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1. 00:03 That’s my recording. You are not recording. Oh, you are. We’re both recording now. You’re recording to the
2. 00:09 cloud. Oh, that’s Yes. Yes. Yes. I I need it. I usually like I’ll record it to my laptop. You
3. 00:15 already know. So, I um I started recording to the cloud. So, we’re going to get started in five, four, three,
4. 00:21 two, one. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much uh for joining us today. Welcome back. This is Sarah Martinez, founder of Divine Sisters. Today we find ourselves lucky
5. 00:34 enough to have at least 30 to 45 minutes of his time. This is Professor Sam. How
6. 00:41 do you say your last name? We can I say I say it easily. Vakn
7. 00:47 Vaknin. Okay, so I’m going to start over. Sorry. Okay. Um No, sorry. I’m a little nervous. No, don’t worry. Okay, so I’m going to start over. Uh, if I look this way, can you tell
8. 00:59 that I’m looking to my right? Do it again. Uh, yeah, a bit, but it’s it’s not distracting. Okay, so I’m going to read so we can
9. 01:10 Okay, great. Welcome back to Unmask 2025 from covert abuse to collective healing.
10. 01:16 I am Sarah Martinez, founder of Divine Sisters. And today, we’re diving into one of the most complex and invisible
11. 01:23 forms of abuse, narcissistic and covert abuse. For so many women, abuse doesn’t leave bruises. It leaves confusion,
12. 01:30 silence, and a long battle to reclaim your own reality. And that’s why this in this conversation is so important. I’m
13. 01:36 honored to be joined by Professor San Bakning. He is one of the foremost global experts on narcissism, author of
14. 01:43 malignant self-love and a voice that survivors around the world have turned to for a language and understanding.
15. 01:49 Professor Sam, thank you for being here with us. I am grateful to have your insight on how narcissistic abuse operates, how it impacts victims, and how it connects the larger system of control. Thank you so much for joining
16. 02:00 us today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So, I’m not sure. Do you want to give us a little bit of your
17. 02:06 background? Well, I’m I’m the author, as you said, of malignance of love, narcissism revisited. I um I coined most
18. 02:14 most of the language in use today because I’m an old-timer. I started my work in the 80s. So, narcissistic abuse,
19. 02:21 for example, is a phrase I I came up with. No, to describe this highly uh specific type
20. 02:27 of abuse, which hopefully we’ll be able to discuss. And I’m a professor of psychology in several universities. So,
21. 02:33 that’s in a nutshell. It’s not about me. It’s about narcissistic abuse. So, so we’ll get right into it. So, we would
22. 02:41 like to cover a couple areas of narcissistic abuse. Um, as I previously mentioned off camera, um, Divine
23. 02:48 Sisters, our group of women is very unique. You know, our um, even what we need in regards to support and resources, we don’t have it nowhere in the world. um what we found to be
24. 03:00 something that we share as an experience is the narcissistic abuse piece from our previous relationships or our current relationship, right? And somehow we end up targeted. So that’s where, you know,
25. 03:12 I I found the need to really cover this topic. So when we talk about covert abuse, what does that actually look like
26. 03:19 and why is it so difficult for victims to recognize it while they’re still in it?
27. 03:25 Covert abuse is um the faximile of
28. 03:31 normaly which hides a mask of insanity.
29. 03:38 So there’s a facade of everything is normal, everything is routine, you’re
30. 03:44 just like the next door neighbor. Um there’s compliance with social mores and
31. 03:50 conventions and norms. There’s adherence to behavioral scripts
32. 03:56 which are indistinguishable from the behavioral scripts of healthy people. M and yet underlying all this there is a
33. 04:04 complex hyper complex actually messaging and signaling system which renders every act every decision every choice every figure of speech
34. 04:16 everything the language itself renders them um
35. 04:22 subversive. So in covert abuse you act in a way which looks normal but the message you are sending and the language attached to the
36. 04:33 act undermines and subverts the normaly of the act. Mhm. It’s a bit like dreaming. In dreams you have you know everything looks normal in
37. 04:45 many cases everything looks normal right but you know it’s not you know something is going on. There’s a narrative, a hidden narrative which subverts and undermines the normaly in the dream. So
38. 04:57 it’s very nightmarish. I would say covert abuse is very nightmarish because it’s a failure of language. That’s why it’s extremely difficult to communicate. Right? The abuser creates a fantasy
39. 05:09 world which incorporates you as the victim. And then within the fantasy
40. 05:15 world, the abuser imposes a hyper reality with its own highly unique
41. 05:22 idiosyncratic language which then alienates you from real
42. 05:28 reality, takes you away from real reality. Wow. Then you find yourself trapped, unable
43. 05:34 to wake up, right? um like in a real nightmare. Mhm. And when you try to communicate to other
44. 05:40 people what’s happening, they think you’re crazy. Because if people were to observe this
45. 05:47 from the outside, they wouldn’t be able to spot anything abnormal. It all looks completely, you know, pedestrian and mundane, but it’s not. So to summarize, covert
46. 05:58 abuse is when there is a discrepancy between the language, the signals, the messages and the actions or the choices or the
47. 06:09 decisions or or the or the speech acts, right? And this discrepancy
48. 06:16 simply means that what you see is not what you get. M and um words have special meanings which
49. 06:25 you have a kind of private language with the abuser. And that the actions of the abuser
50. 06:32 actually are intended to undermine your capacity to perceive reality appropriately. Something known as gaslighting. Yeah. And so gradually you drift away into this simulated simulacum into this
51. 06:45 simulated reality. Wow. and you find yourself trapped and there’s no way back. There are no
52. 06:52 there’s no there no breadcrumbs, you know, like Hansel and Gretle, they’re no breadcrumbs. There’s simply no way back
53. 06:59 because the abuser forces you to divorce not only reality but yourself, it takes away your core identity. By forcing you
54. 07:08 to acknowledge and accept and affirm and confirm something that is not real, the
55. 07:15 fantasy the abuser also forces you to deny not only who you are but to deny that you
56. 07:23 are to deny your very being and you cease to exist. At some point you cease to exist altogether. Yeah, that’s that sounds like a true nightmare and I have experienced it
57. 07:35 firsthand. Would you say survivors often only realize after the relationship that
58. 07:41 they were abused or in most cases they they figure it out while they’re in the relationship and they don’t know what to name it or call it or and again they lost themselves so they probably don’t
59. 07:52 have no no um direction even or or how to explain it to others. What’s your
60. 07:58 first we must make clear that covert abuse and narcissistic abuse are two different things.
61. 08:04 Um covert abuse is what I’ve just described where the abuser creates an alternative reality and then forces you
62. 08:10 to inhabit this reality and to deny that there’s any other reality or to deny that you exist in any other reality.
63. 08:17 This is covert abuse and it is a common weapon of many abusers not only narcissists.
64. 08:23 Whereas narcissistic abuse is a highly highly uh specific type of abuse. It is
65. 08:29 so highly specific that I had to come up with a special a special phrase to describe it
66. 08:35 because in narcissistic abuse the abuser is trying to kill you. Not physically in majority of cases not physically
67. 08:46 although it can it can reach that level but usually not physically but definitely psychologically. The abuser
68. 08:52 is trying to take away your life force. He’s trying to take away your personal
69. 08:59 autonomy, your agency, your capacity to act and and decide on your own. your
70. 09:05 friends, your family isolates you, your your uh job, your your trips abroad, you
71. 09:14 there’s a a situation where the abuser wants to convert you or reduce you into
72. 09:21 an Egyptian mummy so that you are inanimate. The abuser deanimates you in narcissistic abuse, right? And the reason the abuser does this, and in this case it’s a narcissist. The reason the narcissist does this is because he does not
73. 09:36 perceive you as an external object. He does not acknowledge your separateness
74. 09:42 and your externality. He perceives you as an internal object, a figment in his
75. 09:48 mind or his imagination. Wow. And anything you do that proves him wrong, anything you do that demonstrates to him that you are external, that you
76. 09:59 are separate, that you have a life and mind of your own challenges the internal object. And the precarious balance that is maintained in the narcissist’s
77. 10:10 demented mind. He needs you to not act, to not breathe,
78. 10:16 to not travel, to not talk to other people. He needs you to not be.
