Trauma Bonding is Self-harm (Compilation)

Summary

what are you all doing here good afternoon baby seals this is Sam Vaknin author of Malignant Self-Love Narcissism Revisited and a professor of psychology in the center for international advanced professional studies outreach program of the Cas Consortium of University universities satisfied then we can move forward into the topic of today's video which is essentially intermittent reinforcement now we tend to think of intermittent reinforcement in a very stereotypical way but actually many behaviors many decisions many choices have to do with intermittent reinforcement demitted reinforcement is a very allervasive phenomenon in a multiplicity of relationships not all of them abusive dysfunctional and pathological but let's start with a definition of course because I'm an academic and academics

Abuse, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Trauma, Vaknin, Vaknin Summaries

June 13, 2025

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00:02 what are you all doing here good afternoon baby seals this is Sam
00:09 Vaknin author of Malignant Self-Love Narcissism Revisited and a professor of
00:15 psychology in the center for international advanced professional
00:21 studies outreach program of the Cas Consortium of University
00:30 universities satisfied then we can move forward into the topic
00:36 of today's video which is essentially intermittent reinforcement now we tend to think of intermittent reinforcement in a very stereotypical way but actually many behaviors
00:50 many decisions many choices have to do with intermittent
00:56 reinforcement demitted reinforcement is a very allervasive phenomenon in a
01:03 multiplicity of relationships not all of them abusive dysfunctional and
01:09 pathological but let's start with a definition of
01:15 course because I'm an academic and academics define before they discuss
01:21 what is intermittent reinforcement intermittent reinforcement involves two people at least but not necessarily only
01:29 two you can have intermittent reinforcement on a collective level the government can engage in intermittent reinforcement social media companies do it all the time intermittent reinfor reinforcement is when a receiving party aka victim in
01:50 intimate relationships a receiving party receives regular
01:57 regular signals messages and treatment
02:03 which are cruel callous abusive
02:09 disempathic indifferent and so on
02:15 i repeat when there is a receiving party a recipient who is subject to behaviors
02:23 or treatments treatment or decisions or choices which
02:30 on the surface appear to be sadistic cruel callous abusive disempathic
02:39 etc etc and then every once in a while there's a display
02:47 of extreme affection interspersed with the abuse there are
02:54 instances of reward this is very unsettling it's
03:01 discombobulating look it up when you are subjected to an endless
03:08 stream of abuse you know what to expect you know the rules of the game you know
03:15 all the ropes you prepare yourself mentally and physically but what do you do when abuse is then gives place to love love
03:29 succumbs to pain pain follows affection affection results in hurt what do you do
03:38 when the signaling is inconsistent what do you do when you keep receiving
03:44 mixed signals information that information bits that contravene each
03:50 other what do you do when your data don't fit in neat frameworks how do you
03:56 interpret the world how do you make sense of anything and everything that's happening what's the meaning of such behavior hot and cold
04:08 a behavior that at one time tells you you're nothing you're an object you are filth
04:17 you're unworthy you're bad you're corrupt you're stupid you're inadequate
04:23 a bad object signaling and then suddenly it gives place to the
04:31 most warm empathic understanding accepting sakur
04:37 how do you reconcile these two streams of messages the answer is you don't and it gives rise to traumatic bonding but intermittent reinforcement is often described in the literature in a very
04:53 one-dimensional caricatururistic way intermittent reinforcement is much
05:00 more deep complex and pervasive than we imagine let us examine two phenomena
05:09 false hope false hope giving someone false hope and then withdrawing this
05:16 hope and then giving hope again that's a form of intermittent reinforcement
05:23 anytime you give anyone a reason to hope a reason to get up in the morning a reset a reason to exist and then you take it
05:34 away you are engaging however unwittingly in intermittent reinforcement
05:40 another phenomenon which many of you may be acquainted with from my videos is approach avoidance repetition compulsion
05:49 repetition compulsions in general but especially approach avoidance their forms of intermittent reinforcement the
05:56 borderline uh personality frequently engages in this people with borderline personality
06:02 disorder frequently approach and then avoid because they are subject to the
06:08 twin anxieties engulfment anxiety versus abandonment anxiety they approach in
06:14 order to allay to mitigate abandonment anxiety and then they avoid in order to
06:20 calm down and amirate the engulfment anxiety this approach avoidance I hate
06:27 you don't leave me i love you i want you dead these messages conflicting messages
06:33 from border lines they are forms of intermittent reinforcement indeed many
06:40 partners of border lines and partners of even codependence describe the
06:46 relationship as a kind of trauma and the bonding is especially intense because
06:52 the person who causes you pain is the only person who can take it away
06:59 the person who has locked you into a position of hurt and agony and uncertainty and indeterminacy and fear and stress the person who locked
07:11 you into this is the only one who's holding the key to release you from it intermittent re reinforcement is a is an attribution error you tend to think that
07:24 only the person who had mistreated you can make it all go away with a kiss
07:31 and so there are four types of intermittent reinforcement fixed interval schedule FI
07:40 very common in relationships the abuser awards the victim the reinforcement
07:46 reinforcement is simply u behavior or a message which alters or modifies your
07:54 behavior when you're subject to reinforcement which is positive you're likely to repeat the behavior that
08:00 elicited the positive reinforcement more and when you're subject to a negative
08:06 reinforcement it's likely to inhibit the behavior that had produced it or had led to it so the abuser awards the victim a reinforcement think of it as a cookie or
08:19 a candy so he awards reinforcement after a specific interval a specific period from the last reinforcement and usually it's
08:30 a fixed interval this is also known as partial intermittent reinforcement
08:37 so every two weeks on the dot according to schedule there is a tradition of
08:44 positive reinforcement following two weeks of harrowing harassment and
08:51 punitive actions and fear and pain inflicted on the victim the victim then
08:58 learns to survive these two weeks in order to reach the final point where
09:05 she's awarded with something a candy the abuser waits for a specific time to
09:14 offer for example affection or understanding or attention or a
09:20 listening ear or a shoulder to cry on and this causes the victim to display
09:26 slower reactions after the reinforcement behavior in the presence of this kind of
09:32 reinforcement the victim becomes inure more tolerant inured to the abuse as the
09:39 time passes he develops the victim develops abuse tolerance the same way alcoholics develop alcohol tolerance this is the fixed interval schedule
09:51 intermittent reinforcement there's another type known as variable interval scheduled intermittent
09:57 reinforcement the reinforcement reward the gift the candy the soothing
10:05 come after a time that is unpredictable a time that is variable from the
10:12 previous time that had elapsed the victim receives the reinforcement by
10:18 surprise it's abrupt it's sudden it's not scheduled and therefore it is much
10:25 stronger much more potent such cases increase the anticipation of
10:32 the reward and the affection the victim becomes addicted to the reinforcement the victim tolerates abuse of any kind from their partner in order to get this
10:43 spontaneous spontaneous relief because intermittent
10:49 reinforcement is about building up your anxiety your stress your fear and then
10:55 relieving it with a kind word with a touch with a smile it's cruel there's
11:02 nothing more cruel than intermittent reinforcement except possibly listening to my videos and then there's the fixed
11:11 ratio fixed ratio schedule intermittent reinforcement in fixed ratio schedule intermittent reinforcement the abuser delivers an affectionate display after several responses
11:29 the abuser is actually focused on the victim's response he wants to get a rise out of the victim he wants to elicit the kind of reaction in the victim that is
11:40 discernable and visible so the victim continues to produce higher and higher rates of responsiveness until they get their reward clinically
11:53 speaking this is Pavlovian conditioning pain is inflicted and it gets attached
12:00 in the victim's mind to an ultimate reward so the victim learns to actually
12:06 anticipate the pain want the pain crave the pain in order to finally benefit
12:13 from joyfully the offered reward behavior pauses and the victim continues
12:20 the same pattern after the following abuse incident
12:26 and finally there's the variable ratio schedule um intermittent reinforcement
12:32 the reinforcement is awarded after a variable number of responses in the
12:38 variable ratio schedule intermittent reinforcement remember that the previous
12:44 variation the previous variation the fixed ratio schedule intermittent reinforcement is when the abuser
12:52 provides a reward after a fixed number of responses let's say five the victim
12:59 has to respond five time for example by crying or begging or supplicating
13:06 or selfharming and then the abuser provides the reward and again the reward could be a smile could be a kind word could be a tiny gift or a big gift but there's always a reward and in the fixed ratio schedule this has
13:24 to do with a fixed number of responses naturally in the variable ratio schedule
13:30 the reinforcement the reward the award come after a variable number of
13:36 responses once the abuser would comfort you and
13:42 soothe you and hold you and love you and lick away your tears after three times of crying after three events of crying and then next time he
13:55 would do it after two after seven lacrimos incidents
14:01 there's no predictability there's no way to tell there's no way to prepare yourself the abuser offers affection
14:08 faster or delays the affection at his or her sole discretion and this in turn
14:16 causes the victim to display a high and steady steady rate or response upon
14:23 receiving the reinforcement all these have devastating consequences on the
14:29 body hormonally and otherwise ultimately these behaviors wear down the victim
14:37 victim becomes kind of zombified and much more aminable to manipulation which
14:43 is precisely the idea behind intermittent reinforcement trauma bonding is about control watch my
14:50 interview about trauma bonding on this channel thank you for listening i hope I
14:56 haven't traumatized you too much and here's my smile to soothe you and comfort you down yes yes I know sorry about that see you next time
15:13 dear colleagues organizers thank you for inviting me to the World
15:19 Congress of Psychiatrist and Psychologist i'm honored
15:25 um to be a keynote speaker today I would like to discuss fantasy
15:32 fantasy defense when it goes malignant when it goes arai what it does to you
15:38 and what it does to others around you my name is Saknin i'm a professor of
15:45 psychology in Southern Federal University Russia and I'm a professor of finance
15:51 and a professor of psychology in the outreach program of SEAS CEOs center for
15:57 international advanced and professional studies before I start it's important to understand that fantasy tends to metastasize fantasy co-opts and hijacks every
16:13 resource available to the individual fantasy takes over emotions effect
16:19 cognitions memories psychosexuality and even one's own identity fantasy is
16:26 addictive it It's anxolytic mitigates anxiety it is safe it patrices the
16:34 fantas grandiosity self idealization actually
16:40 each of these dimensions of personality and functioning is mediated via the fantasy is colored by the fantasy and is
16:48 distorted by the fantasy and gradually all direct contact with and inner
16:54 experience of one's psychological world and the world around they're lost a
17:02 robotic zombie emerges from within the fantastic space regulated by its narrative and so today I would like to explore four cases of fantasy starting with
17:14 trauma bonding trauma bonding is a widely misunderstood concept today most
17:22 people especially self-styled experts online describe trauma bonding as a form of extreme attachment fostered by traumatizing intermittent reinforcement
17:34 hot and cold good and bad love you hate you ambivalence this supposedly creates
17:42 trauma bonding if you stop to think of of it for a minute you will see how ridiculous this is why would such
17:49 behavior create bonding it's because trauma bonding is way more than that much more than that this is
17:57 why it is nearly impossible to disentangle trauma bonding to reverse trauma bonding trauma bonding involves retraumatization
18:08 the abuser triggers reactivates unresolved conflicts from the targets or
18:15 from the victim's early childhood joan Lkar calls it archaic wounds based on
18:22 Freud and other early psychoanalysts the abuser engenders a multi-layered and
18:29 multi-dimensional resonance of unrequited pain and existential angst
18:36 both old and new it's like replicating the past it's like
18:43 time travel and by doing so the abuser assumes a maternal role he becomes a
18:50 mother regardless of his gender even a man becomes a mother he assumes a maternal role within a shared fantasy at first during the love
19:01 bombing and grooming phases and then a bit later on so during the love bombing
19:07 and grooming phases the abuser becomes a surrogate mother he promises
19:13 unconditional love via idealization of the target or the victim he idealizes
19:21 the target of the victim and then he gives the victim access to the idealized image this is perceived by the victim as
19:29 a form of unconditional love you love me no matter what you see me as perfect
19:35 it's addictive it's difficult to break but then at a later stage the very same
19:43 abuser becomes what Andre Green called a dead mother a selfish immature
19:51 withholding insecure and aggressively rejecting mother
19:57 this this pendulum this abrupt switching between
20:05 I'm your mother I'm your loving mother I idealize you I see you as perfect I love
20:12 you as perfect you should love yourself as a perfect being this is the first message and then the later messages I reject you are
20:23 imperfect you're flawed you're inferior So the transition the abrupt transition
20:29 between these two messages is what creates traumabonding this is the reason
20:35 for trauma bonding who can give up on her real life mother
20:42 who can give up even on her reactivated simulated mother introject it's
20:48 difficult to give up on mother in any way shape or form symbolically or in real life it's like getting um getting
20:55 rid of a big part of one's self the abuser
21:01 gives his victim or target a second chance it's a second chance at writing all the
21:08 wrongs of childhood it's a second chance at resolving conflicts it's a second chance at attaining and receiving unconditional
21:19 love it's a sec second chance at being seen at being noticed and not only being
21:26 seen but being seen as a perfect idealized flawless object no one can give up on that so bonding sets in and this is what we call trauma
21:37 bonding it's a it's a reaction to a fantasy in this case trauma bonding exactly like
21:43 narcissism is a fantasy defense gun or eye but it's a fantasy defense of the
21:50 victim what is fantasy fantasy is a defense mechanism so powerful that it can give rise to severe mental health issues such as
22:02 narcissistic personality disorder as well as to cognitive deficits and distortion and an impaired reality
22:09 testing this is the power of fantasy the power of fantasy is to usurper reality
22:15 and to replace it with something else which appears to be as realistic and plausible as the world fantasies are either compensatory
22:26 you can't get the real thing so you fantasize about getting it or fantasies could be inhibitory you're afraid to
22:34 pursue the real thing so you fantasize about it all fantasies therefore
22:40 um are in some way healthy or normal regardless of their contents because
22:46 they help us cope with harsh unpalatable unacceptable reality but when fantasy
22:53 goes too far it degenerates into all kinds and forms of mental illness
23:00 schizotipy is psychological neotony it involves regression to pre-self
23:07 childhood when the self is either not constellated or not integrated when bound boundaries are fuzzy boundaries are blurred and there is a confusion between external and internal
23:19 objects creativity and imagination are enhanced and predispose to fantasy
23:26 and so fantasy as I said tends to metastasize i repeat it co-opts it hijacks every
23:34 resource available to the individual his emotions effect cognitions memories psychosexuality even his or her identity
23:42 it is addictive it's anxolytic because it is safe it butresses the fantas
23:48 grandiosity self idealization because it restores a sense of inner locus of
23:54 control you control the fantasy you can control reality you control internal
24:01 objects that represent people you can't control the people that gave rise to these objects actually each each of
24:09 these dimensions of personality co-opted and and hijacked by fantasy
24:15 each of these types of functions they all mediated via the fantasy they're
24:21 colored by it they're distorted by it and gradually all direct contact with the inner experiences of one psychological world is lost the emotional investment the cexis in
24:34 fantasy is total and it comes at the expense of the person's reality testing
24:40 we can easily spot the captives of fantasy they avoid reality they opt for
24:46 substitutive action their self-reported emotions hopes
24:52 wishes and dreams stark starkly contradict their actions and so we can
24:58 we can have a client who says for example I crave intimacy i love sex and
25:05 I seek love in a committed relationship but at the same time he chooses mostly objectifying sex with strangers or un emotionally unavailable partners as a dominant practice is intimately as own devolve into sexlessness cheating and dissolution
25:23 the proxies contradicts the declaration such a person also selects only
25:30 inappropriate and incompatible and therefore temporary mates who do not constitute a threat to the integrity and
25:37 longevity of the fantasy by diverging from it by undermining the idealized largely imagined snapshot
