Let me tell you something. This may or may not surprise you, but I absolutely LOVE it when people underestimate me. I know it seems counterintuitive – and I didn’t always feel this way. For a lot of my life, I felt offended and upset by people who chronically underestimated me. But one day, I recognized a powerful fact: if someone underestimates you, it actually offers you a rather significant advantage. If they think you’re not capable of something and you do it anyway, there is far less resistance involved, if that makes sense. And, if you’re anything like me, you might even take a bit of pleasure (not to mention some much-needed motivation) in proving them wrong.
With that being said, you and I both know that probably the most likely person in your life to underestimate you is the narcissist in your life. In fact, if you ask me, their consistent need to underestimate us is one of their biggest weaknesses. Not only does underestimating us leave them vulnerable in certain ways, but it also gives them a certain amount of overconfidence in themselves.
For example, the narcissist might assume you’re less intelligent than they are, and this assumption might lead to them making obvious attempts to deceive you. If you’re smart, you’ll play along and see the truth without their knowledge. Is this wrong?
Could it be unethical to allow them to underestimate you and not tell them you see right through them? While some people will disagree with me, I’d say absolutely not – and here’s why.
Why Narcissists Underestimate You
Narcissists underestimate you for many reasons – the most frustrating being that they don’t truly see you for who and what you are. Seriously. So let’s talk about that.
The one thing to always remember when it comes to a narcissist is that they are only looking out for one thing from you – what you can do for them, or the narcissistic supply that you can offer.
When you’re in a relationship of any type with a narcissist, you become a source of narcissistic supply. Whether they are a partner or spouse, a family member, friend, or coworker, narcissists aren’t capable of really, genuinely caring about you and who you are. They are not able to form healthy bonds with you, in part because they completely lack true empathy. This leads them to see you as a target or an object instead of a whole person. At best, they’ll see you as an extension of themselves.
As such, they see you as “less of a person” than they see themselves and they believe that they can treat any way that they want. That means they can cheat on you, lie to you, gaslight you, manipulate and abuse you in any way or form – without remorse. They don’t feel bad about it and they never admit to what they’re doing unless it somehow benefits them to do so. And, if you’re ever lucky enough to get an apology from a narcissist, you’ve got to know that they have some ulterior motive. They want something from you or they’re doing it to get a certain result – not because they’re actually sorry.
So, in other words, narcissists are likely to underestimate you because they, themselves are limited people. It’s almost ironic when you think about how narcissists project their own limitations on to you. They are notoriously over-confident (on the outside, anyway) and are known to overestimate their own intelligence and abilities in general. However, deep down, some part of them secretly doubts who they claim to be – and often, this is an accurate doubt as that same deep down part of them knows they’re putting on a show. They will assume the same about you and everyone else. And let’s not forget the whole “black and white thinking” thing that narcissists have going on. Since there are no “gray areas” for a narcissist, they assume that your reaction (or lack thereof) to their little games, not to mention their blatant gaslighting and other forms of manipulation, must mean you have your own limitations. And of course, you do – we all have limitations. But they underestimate you by overestimating your limitations. This is exacerbated because the narcissist sees you as less than them and see themselves as better than you.
How Narcissists Underestimate You
Narcissists Underestimate Your Intelligence
This is probably the most common way narcissists underestimate you. They think they can pull the wool over your eyes and that you’ll believe whatever they say or pretend because you’re not smart enough to see through it. Contrary to popular belief, though, narcissists aren’t actually likely to end up with someone who is anything less than intelligent. They are so focused on how other people see them that they’re highly likely to choose someone who is intelligent, attractive, and who makes them look good. But after the idealization or love bombing phase ends, the narcissist sort of “forgets” this part. Rather than focusing on the good qualities you have, as they did during idealization, when they get to the devalue phase, they’ll be focused only on what they deem your bad qualities – or what they see as being “wrong with you.”
Narcissists Underestimate Your Strength
Narcissists need to see you as weak, at least once they get past that idealization phase of the relationship. They need to think of you as dependent and incapable of surviving without them in some way. This is, in part, a form of psychological projection, because despite the fact that they may be supporting you in some way (financially, for example), the narcissist needs your supply to feel normal. And if you were to suddenly display your true strength and stop feeding the endless hole that is their ego, the narcissist would kind of lose it! They would, in most cases, quickly scramble for alternate sources of narcissistic supply (if they haven’t already got them in place). Without it the narcissist is weak and feels lost. Here’s the thing, though. You and I both know that being in a relationship of any kind with a narcissist takes more strength than most people know. Don’t let them fool you into thinking you’re anything but powerful.
