How to keep your cool during tricky interactions with tricky people
Self-control & ego management
Dear readers, I want to take the opportunity to express my gratitude for subscribing and for your support by reading, sharing and commenting on the ideas and tips I’ve shared this year.
My efforts for 2026 will continue to focus on raising awareness of interpersonal narcissism, the root causes of suffering and what’s involved in freeing yourself from the power dynamics that continue to wound you and/or others. Please comment below with requests for specific content!
The most frequently asked question I get asked is “how can you help me build confidence to self-advocate and advocate for others?”
So many questions in that single question that I couldn’t give a personalized response without getting personal with that person. What I can say is that confidence is the result of self-valuation, preparation, and a plan to execute to achieve a specific outcome in a situation that has challenged you. Even if you fail, confidence will help you learn from the failure and give you the energy to adjust your plan and try again.
What is self-advocacy?
It’s the ability to speak for yourself and express the things that matter to you. You can self-advocate when you know what you want and need, and feel safe enough to express what you think and feel. I describe it in more detail in my book on assertiveness.
When would you want to self-advocate?
When you’re in situations with tricky people who make it difficult to express or be yourself. Such as:
People who don’t give you as much airtime as they expect you to give them.
People who diminish your accomplishments and abilities.
People who try to be your teacher, therapist or spiritual guide when you didn’t ask for it.
People who have high standards for your conduct but are combative when you point out when they’re not walking their talk.
People who view themselves as superior to you based on devalued attributes that you were born with because of the privileged attributes they were born with.
I know there are many more examples but you get my point.
What I’ve learned in my 50-something years is that most people won’t ever know me, won’t care to know me let alone like me, and I need to be ok with that.
I also don’t need to make time for people who continually show me that they have so many defences. There was a time that I believed compassion meant I could ‘serve’ others by giving them my time and effort to make them feel good about themselves. Compassion is giving them attention even when it’s clear that they can’t do that for me. My piety meant I had all the energy and reserves for others who were impoverished in kindness and self-love. Compassion meant that I was on a godly path and I started to believe that my way was superior to others. Turning into a righteous asshole made me the opposite of compassionate. People distancing themselves from me was enough of a cue to get me to reassess my values and turf some of these beliefs.
Drawing from Kabbalistic principles, I’ve come to see compassion as the combination of loving kindness (chesed) and boundaries (gevurah).
Compassion = generosity + boundaries/self-restraint + context (for you math lovers out there)
I’d neglected the self-restraint bit.
What’s more realistic, compassionate, and easier for me, is to accept people as they are.
This tenet has made it easier to accept people as they are AND become aware of my expectations of others to like, validate, pay attention to or even consider me. It’s my expectations - my ego’s need to be important, significant and special that I need to adjust - not them.
I present here the 10 rules of Ego Management (according to what works for me) when confronted with trickiness and consistently tricky people.
10 Rules of Ego Management
Accept them as they are. They’re showing you the entire landscape of their human experience, conditioning and paradigms of belief in every sentence they utter about themselves, life and you.
Adjust your expectations of others. If someone is pissing you off, yes they could be acting badly AND you’re reacting to them not fulfilling your expectations of them.
Boundaries. Limit your time and exposure to anyone who is happy to be challenging/difficult/painful. This is self-compassion.
Have a goal for your conversation or interaction. Do you want to plan a meeting? Do you want to negotiate a change in plans? Do you need to communicate an idea? Whatever the goal, be clear about what it is and keep the conversation focused on getting there.
Remain transactional. They don’t need to love you. You don’t need to love them. You can be friendly or warm enough to achieve your goals.
Suspend your need to be right.
Suspend your need to feel seen & understood.
Suspend your need to express your opinions.
Their perspectives are always interesting/fascinating/correct for them. You can disagree in your thoughts or verbally without judging them for theirs.
Maintain focus on them. Their ideas, experiences and opinions are all that matter here because they’ve already shown you that yours don’t.
I’m not going to pretend this is easy. It’s incredibly hard when you have to manage your ego with parents or loved ones while hoping that one day they will accept you as you are. It’s difficult to be the one who has to accept them as they are without reciprocity. It’s unfair that the onus is on you to create peace while they continue with their trickiness and absent self-responsibility. As I described here, some people are incapable of that level of change.
It’s normal to feel angry, angst, anguish and other ‘a’ emotions. Get pissed and give yourself a time limit. You’re the only one who can change things for yourself. I can guarantee that you will feel FREE when you can adequately do all 10. You will have better quality relationships because you’ll be clear about who you need to have in your life, who deserves your time and energy and who shows you that you matter.
YOU matter.
And ego management affirms that you matter to you. And maybe that’s enough for a good life.
Is this a possibility somewhere in 2026?
Thank you for reading, sharing, commenting and returning for more,
Nathalie Martinek, PhD
The Narcissism Hacker
Hack narcissism and support my work
I believe that a common threat to our individual and collective thriving is an addiction to power and control. This addiction fuels and is fuelled by greed - the desire to accumulate and control resources in social, information (and attention), economic, ecological, geographical and political systems.
While activists focus on fighting macro issues, I believe that activism also needs to focus on the micro issues - the narcissistic traits that pollute relationships between you and I, and between each other, without contributing to existing injustice. It’s not as exciting as fighting the Big Baddies yet hacking, resisting, overriding and deprogramming our tendencies to control others that also manifest as our macro issues is my full-time job.
I’m dedicated to helping people understand all the ways narcissistic traits infiltrate and taint our interpersonal, professional, organisational and political relationships, and provide strategies for narcissism hackers to fight back and find peace.
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Thank you Nathalie! So beautifully said and very helpful🙏🏼
Just had to do this with some sick fnvk who went to great lengths to reframe and twist a generous story into fodder for blame and attack. She was defending another sick fvck. 🙄