25:45 the intrusion of fantasy into all areas of life even casual ones
25:51 like for example casual sex renders fantasy largely autoerotic and soypistic
26:00 only a small minority of participants of both genders in fantasy actually
26:06 consumate the fantasy bodily or spiritually or psychologically
26:12 so this is trauma bonding let's take another type of fantasy another case study identity disturbance
26:21 cluster B patients suffer from identity disturbance they are lifelong
26:27 disappearing acts they are emptinesses they're pivoted on an empty skisoid core
26:33 there's nobody there cluster B patients are not about they are not a a presence
26:40 they are an absence the abuse of substances helps these patients to suspend their existence to
26:48 not be themselves for a few hours especially around other people in social and sexual contexts
26:55 they leverage substances and they abuse them in order to obtain a persistent
27:01 state of dissociation a dissociative hiatus in life because
27:08 cluster B patients are essentially nothing but dead voids they feel alive and existent only when they are not themselves when they are
27:19 for example inebriated intoxicated wasted drugged or when they act out or
27:25 when they switch into other self states for example the borderline switches into
27:31 a secondary psychopath the narcissist switches into his grandio false self
27:37 these clients these patients they feel alive only when they
27:44 symbolically kill themselves but not being oneself
27:52 denying oneself migrating to other self states which are essentially not you these become a habit
28:02 and many of these people forget how to be themselves being themselves feels so alien so sad
28:10 so dull even vaguely menacing that they avoid being themselves a seriously and for as long as they can gradually incrementally this overwhelming need to
28:21 not be oneself by for example abusing substances this overwhelming need to
28:27 deny oneself to suspend oneself this need impacts all fields of life
28:36 the workplace career relationships and family included another problem is that
28:43 when these patients are not themselves when they are for example drunk
28:49 predators of all types sexual and emotional take advantage of the of these patients they gain access to their
28:56 bodies minds and material possessions they use these patients contemptuously and then they discard them and these
29:03 repeated humiliations rejections and exploitation exacerbate the underlying
29:09 conditions induce anxiety and depression and push the patient inexurably to harm
29:15 herself and to escalate even further her attempts to vanish down the road to self
29:21 annihilation down the rabbit hole down the black hole
29:29 let's consider another manifestation of fantasy the fantasy defense case three
29:36 fantastic grandiosity fantasy involves cognitive deficits it involves cognitive distortions
29:43 ironically the narcissist grandiosity fantasy defense is less rigid than the
29:49 grandiosity of either the borderline or the psychopath throughout his life the narcissist is subjected to a barrage of narcissistic injuries and narcissistic motifications
30:01 these challenges remold or entirely suspend his false self the locus of his
30:07 grandio self-perception psychopaths and border lines do not experience any undermining of their
30:14 variance of self aggrandisement narcissists do consequently the grandiosity of border lines and
30:21 psychopaths is immutable not aminable to any process of learning or modification
30:27 via intrusions from countervailing harsh reality the narcissist is much more
30:33 flexible in this sense is much less rigid and that's because the narcissist fantasy defense is outward oriented its
30:44 main goal is to obtain narcissistic supply so the narcissist must be alert and attuned to the vicissitudes in
30:51 supply and in sources of supply around him in other words the narcissist must be embedded in the world in some respects much more than the borderline or the psychopath
31:03 but all three share a fantasy of grandiosity and this fantasy of grandiosity dictates
31:11 their lives shapes their lives this fantasy of grandiosity is the one which
31:18 triggers self states and pseudo identities this fantasy of grandiosity dictates
31:26 or at least determines which emotions and which cognitions will come to the four and become conscious
31:33 they are molded and sh they are narcissists psychopaths and border lines are raifications
31:41 of the fantasy defense let's talk about a specific type of fantasy um usually common among narcissists it's
31:52 the shared fantasy the term shared shared fantasy was coined by F sander S an N D E R in 1989
32:03 in his article titled Shared Unconscious Conflicts: Marital Disharmony and
32:09 Psychoanalytic Therapy published in Jay Alhamd libert uh as editors of the
32:17 Middle New Psychonalytic Perspectives New Haven Connecticut Yale University
32:24 Press pages 160 to 176 okay that's the reference for shared fantasy what is a shared fantasy the narcissist's ability to engage in a shared fantasy rests on three pillars
32:40 the environment has to be ruthless easy to discard fantastic or dreamlike in
32:46 order to uphold this grandiosity timeless perception of an eternal present so that
32:53 actions do not bear consequences because there's no future and boundless no limit to what can be done or accomplished so the environment is a first precondition
33:04 for the emergence of a shared fantasy the circumstances ought to be right conducive to grandio fantasies by yielding lots of money sex power access
33:16 fame celebrity or notoriety effort effortlessly in this sense there is a psychopathic tinge or a psychopathic undercurrent in the shared fantasy the
33:27 narcissist expects to reap the rewards of the circum circumstantial rewards
33:34 with no commenurate investment or commitment the last and most important element of
33:40 course in the shared fantasy is the intimate partner the narcissist's partner in constructing the fiery du the
33:48 mass psychoggenic illness of the shared fantasy the partner in the shared fantasy has to be present to avoid
33:55 abandonment anxiety has to be submissive fawning adulating playful or childlike
34:02 and has to be mothering or fathering for example as a business associate it has
34:08 to be the partner has to be addicted to the narcissist so once the narcissist finds the perfect
34:16 comes across the perfect confluence of environment circumstances and partner he
34:22 establish he establishes a fantastic space and then he invites the partner into this fantastic space via the love
34:30 bombing and grooming phase one major element in the fantastic space is of course the idealized image of the partner the narcissist exposes the partner to this idealized image in order
34:43 to foster addiction the partner becomes addicted to seeing herself via the
34:50 narcissist's eyes and then she's hooked and then she's in and then she's a
34:56 participant in the shared fantasy borderlines also have shared fantasies
35:02 they have three types actually of shared fantasy the fairy godmother fantasy the princess fantasy and the damsel in distress fantasy each fantasy hails a
35:13 different type of intimate partner the fairy godmother attracts beneficiaries of lodes
35:21 the princess fantasy attracts a falling subject and the damsel in distress
35:27 attracts rescuers and saviors the borderline exactly like the narcissist
35:33 takes a snapshot and in introjects she introjects via introjection she takes a snapshot of her intimate partner but as a per secondary object so her snapshot actually initially devalues the intimate partner
35:50 while the narcissist snapshot of his potential partner idealizes the partner
35:56 that's a major difference between borderline dynamics and narcissistic dynamics in the borderline's mind the
36:02 intimate partner has the power to engulf her has the power to harm her has the
36:08 power to cause her pain so the snapshot would be tinged with fear and dread and
36:15 rejection and resentment and disappointment and hatred even it would
36:21 be a postsecary object and this inexurably leads to decompensation and acting out the equivalent of narcissistic motification we can call it borderline motification the narcissist shared fantasy involves perfect love adulation
36:39 it attracts intimate partners who are willing to play the roles or fan playmate and mother the narcissist first
36:47 snapshots his intimate partner as an idealized object and then as she diverges from the snapshot converts her
36:55 into a secondary object which induces motification discrepancies in the shared fantasy
37:02 provoke the narcissist to become a primary factor one psychopath discrepancies in the shared fantasy provoke the borderline to become a factor 2 secondary psychopath
37:15 recklessness and fantasy are both clinical features of borderline personality disorder
37:22 and in some respects also of psychopathy fantasy characterizes the borderline's
37:29 intimate relationships as well as it does with a narcissist
37:35 but her self-destructiveness the borderline self-destructiveness her emotional dysregulation her mood
37:42 liability are such that she always sabotages what she has as reality intrudes on the fantasy which the borderline finds intolerable and anxietyinducing
37:53 she begins to devalue the partner she acts out egregiously and the resulting
37:59 deterioration in the quality of the bond justifies bouts of misbehavior for
38:05 example cheating on the partner and reckless self trashing on the way to a new man with the next fantasy and like the schizoid and like the narcissist the
38:16 borderline has fantasies and intrusive dreams of socially condemned sex she
38:22 recklessly places herself repeatedly in harm's way in reality to counter the ego destiny provoked by her sexual exhibitionism and extreme
38:33 sexual selfrashing the borderline for example fantasizes that the men or men multiple even in a
38:40 one night stand or in group sex care about her or love her
38:46 the borderline idealizes snapshots these sexual predators and interacts with the
38:53 internalized objects rather than with the brutish and revolting or even dangerous or risky reality
39:00 borderline weaves a narrative which she knows is fictitious but which allows her to pretend to make believe to dream and therefore to act within a fantastic
39:12 space any manifestation of kindness an expensive date free drinks or drugs a
39:19 place to crash in for the night flirting and courting attentiveness sore affection or outright physical intimacy all these are incorporated into the fantasy all these legitimize the
39:31 borderline's actions and conversely abuse indifference avoidance nastiness
39:37 or malice render her sex um problematic she becomes sex averse
39:45 because these kind of behaviors or misbehaviors shatter the fantasy they deny her the
39:52 possibility to express her core sexual psychosexuality safely let's repeat this when the borderline is exposed for example in a relationship
40:03 with the narcissist to abuse indifference avoidance nastiness withdrawal absence malice or rejection humiliation all these she becomes sex
40:14 averse and she becomes sex averse because she can no longer idealize her narcissistic partner she can no longer
40:22 inhabit the shattered fantasy and without a fantasy she can't express
40:28 her core psychosexuality safely for example with a partner she can't feel
40:34 egoonic or legitimate about her psychosexuality and in this the borderline differs from
40:41 mazoistic women and for submissive women in BDSM and so confronted with rejection the borderline becomes pseudo stupid and
40:52 passive aggressive or antisocial in other words a secondary psycho when the borderline's partner is as prone to fantasy as she is for example
41:03 when she teams up with a narcissist or when he misreads her psychology entirely
41:09 she embarks on fantastic pseudo relationships that are founded on sex but misinterpreted as love having
41:18 misjudged the nature of the leazison and being faced with the exigencies of reality the borderline again results to fantasy she ends up being discarded or
41:29 she cheats on her intimate but sexless partner within a new fant with a new
41:35 fantasy action figure you see the role of fantasy in all these disorders
41:43 the role the main role of fantasy is to allow people with cluster B personality
41:49 disorders and not only cluster B personality disorders because this applies also to schizoid personality disorder paranoid personality disorder one could generalize and say that the role of
42:00 fantasy in personality disorders is to allow these people to function they are
42:07 unable to function in reality reality impinges on very critical dimensions and determinance of their personality reality drives them to to
42:18 experience extreme pain discomfort ego ego destiny fear
42:25 reality creates injuries and motifications reality is perceived as threatening and hostile so they can't function in reality they need to deny reality they
42:37 need to put a boundary or a barrier or partition between themselves and reality and this firewall is the fantasy defense
42:45 within the perimeter of the firewall behind the firewall they are able to act
42:52 they are able to act in a way that approximates that is asytoic to who they
42:59 really are and behind the firewall they feel legitimized and above all they feel
43:05 safe this is why it's extremely difficult if not impossible to dismantle
43:12 lifelong fantasy defenses and types of relationships with fantasy dynamics such
43:20 as trauma bonding or the shared fantasy thank you for listening and I'm open now
43:26 to to questions you can pose the questions on the chat or you can pose the questions verbally the host will
43:32 take care of it I'm sure thank you again
43:39 my name is Sambaknin and today as some of you who are not color color blind may notice today I'm
43:48 blue i'm completely blue but at least my conscience is black
43:56 yes I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love Narcissism Revisited and I'm also a professor of psychology but not
44:05 only of psychology by the way i also teach finance to the detriment of banks around the world okay Shushanim today we're going to
44:16 discuss a much neglected topic in narcissism what else a topic not one
44:22 self-styled expert had ever touched upon which pleases me no end
44:29 okay so you've you're all acquainted with the concept of well those of you who had listen who had the misfortune of listening to my previous videos you are
44:40 acquainted by now with the concept of the empty schizoid core at the heart of the narcissist at the heart of the heartless narcissist there is an emptiness a black hole a void howling
44:54 winds in endless corridors leading to holes of mirrors don't you just love my
45:01 poetic twists and turns and so this empty schizoid core this
45:07 emptiness to borrow a phrase from Otto Karnburg this
45:13 uh howling void the narcissist believe it or not experiences it
45:20 you can ask if the narcissist does not exist if the narcissist is only an absence who does the emoting who does the feeling who who is the one who is experiencing his or her own absence well that is the conundrum and this is a
45:37 paradox at the heart of narcissism there is something there a hyper structure a
45:43 superructure an entity perhaps there's something there i wouldn't say someone
45:49 that would be taking it too far but there is something there that senses this emptiness and so what the narcissist tries to do he tries to supplant to replace this emptiness with
46:03 a semblance of existence no one feels well no one could feel well
46:09 not being being is at the core of anyone's and everything's experience in this sense perhaps animism was right rocks have being trees have being
46:22 being is the organizing principle of reality of the universe and so not being
46:29 is a problem and the narcissist tries to cover up for it in a variety of ways he
46:36 tries to create zats u fake impromptu improvised types of existence the first solution that the narcissist
46:48 uses is to outsource his sense of existence he outsources it he deres it
46:55 from others but not only from other people but from his pathological narcissistic space the physical location
47:03 that he is in from his friends from his colleagues from institutions from religions and affiliations and so on so
47:11 forth the narcissist leverages and uses everything around him animate and inanimate to outsource his sense of existence he borrows it so to speak from
47:24 others in this first solution outsourcing the narcissist experiences
47:31 existence as his own trait as his own property so to speak his own quality he does not experience it as coming from
47:42 the outside what he does he integrates minds places circumstances
47:51 um possessions he takes all of these and he integrates them kaleidoscopically
47:58 into a hive mind a mind that is made of patches and shards held together precariously via grandiosity and other cognitive
48:10 biases and this is outsourcing the outsourcing process itself is
48:16 transparent to the narcissist he does not realize what he's doing he just feels alive he feels that he exists but
48:24 only when he is in his pathological narcissistic space only when he is next
48:30 to his sources of supply only when he reviews his collections and possessions
48:36 or his children so what the narcissist does not realize the outsourcing narcissist does not realize is that if all these were to be taken away from him
48:47 he would not feel that he exists if all these external sources external origins
48:54 of existence beacons of existence were removed from his life he would not feel
49:00 that he's alive he would not feel being he would not feel existence
49:06 i recommend to you to watch my uh video on Satra and nothingness and being so this
49:15 is the first solution outsourcing outsourcing is scanning for scanning for
49:22 sources and origins of existence and then incorporating them into a pastiche into a kind of collage into a kaleidoscope and then owning this
49:33 kaleidoscope and identifying with it to the point that it is indistinguishable from the narcissist the narcissist feels
49:40 that his existence his being is coming from the inside he experiences it as any
49:46 other healthy or normal person would but what he doesn't realize it's not coming from the inside it's outsourced
49:53 it's outsourced just in time it's it's real time a real time simulation
50:02 outsourcing is the most common experience and the most common solution for the narcissist non-being problem but
50:10 there are others before we go to these others we need to dwell upon two concepts one old and one new
50:18 existence agents these are the elements in the narcissist's life that
50:26 provides him provides him with a sense of existence each one of them contributes a minuscule or incremental
50:33 piece and when you put all of them together existence emerges it is an emergent property an epiphenomenon
50:41 so the narcissist actually is a kind of device a scanning device and then when when the information reaches a critical mass he suddenly feels alive and his job
50:52 is to keep this critical mass at all times because if he goes under the critical mass he no longer feels alive he no longer feels that he exists he no longer feels his being this is
