In the relationship with the narcissist, you have 100% of the power. The narcissist has zero.

The genius of the narcissist is to convince you that he has 100% of the power and you have zero.

The narcissist does have empathy. It‘s called cold empathy. Cold empathy is empathy, but without emotions. It’s goal-oriented.

So if I see someone crying, I would recognize that she is sad. I would recognize this. She is sad.

So I do have empathy. I have cognitive empathy.

But you will say, wow, she is sad. I remember being sad. It’s a bad feeling. Can I do something for her? Emotional resonance. She is sad. I remember being sad. It’s a bad feeling. I want to help.

The narcissist says, or the psychopath, she is sad. I know what it means to be sad. Not from personal experience, but I know. I read in books. I observed. I know what it means to be sad, cognitively.

Now if I play my cards right, probably at the end of the night, I can have sex with her because she is broken. She is vulnerable. Her defenses are down. It’s an opportunity.

Cold empathy is empathy used to find your vulnerabilities and then use these vulnerabilities to obtain goals. Narcissistic supply, sex, money, power, contacts, whatever.

So never, ever show the narcissist any emotion. Starve. Starve the narcissist’s cold empathy of information. Do not provide information to the narcissist called empathy. You want to cry? There’s always the toilet. You’re happy. Keep it to yourself. It’s like the Miranda warning. Any emotion you show can and will be used against you.

And this is cold empathy.

Similarly, never ever offer the narcissist help or advice. It’s extremely difficult.

Many of you love the narcissist. It’s a different lecture. What’s wrong with you?

But many of you do.

And when you love someone, I heard, you want to help. You want to prevent bad things from happening to that person. You want to guide the person in the right direction, if you know the right direction. Or you just want to hold. Hold the person.

These are critical mistakes with the narcissist. I repeat, never ever offer help, advice, guidance or holding for two reasons.

One, the narcissist will interpret your behavior as weakness, as vulnerability, something he can leverage, something he can use to obtain goals in the future.

We begin to fake the need for help.

Second thing, if you offer the narcissist help and advice, he will think that you are humiliating him. It’s narcissistic injury. The narcissist doesn’t need help from you. The narcissist doesn’t need help from anyone. He’s above help. He’s omnipotent. He’s all powerful. The narcissist doesn’t need advice from you. He’s omniscient. He knows everything.

A narcissist will drive his car for six hours before his wife will ask someone for help because he cannot find a place. If you’re offering the narcissist advice or help, you are saying to the narcissist, you are in need of advice and help. I have something you don’t have.

For example, I have information you don’t have. Narcissists will react very badly to this. I will never forgive you for offering help and advice.

You well know by now, it’s something that I described in the mid-90s, a cycle of idealization, evaluation, discard and replacement.

There is a technique that makes use of this cycle.

The narcissist first idealizes you, then the narcissist devalues you, then the narcissist discards you and then the narcissist replaces you with someone else.

To manipulate the narcissist, you reverse the cycle. Reverse it.

Remember, idealize, devalue, discard, replace. The technique is replace, replace, discard, devalue, idealize.

Replace the narcissist with someone, visibly, triangulate. Then discard him, not only triangulate with someone, but also discard the narcissist.

As you discard him, devalue him. I don’t know. You’re not a man. Example.

And finally, idealize him. That’s it. He’s yours.

So it’s reverse of the cycle. Simply reverse the cycle.

Now, many women came to this behavior intuitively. The maximum effect, maximum impact, if it is all done in one sitting, in one situation, happened to me recently.

So as you see, I’m describing the world of the narcissist and from each aspect of the narcissist personality, I’m giving you some technique or some approach that might work.

The narcissist is a victim of abuse. That’s why he became a narcissist.

As a child, the narcissist was terrified of pain, of hurt, of unpredictability. So he created the false self.

Narcissists don’t have relationships. They have power plays. It’s all about power. All of it is establishing a balance of terror, a matrix of power.

