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1. 00:10 victimhood pride, victimhood defiance, also known as reactive abuse, and the normalizing of abuse. These are the three ways we somehow cope with narcissistic abuse. These are the three ways we survive through it. And this is also the topic of today’s video.
2. 00:37 Those of you who have been following my work know that there are two types of narcissistic abuse. The first kind early in the shed fantasy is when the narcissist is testing you. He’s pushing the envelope. is abused, is egregious, is breaking all the rules, is
3. 01:00 breaching all the boundaries. And all this in order to make sure that you love him unconditionally, that you would qualify as a good enough mother, that you will always be there for him, that you will never abandon him. This is what I call the boiling
4. 01:21 frog narcissistic abuse or the boiling frog testing. There is this myth, it’s a myth that if you boil a frog gradually, if you increase the temperature gradually, the frog would stay in the pot until it is boiled to death. And that is the first phase of narcissistic
5. 01:40 abuse. It’s incremental. It’s gradual. It’s imperceptible. It’s glacial. And yet it is always there all permeating all pervading atmospheric ambient. And the whole intent is to make sure that you can survive the honorous environment and the exorbitant cost of
6. 02:05 sharing your life with the narcissist. And then the second phase of narcissistic abuse in uh much later in the shared fantasy is the devaluation. the devaluation of the maternal figure. And devaluation is abrupt, unexpected, unpredictable. Devaluation is a state of extreme
7. 02:28 indeterminacy and uncertainty. It is distinct from the first phase of narcissistic abuse because it is highly ostentatious and visible and communicated monolently and undoubtedly. So here we are faced with two types of narcissistic abuse. How do people react?
8. 02:49 There are three types of pathological mindsets of victims of abuse. And yes, I’m using the word pathological judiciously. Narcissistic abuse induces pathologies in its victims. The first type is the professional victim. It’s the victim whose victimhood
9. 03:09 is an integral and crucial part of their identity and sense of selfworth. They regulate their self-esteem and self-confidence via the eternal state of victimhood. They cultivate and nurture their victimhood. They compete with other victims. This is known as competitive
10. 03:29 victimhood. They demand um they demand uh rights and impose obligations on other people. They are viferous. They are vocal. They are visible. They participate in forums. They trade experiences. This whole thing is very reminiscent of a hobby, but it’s much
11. 03:49 deeper. It’s an identity. Abuse has become the comfort zone. And these professional victims provoke, elicit, and solicit abuse. They engage in what is known as projective identification. They need to be abused in order to maintain and preserve their state of victimhood.
12. 04:11 These professional victims, these eternal victims, these identity victims. They are self aggrandizing. That is not to say that they are narcissists. But many of them are covert narcissists, especially those who self-style as empaths. There is a self-imputed superiority,
13. 04:34 moral superiority if not personal. They attribute to themselves amazing traits which render them to a large extent unique and special and as I said superior. Maybe their empathy is enhanced. Maybe they’re super kind or super generous or super sensitive or
14. 04:55 exceedingly helpful, self-sacrificing, martyrdom, charitable and so on and so forth. They’re ostentatiously pro-social and communal. There is there are good grounds to assume although there are no studies uh there are few studies which substantiate this but
15. 05:13 there are good grounds to assume that these professional victims whose victimhood is their identity are actually types of narcissists known as pro-ocial or communal narcissist. Their victimhood status, their victimhood mentality helps them to regulate their
16. 05:30 sense of selfworth. And in this sense, their victimhood is a form of narcissistic supply. So this is the first type of reaction. I’m a victim. Bring it on. Wonderful. The second type of victim is defiant. These victims are engaged in a sympal
17. 05:57 scheming. They react with abuse of their own to their maltreatment and mistreatment. So reactive abuse. The spiral of mutual torment is hard to break because drama antiques and trauma bonding intermingle. To remind you, trauma bonding is not neither trauma nor
18. 06:18 bonding. It’s just an addiction to intermittent reinforcement, hot and cold. The victim’s conduct gradually becomes increasingly more psychopathic or narcissistic, and they come to resemble their own abusers to the point that they become abusive. So, this is the defiant victim.
19. 06:39 By far, the greatest majority are the submissive victims. They feel bad in the abusive environment. They seek to extricate themselves emotionally or physically, but they just can’t for some reason. Either the either because they’ve become dependent on the situation or the
20. 07:02 environment or the abuser or because they have a very low um self low level of self-esteem or a very degraded self-concept. then they don’t trust themselves to do the right thing and to prevail and to succeed or because they do not trust their own
21. 07:22 reality testing. They are not sure that what they perceive is abuse is actually abuse. So a minority of victims succumb to their fate and accept it unc unquestioningly. So within the submissive group of victims, we have victims who feel uncomfortable, victims who want out, but
22. 07:46 they for some reason never exit the situation and they become subservient, obedient, obscurious. This is one group within the sub one subgroup within the submissive group. And the other subgroup within the submissive group are those who simply accept their destiny
23. 08:08 accept even adopt their fate unquestioningly as a kind of force majour or force of nature. They reframe the abuse and engage in malignant optimism. They say it is not all bad. It is not what it seems. is not he is not you know an abuser he is having a bad moment or with my love I
24. 08:33 can fix him my love will heal um and change him and so on and so forth so we have this submissive group and they come up with narratives and stories and reasons why to stay even when a majority of them actually do not want to stay and this creates dissonance and high levels
25. 08:54 of anxiety and depression and submissive victims and badly as far as mental health. They deteriorate. They become dysfunctional. Their lives become constricted. They become avoidant. They withdraw. They isolate themselves. No friends, no family. And they decay. They essentially
26. 09:18 mentally decompose within the ambit and remit of the narcissist circle. These are the three ways to react. Either to aggrandise the victimhood, elevate it, render it saintly somehow, ostentatiously display the victimhood or to become defined, psychopathic and
27. 09:42 narcissistic. React with abuse to abuse with fire to fire or to become submissive. Even when you do want to exit the relationship, you don’t. And gradually you begin to convince yourself that things are not bad as they seem and your abuser is not actually an abuser.
28. 10:04 Um minority of such victims, the submissive victims sometimes convince themselves that they are the cause and the reason for whatever is happening, that they’re guilty, that they are to blame, that they are responsible. This is known, these are known as autoclastic victims.
29. 10:20 This is the typology of of victimhood. Do you identify yourself in one of these three types?