51:04 intolerable so he is busy all the time replenishing
51:10 replenishing the information from existence agents the existence agents could be people could be places could be
51:17 circumstances could be clubs could be countries could be churches could be children you name it anything could be
51:24 possessions physical objects material objects anything can and does serve as
51:30 an existence agent and it is the narcissist's role it is what he does all day it's a full-time job he extracts
51:38 it's like a mining operation it's instead of data mining it's existence mining he extracts his existence from all these existence agents he puts all
51:49 of these increments together and he creates an ostensibly coherent cohesive and congruent picture
51:58 um of of his being of course it's fake it's fake because it doesn't emanate
52:04 from the inside it comes from the outside and it's highly dependent on a continuous stream of narcissistic supply
52:12 this actually is the main role of narcissistic supply take away the narcissistic supply from the narcissist
52:18 take away his attention attention that he gets take away agilation admiration even being hated even being feared take
52:25 away take away attention from the narcissist and he crumbles to dust
52:32 there's nothing there and nobody there it's an intricate the narcissist is an intricate simulation and to keep it
52:39 going there needs to be a constant power charge not power surge that would be
52:45 narcissistic injury or narcissistic motification but a power charge a constant stream a constant current of electricity the electricity of being the
52:56 electricity of existence so the narcissist goes around scouting for existence agents then co-opting them or coercing them or collaborating with them
53:08 or lovebombing them or grooming them or persuading them whatever it takes
53:14 cajoling them whatever it takes to provide him with these teeny tiny bits
53:20 of existence that he can then laboriously amalgamate and put together into the
53:27 picture of a being at that point he feels that he's alive that he is a
53:34 creature in the sense that he had been created but of course such constant dependence
53:42 creates a sense of asymmetry a sense of imbalance a sense of inferiority and
53:49 these are egoistonic the narcissist hates being dependent the narcissist's grandiosity and sense of superiority are challenged by this
54:00 constant neediness and clinginess which are essentially borderline features or
54:06 codependent features features of dependent personality disorder in many respects the narcissist is actually um dependent he's someone he's a
54:17 codependent in many in many respects so and he hates it he hates to be dependent
54:24 on other people on places on circumstances on bosses on children he hates to be so reliant on and so
54:33 crucially dependent on these existence agents it makes him feel bad inferior
54:39 egodistonic injured traumatized mortified you name it so the narcissist
54:45 is always in a state of dysphoria dysphoria is one step removed from depression and indeed many scholars had
54:53 tried to conceptualize narcissistic personality disorder as a depressive reaction to shame the shame of being
55:00 dependent starting in early childhood when the narcissist had been dependent on abusive withholding frustrating dead
55:09 emotionally dead parents absent and narcissistic so some narcissists use other solutions
55:17 the second solution is substitutive existence remember the first solution is outsourced existence that is by far the most prevalent and widespread solution
55:28 some narcissists use outsourced existence in conjunction with substitutive existence now substitutive
55:36 existence is very interesting it's when the narcissist uh borrows borrows other people whole scale full scale wholesale borrows
55:50 them incorporates them in his mind and by incorporating them actually uh
55:57 hijacks their existence now two things come to mind many victims
56:03 of narcissist describe the experience of being with a narcissist as um he they
56:11 say he sucks the life out of me he's like a vampire he sucks the oxygen out of the room true that's exactly what narcissist do with substitutive existence they suck your life out of you
56:25 they take away your existence they appropriate it and then they assimilate
56:31 it and it becomes their existence your non-existence your increasing absence
56:38 your gradual vanishing and disappearing is their uh their rise to being they are
56:48 they exist more and more the less and less you exist it's a zero sum game it's
56:56 you or the narcissist and so substitutive existence is is a process
57:03 of um snapshotting people then incorporating them the snapshots
57:12 photoshopping idealizing the snapshot and then trying to coersse the sources of the snapshot the origin the real the
57:19 real person to behave in accordance with the snapshot to in other words not diverge not deviate from the snapshot and the narcissist
57:31 will go to big extents to a large extent or very very far to ascertain that no
57:37 such deviation and digression happen so substitutive existence is actually a
57:45 kind of body snatching or mind snatching where the narcissist takes over you in
57:51 order to digest you and assimilate you so that he can then derive and benefit
57:57 uh from your um self-imputed existence now of course in primitive cultures primitive
58:08 societies ancient religions substitutive existence was very common
58:14 for example warriors after a war after a battle they would eat the bodies of the
58:22 vanquished enemy by eating the liver of the vanquished enemy by eating the brain of the vanquished enemy they will have acquired the properties and qualities of
58:33 the of the enemy it was and and to this very day in Catholicism
58:39 we have a process whereby the body of Christ is transformed into the wafer and
58:46 and the wine so cannibalism had religious dimensions throughout human
58:53 history and so the narcissist is a cannibal he he feists on your mind he fe he he
59:03 digests your your existence he eats you up he eats you up he devours you he
59:11 consumes you so that your existence your earthwilile existence hitherto becomes
59:19 his by virtue of having assimilated you now of course this process is hampered by some narcissistic traits for example
59:30 the narcissist tendency to devalue meaningful and significant people in his life you can't very well devalue someone and then treasure their separate existence
59:43 or being devaluation stands in the way of substitutive existence because substitutive existence requires idealization of the so of the of the existence agent
59:55 you represent existence in the narcissist's life for example as an intimate partner you represent existence
60:02 you have a separate being you're real you're alive the narcissist wants this he wants to take it away from you because he needs it because he is an absence he's a black hole and he doesn't
60:14 want to be a black hole he wants to be a supernova or a galaxy or a sun at the very least and so he needs to he needs
60:22 to make you disappear and reappear inside him as a form of presence of as a
60:28 form of entity or a form of being it's a very creepy process luckily it is
60:36 hampered it is the it is obstructed by his tendency to devalue you because the minute he devalues you you're no longer a valid source of existence
60:47 it is also hampered and obstructed by paranoia because the narcissist's paranoia makes him hypervigilant and
60:55 suspicious of you and he would tend to be very afraid of internalizing you
61:01 converting you into an internal object or an introject in other words into a snapshot it's like you're you are
61:09 suspicious he's paranoid of you and so if he gets you inside his mind you can do something bad to him in other words the narcissist tends to convert you into a bed per secondary object into an enemy
61:21 and the minute you're an enemy you he won't he won't allow you access to his mind because he can do horrible things
61:27 to his mind so devaluation and paranoia render substitutive existence as a
61:34 strategy as a solution very difficult to implement the third and last type of
61:42 um kind of hijacked existence or existence from the outside um is
61:49 displaced existence to summarize the previous two outsourced existence is when the narcissist collects bits and pieces of existence from his environment and puts them together in a collage in a in a pastiche in a kaleidoscope and then he
62:07 experiences this collage he experiences this assembly or compendium as his own existence that's outsourced substitutive existence is when the narcissist internalizes whole people complete people intimate
62:23 partners colleagues neighbors friends internalizes them converts them into internal objects introjects snapshots
62:31 and then uses these to experience existence to experience being
62:37 vicariously um uh he he actually annexes he he
62:45 assimilates the existence and being of other people this is the substitutive existence solution and the displaced existence solution is when the narcissist
62:57 um recognizes that other people are separate from him
63:03 that they have their own existence and their own being but he then somehow co-opts somehow makes their exist their separate existence and being his so for example covert narcissist and especially inverted narcissist are likely to do this because they exist via others the
63:27 inverted narcissist for example is a subspecies of covert narcissist and she feels alive she feels that she exists that she feels that she is in being she
63:39 has a being she is an entity only via an
63:45 overt grandio classic narcissist who is her intimate partner so she is like the
63:51 moon and her intimate partner narcissist is like the sun and she has the sun's
63:58 reflected light the moon doesn't have doesn't shine doesn't have a light of its own it reflects the light of the sun
64:06 so it's the same in displaced existence it's the reflected existence the
64:12 reflected being uh the reflected lives of people around the narcissist he basks he basks in this secondary reflective source of light
64:25 source of being source of life source of existence he surrounds himself with people intimate partners colleagues
64:32 neighbors friends never mind he surrounds himself with people through whose existence he can exist it's
64:40 vicarious existence by proxy it's if my intimate partner exists only then do I
64:48 feel that I exist it's also common in borderline by the way and in codependency here's another thing common
64:54 to narcissist border lines and codependence so displaced existence is
65:00 when the narcissist uh makes sure that there is an existence
65:06 agent agent or agents around him which can imbue him endow him bestow upon him the gift of existence so if your intimate
65:20 partner is successful you feel successful if your intimate partner is
65:26 loving you feel being loved and you love the fact that you're being loved so you
65:32 love if your intimate partner is very good with his hands a great handyman you
65:39 take pride in this but not pride for him pride for yourself it's like you own him
65:45 is your property you own something exotic and amazing so this is displaced
65:51 existence and these are the three solutions and displaced existence is obstructed and hampered and very often prevented by passive aggression and entitlement passive aggression is a tendency to undermine sabotage and destroy from the
66:09 you know like termites destroyed by knowing away at the foundations and the roots of relationships
66:16 so the narcissist the covert narcissist passive aggression tends to um deflect
66:25 tends to diminish his ability or her ability to obtain existence from his
66:33 from people around him from his sources he tends to uh passively
66:39 aggressively destroy any possibility any attempt any
66:45 effort and any potential to somehow live vicariously
66:51 through another person and also entitlement narcissist feels entitled and so he
66:57 becomes demanding he becomes aggressive clinging needy and ultimately pushes the
67:04 existence agents away okay
67:10 now to three of your questions joy asks "Is there only one form of
67:17 shared fantasy?" Well shared fantasy was first described in 1989 by Sander not by Vakning and ever since then we've learned a lot about shared fantasies especially in cluster B personality disorders mainly narcissism and borderline and so it
67:33 seems that there are two types of shared fantasy there is a companion companionship shirt fantasy and there is
67:40 a submissive shirt fantasy now the companionship shirt fantasy is common mainly among cerebral narcissists cerebral narcissist
67:51 uh and to some extent covert narcissist the submissive shared fantasy is common
67:58 among overt grandio narcissists so compensatory covert cerebral
68:06 narcissist they would create a companionship shared fantasy overt grandio somatic narcissist they
68:15 would create a submissive shared fantasy and what's the difference between these two a companionship shared fantasy is
68:22 very much like a business transaction indeed it's transactional it's an agreement you will provide me you my
68:29 intimate partner will provide me with services you will provide me with um adulation with with supply narcissistic or if I'm a bit sadistic sadistic supply you'll provide me with supply with attention with adjulation with adiration you will provide me with services all
68:44 kinds of services i don't know um you will be my personal assistant or whatever and I in turn will endow you
68:53 bestow upon you my presence so this is the companionship shared
68:59 fantasy where the intimate partner actually fulfills the roles of mother and to some extent fan or admirer and in
69:08 a shared in a companionship shared fantasy the main role of the intimate partner is to provide secondary
69:16 narcissistic supply the uh narcissistic supply u I mean the intimate partner witnesses the narcissist accomplishments records
69:27 them and releases these recordings when supply is low helping to regulate the
69:33 flow of supply so this is in companionship shared fantasy in submissive shared fantasy the main
69:39 emphasis is on the intimate partner as a playmate and a fan so in submissive
69:45 shared fantasy there's a lot of sex the demand is for sex and for supply and
69:52 only in the third place services the submissive shared fantasy is much more common among somatics and so on and
69:59 there it's much less of an agreement there's also no horizon there are no plans it's not serious there's no
70:06 investment there's no commitment there's a lot of uh fantasies about the future the many fantasies about the future and
70:13 it's all very vivid and very colorful and and very convincing um but and even
70:19 the narcissist himself believes in these fantasies so it's not future faking the narcissist is not lying he's deluding
70:25 himself as well as an intimate part his intimate partner but the emphasis is on sex usually sadistic or submissive sex
70:33 and on adgulation admiration uh the narcissist wants to feel irresistible
70:39 for example if he's a somatic narcissist okay so these are the two types of shared fantasy uh it's important to to understand that
70:51 when you misidentify sex as intimacy when you mislabel love as pain you end
70:58 up having sexless intimacy and painful loves i repeat this because it's a profound
71:06 sentence and it's profound because I wrote it when you misidentify sex as
71:12 intimacy you end up having sexless intimacy when you mislabel love as pain you end
71:20 up having painful love affairs profound i admire myself mainly because
71:27 no one else would poor me that's called victim stance okay which leads us to
71:34 trauma bonding of course trauma bonding is a form of self mutilation
71:41 it's a form of self harm now that's a very unusual view of trauma bonding because we tend to divide the participants in trauma bonding into perpetrators abusers predators and
71:54 hatless flawless angelic victims nothing could be further from the truth trauma
72:00 bonding is a collaboration a very close collaboration where the parties contribute equally and both of them are committed to the Trump to the bond both of them are affected emotionally invested in the bond but as far as the
72:12 victim is concerned it's a form of self- cutting exactly like in borderline personality disorder it's a form of self-punishment self-destruction self mutilation self harm and all these
72:25 behaviors in borderline personality disorder for example all these behaviors have three functions
72:32 there are three functions to self harm and selfmutilation number one to dis to numb to quell to repress disregulated emotions that
72:43 threaten to overwhelm the victim number two to allow the victim to feel
72:49 alive through pain number three to punish defeat and destroy the self mutilator so these are the three functions of self mutilation and self harm to numb disregulated emotions that
73:02 threaten to overwhelm the self-mutilator to allow the the person who selfharms to
73:09 feel alive through pain and to punish defeat and destroy the self-mutilator or the person who self harms and all three exist in trauma bonding it's exactly what trauma bonding does
73:21 lydia Rangelowska wrote these words recently our narcissistic defenses preserve us from self-destruction in
73:29 desperate hopeless and uncertain times the need to socialize to compare ourselves with others is intended to restore control over our innate urges
73:40 having been terrified of our dark side we actually trauma bond with others and
73:46 so others remind us that we are weak and that we have to fight for our survival
73:52 one should embrace his or her weakness in order to restore the energy the hope
73:58 and the will to live others won't do it for you it's a choice you have to make
74:04 to suffer or to live wise counsel indeed and another alternative view on trauma
74:11 bonding i hope you survived and enjoyed this excursion into the dark underside
74:19 of the human psyche i'm always here to guide you through Hades just pay me my
74:25 due
74:34 my name is Sami i'm the author of Malignant Self Love Narcissism Revisited
74:41 it takes two to tango in an equal number to sustain a long-term abusive relationship the abuser and the abused form a kind of a bond a dynamic a dependence
74:56 expressions such as fia and shared psychosis or even Stockholm syndrome
75:04 capture facets of this dance macab and this dance often ends fatally it is always an excruciatingly painful affair
75:17 but it can also turn dangerous at the least expected moment abuse is closely
75:24 correlated with alcoholism drug consumption intimate partner homicide
75:31 teen pregnancy infant and child mortality and incest spontaneous
75:37 abortion reckless behaviors suicide and the onset of mental health disorders
75:45 it doesn't help that society refuses to openly and frankly tackle this pernicious phenomenon and the guilt and
75:51 shame associated with it people overwhelmingly women remain in an
75:58 abusive household for a variety of reasons economic parental to protect the
76:04 children and psychological but the objective obstacles facing the battered spouse the abused spouse cannot be overstated
76:15 the abuser treats his spouse as an object an extension of himself
