I Gave the Overt Narcissist a Taste of His Own Medicine

The only way to injure this narcissist is to trigger them into unmasking themselves —here’s how

I recently discarded a very toxic overt narcissist named Justin who I’d let back into my life after a seven-year separation.

Like a typical narcissist, Justin poked holes in my confidence by finding flaws where there were none and exacerbating the ones I felt I already had. Like a typical overt narcissist, he did it using jokes.

Justin was hands down the most offensive narcissist I’ve encountered in a while — specifically because of the jokes he made.

On one occasion, after we had sex, he looked at me while I was still naked and told me that I looked malnourished.

See: The Overt Narcissist Has One Dead Giveaway in The Bedroom

I was later blamed for being too sensitive and unable to take his jokes.

My humor is not for everybody. Especially people as sensitive as you.

That was it.

This was his level of empathy.

It was more than clear that Justin was bad for my mental (and sexual) health because whenever it was time for his comedy routine, I was always going to be the punchline of every joke.

It was also clear that I was always going to be reduced to my emotional state as Justin continued to use it to minimize my hurt feelings. So imagine my surprise when the tables turned unexpectedly and it was my humor that didn’t exactly turn out to be his cup of tea.

Justin came over late one night in April.

We’d finished watching the movie Fall, and I was reading him some of my poetry when he requested a song.

Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac.

I played the song from my laptop and started singing along. Before long, Justin started singing along too. He wasn’t a good singer but I actually found it endearing that he

• knew of (let alone liked) Fleetwood Mac
• couldn’t sing but did it anyway
• felt comfortable enough to sing in front of me

He was one of those “tough guys” so this was truly a hallmark moment for me to witness. I also thought it was super cute — so I laughed. Justin immediately looked over at me and asked,

What are you laughing at?

His eyes narrowed as if he was suspicious and preparing to go on the defense and his voice came off cautious but also… scared.

In hindsight, he was fighting to keep as much of his mask on as possible by making it seem like he was taking my laughter lightheartedly. He even looked like he was about to laugh too so this made me laugh more.

I didn’t answer his question because I couldn’t stop laughing and he kept staring at me with this funny expression on his face (it was a trademark of his) until he blindsided me by stating,

No. You’re just being a bitch right now. That’s what you’re doing, you’re being a bitch.

Everything stopped.

Let me make something VERY clear, there are very few things people, specifically men, can’t get away with calling me. “Bitch” is one of those things.

This was a line most men instinctively knew not to cross with me. He was one of two men who decided to test this boundary and the moment he did he got more than what he bargained for and anticipated.

I looked over at him and asked,

What did you just say?

And he repeated himself.

You’re being a bitch.

Knowing what I know about Justin, this was partially a test for him to see what new level of disrespect he could away with when it came to me. But this was also the result of an insanely fragile ego.

This was the classic behavioral display of a narcissist who had just been injured. But not just any narcissist — an overt narcissist.

I told you the overt narcissist places himself above others and has this very unusual need to verbalize it in a way that comes off desperate; as though he needs you to believe it more than he does. With this logic in mind, It’s important to mention that I actually can sing.

My ability to sing and my laughing at his singing affected him deeper than it would have had I been someone who couldn’t sing. But because this was one area where I was superior to him he took my laughter personally.

Especially since he always devalued me using his sick sense of humor (often laughing in my face or on audio messages). Now, he was the one being laughed at. He was the butt of the joke.

And he had to cease my laughter and restore the natural order of him being the joker (and me, the joke) in our connection— by any means necessary. So he crossed the ultimate line by calling me out of my name.

As soon as he repeated himself I told Justin,

Don’t ever call me that. Ever in life. I do not play with that word. Don’t ever say that to me again.

Once he saw that I was dead serious something very interesting happened; something I never expected. Justin’s face flushed and he looked embarrassed.

Me finally putting my foot down with him, after being pushed too far, triggered a deep shame in him. This shame caused him to overcompensate for his inexcusable behavior, with a lame excuse.

I’m sorry… But you were laughing at me.

He said it like a kid who had gotten in trouble for doing something they knew was bad and felt ashamed for — while equally trying to tell you why they did it. As if the excuse justifies the deed.

I looked at him and that’s when I realized he was hurt about me laughing at his singing, the way I’d been hurt by him countless times prior. I couldn’t believe it, I injured this narcissist by laughing at him, the way he always laughed at me.

