Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. Why Narcissistic Abuse Unlike Any Other (Lecture in University of Applied Sciences, Elbląg, Poland)

1. 00:20 Today we are going to discuss um the topic of narcissistic abuse. The difference between today’s lecture and the previous two lectures is that in the previous two lectures I reviewed the work and the contributions of other people. not my contributions,
2. 00:39 not my scholarship, not my work, but other people’s work over a period of 70 or 80 years. So it was a very wide panoramic view of the contributions to the study of personality disorders. Today I’m going to discuss mostly my contributions. So I’m going to discuss
3. 00:58 mostly my work and you need to know that some of my work has become mainstream and some of my work has been integrated into the study of pathological narcissism and narcissistic abuse. But some of my work is not mainstream. Some of my work is controversial.
4. 01:21 So you need to be very careful after this lecture because you need to check which parts of what I’m saying have become mainstream, have become orthodoxy, have become accepted and which parts are still hotly and widely debated.
5. 01:41 Narcissistic abuse. Why do we need a classification of narcissistic abuse? Why is it not enough to say abuse? People are abused all the time. Why do we need to say narcissistic abuse? Abuse perpetrated only by narcissists. In this lecture, when I use the word
6. 02:03 narcissist, I mean only and exclusively someone diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. Not someone with a narcissistic style. Not someone who is obnoxious. Not someone who is who lacks empathy. Not someone who is unpleasant. People people
7. 02:24 you would not want to get married to or people you would not want to be friends with. Maybe not nice, maybe not kind, but they are not narcissists. Narcissists are only people who’ve been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. The problem nowadays is when
8. 02:43 you had a fight with your neighbor, you say you claimed that the neighbor is a narcissist. When you had a had a big argument with your wife, your wife is of course a narcissist and her husband is a narcissist and everyone is a narcissist. Everyone
9. 02:59 narcissism has become the word you use if you dislike someone, if you don’t like someone. The truth is that narcissists are very rare. People diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder are very rare. Only 1.7% of the general population are diagnosed
10. 03:22 with narcissistic personality disorder. Not six, not 10 like you would find misinformation online. By the way, most of the information online is wrong. not only about narcissism. It’s wrong. Do not rely on artificial intelligence. Do not rely on
11. 03:43 YouTube chat GPT. All this is nonsense. Half the time you will get completely wrong information. And so one of the pieces of wrong information is that narcissism is very common and that there are many narcissists and that you’re surrounded by narcissists and that your whole
12. 04:01 family are narcissist and that you have had relationships with multiple narcissists and so on. And this is extremely likely unlikely. Narcissistic abuse is an attempt to take away your your life, to take away your life force, to take away your separate existence, to negate
13. 04:25 your personal autonomy, your independence, your agency. Narcissistic abuse is not about taking your money. Narcissistic abuse is not about assaulting you sexually. Narcissistic abuse is not about verbally abusing you. That’s not narcissistic abuse. The narcissist
14. 04:46 tries to take away your life force. He tries to convert you into a robot, into an Egyptian mummy. He tries to render you inert, to objectify you, to make you some kind of object. And the reason the narcissist does this is because the narcissist wants you to
15. 05:10 conform to your representation in the narcissist’s mind to the internal object that represents you in the narcissist’s mind as I’ve explained in the first lecture the process of snapshotting. Now, what the narcissist does to you when you’re in an interpersonal relationship
16. 05:33 with a narcissist, when you are the boyfriend of a narcissist, when you’re the girlfriend of a narcissist, when you’re the spouse of a narcissist, when you’re the child of a narcissist, when you are the best friend of a narcissist, when you are the employer of a
17. 05:46 narcissist, the boss, when you are a coworker of a narcissist, whenever you come across someone diagnosed with narcissism, istic personality disorder. They want you to become like them. They want to take away your separateness, your externality, your
18. 06:06 independence, your personal autonomy, your critical thinking, your life force. As I said, your elan vital. They want to deanimate you. They want you to become an object. And they want you to become an object that is very similar to themselves. They want you to become a
19. 06:26 clone, a replica of themselves. Whatever it is the narcissist has experienced as a child, they want to reenact with you. They want a replay of their early childhood experiences with you. And so the narcissist as a child was not allowed to separate mainly from his
20. 06:53 mother or her mother. The narcissist was denied the possibility of separating from the mother and becoming an individual. There was a failure of separation individuation. And so the narcissist does not want you to separate from him or her. The narcissist does not allow you to be
21. 07:15 a separate person, a separate object with your own hopes and dreams and fantasies and emotions and cognitions and fears and expectations. You’re not allowed to have all these. You’re not allowed to be separate from the narcissist because narcissists have
22. 07:33 never experienced separateness. They were not allowed to separate as children. your the narcissist exists in fantasy. Narcissists are divorced from reality. They have what we call impaired reality testing. So they want you to exist inside their own fantasy. We’ll come to it a bit
23. 07:58 later. You are not allowed to interact with reality. You’re not allowed to have a reality testing. Gradually the narcissist isolates you from other people, from your family, from your friends. Why? Because they can provide you with input about reality. And the
24. 08:20 narcissist does not want you to exist in reality. He wants you to be teleported or transported into his fantasy. He wants you to become a figment or an element of his fantasy, an actro actor or actress in his theater production in his movie. Now, from now on, I’m going
25. 08:41 to use the male gender pronoun. I’m going to say he and his. But you should know that half of all narcissists, 50% of all narcissists are women. The narcissist does not have a self. As a small child, as an infant and a toddler, the narcissist was not allowed
26. 09:04 to separate from the mother, to become an individual, to develop a sense of continuity, a core identity. Inside the narcissist, there is nobody, there is nothing. There is an emptiness, a black hole, a vacuum. The narcissist appears to be human,
27. 09:28 appears to be fully functional. Many narcissists are charming. Many narcissists are manipulative. Many narcissists are highly functional, high functioning narcissists. They have skills. They’re pillars of the community. They reached reach high
28. 09:46 positions in society. And yet throughout all this, the narcissist is not in touch with reality. And inside the narcissist, there is a vast emptiness known as the empty skisoid core. The narcissist wants you to be empty as well. The narcissist wants to hollow you
29. 10:10 out. The narcissist wants to take away your core identity. The narcissist wants you to no longer realize who you are, to have no sense of continuity, to have no self, no ego and no ego functions. So the narcissist denies you. Narcissistic abuse is about negation and
30. 10:34 visiation and emptying the other person
31. 10:40 because the narcissist cannot tell the difference between external objects out there in the world and internal objects in here in his mind. He is unable to tell the difference. He cannot make a distinction between people out there and the representations of these people, the
32. 11:01 avatars inside his mind. He cannot tell the difference. And because he cannot tell the difference, he wants you to become an internal object. He wants you to never undermine or challenge or contradict your internal object. the internal object that represents you in the
33. 11:22 narcissist’s mind. So whenever you do something, whenever you say something that challenges or undermines or contradicts the internal object, the narcissist becomes aggressive, abusive, punitive, violent because you are challenging his mind, the internal
34. 11:45 object in the fantastic space that is his mind. You’re not allowed to do this. You’re not allowed to have personal autonomy. You’re not allowed to have a life of your own. You are not external. You’re internal. You should conform 100% to the internal
35. 12:04 object. You should never deviate from it. You should never diverge from it. And so he imposes on you internalization, internality. The narcissist is highly dissociative. He has a lot of memory gaps and lost time. And in order to bridge these memory gaps, the narcissist creates
36. 12:28 narratives, stories known as confabulations. And the narcissist insists that his version of reality with all the memory gaps, with all the lost time, with all the confabulations, with all these stories and narratives, he insists that this is reality.
