If you’re like many people who have had a relationship with a narcissist, you’ve probably tried everything you can think of to stop the emotional abuse and get the narcissist to change. The problem with narcissistic personality disorder, however, is that narcissists don’t want to let go, and they will continue to try to contact you long after you’ve gone no contact. So, what can you do? 

There are several things you can do to get a narcissist to finally get the message that you really don’t want to see them again, but these 9 steps are essential to get them to stop contacting you: 

1. No Contact Means Absolutely No Contact;
2. Stick the Goodbye and Just Go;
3. Block their Phone Number; 
4. Block them on Social media; 
5. Block Their Friends Too; 
6. Remind Yourself Why You Left; 
7. Take Time to Heal; 
8. Move; 
9. Get a Restraining Order.

Some of these steps are aimed at keeping the narcissist away, but you’ll also notice some are aimed at reminding you why you want them away in the first place. It’s critical to understand each of these steps and why they’re on the list. Basically, the narcissist is nothing if not persistent, so it’s important to understand a little bit about how the narcissist will respond and why each of these steps may be a critical element to finally get free. 

How Will a Narcissist Respond to No Contact?

If you tell a healthy person that you’d like to stop being in contact with them, they will respect your boundary, but that’s not the case with a narcissist. Narcissists see other people in their life as mere extensions of themselves. 

They desperately need other people to provide them with their narcissistic supply of love, admiration, and devotion. This is what props up their damaged self-esteem. They have buried their true self long ago, and in its place, they have constructed a false image and imbued it with grandiose ideas. 

They did this long before they met you, but when they did it, they created a need for external validation. This is because the false self cannot take the place of a genuine ego or sense of self. The latter can internally support a healthy person’s self-esteem, but the false self cannot. 

For that reason, when you try to go no contact with a narcissist, you’re going to have to set that boundary more than once. Initially, they may become enraged as a way to scare you and distract you from trying such a thing. 

If that doesn’t work, they will go through a series of manipulations from promising to change to attempting to smear your good name. They might come to your place of work, stalk you online or physically, and even threaten you. They’re desperate and that means you’ll need to be ready and to be firm in your resolution to end all contact. These 9 steps can help depending on your individual situation.

1. No Contact Means Absolutely No Contact

If you’re going no contact with a narcissist as a manipulative tactic to get them to change, you’re likely to be seriously disappointed. If you contact a narcissist for any reason after going no contact, they will see that as an encouragement to continue their efforts to get you back under their manipulative thumb.

If you really want to stay with them, but want them to change, there are other tactics you can use to try to achieve that goal. Going no contact should not be one of them. Having said that, if you’re going no contact for the right reasons — you want to be free from emotional abuse and manipulative control efforts — then you should not want to contact them anymore at all. 

There may be reasons, however, that you go no contact, but you still need to contact them. You might, for example, share custody of children with them or need to dissolve a business with them. 

If that is the case, try to contact them through legal representatives or other intermediaries as much as possible. If they have to drop off or pick up your children and you must see them, try to make those exchanges in a place other than your home, preferably in public. Make the contact quick and unemotional. 

You can use the grey rock technique to make yourself as uninteresting as possible when you do have to contact them. Don’t give them any emotional reaction whatsoever. If you do, they will know how to get to you. Of course, if you don’t have any reason to be in contact with them, then don’t. Ever!

2. Stick the Goodbye and Just Go

So often, people will linger after saying goodbye. It’s common even for people in a relationship with a narcissist to remember more of the good times than the bad, but if you’re really serious about going no contact, you need to just end the relationship and leave. 

Don’t try to stay friends or contact them if you’re feeling particularly weepy or sad about the loss of the relationship. Call your best friend or a loving family member and get them to help you through those moments of weakness, but under no circumstance should you contact the narcissist. 

Narcissists are experts at spotting and exploiting weakness, and as you likely already know, when they want to be, they can be very charming. They can and will try to reel you back in and get you back in their life. If you succumb to their charms, they won’t have changed, and soon, you’ll be right back to emotional abuse and manipulation. 

3. Block Their Phone Number

You might think it’s not necessary to block them from calling you, that you just won’t answer, but it’s better to block them than to give in to your kind nature. This is particularly true after some time has passed. 

You might be thinking, “Oh, it’s been a while, I can answer and it’ll be fine,” but you will find is that if you open the door at all, the narcissist will not stop until they have pushed their way back into your life. Once they’ve made some progress, they won’t give up. 