79. 10:22 And this is the difference between covert abuse and narcissistic abuse. In covert abuse, there is a replacement or
80. 10:31 a substitution of real one reality with another. But in narcissistic abuse,
81. 10:37 there is an attempt to essentially kill you psychologically so that you’re no longer you’re no longer reactive. You’re
82. 10:44 no longer responsive. You’re dead in effect. As to your question,
83. 10:52 um I tend to digress, apologies, but No, it’s okay. But this was an important I think distinction. Yes. As to your question, studies in Harvard have shown that we are able to correctly evaluate other people within fewer than 3 seconds. Yeah,
84. 11:08 we have multiple studies, a huge body of studies that show that we can diagnose
85. 11:14 another person with narcissistic personality disorder accurately 75 to 85% of the time after having been exposed to this person for 30 seconds.
86. 11:26 Wow. So, we do know that there’s a narcissist out there talking to us,
87. 11:33 dating us, you know, befriending us, invading our turf, penetrating in a
88. 11:39 variety of ways, intruding. We are aware of the narcissist existence out there,
89. 11:45 but we deny it. We deny it because we’re lonely. We deny it because we are starved for sex. We deny it because it’s
90. 11:53 not nice to judge someone within 30 seconds. Society tells us it’s not the thing to do, right? We deny it because we are supposed to give second chances. And so there’s a lot of selfdeception and denial.
91. 12:06 The answer to your question is people know not only that they are being abused, they know that they are about to
92. 12:13 be abused within 30 seconds from the moment they first met the person the
93. 12:20 abuser. So it’s all about the victims, not about the abusers. We are perfectly equipped
94. 12:27 as human beings to identify threats. Our intuition when it comes to the
95. 12:33 identification of threats is highly highly reliable and we immediately feel
96. 12:39 uncomfortable in some way. This is called the uncanny valley reaction. But then we convince ourselves, we lie
97. 12:46 to ourselves, we deceive ourselves, we tell ourselves stories that it’s going to be okay and you know things will
98. 12:52 change or whatever. So that’s the answer to
99. 12:58 Yeah, that’s really really interesting. And I I have to think back to when I I
100. 13:05 have met my previous narc. I think I might have had two that were like real textbook narc cuz I I see how nowadays at least it’s become pretty, you know,
101. 13:16 normal people just throwing it that word around. But when you really experience a narc, a textbook real narc, it’s really
102. 13:24 different and it is cruel. It’s it’s a nightmare. It really is. And I truly
103. 13:31 agree with you. Within the 30 seconds, I knew something was wrong. And I knew this probably will be painful in some way, shape, or form. There was this intuition that did kick in and I just
104. 13:43 ignored it because I said, “Oh, stop judging. You don’t even know this person. You know, you know, you’ve been traumatized so much that you’re not even giving them the benefit of doubt.” So that’s what kept me there. So I agree
105. 13:53 with you. We we tend to when we are confronted with um severe deviation from
106. 14:00 what is normal from reality or what is common when when we we find ourselves embedded in circumstances or situation where everything appears to be
107. 14:12 nightmarish and all righty and crazy and so on. We don’t extricate ourselves. We
108. 14:18 don’t run away. What we do is we normalize the situation.
109. 14:24 We we actually say it’s this is the new normal. That’s absolutely normal. That’s okay.
110. 14:30 That’s the way it is. You know, this is called habituation. We create a habit of accepting the abuse
111. 14:37 as if it were the the normal the common thing to do, the normal thing to do,
112. 14:43 you know, right? And that applies not only to personal relationships. It applies for example in politics when you know the
113. 14:50 there is political extremism and and radicalization and polarization of
114. 14:56 politics right and every day we wake up to something more horrible than yesterday and yet we accept it and we normalize it and we go on living and we say that’s the way it is. It’s a new law.
115. 15:08 We have to adop. Wow that is so interesting. So for in narcissistic abuse for survivors uh most describe the cycle of idolization,
116. 15:20 devaluation and discard, right? Why does that cycle create such a strong trauma
117. 15:26 bond? Trauma bonding is a very misleading uh
118. 15:33 concept because it is not about trauma and not about bonding. M trauma bonding is getting addicted to intermittent reinforcement. Intermittent
119. 15:44 reinforcement is a clinical term which describes unpredictable, inconsistent and unstable
120. 15:51 behavior. So hot and cold, I love you, I hate you. You’re the best. You’re the worst. So this is intermittent reinforcement. Wow. The problem is that these messages
121. 16:03 emanate, they come from the same person, right? It’s the same person who tells you on on
122. 16:10 Wednesday, you’re beloved. You’re the only one. You’re amazing. You’re and the next day he tells you, you’re stupid and
123. 16:17 ugly and you’re the worst thing that has ever happened to me and I hate you. Right? It’s the same person.
124. 16:24 And so you get addicted to this intermittent reinforcement because you
125. 16:30 crave the idealizing message. You see yourself through the abuser’s
126. 16:36 gaze. When the abuser idealizes you, you suddenly end up idealizing yourself. You
127. 16:44 experience selflove because now you’re perfect. You’re flawless.
128. 16:51 And only the abuser can grant you this access to your idealized version. He has a monopoly on
129. 16:58 access monopoly. So if you want to feel again
130. 17:04 that you are perfect, drop deadad gorgeous, amazingly intelligent, unprecedented, if you want to feel this
131. 17:12 way again, there’s only one person who can give you this feeling, and that’s the abuser.
132. 17:18 Wow. And you are willing to pay the price like you’re willing to tolerate the negativity. You’re willing to pay this this cost of
133. 17:29 gaining access to your idealized version because your idealized version is
134. 17:36 intoxicating. It’s it’s uh and again it’s intoxicating because many victims have never experienced self love, right? And so this is their opportunity
135. 17:48 to experience self- loveve. They see themselves through the narcissist’s eyes and they say, “Wow, I am very lovable because I’m perfect because I’m
136. 18:00 gorgeous. Because I’m hyper intelligent, I’m very lovable.” Now it’s legitimate
137. 18:06 to love myself. I couldn’t love myself before I’ve met the narcissist because before I’ve met the narcissist, I was less than ideal. I was perhaps not so gorgeous and maybe
138. 18:18 not so intelligent. And so the narcissist legitimizes a a version of you, a view
139. 18:26 of you which is highly unrealistic, highly fantastic, and that is intoxicating. And then you say, “Okay, there are bad days, but the good days the good days are worth it.
140. 18:37 Being idealized is worth it.” And so you get addicted to the intermittent reinforcement, to the hot and cold. And
141. 18:43 this is what we call trauma bonding misleadingly because it has nothing to
142. 18:49 do with trauma and it definitely does not create bonding. You don’t you are not bonded with a narcissist. You are bonded with your idealized image
143. 19:02 through the narcissist gaze. You are not connected to the nar. You’re not attached to the narcissist. You’re
144. 19:08 attached to what the narcissist can give you. And what the narcissist can give you is this idealizing gaze
145. 19:16 and intermittently. And that’s what it so would you call that a form of addiction?
146. 19:22 I think you did say that. No. Wow. That’s that’s really interesting. And wow, makes me just think of my own
147. 19:29 experience. I tell you this is really interesting. There’s no feeling there’s no feeling like that. I mean when you’re idealized
148. 19:36 there’s laser focus. We call it hyperfocus. The clinical term is hyperfocus. There’s laser focus on you
149. 19:43 and you can do no wrong. You are drop deadad gorgeous. You are amazingly intelligent. You are
150. 19:50 perfection rayified. You are you’re a goddess. You’re divine. Who can resist
151. 19:57 this? It’s irresistible, right? It’s irresistible. And you want to feel it again. You want to experience this again. Because when you experience this, you are at peace with yourself. You can
152. 20:10 finally love yourself the way a mother does. You can accept yourself unconditionally
153. 20:17 because what is there to not love? What is there to reject? You’re perfect, right? It’s uh and this is one of the secrets of the narcissist because the narcissist uses other types of baiting to introduce you into the shared the shared fantasy.
154. 20:32 And this is one of the baits. Wow. This is one of the baits. Wow. So, what long-term effects do you
155. 20:40 see in survivors, especially around identity and selfrust? Well, let’s start with the fact that um exposure to to a narcissist has almost
156. 20:52 immediate physical bodily bodily impacts. And the longer you’re exposed
157. 20:58 to the narcissist, the higher the price, the higher the cost. Wow. in in in in corporeal terms in in
158. 21:04 physiological terms and biochemical terms brain activity and everything. So there’s huge damage to the body also
159. 21:11 many many rhythms and functions are disrupted for example in ability to sleep insomnia.
160. 21:17 Mhm. Many people self soothe or self-comfort by developing addictive behaviors
161. 21:24 substance abuse and overeating and you know these kind of things. Yeah. Um so there’s a the bodily
162. 21:31 dimension and there is a group of scholars um for example Vander Kulk and
163. 21:37 others who say that they they use a phrase the body keeps the score. Yes. Yeah. I read that book.
