subject of racial discrimination and poor - again the power differential was extreme); David Koresh forbid his male followers to have sex with their own wives, but had sex with the wives instead.  

Any cult that practices isolationism, and keeps track of where members go, what they do, how loyal they are to the leader, and who they talk to, and anyone who insists that they have to be in the spotlight and praised endlessly for their benevolence, is usually narcissistic. A leader who tells a person they can't have sex with their own spouse (at their command) is probably narcissistic too. 

Malignant narcissists have Antisocial Personality Disorder traits and are more menacing. Their primary way to get people to do what they want is through both overt and passive aggressive threats, intimidations, micro-managing what you do, where you go, how you speak, how you dress, how you treat them, how you set the table, and place the napkins, what you give them, and managing you on all levels, often financially, emotionally, physically, verbally, socially, including how you conduct yourself in other relationships, who you see, and so on. 

Malignant narcissists are much more likely to indulge in crimes against you including domestic violence (physical abuse, threats of physical abuse, and intimidating body language), stalking, stealing, home invasion, erroneous lawsuits, false imprisonment, kidnapping your common children, and other illegal aggressions to make you feel hunted. This sometimes happens during the relationship, but it can often happen when you aren't doing what they require you to do, or have recently left them. 

Malignant narcissists usually have subcategories too like "Overt Grandiose Malignant Narcissist" and "Covert Vulnerable Malignant Narcissist" and "Communal Malignant Narcissist". 

Malignant narcissists get their narcissistic supply through making other people afraid of them and getting other people to feel intimidated by them. They tend to be sadistic to get this kind of supply. 

Fear and hurting others is always going to be the malignant narcissist's main supply and you can sometimes tell they get off on it by a smile on their face - most of them love to see people in fear, and being hurt. 

Also seeing someone fearful of them, and hurt, is their way of knowing they've got your attention, and power over you. Obviously, it's one of the more sickening and evil brands of narcissism, and one that tends to gradually get worse as they are rewarded by people who tolerate them getting off on their pain just to stay in a relationship with them. 

For malignant narcissists they have their scapegoats, and they can turn on the politeness and charm when a person isn't their scapegoat, thereby hiding their sadism. They can act like the sweetest, most caring person on earth, so it isn't always noticeable that they are the opposite of this. But to people who are hurt by them, the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde personality is very obvious (and often the first sign of malignant narcissism).

And the way someone gets to be a scapegoat of a malignant narcissist is if they do not do everything the narcissist expects them to do, and if the narcissist isn't successful in silencing you. They make it clear that you've got to take their aggressions, their orders and their sadism without comment or you will pay. 

Their secondary brand of narcissistic supply is being successful at micro-managing others - telling others what to do, and how to do it, constantly, without let-up. 

These folks, like the covert narcissist, can't take any criticism, or even an excuse as to why you need a moment or two of self care. You are always going to look selfish in their eyes (it is projection). They respond to criticism in a different way than covert narcissists do, with a barrage of threats, dares, physical altercations or violence, physical acts of dominance, breaking things and pounding their fists, and being a menacing presence. They are completely and utterly compromise resistant, and if they can't get their way, they take.  

They are hyper critical of other people, and demanding of others.

They have no concept of fairness. 

They have no ethics except as an acting job when it is important to another person - "pretend ethics". 

Their favorite phrases when they criticize others are "selfish" (because they are that way and assume others are too), and "lazy" (because they feel they get to determine how fast and diligently others work for them while they become "lazy delegators"). 

Another one of their favorite phrases is: "He (or she) deserved to get hurt." This can be over their victim not following their precise orders. Other similar phrases are: "She deserved to get cancer and die." "He deserves every bad thing that is happening to him." "He deserves not to get an inheritance for being disloyal" - even when narcissists are more disloyal than anyone on the planet. "I hope they die a miserable death" and so on. All of these sayings are very obviously sadistic, and when said to others is a warning that they will be happy to see you suffer too if you are not doing what you are told to do (putting themselves in charge of all of your actions is not only presumptive, but downright unhealthy in close personal relationships). 