37. 12:49 and your reality is wrong. It’s a form of gaslighting. The narcissist also has a very complicated relationship with his mother. His mother is usually a dysfunctional mother, not good enough mother, a mother who is insecure, overprotective, a mother who is maybe depressive, maybe
38. 13:15 narcissistic and selfish, maybe psychopathic, neglectful, a mother who is not there. Andre Green, the French psychoanalyst, calls it the dead mother, metaphorically dead mother. And the narcissist as a child failed to have a meaningful relationship with his
39. 13:35 mother. He failed to internalize the mother because the mother was very threatening, was very frightening. And so the narcissist does not have what Jung called the mother archetype. He does not have an internal mother. He cannot mother himself.
40. 13:56 And the only introject of the mother, the only representation of the mother inside the narcissist is a bad mother, a dead mother, the wrong kind of mother, a mother who is an enemy. And so the narcissist spends his entire life looking for another mother psychologically,
41. 14:22 emotionally, mentally. The narcissist is two years old, maybe three years old. Yeah. It’s a two-year-old who can use a computer. It’s a 2-year-old who can give lectures. It’s a 2-year-old who can drive a car. It’s a 2-year-old who watches television
42. 14:43 and has a political opinion and votes. And maybe it’s a 2-year-old who is a political leader or a famous actor or a public intellectual. These are all skills, learned skills. They have nothing to do with emotional maturity, with psychological age.
43. 15:04 And the narcissist is a 2year-old, an advanced narcissist is three years old. And so it’s a two-year-old or a three-year-old in an adult body who is looking for a mother all the time. looking for a mother. And so the narcissist converts everyone
44. 15:27 around him into a maternal figure into a mother’s substitute. When you are having a romantic relationship with the narcissist, an intimate relationship with the narcissist, a friendship with a narcissist, when you collaborate with a narcissist in the workplace, when you
45. 15:46 become the narcissist’s friend or you think you become his friend, when any interaction and any interpersonal relationship with a narcissist, the narcissist wants you to be his mother. He wants you to mother him. is looking for a substitute mother. It’s a child.
46. 16:06 It’s a baby. It’s a 2-year-old. It’s a three-year-old. And so, he tries to convert you into his mother. He imposes on you a maternal role, maternal function. And the narcissist tests you. Are you really a good mother? Do you love me unconditionally? Says the
47. 16:28 narcissist. I’m going to test you. I’m going to abuse you. I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to harm you. Narcissistic abuse. I’m going to do all this, says the narcissist, because I’m testing you. If you are really a good mother, you’re going to love me unconditionally.
48. 16:49 Never mind what I do to you. I can do anything to you. I can engage in the most egregious forms of abuse and you are still going to love me if you are truly a good mother. That is the way the narcissist test you all the time within the fantasy. What is
49. 17:10 the fantasy? It’s a fantasy of I’m the child, you are the mother. We’ll come to it a bit later. The narcissist suffers from cognitive distortions. The narcissist does not perceive reality appropriately. He has an impaired reality testing. And the narcissist has a self-concept,
50. 17:35 not a self, not a self, but a self-concept, a concept about the self, a set of beliefs about the self. The narcissist sees himself as perfect, godlike, omniscient, all knowing, omnipotent, all powerful. The narcissist is perfection rayified. And so this is the narcissist
51. 18:01 self-concept which is a substitute. The narcissist self-concept is a substitute. It’s false. And in object relations theory, we call it false self. And the narcissist goes around soliciting input and feedback from people and asking people, “Am I really godlike?
52. 18:25 Am I really handsome? Am I really perfect? Am I really a genius? Am I really amazing? You tell me. Tell me that I am. Confirm to me that my false self is not false. That it is a self.” And this is a form of cognitive distortion. The narcissist immediately
53. 18:45 rewrites history, reframes reality, selects and filters information and data, and then adopts it like a jigsaw puzzle in order to support the inflated fantastic, grandio, counterfactual, unrealistic self-image, self-concept. And so when you start a relationship
54. 19:16 with a narcissist, any kind of relationship, even in the workplace, even in church, definitely as an intimate partner, when you are born to a narcissist, you are the narcissist child and the narcissist is your mother or your father. At that point, you’re trapped.
55. 19:37 You’re trapped. There’s a spider’s web. You are inside the fantasy and the narcissist is molding you. It’s like the narcissist is like a sculptor and you’re a piece of marble or you are a clay or you’re a party and the narcissist is molding you and shapeshifting you to
56. 19:57 create a replica of himself, a clone, an internal object inside his mind that never ever abandon abandons him. never ever rejects him, never ever doubts him or criticizes him or disagrees with him. An internal object which is compliant and submissive and obey obesent and obsuious.
57. 20:24 Of course, narcissistic abuse takes away your identity, takes away your energy, takes away your very life, renders you an inert object. You are negated. You are you become a shadow of your former self. You don’t recognize yourself anymore. This psychological
58. 20:50 process is known as self estrangement. You are a strange. You’re like a stranger to yourself. And of course, this is a horrible experience. And most victims become depressed and anxious. And most victims of narcissistic abuse are completely disoriented.
59. 21:10 It’s like finding yourself in a movie, The Matrix, maybe. And victims react in a variety of ways. They become aggressive. They dissociate the horrible experience. They develop amnesia or depersonalization or derealization. I discussed it in the
60. 21:30 previous lectures. They feel trapped. They feel hopeless. They feel helpless. It is learned helplessness. And they’re subjected to intermittent reinforcement. The narcissist is hot and cold. I love you. I hate you. Approaching, avoiding. This intermittent reinforcement
61. 21:50 is a form of conditioning. The victim becomes dependent on the narcissist because it is the narcissist who now regulates the victim’s emotions and the victim’s moods. The narcissist has the capacity to make the victim happy. The narcissist is has the capacity to make
62. 22:10 the victim unhappy. The narcissist has the power to make the victim depressed. And the narcissist has the power, the potency to make the victim euphoric. It is the narcissist that regulates the victim’s mind and internal environment from the outside.