164. 21:43 The body is a repository of all these really really dark and bad memories and
165. 21:49 it’s poisoned. It’s poisoned by the experience. At the same time there are numerous
166. 21:55 psychological impacts. You mentioned two of them. Loss of trust or loss of the
167. 22:01 ability to trust. We call it hypervigilance, right? Loss of ability to trust is is one
168. 22:07 example. But there are many other things. You mentioned loss of identity.
169. 22:13 So victims, for example, would say, I don’t recognize myself anymore. I don’t believe I’ve done this. I don’t believe I did this. It’s not me. It’s not like me. You know, they become estranged. The clinical term is estrangement. they become estranged,
170. 22:28 alienated from themselves. Um, another thing that happens is that
171. 22:34 narcissism is contagious and the longer you’re exposed to the narcissist just in order to survive and for
172. 22:41 self-preservation, you’re going to become a narcissist. So, you’re going to push back, you’re
173. 22:47 going to become aggressive, you’re going to your empathy is going to be impacted and you may definitely lose it
174. 22:53 ultimately the longer you’re exposed because you have to survive. And the only way to cope with the narcissist is
175. 22:59 to outnarize the narcissist. You need to be a bigger narcissist. It’s the only way to survive. So you find yourself
176. 23:06 verbally abusing the narcissist, shouting back, being aggressive, maybe becoming violent. Sometimes you lack empathy. So even when you see, for example, the narcissist sick or in need
177. 23:19 of help, you no longer care. There’s no compassion and so on. You are you are
178. 23:25 desensitized to your humanity. You’re losing your humanity the more you’re exposed. This happens not only with
179. 23:31 narcissists. This happens in many situations of trauma, chronic chronic illness settings. Settings like prison
180. 23:40 and hospitals, army, the army soldiers describe this. Medical doctors,
181. 23:46 especially surgeons need to desensitize themselves. They need to lose empathy just in order to
182. 23:52 survive. If you’re a doctor, you know, you need to lose empathy. Otherwise, you go crazy after a while. And indeed, by
183. 23:59 the way, the rate of suicide among medical doctors is the highest in in any profession. So, I’m giving this as
184. 24:06 examples because when you’re exposed to adversity, doesn’t have to be a narcissist. When you’re exposed to adversity, you become
185. 24:13 narcissistic. This is called narcissistic defense. And when you’re exposed to extreme adversity, and there
186. 24:20 is no adversity more extreme than narcissistic abuse. So when you’re exposed to this, you become a narcissist
187. 24:29 just in order to survive. And if you’re exposed to it for 6 months, the way
188. 24:35 back, there’s a way back. But if you’re exposed to it for 20 years, right, there’s a lot of work to be done after
189. 24:41 that. Another problem is the narcissist infantilizes you. He regresses you.
190. 24:50 He takes away your adulthood. The agency that comes with adulthood.
191. 24:57 A reality testing, the ability to gauge reality appropriately, which is an integral part of adulthood. He renders
192. 25:03 you an infant dependent upon him and and as an infant you relegate responsibility
193. 25:12 to him. He becomes a decision maker. He becomes your interface with reality. Reality is mediated through him and
194. 25:20 suddenly you find yourself helpless. This is learned helplessness. You find yourself helpless
195. 25:26 and you an infant. So the first thing you do after you break up with a narcissist or you you’re discarded, the
196. 25:33 first thing you have to do is to grow up. You have to go through the whole process again starting at age two.
197. 25:39 Wow. You need to again go through a process known as separation individuation. You
198. 25:45 need to separate from the narcissist because the narcissist had become a parental figure. You need to separate from the narcissist the way children separate from their parents and become individuals. So as a
199. 25:58 child, because now you’re a child, you need to separate from that parental figure and grow up and become an individual. That’s another impact of narcissistic abuse. And there are many
200. 26:09 other impacts which are much more mundane and common. For example, anxiety, uh depression, anxiety and depression
201. 26:15 are very common among victims of abuse generally and narcissistic abuse particularly.
202. 26:22 Um it stands to reason that it impacts the brain because we know for sure I mean the studies that have substantiated this that abuse rewires the brain. Abuse
203. 26:34 reshapes the brain. Unfortunately our brain is neuroplastic. In other words, our brain can reshape itself or rewire itself for better and for worse.
204. 26:45 So narcissistic abuse plays with your mind. And there is even
205. 26:51 a process discovered 12 years ago. It’s called entrainment where if you’re exposed to the same
206. 26:59 sounds time and again over a prolonged period of time, which which means hours,
207. 27:05 right? Your brain waves synchronize with the brain waves waves of the source of the
208. 27:11 of the sound. So this was discovered with rock bands. They studied the brains of rock musicians in a band and they found something amazing. The wave the
209. 27:23 the the waves the brain waves of all the rock musicians in the band became
210. 27:30 indistinguishable from each other. They became identical. There was no way to tell whose brain it
211. 27:36 was. They they acquired a single hive mind, a single brain.
212. 27:42 When you as a victim of abuse, you’re exposed to repeated verbal abuse,
213. 27:48 usually the same words. Yep. Same message time and again, time and again, time and again. Your brain waves
214. 27:56 synchronize with the brain waves of the narcissist. Wow. And so he gains control over your brain.
215. 28:03 That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s neuroscience. He gains control over your brain and he’s able to install in your
216. 28:11 brain an app as if you were some kind of smartphone. He’s able to install an app.
217. 28:17 The clinical term for this app is introject is able to install in your brain a voice.
218. 28:24 And this voice is the narcissist’s voice. And this voice is with you even after
219. 28:30 the narcissist has long discarded you and has exited your life. The voice is
220. 28:36 there. The app is there. The app is there and it talks to you.
221. 28:42 And not only does it talk to you, it collaborates with other introj with other apps that have the same message.
222. 28:50 It creates a cluster. So for example, if you had a mother who kept telling you
223. 28:57 you’re a failure, you are unworthy. You’re also ugly and stupid. by the way,
224. 29:03 whatever. The narcissist would install an app that would say the very same
225. 29:09 things. You’re a failure, you’re ugly, you’re stupid. And these two apps, your mothers and the narcissists, would
226. 29:16 create a cluster together. They will work together. They create a coalition which amplifies the message. Makes it much much it makes it actually overpowering and overwhelming. And many victims experience what we call emotion dysregulation. They’re overwhelmed
227. 29:34 emotionally, right? They’re also overwhelmed by memories. People are using the wrong the wrong
228. 29:40 phrase emotional flashbacks. But memories emerge and they carry with them
229. 29:46 some emotional balance, some emotional and so we call this emotion dysregulation where your emotions drown you. This happens a lot to victims.
230. 29:57 Yeah, there is also mood liability, ups and downs, cycling between depression and
231. 30:03 euphoria or relation a bit a bit like bipolar. Yeah. The whole the whole apparatus the the
232. 30:10 your mind your brain they are compromised. You’ve been infected with malware.
233. 30:16 Wow. You need to decontaminate yourself. You need to debrief yourself. You need an
234. 30:22 anti virus to kind of erase the traces of malware in your brain. And your brain
235. 30:28 has been compromised and your mind has been compromised at the most fundamental level. So it’s not a malware that is like in a computer, but it’s some something we call root root malware. It’s a malware
236. 30:39 that infects the operating system and even the chips your chips and and you
237. 30:47 become it. You become the glitch. Wow. You become the glitch. You become
238. 30:53 the bug. Wow. There’s a lot of work after narcissistic abuse. But to proceed with a more
239. 31:00 optimistic note, there’s a lot of work. Mhm. Some work is you need to do by yourself.
240. 31:07 All by yourself. You’re all alone. No one can help you with this. And some work you do with professionals like therapists and so on. And the prognosis is excellent. In other words, the chances that you will fully recover are
241. 31:20 very close, very close to 100%. That’s really So there is full recovery from
242. 31:26 narcissistic abuse regardless of how long you’ve been exposed to the narcissist, regardless of how long the
243. 31:34 relationship has been. You will recover in almost 100% of the cases. In the very
244. 31:41 few cases where there’s no recovery and no healing, there have been preceding
245. 31:47 preceding mental health issues. Mental health issues that preceded the narcissistic abuse kind of morbidity,
246. 31:54 you know, predisposing morbidity. So, and these are rare cases. Yeah. Wow. Um, would you say that uh
247. 32:02 long-term effects you see in survivors uh may mirror what we call complex PTSD?