How was I supposed to know that the world’s shittiest comedian couldn’t take a damn joke?

A joke that didn’t even involve any insults or words at all. It involved a literal sound effect, laughter. Considering all of the very demeaning jokes he’s made at my expense, I felt Justin was now the one being sensitive and overly dramatic.

I had never witnessed him respond so childishly but then again this was the very first time I stood up to Justin and it was happening face to face.

This is when I saw for myself how calling the overt narcissist out on their shit was equally as effective at injuring them as making a joke out of them; even more so if you do so after humiliating them in some way.

This was easy for me to do because Justin had finally pushed me too far with the disrespect. His bruised ego wasn’t important and I didn’t care about his feelings at this point. In the same way, he never cared about mine.

I told him that offending him wasn’t my intention before bringing the conversation back to the point — do not ever call me a bitch again.

This time, he apologized without adding an excuse to the end of it but when the mood lightened he brought the conversation back to his point, his singing. Completely unprovoked, he randomly said,

I can sing if I want to.

This was his way of trying to say that he was capable of singing and that he just wasn’t trying his best. He said this insisting that my laughter was somehow a mistake by trying to convince me of his watered-down vocal talent.

It was the fact that he said this unprovokedly that alerted me to the severity of his injury. This is when I realized just how sensitive the overt narcissist truly is.

From my experience, it’s usually the overt narcissist, of all the archetypes, that tends to take blatant rejection very badly.

See: This Is How the Overt Narcissist Will Hunt You

(Whereas, the malignant narcissist is the one who takes being abandoned the worst — and the most dangerously.)

All that “tough guy” shit really was a facade.

Every joke Justin made at my expense was covering up the very fragile ego of a man who would never have liked the taste of his own medicine.

Or being the butt of his own joke.

Suddenly it hit me.

I was allowing this arrogant loser to make me feel extremely bad about my self-esteem and self-worth when he, himself, couldn’t even handle the slightest experience with his own treatment.

It triggered the bully to get bullied and to be held accountable for it. So much so that when Justin got home, he brought up the topic of calling me a bitch and, as with his initial apology, made a new excuse for it.

He said:

I call all of my close friends a ‘bitch’, including the ones that are female so I really didn’t mean it like that.

Now, he was playing on my intelligence because he often excused his “offensive” humor as a right of passage that symbolized how “close” he considered you to be to him. With this knowledge in mind, Justin never called me a ‘bitch’ before. Yet, he claimed we were “close”.

This excuse was designed to make me seem like I took his words the wrong way when the reality is he had no right to call me out of my name in the first place.

This excuse was also supposed to ease the blow of the injury of being put in his place by me — someone he needed to view as lesser than him.

I wasn’t falling for the gaslighting or minimizations so I brushed him off and let him know that I wasn’t one of his other friends and that I’d never accept being talked to like that — especially from him.

But then I went for the jugular and injured him in a way he couldn’t recover from… because it involved me using his own logic and his own words against him to devalue him.

I told Justin that he overreacted.

I explained the reason I laughed wasn’t because his singing was bad but because I found that moment between us endearing and thought his singing was cute because I’d never seen him so vulnerable.

Right after this explanation, I proceeded to devalue Justin’s hurt feelings while scolding him like a child by ending my with,

Nothing about what happened warranted you calling me a bitch. What, because I laughed at you when you started singing? You are always bashing me for being too emotional yet the first thing you do is resort to calling me a ‘bitch’ because I was laughing? As you like to tell me, don’t you think that was a little sensitive? Because I damn sure do.

Now, he seemed even more embarrassed and was unusually at a loss for words as all he could say to me was,

You’re right.

He then said goodnight and the conversation ended immediately because being held accountable while being left to sit in the consequences of his actions was impossible for him to do.

Not because he refused accountability like some narcissists do but because being inarguably wrong made him uncomfortable.

It triggered him.

What made it even more intolerable was the fact that he brought it on himself when he unmasked himself by having such a strong reaction to something he would’ve insisted was small if the roles were reversed.

And he knew this.

And he knew I knew this solely because I pointed out his quickness to laugh at how “emotional” I am right before highlighting his own seemingly unreasonable sensitivity. This was too much of an injury for Justin to digest. But it was one he damn well deserved.

Some people need to get they feelings hurt sometimes.

— Fezco, Euphoria

Btw, Justin never called me a bitch again.

© Linda Sharp 2023. All Rights Reserved.