Narcissists Underestimate Your Ability to See Right Through Them
When you catch a narcissist in a lie, they will automatically assume they can keep up the charade. This is true even when you can provide them with clear-cut evidence of the lie. Even then, the narcissist will dismiss you and the evidence that you provide.
Examples of Narcissists Underestimating People
A good example of this comes from that Shaggy song called “It Wasn’t Me.”
The song tells the story of a guy who goes knocking on his friend’s door looking for advice. The apparent issue he’s struggling with is that his girlfriend caught him in the act with another woman. His so-called friend advises him to deny what happened and say it wasn’t him. When he explains to the friend that she physically saw him in the act, the friend tells him to keep denying the facts. At the end of the song, the guy decides to admit the truth and apologize – which proves that he’s not a narcissist.
But his friend might be one. Because, in my opinion, the advice he’s offering is literally telling him to gaslight the woman – literally to deny that she saw what she saw. This is of course blatant gaslighting.
Another way to look at it? The kid who sneaks into the cookie jar and consumes an unauthorized cookie or two. When they’re confronted by their mother, they deny having eaten the cookies, despite the fact that the evidence is all over their face – literally. Obviously, mom knows what happened, despite their insistence that they didn’t do it.
The same goes for a narcissist who is lying to you. They can get a little sloppy because they are underestimating you. They aren’t thinking about the fact that you know them, and that, if we’re being honest, their mannerisms, body language, lack of eye contact, and so on totally gives them away. Even when they’ve relied on your intuition in the past, they will forget that part, or continue to underestimate you because they’re overestimating themselves.
Your Empathy is Your Super-Power
Whether we like to admit it or not, before we’re fully awake to what the narcissist is, they can be really skilled at manipulating you. This along with your natural human fear of abandonment, combined with the inevitable trauma bond you’ll experience in any toxic or abusive relationship, leads the narcissist to think they can control you and continue to consume the supply you provide them indefinitely.
But the one thing that they fail to get is that because you have a superpower that they didn’t count on: empathy, emotional and compassionate empathy. While narcissists are capable of cognitive empathy (as in, they can understand on an intellectual level how someone might feel in any given situation), they do not have emotional or compassionate empathy. So while for you, it is automatic to sort of “get” how someone feels, for the narcissist, it is not. They have to stop and think about it – and often, especially when they’re trying to actively lie to you or pull the wool over your eyes in any way, they’re not thinking about how you might feel.
And because they underestimate you, they don’t understand that your ability to read people, your knowledge of them personally, all combined with your own intelligence and natural intuition will tell you that they are lying.
Why You Should Keep Letting the Narcissist Underestimate You
My advice on this situation will be unpopular, but I say do not bother trying to prove yourself to a toxic narcissist. In fact, if I were you, I’d LEAN INTO IT! That’s right. Go ahead and let the narcissist continue to underestimate you. Let them think they have control. This will give you an advantage if and when you are forced to deal with them, in every situation. As they say, being underestimated is one of the biggest competitive advantages you can have. And it truly is.
Remember too that the narcissist will also underestimate that your ability and power to heal. They will underestimate that you have the power to learn about and understand what is happening between the two of you, as well as the fact that you can look at yourself honestly and figure out what causes you to end up in relationships with people like them. This is way outside of the narcissist’s own ability, as they cannot acknowledge or admit that they might lack in any particular area.
Here is the thing. The narcissist’s lack of self-awareness, along with their grandiose delusions, lead to their ridiculously fragmented sense of who they are – and this false self that needs to believe it is superior to everyone else, including but not limited to you, is actually the narcissist’s greatest weakness.
For you, this means the narcissist will never see it coming when you decide to take your life back. They won’t know what to do if you leave, and they’ll never expect you to follow through and go no contact or low contact.
Keep Shining, Just Like You Always Do
You know what I want for you, right? I want you to keep on shining as you do. Imagine looking up into the sky and catching a glimpse of the sun through the clouds when you least expect it. You’re blinded for a moment, and you can’t see much outside of light (and maybe a few spots) for a few seconds, right?
Well, I want you to consider yourself the sun here – and the clouds, the narcissist’s delusion. Once the clouds clear, you’ll be seen in all your full glory. But even though the clouds might obstruct your light temporarily, your light can still shine brightly from behind them. And when those clouds do clear, you’ll gain clarity – and you’ll know for sure that you are in fact the light. You with me?
Question of the day: Have you ever been underestimated by a narcissist, and if so, what happened and how did you deal with it? Share your thoughts, share your ideas, share your experiences in the comments section below this video, and let’s talk about it!