248. 32:11 Yes. Um, depending on the length of your exposure. So, first of all, let’s dispel one of
249. 32:18 250 myths online. There’s a lot of nonsense online. Yeah. And one of the biggest pieces of
250. 32:24 nonsense is that you can experience PTSD. Mhm. You cannot experience PTSD in a
251. 32:30 relationship. PTSD is the result of a single event.
252. 32:36 Okay? So if your narcissist tries to try to kill you physically like came at you with a knife or tried to strangle you, yes, then you could experience PTSD.
253. 32:47 Mhm. Or if he burned down the house, you could experience PTSD. But it has to be a single event,
254. 32:53 right? So um and it has to be exposure directly or via someone. So even someone describing something like this can cause you PTSD. But PTSD is never the outcome
255. 33:07 of long-term repeated exposure, incremental exposure, right? CPTTSD is CPTTSD is complex trauma or
256. 33:17 complex post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s first described by Judith Man in 1992.
257. 33:24 And um it’s very very common among victims. CPTtsd is
258. 33:31 slow mo slow slow motion trauma. It’s um discernible as trauma. It can be
259. 33:38 diagnosed as trauma but it lacks many the more extreme manifestations of
260. 33:44 trauma. For example in CPDSD there are no flashbacks. That’s why you cannot use the phrase
261. 33:51 emotional flashbacks. It’s nonsensical. They’re not flashbacks. Flashbacks is when for a minute you lose the distinction between the flashback and reality and you think you’re you think
262. 34:03 the flashback is reality. So if you’re Vietnam vet, you know, you
263. 34:09 would be back back there with a helicopter or whatever. You you wouldn’t be able you would be unable to tell that
264. 34:15 you’re in a supermarket in Iowa, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And then you would shoot everyone because you think you’re in in Vietnam.
265. 34:21 you’re fighting for your life, you know, right? So, this is flashback. It’s common in PTSD. These type of things
266. 34:28 Mhm. are missing in CPTTSD. So, for example, another example, last one, startled reaction. The startle reaction is when you’re jumpy and jerky,
267. 34:40 when you’re when something happens around you, there’s a stimulus of some kind, especially an unexpected stimulus,
268. 34:46 and then you simply jump physically jump. and and at the same time there’s an
269. 34:52 increase in blood pressure and pulse and breathing um becomes shallow and so on.
270. 34:58 I would make the distinction like this PTSD is mostly physical mostly the body.
271. 35:05 Okay. Whereas CPTTSD is mostly the mind and and victims of narcissistic abuse
272. 35:12 suffer very extreme forms of CPTTSD. Yes.
273. 35:19 Okay, that’s interesting. Um, so survivors often say it wasn’t just what
274. 35:25 he did, it was how nobody believed me. How does institutional betrayal from
275. 35:31 courts, therapists, or even family at a second layer of trauma? Yeah, we have even a clinical a clinical
276. 35:39 field that deals with it. It’s known as betrayal trauma. And there is institutional betrayal trauma. when
277. 35:46 you’re betrayed, for example, when you’re not believed, when you’re not believed, this creates
278. 35:54 um type of moral injury. Um, and so the
279. 36:00 the the injury, the trauma when you are not believed, when you’re not listened to, when your needs are not met,
280. 36:08 when you are devalued in some way, people say you’re crazy or it’s your
281. 36:15 fault that you’ve been raped because you’re promiscuous or, you know, so or when you are minimized, people say it’s not a big deal. Get over it. It’s nothing, you know.
282. 36:27 uh or my experience has been have been much worse than yours, you know, when there’s competitive victimhood
283. 36:33 and so on. In all these situations where you’re not not heard, not seen, not validated, not accepted as you are,
284. 36:42 um people don’t realize that the intensity of your experience is completely individual and idiosyncratic. something that would have zero impact on me, would devastate you in your devastation is as valid as my
285. 36:58 indifference. And people don’t accept it. They think there’s something objective that everyone experiences everything exactly the same. And all this is wrong. And institutions what they do, they codify this.
286. 37:14 They convert these perceptions, these misperceptions and these misbehavior towards victims. They convert these into uh laws and regulations and and
287. 37:27 institutional procedures and and hurdles and obstacles
288. 37:33 and institutional disbelief and distrust. There’s institutional paranoia
289. 37:39 that actually the the the victim is trying is somehow manipulative, some of them a cave because some victims are some victims leverage victimhood to obtain some benefits and acquire some rights and this gives a bad name to all victims
290. 37:55 and and so I would say that there’s a gulf of distrust between not only
291. 38:01 institutions but between nonvictims and victims victim Victimhood is a uniquely
292. 38:08 lonely experience. It’s a uniquely soypistic experience. It
293. 38:14 is not something that you can truly communicate. It’s not communicable. And I know what you may be about to say.
294. 38:20 Yes, but I can communicate with other victims. No, you can’t. You’re comparing
295. 38:26 notes. You’re comparing words. You may offer each other sakur and help and
296. 38:32 holding and containment and yeah all this is true but no one you cannot
297. 38:39 communicate your experiences to anyone anyone else. It’s the ultimate loneliness. The narcissist starts by isolating you physically, right? Then he ends by isolating you mentally
298. 38:50 and then you find yourself in solitary confinement in a cell of the narcissist
299. 38:56 making. And often it’s for for you know the rest of your life because these
300. 39:02 experiences are with you until the day you die. You learn to function despite
301. 39:08 these experiences. There’s no way to eradicate them. There’s not any way to eliminate them. It is not a good idea to
302. 39:14 deny them or ignore them or reframe them. And in some situations it’s not a good
303. 39:21 idea to try to communicate them even. We have studies that show that when people vent all the time, they get trapped in a
304. 39:28 victimhood state and they never emerge and never heal. So overcommunicating,
305. 39:34 oversharing your your experiences is not always a good idea. It’s very comforting and soothing
306. 39:40 but so is overeating and that’s not a good idea, you know. Yeah. So
307. 39:47 um you have to accept this loneliness. You have to say, “I’ve gone through
308. 39:53 something that is uniquely mine.” Similarly, you can’t really communicate love.
309. 39:59 Can you communicate to me the last time you fell in love with someone? Of course not. No. You can’t really communicate these things. These are lonely experiences for better and for worse.
310. 40:10 Yeah. We have to accept that. And we have to move on with with our lives not feeling that that we are betrayed because we have failed to communicate. understanding that other people find
311. 40:22 these experiences horrifying. They defend against these experiences. They don’t want to hear. They don’t want to to they they want to shut these experiences off. And you’re the messenger.
312. 40:33 You’re the messenger with the bad news. So, they want to shut you off. And institutions are just institution is
313. 40:40 just a group of people together. It’s just a collective. It’s people ultimately it’s people and and it’s it’s terrifying. And and people don’t want to they they they regard your victimhood as a form of aggression.
314. 40:56 When you’re trying to share what you’ve gone through, you’re being aggressive. You’re invading my life. You’re impacting my mind. You’re changing my mood for the worse. You’re
315. 41:07 destroying my evening. What the heck are you doing? Who gave you permission to do that? You know, go away. Go away. What’s my defense? How
316. 41:15 can I defend against your pollution? Mhm. Because your attempt to communicate what
317. 41:21 has happened to you is a kind of pollution. You’re polluting my world. My world has been clean. My world has been chased. And here you are coming waking me up, ruining ruining my innocence, you know,
318. 41:32 taking away my innocence. I need to defend against this. You’re evil, you know. I need to defend against this. So,
319. 41:39 I’m minimizing you. I’m denying your experience. I’m invalidating you. I’m anything. Just get away. Get away from
320. 41:45 me, you know. Wow. And this applies to narcissistic abuse. It applies to the Holocaust. It
321. 41:51 applies to Jeffrey Epstein. It apply this is it. Maybe there’s no big conspiracy around Jeffrey Epstein. It’s
322. 41:58 just we don’t want to hear this, right? Simply we don’t want to hear this. Go away, you know. Yep. That makes sense. So narcissists are known to weaponize credibility. How do you use how do they
323. 42:14 use smear campaigns? custody battles or false accusations to keep controlling their victims even after separations. Narcissists are the masters of fantasy.
324. 42:26 Narcissism, pathological narcissism is widely considered in academ at least as a fantasy defense.
325. 42:33 So narcissists are great at write at storytelling. They’re authors. They’re authors of their own fiction. You know, I’m I’m divine. I’m godlike. I’m a genius. And that’s that’s a piece of fiction.
