How to Know When a Narcissist Is Testing You

There's a kind of person who tests you the moment they meet you. Subtly, quietly. You can feel it, even if you can't explain it. Most people think you can spot a narcissist by how loud or charming they are. But the truth is, the smartest ones test you first to see how far they can push you, how much they can take from you, and what they can get away with. And those first moments are everything. Because if you could spot the test early, you can flip the power dynamic without bending, without sounding rude, and without letting them hijack the situation. I've spent the last 20 years researching self worth and narcissistic relationships. As a coach, author and survivor myself, I teach simple systems to help empower you in any situation. In this video, I'll show you how to know when a narcissist is testing you, what those tests look like, and how to keep your power when they try. Recently, I was at a weekend painting workshop with a bunch of people I'd never met. And of course, in every group, there's always at least one person who starts testing the people around them. And I'm a total newbie painter. I was just there to learn, honestly, hoping for a break from thinking about narcissists for once. But that weekend I noticed how often narcissists show up and how quickly they start to test for targets. So I want to walk you through how it played out the first morning. We're all outside, the teacher's in front of us painting a landscape. It's windy, so everybody's kind of huddled together to hear him. And right behind me, like right here is this guy practically pressed up against my back, humming, whistling and making sound effects while the teacher paints. The teacher's painting and we're looking at him and here's this guy, this middle aged man in my ear going, do, do, do, do, do do do do do do, swish, swish, bap bop. And at first I'm thinking, okay, maybe he's nervous, or maybe he doesn't know what to do with silence, or maybe he's just trying to offload his anxiety. I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt. So I try to move away because I'm immediately like, oh, no. But the more I move away, the closer he scoots into my space. And I'm thinking, I wish I had a remote control so I can mute him. At this point, I'm still thinking, maybe he's nervous, but my spidey sense is up because this also might be a power play. And if he's a narcissist, he's testing our airspace, the soundscape. And he's testing to see if he can steal the attention that belongs to the moment and to the teacher and overpower it with his incessant noises. And this is what I call the ambient power test. When someone tries to control the energy in the room or outside just to see who's movable. Now, it's totally possible that I'm the only person in that group being annoyed. It's possible that he's just really anxious and maybe he's the class clown. But it's also possible that this is a test, a way to see who's going to push back. And if it is a power test, then he's scanning for targets, checking the room for who reacts, who laughs, who looks uncomfortable, and who stays quiet. He's looking for the power structure for who's safe to challenge and who might challenge him back. So most people there were just smiling, kind of like, okay, yeah. That's what narcissists are looking for. They're collecting data. Who's easy, who's strong, and who can they start testing next? Personally, what I feel in a moment like that reminds me of being on the playground when I was little, when a boy would run by and pull my hair and then take off running just to get me to chase him. And. And it could be that innocent, but I just don't chase anymore. So I stay focused on the teacher. I make it obvious that I'm not engaging. I don't turn around, even though he's right here. I don't react. I don't even glance his way, because if he is testing, he's looking to see who's going to chase him. And it's not going to be me, by the way. If you want help assessing the level of risk you're dealing with, I've created a free narcissist protection checklist. It's a quick, powerful way to check what you're dealing with. And there's a link in the description below. So for the rest of that day, I gave him zero attention. No reaction, no energy, nothing. He didn't exist to me. So the next morning, he comes in, ready. Because narcissists are looking for a payoff, a payload of narcissistic supply. The bigger the challenge, the more payoff they're going to get. And they're always ranking people in order of power. The person who says yes goes to the bottom of the list. The one who says no automatically moves up to the top. More authority, more value, more payoff. So they've got two options. They go for the easy target who gives them what they want right away, or they go for the harder target, the one who didn't play. And that's the one they're going to fight for. Winning means status. It means power, it means supply. So when you become unmanipulatable, you also become the mountain they want to die on. And I definitely gave off the how about never? Signal. And he thought, challenge accepted. So later that morning, I wanted to capture the moment. So I walked away from the group down the trail to take a photo of the whole landscape. The group, the light. It was really pretty. And when I came back to the huddle, purposely as far away from the sound effect maker, he scoots behind me and pushes in behind me and leans into this ear and says, I left you a little something. Of course I'm not going to look at the phone at that point. I'm going to look at it later. And sure enough, there it is. He's looking straight at my camera lens, tongue out, bicep flexed like a frat boy on a spring break. And this is what I call the rejection override test. When you don't give them your time, attention, or energy, they will find another way to insert themselves back into your space, even if it means invading it. It's their way of saying, you don't get to reject me without my consent. So instead of teaching you a tool, let me show you how I deal with this. When something like this happens, I actually use the tools that I built into my unmanipulatable five day training. I've put everything I've learned over the past 25 years into these tools. The same frameworks I use with my books, classes, and with private clients. It's all in one place, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel. Every time someone like this shows up in my life, I just drop the situation in and it shows me exactly what's happening and what to do next. So this part really helped me. It nailed what was going on. This wasn't social awkwardness or anxiety. He tested my space. He watched my reactions. And when I didn't give him attention, he escalated. It was entitlement dressed as charm followed by dominance. When charm failed, the goal was to take control of who held any power in that room. And when that didn't work, it turned performative and gross. So I asked the profiler what to do the next day and how to actually handle Him. And this is what it said. Stay grounded. Don't match his energy, don't react, don't chase. If he talks to you, no eye sparkle, no little smile, no softening, just not interested or nothing at all. And if he gets into your space, take a clean step back. If he keeps going, I can say, please step back or that's close enough. Just no tone, no explanation, just clarity. This tool really helped me. I already had him profiled, so when the next thing happened, all I had to do was drop it in locked and loaded. If you want to see how this tool works, it's inside my unmanipulatable training. You can grab the narcissist protection checklist link below and I'll send you a private offer to access it. By day three, I know exactly who I was dealing with. I went to get a snack at break and I was walking back on the trail and he blocked my path and said, what'd you bring me? Now, here's what you need to know. This is not a bad joke or some kind of awkward flirtation. This is a classic con. The same kind of test pickup artists use pimps use to test women. This, they'll say things like, buy me a drink or give me your chair, not because they want those things, but to see if you'll submit. And it's so off putting, it's so out of left field that your brain stalls. Like, are they kidding? Are they serious? Like, I'm just walking back with my snack and he's asking me, what'd you bring me? Even knowing exactly what this was, it was still so uncomfortable because it puts you in a double bind. Either you have to submit or you have to be rude. And that's what makes this such an effective manipulation. It's a submission test. Even though I knew what I was dealing with, I still wasn't sure if I actually handled it right. I just kept walking. I didn't say anything. But then I had that, like, interior worry afterwards, like running the scenario, thinking maybe by walking and not saying anything, I'd submitted to the test. Luckily, I already had his profile loaded in my tool, so all I had to do was just put this new, new scenario in and do a double check of my response. So sometimes I use these tools when I need to know what to say next, and other times I just need to know if I handled it right or how to course correct in real time. No matter what, it helps me relax knowing that I have a tool to rely on. So the chat confirmed that this was another test and that I had actually done the right thing. This is the part that hit me. Silence is powerful here. He expects flirtation, a joke or defensiveness. When you give none of them, he hits a wall. So that gave me peace of mind and a strategy for handling the rest of the workshop. These are the exact tools I built into my unmanipulatable five day training. It's available on my website or if you grab the narcissist protection checklist below. Wink, wink. You'll get an insider rate sent straight to your inbox.