Counter-Narcissist Intelligence in Action

Where to start with Red Flags - Sam Ray © 2023

 

This should be one of the clearest, easiest and yet most important lessons to burn into your memory on how to use Counter Narcissist Intelligence regardless of whether you just have a few suspicions or someone is a full-blown toxic manipulator of either the overt or covert variety. It usually won’t solve the problem like it did in the case-study below, but it is often a foundational part of legal solutions and helps psychologically release some gaslighting stress by acknowledging that something strange is going on, you are not the crazy one, and you also have written proof for yourself and your support network to feel confident in what is real, and work to build defenses to handle those realities.

A pathological narcissist’s default is to make their targets feel stressed-out, anxiety-riddled and shell-shocked for a variety of reasons, not least of which is making you feel weak, vulnerable and isolated. That makes it easier for them to manipulate their prey and makes their fragile egos feel strong, powerful and Godlike, or so they tell themselves. Indeed it is horrible and ridiculous but it is also empirical psychology.

If you haven’t figured it out already, if you are dealing with a pathological narcissist, you need to think like a spy. I learned to think like a spy right after my Dad took me to my first James Bond movie in 1977. Needless to say, this opening sequence from The Spy Who Loved Me blew my 10 year old mind.

Not surprisingly, I also wanted to be as cool as James Bond and maybe even a spy (neither of which happened), but it did set me on a life path of always wanting to have the best intelligence, because I learned from 007 that it can be a matter of life and death and saving the world, and that can certainly be true when dealing with narcissists, sociopaths or psychopaths. Believe it or not, excluding times of war, pathological narcissists probably cause their most deaths by ruining lives, aka pushing people towards early graves by breaking their hearts and minds with demons like cruelty, trauma and shame.  

Of course Bond isn’t real but we do seem to be in an era with an awful lot of supervillains and aspiring supervillains who not surprisingly think they are the heroes in their psychologically disordered self-serving fantasies and delusions. Coincidentally, just like nearly all malignant narcissists would want, their goal is to break the collective will of the “Free World” so we submit and they can rule us as the Godkings they know themselves to be.

On an individual level, one of the most difficult challenges for almost everyone in defending themselves from narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths is recognizing them for who and what they are before the con game they are running is completed, or they have fully sunk their hooks into you, making it much harder and more painful to escape.

As CNI has previously noted, even the top experts in the world admit they can be fooled here and there by these groomed and/or instinctual master manipulators, so it should not be as much shame as it feels like, because it can happen to anyone. The truth is most people never see them coming because their level of grooming, lying and shamelessness is almost inconceivable to any honest and decent person, group or organization, unless they have had previous experiences that revealed the dark psychology behind most of the evil done in the world.

Frankly,  a lot of CNI is just common sense that comes from fully understanding the psychology, but so few who are the most knowledgeable are able to speak out about these dangerous pathologies because the main psychiatric organization seems to have ethically muzzled virtually everyone in the psychology industry, media and academia from discussing pathological narcissists, with rare exceptions like Dr. Bandy X. Lee, Mary Trump and Duty to Warn folks, thus the public is mostly kept psychologically in the dark due to limited exposure. Unfortunately, this educational reality gap means most often don’t see they have been manipulated until after the fact, which is why any kind of reasonable preventative medicine is so key to your personal defense.

Below is how I recently used Counter-Narcissist Intelligence preventative medicine to get justice at the long-term Airbnb I have been staying at for several months. It is amazing how much gaslighting, stress and grief I saved myself by following two basic first steps of how to take down a narcissist; keeping a log of red flags in contemporaneous notes and letting at least one other reliable person know of the situation, so you have a witness to vouch for you if one is needed.

As noted, keeping records of narcissistic red flags and informing a witness usually does not result in such an easy resolution as the situation below, but these preliminary actions are foundational first steps in proving you are on the side of truth and justice, and not the malignant liar and villain who keeps trying to gaslight others into thinking you are the bad guy.

Narcissist’s forever default is to make someone else look like the bad, crazy or evil person who should be falsely blamed and/or hated for doing horrible things, so that no one realizes that they are really a highly disturbed hollow individual who is really the one doing the lying, and is a manipulative narcissist who is slanderously blaming you their victim. That is why taking fresh Red Flag notes and sharing the “what happened” can be so valuable in reducing the narcissist's power over a situation they are trying to impose on you. Here is one way fresh notes and a witness saved the day for me.