63. 22:31 External regulation exactly as the narcissist uses other people to regulate his own internal landscape. And so ultimately the victim suffers what is known today as complex trauma. Complex trauma or complex post-traumatic stress disorder were first suggested by
64. 22:55 Judith Herman in 1992 in Harvard. Complex trauma is a form of post trauma and but it it is a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder that occurs when you are exposed to many traumas many times a day for many many months or years and then you develop a
65. 23:20 trauma but it’s like low intensity simmering background type of trauma complex trauma And literally all victims of narcissistic abuse display signs of trauma and post-traumatic reactions, including, as I mentioned, dissociation. But trauma, ironically, the trauma of the victim
66. 23:49 leads the victim to bond with the narcissist, to attach to the narcissist. Why is that? Because the narcissist is the source of the trauma. So the victim believes that only the narcissist can take the trauma back. The narcissist gave you the trauma. Only
67. 24:12 the narcissist can take the trauma away and the victim becomes bonded to the narcissist because the narcissist is the only medication for the trauma inflicted in the narcissistic abuse phase. The narcissist is hot is cold and only the narcissist can be hot. The
68. 24:35 narcissist is hateful. Only the narcissist can be loving. The narcissist is traumatizing and abusive. Only the narcissist can make it good again. The Germans call it vidmahung making it good again. And so this leads to what is known in the literature as
69. 24:56 trauma bonding or trauma bond or traumatic bond. But there’s another bond which I was the first to describe and that’s the drama bond. The relationship with the narcissist is full of drama, full of excitement, full of thrills and risks and dangers.
70. 25:17 Um, it is full of color. To be with a narcissist is like being on a roller coaster. You never know what’s coming. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s horrible, but it’s always unpredictable and it’s very exciting. And you get addicted to adrenaline. You become an
71. 25:38 adrenaline junkie and you againain bond with a narcissist because it is the narcissist who is the source of all these thrills and all this excitement and all these unpredictability and all these wonderful things are going to happen and all these
72. 25:54 horrible things are going to happen and and you become addicted to it as a victim. You become addicted to it. any other relationships with a normal healthy individual. These relationships look dreary, boring, black and white, no color, colorless. You don’t want that.
73. 26:16 You are addicted to drama now. And you need drama in your life. And the narcissist is a great source of drama.
74. 26:29 the narcissist. When you’re exposed to a narcissist, when you live with a narcissist, when you have children with a narcissist, when you’re good friends with a narcissist, when whenever you’re exposed to a narcissist in the workplace, as a coworker, so on. What the narcissist
75. 26:45 does, he undermines your ability to make sense of the world. He takes away the meaning. He renders your life and your mind meaningless. You can’t make sense of anything. You can’t make sense of other people. And you learn to distrust other people and
76. 27:05 to distrust your capacity to understand other people, to distrust your theory of mind, to distrust your process of mentalization. Similarly, the narcissist isolates you from reality. He removes you, removes you from reality into his fantasy. So you can no longer
77. 27:27 tell the difference. This challenges and undermines your internal working models. You don’t understand a thing anymore about anyone and anything and any event and any development and any figment or element of reality. You’re lost. You’re lost like in a wood in a forest,
78. 27:51 you know, like Henzel and Gretle. And because you are lost, the narcissist becomes your only interface with reality. It is the only person you can trust, the only person who’s going to protect you, the only person who’s going to be there for you. And you become highly
79. 28:09 dependent, codependent in effect on on the narcissist. And the narcissist makes use of many many baits, many many forms of temptation and seduction, many ways to lure you into the fantasy so that you can never exit. For example, the background of the narcissist, the
80. 28:33 personal background of the narcissist is similar to the personal background, personal biography of the victim. Most victims come from dysfunctional families. Most victims have suffered abuse as children. Most victims are broken and damaged. Most victims are
81. 28:54 vulnerable. The narcissist also comes from an identical background, a background of familial dysfunction, a background of abuse, a background of trauma as a child. So you resonate the the narcissist and the victim resonate. The victim feels understood like never before, accepted,
82. 29:21 deciphered, decoded by the narcissist. The narcissist is a twin soul or twin flame, a soulmate, the other half, the longlost other half. And the victim bonds with the narcissist like superglue because the narcissist is a reflection of her is a member of the same family and clan
83. 29:46 of abused children. These are two abused children bonding creating a fantasy together. It’s very difficult to break. Very difficult to break. And when the narcissist ultimately devalues the victim, discards the victim, usually cruy, the victim perceives it as betrayal.
84. 30:12 And there was there’s a psychologist Jennifer Fried and she described betrayal blindness followed by betrayal trauma. Breaking up with a narcissist is always highly traumatic. Even if you initiated the breakup because there’s a lot of betrayal involved. I will discuss it
85. 30:36 when we discuss grief. I’m going to dedicate the first half of the lecture to what the narcissist does to you and then I’m going to dedicate the second half of the lecture to how you can recover, how you can heal from this. enormous trauma. The victims try to make sense of what’s
86. 31:02 happening to them to the gradual disappearance of the self. The gradual dissipate, the incremental dissipation of the core identity, the sense of I am not me anymore. I don’t recognize myself anymore. Self-estrangement, the bizarre acts, the declining empathy.
87. 31:23 The victims try to make sense of all this and sometimes the victims react in ways which are which exacerbate the abuse, enhance the fantasy or are very self-defeating ways. For example, some victims regard the whole situation as a morality
88. 31:48 play. The victims say, “I’m a an angel. The narcissist is a demon.” The narcissist is all bad. I’m all good. This is, of course, a splitting defense mechanism. Splitting defense mechanism is when you regard other people as all bad or all good, all right, or all
89. 32:12 wrong. It’s a primitive defense mechanism and it’s a very crucial clinical feature of pathological narcissism. So the victims cast themselves as all good. Narcissist is all bad. And of course this is very a very bad idea because if you are all good then you
90. 32:33 would never take responsibility for what has happened. You would never recognize your contributions as a victim. You would never realize what you have done wrong and you are doomed to repeat it later on in your life. Another mechanism of coping with a
91. 32:50 traumatic situation or traumatic fantasy. Another mechanism the victim adopts victims adopt is to self aggrandise to make themselves important and chosen and special and unique and amazing and fascinating. So they say the narcissist chose me or I
92. 33:08 am an empath. I’m super kind, super nice. My empathy levels off the charts and so on and so forth. This is a narcissistic defense. It’s a form of grandiosity. Another way that victims react which is dysfunctional and not good is when victims deny all responsibility. They say
93. 33:32 this has happened to me. The narcissist has happened to me. I didn’t do anything to deserve this. I have no contribution. I have no responsibility. I should not be held accountable. I didn’t do anything. The narcissist is like a force of nature. It’s like a flaw or hurricane.
94. 33:53 You know, I was just there. I was just standing there and things happened to me. I am not responsible. And this has a name. This is a clinical name by the way. It’s called the tendency for interpersonal victimhood, TIV. You can read articles, studies
95. 34:11 about this tendency published by Gabby and others starting in 2020. And so the victim begins to be competitive with other victims. The victim says, “My abuse, the abuse I’ve experienced is the worst ever. My abuser was the most egregious abuser. There’s
96. 34:32 competitive victimhood taking place and there’s a sense of entitlement. I’m an I’m an abuser. I deserve things. I have rights and you have obligations to cater to my needs. All these and I’m giving you just a a taste. All these are very dysfunctional ways of reacting to a
97. 34:54 state of traumatizing victimhood within a fantasy. The very dysfunctional generally many victims develop victimhood mentality. Their identity becomes the identity of a victim. They are only a victim. They are nothing else. Just a victim. And if you
98. 35:16 render yourself, just a victim, then you will remain a victim for life. And you will attract predators because predators, narcissists, psychopaths, they sense your victimhood. It’s like blood in the water. It’s like a signal. If you maintain your
99. 35:37 victimhood, you will keep attracting these kind of people, these kind of abusers into your life time and again. You need to regain your power. You need to regain your agency. You need to assume responsibility for the mistakes you have made. And you if you’re a
100. 35:55 victim, you have made mistakes. You have committed to wrong choices and wrong decisions. You have had contributions to what has happened. It’s a dance macabra. It’s a tango. It takes two. And yet very few victims are willing or able to confront these realities. Very few.