76:22 devoid of a separate existence and denuded of distinct needs preferences
76:28 wishes and priorities thus typically the couple's assets are
76:34 all on the abuser's name from real estate to medical insurance policies the
76:40 victim has no family or friends because her abusive partner or husband frowns on
76:46 her initial independence and regards it as a threat by intimidating controlling charming and making false promises the abuser
76:57 isolates his prey from the rest of society and thus makes her dependent on
77:03 him totally the victim is of is often also denied
77:09 the option to study and acquire marketable skills or augment them
77:16 abandoning the abusive spouse frequently leads to a prolonged period of destitution and paragrination
77:23 custody is usually denied to parents without a permanent address a job income
77:29 security and therefore stability thus many victims stand to lose not only
77:36 their mates and their nests but also their offspring there is the added menace of violent
77:43 retribution by the abuser or his proxies coupled with emphatic contrition on his
77:49 part and a protracted and irresistible charm offensive
77:56 gradually many victims are convinced to put up with their spouse's cruelty in order to
78:02 avoid this harrowing predicament but there is more to an abusive diet
78:08 than mere pecuniary convenience the abuser stealthily but unfailingly
78:15 exploits the vulnerabilities in the psychological makeup of his victim the chinks in her armor
78:22 the abused party may have low self-esteem fluctuating sense of selfworth primitive defense mechanisms phobias mental health problems a
78:33 disability bodily or psychological history of failure or a tendency to
78:39 blame herself or to feel inadequate what we call autotolastic neurosis
78:45 she may have come from an abusive family or environment herself which conditions her to expect abuse as inevitable and
78:52 normal abuse becomes her comfort zone in extreme and rare cases the victim is a
78:59 mazoist possessed of an urge to seek ill treatment and pain and to revel in them
79:07 the abuser may be functional or dysfunctional pillar of society or a parapathetic con artist rich or poor
79:15 young or old there are many types of abuses there is no universally applicable profile of the
79:23 typical abuser yet abusive behavior often indicates serious underlying
79:29 psychopathologies absent empathy the abuser perceives the abused spouse only dimly and partly as
79:37 one would an inanimate source of frustration the abuser in his mind interacts only with himself and with what we call introjects representations
79:48 of outside objects such as the victims it is an it is a monologue never a
79:54 dialogue
80:04 so hello um I'm with Stephanie who is a trauma expert she will introduce herself
80:11 using hopefully her full name so that you can find her online she has she has a prolific Instagram presence as well
80:18 very interesting account and I will hand over to her stephanie will introduce herself and then I'll introduce myself thank you so much Sam for introducing me
80:29 and for having me here it's such an honor to have this discussion with you um so my name yes is Stephanie Karina
80:36 you can find me on um Instagram i'm posting there i'm a clinical psychologist specialized in trauma and
80:43 personality mainly um yeah so and I understand that you're based in Netherlands if if I understand correct you're in in the Netherlands okay my favorite accent
80:55 okay i'm Sambachin uh those of you who are watching this on my channel know me already and are tired of me probably i'm
81:02 the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisiting and a professor of psychology in the universities uh which
81:09 would have me which is quite a few so today we're going to discuss essentially
81:15 I believe uh trauma and more more specifically we're going to start with trauma bonding and then Stephanie and I
81:23 will have a free exchange we'll have a conversation in effect about things that interest her and maybe I'll have some
81:30 new ideas she will contribute I will contribute and we're going to have a lot lots of fun and you are invited to be
81:36 witnesses to the whole thing so we start with trauma bonding and Stephanie is
81:42 going to present six questions six basic questions about trauma bonding this is more in order to lay the groundwork so
81:49 that we have a common language and an ability to communicate on this phenomenon from a common base point and
81:57 so we define the terminology and then a little of the dynamics of the whole process and so on and so forth so again
82:05 like in tennis over to Stephanie yes and I'm excited about this topic because
82:12 this is u basically a hot topic also on social media i think a lot of people are suffering from what is called
82:18 narcissistic abuse so I'm excited to get about to get to this topic could you define for us what trauma bonding is i'm going to use my favorite definition
82:30 the one I'm using usually in international conferences and it's my favorite definition because
82:36 it includes I think all the elements of trauma bonding and it goes it goes like that extreme trauma bonding involves
82:44 extremes extremes of everything extremes of abuse extremes of attachment extremes
82:50 of inability to extricate yourself from the bond etc etc so it's extreme
82:56 unidirectional attachment the abused is attached to the abuser but the abuser is
83:04 not attached to the abused now this is very important because this is what differentiates between trauma bonding and Stockholm syndrome in Stockholm
83:15 syndrome we have mutual mutual birectional attachment both the abuser
83:22 or the kidnapper or whatever and the abused are bonded with each other in trauma bonding it's one direction only the abuse is attached to the abuser and
83:33 the definition continues fostered created by traumatizing
83:39 unpredictable intermittent reinforcement intermittent rein reinforcement is a fancy phrase a
83:46 clinical phrase to describe hot and cold pot and cold loving hating but in an
83:54 unpredictable way the abuser wakes up in the morning and he's all flowers and caring and loving and so on and then in the afternoon he becomes a monster and
84:05 then the next morning he's again love bombing and grooming and and everything
84:11 and so it's impossible to predict the behavior of the abuser and it creates what we call intermittent reinforcement
84:17 we'll discuss it a bit later and finally involving a power asymmetry
84:24 there must be a power asymmetry in trauma bonding the abuser is holding all the cards the abused is needy in the sense that she needs the abuser so I'm
84:36 going to repeat the definition trauma bonding is extreme unidirectional
84:43 attachment fostered by traumatizing unpredictable intermittent reinforcement involving a
84:52 power asymmetry and this definition is derived from what we call in psychology
84:58 learning theory yes there is such a thing learning theory it also borrows a little from behaviorism and that's my favorite definition but I must warn you there are others
85:11 thank you for that so what sometimes they call it an emotional attachment so it's only a one-sided emotional attachment from that okay yes in trauma bonding it's one-sided in Stockholm
85:22 syndrome it's two-sided okay so then you would one would ask why stay in such an
85:29 abusive relationship right so what are some of the dynamics in trauma bonding why would one stay
85:36 um I would come to why would one stay a bit later but I think the dynamics are important there are several extremely unusual dynamics in trauma bonding and the reason is the abused person has a highly specific profile a highly
85:52 specific autobio biographical profile and so in within trauma bonding we find
85:59 people we find I don't I hate to use the word victims um because trauma bonding
86:05 is a collaboration it's a dance macab there is a collusion between the abused and the abuser the abused needs the abuser and the abuser needs the abuse
86:16 and they're working together on joint project which is called trauma bonding so I hate to use it's wrong to use the
86:22 word victim but I think abused the abused person the abused person confuses
86:29 has a series of confusions for example the abused person confuses intensity
86:36 with truth the bond in trauma bonding is very intense so the abuse says to
86:43 herself it is so intense it must be real because it's so strong it's so extreme
86:51 it must be true it must be real there is another confusion between attention and
86:57 love the abused person tells herself and I'm saying herself because the majority
87:03 of the abused in trauma bonding are women and that happens to be a fact so
87:11 the abused person tells herself "He's giving me attention it may be bad
87:17 attention it may be abusive attention it may be violent attention but it proves
87:23 that he loves me the fact that he is jealous when I just look at another man
87:29 it's proof that he loves me the fact that he beat me up from for within an
87:36 inch of my life and I'm in a hospital it proves that he loves me he couldn't control himself actually I provoked him
87:43 so there is a lot of confusion and the reason the abused have all these
87:49 confusions is because they dread loneliness they have extreme separation
87:55 insecurity separation insecurity is the clinical term for abandonment anxiety so
88:02 they have extreme abandonment anxiety very much like a borderline and so they dread loneliness and they lie to
88:09 themselves they say the abuser the abusive partner loves me because he pays
88:15 attention to me and because he's so intense and extreme it proves that he loves me and then in many cases there
88:23 are coercive coercive circumstances the abuser isolates
88:29 isolates the prey isolates the victim or the abused person from her family from
88:36 her social circle he he isolates it to the point that she totally depends on him even for daily functions let alone mental functions psychological functions and he creates in her the belief that
88:52 she is unable to escape he gaslights her into believing that she doesn't have any
88:59 capacity to extricate herself and to walk away he for example teaches her
89:05 helplessness this is called learned helplessness it teaches her that she is
89:11 helpless she's stupid she is inadequate she's uneducated and ignorant she will
89:18 never make it no one else will ever love her she will not find a job she should not walk away because he is her only guarantee her only source of safety and she buys into this story and finally another important dynamic is what is
89:35 called betrayal trauma betrayal trauma was first describ described by Kins C a
89:41 r nes and expanded upon by a very important scholar from Stanford the name is
89:48 Jennifer Fried and Jennifer Fried coined the phrase betrayal trauma blindness and
89:55 together with K's work there is a betrayal trauma theory and I'm going to read to you the definition um Freight's definition of betrayal trauma
90:07 when you cannot or when you are not allowed to express your experience of trauma and abuse when you're not allowed to communicate the breach of trust the disempowerment
90:20 the negative emotions and the profound betrayal by someone that you depend on
90:26 in a crucial way such denial and repression lead to severe mental health
90:34 outcomes dependency dissociation and host of other long-term mental
90:41 health disorders so all these dynamics work together in trauma bonding which is
90:47 the reason trauma bonding is by far the strongest bond and attachment we know
90:54 it's even stronger than the maternal bond to a child or a love affair it's
91:01 extremely strong and extremely difficult to break and so how come is it so strong even
91:08 stronger than with a relationship with the mother childhood it is so strong because it fulfills all these needs it fulfills multiple psychological needs and because the victim learns to
91:21 internalize the view of the abuser the view the way the abuser sees her or
91:27 wants her to see herself so the abuser communicates to the victim you're
91:33 hopeless you're helpless don't even bother to walk away you will not survive one day without me i'm the guarantor of
91:40 your survival and well-being and peace of mind and everything else you need and
91:46 so on so forth so there is the abuser creates total dependency and it's very difficult for the victim to to break them so in a way the abuser takes over the
91:59 abused person he takes over in multiple ways he he becomes for example her
92:07 reality testing In other words the abused person loses her belief in
92:14 herself she begins to think that she is not capable of appreciating and
92:20 appraising reality properly she begins to distrust her own judgment
92:26 and so she resorts to the abuser she asks the abuser "Is this real am I not
92:32 crazy can I trust my judgment in this case what would you have done had you
92:38 been me etc etc the abusers's reality testing the abuser's judgment displaces
92:46 and replaces the victims and the abuser becomes an extension of the victim in
92:52 this sense we can say that the victim outsources her internal world her
92:58 internal processes she outsources them to the abuser so that the abuser becomes
93:05 an external regulator the abuser has the power to regulate the abused person's
93:12 emotions moods and this is why many of the people in trauma bonding situations
93:20 actually suffer from disregulatory or dysregulation disorders for example
93:27 borderline personality disorder where the person is incapable of regulating
93:33 her emotions and her labile moods by herself she needs an external input she
93:39 needs someone from the outside to regulate her and the dependency become total now consequently the victim or the
93:48 abused person lies to herself because there is a cognitive dissonance
93:54 on the one hand she's abused she's not stupid the the abused people are not
94:00 stupid no one says they're stupid they know that they are being abused but they can't walk away so this creates a
94:07 dissonance this creates a conflict i'm in a bad situation but I cannot help myself so to resolve the cognitive dissonance they lie to themselves they
94:18 rationalize what's happening they're saying to themselves "Whatever is happening to me is happening for a good
94:26 reason." They justify the abuser they say "I provoked him i misbehaved i had
94:32 it coming i deserve this." Or they minimize the abuse they say "Oh it's not
94:38 a big deal so he broke my my finger it's not a big deal three weeks and I'll be
94:44 as right as new." So there's a minimization of the abuse there's dissociation
94:50 simply the abused person simply forgets simply deletes the experience and the
94:57 memory comes back only when she's abused the next time this is called state dependent memory then there is malignant optimism force hope the abused person
95:09 lies to herself she says "It's going to be okay the abuse is not very frequent
95:16 the rest of the time he loves me if I only get to his inner child if I only
95:22 love him properly he's going to change this is malignant optimism and finally there's there are autoplastic defenses autoplastic defenses is when you tend to blame yourself when you tend to feel
95:35 responsible for everything that's happening when you feel guilty and ashamed about the abuse someone else is
95:43 abusing you and you feel that you made it happen somehow it's a form of magical
95:49 thinking so all these all these mechanisms of selfdeception
95:56 are at work all the time and they don't allow the the victim to simply look
96:02 reality in the face and say I'm out of here i'm not going to tolerate this anymore because she can't see reality
96:10 she's she's but she's a firewall the abuser firewalls her it's isolation from
96:17 the outside he cuts her off any social contacts family and friends and it's
96:23 isolation from the inside he cuts her off from her contact with reality
96:29 and basically what you're describing is also gaslighting I suppose then yes gaslighting is is a is a technique used
96:37 by abusers to induce trauma bonding exactly so how does the victim in trauma bonding cope with this reality of abuse
96:48 it is um there are two ways to conceptualize
96:54 um trauma bonding two new ways let's say one way is as a fantasy defense and the
97:02 other way is as a selfharming activity actually these are the two major coping mechanisms of the abused person in a
97:14 trauma bonded relationship either she retreats into fantasy or she begins to
97:21 harm herself by actively participating in the abusive cycle and I will
97:27 elaborate a bit with your permission on each one of these two trauma bonding is a fantasy defense what
97:34 the abuser does he comes to the abused person he comes to the victim if you
97:40 wish and he says to her "I'm going to love you the way a mother loves i'm
97:48 going to love you like a mother i'm going to play the maternal role i'm
97:54 going to idealize you and then I'm going to give you access to the idealized image
98:00 and you will fall in love with your own idealized image through my gaze i'm
98:07 going to have a monopoly says the abuser i'm going to have a monopoly on your new found selflove i'm going to love you unconditionally the way a mother loves you and I'm going
98:19 to allow you to love yourself unconditionally by idealizing you and letting you have access to this
98:25 idealized image and they strike a deal the abuser and
98:31 the abuse strike this deal the abused says "You can do anything you want to me as long as you love me as a mother does and allow me to gain access to my
98:42 idealized image because it's addictive it's intoxicating." And then the abuser suddenly switches
98:50 instead of being a good enough mother he becomes what is called in psychoanalytic literature a dead mother he becomes a
98:57 bad mother he becomes a vicious mother an absent mother narcissistic mother
99:03 selfish mother and this disorients the victim completely because she believed
99:09 that the abuser loves her she believed that the abuser loves her the way a mother loves her child
99:16 she saw herself in the abuser's gaze in the abuser's eyes as an idealized infant
99:23 and suddenly he hates her he devalues her he attacks her and this is
99:29 exceedingly disorienting she can't give up on this newfound so-called fantastic
99:36 love it's a chance at a second childhood it's a chance to get things right to
99:43 resolve conflicts to experience the kind of love that maybe she had never experienced before and to be seen as a
99:50 flawless object and she doesn't want to let this go but on the other hand it's very painful because there's there are
99:57 these constant attacks by the abuser so what she does she retreats into fantasy
100:05 she idealizes the abuser and she begins to have a relationship with the
100:11 idealized object in her mind that represents the abuser
100:17 so in a way what she does she takes a snapshot of the abuser then she photoshops the snapshot she converts it
100:25 into a ideal image and then she cuts off the real abuser and she continues to
100:32 interact with the representation of the abuser in her mind she begins to have a
100:39 relationship with an internal object because the external object the real life partner the abuser is too painful the second solution is self mutilation