326. 42:45 They’re writing a movie. They’re street riders. So, yeah, they’re very good at telling stories and you’re not. And this is their advantage. Their stories sound real. Their stories
327. 42:57 sound credible. They know how to embed shards and pieces of truth in a popoly
328. 43:05 of falsity and falsehoods and and you know, fantasy. So, it sounds true. It
329. 43:13 sounds real. sounds credible. They can they they spin it on a dime like they’re
330. 43:19 able to come up with immediate answers and immediate immediately reshape or reform the fantasy or the narrative so
331. 43:25 that it fits the audience. You don’t stand a chance against this that you don’t stand a chance against this because these people have been busy since age two have been busy creating a
332. 43:38 false self creating false narratives. emphasis on false.
333. 43:44 Wow. And so they’re great at manipulating other people. They’re machavelian. They’re great at manipulating other
334. 43:50 people’s perceptions other people’s reality testing. They’re great at taking, as I said,
335. 43:57 elements of truth and either amplifying them or refraraming them or recombining them wrongly in a misleading way. So that when you observe, when you listen to the narrative, you say, “Wow, I know
336. 44:09 this to be true.” So they can say, “Do you remember when
337. 44:15 Sarah lost it? Do you remember when she threw a plate at me or vas at me or whatever? Do you remember when she?” And
338. 44:21 then they put it together and say, “Well, the conclusion is she’s crazy.” So, and you say, “Yeah, I do remember
339. 44:29 these three occasions when she became violent.” The conclusion is she’s crazy. I agree with you. Conclusion is she’s crazy. Of course, there’s a missing part. Yeah, the missing part is what what had led
340. 44:41 you to behave this way. But what Basis is is amazing at creating
341. 44:47 airtight narratives where it appears that nothing is missing and you have all the information when
342. 44:53 it’s completely wrong. It’s not true. Wow. And of course in these narratives the narcissist is always the victim.
343. 45:00 Victimhood is a critical part of narcissism. Both overt and covert narcissists claim victimhood
344. 45:08 and as victims immediately you get a discount like if you right yeah yeah of a victim you are instantaneously
345. 45:19 believable instantaneously credible who dare to challenge a victim you know and so on and you as a victim you have
346. 45:26 rights and these rights impose obligations on on other people.
347. 45:32 The obligation is to listen to you. The obligation is to to believe you. The obligation and of course narcissists
348. 45:38 encounter the same problems that victims do. Um they are disbelieved or they’re
349. 45:44 not seen and so on. But they know how to overcome these issues. They know how to end up being
350. 45:50 seen and being validated because they bribe people. M they create situations where people have
351. 45:57 incentives to believe them where people benefit
352. 46:03 from supporting them. And this is the famous phenomenon of flying monkeys. Yep.
353. 46:09 So narcissists don’t operate alone. They operate in herds. They operate in groups. They create entire environments which come after you. They are not they
354. 46:22 never act alone. And so it’s uh a whole ecosystem. They create an a whole
355. 46:28 ecosystem where various people are willing to plug into the ecosystem,
356. 46:34 derive sustenance from the ecosystem, profit from the ecosystem, benefit from the ecosystem,
357. 46:40 and you happen to be the cost. You you have to pay the price for this.
358. 46:46 Wow. So they acknowledge they acknowledge the narcissist victimhood. And some of them, for example, all they want is for the narcissist to acknowledge them, to notice them, to pay attention to them,
359. 46:57 to admire them, to agulate them, to praise them. That’s it. That’s all they need. And immediately they subscribe to
360. 47:05 the narcissist’s version of reality and you become the enemy. It’s a cult. What I’m trying to say, it’s a cult. Right. Exactly. Actually, that’s a great segue into my next question. Um, so some
361. 47:16 survivors describe organized harassment surveillance after leaving the abuse.
362. 47:22 How do you see the overlap between private narcissistic abuse and public systemic abuse? Like you said, the
363. 47:29 flying monkeys, right? How would you um how would you how do you see the overlap between those things? The distinction between individual and collective is very new and it’s very
364. 47:42 wrong. Collectives are just groups of individuals. It is true that collectives have a mind
365. 47:49 of their own. There’s an inroup and an out group. There’s a hive mind. There is a collective mind or cult mind. All this
366. 47:56 is true. But ultimately you can describe collectives in terms of individual
367. 48:02 psychology and you would be 100% right. Definitely. For example, there are narcissistic collectives. Absolutely.
368. 48:09 And they resemble individual narcissists. perfectly. You have psychopathic
369. 48:15 societies for example Nazi Germany and these psychopathic societies re are is
370. 48:22 the exact equivalent of an individual psychopath. So we don’t need two types of psychology in my view. One type one description is enough. Right? And so
371. 48:33 the same way a narcissist would weaponize certain technologies and certain behaviors and groups of people
372. 48:39 and create alternative narratives, a collective would do that. Um an
373. 48:45 intelligence agency, um government, um you know, collectives would do that. A religion, um your neighbors, I mean the church. So
374. 48:56 collectives do these things, right? And so we know that it’s a surveillance society that’s widely
375. 49:05 acknowledged by now. Yes. Uh in some countries for example this is considered very commendable. For example
376. 49:11 in the United Kingdom really they they believe that they should have a CCTV every 2 meters. It’s a goal an explicit goal of the government to have
377. 49:22 a CCTV every 2 meters. CCTV camera every 2 meters. Right. Wow. So surveillance
378. 49:28 had become normative and praiseworthy because it fight it helps to fight crime
379. 49:35 or to fight terrorism. And the problem is of course it can be mishandled and and it can be egregiously abused and
380. 49:42 leveraged against individuals. Mhm. And these things are happening. Um
381. 49:48 stalking similarly individual narcissist talk some collective stalk sometimes.
382. 49:55 Yep. aggression, externalized aggression. So narcissists could become externally aggressive and some countries could decimate you know whole population like in Gaza.
383. 50:06 So it’s I think the distinction is artificial. Whatever you know about
384. 50:12 individual narcissist is immediately applicable to every institution you ever heard of and every collective and every
385. 50:18 society and every culture and every period in history and every government and every institution.
386. 50:25 Wow. So, does that look like gaslighting on a societal level? You’d say again, as psychopaths, narcissists don’t gaslight because narcissists cannot tell
387. 50:36 the difference between reality and fantasy. So, narcissists are delusional. They’re sick in the head. They are psychotic. But psychopaths gaslight. So, psychopath tells you that reality is is
388. 50:48 this when he knows that it’s not. He knows he’s misleading you. is not psychopath knows he’s deceiving you.
389. 50:55 He’s manipulating you by altering your perception of reality. So and of course sometimes collectives do this, institutions do this and so on. For example, in times of
390. 51:06 war, war propaganda is a form of gaslighting. Mhm. uh which involves outright lying
391. 51:13 and and deception and selfdeception and the chain the changing of the perception
392. 51:20 of reality. Religion is a form of gaslighting, massive gaslighting. Wow. Um so yes, we have collective institutional gaslighting. I think the difference between this and being a paranoid is a paranoid would say that all
393. 51:36 collectives and all institutions gaslight, stalk and survey all the time.
394. 51:42 That is not true. What is true that this these forms of
395. 51:48 misconduct do happen do occur and they do involve sometimes collectives institutions and and so on and societies. But it’s wrong to say that this is the
396. 52:00 modus operandi. This is the the method of operation right of for example governments. So you could
397. 52:06 have two people. One of them would say my government during this and this period engaged in in harassment and
398. 52:15 stalking. Mhm. That probably is a healthy normal welladjusted person. And you could have
399. 52:22 another person saying talking about the same government. My government always
400. 52:28 harasses and stalks and kills people and and so that’s probably not a very
401. 52:34 healthy person. It’s probably a paranoid person. Okay. Someone someone who’s in need of help.
402. 52:40 His reality testing is distorted. Equally distorted. Right. Yeah. Wow. So why do you think
403. 52:47 women who speak out whether about abuse or corruption so often become targets
404. 52:53 for bigger systems? I’m not aware that this is substantiated by by any studies. But of course if you
405. 53:01 attack powerful people you will will end up or may end up being harassed or
406. 53:08 powerful people may leverage institutional le li levers institutional tools and instruments to go after you
407. 53:14 and so on. So I think it it crucially depends on highly specific circumstances. If you go after uh
408. 53:21 Jeffrey Epstein or Donald Trump, you are likely to experience institutional
409. 53:27 harassment as many enemies of Donald Trump can tell you. Uh however, if you go after Joe Mo, who is a sanitation worker, I doubt very much that you’ll find yourself on any list or that you’re
410. 53:38 being harassed. And if you claim otherwise, if your nar narcissist is Josh Mo, who
411. 53:44 is a sanitation worker, and you claim the CIA is after you, you’re in need of help and medication probably.