101. 36:20 The last point I would like to make before I discuss the shared fantasy of the narcissist is that when you team up with a narcissist, especially in an intimate relationship of any kind, when you team up with a narcissist, the narcissist infantilizes you. The
102. 36:42 narcissist regresses you by taking away your power, by taking away your identity, by absconding with your agency, by rendering you dependent instead of independent, by destroying your personal autonomy, you become a baby. You become an infant. When you are in a relationship with a
103. 37:06 narcissist within the fantasy, you are a child. You are regressed. You’re infantilized. You’re unable to think the way an adult thinks. The narcissist wants to wants to keep you this way. The longer you are an infant, the longer you are dependent on
104. 37:26 the narcissist, the less likely you are to abandon the narcissist. the less likely you are to wake up to the fact that you are a cult member, a member of a cult and the narcissist is a cult leader. Indeed, all the psychological mechanisms the narcissist uses within
105. 37:46 the shared fantasy are identical to the mechanisms used in a cult. These are cult-like mechanisms and the narcissist tries to create what is known in psychology as a cult mind. in the victim. I keep mentioning the shared fantasy. Now remember this lecture is about my
106. 38:09 contributions. Some of which have been accepted, some of which have not been accepted yet. I hope so. You need to take everything I’m saying with a grain of salt in the sense that you need to do your own research. Never trust someone who is an authority. This is not the way
107. 38:30 to do science. This is not the way to become an intellectual. This is not the way to truly graduate. Doubt everyone everyone all the time first and foremost your teachers. So I am now going to describe to you the shared fantasy. It is my contribution
108. 38:52 but it is based on the work of another person. Like everything else in in science or everything else in learning always base yourself on other people’s work. So in 1989 there was a psychologist his name was Sander Ser and Sander came up with a construct of
109. 39:14 the shared fantasy. Sanders suggested that sometimes people team up together and create a fantasy which in which both of them participate. Both of them participate in the fantasy. Both of them adhere to the fantasy. Both of them believe in the fantasy. Both of
110. 39:33 them function within the fantasy according to the rules of the fantasy. Both of them accept the narrative of the fantasy. The fantasy becomes their reality. Now Sander suggested the the concept of shared fantasy but way before fander we were aware in psychology of similar
111. 39:52 situations. They were called fad in French madness in Tusan and after that it was called shared psychosis. And today by the way in the diagnostic and statistical manual there is a diagnostic category of mass psychoggenic illness. Mass psychoggenic illness.
112. 40:13 Clinically speaking the shared fantasy is a mass psychogenic psychoggenic illness. Now what is the shared fantasy? The shared fantasy is a movie. The shared fantasy is a theater play. The shared fantasy is a story. The shared fantasy is a narrative. It’s a piece of fiction.
113. 40:34 The narcissist comes to you and says, “Hello, your life sucks. Reality is horrible. You don’t like your life. You don’t like reality. I have an alternative for you. And my alternative is exciting. My alternative is amazing. My alternative
114. 40:54 is addictive. My alternative will make all your dreams come true. In my alternative, nothing bad ever happens. In my alternative to reality, I will protect you. I will save you. I will rescue you. I will be there for you always like a rock. I will regulate you
115. 41:13 from the outside. I will control your moods and your emotions. You will not need to make any decision anymore. I will make all the decisions and if anything goes wrong, it’s my fault and my responsibility. In short, the narcissist offers you to become a child.
116. 41:32 And it’s very, very tempting for reasons which I will explain in a minute. First of all, if someone gives you a second chance at being a child, who would refuse? Reality really sucks. Reality is horrible, especially nowadays. So, if someone offers you an alternative to
117. 41:52 reality, why wouldn’t you take it? Most of you in this room spend most of your time already not in reality. For example, you’re watching movies, don’t you? That’s not reality. You’re playing video games. That’s not reality. You’re playing multiplayer games on the
118. 42:16 internet or via the internet. That’s not reality. You’re reading books. That’s not reality. Actually, if you look at yourself very carefully, including the time you spend on social media and so on, most of your life is spent not in reality. And so what the narcissist offers to you
119. 42:40 sounds plausible and reasonable. Anyhow, you’re not in reality, so why not? And you accept. And within the shared fantasy, the narcissist offers you a drug. Drugs. These are mental drugs, psychological drugs. Yes, not physical drugs. But the narcissist
120. 43:01 offers you some things which are highly addictive. I will mention a few of them. One of them is what I call the hall of mirrors. The hall of mirrors. What the narcissist does in the initial stages of the of the shared fantasy, the narcissist idealizes you. He creates an
121. 43:24 internal object, an avatar, a snapshot of you, a photograph of you that is then photoshopped and you become ideal. The you become perfect in the narcissist mind. Narcissist tells you, “You’re amazing. You’re a genius. You are drop deadad gorgeous. I have never had such
122. 43:47 an experience before. I love you like I’ve le never loved anyone else, etc., etc.” You see yourself through the narcissist’s gaze. You see yourself through the narcissist’s eyes as perfect, as ideal, as blemishless, as flawless. And you fall in love. You fall in love
123. 44:11 with your ideal image. You fall in love with yourself. You experience self-love, self-infatuation, self lirance. The narcissist shows you yourself in a way that you’re completely lovable.
124. 44:31 And it is only the narcissist that can give you can grant you access to this idealized image of yourself. If you want to see yourself as gorgeous, as intelligent, as amazing, as unique, as unprecedented, if you want to see yourself as a perfect entity,
125. 44:55 a goddess or a god, if you want to see yourself this way, you can see yourself this way only through the narcissist’s gaze, only through the narcissist’s eyes. He has a monopoly on your idealized version. And gradually you fall in love with this
126. 45:14 version and you can’t live without it. You get addicted. You get addicted to this. You get addicted to seeing yourself through the narcissist’s gaze, through his eyes. And this is the whole of mirrors. Another way the narcissist gets you addicted, bonded, attached. Another way
127. 45:36 the narcissist intoxicates you so that you can never walk away is the dual mothership. Dual mothership is the narcissist makes a contract, creates a contract with you. This contract is unspoken but it is the foundation of the shared fantasy. The
128. 45:54 shared fantasy is transactional and it’s contractual. And one of the elements of the contract, one of the articles in the contract is, I’m going to be your mother, says the narcissist. You’re going to be my mother. We are going to be each other’s mothers.