Need help with recovering from narcissistic abuse in a toxic relationship? You might like to check out our new narcissistic abuse recovery small group coaching program – you’ll get personalized coaching at a significantly reduced rate, plus have the option to connect in a private with a small group of like-minded survivors for added support. Learn more or sign up here.
(Prefer to listen instead of read? Click here to see/hear on YouTube)My ex was the king of crazymaking. A couple of days before our wedding, our best man and maid of honor (which was our whole wedding party) came to town, so we decided to go out and have our bachelor/bachelorette parties – which were really just a night out on the town with our individual friends. He and his friend went one way, while my friend and I went another. And since my friend was a recovering alcoholic, we had a sober night out. But when my then-fiance came home that night, he was so intoxicated, I am pretty sure he didn’t even know his own name!
As you can imagine, it wasn’t enjoyable for me, being stone-cold sober and fully aware of everything that was happening. It was more than just worrying about his seemingly excessive level of intoxication, though. It was also that I was overly concerned with what they had done on their night out.
Now, let me just be totally transparent here. I’m not saying I was in any way perfect. In fact, I admit to being overly concerned with a lot of things back then. Honestly, I was very insecure about myself, thanks to growing up with a toxic mother, and being that I was only 22 when we got married, I still had a lot of growing up to do.
And that, along with the fact that I instinctively didn’t trust him any further than I could throw him, is probably why I insisted that we create rules for ourselves for that night out, ahead of time. And of course one of the things that we agreed on was that we wouldn’t go to certain kinds of places. I’m sure you can imagine what I mean. But in hindsight, I’m about 99 percent sure that he did go to one of those places that night and that he lied about it. Well, maybe “lied” isn’t the right word. Unless we’re talking about a lie by omission. And if I’m being honest, part of me thinks that more could’ve happened that night than I care to know.
But like always, he would tell me what he thought I wanted to hear and then just go ahead and do whatever he wanted. Ironically, somehow, that night would, in so many ways, be very representative of that relationship as a whole.
And, just like anytime I’d catch him red-handed doing something he shouldn’t, or something he promised he wouldn’t, he got really weird that night.
While a normal person might own up to what they’d done, or at least try to discuss it, my ex was confusing. See, he was hard to read. And rather than send me running, it drew me in – because I could read nearly everyone else.
When he was guilty, he might or might not argue with me. He might or might not defend himself. He might try to say things that made me feel better, or he might say things that would hurt more – depending on his mood and his goals at the moment. What I mean is that at the beginning of the relationship, he was more likely to pretend to care how I felt, but as time progressed, there would e occasions where he’d pretend pretty hard that he cared – at least, when it served him to do so.
But he did this one thing that was totally perplexing to me, even when he was still in the idealization phase of the relationship. If I’d ask questions – especially about something that could somehow incriminate him or get him in trouble, he would literally just say…nothing at all.
Now, it wasn’t exactly the silent treatment. Maybe it was a kind of stonewalling. But it wasn’t that he would not talk to me during these times. It was just that he wouldn’t answer any of my totally valid questions. He’d either say nothing, or he’d say something that was in no way an answer. So, for example, if I asked, “did you go to the strip club last night?” He’d say, “Well, I told you I wouldn’t,” but never actually say he did or didn’t go.
It drove me crazy. I mean CRAZY. And I’m pretty sure that was his intention.
Now that I think about it, it wasn’t ONLY when he was going to get in trouble that this narcissist wouldn’t answer questions. There were other times where I’d ask him a perfectly innocent question – such as whether he’d go with me to an event or something, and he’d refuse to answer those questions too. He’d say stuff like, “We will see.” And then I couldn’t make plans. And these are just a couple of examples of this all-too-often used manipulation tactic.
So let me ask you. Have you ever experienced this – a narcissist who just won’t answer your questions sometimes? So why don’t they answer your questions? What does it mean? How can you tell? Well, that’s exactly what we’re talking about today – why narcissists don’t answer your questions and how to read that behavior.
Why don’t narcissists answer questions?
Have you found yourself in this situation, wondering why anytime you ask a narcissist a question, you don’t get a straight answer? I know – it is extremely frustrating, to put it mildly.