412. 53:51 Okay. So, if narcissistic abuse at home erodess one person’s reality, what does
413. 53:57 it mean when governments adopt the same pattern? Governments and but not only
414. 54:03 governments, collectives in general, correct? Mhm. reshape reality in order to manipulate
415. 54:12 members of the collective in order to obtain common goals.
416. 54:18 Members of a collective often know that reality is being manipulated
417. 54:24 but they go along with it because they share the same goals. So I gave you an example of war. There’s a war and your
418. 54:32 government is telling you that the enemy is inhuman. The enemy is sadistic. the enemy is an animal, the enemy deserves
419. 54:39 to be slaughtered and and you what have you and you go along with it. You don’t
420. 54:45 even bother to verify these claims. You go along with the gaslighting. Why?
421. 54:51 Because you also want to destroy the enemy. You you have a goal that is common. The institution and you sh the collective and you share the same goal. And that that is that endows institutions and collectives with power.
422. 55:07 The dosility the compliance of participants and members and regular
423. 55:14 people because they succeed to convince people in the goals not in reality but
424. 55:21 in the goals. So imagine that you support a politician
425. 55:27 and you know this politician is lying through his teeth all the time. You don’t care. You don’t care. You
426. 55:34 don’t care that the politician is falsifying reality because his enemies are your enemies
427. 55:42 and he’s good for it. He’s going after your enemies. Who cares if he’s gaslighting you? You don’t care.
428. 55:48 Right? So this is the big collusion. the collusion between individuals who know
429. 55:55 that this is not reality, who know they’re being gas lit, and that’s the vast majority of people actually, and
430. 56:02 the gaslighters. And the collusion is both of them agree on a common agenda.
431. 56:08 So the gas lit agree to be gas lit on condition that the gaslighter realizes
432. 56:14 the agenda. That’s that’s the way human affairs are managed, right? We are being gas lit. Yeah, we sure are.
433. 56:26 Man, this has been really helpful, very educational. I know many will um really
434. 56:32 benefit from this interview. Thank you. Um and so we’re going to wrap it up. I have one or two more questions, but
435. 56:38 before I do, I would like to ask you, and really I just keep thinking about
436. 56:44 this as we keep talking. So, are narcissistic people born that way or I know you mentioned that even as as young as two years old, right, they start to um create or their narrative or sort of like manipulate, right? Two
437. 57:00 years old is like really young. So, how how could they even do that? So, I’m I’m
438. 57:06 assuming that they’re born that way, right? Because I read somewhere online that it’s like their first seven years
439. 57:12 of development where they don’t connect with their mother specifically that that’s where this um disconnection in
440. 57:19 their brain. Um I don’t know. I’m not a doctor and and perhaps it was AI that I
441. 57:25 read it somewhere. But can you can you give us a little more on that because I know that psychopaths if I’m not mistaken they’re born that way right?
442. 57:32 Yeah. Well, there that’s like nine questions in one and I’ll try to
443. 57:38 disentangle some of them. So, narcissism is the outcome of a disruption or a
444. 57:46 dysfunction in normal development and usually the mother is responsible for normal development in the first three years of life and then the mother and the father together in the next three
445. 57:57 years of life and these are known as the formative years. Formative years are 0 to six.
446. 58:04 The mother is crucial to the emergence of what we call the self or Freud used to call the ego. So why? Because the child separates from
447. 58:16 the mother. The child learns to separate from the mother. And when the child separates from the mother and begins to
448. 58:22 explore the world, the child becomes an individual. The word individual means divided.
449. 58:30 So the child learns to divide. If this division fails, if this separation individuation fail because the mother is
450. 58:37 for example insecure, doesn’t allow the child to separate or the mother is narcissistic and selfish and doesn’t
451. 58:44 want to let the child go or the mother emotionally blackmails the child when
452. 58:50 child walks away. You’re a bad you’re a bad kid. You know, you’re abandoning your mommy and so on. No, in all these
453. 58:56 situations where the child cannot separate from the mother, the child then retreats from reality because reality
454. 59:04 then is intolerable, is unbearable. The child wants to separate. It’s probably
455. 59:10 biological. Child wants to separate but is not allowed to is constrained. It’s like in prison. So then the child
456. 59:17 retreats from reality to fantasy and begins to develop a fantasy of itself
457. 59:24 as essentially godlike. Like I can’t cope with reality.
458. 59:31 In reality I’m helpless but in fantasy I’m superior. I’m all powerful. I’m all
459. 59:37 knowing. I’m so narcissism is born. Pathological narcissism but it is a reaction to maternal dysfunction. There
460. 59:44 are many types of maternal dysfunction by the way. Spoiling the child is also abusive and so
461. 59:50 okay. So now the question is do all children who are exposed to failed disrupted separation individuation? Do all of them
462. 60:01 develop narcissism? Like if we were to take a 100 kids and all of them had identical
463. 60:07 relationship with a mother that is not a good enough mother. A mother who doesn’t know how to be a mother. a mother who doesn’t let the child become its own person and there’s a hundred of them.
464. 60:18 Are we going to have 100 narcissists? The answer is no. We’re going to have 1.7 narcissist.
465. 60:25 Fewer than two develop narcissism. Wow. which gives credence, makes it
466. 60:32 believable that narcissism probably involves some
467. 60:38 genetic predisposition. That only two children out of a 100
468. 60:44 have the genes and perhaps the brain abnormalities. We’re not sure that give rise to pathological narcissism. Only these two children are going to react in a way that would lead them to become
469. 60:56 narcissists. The other 98 are exposed to the same parents, same environment, same upbringing. So we have twin studies where one twin became narcissist, the
470. 61:07 other didn’t. Wow. So there are strong indications of a genetic predisposition and perhaps even
471. 61:13 brain abnormalities, but we don’t have any evidence of this. We have studies like we have studies and
472. 61:22 some of the studies link narcissist pathological narcissism to some changes in the brain and we have some studies that connect narcissism to that gene of of this gene. They are not serious
473. 61:34 studies. They are not rigorous studies. They’re laughable. Some of them involve three people.
474. 61:41 These are not serious studies. So at this stage we cannot say with any certainty that there is a genetic background and or brain abnormalities involved in the emergence of narcissistic personality disorder. Although I’m telling you personally I
475. 61:58 believe it fully but I just can’t prove it. Right? It’s not the case with borderline personality disorder and it’s not the case with antisocial personality disorder especially the extreme form known as psychopathy. Right. In these cases, we have there there is
476. 62:16 overpowering evidence of brain abnormalities and definitely there is a genetic
477. 62:23 hereditary determinant. For example, if you have a firstderee relative with borderline personality disorder, you are five times more likely to have borderline personality disorder.
478. 62:35 Wow. That is a powerful indication that genetics are at work. Mhm. We don’t have this with narcissism
479. 62:42 for example. So that’s why I can’t really answer your question. It we know for sure we have a mountain range of evidence that all narcissists in their background in their history personal history they had a dysfunctional mother in some
480. 63:00 way. Now people say but it’s not true. My narcissist had a very loving mother.
481. 63:06 It’s completely untrue. My narcissist grew up in a family which was the perfect family and so what they don’t
482. 63:12 understand there are many ways to abuse and traumatize a child right for example if you are overprotective of
483. 63:19 the child you’re abusive you may appear to be a wonderful mother but you’re not a good mother because you’re isolating the child from reality and from his peers you’re not allowing
484. 63:31 the child to grow up to develop that’s abuse if you’re spoiling the child
485. 63:37 pampering the child, idolizing the child. Many people would say, many, many neighbors would say, “What a great
486. 63:43 mother, how she loves the child.” I mean, it’s incredible. It’s spoiling, pampering, idolizing, pedestalizing the
487. 63:50 child. These are forms of extreme abuse. Why? Because the message you’re sending
488. 63:56 to the child is you’re perfect. You can do no wrong.
489. 64:02 You’re not allowing reality to inform the child, to shape the child. There’s no friction. The child believes that it can do anything it wants because it’s always right
490. 64:13 and other people are wrong. And and that is of course a great description of narcissism, isn’t it?
491. 64:20 Yeah. It’s a kind of mother that creates a narcissism. So that’s what people don’t understand.
492. 64:26 Mothers who who appear to be perfect actually could be extremely abusive. And I’m not talking now about absent mothers, depressive mothers, insecure mothers, narcissistic mothers,
493. 64:38 psychopathic mothers, selfish mothers. They’re all abusive. Neglected mother. That’s abuse, right?