100:53 we know for example in borderline personality disorder when there is a lot of stress where there is abandonment or
101:02 rejection real or imagined the borderline self mutilates she cuts
101:08 herself she burns herself or she engages in dangerous reckless behaviors for
101:14 example promiscuity with total strangers these are all forms of self harm she harms herself why does the borderline harm herself because it's a coping
101:25 mechanism and a very effective one very efficacious one the abused person the
101:31 victim in trauma bonding does exactly the same she uses the abuser to harm
101:38 herself to mutilate herself to damage and injure herself
101:45 trauma bonding is a collaborative form of self mutilation and self harm and it
101:51 has three functions as far as the victim is concerned to numb to emotionally numb
101:58 herself to to eliminate disregulated emotions that threaten to overhel
102:04 overwhelm her the emotions inside her are too strong so by being abused
102:11 by by collaborating with the abuser on tra in a trauma bonded situation the
102:18 these emotions that threaten to overwhelm her are numbed they're suppressed they're repressed and she can
102:25 forget about them at least for a while the second function is to allow her to feel alive through pain the irony is that victims of trauma bonding often
102:38 describe the drama in trauma bonding the abuse even the physical attacks they
102:45 describe these experiences as lively experiences they felt alive
102:53 in in other situations where there's no abuse and no pain physical or psychological they feel dead inside otto Kber called it the emptiness
103:05 seinfeld another psychoanalyst called it the empty schizoid core at the heart at
103:12 the heart at the nucleus at the core of trauma bonded victims there is an
103:18 emptiness there is a deadness they're dead inside the abuser brings them back
103:24 to life revives them and resuscitates them with his dramatic antiques and with
103:30 his abuse finally traumab bonded abuse is intended
103:36 to punish to defeat and to destroy the victim it is a form of self-destructiveness you could ask why do the victims not walk away one of the main reasons they
103:49 don't walk away is that they hate themselves they loathe themselves they have a very low negative view of themselves they have extremely low self-esteem and self-confidence and
104:01 self-worth it's not fluctuating it's simply low and they want to die they want to destroy
104:08 themselves it's nihilism and the abuser comes handy because he offers them
104:14 self-destruction and self-deeat on a silver platter
104:20 so what you're describing is that basically this relationship gives them a kind of relief yes the relationship
104:27 reduces anxiety what people many people and even scholars don't understand is
104:33 that trauma bonding is anxolytic it reduces anxiety the baseline the baseline of trauma victims all trauma victims not only bonded trauma the baseline of trauma
104:45 victims in post-traumatic conditions is extreme disregulated anxiety
104:52 and they would do anything to reduce the anxiety they drink they do drugs and some of them self harm and self mutilate
104:59 to reduce anxiety and one of the best ways to harm yourself is to find the
105:05 wrong partner because if your mate selection is self-destructive you will
105:12 find a partner who will m mutilate you who will harm you exactly like a cigarette or a knife you know and so
105:19 these women in most cases they self harm through the wrong partner or actually
105:25 the right partner for them because they want to destroy themselves but you see there's another thing the the abuser
105:34 creates in the in the victim a set of mind
105:41 he he inculcates in the victim beliefs he replaces the victim's belief system
105:47 with his own belief system and there are negative automatic negative thoughts ants yes automatic
105:55 sentences negative sentences that keep circulating throughout the victim's mind
106:02 for example I am lucky to have this abuser i'm worthless i'm damaged goods
106:09 i'm broken i'm lucky to have found even this guy who is an abuser if I leave the
106:16 relationship who else would want me where will I find another partner i will never find another partner this is a sentence this is a message that the abuser is implanting in the mind of the
106:29 victim this process is called entraining it's a form of brainwashing another sentence the best of all worlds the victim tells herself "Life is harsh and
106:41 it doesn't get much better than this actually my life is not so bad you know
106:47 I have a relationship i have a man he clearly loves me because he beats me up he's jealous." And so the grass is always greener on the other side it's an optical illusion my life as it is now is as good as it gets another sentence my
107:05 partner may be bad but is not worse than other partners every other partner I
107:12 will find will have flaws every other partner will abuse me every other partner will have quirks and eccentric
107:19 eccentricities every other partner I will have to get used to i will have to
107:25 accommodate every other partner better stick with what I know and what I have no one guarantees that my next partner
107:32 will not be even much worse than this one so why not stick with this one and finally there's another sentence that
107:39 the abuser entrains into the mind of the victim there's no such thing as happiness don't pursue happiness happiness is for idiots happiness is for
107:50 adolescence serious adults don't don't pursue happiness they pursue utility and
107:58 self-efficacy life is a serious business is not about being selfish the pursuit
108:04 of elusive happiness is another name for selfishness you should meet your obligations you should get on with it
108:11 you should move on yet the best you can expect what I'm giving you is an abuser
108:17 that's the best you can ever get this is happiness your life now is happiness you just don't know how to identify you don't know how to recognize it you're stupid you are deficient you're
108:28 dysfunctional you're mentally ill you don't realize you have the best life imaginable so all these sentences these
108:36 are negative automatic thoughts all these sentences implanted in the victim's mind by the abuser are forms of
108:43 control they control the victim because they teach her to be hopeless and
108:49 helpless i think we should take a break now and if you wish we can return and have a
108:56 conversation yes thank you yes
109:09 yes i'm recording my backup is recording i'm recording the backup everything is okay yeah so I'm trauma bonded to to my
109:19 glass of wine and and just to open the conversation you can be trauma bonded to
109:25 a substance you can be trauma bonded to an institution you can be trauma bonded to an to a to a parent to a mother or
109:33 father you can be trauma bonded to a sibling trauma bonding simply means that you can't walk away from a situation
109:40 that traumatizes you with anything now an alcoholic is traumatized by the
109:46 alcohol because many bad things happen to alcoholics when they drink you know but they can't stop so we could say that
109:53 addiction is a subset subspecies of trauma bonding
109:59 just to kick kick off the conversation so that's interesting i never thought of
110:06 it that way but yeah so that's uh any type of abuse including the alcohol uh
110:12 the negative aspects of alcohol yeah wouldn't you agree that the alcohol abuses the alcoholic
110:18 in many ways i mean horrible things happen to alcoholics they're robbed they're mugged they're killed they're
110:24 absolutely horrible things and yet they can't stop they can't just walk away and if you analyze the psychoynamic of
110:31 addiction you discover huge similarities with trauma bonding trauma bonding may be the mechanism that generates
110:38 addiction actually yeah interesting and uh you were describing um about the entraining process that the that abuser
110:49 imple implements um um beliefs and that's why the abuse stays and in the
110:56 with the purpose of controlling them basically making them feel powerless and helpless to not leave and now I realize
111:02 because I've been posting on gaslighting now I realize why they say it's so important to leave as soon as possible
111:09 because otherwise this process gets worse and worse and then you have totally a different belief system and
111:15 you will feel totally helpless and depressed and stay very true it's very true and train and training is a relatively new concept it was first discovered 10 years ago among among
111:26 musicians musicians were were playing music together and the brain waves of
111:33 the musicians became identical they It's like they had one brain a hive brain and
111:39 so I extended this and I said "If someone repeats the same sentence to you
111:45 all the time and does it in a kind of musical way like with the same inonation and the same inflection and the same accent so there's music in the background isn't training you in effect
111:57 now this is this leads to a kind of brainwashing it uses a mechanism known as internalization introjection used to be called identification but the name
112:08 has changed internalization introjection is a very powerful mechanism where we
112:14 internalize other people who are meaningful to us so the abuser forces
112:21 you to internalize him so you have an internal object of the abuser in your mind and then he attaches to it the
112:29 abusive the verbal abuse he attaches it to his internal object so the internal object begins to repeat the abuse inside
112:37 your mind simply even when the abuser walks away you broke up with the abuser
112:43 his voice is still inside your mind and still repeating the same sentences in
112:49 the same because he created this attachment if you wish between internal object and entrained entrained sound
112:57 entrained voice it's very powerful extremely powerful almost impossible to to reverse that's why you really must run away as soon as you can
113:08 and that also makes me wonder but perhaps we'll get the there with the next question is why does the abuser um
113:16 need why does the abuser do this um why is the abuser abuser going to these
113:22 lengths to do this so in your work you compare trauma bonding to a fantasy um
113:29 could you elaborate the most abusers not all abusers let it
113:35 be clear but most abusers suffer from mental health problems they could be mild mental health but they could be
113:42 very serious mental health problems for example narcissism which is an extremely serious mental health disorder um
113:49 and so these abusers have serious problems with what we call
113:57 object constancy abusers grow up in dysfunctional families and were exposed to
114:03 dysfunctional mothers also known as dead mothers these are mothers who are selfish absent depressed
114:10 um angry uh neglectful or what instrumentalize the child
114:17 parentify the child bad mothers mothers who don't know how to be mothers so constant consequently this child is
114:25 unable to form what we call object constancy the child becomes very insecure very clinging very needy
114:32 terrified when the mother leaves the room because he has no representation of the mother in his mind and this is what
114:38 is known as object consency so these abusers when they come across an
114:44 intimate partner they have to objectify her they have to convert her into an object because objects can be controlled and objects never abandon and objects never cause
114:57 pain and objects never frustrate and objects are utterly controllable so they
115:04 need to objectify you immediately and the only way to objectify you is to take away your agency your autonomy your
115:11 independence and your ability to act and your trust in yourself and in your reality testing and in other people they need to convert you to an
115:24 ancient Egyptian mummy there's a famous movie Psycho by Hitchro where there's a
115:30 guy who owns a motel his name is Bates and he has a mother his mother died so what he does he mummifies her and every morning he puts her facing the window on
115:41 a chair facing the window and every evening he comes back going goes up to the room and puts her to sleep but she's
115:47 dead of course that's the ideal partner of an abuser this kind of mommy
115:53 mummified mommy that's the ideal partner of an abuser abusers
115:59 consequently create fantasies all abusers by the way even even abusers
116:05 who are not narcissist they all create fantasies and they invite you into the fantasy and once you are in the fantasy
116:13 you become a fictitious character because a fantasy is a movie a fantasy
116:19 is a story it's a narrative it's not real and the minute you enter it you
116:25 become two-dimensional a fictitious character and then of course the author the writer of the fantasy has the right to tell you how to behave in his story
116:36 it's his story it's his movie he's like a director so he has a right to tell you how to behave and only he has the key
116:45 which can release you from the fantasy but he will never do this he will never release you from the fantasy on the very contrary he will quash you and squash you and make you make you more and more two-dimensional
116:57 until you become a symbol what we call an internal object you become an
117:03 introject you lose your real life presence you become a figment in the
117:10 abuser's mind that's why abusers for example have no problem to beat you
117:16 up physically or to torment you verbally or psychologically but they would never do this to other people
117:24 you know many many victims of of abuse they say "My abuser is so kind and so
117:30 nice to other people he abuses only me." And so people find it hard to believe me
117:37 because he's a pillar of a community he's charitable he's altruistic he's a wonderful man he's kind with everyone
117:43 then he comes back home and he beats me to the point of of having to go to the hospital and no one believes that he's
117:50 capable of that because when he when the abuser abuses his intimate partner he is
117:58 not abusing the external object he's not abusing the real person he's abusing the internal object
118:06 and he doesn't have other internal objects it's his partner that's the reason no he has many other internal
118:12 objects but one of them is is intimate power he has an he has what we call introjects so he has a representation of
118:18 his mother of his father peers teachers role models he has other internal objects for example self states he has all kinds of states of the self there
118:29 are everyone by the way even healthy people have many many internal objects but the internal object that is used to
118:40 regulate some of the critical needs of the abuser is the intimate part so he develops
118:49 um a kind of sick attachment coupled with enormous anxiety and to reduce the
118:55 anxiety he needs to prove to himself that the intimate partner is a
119:01 controllable object that the intimate partner would never walk away he needs to make sure that she
119:07 would never walk away you know in extreme cases he disables her physically he poisons
119:14 her he breaks her legs there's a famous movie Misery it's a movie with you know
119:21 so in Misery there's a fan a fan of a writer she's a fan and the writer has an accident and the fan of this writer finds him in the snow and takes her takes him home to her home and she
119:34 nurses him and nurtures him until he heals but then when he heals he wants to
119:40 walk away he wants to return to his home and she wouldn't have it she breaks both
119:46 his legs in order to keep him in her possession and this is what the abuser does trauma bonding happens when the abused
119:58 likes this process when she needs this process when she responds positively to
120:05 this process in the overwhelming vast majority of cases the the victim tries to run away the victim is unhappy she's egoistonic she she tries to extricate
120:16 herself she seeks help she wakes up and educates herself in the vast majority of
120:22 cases the victims have agency of some kind or another and they try to walk away from the situation but in a small minority of cases the victims want this
120:33 to happen trauma bonding is collusive and collaborative
120:39 it's not true that trauma bonding happens to to kind of innocent victims it's a collaboration and the abused person is attached bonded loves the
120:51 abuser because he abuses her this is the politically incorrect and
120:59 palatable truth the reason she's attached to it the reason she's bonded to him why she loves him is because he guarantees to her unmitigated
121:11 uninterrupted mistreatment and she needs it for the reasons that I
121:17 described before so that's what you're describing with fantasy from both parties the contract
121:24 basically so the narcissist um needs this love this validation basically that he never received as a child and is afraid to lose her is the
121:36 fe has has the fear of abandonment and that's why he needs to control her of course can also be the other sex but
121:42 needs to control her okay and that's why and she needs she needs to be loved yes
121:50 the the uh victims of trauma bonding are love addicts
121:56 they're love addicts they need to be loved when they are not loved they feel dead inside but they mislabel they misinterpret
122:07 many many behaviors as love when they're not they see love everywhere
122:13 where it is not for example they mistake dependency for love
122:20 they mistake abuse for love they mistake romantic jealousy for love because they
122:26 are so addicted to love and because they feel alive only when they are in a
122:32 dramatic extreme love relationship they tend to see love everywhere in
122:39 every behavior and with everyone that's why I told you that trauma bonding is a
122:45 form of addiction and can explain is a major mechanism in every addiction because there is a love affair between the alcoholic and his alcohol absolutely and definitely anyone I worked with
122:57 alcoholics for 10 years anyone who had witnessed an alcoholic when he sees alcohol when he he glances he he sees a
123:06 bottle it's love love is in the air so and we
123:12 call it cathexis the clinical term is cathexis there is emotional investment in in the in the process of loving the trauma bonded victim is loves to be
123:25 in love she's emotionally invested in loving never mind who never mind what
123:32 she must love why is that because she feels dead
123:38 she she she has no existence except through the gaze of another person
123:44 it is the gaze of another person that defines her and that convinces her that she exists when she is not loved and again she misinterprets what is love it calls many
123:57 things love which are not love but okay when she believes that she is not loved
124:03 there is no external gaze and she feels that she is not seen and because she's not seen she doesn't exist she falls apart she disintegrates it's a process
124:14 called the compensation the the borderline the narcissist many
124:20 other mental health disorders the glue the glue that holds them together is
124:26 another person's gaze the narcissist needs other people for narcissistic supply attention the borderline needs other people to regulate our emotions and moods when these people are not loved quote unquote by another