1. They Don’t Think You Deserve Answers
They really do think you don’t need or deserve the answers to your questions. This is hard to admit to ourselves, but narcissists really don’t see us as “whole people,” or at least they don’t see us as people who are quite as “real” as they are. What I mean is that a narcissist sees you as a sort of extension of themselves, and at the same time, they see you as somehow “lower than” or “less than” they see themselves. By giving you a straight answer, the narcissist would be acknowledging that you are important and that you deserve to be treated like a real live human. They would be honoring you as someone who they saw as an equal, or even as a superior. Giving you a straight answer would essentially be acknowledging that your feelings, thoughts, beliefs and ideas are as important as their own – it would mean they would have to have some level of empathy, and they just plain don’t. This brings me to my next point.
2. They Really Don’t Care How You Feel.
Like I said, narcissists don’t have any empathy for you or anyone else. And even when they appear to care how someone feels, you can bet it’s only because in that moment,it benefits them to do so. Maybe they want something from you, or they want to shut you up so they can go and do whatever they want. But when it comes to answering your questions truthfully – or at all – it would require a certain amount of concern for your feelings, and they just can’t go there, if they’re going to maintain the facade that keeps them going. And speaking of false fronts, this brings me to number 3.
3. They Like It When You’re Confused.
Narcissists don’t answer questions because they like it when you are confused and uncertain. So rather than give you any sort of clarity, they either don’t answer at all, or they only offer very vague answers. Or, in some cases, they’ll say something that is completely out of context. They may give you a little “word salad,” or they might just straight up gaslight you. In any case, they want to keep you in control, and if you are feeling confused and uncertain, you will keep walking on eggshells around them and that is exactly what they want from you. And, of course, this is also a way they hurt your self-esteem because when they don’t give you a proper answer, they’re also openly disrespecting you.
4. They Want to Deflect and Project
When you ask a narcissist a question that feels like an accusation, the narcissist instantly goes on the defense. If you ask them why, they’ll tell you something like, “I hate being investigated,” or “You’re always accusing me of something.” The truth is that narcissists won’t answer questions that they deem accusatory in any way – even if they’re not. For example, if you asked them why they didn’t put their dishes away after they were finished, they might turn around and say something like, “What, are you saying I’m a slob?” Then they will take it even further, either attacking you for being so mean to them, and/or pointing out all the times you’ve ever not put your own dishes away or let the laundry pile up. Or they’ll point out the fact that one time 10 years ago, they helped you out by washing your dishes for you and they’ll ask how come you never do anything to help them (despite the fact that you literally bend over backward every day to make their lives easier). Before you know it, you’ll be the one feeling guilty, begging them to forgive you for having the nerve to ask them to put their own dishes away – and that’s exactly what they want.
5. They Want to Kill Time.
One simple reason that narcissists don’t give you answers is that they have not yet figured out a good lie to tell you. So, in order to make time to dream up a real whopper, they stall so they can kill enough time to figure it out. They will keep stalling as long as they have to in order to come up with a believable lie. Or they might just stall long enough that you’ll forget about it completely – at least that’s what they hope for. After all, they don’t feel the need to provide any sort of closure or satisfaction for you, and let’s not forget that they are completely happy with leaving you hanging anyway – which, of course, brings me to my next point.
6. They Want to Take Over Your Brain.
Narcissists love to see themselves as mysterious and fascinating. They enjoy the idea of you being laser-focused on them – and having to guess what they have been up to or what they are doing offers them the assurance that you’re only thinking of them. They want to take up ALL the space in your head, and by not answering your questions, they feel that they are finally getting the proper amount of attention from you. You won’t be able to think of anything else, they reason, and that’s how they like it. It’s just one of the many debts they feel you owe them as their primary source of narcissistic supply.
So how do you deal with a narcissist who won’t answer your questions?
Honestly, the best thing to do is to never expect a straight answer from a narcissist. Always take everything they say with a grain of salt, and don’t hang your heart on the idea that they might one day be real with you. Understand that narcissists will do their best to always leave you hanging and will never give you the answer you need for the sake of their own agendas.
This is exhausting and painful if you’re not careful. But when you can learn to see a narcissist for what they are, limitations and all, you can really empower yourself. Because when you understand what to expect from them and you can identify and label their behaviors, it can really take the sting out of some of it. It’s a way that you can reassure yourself that it really ISN’T you, that their manipulation and drama is always all about them and their own issues. You just happen to be one of the cogs in their toxic machine – at least until you figure them out. Speaking of which, here’s what to expect when the narcissist knows you have figured them out. Take a look right now, if you have time. It’ll give you some real insight into their psychology.
Question of the Day: Have you ever encountered a narcissist who wouldn’t answer your questions? How did you handle it? What tips would you offer your fellow survivors who are dealing with this issue? Share your thoughts, share your ideas, share your experiences in the comments section below this video, and let’s talk about it!
