The Narcissist’s Playbook: Smear Campaigns and Stalking
One of the manipulator’s ugliest tricks.
It’s important to learn how a narcissistic manipulator may try to continue and make your life hell, even after you wake up to their toxic behavior and attempt to part ways with them.
In Shahida Arabi’s book, POWER: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse, there is a chapter that details 20 diversion tactics an abuser will use to try and run away from the fact that their behavior has caused you emotional harm.
This piece will focus on one of those tactics — smear campaigns and stalking.
I’m choosing to raise awareness about this narcissistic behavior because it’s terrifying for anyone being subjected to it.
A narcissistic abuser may try to keep the emotional turmoil alive and well in their target, well after the relationship has been formally ended. The goal, of course, is to not let that person live “free” of the abuser.
One of the ways they can do this is to immediately launch a smear campaign in the aftermath of the relationship. They’ll deploy deceptive language — as well as out-of-context, private information that they’ve collected — in an attempt to paint the worst possible picture of their victim.
When toxic types can’t control the way you see yourself, they start to control how others see you; they play the martyr while you’re labeled the toxic one. A smear campaign is a preemptive strike to sabotage your reputation and slander your name so that you won’t have a support network to fall back on lest you decide to detach and cut ties with this toxic person. They may even stalk and harass you as a way to supposedly “expose the truth about you; this exposure acts as a way to hide their own abusive behavior while projecting it onto you.
— POWER p. 58
More than anything, a narcissist is afraid of being unmasked and of having their behavior exposed for what it is — toxic and emotionally destructive.
This is why Shahida refers to their smear campaigns as a “preemptive strike.”
When the narcissist detects that a former target/victim is waking up to the reality underlying the toxic relationship, they will lash out first in an attempt to save face by ruining the reputation of their victim before they have a chance of sharing their story with a support network.
This is unfortunate because, in many relationships, there is some overlap between the friend circles of the abuser and the abused.
They will attempt to use those connections to spread gossip and rumors about you after the relationship ends, with full knowledge that you will likely find out about it and therefore be coaxed into having a reaction that will validate their warped perspective of you in the minds of others.
After all, who would not react defensively to lies and mischaracterizations being intentionally spread about them, all from someone they formerly considered to be a friend?
Toxic people will gossip behind your back (and in front of your face), slander you to your loved ones or their loved ones, create stories that depict you as the aggressor while they play the victim, and claim that you engaged in the same behaviors that they are afraid you will accuse them of engaging in. They will also methodically, covertly and deliberately abuse you so they can use your reactions as a way to prove that they are the so-called “victims” of your abuse.
— POWER pgs. 58–59
Shahida advises people to document any forms of harassment if possible.
Unfortunately, during the time you were “friends” or “partners” with the narcissist, your gut instinct probably wasn’t telling you to distrust them and therefore save any evidence of strange behavior.
The narcissist, however, has no qualms about using private information that was shared with them in good faith — whether it be intimate details about your insecurities, your social or political views, or any other material — as smear campaign fuel to color the perceptions other people have of you.
Therefore, it’s important for people who participate in online chat communities to be aware of the risk associated with sharing intimate details with strangers online.
If you discover that you are being smeared behind your back by a narcissistic manipulator, it can be tempting to want to try and jump back into the relationship to defend yourself, but this is hardly ever productive.
Although understandable, this is a huge mistake.
Rushing to defend yourself is exactly what the narcissist wants, both to prove to others that you are mentally unstable, crazy, or otherwise as bad as they are, as well as to gain a feeling of satisfaction that they are still living rent-free in your head and influencing your life even after the relationship has ended.
Shahida mentions that the only way to deal with a narcissist is to go “No Contact” with both the manipulator and the people that they are still surrounding themselves with.
It can be difficult to do this, especially when your reputation is being smeared to people you formerly thought of as friends. But abstaining from the conflict is essential. The narcissist began the smear campaign to rile your emotions up and get you to act out an emotional outburst — which would vindicate their view.
Even if such an outburst is justified — as it almost always is when in response to the tactics of emotional manipulators — other people won’t see it that way.
The only thing that can be done once a smear campaign — with potential stalking attached — is to continue going No Contact and hope that the other individuals who are being manipulated eventually have an epiphany moment of their own.
The best defense against a smear campaign is to remain true to yourself. Shahida ends with:
Your character and integrity will speak for itself when the narcissist’s false mask begins to slip.
— POWER. p. 59
