The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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You do what you and your group did (from what I understand). You kick the bad actor out of the group. And if his defenders give the group too much grief, you kick them out too. And then you quit engaging with them. You have to be aggressive when dealing with these types of people. They're addicted to conflict. And they'll never change. Be willing to be the "bad guy" in the situation. They're wasting your time and energy. They're decreasing your happiness. That's an enemy in my book. Be sure to reinforce bonds with your allies in the group.
I think the desire is really to keep his defenders in the group. They are good actors defending their friend, not realizing he's a bad actor. That's admirable. They are good people. There is a fear that if they leave, he'll eventually do the same thing to them, which a lot of the group are worried about. It is altogether a surprisingly empathetic group, that is likely being taken advantage of by a narcissist. I do think this conflict has strengthened my bonds with the others in the group, especially the 7 others with grievances. So I guess that's the silver lining. I'm really just confused on how to effectively deal with manipulative narcissists in general, nipping this in the bud would have probably been far more effective.
If his defenders are good eggs, then just treat them with kindness and respect, and steer clear of the topic of the bad actor. Hopefully you all will appear to be the better option then.
Narcissists have an alien way of thinking, and they don't change. Best way to deal with them is to cut off contact with them. Next best way is to limit contact with them and don't react when they screw with you. In groups, you gotta sniff out who's a good actor and who's a bad actor. Then you gotta build good enough friendships/relationships with the good actors so that the bad actors can't divide and conquer (or triangulate).
You'll do fine.
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