129. 46:12 You my intimate partner, you my best friend, you my child, you my boss, you my coworker, you my pastor in the church, you are going to be my mother. You’re going to function like a mother. You’re going to accept me unconditionally. You’re going to love me
130. 46:31 unconditionally. You’re going to nurture me. You’re going to pamper me. You’re going to protect me. You’re going to be my mother, says the narcissist. What am I giving you in return for this? I’m going to be your mother. I’m going to love you unconditionally. I’m going
131. 46:48 to accept you as you’ve never accepted been accepted before. I’m going to understand you like you have never been understood by anyone. I’m going to protect you. I’m going to make you feel safe. I’m going to provide you with a secure base, a rock. I’m
132. 47:04 going to always be there for you like a mother. I’m going to idealize you the way a mother idealizes her newborn. So, I’m going to be your mother, says the narcissist, and you’re going to be my mother. We’re going to be each other’s mothers. We’re going to give each other
133. 47:21 a second chance at childhood with a proper path with a proper tra trajectory including separation individuation. This is an irresistible proposition. There is not a human being alive who wouldn’t want to have a second chance, especially a second chance at a happy
134. 47:45 functional childhood. And so these are examples of what the narcissist offers you in the shared fantasy of the hidden unwritten non-verbal contract that you are signing with your blood. And the shared fantasy unfolds inexurably. It is a mechanism. The shared fantasy is
135. 48:09 a device. It’s a machinery piece of machinery and it consumes the narcissist and you. You and the narcissist, you are nothing but bolts or cogs or wheels in this machine. The machine is bigger than you, stronger than you. Inex inexorable. Narcissist cannot say no to the machine.
136. 48:31 The narcissist cannot stop the machine. The narcissist cannot change the machine’s way of functioning. Narcissist can do nothing to the machine because the narcissist does not exist. The machine exists and the machine has several phases and several stages.
137. 48:50 The shed fantasy starts when the narcissist spots you. He spots you as a potential partner, potential victim. He prays. He’s a predator. So, he prays on you. Remember when I say narcissist, it is someone with narcissistic personality disorder. So he spots you and then he auditions
138. 49:12 you. There’s an audition. So he goes to a pub. He goes to a pub. You are in the pub. He’s in the pub. He sees you from across the counter far away. He spots you. You are target. You are It’s like a laser a laser finder. There’s a you’re in the crosshairs.
139. 49:31 He spots you and then he comes to you physically and he auditions you. He auditions you. He puts you through various situations. He says all kinds of things. He behaves in ways that puts you put you to the test. You’re being tested. Can you be idealized?
140. 49:53 Maybe, I don’t know, you’re too ugly. Maybe you’re too stupid. There’s no way to idealize you. So you you won’t be included in the fantasy. You don’t get the job. It’s like a job interview. Can you be idealized? Can you provide the narcissist with the
141. 50:10 four S’s? The four S’s are sex, supply, narcissistic and sadistic. Supply is another word for attention, services, and stability or safety like a mother should. Can you provide two of these four? So, can you be idealized? Can you provide these two? And are you
142. 50:29 vulnerable? Are you broken? Are you damaged? Are you needy? Are you frightened? The narcissist has something that I I was the first to describe called empathy. Cold empathy is a combination of cognitive empathy and reflexive empathy, animal empathy without the effective emotional
143. 50:52 component. So when the narcissist comes to you, he scans you like a scanner, like an MRI. He scans you and he spots immediately all your weaknesses, all your vulnerabilities, everything you hope and dream and fantasize about, all your fears. He makes a map of you. How broken are
144. 51:17 you? How damaged are you? How vulnerable are you? How open are you to attack? How how how much of a prey are you? He’s a predator. Are you bleeding? This is the auditioning phase. And having spotted your vulnerabilities, the narcissist proceeds and he proceeds by exposing you to
145. 51:41 himself as a child. He shows you his inner child. He shows you the fact that he’s 2 years old or three years old. He makes you protective. Anyone, men or woman, when they are exposed to a baby, they become protective. So he renders you protective. That’s the
146. 52:00 next stage. He exposes you to his childlike side and then he resonates with you. You’re wounded. You’re damaged. The narcissist is wounded and damaged. You come from a dysfunctional background. He comes from a dysfunctional background. You maybe are a bit of a freak or not
147. 52:22 accepted. He’s the same. He resonates with you. He becomes your soulmate. The other half, the twin flame, call it as you wish, he resonates with you. And then having resonated with you, he idealizes you. The first stage in the cycle within the shed fantasy is idealization.
148. 52:42 He creates an image of you in his mind which is perfect. Perfection in every way. Physically, mentally, intellectually, you’re perfect. You’re superior. You’re amazing. You’re incredible. You’re unprecedented. Nobody like you. Has never been anybody like
149. 52:58 you. And he communicates this to you. He’s telling you this. He’s telling you, “Wow, I have never seen I’ve never met anyone like you. I I must be in your life.” And it’s irresistible. It’s irresistible to you because very few people would tell you that
150. 53:18 you’re perfect. Very few people would subject you to the laser focused attention that the narcissist does. So he idealizes you but he’s idealizes you and at the same time he’s idealizing himself. You are like a flashy car. It’s like owning owning a Ferrari. If you own a
151. 53:38 Ferrari, it says something about you. So he renders you perfect. He renders you ideal. And at the same time, because he owns you, he possesses you. You’re an internal object, not external, because you’re part of his mind. By virtue of your perfection,
152. 53:58 it makes him perfect. By virtue of your of your ideal nature, it renders the narcissist ideal. And this is co- idealization. Narcissist idealizes you mainly actually to idealize himself. He starts to lovebomb you. He creates a snapshot of you. The snapshot is my term but the
153. 54:24 clinical term is introject. He creates a he introjects you and then having introjected you now there’s an internal image internal object an imago that represents you in the outside in his mind and then he photoshops it. He idealizes it and now he has an idealized
154. 54:45 avatar of you, an idealized icon of you, an idealized picture of you in his mind and he starts to lovebomb you. Lovebombing is incessant, usually verbal communication and various acts that communicate to you that you are being loved, you are lovable, and
155. 55:10 that the love given to you is unprecedented. You have never been loved like this before. And the narcissist has never loved like this before. This is love without equal. This is the love bombing phase. The lovebombing phase as usual with narcissist is not about you. It’s about
156. 55:32 the narcissist. He’s trying to convince himself that you are worthy of idealization and the shared fantasy. These are the initial phases of the shared fantasy and they are followed in due time by the exact opposite. You’ve been idealized. Now you’re devalued.
