How To Deal With The Dangerous Narcissistic Stalker?

— by Dr. Sandip Roy.

Stalking is a crime and stalkers are criminals. Don’t think otherwise.

Victims of stalking live under constant threat. Their days are often spent in hypervigilance, helplessness, and panic/anxiety.

Their bodies and minds go numb trying to protect themselves from the relentless fear and intimidation.

Find out how to handle narcissist stalking with courage, strategy, and knowledge.

Common Signs of Narcissistic Stalking

1. Persistent Contact Attempts: The narcissistic stalker repeatedly tries to communicate through calls, texts, emails, or social media. Their harassment usually gets worse over time. What starts with “silent” phone calls may end up in abrupt physical violence.
2. Monitoring and Surveillance: He may lurk around the victim’s residence, follow them, make many phone calls, and maintain constant vigilance over their activities.
3. Manipulative Behaviors: She may resort to guilt, flattery, or threats to maintain a connection or exert control. She may often assert her overbearing presence over the victim’s life, often threatening and limiting their freedom.
4. Invasion of Privacy: They can turn up unexpectedly at the victim’s home, workplace, or social events. They can intrude into their victim’s personal property or private activities — to establish that they still control their life.
5. Smear Campaigns and Harassment of Associates: Some of their usual ploys are spreading false information to sully the victim’s reputation. They can harass your colleagues, friends, or family, and even harm your pets to intimidate or unsettle you.
6. Sending Inappropriate Gifts or Notes: They can send disgusting or sexually explicit ‘gifts’ or messages “from you” to your office people.
7. Love-Bombing and Hoovering: This person can show you excessive displays of affection. Or profusely apologize and make promises to change after periods of hostility. However, you can be almost sure that they will revert to default behaviors once you forgive them and reconnect.
8. Using Others to Make Contact: They often use mutual acquaintances or strangers to convey messages or gather information when you block them from contacting you directly.
9. Worsening Harassment Over Time: What begins as less overt actions may escalate to physical violence, reflecting a pattern of increasing aggression.
10. Substance Use and Aggression: Many stalkers exhibit problems with alcohol or drugs, which can exacerbate tendencies towards aggression, spitefulness, and bullying.
11. Psychopathic Traits: Some narcissistic stalkers may be psychopathic (antisocial behavior). These stalkers are more calculated, cold, and dangerous. They are more likely to act on impulses and be violent. A lack of remorse for their acts makes their stalking more resistant to legal deterrents or social condemnation.

How To Handle A “Normal” Narcissistic Stalker

How you handle your stalker may depend on the type of narcissist they are (and there can be six types of narcissists). Techniques suited to one type may backfire or prove useless with another.

These are some of the best ways to handle a normal (non-malignant) stalker:

1. Tell Them You Don’t Want Any Contact

• The best strategy against a narcissistic stalker is to tell them clearly and firmly that you do not want any future contact with them.
• Use firm language and unequivocal phrases to ask them to leave you alone. You could communicate in many ways other than talking, like sending messages and emailing.
• Do not tell them as if you were putting in a request for their consideration. Send a strong message that you want to be left alone, but do not use aggressive tones.
• Keep calm and collected while letting them know you want to be left alone. Never show weakness, sadness, or fear of loneliness.
• They will try to trigger you into a rage or push you into a helplessness mode — but you must stay unemotional. If necessary, practice before a mirror how to stay peaceful.
• Beware: Do not threaten them, ever. They can interpret a threat as an insult (narcissistic injury), and then they come at you even stronger and meaner.

2. Keep Your Support System On Alert

• Your trusted and longtime friends and colleagues can give you empathetic support and insightful advice. Educate yourself about the psychology of stalking. Join stalker-survivor groups.
• Your family should be your default source of support. They can offer a place to stay, protection, money, guidance, and emotional backing.

3. Warn Them Against Hurting Your Loved Ones

• Warn them in no uncertain terms that if he causes disturbance in your loved ones’ lives, stalks them, or hurts them in any way, there will be serious consequences.
• Offer them a choice: stop the harassment and move on, or face the consequences — police arrests, restraining orders, and serious legal actions.
• Narcissists are usually cowardly and can be easily intimidated with a stern warning like “The cops shall arrest you if you contact me again.”
• A warning of legal and authoritative consequences usually makes them sulk back and move out of your life.

4. Maintain No Contact

Once they stop stalking you, maintain strict No Contact with them.

• Thankfully, narcissistic stalkers typically do not get emotionally attached to their victims, so they may not initiate contact with you after you have warned them off.
• Sadly, they might have got you trauma-bonded to them. So, occasionally, you may have irrational urges to re-contact them, feeling pity for them, and “wanting to fix them.”
• Curb those urges and main train No Contact — block them out completely, from your phone list, social media, and emails.
• Stay busy with activities you enjoy and spend time with friends who make you feel good about yourself. You can start writing in a journal about your feelings so you understand them better.

Handling The “Dangerous” Narcissist Stalker

The malignant narcissist is the most dangerous type of narcissist.

• Refusing their love angers them, as they feel insulted.
• They can bully and attack you to release their pent-up rage.
• Choosing another person after rejecting them makes them intensely hate both of you.

This maleficent stalker is looking for a chance to punish you and harm people close to you. Their aim of stalking is to “teach you a lesson.”