With "Malignant Grandiose Narcissism" they get their narcissistic supply through fear, intimidation, threats AND overt types of aggression such as violence, stalking, stealing, false imprisonment, taking things other people want because they know it will hurt them, refusing to compromise on anything, being two-faced, being the life of the party and then criticizing everyone at the party when home, and in general, being a menacing, selfish, boorish, arrogant, overly antagonistic presence in their victim's life. When they get caught, they aren't as convincing at playing the victim (but they try) as the covert malignant narcissist because they usually brag about what they've done with someone else, or a number of people. They aren't introverted at all, and that's their downfall. 

With "Malignant Covert Narcissism", for instance, they get their narcissistic supply through fear, intimidation, threats, and stealing to hurt the other person (this and destroying personal property is usually their primary crime), AND through playing the victim afterwards. However, it should be said that they are not above injuring and murdering if it can be done in a way where no one sees (covertly) and planned - it depends on the amount of Antisocial Personality Disorder traits they have as opposed to narcissistic traits, and how much revengeful thoughts take over their system. 

As I've said before, they can become vengeful over you not apologizing, and not just give the silent treatment. Again, they enjoy hurting others, so they can commit crimes to make sure their wishes are carried through. 

They are masters of the DARVO technique to get out of being accountable, and can be more convincing than any grandiose narcissist, with their more sullen, quiet, measured, non-revealing, if very cold, demeanor.

Covert malignant narcissists can have significant Machiavellian traits (Dark Triad traits) - planning demises and revenges can take over every thought and ambition they have. 

With Communal Narcissism meshed in with Malignant Narcissism, we see crimes, most often against people with so little power, and who are so "wowed" by the narcissist, that they literally become a follower. But these narcissists commit crimes, isolate victims, whether it is sexual crimes against children and teenagers, or coercive crimes, child abuse, the stock-piling of weapons for a shoot-out with public officials like police, abuse against women, and some of them insist their followers commit suicide with a forced-on-them murder weapon.

"Drinking the Kool aide" has become a metaphor for going along with your own demise by following a dubious or diabolical leader or idealogue. It refers to the Jim Jones cult where the followers were coerced into drinking poisoned Kool aid and died. 

When we think of narcissists, and following narcissists who are leaders, "drinking the Kool aid" is definitely a warning not to be too enthralled, or too drawn in to a leader's victim stories, or enchanted with their charisma or followers, or too drawn in to letting them make decisions for you (being dictatorial in exchange for more-often-than-not fake promises), or too threatened by them enough to neglect yourself and your own self preservation.  

I hope this is helpful in how to differentiate between the different types of narcissists so that you can be better informed as to the type of narcissist you may be dealing with. 

Warning: sometimes it's hard to tell if the person is a malignant narcissist until the crimes start happening to you. Also remember that domestic violence is a crime (a real crime, not "a crime of passion" as some police used to call it). Also remember to look out for Jekyll and Hyde behavior, arrogance, controlling manipulative behaviors, and people who go into a rage when criticized. 

FURTHER READING

5 Types of Narcissism and How to Spot Each - by Courtney Telloian, and medically reviewed by Jeffrey Ditzel, DO for Psych Central

5 Types of Narcissism and How to Spot Them (No two narcissists are exactly alike. Learn how narcissism exists on a spectrum.) - by Katharine Chan, MSc, BSc, PMP, reviewed by Steven Gans, MD for Very Well Mind

7 Types of Narcissists (Covert, grandiose, and other types of narcissistic personality disorder) -  by Dr. Laura Dorwart, medically reviewed  by Elle Markman, PsyD, MPH

14 Types of Narcissism & What to Know About Them - by Brooke Schwartz, LCSW and medically reviewed by Kristen Fuller, MD for Choosing Therapy

Know the Kind of Narcissist You're Dealing With and Symptoms (Types of narcissists have different behavior, but they share two core symptoms.) - by Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT and reviewed by Davia Sills for Psychology Today