Whether it was before, during, or after addiction, at some point you will have a narcissist in your life that you will need to deal with—maybe even a few.

Chaos magic, flying monkeys, stress psychosis, inciting and feeding off of your reactions and living in your mind rent free; secret slanders, gossip, lies, financial leveraging, love bombing after draining you dry; constant confusion, walking on eggshells, the consistent dark cloud, intentional sleep disturbance . . . these are some of the tactics of a narcissist.

Spotting one before they have your nervous system programmed, and have you cornered in a compromising position or living situation, was not as easy as I had thought. Getting out of it was even more tricky.

You most likely have more than one in your life. A boss, boyfriend or girlfriend, business associate, friend, associate: these people are easy to slam the door on when you’ve had enough of their bullshit. But someone who lives with you, someone you love, someone you rely on for some area of your life, a relative, spouse, parent, offspring . . . This is different.

The consensus among the experts and many survivors (yes, they drive their victims to suicide) is that the only way out is by running. Get as far away as possible and cut all ties. Which is not a bad strategy. But what if you can’t flee and need to learn how to fight back (not physically, that works in their favor)? I have found that by the time you figure them out most are not in a position where they can just flee. Believe me, they had spent years ensuring that.

Disclaimer: if the situation has escalated to the point of physical abuse, involving the authorities is the obvious choice, but you better be ready to follow through.

While running away might be the easiest, self-avoiding, and somewhat effective method, two things can happen. One, you just let another narcissist get their hooks in you because you didn’t do the work. And two, because you didn’t do the work, you failed the class. Every situation is a lesson and an opportunity to grow. This just happens to be a big one.

Narcs don’t respond to traditional behavioral modification. You can’t “talk it out”, use logic or reason, appease them, make a deal, threaten, there is no compromise. They don’t go to therapy, only their victims do. None of it works.

The thing that most people don’t realize is that the fight is not just with the narcissist. Often, they have already gotten everyone else on their side and those people will most likely label you as mentally ill and socially pressure you to stay in the situation.

They are adept at sweet-talking anyone who you may try to get involved in the situation, except for one type of person, and this is the type of person I needed to become.

A sovereign empath.

If you are still reading this, and a Narc has targeted you, that means you are an empath—just an unconscious one. You are still asleep and stuck in a nightmarish loop that will not go away until you stop processing their shadow and start working on and protecting your own light. Empaths are people with extraordinary emotional/energetic sensitivity (and resources).

Before effectively dealing with my Narc, I needed to deal with myself. I had been using my light irresponsibly. And just know that, when you do start to use it responsibly, it will disappoint and piss off a few people in your life. It didn’t matter what I said or did if I just kept giving all of Me away. That realization was my first step.

Your light, your energy, is their supply. NO, YOU ARE NOT GOING INSANE. They crave all your negative reactions, unnecessary struggle, doing things for them, and keeping you talking about and thinking about what they did and how frustrated you are with them. They actually plan all this shit out. Attention is spiritual currency.

My second step was that I needed to get past the psychology and the physical persona part of all this. It is not them doing it, at some point in their life a demon attached itself to this person, and that spirit is who they are listening to, not you. That’s why talking does not work in your favor.

If you keep attracting these spirits it’s not a bad thing, it’s a training ground. And what it means is you have light, something they don’t have and need to steal from you. That’s their Fix, that’s how they feed.

We tend to be an open channel. Because of this openness we have mass reserves of light, or source energy, but all too often spend it all on everyone but ourselves. Narcs sense this almost immediately, like an addict who can spot someone who is holding drugs in a crowd of a thousand.

I practiced cutting off their supply: one word or sentence replies (no conversation)—no reactions, don’t let them into your business and stay out or theirs. Shutoff access. Replace your barbed wire fence boundaries with brick walls. You will notice very fast that it’s not about you, it’s your energy and their access to it, because once you cut off their supply, they quickly find another source/person to siphon from until they can regain access to their favorite source, you.

Then I started doing Me, with rock solid selfishness, but not in the negative way. Selfish with my values, morals, goals, time, rest, thoughts, and focus. Do not share it with them. If you share these things then they know what to attack.

Keep in mind that this is the equivalent to hiding an addict’s drugs, so expect the same behavior.

I found this to be quite empowering, but what it really did was give me just enough energy and focus to figure out this most important need that I had.

I was trying to control another person’s reality to fit how I wanted my reality to be. What my battle was really for was authority. I lost authority over my life.

So, here’s the part nobody tells you about. Praying for things like my narc to change, my life to change; for the treatment to stop, to escape the “no win” situations; to be left alone, trying to control them, to get them to listen … none of it works because I had no authority over them or myself.

The way I got my authority was not by gaining the things the narc respects. Narcs are incapable of respecting people, they respect things like money, titles, hierarchy, and popularity, but they will never respect you.

The way I gained authority in my life was the most counterintuitive thing I have ever done. I gave all control to God. By giving God control over my finances, my business, my focus, my relationships, my day-to-day everything: he gave me the authority over the people, places, and things that He puts in my life to steward in exchange. A narc cannot trespass when I stand on that ground, because it’s God’s. Remember, they respect hierarchy, even subconscious spiritual hierarchy.

It is at that point the narc will either need to leave on their own or they change. Yes, they do change, they need to adapt. Everyone needs to adapt when their environment changes.

In my case, my narc changed. I still live with them, but once my authority was given to me in exchange for me giving God control, my narc’s behavior and thinking had to shift into a completely different person.

Here’s why. The biggest fear a narc has is exposure. They fear that people will see them for how they see themselves. But they know that nobody will listen to an unconscious empath, but they also know that they will listen to someone who has authority—worldly or spiritually, it doesn’t matter. The Gaining of authority quickens the pace by which they expose themselves–other’s start to see them. Not because I shouted it from the rooftops. Believe me, I tried. But because God light is bigger and shows everyone more.

Every victim of Narcissism has the capability to do this. The Narc spent a lot of energy, siphoned from their victim, to try to ensure that they don’t do what I have just described, because it means Game Over. They get overdosed on light.

Their damage is their disconnect from this source of energy. They had lost the capability to connect with source energy, God. The victim only needs to realize that what they thought were their weaknesses will become strengths when they drop the character they were groomed to be and become sovereign on all fronts and protect their light at all costs; no matter how it might look to others.

And always remember, your new life is going to cost you your old life. The narc isn’t the only one who changes in this scenario.