Foundational message of concern to in-home manager on Airbnb platform

“I don’t think it is a problem but thought you should know about some very strange and uncomfortable behavior by the guy in B.

Earlier in the week, I was woken up about 11:30AM by a loud TV coming from outside my door. I opened my door and saw the door to B was wide open and the TV was on fairly loud. I went to the kitchen and nicely asked the guy, “Could you either close your door or mute the TV?” He said, “I didn’t think you were home” and I said, “No worries.” 10 minutes later he knocked on my door, apologized again and I said, “No worries” again, and that was it.

Then on Thursday, I was in the kitchen cooking and he started walking around looking for the tooth he lost. Then he comes up to me and says, “We are both considerate” while apparently unwittingly flashing his bright search light in my eyes a few times, and then tells me I was “not nice enough in the way I asked him to close his door or mute the TV, by not saying, ‘please,’” or something like that.

I was shocked since I thought maybe he was going to more fully apologize for his inconsiderate behavior, after maybe being reminded of the noise hours notice on the laundry door next to his door, but instead he was accusing me of being inconsiderate to him when I wasn’t at all. He tried to excuse himself again by saying he didn’t know I was home and I explained, “That doesn’t matter because it was inconsiderate of him to leave his door wide open with the TV on loud.” He acted as if he had done nothing wrong and the whole situation that transpired was all my fault.

Then he gets in my face and says something like, “I could get really angry/aggressive if I wanted to.” I stared him down and said, “You got issues dude.” When he realized he couldn’t physically intimidate me, he said something like, “Well, let’s just not talk anymore,” which I never did much other than being my normal friendly self when we crossed paths. After his weirdness, I’m more than happy to cease talking with him.

Additionally, he had previously asked me if he could use some of my shelf space and I said no problem, but then asked if he should remove his goods from my shelves after his confrontation. I said, “I don’t care,” but this is also another example of his strange pettiness, since it would never have occurred to me to tell him he could not use my open shelves anymore as payback for his bizarre personal attack.  

He then walked off and made some comment about hearing me mumbling about him, which I wasn’t, since I am not a mumbler, so I ignored it. He then came back to the kitchen and started strangely offering me one of his drinks, I said no thank you, and he then complained about me not accepting a drink from him. It was all very strange.

I then left for my room and I heard him make the comment that he heard me mumbling about him again, so I came back and said, “I don’t know why you keep saying I’m mumbling about you when I am not. I don’t mumble” He said nothing, and I finally left. He had previously told me he doesn’t hear well in his left ear, so let’s hope that’s why he imagines hearing things and it’s not him hearing voices in his head.

It was a very strange and uncomfortable experience and it occurred to me that is probably why he does not have front teeth, because if he acted this way towards some men, they would have knocked his teeth out for accusing them of behaving badly when he was being weird like this.

I was going to mention he was acting a little strange the first time he stayed here but thought no big deal, but that strange behavior fits a similar pattern. Previously, we would have some short conversation and then he would take something I said as an attack, get very defensive and a little aggressive towards me over nothing, but I could handle it so figured no reason to bother you about it. I thought maybe that is just the way he is with men since I have heard him acting very nicely towards you and the woman in A.

However, this escalation and more bizarre behavior of falsely imagining me disrespecting him and mumbling insults about him does not seem to be the behavior of a completely mentally stable person. Again, I don’t think there is a problem for me if he is going to stop talking to me like he said he would, since you know I keep to myself, but thought you would want to know about this strange and uncomfortable behavior by one guest towards another, since you provide a peaceful and relaxed place.”  

So things were quiet for about a week until the day after I went shopping, the next morning two of my six yogurts sitting right at eye level were just gone. It seemed like some very blatant food theft that almost had a message of intimidation and impunity, so I reported it to the host and they said they would buy me new ones.

I said, “That’s not really the point, I’m beginning to feel unsafe.”

Two or three days later, my unopened ice cream was opened and a fair amount had been eaten. That was it for me! Either he had to go or I had to go, because this guy who hears voices, had semi threatened me about his anger and now my food supply was being threatened in various in your face blatant ways.

“It’s hard to say a place is a safe environment when someone fairly unknown in a house I am staying at creates negative situations that don’t exist, hears voices he thinks are talking about him from others when there are none and gets physically and verbally threatening when told his made up negativity version of unreality is trying to gaslight me by saying I was rude to him when the truth was I was nice to him, until he started getting falsely accusatory and threatening.”

