evile

It really depends on what you mean by ‘help.’ If you mean “Help the narcissist stop being a narcissist” then the answer is NO. If you mean “help the narcissist to become a better predator, then the answer is ‘maybe,’ depending on whether they are high functioning [1] or low functioning[2]

In my experience, narcissists who are intelligent and high-functioning can, will, and DO adopt the language of self-help, therapy, the new age movement, spirituality, and/or legal matters in order to make themselves sound like experienced professionals with deep knowledge of these topics. They will then use the buzzwords, lingo, tactics, and terminology of the self-help, new-age, therapy, legal, religious, and mental-health worlds in order to demonize their targets and make themselves look like blameless victims in their smear campaigns against others.

Sending an intelligent narcissist to therapy, anger management, or any other self-help type activity is like handing a homicidal maniac a loaded gun. They will hurt you and you will regret it.

On the other hand, if you are dealing with a low-intelligence, low-functioning narcissist, he or she will simply respond with anger and blame towards you, because they will not understand any of the class and they will blame you for feeling inadequate and ignorant.

Either way, a narcissist at an anger management class will not learn to become a better human being, nor to stop being abusive. Your only two potential outcomes are that they learn to disguise their predatory nature a bit more carefully, or they explode in anger at you for ‘making’ them do something that ended up making them feel foolish and like a failure.

You, on the other hand, would probably benefit greatly from taking anger management classes and learning how to be assertive[3] in response to the narcissist’s attempts to manipulate, abuse or mistreat you. A great many empathetic and kind people who are victimized by narcissists seem to come from a family of origin which made them feel that their ‘negative’ emotions were not allowed—If, as a child growing up, you aren’t allowed to say ‘no,’ you aren’t allowed to be angry when your personal boundaries are violated, you aren’t allowed to stand up for yourself when people around you are being unkind and unfair, then you are very likely to grow up to be the perfect narc-bait victim tidbit.

So, please work on yourself, learn that you are allowed to say No and can also say Yes if it feels good, that you can change your mind, that you can do things that only please yourself and don’t necessarily need to make everyone around you happy all the time. Establish your boundaries, learn to be firm-yet-kind (also known as assertive!) and make yourself narc proof!

Footnotes

[1]

The High-Functioning Narcissist - The Narcissistic Life

[2]

High-Functioning and Low-Functioning — Out of the FOG

[3]