The narcissist from the beginning after the love bombing phase.

By the way, the love bombing phase is not telling you that the narcissist needs you, it’s about telling you how unique you are.

The narcissist is trying in the love bombing to phase to convert into a narcissist, to taste how it feels to get narcissistic supply.

So the love bombing phase is simply to give you the taste of this drug so that you become junkies as well.

But the minute the narcissist acquires you, the minute the narcissist hoovers you, the minute you belong to the narcissist in his mind, the narcissist message to you is, I don’t need you. There is nothing you have that I want or that I need or that I cannot get anywhere else. Don’t think you have any power over me because you don’t. You do not have power over me. And I can dump you tomorrow and find someone else in minutes.

This is precisely the essence of relationships with narcissists.

In the first phase, the narcissist tells you how special you are. In the second phase, the narcissist tells you how not special you are.

You’re amazing. You’re unique. You are the love of my life. I never had this experience with anyone. I never felt so deeply. You know what? I never felt at all. You’re the first and only. The things you do to me.

And this is the love bombing phase and makes you feel very, very unique. One in the world. There’s only one you.

You can offer nothing I need. And what you offer, I don’t need. If I’m a cerebral narcissist, I’m above sex. Sex is retards. If I’m any kind of narcissist, I’m above emotions, love is for stupid people, weak people.

And if it’s not you, then someone else. You should be honored and grateful that I’ve introduced you into my exciting and adventurous life.

It is this pendulum of conflicting messages that totally unsettles and destabilizes the victim.

The narcissist fully expects to lose you. He already behaves as though he had lost you. You’re always temporary. Even if you’re 30 years together, you’re still temporary.

Narcissists have something called anticipatory loss anxiety.

From very early age, narcissists have something called object inconstancy or object impermanence.

Again, for those of you who are in psychology, object impermanence is a term coined by Jean Piaget, child psychologist in the late sixties. And object inconstancy is a term coined by Margaret Mahler. She was a psychologist, actually. She was a doctor, but expert on child psychology.

You know, when a baby at a very early age, before the first year of life, between five months and one year, when mother leaves the room, the baby starts to cry because out of sight, out of existence. If the baby doesn’t see mother, mother stops to exist.

Gradually, the child creates a representation of mother inside his mind. When mother is in the room, the child interacts with mother. When mother is outside the room, the child interacts with the representation of mother. This representation is known as imago.

So with a narcissist, there is a problem at this phase. And what happens is the narcissist interacts only with the representation. Can you think why? Why would the narcissist prefer to interact with the representation and not with you?

I gave you the clue. I gave you the answer, actually.

If I am afraid to lose you, I would prefer to interact not with you, but with your representation.

You can always walk away out of my life. I don’t control what you do and what you may do, but I have full control over the representation inside my mind.

So the minute the narcissist sees you and decides that you are potentially a good source of supply, a shocking process takes place and you’re not even aware.

The narcissist snapshots you, takes a snapshot with his mental camera. He meets someone. He thinks she can supply, provide supply.

At that second, he takes a snapshot from that second, I want you to understand this, it’s extremely difficult to believe, I know, from that second all the time, the narcissist interacts never ever with you, always with a snapshot.

In a minute you will understand why the narcissist has at some point to devalue you, although in many cases the cycle repeats itself many times, but such a cycle must exist.

The narcissist has you and a snapshot, but you are not the snapshot. You have your own life. You develop, you study, you travel, you have lovers maybe, don’t tell anyone. I mean, things happen to you. You initiate things. You are, in other words, dynamic.

The snapshot is static. You start from the same position, overlapping and then what happens? You move away.

But the narcissist is emotionally invested in the snapshot, controls the snapshot, talks to the snapshot. So you gradually become less and less relevant as you diverge from the snapshot.

At some point you become a threat.

The differences between you and the snapshot are so enormous that even the narcissist cannot deceive himself that the snapshot is accurate. At some point you challenge the snapshot.

