Read This Book BEFORE You Make A Decision About Leaving The Narcissist In Your Life

If you are reading this hub, you may have been thinking for quite a while about leaving your narcissist partner.

Enough is enough. You've put up with the unbelievable abuse that a narcissist doles out routinely - harsh criticism, sarcasm, lying, gaslighting, projection, endless arguments that go nowhere and leave hurtful scars, and maybe even cheating.

You may be suffering from suicidal thoughts, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or stress-induced physical illnesses. At the very least, your self-esteem has been damaged and your confidence is low.

Maybe you still love your narcissist partner. You do understand that you will not change his or her behavior. And banging your head against a wall of incredibly horrible narcissist abuse is true insanity. What choice do you have but leaving or divorcing the narcissist?

Before You Throw In The Towel

You've read the literature and forum threads that claim it is near impossible to rehab a narcissist because it requires significant re-parenting. Even trained therapists are wary of narcissists and their twisted, manipulative behavior.

Here's an idea - change YOUR approach!

Modify your behavior directed toward dealing with your narcissist partner. Remember when you start finger-pointing, four fingers are pointing back at the culprit.

Learning How To Modify YOUR Behavior

An effective book that reveals how to deal with a narcissist is entitled Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed. Written by a therapist who has worked almost exclusively with narcissists, she outlines coping techniques that you should seriously consider learning how to use.

Read on to understand the approach used by the author of this ground-breaking book. This review also outlines the positive and not-so-positive aspects of Disarming The Narcissist.

Disarming The Narcissist contains seven chapters aimed at understanding YOU, the partner of a narcissist - why you picked a narcissist as a partner, what buttons your partner pushes, and explains what actions help you cope with narcissist behavior.

Take a look at the following paraphrased chapter headings from the book and notice the focus. If you know how the narcissist thinks and how you react to communications from the narcissist, you can identify strategies that work.

Understanding Narcissism

Understanding The Anatomy Of Personality

Identifying Your Personality Traps

Overcoming The Obstacles To Communication

Facing Difficult Encounters With A Narcissist

A Strategy For Interpersonal Effectiveness

Seven Gifts Of Communication With A Narcissist

Even the most skeptical reader will be impressed with the approach of the author of Disarming The Narcissist. Psychology is truly an art form, yet the author has managed to present a set of methods that works in everyday communications.

The reasons for the effectiveness of this approach are as follows: it makes sense logically and it has worked for the author as a therapist dealing with narcissists. Given that you can learn these coping strategies, why wouldn't they work for the partner of a narcissist?

The work is truly groundbreaking - most books covering the narcissist personality disorder warn the partner of a narcissist to run and hide as quickly as possible. Break all contact. That's a difficult mantra to hear when you love someone cursed with the personality disorder.

Regardless of whether you choose to stay connected to your narcissist partner or leave the relationship, Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed will have provided you with an opportunity to learn skills that will help you deal with difficult people you encounter at work, at home, and in social settings.

No book is perfect. Even though Disarming The Narcisssist has a 4-star rating, it has a few not-so-positive characteristics you may want to think about.

The first imperfection is a subjective evaluation that you can discard or accept - the author's writing style is a bit pompous. Reading through the text takes concentration because many points could have been written in simpler language. No, you need not be a PhD to understand it, but you better be in a quiet room with no interruptions when you read through a chapter.

Th second imperfection is somewhat related to the first point above. The passages in the book that you would use to communicate with your narcissist partner seem contrived and too long to hold a narcissist's attention. Many narcissists get bored after the first 10 words that come out of a partner's mouth - it is hard to imagine that the author's communications would captivate them.

Here's the bottom line - the core message of the book is so powerful that the partner of a narcissist should be sufficiently motivated to overcome the imperfections with workarounds. You know who you're dealing with. As long as the basic ideas are communicated to your narcissist partner through your own words, you can make an impression using the book's strategies.