157. 55:56 You’ve been acquired. Now you have been discarded. Everything is ex everything reverses. Fast forward. You’re actually going backward. Everything is reversed and you’re out of the shed fantasy. You’re expelled like the Garden of Eden. Even Adam, Adam expels Eve in the shed
158. 56:18 fantasy and remains in the Garden of Eden. Why the narcissist does this? Why does he devalue someone who who he has idealized not long before? Why is the need to devalue? Why is the need to discard you, to throw you away, to break up with you, to dump
159. 56:37 you? Why? Why is it compulsive? Because it is a reenactment of the narcissist relationships with his mother. Remember in the shared fantasy you are the narcissist’s mother. You’re the maternal figure and with the original mother the narcissist was unable to separate
160. 57:02 unable to become individual. So now with this new mother you he wants to separate. He wants to become an individual. He’s replaying, he’s reenacting the early childhood trauma and and abuse and lack of separation individuation with you as the new
161. 57:21 mother, as the standin mother, as a replacement mother, as a substitute mother. You’re going to be his mother. You would love him unconditionally, but you would also let him go. You will allow him to separate and to individuate. And the only way to do
162. 57:36 this, he needs to let you go. He needs to get rid of you. And this is the reason for separation individuation. There’s another phase known as hoovering. I will not go go into it right now. Okay. This is what the narcissist does to you from narcissistic abuse through idealization
163. 57:57 to devaluation within a shared fantasy. The impacts on you as a victim are enormous. enormous impacts, catastrophic impacts, devastating mentally, especially mentally and psychologically, but also definitely physically. The outcomes and the adverse
164. 58:20 consequences of being in a relationship with a narcissist are impossible to exaggerate. Dozens of symptoms, dozens of dysfunctions and disruptions and deficiencies, and it’s really, really bad. It’s a really bad situation and you need to recover. You need to
165. 58:42 heal. And this is the topic of the rest of the lecture. Can you recover and how to recover and to heal from this um from this horrible
166. 58:56 experience? So the first thing to the first thing to realize is that you have been betrayed. The shared fantasy is a series of proclamations, a series of announcements, a series of uh commitments, verbalized commitments, explicit, a series and a contract.
167. 59:21 There’s been a contract there. And yet the narcissist abrogates, breaks his word and his promises and you feel betrayed. But you don’t only feel betrayed, you also grieve. You’re in a state of grief. Mourning. You’re mourning. In a minute, I’ll tell you what you’re mourning. But
168. 59:44 you’re in a state of what we call today prolonged grief. It’s a grief that doesn’t go away. It’s a kind of mourning and grieving that is with you all the time. Time passes, you’re still grieving. There are new people in your life, you’re still grieving.
169. 60:04 You talk to yourself. You say, “I shouldn’t grieve. It was a bad experience.” You’re still grieving. You go to a therapist after $20,000 and 200 sessions. You’re still grieving. The grief is with you. And the grief is with you because in the
170. 60:21 aftermath of narcissistic abuse there is prolonged complex grief. You’re grieving not only one thing, you’re grieving multiple things simultaneously. First of all, you remember that the narcissist has converted you into a mother figure, into a maternal figure. So by implication,
171. 60:45 the narcissist became your child. So you’re grieving the loss of this child. You’re grieving as a mother in the aftermath of narcissistic abuse and the shared fantasy. You are grieving the breakup. You’re grieving the dissolution of the bond. You are grieving the having
172. 61:06 been dumped and discarded. As a mother, a mother who has lost her child. There’s no grief worse than this. And yet this is what you’re experiencing. But that’s only one thing. You remember the dual mothership principle. You have been you have become the narcissist’s mother. The
173. 61:26 narcissist has become your mother. You have been mothering each other. Dual mothership. So you have lost not only your child, you have lost your mother. A mother who has loved you within the shared fantasy unconditionally, who has always been there for you,
174. 61:45 overprotective and safe and secure and accepting and affectionate and compassionate and empathic. You’ve lost her. So now you’re grieving along two trajectories. You’re grieving your child and you’re grieving your mother. But you’re also, of course, grieving the relationship
175. 62:05 as it was. You tend to remember the good moments. This is a well doumented phenomenon in psychology. We tend to remember the good times. Uh retroactive or retrospective rosy tinted glasses. And you also grieve what could have been
176. 62:28 the potential of the relationship. your how you imagined the relationship, the development of a relationship, the fantasy you had you’ve had about the relationship. You are grieving the fantasy. Of course, you are grieving the losses. You’re grieving the potential.
177. 62:41 You are grieving your lost identity because you no longer know who you are. Yeah. You are grieving um the loss of innocence, the inability to trust. You are grieving the loss of your lover, of a lover. There are so many layers of grief that I tend to call the
178. 63:04 whole process archaeological grief. It’s like engaging in archaeology. Layer after layer after layer after layer and of course you can’t recover. You can’t recover from so many types of grief which afflict you simultaneously. Grief is a major problem in the
179. 63:25 aftermath and treatment of victims of narcissistic abuse along with the betrayal. The third major problem is the narcissist introject. The narcissist uses a technique that had been has been first discovered 12 years ago. 12 years ago there was a series of studies in neuroscience.
180. 63:50 They measured the brain waves of a rock band. Rock bands. So they measured the brain waves of the drummer and the basist and the singer and all of them. All of them were connected to EEG machines and they measured and recorded their brain waves while they were playing as a
181. 64:09 band. They were playing some kind of song or something as a band. And that gave rise to an amazing shocking discovery. The brains of all the members of the rock band synchronized 100%. All the brain waves of all the participants in the concert were the same.
182. 64:37 The the researchers, the experimentalists, the scientists could not tell the difference. Whose brain was it? Because all the waves became one. The members of the rock band became a single brain, one brain. And this is known as entrainment. The
183. 64:59 clinical term for this is entrainment. Initially the belief was that entrainment happens only in music. But today we know that this is not true. Entrainment is a brain reaction. It’s neuroscience. It’s not a conspiracy theory and it’s not a crazy theory of
184. 65:21 mine. That’s neuroscience. Now, we know that brain waves synchronize when there is exposure to repetitive structured sound, any sound including language. And now we are beginning to understand the use of mantra, mantras in the east. The use of mantras in meditation.
185. 65:48 Any sound that is structured and repeats itself synchronizes the brain waves of everyone who is exposed to the sound. Why am I giving you this long lecture about neuroscience? Because that’s exactly what the narcissist does. The narcissist entrains you and trains the
186. 66:10 victim. The narcissist uses repetitive phrases. Some of them abusive, some of them not, but repetitive time and again, time and again, time and again. It’s almost hypnosis, almost hypnotic and synchronizes his brain waves with your brain waves as a victim. He entrains
187. 66:32 you. He uses entrainment. Verbal abuse and trains actually. And then the narcissist whose brain waves are now identical to your brain waves gains access to your brain, gains access to your mind, of course. And what the narcissist does, I’m going
188. 66:55 to use a metaphor. He installs an app. Think of your brain as a smartphone, iPhone 16. So the narcissist comes into your iPhone and installs an app, an application, and this app is the introject of the narcissist. The narcissist exposes you to
189. 67:18 entrainment through which he installs in your mind an extension of himself. He invades your mind like a parasite and he lives there a Trojan horse, an introject. The problem with this is that the introject of the narcissist is usually negative.
190. 67:40 It’s an introject that wants to destroy you, to kill you, to take you down. It’s a hostile intro and it tends to collaborate with other introjects in your mind that have the same message and the same propensity and predelection. So for example, if you have in your mind an
191. 67:59 introject of your mother who keeps telling you that you are a you’re stupid, you’re ugly, you’re a loser, you’re unlovable. That’s your mother. Your mother introject the narcissist introject will collaborate with your mother introject and this will amplify the internally
192. 68:22 negative message. The negative messaging will amplify what stretchy in the 30s called the primitive super ego. The internalized bed object to use klein. So the narcissist invades your mind through entrainment installs an application. the introject and that
193. 68:42 application creates a coalition or a cluster of other in negative introjects in order to attack you from the inside. That’s the third major problem. Now, is it hopeless? No. Actually, the prognosis for victims of narcissistic abuse is excellent. It’s very good.