You all know that point. You’ve all gone through it because the narcissist starts saying things like you have changed a lot. You’re not the same woman I fell in love with. What’s happening to you? You need help. You’re going through a crisis.

He’s describing the gap, the gap, the abyss that is opening between you and the snapshot.

At that point he must get rid of you, must get rid of you because the snapshot matters to him much more than you. He’s protecting the snapshot. He has zero tolerance for abandonment, zero tolerance for loss because he is a baby. It’s a baby. Baby with no object constancy.

So he gets rid of you.

How to get rid of you?

By devaluing you.

How to justify to himself that he idealized you yesterday and he’s devaluing you today?

What? He made a mistake? When he idealized you, was he mistaken?

No way. Narcissist is never mistaken. You changed. You are not the same person. The person he’s devaluing is not the person that he idealized.

So this mechanism, which is technically known as introjection, this mechanism explains the cycles.

What is the technique?

So everything I’m telling you, there is a technique. The technique is to animate the snapshot.

Remember, the narcissist has in his mind a representation of you as you used to be, let’s say, when you met.

So you have two options, to go back to that time and become who you used to be, to give up on your personal progress and development. You will be shocked how many partners do exactly this.

They started to study in a university. They stopped. They are successful in business. They closed the business, etc. They unwind the changes.

That’s one technique.

The second technique is what we call brinkmanship. It’s to animate the snapshot to extreme. That means to challenge the snapshot, to provide the narcissist with a new snapshot.

But how can you do that? He already has a snapshot of you by not being you. You must change so radically and dramatically that the narcissist will have the feeling that he had just met a new partner.

Change everything from hairstyle, to clothing, to lovers, to behave totally differently, different priorities, different everything. And the narcissist will say, wow, I’m falling in love with you again. You’re so different.

I’ve had couples restart sex after 15 years. I’ve had divorced couples who went back to living together with this technique.

Next thing you should know, narcissism, narcissism feels to the narcissist like religion feels to an extreme American fundamentalist or a member of ISIS.

Narcissists are religious fanatics. They are members of a very special religion. This religion has one God and one worshiper, and it’s the only religion in the world where the God is the worshiper, but the inner experience, the emotional correlate, the cognitive aspects are utterly identical to a religious experience.

Let us try to understand why.

It’s my favorite topic, so I don’t care if you’re not interested.

To live with a narcissist, to be with a narcissist is to be member of a cult. The narcissist is the leader of the cult and you are the member.

The narcissism religion is missionary. Christianity sent missionaries in the 19th century to Africa to convert the natives. The natives were happy. Some of the missionaries were tasty, but exactly like Christianity sent missionaries to Africa to convert the natives. Exactly in the same way, the narcissist is trying to convert you to his religion.

What is narcissistic supply? It’s to worship the narcissist.

When the narcissist is asking you to give him supply, he is asking you to worship his God, him.

So there is a very interesting branch, new branch, of teaching the victims to cope with narcissists the same way we cope with religious fundamentalists. I’m kidding you’re not.

When you meet a fanatic Muslim or a fanatic Jew or a fanatic Christian, instinctively you know what not to say. Yes?

You will not mock Muhammad unless you are Danish. You will not attack God in the presence of a fundamentalist Christian. Jesus, you will not attack Jesus in the presence of fundamentalist Christian.

So you know intuitively, instinctively, no one taught you, no one told you, but you know what not to do. You know what not to say.

And if you are inside the church or inside the mosque or inside the synagogue, you definitely know that some things are never done, some things are never said.

Well, when you live with a narcissist, you’re living with a religious fundamentalist. Some things you never do and some things you never say.

You never challenge the God of the narcissist, which happens to be the narcissist. You never challenge the attributes of that God. God is all-knowing. God is all-powerful. God is perfect. God is brilliant. You don’t challenge this. It’s bad taste. It’s impolite to tell me that I’m not God. It also means you’re delusional, I am God.

But still, it’s a church.

Narcissist