124:43 person there is no glue and they fall to pieces and they feel dead totally dead
124:51 and with totally dead you mean is it like um a form of total disconnect to the world uh intense loneliness what what what is it the clinical the clinical terms are emotional numbing and
125:03 uh reduced effect display they feel that they don't have sufficient energy to manifest it's like they feel that they in such a low level of energy that they can't
125:16 prove to other people that they exist because we communicate to other people all the time that we exist it takes energy m you know we are talking right now you are communicating to me that you
125:29 exist and I'm communicating to you that I exist and we are both using energy to do this mhm the
125:36 love addict when he when she is not loved or believes that she is not loved
125:42 the her level of energy is so low that she cannot communicate even her existence to other people even to herself she cannot convince herself that
125:53 she exists so she wants to die she wants to die hence self harming self
125:59 mutilation because it's the only way to feel alive again it's like if I don't have love I can have pain pain is like
126:07 love because love makes me feel alive and pain makes me feel alive so love is
126:13 pain and pain is love that is the foundation of trauma bonding
126:19 the misidentification of love with pain and pain with love so they need a fuel basically right to
126:26 feel this energy y yeah and
126:32 uh you often hear the the term narcissistic supply um
126:38 which is to be seen and and all these things but on the other hand you also the the abused persons that person also needs supply so both need supply
126:50 basically the abused person needs Yes needs you
126:56 could think of of the abused person's version of love as supply yes because it's to be seen you're right it's to be seen yeah to be seen to be regulated all these things and
127:09 could we state that because you said many people who get in a trauma bonded relationship uh and are have sense of
127:16 agency or are generally healthy can get out and will get out some people
127:22 actually stay in it because they gain something out of it so do these people are these people mostly people with
127:29 borderline or codependency or specific disorder what what are the factors obviously obviously people with um regulatory disturbances regulatory disorders such as borderline personality
127:41 disorder dependent personality disorder also known as codependency uh the codependent has difficulty to
127:48 regulate her needs she she outsources her needs to an external to an intimate
127:54 partner the borderline has trouble to regulate her emotions and her lab moods so she outsources the regulatory function to an intimate partner so these
128:05 kind of disorders definitely are much more likely to end up in trauma bonding
128:11 but the truth is that even healthy people can end up in trauma bonding even healthy people depending on the period in life that you find yourself for example healthy people who have just undergone a major crisis are very vulnerable
128:28 and clinically they have a borderline personality structure for a while because immediately after trauma in post-traumatic state or immediately after crisis there are severe problems
128:40 in regulation there are disregulated emotions and so on so clinically if you wish we are in a borderline state so if you find a healthy person and she's
128:51 she's just went through a horrible crisis I don't know she lost her child for example she's vulnerable now every
128:58 predator knows this every pickup artist know this they know to go to a bar find
129:07 women who drink alone and they know or find a woman who is crying and they know that she's vulnerable and they home in on the vulnerability and they leverage it and they abuse it so vulnerable people whether they are
129:23 vulnerable lifelong like border lines or whether they're vulnerable in a specific period of time they can end up trauma bonded
129:35 okay it's very interesting
129:42 and um then I'm I'm wondering uh if someone has the tendency to choose these
129:49 types of um relationships by the way is it always is the abuser always a narcissist as I said um
130:00 some abusers have person have personality disorders some abusers have other mental health issues for example
130:06 bipolar disorder um but
130:12 I would say that majority of abuses the abuse in majority of abuses is not
130:19 connected to mental health issues it's a functional It's a way of functioning in
130:25 relationships that has to do with communication skills attachment style
130:32 uh fear of abandonment early childhood trauma or problems with object constancy
130:39 um uh predelections for example if you're schizoid you you don't like people and
130:47 you end up with an intimate partner intimate partner is a person you don't like people so you're going to take it out on her so
130:54 abuse is a behavior it's not a mental health diagnosis
131:01 and it's not necessarily connected to mental health issue all narcissists all narcissists and all border lines are abusers all psychopaths of course are abusers so
131:14 all people with cluster B personality disorders are typically abusers but not
131:21 all abusers have cluster B personalities so
131:27 and then trauma bonding the way you have described it is in a way is a codependency right because they are dependent upon each other it's a dependency it's not codependency in the
131:39 sense that the abuser is is not attached to the abused the
131:45 abuser can replace the abused any minute through the process of idealization devaluation so he he idealizes her in
131:53 order to captivate her and then he can just devalue her and so to the abuser
131:59 who is abusing is not very important the act of abuse is important the act of
132:05 abuse gives the abuser comfort because when he abuses he feels that he
132:12 is in control he feels he will not be abandoned he feels his anxiety is going
132:18 down it is the act of abuse not the target of the abuse that is important
132:24 today I abuse you tomorrow I abuse someone else it doesn't matter i just need to abuse it's like making money you
132:31 know you can make money from one business and then the next day you can make money from another business it's not the business that matters it's a process of making money it's the same with abuse
132:43 so it's codependency is a very misleading term which is why by the way we never use it in clinical clinical settings or or academia i'm a professor i never use this phrase because it
132:55 implies it implies reciprocity co-dependency like both parties are
133:02 dependent which is very misleading because in majority of dependency
133:08 situations only one party is dependent in trauma bonding only the abuse party
133:15 loves the abuser the abuser has no emotions no attachment nothing towards
133:22 the abused he just uses her he uses her as a punching bag you know he punches
133:28 her that's all he needs to abuse now you I if I'm an abuser I need to abuse you
133:34 happen to be there bad for you your problem you happen to be there if you
133:40 move away and another woman enters the frame I will abuse her no problem i just need to abuse
133:46 example yes I don't need to abuse but I'm saying as an example
133:52 but then uh then I understand also this this might be hard for for people who are abused to hear because they often have this hope that their partner loves
134:03 them their abuser loves them but from what I understand also from your videos which were very insightful um is that
134:10 the abuser doesn't form an attachment to them it's an attachment to what he has the snapshot he has from them so he
134:17 never really cared and what you're describing he cared about the abuse the the feeling of control not necessarily
134:23 about the other person is that correct that is correct for all abusers by the way not only narcissism
134:30 all abusers abuse is a power play it's a control strategy
134:36 it has very little to do with the target of abuse now the targets of abuse they want to feel special they want to feel
134:43 unique because they have their own grandio narcissistic defenses and they want to make sense of what happened they
134:50 want what happened to have meaning they want the abuse to to make some sense so they say "I'm being abused because I'm highly empathic i'm being abused because
135:01 I'm kind i've been abused because I'm a nice person i've been chosen to be abused i
135:09 haven't been abused randomly i haven't been abused accidentally
135:15 i've been abused because I've been chosen they want to convince themselves that what happened makes sense but
135:21 here's the breaking news abuse doesn't make sense
135:28 and the abused victims are not chosen they just happen to be there conveniently there is no commonality there is no
135:39 typology of abuse victims we have a science uh science we have a field called victimology
135:46 and in victimology we study profiles of victims and when it comes to abuse in
135:53 intimate relationships there is no typical profile everyone can be can be
135:59 abused anyone can be abused empathic and non-empathic
136:06 good people and bad people anyone can end up being a victim of abuse so
136:13 you're not special as a victim of abuse you've not been chosen you just happen to be there that is very difficult to
136:20 hear because it means that the abuse was random accidental meaningless senseless and so your life was ruined by an
136:33 accidental occurrence by some random event and you can't digest this
136:39 you can't digest this because you attribute to the abuser humanity but when the abuser abuses he's not human in any sense i'm aware of for
136:50 example we we have shown demonstrated that
136:56 during episodes of abuse there is a total lack of empathy even when the abuser is otherwise empathic so when the abuse happens exactly during
137:07 the abuse he's totally disempathic he's also self-centered he becomes highly grandiose and self-centered during the episodes of abuse it is another very interesting observation
137:20 that is a bit under analyzed abusers are like multiple personality
137:28 they have one personality when they are not abusing and a totally different personality when they're abusing
137:35 which makes it impossible for the victim to comprehend what happened i can't
137:41 believe that he did this otherwise when he's not abusive he's a wonderful man
137:47 he's loving he's caring he's supportive he's He gave me everything he and then
137:53 he broke my arm or you know destroyed me verbally and I can't put the two
138:00 together it's like two personalities and yes she's right there are self states what I
138:07 call self states there are self states the abuser when he abuses is not the
138:13 same person as the abuser when he's not abusing and that's very very difficult to to
138:20 comprehend and accept because you see if you if you're a victim and you need to give up on the
138:27 abuser you need to break up you need to walk away you're giving up also on the
138:33 good personality you're not giving up only on the bad personality it's like Dr jackel and Mr
138:39 hyde if you give up on Mr high you're also giving up on Dr jackekal
138:45 when you give up on the abuser you also give up on a wonderful man
138:51 because there are periods when he's a wonderful man and there are periods when he's a monster you give up on the
138:57 monster you give up on the wonderful man also it's a package deal can you do that
139:03 many victims come they say "Okay he's a monster sometimes but he's also the most wonderful man I ever met and I'm not willing to give up on this i'm willing to pay the price to be with a monster
139:15 every 3 weeks you know so there's a lot of denial going on there um for the the the victims
139:26 basically um they reminds me I've been working in addiction and it's always
139:32 important then to realize what are the disadvantages from the you know the addictive behavior and you need to
139:38 really come clean in a way and so these people also really need to come clean with reality really need to see for what
139:46 see what it is and I also have had um clients who were so and perhaps now I understand this is very very positive uh development and that coming out of such
139:57 a relationship they feel so bad about themselves they feel so ashamed that they have allowed this to happen um but at least there's a realization there they're realizing what happened and that it was in a way useless but they feel so
140:13 so bad about it shame and uh shame and guilt ego ego ego
140:19 intent emotions shame and guilt um on the one hand indicate facing
140:27 reality which is always good but on the other hand
140:33 they can indicate an attempt to take responsibility for what happened to feel
140:41 responsible to feel guilty for what happened to feel ashamed because you
140:47 could have behaved differently or you could have made different choices or And this I don't encourage in my clients
140:54 because I tell them when you take responsibility for what had happened you're trying to
141:01 reassume control you're trying to say my abuse was my fault i controlled it i
141:09 could have prevented it i'm ashamed and guilty and responsible because I did not prevent it but the truth is you couldn't on the one hand you must accept reality
141:20 you must face reality but on the other hand you must realize that there was sometimes very little that you could have done and in most cases you're not responsible
141:31 and you're not guilty and you're not to be ashamed and most people would have behaved identically to you m so I don't
141:40 encourage shame and guilt because these are disguised attempts to assume control of a situation which was actually out of control it's another way of avoiding reality
141:51 in a in a saying yes I have been abused I accept reality I've been abused but it
141:58 was my fault I controlled it which is another way of avoiding reality because in reality the victim has no control or
142:06 very little control the only thing the victim can do profitably is walk away
142:14 in be if absence this absent this if the victim stays in the relationship there's
142:20 extremely little the victim can do so that's where there's a thin line
142:27 between shame guilt responsibility accountability saying yeah I contributed to this situation by for example making
142:33 bad choices okay but up to a point Beyond that point it's falsifying
142:40 reality it's saying I provoked him i was in control or I chose the wrong partner
142:46 i could have not chosen this partner or I I I it's all I I I you know it's like
142:52 I was the god the god in the situation which is wrong so reason that people tend to do that to take that control
143:00 back is because they struggle so much to really accept what happened and grief
143:06 the the loss of the illusion of the hope everything it's multiple grief it's
143:13 multiple grief first of all they grieve their own helplessness there's a lot of shame in helplessness
143:20 even if it is justified and objective and could not have been avoided there's still a lot of shame they grieve the
143:26 fantasy that is lost they grieve themselves because they have been
143:32 changed irreversibly and you know they've been damaged they grieve this they grieve what could have been the dream
143:43 they grieve the abuser there's a lot of grief about the abuser they still see the good sides of the abuser the child in the abuser they still love the abuser or believe that they love the abuser and so there's a lot of grieving over the abuser and the abuser's wasted potential
144:01 not only the abuser is a lost intimate partner but what the abuser could have been had he not been an abuser
144:09 there is grief about lost time and opportunities
144:15 lost social connections lost family losses so the grief this is the most profound
144:23 form of grief when you exit a trauma bonded relationship it's by far the most
144:30 profound form of grief if you lose a child you grieve the child you grieve
144:36 the child's lost potential you grieve your love for the child etc etc but this is
144:42 limited grief when you lose the fantasy that was the trauma bonding you lose
144:50 your entire universe past present and future because in your mind the trauma
144:58 bonded relationship was a fantasy about to happen in a process of becoming and
145:04 it will never ever happen it's also a huge loss and you lost lose yourself you are no longer you sometimes
145:12 you don't recognize yourself so you lost yourself as well and you lost the person you love
145:20 you're abuser so there's a cognitive dissonance here how can I mourn or grieve someone who had abused me is something wrong with me is something
145:31 wrong with with my appraisal of the situation because now I don't trust myself i don't trust my judgment i don't trust my reality testing maybe he was wrong maybe he was not an abuser
145:42 maybe he didn't abuse me maybe I'm crazy maybe I provoked him maybe so there's a
145:48 lot of may you know it's extremely disorienting extremely and profound it's
145:54 called by the way in the DSM uh the text revision that was published a few weeks ago they put finally the
146:02 prolonged grief syndrome finally it's there officially
146:08 and I I think victims of um of trauma bonding they they undergo prolonged
146:15 grief syndrome not regular grief prolonged grief i think we have to break up okay pain so we'll say a temporary goodbye okay see you soon
146:32 hello Stephanie welcome back thank you okay so you you warned me that you have a question i have a question yeah so
146:43 you've explained a lot about how it is for the person that is abused and how hard it is to get out and also
146:51 um the the the grief how hard that is and um yeah a lot of things happening
146:58 for such a person and I'm um and you're saying something very important that
147:04 people should not blame themselves they got into it and the only thing they can do they can do is get out of it but if
147:12 they don't have any influence on it um that can also be a little bit of a hopeless position because that means that they can get into such an abusive relationship next time again right so my
147:25 question is are are people missing red flags can they do anything to prevent it
147:33 next time loneliness is the key loneliness is the key I think
147:41 majority of abuse victims found themselves in abusive relationships
147:48 because they implicitly unconsciously if you wish thought that
147:55 anything is better than being lonely in other words they ignored red flags
148:01 and red warnings they compromised they lowered their standards or
148:08 eliminated the standards they ignored incidents of abuse early on
148:18 all this I think the core issue is a terror of being alone terror of
148:24 loneliness because when these people the abuse victims are alone they feel dead they
148:32 equate loneliness with a for with a form of death it's like being being dead
148:39 terror of loneliness is a very bad advisor
148:45 and I know that there are many therapies for abuse victims you know this and that
148:51 and how to reframe and how to understand your contribution and how to avoid how to behave in abusive relationship and
148:57 how to leave abusive relationship you know it's all very fine and and needed definitely
