Top 5 Ways To Survive The Narcissist In Your Life

Some people you just can’t leave — like a family member — here’s what I do to manage the narcissistic people I can’t walk away from

I had a long chat with my brother the other day, as he has had a lot of anger surfacing lately and wanted to talk to me about it. We saw our mom around mothers Day, and he was on edge the entire time…that’s an understatement — he was really quite angry the whole time. On our call, he explained that he’s currently in the process of healing some deep wounds.

Our mother is what would be labeled a narcissist by anyone who knows her well enough, and she would no doubt be diagnosed if she ever saw a specialist. I’m less about the labels than my brother — but for simplicity's sake, we will just use the word narcissist in this article.

As the three of us hung out, I found myself observing my brother's behavior and reactions — and then observing my mother in response.

There were the classic behaviors on my mom's part, for example: she has known for many, many years that my brother is incredibly sensitive to artificial fragrances and they can even cause him to get sinus infections. Despite that, she had lathered herself in perfume, so he had to stand far away from her when we were chatting. She, of course, acted as if she forgot, was super dramatic, and made herself the victim so we would feel bad for her.