194. 69:11 But there are some conditions you need to do some things. Some of the things you need to do are homework. You need to do them alone by yourself long before you go to therapy. Some of things you can do only with help, preferably professional help. If you
195. 69:29 cannot afford professional help than a good friend or your or your grandmother. You need to seek other people’s help. Professional structured help is of course the best. In other words, therapy. So now I will go into the healing and recovery process. Bear in mind
196. 69:49 everything I told you. The grief, the betrayal, and the Trojan horse the narcissist introject in your mind that is sabotaging you, attacking you, undermining you from the inside relentlessly, callously, hatefully, cruy. It’s an enemy. So the first thing I would like to
197. 70:12 describe is an overall framework and that is what I call the nine-fold path to healing. It has nine elements not surprisingly
198. 70:27 and these elements are divided to three groups. The first group has to do with the body, second group has to do with the mind and the third group has to do with functioning. Start with the body. It is a common mistake to neglect the body. Vessel Vander Kulk who is a major trauma
199. 70:49 expert wrote a brilliant book which I strongly recommend. The body keeps the score. Your trauma is stored in your body. That’s the container of your trauma. That’s the container of your bad experiences. That’s a repository of the horror you’ve gone through as a victim.
200. 71:08 and your body acts out. You are somatizing your memories. You’re somatizing your fears. Everything becomes somatic. You need to pay attention to your body. You need to take care of it. So the first three elements have to do with the body. Actually, forget for a minute about your
201. 71:25 mind. Forget your mind for a minute. Its turn will come. Start with your body. Pay attention to it. Regulate it and protect it. Normally eat well and healthy, exercise, all this. But to divide the behaviors is pay attention, be alert, notice what’s
202. 71:49 happening, regulate your body and protect it. Now, having done this for a while, you can transition to your mind. And when it comes to your mind, be authentic. When I say be authentic, identify the voice in your mind. We all have an internal dialogue. Well, 95% of us, 5%
203. 72:11 do not have an internal dialogue, by the way. Okay? But most of us have an internal dialogue. Listen to this dialogue. Listen. There are voices in your mind and they’re speaking to you. No, it doesn’t mean you’re psychotic. Everyone has it. These are introjects.
204. 72:25 It’s your mother’s voice, your father’s voice, a teacher’s voice, someone from the mass media. Voices are talking to you all the time. Listen to these voices. Learn to identify which of these voices is you and which of these voices is not you. And I will help you how to
205. 72:45 identify. I will give you a rule of thumb. If the voices are negative, if they’re harshly critical, if you want, they want to take you down. They are not your voices. Your voices, your authentic voice is friendly. Your authentic voice loves you. Your authentic voice has your best
206. 73:05 interest in mind, your well-being, your welfare. Learn to identify this voice. Delete, ignore, repress, bury, shut up all the other voices. Be authentic. Next thing, be positive. Deceive yourself. Tell yourself every morning positive things. Read positive
207. 73:27 lists time and again, morning, afternoon, evening, all the time. Surround yourself with positivity. Yes, I’m saying deceive yourself. Tell yourself things that you don’t believe in, but they’re positive. Tell yourself things, convince yourself of things that
208. 73:45 you know for absolute with absolute certainty will never happen. Still poison yourself with positivity. It works. And the last thing with the with the mind is mindfulness. Ground yourself in the present. Try to forget about the past or not to consider the past and try not to plan
209. 74:07 for the future for a while. For a while while you’re healing, while you’re recovering, be grounded. Think only about the present. Nothing you can do about the past. And if you’re too future oriented, then you’re going to neglect yourself in the
210. 74:26 present and this future will never come. So pay attention to yourself in the present. Three elements of the mind are authenticity, positivity and mindfulness. And finally the three element, the three functional element. You need to be a vigilant observer.
211. 74:43 Vigilant observer. Remember the narcissist destroyed your ability to gauge and evaluate reality properly. The narcissist destroyed, impaired. Your reality testing is damaged. You can’t perceive reality correctly. So observe like a scientist. Collect
212. 75:06 evidence. Create theories. Observe all the time. Be vigilant. Don’t trust yourself. Ask yourself questions. Challenge yourself. Doubt yourself. And support all of this with evidence. Become evidence-based. The second element shielding sensor. Don’t let anyone, everyone and
213. 75:28 everything penetrate your mind. Shield yourself. Isolate yourself. Create a firewall. Become selective. And the last thing is a reality sentinel. Judge everything by reality. Make reality your organizing principle. Now, if you want to learn a lot more
214. 75:51 about the nine-fold path to healing, which is a general system, it’s not limited to victims of narcissistic abuse. Yes. Then you can go to my YouTube channel and uh on the YouTube channel you will find a video titled the ninefold path to healing.
215. 76:16 You need to accept that you will go through stages in your grief. These stages have been first described by the Swiss Swiss American psychologist Elizabeth Kubler Ross. There stages of grief, the Kubler Ross cycle and later on augmented by uh Kenneth Docker. So
216. 76:40 there are stages of grief and you need to accept and understand that you will go through your these stages. There’s nothing you can do about it and that you will revisit many of these stages multiple times. You will regress you go back and go forward and
217. 76:58 go back again. As you process your grief, as you integrate your grief, as you come to terms with what has happened to you, you will need to go through these phases. And you need to know the phases. Denial. You’re going to deny things. You’re going to bury them. You’re going
218. 77:15 to insist that things are not true. Denial. Anger. You’re going to be furious not only at the narcissist but at yourself for good reasons. So you need to go through this anger. You need to experience it. You need to justify it. You need to adopt it as yours. You
219. 77:33 need to own your anger. bargaining with yourself. Maybe if I do this, maybe if I did this, I could have done I could have acted differently. Maybe if I only do this, everything will be okay. This is the bargaining phase. You’re bargaining with yourself, with
220. 77:49 reality. You don’t realize there’s no way to bargain yourself out of this, but you’re still bargaining. Depression, allow yourself to be sad. Allow yourself to to mourn and grief. Allow yourself to be depressed. It’s depression is sometimes healthy. I always say that in psychology
221. 78:10 there are no there’s no good good and bad. There’s no right and wrong. Depression when you ask someone what do you think about depression? Is depression bad? Yeah, depression is bad. That’s not true. That’s not true. In certain situations, depression is good
222. 78:25 for you. In certain situations, depression is a sign of mental health because you need to be depressed. If you’re in prison, you need to be depressed. If you’re very happy and cheerful and joyful in prison, something’s wrong with you. So allow
223. 78:42 yourself to be depressed. Don’t panic. Depression means that you’re processing things. And finally, learn to accept. Learn to accept that bad things happen to good people. Learn to accept your responsibility. Learn to accept that there are some imitations of human beings,
224. 79:05 some things, some entities that look like human beings, the narcissists, the psychopaths, but are not fully human and that you have very little in common with them and definitely you cannot understand them or make sense of them. realize that there are some people who
225. 79:25 lack the basic machinery of being human. They have no empathy, no access to positive emotions, no attachment and bonding. They’re human externally, but they’re not very human internally. You have come across an extraterrestrial into across an alien life form across an
226. 79:45 artificial intelligence in corporeal in a corporeal disguise and accept it. Accept that things happen. You know, acceptance is difficult because it undermines your sense of justice. You say, “What happened to me was unjust. I didn’t deserve this.” Yes,
227. 80:07 but this is a major principle of life. There’s not just desserts. You need to accept ultimately life itself. And finally, always remain hopeful. Remain hopeful because this is reality. It’s a fact. It’s not counterfactual. It’s factual. There is hope for you. The prognosis is
228. 80:31 pretty good. So, become your own mother. Become your own parent. Love yourself the way a parent does. See yourself if necessary. Frustrate yourself from time to time. Be your own secure base. Feel comfortable and safe with yourself. Parenting yourself is very crucial on
229. 80:56 the way to on the way to healing. Self love is probably something you have never really experienced. Otherwise, you would not have fallen for the narcissist. The narcissist was offering you fake self love. Fake love, but also fake self-love. Narcissist
230. 81:20 allowed you to love your idealized image. But your idealized image was never you. You need to learn to love yourself. You have what Ross Rosenberg calls self-love deficit. You need to learn how to do this. It’s you. It can be learned. It’s a learning thing. It’s a learning
231. 81:39 experience. And there’s a learning curve. You need to become aware of yourself. You need to accept yourself. You need to trust yourself. And you need to be self-efficacious. You need to believe that you can accomplish beneficial outcomes and avoid adverse consequences.
