Word Salad: Why Arguing With a Narcissist Never Resolves Anything

“Word salad” describes a confusing, circular, often contradictory style of arguing, where topics shift mid-conversation, old grievances get mixed in with the current one, and a straightforward disagreement becomes impossible to actually resolve. If you’ve walked away from a conversation with a narcissist feeling more confused than when it started, without quite being able to say why, this may be why.

What It Often Sounds Like

A conversation that starts about one specific thing, say, a missed pickup time, suddenly pulls in something from three years ago, a comment about your character, a counter-accusation, and a denial of something you never said, all in the same breath. By the time it’s over, the original issue is buried.

Why This Isn’t Really About Communication Failure

This pattern can look like poor communication skills, but it often functions, intentionally or not, to prevent resolution. If a conversation never lands anywhere concrete, nothing ever has to be addressed or changed.

What Tends to Help

Trying to follow and respond to every thread usually leads nowhere. Returning to one specific, factual point, and repeating it without chasing the tangents, tends to work better. This is close to the broken record technique in practice, and it pairs well with keeping communication in writing, where circular arguments are harder to sustain.

For a related pattern, see Circular Arguments: Recognizing Conversations That Never Resolve Anything.