494. 64:45 Yes. I I know many men who have told me their mom neglected them. Very neglect. Absolutely. Yes. That would lead to narcissistic abuse, right? Abandonment. Absent. That’s why I said
495. 64:56 absent mother. Absent. Okay. Neglect. Abandonment. This is called the dead mother. Metaphorically dead mother.
496. 65:02 That’s a that’s a clinical term. So uh and then people say but it’s not only the mother, it’s the father. And they’re angry at me. They say not only at me. I mean at all the profession
497. 65:13 because we kind of pathize mothers or demonize mothers. Nothing to do. It’s the mother that is
498. 65:22 the key player until the age of 36 months. There’s nothing to do about it. It’s not some vakn. It’s bowelby. It’s
499. 65:30 you name it. It’s all the big names. It’s all everyone Freud. I mean you name it. Everyone agrees. It’s the mother. So
500. 65:36 yes, it is the mother’s responsibility to produce a well- balanced child
501. 65:42 and it’s a tightroppe act and it’s very difficult and my heart goes out to mothers because there’s no training
502. 65:49 right and there’s no education and everyone can become a mother and I think it’s wrong. I don’t think anyone should be a
503. 65:56 mother. I think there should be a process of preparation. Maybe preparation by other mothers. I’m not saying but there should be some preparation, you know. Yeah. And and there’s none. So mothers keep
504. 66:08 failing. And when the environment is very demanding and very harsh and very abusive, the mother itself is is abused, is the victim of abuse, for example. and
505. 66:20 so or if the mother has to work because she’s a single mother. Today, single
506. 66:26 mothers raise half the children in industrialized societies. And these mothers are torn to pieces
507. 66:33 and deposit deposit the child in daycare and they come back if they’re lucky, if they have the money for that and and they return from work half dead and they don’t have the the resources now to, you
508. 66:45 know, and quality time with a kid. That’s abuse. But it’s not the mother’s fault. The mother is abused by her
509. 66:53 partner. It’s becoming more and more common. That’s abuse is becoming the the n the normative way of communicating in
510. 67:00 a in a couple. That’s why 52% of people divorce because not working anymore.
511. 67:06 Committed relationships are not working anymore. It’s a it’s a bloody mess. People don’t want to date even. I mean, it’s 42% 42% of people are lifelong singles.
512. 67:18 Mhm. In the recent Pew Center study, 42% have made a decision never ever to be with
513. 67:24 another person. That’s a lot. So, so if you’re in a relationship, you’re very likely to suffer. You’re suffering. You know, you don’t have the resources
514. 67:35 to take proper care of your kid. So, it’s a chain reaction. It’s societal. It’s not only individual. Then we end up with a proliferation of mental health
515. 67:46 issues and disorders, not only narcissism, but anxiety and depression. And I mean the the biggest group of
516. 67:53 mentally ill people are under the age of 25. Wow. And for the first time in recorded
517. 68:00 history, young people are much less optimistic and much less happy than people my age.
518. 68:07 I’m 65. Wow. Much less. For the first time in recorded history, even in the Great
519. 68:13 Depression, younger people were more way more optimistic than older people. Even
520. 68:19 in the Second World War, even the Holocaust, oh my god, we have diaries of young people in the Holocaust like Anna Frank, others, they’re optimistic diaries.
521. 68:30 Young people are optimistic by definition because they don’t know life very well. Yeah. Yeah.
522. 68:36 You know, they don’t evaluate risk very well. They don’t have the brain. The brain is not fully formed, not fully developed. So they’re optimistic by
523. 68:42 definition. They’re delusional in many ways. But here we are and it’s the first time in human history that young people
524. 68:49 are more I mean dramatically more pessimistic than old people old people. It’s a bad situation out
525. 68:56 there and I don’t think we can raise children appropriately anymore. Wow. That’s so interesting. So I know you
526. 69:03 mentioned that there is hope for narcissistic abuse to fully heal. Does it matter how long they were in a relationship with a narcissist? So would you say that narcissists can
527. 69:16 also heal? No. Or is that like a death? Because narcissism is the narcissist.
528. 69:23 It’s again something which is politically correct. You’re not supposed to call someone with narcissistic personality disorder a narcissist
529. 69:29 because there is the person and there is the disorder. That’s complete nonsense.
530. 69:35 The narcissist is his disorder. You take away the disorder, there’s nobody there.
531. 69:42 Same with borderline. They are the disorder. So the problem with the narcissistic personality disorder is that possibly it’s genetic and involves brain abnormalities in which case of course it’s not treatable. But even if it’s if even if we somehow discover in
532. 69:59 the future that I’m wrong and it’s not genetic and it’s not you know and we teach all mothers to be wonderful
533. 70:05 mothers and excellent mothers and so on so forth and then still we have you know a few bad mothers and we have a few narcissists. Narcissism is what the DSM
534. 70:14 calls all pervasive. Narcissis is everything. It’s the way you go to work you function
535. 70:20 in the workplace. It’s the way you have intimate relationships. It’s the way you see yourself. It’s the way you see the
536. 70:26 world. It’s a it’s a rejection of reality in favor of fantasy. It’s the inability to tell apart external
537. 70:33 objects, other people from internal object. It’s it’s the totality of what
538. 70:39 it means to be human. It’s a lack of empathy. It’s inability to access positive emotions. Where to start? If
539. 70:45 you want to heal or cure, where to start? There’s no what you can accomplish in
540. 70:51 therapy. And we have quite a few treatment modalities, quite a few types of psychotherapy that are pretty
541. 70:57 effective in accomplishing this. You can modify some abrasive and some antisocial
542. 71:04 behaviors of narcissists. Mhm. And if the treatment is repeated often enough, the modification is lifelong. So the this you can accomplish. You can make the narcissist for example less
543. 71:16 aggressive, less verbally abusive, less antagonistic, less conflict prone, less
544. 71:22 defiant, less reckless. All this can be accomplished so that it’s more pleasant
545. 71:28 to coexist with someone like that. Possibly even it’s more pleasant to have a relationship with someone like that.
546. 71:34 So you can remove the jagged a edges, you can remove the, you know, the things
547. 71:40 that bother other people, right? But the core is there. For example, the narcissist would never ever
548. 71:46 develop empathy. End of story. Okay. The narcissist would never ever be able to be grounded in reality. He needs the fantasy is is a lifeline. He he cannot
549. 71:57 survive in reality. He’s delusional. It’s a delusional and according to many very important
550. 72:04 scholars is it’s a form of psychosis. So it’s really the narcissist is really
551. 72:10 really sick. Another myth online is that ah narcissism is not mental illness. It’s a personality disorder. Right? That’s not what we believe. That’s how
552. 72:21 we think. Otto Hberg who is the father of the field. He he insisted that
553. 72:27 narcissism is is a form of psychosis or on the verge of psychosis. But pathological narcissism and especially narcissistic personality disorder is a severe mental illness. It’s not only a
554. 72:39 mental illness. This is severe form of mental illness. Second only to schizophrenia maybe.
555. 72:45 Wow. So I mean give it a break. Everyone is trying to humanize the narcissist or
556. 72:51 minimize the narcissist or or demonize the narcissist which is equally wrong. You know the narcissist are evil. They they gaslight the future fake. All this is not true.
557. 73:03 The narcissist is delusional. He’s sick simply. He is not able to tell the
558. 73:09 difference between reality and fantasy. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. You know when he tells you when he makes you
559. 73:15 a promise in his demented mind, in his sick mind, he has every intention of keeping it.
560. 73:21 Right? When he insists that something is real, he believes it to be real. He’s not lying to you. He’s not deceiving you.