Additionally, even if years have passed since the last time you saw them, a narcissist may still try to get back into your life. Once you’ve gone no contact with a narcissist, it’s vital to stay no contact with them or the cycle of narcissistic abuse will begin anew. 

This is exactly their modus operandi, they wait for a while likely because they’ve found other sources of narcissistic supply, but once they begin to exhaust those sources, they cycle back around to old contacts and old sources. To truly stop the abuse, it’s vital that you don’t give them any way they can contact you. 

4. Block Them on Social Media

In our modern age, blocking the narcissist from calling you on the phone won’t be enough; you’ll also need to block them on social media platforms. It’s easy to forget that they can also contact you there. 

Additionally, they’ll try to smear you and affect your online friendships. If you have friends who you suddenly find trying to get you to rethink your decision, you might also consider asking them to stop contacting you or at least to stop talking about the narcissist. It’s very likely the narcissist is behind their pleas to reconsider. 

Because the narcissist will do everything they can to contact you, you’ll want to block them from every avenue you can think of in that regard. As psychology major and childcare expert, Amelia Gray, says, “Block them and keep on blocking them.” 

5. Block Their Friends Too

If you share friends with the narcissist, you might need to block them too, particularly if they were friends with the narcissist, to begin with. You might suddenly find that the narcissist’s friends are advocating on their behalf, and you don’t need anyone trying to get you to reconsider your decision. 

Narcissists have no compunction about using anyone to get to you. They will use common friends, reach out to your friends and family, and they might even attempt to contact work colleagues. If they have contact information for your coworkers, you might need to warn them about what’s happened so they will know your views if they are contacted. 

6. Remind Yourself Why You Left

It’s not uncommon to question your own decision, and this is particularly true if the narcissist in your life was a romantic partner. It’s hard to be on your own again. That’s why it’s a good idea to make a list of all the reasons you made this decision. 

When you’re feeling a little bit down, you can look at that list to remember the bad times instead of romanticizing the good times. Narcissists can be very charming and usually are at the start of a  relationship, so there are likely good times to be remembered. 

But narcissistic abuse is devastating to your self-esteem and to most relationships. Leaving and going no contact is usually the best advice to follow even though it may also be the hardest. 

7. Take Time to Heal

It’s also vital to your own mental and physical health that you take the time to heal. Yes, the narcissist in your life was abusive, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t grieve the loss of that relationship. 

You might think your narcissist was so bad and you should be glad to be rid of them, but the reality is that no one is all bad or all good. You likely loved them at one point in your relationship, and you’ve lost that. They were wrong for you and you’ve left, but you still need to grieve the loss. 

There’s also more to grieve than just the loss of a love. There are all the things you hoped the relationship would be; all the things you thought you would achieve together. 

It’s not bad to hope for those things; it’s just that the narcissist was not the right person to try to achieve those ideals with. Take time to heal your loss before you move on. You’ll be glad you did. 

8. Move

It’s certainly a possibility that your narcissist might stalk you. Just like with any other stalker, that can be frightening and severely disruptive to your life. Narcissists are quite persistent in their efforts too, so if they take to stalking, it might be necessary to move somewhere they can’t find you. 

If you do have to take that extreme step, be sure that you don’t give it all away on your social media feeds or by telling the wrong people in your life. Keep your new location private and provide it only to trusted friends and relatives. 

9. Get a Restraining Order

This is another extreme step to take, but it can be necessary with a narcissist. If they are physically threatening, as they sometimes do, then don’t hesitate to get a restraining order. You should also take any other reasonable steps to protect yourself from them. 

While a restraining order, in and of itself,  may not stop the narcissist from attempting to contact you, if they do, it will give you legal options that you won’t have otherwise. It’s a difficult step to take, but it may be necessary to get the harassment to stop. 

Final Thoughts

Getting a narcissist to stop contacting you can be very difficult to do. These steps will help to do the trick, but you need to be certain of your own motives and you need to be persistent. Narcissists will usually try to contact someone who has gone no contact at some point in time. 

It can even be years after the relationship ended, but they will likely try to come back into your life at some time in the future. That’s why it’s vital to keep maintaining your no contact boundaries, and it’s also helpful if you can make yourself more difficult for them to find. 

If you’re considering going no contact with a narcissist, it’s critical that you read this article about when a narcissist might discard you permanently. It can give you some vital information to help ensure you can get free from the narcissist in your life forever.