149:03 but I think we need prophylactics we need to prevent abuse or we need to prevent abusive relationship and the only way to do this is to teach people
149:15 to be perfectly okay with being alone about 40% of the adult population nowadays is alone for life
149:27 31% are lifelong singles and another 7% more or less exit relationships and remain life and become lifelong singles about 38% of adult population it's a gigantic number more and more people
149:44 will tell you that it's impossible to find intimate partners is the more dating apps we have the less proper dating we have
149:56 it's uh it's a disaster zone finding a partner today is a disaster zone for a
150:02 variety of reasons which are not going to we are as a as a society as a society
150:09 we're denying we're denying this problem and instead of saying listen
150:17 this is the situation half the population is going to be alone for life now let's teach people loneliness skills
150:26 let's teach people how to cope with being alone how to be happy alone how to
150:32 to engage themselves how to entertain themselves how to find meaning in life being alone to find meaning outside relationships how not to rely on other
150:43 people for regulation how not to rely on other people for sustenance and support how to accept that the modern way of life is atomized
150:54 lonely and that's it end of story perhaps perhaps you can make it
151:00 community based that at least it's not so fixed on a partner this this is a very interesting perspective because
151:06 there's so much emphasis on relationships and dating apps and this is very new i've never heard this
151:12 perspective that this is where this is reality and we are basically denying such a big aspect of it we are denying
151:19 many things for example take climate change we are denying climate change we're saying uh we are not denying climate change they're saying there is a problem with climate change but we can prevent it we can reduce emissions and
151:31 we by reducing emissions we will prevent the catastrophe it's too late we cannot prevent the
151:39 catastrophe why not accept it why not prepare for the inevitable so we are doing this in all major crisis
151:50 we we pretend that we still have the power we still have the control we can still reverse we can still cure we can
151:58 still heal we can still you know we can still fix climate change we cannot fix climate change it's out of control we
152:06 need to prepare for the inevitable apocalypse it's the same with relationships intimate relationships we need to accept that half the population will never have a relationship and we need to find
152:22 we need to find meaning elsewhere in social activism in community oriented
152:30 enterprises in learning in traveling in I don't know what I don't know in what but we need to provide alternatives today we are broadcasting that if you
152:41 don't have sex something is wrong with you if you don't have a relationship you're defective you're deformed you're
152:49 dysfunctional That's wrong messaging that's wrong messaging
152:56 if you don't have a relationship either you are not built for a relationship and many people are not
153:02 or you had bad luck and you have to live with it and you have to survive somehow
153:08 and you have to function and you have to love yourself despite the bad luck bad luck is not your fault you have to
153:14 accept that the world is not just you know but the terror of loneliness
153:20 propagated by the mass media by show business Hollywood and so the terror of
153:27 loneliness pushes people to make very very bad decisions in mate selection and
153:35 then even worse decisions within relationships if people if loneliness was legitimized and sexlessness was legitimized
153:46 many people would have been much happier and and this is the situation I think
153:53 people you're right are ignoring listen let me tell you something you have all
153:59 the information you need on a first date when you meet someone and you spend more
154:05 than two hours with him you have all the information you need on that first date
154:12 however if you are terrified of loneliness you would tend to suppress this information ignore it reframe it
154:21 justify it rationalize it you tend to play games with it because you wouldn't
154:27 tolerate it you would lower your standards you would compromise you would do something because better to be with
154:33 an abuser than being alone so abusers
154:39 broadcast their problems very early on the abuser
154:45 the way the abuser interacts with a waiter in a restaurant the way he talks to a cab driver the way he he orders you
154:54 about he tells you what to do and what not to do in a first meeting the way he decides which restaurant you go to the
155:00 way he interrogates you after you come back from the toilet from the restroom all these are bad signs all these are
155:07 warning signs he doesn't accept the way he he's not interested in what you feel like doing has or talks about himself all the time mhm these are warning signs
155:18 and abusers cannot suppress these warning signs for more than a few minutes it's a myth it's a myth that
155:26 abusers are very good at camouflage it's not true if you are with an a-hole
155:32 if you are with a with a jerk if you're with a narcissist it comes out in the first 15 minutes and that is if he's
155:39 very good in acting so and if you're ignoring these signs you're ignoring these signs because you feel compelled to ignore these signs and you feel compelled to do this because you're terrified of the alternative there you should compromise of course
155:55 you should compromise life is a compromise but you should never compromise on your well-being you should
156:02 never compromise on your health physical or mental you should never compromise on abuse in any form even if it is directed
156:10 not at you but the third parties if you see your date abusing a waiter
156:17 walk away that's an abuser but then the question will be I can
156:23 imagine that these people who are so afraid of loneliness of not um ending up alone not being in a relationship they
156:30 would prefer prefer everything to that yes yes so they need to even if they
156:37 when they get out of such a relationship they really need to make a decision for themselves am I really willing again to
156:43 self-sacrifice in order to be in such a illusion for the outside world for not
156:50 coping myself they they also need to make a decision themselves and and society should um change the focus a
156:58 little bit yes and you see that there is a the rate of recidivism is very high
157:04 people who who have who have been in one abusive relationship are likely to be in
157:11 many abusive relationship they go from one abusive relationship to another by the way the same goes for romantic
157:18 cheating or cheating people who cheat once are three times more likely to cheat again
157:24 we create habits and neural pathways we habituate so if your comfort zone is
157:31 abuse you're likely to seek abusers the minute you enter an abusive
157:37 relationship you begin to lie to yourself you begin to deceive yourself you begin to somehow accommodate
157:43 yourself to the abuse you normalize the abuse you legitimize the abuse
157:51 and then all future abuse by future abusers would look normal and legitimate
157:57 m especially if that's what you've witnessed as a child but I'm I'm wondering so why would someone someone
158:04 meets a wonderful person you know real love as in respectful uh honest uh
158:11 accepting you for the way you are how you are and then you have an abuser type why would someone choose the abuser then over the the the healthy partner because no abuser
158:23 presents a facade of only abuse that's the intermittent reinforcement that's what I said the double personality mhm there is a wonderful men element coupled
158:35 with a horrible monster element but why choose uh someone with a combination when you can also choose one that has the love without the abuse because the
158:46 the the presentation is extreme the abuser presents an extremely
158:53 wonderful man m the love bombing and everything yes it's extremely wonderful and the alternatives are average the abuser is extreme he's dramatic
159:04 that's why we call personality disorders cluster B we call them dramatic erratic
159:10 because they're dramatic so you come across an abuser yes he will abuse you horribly it's also extreme but when he's wonderful there will be no one else like him m he will
159:23 be the Mr wonderful no one will come close to him as wonderful person and no
159:29 one will come close to him as a monster okay so it's a dop dopamine rush as well yes it's a it's a it's you get addicted that's what I'm saying like alcohol you
159:40 you get addicted it's a substance the abuser become a substance you know you consume the abuser the way you consume coke or you know that's why so that's
159:51 why it's so important for people to not confuse as they say drama with excitement right that's what I opened
159:58 our my opening statement in our conversation was that people confuse intensity with truth they say if it is
160:05 intense it's real if it's intense it's real so they say "Oh he's so intense it
160:12 must mean that he is real he's authentic." But no it could be acting or
160:18 it could be compulsion compulsion is very intense you know but it's pathological it's sick
160:26 um I don't know serial killers are very intense psychotics are very intense intensity is
160:32 not an indicator of mental health and is not an indicator of reality it's it's just indicator of intensity that's all
160:41 but people confuse you when you talk to abuse victims they say that when he was
160:47 wonderful there was no one like him he was the ideal man he was the love of my life he was the perfect match he was my soulmate he was my twin flame he was I don't know what yes you know when he was
161:00 wonderful which is 70 80% of the time abusers abuse like 10% of the time 3% of the time 5%
161:07 of the time 85% of the time 95% of the time they are the ultimate partner the
161:13 perfect partner and so it's very difficult to give up on the package and also wondering could it be that with um
161:21 an abusive uh person usually that person is not really interested in you and who you are
161:27 and what you need while a healthy person is interested in you and that can be
161:33 with wounded people can be scary as well because you don't like yourself so perhaps these healthy people come very
161:39 close and the abuser stays at a safe distance the love bombing is not being interested in you as a person right
161:47 there is a what we call the dual anxiety for example in borderline between
161:53 there's abandonment anxiety or separation insecurity and there is engulfment anxiety this fear of intimacy
161:59 dread of intimacy is prevalent it's pervasive in in multiple mental health
162:05 disorders the fear of intimacy can be because you consider yourself um less than perfect
162:12 so if someone comes to know you they'll run away because they would see that you're less than perfect
162:18 the fear of intimacy could be because intimacy had been associated with pain in childhood so you you anticipate pain
162:26 you anticipate rejection humiliation um cheating betrayal so fear of intimacy
162:33 could be because it doesn't fit a specific narrative for example if you if
162:39 you consider yourself to be superior controlling um intimacy compromises you because it
162:46 exposes vulnerabilities so there are what I'm trying to say is there are multiple reasons to fear
162:52 intimacy and so yes the relationship with an abuser is a relationship between two
162:58 fantasies between two internal objects not real the two parties don't see each
163:04 other the abused doesn't see the abuser also so there's a there's a so there's a
163:10 safe distance yes it's it's self love that's why I said at the beginning this is a process of self-loving not not
163:17 other loving it's not it's not object relations it's not loving the other it's
163:23 loving how you see yourself through the other how you see yourself through the other's gaze and when you talk to abused victims they would tell you the way he looked at me the way he saw me no one
163:37 has ever seen me like that no one is looked at me like that you know they are in love with themselves through the eyes
163:44 of the abuser and similarly the abuser is in love is is implementing the
163:50 fantasy is is a child and the abused one is a mother so both of them are focused
163:56 on themselves their internal processes their needs their images their fantasies
164:02 they don't have time to see the other they are too busy managing themselves in
164:08 this joint fantasy in a movie it's a movie like the actors you know in a movie in a real movie they often shoot scenes out of order not chronologically
164:20 and very often they shoot one party and then the other party and they put them together as if they were having a
164:26 dialogue this is exactly the abusive relationship
164:32 the the two actors say their lines and are not aware of the
164:38 presence of the other actor the ultimate director put them together but they they
164:44 go through their own lines they have their own script mhm then the other the other person is just
164:51 an excuse to implement the the script it's it's very difficult for victims to
164:58 hear this very because they want to believe that they had meant something to the abuser they want to believe the
165:04 abuser had some kind of connection or emotion or an attachment or bond they want to believe that they're special
165:10 somehow or at least were special to the abuser they want to believe all these things but the truth is they were never there the truth is the abuser never noticed
165:22 their existence they were like an object a punching bag uh an excuse they were like a trigger
165:31 they didn't have a separate existence in the eyes of the abuser they were manipul
165:37 manipulable internal object this is terrifying to the victim because it means that she never existed and anyhow the victims have a fear that maybe they
165:49 don't exist they need another person's gaze to feel that they exist and here
165:55 the abusive relationship implies that they never existed so maybe really they don't exist it's existential existential
166:03 angst you know do I exist or not yeah so these people need to re-evaluate that
166:11 relationship and see how they actually weren't seen and start to identify when
166:17 someone perhaps is less exciting less of a dopamine rush but actually does take to into account how they feel
166:25 um that they are really interested perhaps it won't be love bombing but it will be someone really being interested
166:31 in how you how they make you feel which is a big big difference it's enormous difference but these addicts coming back
166:39 to the beginning of our previous segment where I said that you know these addicts
166:45 I said that they are love addicts they're addicted so a normal average person potential
166:55 intimate partner would not excite them they would be bored to death they would
167:02 not be sexually aroused they would not be infatuated there would be no drama they would walk away they can't they can't have this so the people who find
167:14 themselves in trauma bonding find themselves in trauma bonding for good reason they love the drama they love the fantasy they love the self harm they love walking on the brink of death
167:25 between life and death they love to feel that they are alive and they exist because they're mutilated they love all
167:31 this when they come across a truly loving person a person who really sees them yes really really admires or loves
167:40 them for who they are it's boring it's boring they can't stand it they they
167:46 they just want to run away yeah that triggers them not being alive again
167:53 which is their worst nightmare yeah got it so that's why therapy would be so crucial if they want to break this
168:00 pattern this this dependency this addiction there is a risk excellent that you raise this point there is a serious risk of trauma bonding in therapy the as you well know you're clinical
168:12 psychologist the initial initial phases of therapy involve transference
168:19 and there is um a kind of bonding that takes place or attachment that takes place between patient and therapist even
168:26 the best therapist with boundaries with therape therapeutic alliance with all the defenses even there the patient develops transference develops emotions projects onto the therapist dynamics psychological dynamics from her
168:42 life and so on so there's transference inevitably there's counter transference the therapist reacts to this never mind
168:48 how trained and how supervised and how we name it still reacts to it there's a dynamic developing and it is an intimate dynamic
168:59 exactly like in every other intimate relationship mhm there is a tremendous risk of trauma bonding if the therapist is unbounded untrained and so on if the patient is very forceful and invasive and intrusive
169:17 and aggressive there is a serious risk that the therapeutic relationship will deteriorate into a simulation of trauma bonding in an intimate relationship mhm
169:28 and I must say and I'm sorry to say that from my experience I'm 26 years in this
169:35 record from my experience many therapists don't know the line don't cross the
169:42 boundary and in many therapeutic situations
169:48 there are very perverse or wrong bad dynamics as far as a patient is concerned
169:54 many I wish I could say it's a minority it's not the minor in many there could
170:00 be for example a situation where the therapist would consider herself or himself to be a savior or a fixer or a
170:06 healer yes there could be a situation where the therapist would react adversely to the patient and create
170:13 trauma doesn't like the patient you know there could be a situation where the patient
170:19 would impose a traumatic overstructure superructure on the therapy she would do
170:25 something very traumatizing you know she would introduce trauma into she would for example commit suicide in the in the in the clinic or try to commit suicide in the clinic you know to so and that's
170:38 an extreme example but there are many ways to create trauma artificial trauma in the so the therapy is
170:46 more intimate than most intimate relationships I know and the risks are
170:52 there don't think that just because you're a therapist you have control over the
170:58 situation absolutely the risks are there not to mention the situations where therapists
171:04 cross the lines and begin to have sexual leazison or romantic leazison with patients i'm not talking about this this is minority but even in standard therapy so you're saying that that that it's
171:15 very important to identify first of all the dynamics of the codep of the yeah a
171:21 dependent person basically we're talking about right and then also it's important to identify if that person
171:28 actually comes there to really change or just create a new dependency and then it's up to the therapist to be able to
171:34 have good good supervision and intervision to try to stay out of these dynamics I suppose yes if the patient if
