Five Tips for Handling the Holiday Season with a Person with Narcissistic Traits

If your holiday season involves someone with narcissistic traits, chances are good you worry about the holidays in a different way than other people do. In addition to the usual challenges of juggling holiday activities, maintaining healthy habits, and avoiding indulgence, you’re dealing with the challenges of being in a relationship with someone with narcissistic traits.

How do people with narcissistic traits make the holidays anything but happy? They plan parties or events, then cancel them last-minute. They agree to plans, then “forget”. They volunteer to roast the Thanksgiving turkey, then "accidentally" sleep in or spend hours prepping it, so dinner is three hours late. They buy Christmas gifts to replace items you love, purchase clothes for you in a size too small or too big, or buy items that clash with your color scheme in your home. They “forget” your gift at their house when they stop by to visit. They reject the expensive cashmere sweater you scrimped and saved to buy because it’s “not soft enough.” They buy your children several (or even a dozen) of the exact same toy, and buy your teenagers things they used to like when they were children. They pout when little things don’t go their way. They provoke arguments and create scenes, usually ending with them storming off and slamming doors, or squealing out of the driveway and racing down the street.

If you’re separated, you may fare better, because they’re not in your home. You can expect them to do their best to interfere with your holiday happiness, though. If they think you might still be a useful object in some way, they won’t hesitate to use you. You’ll be asked to run errands “because you’re going there anyway,” buy “a gift for my mom this one last time, because she likes what you pick out better,” watch the kids on their custodial day last-minute, or ask you to bring pumpkin pie when you drop off the kids “because the kids will want it while they’re at my house this year.”

On the holiday itself, you can expect cards, letters, emails, texts, and phone calls that are irrelevant, self-centered, and accusatory. You may receive cards, letters, emails, texts, or phone calls full of hearts and flowers, carrying the unspoken message they still love you unconditionally…and the way things turned out is all your fault. Depending on your person with narcissistic traits, they may vacillate between anger and affection, leaving you feeling drained and exhausted, and in no mood to celebrate.

You could argue that anyone might do any of these things, and that’s true. However, people with narcissistic traits do these things consistently. Which things and which holidays, and how predictable their behavior is, will depend on the person with narcissistic traits. But you can count on them to make the holidays uncomfortable.

So, what can you do to maintain your mental health? Here are five tips for handling the holiday season with a person with narcissistic traits:

1)     Understand narcissism

This is perhaps the single most critical thing you can do to navigate the holiday season successfully. When you understand what narcissism is, and what that means for you, then it’s far easier to see their behavior as happening to you personally, but not because of you personally.

Narcissism results when personality intersects with early childhood abuse and neglect. Your person with narcissistic traits didn’t choose their personality, nor did they choose their early childhood experiences. Through no fault of their own, the person with narcissistic traits lacks both brain cells and brain connections in the part of the brain that processes feelings. This means they’re stuck in an emotional age stage that doesn’t match their chronological age. (If you want to learn more about this, I recommend the excellent book A General Theory of Love.)

For most people with noticeable narcissistic traits, they’re emotionally stuck in the age stage of the preschool years, which is why I use the term “emotional four-year-old.” Physically and cognitively, your person with narcissistic traits is their chronological age. Emotionally, however, they are a preschooler.

This means their behavior consistently reflects the traits associated with both preschoolers and narcissism: a lack of empathy, self-centeredness, a tendency to see people as useful objects, an unhealthy need for power and control, an unhealthy need to be seen as good, right, or perfect, and an unhealthy reliance on the immature ego defenses of the preschool years (projection, denial, and displacement).

If you read through that list carefully, it’s easy to match up the traits with common holiday behaviors. The lack of empathy and self-centeredness mean the holidays should revolve around them, and their need for power and control makes it hard for them to tolerate it when they’re not the center of attention.

When they throw a tantrum (and they will), you’ll see the immature ego defenses on full display. Their tendency to see people as useful objects makes it hard for them to buy appropriate gifts for others, and makes it easy to take advantage of your good nature. The need to be seen as good, right, or perfect tends to show up as pressure on you to get things done--so they look like they're good, right, and perfect.

Once you thoroughly understand narcissism, it’ll be far easier to…

2)     Have reasonable expectations

If you’re celebrating the holidays with someone with narcissistic traits, it just makes sense to have reasonable expectations. Your person has the emotional life of a four-year-old. They are not an emotional adult. Neither you nor they can do anything about this in time for the holidays.

Think about it: If you were planning to have a four-year-old visiting you for your celebration, you’d never expect them to behave like an adult. Instead, you’d plan ahead for a holiday season that takes into account how four-year-olds behave. Your person with narcissistic traits isn’t an emotional adult, and you can safely predict they’re not going to act like one.