These are some of the most helpful tips to cope with the malignant narcissist stalker:

1. The standard advice against this dangerous narcissist is to avoid all contact with them. Always take precautions to avoid meeting them, like avoiding places they frequent, changing your daily routines, and using different routes for travel.
2. Even when you happen to come face-to-face with them, don’t respond. Stay unemotional, ignore their triggering acts, call your emergency contacts, and move to a safe place.
3. Keep your friends, relatives, and local police and law authorities informed and available on distress calls from you. Carry a portable panic button safety device.
4. Bear in mind that evading them can trigger their wrath and frustration. Sidelined and stonewalled, they can become more persistent, intrusive, and aggressive.
5. Document every contact and conversation with them to strengthen your legal side against them.
6. They might try to reconnect in many ways, like sending you messages of remorse or love-bombing — do not give in to their words. Always take their reconnection attempts as trying to get closer to hurt you in the worst possible ways (even killing you).
7. Never accept their gifts. Don’t try to find out how they are doing — they might interpret it as your rekindling of interest in them.
8. Do not seek revenge, don’t insult them, or don’t make plans to punish them. They might be keeping tabs on you in ways you may not realize. It might provoke them to go all out on you, unheeding all legal retribution.
9. Take safety precautions at all times. Move out and stay with people you know. Visit places you are familiar with. If you have children, teach them to be safe, not trust strangers’ tales, and give them a password to ask if someone tells them to accompany them.
10. If you choose to move to a new place, be careful about sharing your address on social media or with too many people. Retract your information from the internet beyond what is the bare minimum.

Getaway Items: Copy and store all documents — identity cards, health insurance, medical prescriptions, social security cards, checkbooks, mortgage details, bank cards, credit cards, birth certificates, and vaccine cards of your kids. Save all account passwords and access codes like ATM PINs.

Natural Traits of A Narcissistic Stalker

The 9 common natural traits of a narcissist stalker:

1. Grandiose and self-important: They believe they are more important than others, frequently inflating and lying about their achievements and talents. They demand recognition of their superiority for even minuscule or nonexistent contributions.
2. Fantasize fame and success: They are obsessed with fantasies of unparalleled success, fame, and power. They may harbor fantasies of unmatched intelligence (Cerebral Narcissist), or physical and sexual attractiveness (Somatic Narcissist). They also imagine themselves being in a perfect, overpowering passionate affair.
3. Think they are unique and special: They are sure they are one of a kind and can only be understood by or associated with similarly special, high-status individuals or groups. They are reluctant to mingle with common people. A narcissistic stalker may even have the delusion that you are sending secret messages that you want them to stalk you.
4. Need excessive validation and praise: They crave excessive admiration, attention, and respect. If they don’t get this hero worship, they may choose to be seen as feared, and choose to become infamous villains.
5. Feels entitled to special treatment: The narcissist stalker feels entitled to your love, time, attention, admiration, and resources. They feel entitled to special treatment and expect others to meet their demands without any question. They expect people to understand their demands without their uttering a word.
6. Will exploit at every chance: They use people for their own gain, without feeling wrong or guilty. They do not consider the impact of their exploitative actions on those around them.
7. Lack of emotional empathy: They don’t recognize or respect other people’s feelings, needs, or choices. Even when they understand, they won’t act in kindness or compassion unless specifically asked.
8. Envious of achievers: They suffer high levels of envy of others, and often have bodily sensations of burning pain on seeing or hearing about other people’s success stories. They may try to harm or undermine those they envy. They might also have paranoid delusions that others are jealous of them and that they will act against them.
9. Arrogant and haughty: They are arrogant and insulting to those they see as “lower” or “weaker” than them. Those in powerful positions often feel they are “above the law”. They react unkindly to people who challenge or oppose them. They can explode in violent rage when frustrated and proven wrong. They can interpret a rejection as an act of malevolence or insult. And can react with simmering rage, sustained vindictiveness, and opportunistic violence to a perceived slight.

FAQ 1: How Do Experts Define Stalking?

Karen M. Abrams and Gail Erlick Robinson define stalking as “the ‘wilful, malicious, and repeated following or harassing of another person’, usually requiring a ‘credible threat of violence’ against the victim or the victim’s family.”

Legal resources generally deem it is illegal to:

• Intentionally harass someone through repeated actions.
• Follow or contact someone repeatedly, which is against the law.
• Watch someone’s home, workplace, or their whereabouts, which is prohibited.
• Engage in any threatening behavior towards someone or their family, which is illegal.
• Undertake actions that cause someone to fear for their safety, which are considered unlawful.

Legal systems aren’t always able to address the complexities of stalking, as there’s no uniform law against stalking across the US.

FAQ 2: Are All Stalkers Narcissists?

No, all stalkers are not narcissists. The psychological profile of stalkers can vary widely. While narcissism can be a factor in some stalking behaviors, it is not the sole cause. Stalking can have various psychological backgrounds, like obsessive tendencies, jealousy, or a desire for control and power.

FAQ 3: Are All Narcissists Stalkers?

No, not all narcissists are stalkers. While some narcissists may show extreme urges to control others, or be possessive/obsessive, that can lead to stalking, many do not engage in such actions. Narcissism involves a deep need for validation and admiration, but does not inherently include stalking behavior.

Final Words

Narcissist stalking is a traumatic process, and victims often go through relentless harassment that invades every aspect of their lives.

Even sadder is that the trauma can linger long after the stalker is gone, making the victim feel unsafe and unwell.

Despite the challenges, survivors often report experiencing profound personal growth and resilience, and finding strength they never knew they had.

• Allow yourself to feel happy and indulge occasionally, but be careful to stay alert.
• Realize that you are not crazy to feel constant fear even after they have left your life.
• Reach out to a psychological professional to help you cope with its aftereffects.

√ Also Read: How To Spot & Stop A Narcissist’s Flying Monkeys

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