171:42 the patient expects you to regulate her to save her to replace an intimate partner in some way and so on so forth these are forbidden forbidden dynamics you I mean you should tell her I can't
171:58 work with you anymore if you have counter transfers I can't work with you anymore you need to find someone else
172:07 that's it and by the way it's not gender dependent you could these dynamics even if you're heterosexual you can have
172:13 these dynamics with samesex patient these are not gender dependent dynamics
172:19 the that's why for example a mother can can traumatize her daughter it's not gender dependent you could have trauma
172:26 bonding with a mother even though you're a daughter so it's not about sex it's about uh control dynamics and regulation dynamics
172:39 yes very interesting there's a lot of information for people out there I can imagine
172:45 okay it's been a pleasure to talk to you absolutely it was very very I'm very
172:53 happy that we went into the subject in such a deep way i think uh it's not spoken about this in this way so I'm
173:00 very glad about that yes I think we did we did some we shed some new light i agree yes absolutely thank you it's been
173:07 a pleasure take care there in 11 okay bye bye bye
173:16 long before many of you were conceived I introduced the concept of drama bond or
173:22 drama bonding into the discourse of cluster B personality disorders
173:28 especially narcissistic and borderline personality disorders
173:34 so what is drama bond or drama bonding and what is the difference between drama bond and traumab bond they sound the same but are they the same my name is
173:47 Samakin i'm the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited and a professor of clinical psychology today
173:54 we are going to go deep into the rabbit hole of drama bonding first of all in
174:01 the description you will find two additional videos that I would like you to watch and they describe trauma
174:08 bonding in a very unusual way one is a presentation to a conference in 2021 and
174:15 the other one is an interview with Stephanie Karinia a trauma expert
174:21 trauma bonding is an extreme experience it is unidirectional in the sense that the victim bonds with the abuser but the abuser does not bond
174:35 with the victim in this sense we can conceive of trauma bonding as a kind of selfharming
174:44 attachment an attachment that is self-defeating self-destructive
174:50 self- thrashing self-mutilating and in short self harming or harmful
174:58 trauma bonding is fostered by repeated recurrent traumatizing
175:04 unpredictable intermittent reinforcement experiences involving a power asymmetry now that's a
175:12 mouthful first of all there has to be an element of trauma now trauma is a much abused
175:21 overused and misused word trauma is a subjective experience there's no way to
175:27 quantify trauma there's no way to objectify it to make it objective trauma
175:33 is the way specific people certain people react to experiences
175:40 we could have 10 people exposed to the same experience only one of them would be traumatized and the other would walk away unscathed and so trauma is a subjective experience
175:52 that means that only people with highly specific psychological profiles are bound to be traumatized and I deal with it in
176:04 numerous videos there's a trauma um playlist on this channel which I
176:10 encourage you to watch and in the particular case of trauma bonding the trauma is induced by mistreatment or
176:18 malreatment especially unpredictability what is known as intermittent
176:25 reinforcement and the unpredictability has to be a feature of a power asymmetry
176:35 in other words the abuser holds all the power the victim is powerless and
176:42 helpless either because she chooses to be this is known as learned helplessness
176:50 or because there is something structural in the relationship for example financial dependence or common children
176:57 which render the victim uh essentially at the mercy of the abuser but the
177:03 unpredictability is the core the inability to gain a modicum of certainty
177:10 determinacy in a relationship waking up in the morning not knowing what to expect this creates of course dependency on the abuser the abuser holds the power
177:22 to harm and hurt the victim to inflict pain on the victim and so the victim
177:28 ingress ingratiates herself the victim kind of becomes submissive
177:34 obedient obsticuous the victim cowtows and caters to the
177:40 needs of the abuser just in order to make sure that she is not being she will
177:46 not she is not abused yet again and of course this leads to dissonance and ambivalence on the one hand the victim hates the abuser for abusing her
177:58 and on the other hand she loves the abuser it all started with love love bombing or real love fantasy or reality
178:07 whatever the case may be initially there was a real attachment between the two the abuser and his victim the predator
178:14 and his prey it is all founded on real attachment so trauma bonding
178:21 is a malignant cancerous metastatic form of healthy bonding it is not divorced
178:29 from healthy bond bonding it has all the elements of healthy bonding this is a
178:35 common mistake in the literature even let alone among self-styled experts as if trauma bonding is something that has
178:41 nothing to do with real love or with real attachment or with real bonding or with couplehood or with being in a diet
178:49 or with sharing a life with someone companionship and so on that is not true trauma bonding has the all the elements of a good healthy functional
179:00 relationship support sakore companionship you know collaboration love attachment
179:09 bonding you name it it's all there the only problem is that it is only half
179:15 of the equation only part of the equation and the other half is comprised of abuse verbal psychological sometimes
179:23 physical um maltreatment degra degradation humiliation shaming
179:30 attacking um denying the victim her agency and
179:37 personal autonomy and independence and so on so there are these two parts one of them healthy one of them sick and it
179:45 is this conjunction this combination that creates the trauma bonding because
179:51 there is ambivalence there i love him but I hate him he's good to me but he is
179:58 bad he's bad to me he treats me well he mistreats me it all emanates from the
180:04 same source from the abuser and it's difficult to reconcile and because it's
180:10 irreconcilable because you can't put everything together within a cohesive coherent framework this causes the
180:18 trauma bonding and it is known also as identifying with the abuser so it is a complex trauma bonding is a
180:29 complex phenomenon because on the one hand you're truly attached the victim is truly attached to
180:36 the to the abuser in a meaningful healthy way and on the other hand the
180:42 outcomes of this healthy attachment this love this companionship this friendship
180:48 this partnership the outcomes of all these are very bad very negative
180:54 and when we have a discrepancy between behaviors and emotions effects and
181:01 cognitions and real life uh consequences when we have this discrepancy we tend to
181:09 freeze we tend to freeze and we tend to get even more involved emotionally in a
181:17 desperate attempt to make sense of everything to restore order and
181:23 structure and justice to somehow uh imbue what's happening with meaning
181:30 and purpose and direction and so there is this it becomes like a challenge there is this immersion in in I'm going to make this work or I'm
181:42 going to solve this i'm going to make sense of this and above all the source
181:48 of the pain the source of the hurt is also the source of the comfort
181:55 so you can't let go of one without letting go of the other the very person in the trauma bonding
182:02 the the the abuser the perpetrator the one who inflicts on the victim
182:09 immeasurable pain agony torture is the very person
182:16 who holds the key to her happiness and contentment and comforting and soothing
182:24 and so this creates of course dependency dissonance and ambivalence are the core
182:30 reactions and engines of trauma bonding don't forget another thing
182:37 narcissists create introjects in the mind of the victim they use an training to create in
182:45 the mind of the victim a representation of themselves so the narcissist has an
182:51 ally inside the victim's mind it's like installing an app on a on a smartphone
182:58 and this introjet this voice this representation of the narcissist in the victim's mind colludes with the
183:04 narcissist collaborates with the narcissist and because a narcissist perceives himself to be a victim
183:12 the introject that represents the narcissist in the victim's mind is also an introject of victimhood in other words the narcissist's internal voice in
183:23 the victim's mind keeps saying "You wronged me you victimized me you are the abuser." And so the victim feels guilty she feels
183:34 remorseful she doubts herself for no good reason she asks herself "Am I really the
183:41 narcissist am I the abuser have I done something wrong could I have behaved differently?" And so on this is another reason for the bonding as long as the
183:52 victim feels that she is responsible for what's happening and that she should be
183:58 held accountable for the predicament that they she finds herself in then of
184:04 course she would continue in the relationship she would become more and more bonded and attached to the abuser
184:12 because she would unconsciously even perceive the abuser as having been victimized by her she would feel remorse
184:21 and regret and she would attempt to compensate the abuser for her own
184:27 misbehavior for her misconduct and for the abuse that she has meitted out to the to the abuser so it's a hall of mirrors it's very disorienting
184:40 and what do we do when we we get disoriented we freeze trauma bonding is a freeze reaction a freeze reaction writ
184:48 large simply put and
184:54 you could conceive of trauma bonding as a form of self mutilation or self harm
185:00 as I said replete with the same three functions to numb disregulated emotions that
185:06 threaten to overwhelm the victim to allow the victim to feel alive through pain and to punish defeat and
185:14 destroy herself it's a self-punitive okay this is a general introduction to
185:22 trauma bonding and now we come to drama bonding drama bonding is not the same as
185:28 trauma bonding although it may involve traumatic figments or traumatic elements
185:34 drama bonding is equally extreme as extreme as radical
185:40 um as colorful if you wish as trauma bonding but it is birectional whereas
185:46 trauma bonding is from the abuser to the abused in drama bonding there's a
185:52 collusion there's a collaboration between the two participants in the drama or the three or whatever usually it's two the two participants um work together to create the drama to engender it to foster it they write this
186:11 the plot of the drama and then together and then they implement it together and then they bask in the drama together
186:19 they absorb its effects and consequences together they react effectively and
186:25 cognitively almost in the same way and in this sense drama bond or drama bonding is at the core of cults actually so in cults you have both trauma bonding
186:39 and drama bonding because cults are about drama and they are birectional
186:45 exactly like trauma bonding drama bonding is a selfharming attachment
186:52 and it is selfharming because drama is the antonyym is the opposite of personal
187:00 growth and development when you are immersed in a dramatic erratic crazym
187:06 situation there's no time for evolution personal evolution for learning for uh
187:14 insight for there's no time for all this you are it's a survival mode you're
187:21 fighting you're coping so drama is a distraction
187:27 away from the regular course of life and drama is also counterfactual it's
187:33 not realistic it drives you away from reality it's unhealthy it's pathological
187:42 like trauma bonding drama bonding is fostered by experiences as I said some
187:48 of these experiences may be traumatic some of these experiences are unpredictable
187:54 some of these experiences are intermittent so there's intermittent reinforcement involved
188:00 and in this sense drama bonding is very similar or resembles trauma bonding but
188:06 there are additional things in drama bonding which usually cannot be found in
188:12 trauma bonding for example in trauma bonding the abuser abuser engages with a
188:20 victim i would say that trauma bonding involves over engagement too much
188:26 engagement a a hostile takeover a merger a fusion an enshment
188:33 whereas in drama bonding there is object withdrawal object withdrawal is the opposite of
188:40 object constancy in other words the participants in the drama sometimes
188:48 withdraw from each other avoid each other and this generates the drama
188:54 most of these dramas are actually founded on avoidance on an attachment style that is
189:02 dismissive or fearful or anxious so the drama is a reaction to the
189:12 potential for loss it's a reaction for the anticipation of loss of abandonment of rejection and so object withdrawal is critical here you could also say that drama
189:24 bonding is the reactive pattern to separation insecurity or abandonment
189:30 anxiety which is not the case in trauma bonding in trauma bonding the abuser
189:36 makes clear that he he is in the victim's life intends to stay there
189:42 maybe teach her a lesson maybe he's angry at her maybe is abusive and punitive and so on but he's always there
189:49 he is too much there he is in control he is the victim he He seeks to annihilate
189:55 the victim and become one with her by annihilate her by becoming one with her
190:01 that's not the case in drama in drama bonding um in many cases the threat the menace
190:10 is "Wow I'm going to lose him i'm going to lose her they're about to walk away
190:17 it's on the verge of a breakup." So object withdrawal similarly
190:23 drama bonding drama as the name implies drama it's a drama it's a theater
190:29 production it's a movie there's a structural narrative fantasy that
190:35 underlies the drama in trauma bonding trauma with a T in trauma bonding it's
190:42 exactly the opposite there is no narrative the potency the force of the trauma bond
190:49 is because it's unpredictable it's intermittent it's crazym it's it has no
190:55 story no sense no meaning no connectivity
191:01 no explanation it's it's totally insane it's nuts whereas in the drama there is definitely a story a narrative
191:13 a fantasy and they're rigid they're rigid that's why drama bond or
191:20 drama bonding is common in cults it's a rigid narrative and both participants in
191:26 the drama adhere to the narrative except the rules of this concocted universe this alternative or virtual reality if you
191:38 want to watch drama bonding in action I advise you to watch the movie Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton amazing movie
191:50 uh 1967 I think but amazing movie the best the best depiction I've ever seen
191:57 of both trauma bonding and drama bonding in a couple and you will see there that both participants adhere to something to a story and it is
192:11 as if they're going through the motions as if they're following some kind of script scripted uh thing like they're on
192:18 a movie set it doesn't feel real most of the time and sometimes they say something and you can see in their eyes and body language that they're like "What the hell am I doing?" I mean why
192:29 am I doing this it's as if they're controlled from the outside but by some
192:35 director as if the whole thing is a simulation of some kind with a demented coder behind it so the drama bond
192:44 feels a little dissociative feels a little like not real unreal
192:52 and because it is like this it involves a lot of uncertainty
192:58 indeterminacy insecurity there is a power asymmetry even in drama
193:04 bonding there's a power asymmetry exactly like in um what is known as shared psychosis so for Lead there is an inducer there is the the person who
193:15 writes the script the person who concocts the fantasy the person who comes comes up with the plot of the
193:21 narrative and there is the participant the actor so it's like a director and a script writer and an actor or actress so there is a division of labor and one
193:33 of the participants has more power than the other so there is power asymmetry and there is uncertainty indeterminacy
193:41 insecurity and so on so forth but not like in trauma bonding in trauma bonding
193:48 the locus of uncertainty is what is he going to do next
193:55 in trauma bonding the question is what is he going to do next how is she going to behave next next it's future oriented in drama bonding the question is how
194:07 long is it going to last when is it going to walk away when is this movie
194:13 going to be over and the credits roll so it's also future oriented but whereas in
194:23 trauma bonding there is object constancy in drama bonding there is no object
194:29 constancy there's anticipation of the unwinding of the drama with the exit of
194:36 one of the participants and it leads to anxiety not to dissonance
194:43 not to ambivalence but to anxiety to desperation acting out attempts to regain the the partner within the drama um
194:59 there is a hidden or implicit assumption or belief that the more dramatic you you are the more crazy making the more you act out the more addictive you become to your
195:10 partner you're both drama addicts you're both drama magnets
195:16 and so it's as if the partner asks you to be dramatic as if the participants in
195:22 the drama bond have agreed to bond bond through drama
195:29 and to gratify or satisfy each other's needs for drama
195:35 it's they're like both of them are enablers each other's enablers so you want me to be dramatic and then you will stay in my life you will stick around if I'm dramatic you will never
195:47 abandon me you will never reject me you never walk away you never break up with me the more dramatic I am the more toxic
195:54 I am I'm going to be toxic i'm going to be dramatic just to keep you in my life and this is the essence of drama bonding okay I did my traumatizing best to
196:06 explain the differences between trauma bonding and drama bonding i'm open to questions in the comments section and um
196:14 to making another video in the future should your questions address um lakunas
196:21 or anything I've missed okay it's been a very traumatizing
196:27 traumatizing uh video but very dramatic and I hope you've bonded with me even more than before

Summary Link:

https://vakninsummaries.com/ (Full summaries of Sam Vaknin’s videos)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html (My work in psychology: Media Kit and Press Room)

Bonus Consultations with Sam Vaknin or Lidija Rangelovska (or both) http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/ctcounsel.html

http://www.youtube.com/samvaknin (Narcissists, Psychopaths, Abuse)

http://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings (World in Conflict and Transition)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html (Biography and Resume)

Summary

Abuse, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Trauma, Vaknin, Vaknin Summaries

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