Is Not About The Nail

Sometime last year, DH sent me a video called: "It's not about the nail" which shows a woman complaining to her husband that all her sweaters are getting ruined when she puts them on. The husband can see that she has a nail on her forehead and that is the cause of her problem, but he's not "allowed" to tell her because he's meant (I guess) to be sitting there listening empathetically rather than offering solutions. (I can't say that I relate much to that way of thinking because I am the sort of person that if I am talking about a problem I want SOLUTIONS. I don't want the: "Oh dear, there..there..." -which by the way, my MiL used to do whenever I shared a problem with her and always left me frustrated. I don't share my quandaries with her anymore.) 

Anyway, the other day I was thinking about the way Ns throw flimsy accusations at you as if you had committed the worse crime in the history of mankind (i.e. "mom gave you a package for me and you didn't deliver for six months!!!!"), and you stand there perplexed, wondering why even when you explain that "it wasn't six months, it was a month and I couldn't deliver it earlier because all the roads being snowed under", it does nothing to abate their anger. And that's when I had the lightbulb moment that when it comes to Ns: it's never about the nail. Or, in other words, it's never about what they say it is, because if it was, it would be resolved the second you explain it to them, like it does with normal people. See, in reality, they're not bringing up the accusation to get an explanation, they're just looking for stuff to "throw" at you, so they can "make" you look like the bad guy while making themselves look like the "victim". 

One of the most classic examples of this is the well-known story of Satan accusing Job of only serving God for what he got out of it. After it gets proved beyond any doubt that Job was serving God genuinely, there is absolutely no acknowledgement on Satan's part that he was wrong about Job. And isn't this exactly the same that Ns do, when they're confronted unequivocally with their accusation being wrong/mistaken or inaccurate? There is never ANY acknowledgement on their part that they were wrong. 

So next time we're thrown a wild accusation by a Narc, let's remember that is not about the accusation, and let's focus on how to protect ourselves and get out of their presence as quickly as possible.