561. 73:27 He’s not manipulating you. He believes it to be real. It happens to be unreal. It happens to be not real. Happens to be
562. 73:34 total nonsense, but he doesn’t know it. Right. So, there’s a lot of wrong information
563. 73:41 and a lot of conflation, confusion of narcissists and psychopaths. Psychopaths
564. 73:47 are really evil, really dangerous people. It’s not a narcissist. The narcissist is a child who got stuck at a
565. 73:55 very early stage. Therefore, didn’t develop adult skills and adult
566. 74:01 psychoynamics and adult dimensions of a personality. It’s unable to cope with reality. It’s a kid. So lives in fantasy
567. 74:09 and tries to drag you into the fantasy because he’s looking for a mother. He’s looking for a mommy. So he tries to drag
568. 74:16 you into the fantasy. And he would do anything to drag you into the fantasy. Yes. Including damage you, including abuse you. He wants to coersse you into the fantasy because he is in panic. He’s
569. 74:28 desperate. He’s grieving. He’s terrified. He’s fragile. He’s vulnerable. He needs a mommy. And if you
570. 74:35 refuse to be his mommy, he will punish you. And if you deviate from the mommy image or maternal contours, he will
571. 74:42 punish you. And if you challenge him and undermine his capacity to survive by pretending, by lying, by fantasizing, he will punish you. There’s a lot. It’s very punitive process. I agree. But it’s
572. 74:54 not because a narcissist is this demon evil reincarnation of the devil. It’s not because of it. It’s on the very contrary. It’s because a narcissist is so so unskilled at life, so incapable of
573. 75:10 coping with life that he has to as a parasite use your capacity, your skills,
574. 75:19 your access to reality, your ability to live. The narcissist lives through you
575. 75:25 vicariously by proxy. He exists through you. You become a vessel, a container.
576. 75:34 So, and then many victims would say no to this unepetizing proposition and that
577. 75:41 infuriates the narcissist. This in the narcissist’s mind, there’s no harmony bigger and no love greater than mother and child. And the fantasy, as far as
578. 75:53 the narcissist is concerned, is not an incarceration cell. The fantasy is Disneyland. Then why would you not come to my fantasy and be my mommy? Says the narcissist. That means you’re evil. Rejecting me, you’re evil. You need to
579. 76:08 be punished. Yeah, that’s more or less what goes on in the narcissist mind.
580. 76:15 This uh this this talk today really validated my whole experience with a
581. 76:21 narcissist. Like I’ve it was such a ride, Lord. Um, so as we wrap this up, I
582. 76:27 would like to ask or gauge your your um your perspective. So for women listening
583. 76:35 who may feel broken or disbelieved, what truth do you want them to hold on to
584. 76:41 about healing and value even in the face of narcissistic abuse? Well, first of all, let’s start by
585. 76:47 setting the record straight. Half of all narcissists are women. Oh, right. Again, again, there’s a lot of misinformation online, and I will explain where this misinformation came from. And everyone says most majority of
586. 76:58 Nazaris are men. And this misinformation comes from old old editions of the
587. 77:05 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual dating back to to the year 2000. And in the old edition of the DSM, they they wrote that 75% of narcissists are
588. 77:16 men. This is no longer the case. That’s not what the DSM says today. The DSM
589. 77:23 today says that 50% are men. Wow. So half of all narcissists are women. We also know it from clinical practice and so on. Similarly, by the way, half of all border lines are men.
590. 77:35 Again, we have gender bias in these because border lines were crazym and they were emotionally disregulated. And the psychiatrist and the psychologist of the time 20 30 years ago, they said this
591. 77:46 cannot be men. Men are strong. men are stable men are you know this male stereotype so this cannot be men and
592. 77:53 they diagnose borderline only in women it’s kind of borderline was kind of the
593. 77:59 successor of hysteria because hysteria was also diagnosed only in women it’s a gender stereotype then half of all women are um
594. 78:10 I would give a very controversial piece of advice I don’t think I don’t think you should
595. 78:16 try to be heard and I don’t think you should try to be seen and I do not think you should try to seek closure.
596. 78:23 Definitely not from the narcissist. That’s a seriously bad idea. Okay. And I don’t think you should vest your
597. 78:31 scarce resources cuz you’re depleted. Yeah, you’re depleted. You have very little to go on. You’re running on fumes. You
598. 78:38 know, I don’t think you should invest the little you have on trying to convince other people the hell with
599. 78:44 other people. You should focus on yourself. Other people come around to your point of view. Great. They don’t. Great. Forget that. Forget this. Focus on number one who you are. Regain your
600. 79:02 identity by separating, individuating and so on. Grow up again. Go through the process of growing up. Regain your
601. 79:09 identity. After that, focus on uh reality. Try to regain access to
602. 79:16 reality. unmediated access. Number three, eliminate and delete the voice of the narcissist in your mind. The introject this you need the help of a therapist to do this.
603. 79:28 Number four, having accomplished the above three, start to reconstruct your life. play place an emphasis on your body, on your well-being and then on your h home and then on your
604. 79:40 neighborhood and then and go in concentric circles, you know, rebuild rebuild your life, rebuild your reality,
605. 79:47 rebuild your environment and so on. And throughout this process, people who doubt you, exclude them. That includes your mother, that includes your
606. 79:58 sister, exclude them. They are not good for you at this stage. You’re not strong enough to deal with
607. 80:04 this. They are doing the abusers’s work. You know what religious people would say
608. 80:10 the devil’s work. They are not good for you. So those people are unable to accept the
609. 80:17 veracity of your experience. They’re unable to share your experience. I understand. They find your experience
610. 80:23 harrowing and and you know I understand they want to avoid you because you know
611. 80:30 you’re the bringer of bad news and you’re always at the beginning you’re always depressed and I understand even then I understand all that but if they begin to invalidate you and doubt you
612. 80:41 and put you down and minimize you and so on they are the enemy they are the enemy and it doesn’t matter what whether they are blood relations or
613. 80:52 You need these people out of your life because they bring toxicity and you need to surround yourself only
614. 80:59 with people who are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt are willing to entertain the possibility that you’re
615. 81:05 telling the truth and regardless of whether they believe you or not offer
616. 81:12 you unconditional full support and sakur and that includes your therapist that includes your best friend maybe whoever a neighbor, a stranger,
617. 81:24 you need to surround yourself with positivity and you need to surround yourself with people who trust you
618. 81:30 because it’s the only way you’re going to regain your ability to trust. If you do not regain your ability to trust, you
619. 81:36 will never ever heal. Wow. Period. Healing is only through
620. 81:42 connecting to other people. Healing demands connectivity. We know multiple studies. It’s it’s
621. 81:49 absolutely the the dogma that you cannot be mentally healed while you’re completely isolated. You can be a loner.
622. 81:57 You can love love being alone. But if I were to isolate you never ever to see another face, you would go crazy. Mental health is a derivative of social
623. 82:08 connectivity, however minimal. And you cannot connect with other people in any meaningful way if you distrust them. if
624. 82:15 you expect the worst, if you’re hypervigilant and so on, right? And so you need to surround, you need to create a circle of trust and within this circle of thrust, you can begin to I’m not saying flourish.
625. 82:28 I’m not saying thrive, but you can begin to reconstruct. It’s a reconstruction process. You are devastated. You are
626. 82:34 scorched earth. Yeah, you’re battle battlefield, you know, and you need to sow the seeds and you need
627. 82:40 it’s and the last thing is have patience. Don’t expect quick results.
628. 82:46 It’ll take years. It’s years. It’s it’s going to take years. No course that you
629. 82:52 buy online, no book, self-help book that you purchase and no interview with this or that professor will help you. It’s
630. 83:00 going to take years because these are integral healing processes. This is like healing of a wound. You can’t speed it up. It’s it’s it take it takes place inside and you have no control over it.
631. 83:12 99% of it is submerged unconscious like an iceberg. There’s nothing you can do. You just
632. 83:18 have to wait. But if you follow these bits and pieces of advice, you’re very likely to to
633. 83:25 heal. Okay? If you don’t, you’re going to delay the healing. Here’s here’s the last nugget.
634. 83:31 Even if you do everything wrong, you will heal. But it’s going to take but it’s going to take much much longer.
635. 83:38 Okay? Much much longer. like could have taken 3 years would take 10 years because you’ve done everything wrong you surrounded yourself with the wrong people started to doubt yourself you develop automatic negative thoughts
636. 83:50 criticizing yourself chastising yourself castigating what could I have done I could have done things differently you
637. 83:57 know I’m the I’m the actually I’m the abuser I I come across many victims who say I think I’m the narcissist you know
638. 84:03 and so if you’re doing everything wrong it’ll take much longer there’s no way to prevent the healing that’s a news.
639. 84:11 Okay, great. Well, Professor Sam, thank you so much for your wisdom and clarity
640. 84:17 today. You’ve given us a framework to understand not only what happens in abusive relationships, but also how those same patterns show up in larger systems that silence and punish survivors. For every women listening, I
641. 84:30 want you to remember your story matters, your voice matters, and you are not alone. healing is possible and together
642. 84:37 we are breaking the silence of narcissist abuse. Stay with us for tomorrow’s session where we’ll continue to expose digital human trafficking, electronic sexual abuse, and the hidden
643. 84:49 systems that keep women bound. Until then, hold on to truth and know that your life cannot be erased. Thank you.
644. 84:57 Thank you for having me. I will stop the recording.