I have made many mistakes when it has come to dealing with narcissistic individuals. One of the greatest has been giving them the benefit of doubt.
It is a norm for me to believe the best in others and to see their potential for change, but over time, I have grown to learn when it comes to dealing with actual narcissists, there is only the worst and hardly any potential for change for the better.
Although I can pinpoint many examples of my errors when it comes to this, I’ll just give one example story. This story deals with a coworker who was the leading member of a mob group who came against me in a corporate workplace environment.
My first encounter with this coworker was not a good interaction. In fact, this coworker was downright rude to me. I thought it might have been just one incident, but this coworker was frequently not nice to me and always had a scowl on her face whenever she saw me.
From those interactions, I chose to stay out of her path. I assumed that maybe she was just a miserable person in general because I noticed that she didn’t only behave that way with me, but she also behaved that way with others too. In fact, I noted that this was a common behavior with several people – both men and women – within this work environment. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was just working someplace with a lot of toxic people.
As time passed, this person became less of an issue for me because I found ways to avoid her. As it turns out, we didn’t work in the same department. So I didn’t have to necessarily interact with her to do my job. This was until a new supervisor decided to shake things up within departments. That’s when job situations changed, and he placed this person directly within the department in which I worked, thereby changing the entire workplace atmosphere and the dynamics.
It took me a while, but I came to realize that this supervisor was as narcissistic as this coworker and seemed to love instigating drama. For the most part, I thought this supervisor was working to improve the atmosphere, but instead this supervisor created a mobbing dynamic that undermined supposed good efforts. It wouldn’t be until later I realized that this dynamic was all by design.
The mobsters (as I refer to them) were created to specifically drown me out and push me to leave the department for which I was hired, and ultimately, the workplace. But, I was steadfast in doing what I was hired to do, all while documenting every instance of workplace abuse. As hard as this coworker tried to rally her flying monkeys against me to silently gaslight me and bully me out of my position, I stood that much taller and reacted as if I was completely oblivious and unbothered.
At some point, the supervisor, the bully and her minions regrouped themselves to make their efforts stronger against me. I was snubbed, given the silent treatment when I attempted to interact with them about work matters, talked about in roundabout and indirect ways, devalued in ways that were meant to undercut me on a superficial level, and made to appear as if I was messy and as if my work was subpar. I was also frequently undermined in my work efforts and sabotaged in ways that were designed on the surface to appear as if I needed the help of others.
When the supervisor came around to report on each coworker’s progress, he always failed to give me a verbal report. He’d always coddle the main bully and talk her up. It was obvious she needed the validation. However, as it would turn out, the team leads would all tell me that I performed 10 times better than all of my mobster coworkers even though they did everything possible to sabotage my efforts. Instead of reiterating this fact, however, the supervisor would make very light of my achievements and speak about them in such a disdainful manner that I questioned my own abilities.
Needless to say, I documented every instance of his and the mobsters’ actions, maintained a strong stance, and focused on continuing to do my job. I’d been through this mobbing behavior before within another workplace at varying degrees. So I kept my focus. Although there were times that I felt isolated and emotionally exhausted from the impact of the mobbing behaviors against me, I may have only silently reacted by walking away twice. It was during the times that I played right into the supervisor’s manipulative hands by expressing my frustrations about the group.
Yet, this supervisor was very unaware that I am also strategic, and instead of playing checkers or chess, I play a mean game of “Go”. I was several steps ahead of him because when I see that patterns repeat themselves, I pay attention, take notes, and move into place. By the time the supervisor and I were done with our conversation, he was very aware I knew what was up with his underhanded schemes even if I couldn’t specifically tie him to the mobbing group. Unlike my coworkers, I knew workplace policy, and I wasn’t afraid to stand up for myself.
I really had to pray to cover myself because the onslaught of bullying tactics by the mobsters and this supervisor were brutal. Their tactics were mostly in silent and menacing ways so that they could gaslight and stonewall me into believing everything they did against me was all in my head. In fact, I found myself in some serious spiritual warfare that I didn’t completely comprehend. It was just a job, but these mobsters were fighting me so hard.
I’d find out in roundabout ways from others that the mobsters were smearing my name all over the place, and it didn’t hurt for them to have some help from a former team lead who frequently conveyed to others how much she couldn’t stand me. This former team lead would tell others that something was weird or off about me, but maybe she just couldn’t understand or was bothered my neurodivergence. When I think about it, I was catching negative behaviors from quite a few people associated with these mobsters, and that’s when I realized there was a collective stance against me.
Then about three months after all of the dramatic craziness I experienced from the mobsters, something broke. It was as if God said, “Enough”. The next thing I knew, the supervisor was sent packing to a different location, and the mobbing group against me eventually disbanded because one member became fed up and quit the job and two others were eventually moved out of the department almost for good. So that left me to work closely with the lead bully – a woman who always pretends to be a Damsel in Distress – and one flying monkey who began pulling away from the bully when she noticed the bully taking a keen interest in me.
At some point, it appeared that either God gave me enough grace that the mobsters backed off from their narcissistic tactics against me (or so I thought). I suppose they realized their efforts to get rid of me had bid them no better in their conquests against me. So they retreated (only to regroup later) and left me alone for a while. In fact, whenever the lead bully was absent, the flying monkeys who worshiped the ground she hovered over would actually talk to me, but I only believe this is because it just happened to be another angle of using their arsenal against me in an effort to gain information.
The saying is true … that if at first you can’t succeed, you try again. That’s what these mobsters did. They tried again and again, but this time, they tried gaining entry by trying to get to know me. They thought I’d give them the benefit of doubt. On some level I did, but as the song goes by Briarr, “Baby, I’m a gangster too and it takes two to tango … You don’t wanna mess with me.”
Stay tuned for the next part …
My Voice Unchained 