Whatever your person with narcissistic traits did last year, chances are good they’ll do it again this year. If they don’t do that exact thing, you can safely predict they’ll do something else that demonstrates their emotional immaturity. Thinking “Maybe this will be the year…” is wishful thinking.

Instead, review your knowledge of narcissism. Know the six narcissistic traits, and how your person with narcissistic traits evinces them, forward, backward, inside out, and upside down. Think of your person with narcissistic traits as an emotional four-year old. Expect your person to behave like an emotional four-year-old, not an emotional adult!

3)     Plan ahead

When I say “plan ahead,” clients often think I mean “imagine every possible scenario and plan for each one.” That’s like telling yourself “Imagine every song that might be played at a party, then create every possible choreography for each song.” It’s impossible, and it’s the fast track to anxiety and panic attacks.

However, you can plan ahead for handling the behaviors typical of your person with narcissistic traits. If they hold up Thanksgiving dinner every year, or cancel parties or events, plan ahead for snacks, and plan your own parties or events. If they give you awful gifts or are rejecting of yours, expect it. If they make last-minute or unreasonable requests of you, think about your boundaries ahead of time, and stick to them.

You can also plan ahead for the holidays by thinking about your person’s past narcissistic behaviors, then rewarding yourself every time you notice them. As we’ve discussed in the past, this technique works well for helping you stay calm in the moment, and avoid reacting when your person with narcissistic traits is an emotional four-year-old.

That said, your person with narcissistic traits may, or may not, do the same things they’ve done in the past. So, it makes sense to also plan ahead by knowing narcissism, having reasonable expectations, being prepared for the unpredictable, and staying in your circle of control. When you expect your person with narcissistic traits to show up for the holidays and evince narcissistic traits, it’s easier to take it in stride when it happens. In other words, planning ahead means you need to…

4)     Be prepared for the unpredictable

If you’re unfamiliar with child development, spending a day with a four-year-old can get overwhelming quickly. A preschooler following you around all day asking “But why?” can be frustrating! But if you understand child development, the things preschoolers do (like asking “Why?” dozens of times a day) make sense, because these are developmentally normal (and important) childhood behaviors.

If you know these are normal behaviors, you can expect them to happen. You won’t know when they’ll happen. But you can know that they will happen, and when they do, you won’t be surprised or dismayed. Instead, you’ll feel smart! – “I didn’t know when this would happen, but I did know it was likely to occur. Ha!”

In a similar way, understanding narcissism makes it easier to be prepared for the unpredictable. If you think about your person with narcissistic traits as an emotional four-year-old, you can predict the kinds of things they’re likely to do. You may not know when they’ll do them, but you can be unfazed when they do happen. Again, knowing the six tenets of narcissism is imperative to your mental health. This will help you…

5)     Stay in your circle of control

Being unfazed when your person with narcissistic traits acts like an emotional four-year-old is key to staying in your circle of control. If you have a parent with narcissistic traits, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you’re responsible for how other people act and feel. That makes you susceptible to self-blame when your person with narcissistic traits acts like a preschooler. It’s especially challenging if your person with narcissistic traits is telling you “it’s all your fault!”

As we’ve discussed here, unless you’re a geologist, remove the words fault or blame from your vocabulary. Only use the word responsible. If you notice yourself thinking, or if someone tells you it’s your fault or you’re to blame, ask yourself, What’s my responsibility here? If you’re being held responsible for someone else’s thoughts, feelings, or actions, don’t fall for it! You don’t have power over others’ thoughts, feelings, or actions—and you’re not responsible for them, either.

Sometimes clients find this hard to believe—after all, it’s true that your words and actions are catalysts for others’ thoughts and feelings. That said, it’s also true that just because someone says or does something doesn’t mean you have to respond a certain way. Two people can experience the same situation, and respond entirely differently to it.

Here's an example: If you know a person with narcissistic traits, it’s likely they’ve done hurtful things in response to your behavior, even when your behavior wasn’t intended to be hurtful. In contrast, you can probably name many times when they’ve done something hurtful to you, and you didn’t retaliate by doing something hurtful to them. This discrepancy happens because how you decide to respond to a situation is up to you. You’re responsible for your behavior, and other people are responsible for theirs.

Understanding and accepting narcissistic behavior is challenging any time of the year. The holiday season makes engaging with a person with narcissistic traits makes it even more difficult. If you’re struggling to make it happen, I encourage you to seek out a therapist who specializes in narcissism recovery before the holiday season. You deserve to thrive through the holidays!

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