It did also occur to me that with the woman in A and I being long-term, he might have been motivated to try to chase me out since he wanted to stay, because a new booking was made before he decided that. The house manager advised me only Airbnb could evict a customer so I would need to work with them to make this escalating danger be gone from where I had been calling home for months and being very productive in building up CNI. Airbnb offered to put me up in a hotel or another Airbnb until the investigation was completed, but I relayed I should not have to leave what had been my home for a few months when the situation was established and clear. They said they needed to investigate more.

I said, “I reported strange and threatening behavior last week on your system and now my food is being attacked. Certainly anyone who is hearing voices and threatening people is not a customer that Airbnb wants? It all comes down to who is believed and who is not. As the manager here can attest after our few months together, I have been a model tenant as a quiet and friendly writer who mostly keeps to himself, so investigation over. Please evict this person so I can feel safe and productive in my current home again.”

It did take a few days more than it should have but he was evicted. He tried to talk to me about it and I said, “There’s nothing to talk about. You threatened me and you attacked my food. He said, “When did I threaten you?” I said, “Remember we aren’t talking” as I walked in my door. He then said, “I didn’t touch your food.” I said, “Well it was you or the woman in A. She has lived here longer than I have.” He had that look of defeat as I closed my door.

In full hindsight, the guy seemed a little off and overly defensive with me from the start, but also seemed somewhat decent. However, the cumulation of his subtle accusatory, confrontational interactions, hearing voices and aggressive nature equaled more than enough Red Flags to be documented, just in case. Just as important was consciously sharing my contemporaneous concerns with the host so they became my witness when the time came. Them knowing me for a few months as a friendly and easygoing guest also made it easy for them to stand by me when Airbnb no doubt asked, “Who do you believe and want to stay?” Thanks for the clarity of action, CNI philosophy!

The next day he was moving out and shockingly asked me if I would help him “move out a dresser.” My response was “Good luck with that,” as I went back in my room to avoid him until he was gone. Additionally, this strange request and trying to manipulate me with the guilt of having him kicked out into helping him could have been far more insidious. Having worked in moving, I knew good movers get hurt by carrying a piece with a bad mover who does something wrong, so imagine what a narcissistically hurt and possibly delusional person might do to someone moving something heavy with them.

It could have easily gone down with, “Honestly officer, I don’t know what happened other than he dropped it on his foot and began screaming in pain at me until the ambulance got here.” My word against his, he gets away with it and can re-inflate his wounded ego on his great victory, while I beat myself up the entire time I am recovering from my injury for foolishly trusting him.

I had defeated him, this would be his last opportunity for narcissistic revenge, and CNI philosophy dictates never give a known narcissist an opportunity to hurt you if you can avoid it, because if they get the chance, depending on their level of compulsion, they may not be able to resist the level of temptation to boost their fragile ego by hurting you.

Of course, the main moral of this story is to start taking notes as soon as you suspect someone may be a narcissist out to prey on you or someone you care about, so you have some documentation and proof that backs you up with the decision-makers and/or legal authorities, if or when the time comes. And pick out at least one person of honor and integrity you hopefully completely trust to share your secret until such time comes when you need a witness to help you bring someone’s dark secret out into the light.  

Note of Extreme Caution Warning - If someone lives in the same house or their particular narcissist can hack or access their computer, the last thing you want to do is let the narcissist know that you are onto them and keeping a list that could take them down, because that will likely trigger them into all kinds of crazy thoughts and bad decisions that will negatively blow back on you, when the main goal should be your safe and secure freedom.

If you have a difficult, challenging or interesting scenario and you would like to know how CNI would view the situation, please feel free to send it in and perhaps it will be turned into a CNI in Action analysis here for the think tank. If it is something more urgent and/or a very private matter, the purchase of a year subscription comes with a 45 minute non-judgmental coaching session. Due to CNI’s growth rate, capacity will be increasingly limited, so please book an appointment ASAP if you believe CNI can be useful insight regarding your narcissist hypotheticals, current situations and/or unresolved feelings.

Full Disclosure Notes: The first Airbnb message was slightly altered and amended for clarity and readability but is essentially the exact same message. The follow-up messages are accurate but they are more summary paraphrasing to avoid unnecessary length and redundancy.

Of course we need to add every legal disclaimer that nothing here should be considered anything beyond the author's personal beliefs, and should not be considered advice in any way, because each person’s situation is unique and so every individual should consult a professional about their own specific situation before taking any kind of psychological action appearing to be suggested or implied here.