232. 82:00 And so on my YouTube channel there is u there are two playlists. One is titled narcissistic abuse healing and one is titled life’s wisdom. And you’ll find a lot more about self-love functional real self- loveve not the fake version on on these um
233. 82:22 uh uh playlists. Now, before you go to therapy, there are several things you need to do. And therapy is recommended. Even if you’ve been exposed to a narcissist for a few hours or days, in my opinion, you need therapy. There have been studies in Harvard University and other places
234. 82:46 which have demonstrated that when you’re exposed to a narcissist for 30 seconds, you heard me correctly, 30 seconds, you already begin to develop acute discomfort. This is known as the Anani Valley reaction. In studies conducted with multiple in
235. 83:06 multiple um universities, it was found that you are able to diagnose someone with narcissistic personality disorder accurately 85% of the time by looking at their photograph, by reading an email, or by watching a 30- secondond video. With this input, with this information,
236. 83:35 you can diagnose correctly someone with narcissistic personality disorder 85% of the time. Imagine the impact on you if you cohabit with a narcissist, live with a narcissist, get married to a narcissist, bear children to a narcissist, work with a narcissist,
237. 83:55 become friends with a narcissist for years. For years. Not for 30 seconds, for 30 months or even 30 years. Imagine what it does to your mind. You need help. Don’t be grandiose. Do not be grandiose. You can’t manage it by yourself. But before you attend therapy, before
238. 84:17 you seek help, there are some things you should do. There’s homework to be done. First of all, stop thinking of yourself as a victim. Do not allow victimhood to become who you are. Do not develop a victimhood mentality, victimhood stance and victimhood identity. Don’t compete
239. 84:36 for victimhood. Don’t render victimhood your new profession. Do not link your victimhood to any benefits, monetary or otherwise. Get rid of victimhood in your life. Accept ownership of what has happened to you. You did contribute to your predicament.
240. 84:56 You were responsible. You made some stupid decisions and choices. Self-destructive, self-defeating. Accept responsibility for it. Own it. Silence the voices inside you which are not you. As we discussed before, reverse your infantilism because the narcissist
241. 85:17 regressed you, infantilizes you, made you a baby. Stop being a baby. Stop being needy. Don’t be clinging. Don’t be dependent. Don’t get rid of your learned helplessness. Separate from the narcissist in your mind. Become again an individual and
242. 85:38 embody all this in your body. Make your body an agent of self-control, self-discipline, accomplishments. Use your body to feel much better about yourself. Then regain all the functions you have lost because you have outsourced them to the narcissist in
243. 85:58 your life. Regain them, reacquire them. Self-mothering, self-saving, agency, self-efficacy, affirmation, authenticity, mindfulness, personhood, autonomy, independence, and so on. How would you know if you are recovered? How do you know? How would you know if you
244. 86:21 are healed? I’m going to read to you the signs. So, you go through a process. You do you do your homework. Then you attend therapy. At some point, you need to ask yourself, have I have I arrived? Am I cured? Am I healed? Did I recover from all this? And you need to know the
245. 86:42 signs of healing and recovery, which I’m going to read to you. So first of all, there are no voices in your head that attack you and criticize you harshly, that hate on you, that push pull you down, want to take you down. No enemy voices in your head, no disparaging introjects.
246. 87:06 Number two, you feel good with yourself. You feel comfortable with yourself. You have ego syony. You are not ego dissonance. You don’t have ego destiny. You feel good with who you are. You feel good in your skin and you’re able to make decisions because you trust yourself.
247. 87:26 Next, your ability to trust other people is restored. You are able to trust other people. You are able to venture out to try things, to date again, to experiment. You’re not afraid anymore. You’re not phobic. You don’t doubt your judgment. you trust
248. 87:44 it. There is a sense that you’re evaluating and gauging reality appropriately. In other words, that your reality testing had been restored. There are no cognitive distortions and no cognitive dissonance. There’s a sense of agency and self-efficacy. You set goals
249. 88:02 and you accomplish the goals. Gradually you begin to trust yourself to secure positive outcomes, beneficial outcomes from the environment to act on the environment and in the environment in a way which would have benign consequences and avoid adverse consequences. You
250. 88:21 begin to trust yourself to do this. This is known as self-efficacy. Your your motivation is autonomous. It’s coming from the inside, not it’s not a response to what other people expect of you, including your therapist, but it’s coming from the inside. It’s autonomous
251. 88:39 motivation. You do not catastrophize anymore. You don’t anticipate the worst. You’re not hopeless. You don’t believe in imminent doom and gloom. You’re much more optimistic. There’s no anticipatory anxiety. You don’t anticipate things with anxiety.
252. 88:57 You don’t imagine things, all kinds of scenarios and then react with anxiety. These are all signs of healing. I’m reminding you these are the signs that you have healed, that you’ve recovered. You’re ready to move on. There’s no addictive cravings. Addiction
253. 89:13 to anything. Addiction to alcohol, to drugs, addiction to other people, addiction to shopping, addiction to gambling. Any addictive cravings are an indication that you are far from healing. And similarly, you’re not nostalgic. You don’t have sentimental nostalgia.
254. 89:34 You don’t regard the past, your relationship with the narcissist, the shared fantasy, what you’ve had together as maybe it was not that bad. Maybe actually there were some good times and some good aspects and so on. Don’t you’re not kidding yourself anymore.
255. 89:49 You’re not selfdeceiving. And there’s no separation in security. You’re not afraid of being abandoned. You cherish your alowneness. You can stand on your own two feet. You don’t need people to regulate your moods, to stabilize your emotions, to
256. 90:06 tell you what to do, to confirm to you that something is real or not. You you got rid of your dependency on other people. And consequently, you have no abandonment anxiety. You don’t seek the same type of partner when you finally date or when you finally befriend someone, become a
257. 90:26 friend of someone or when you um create a relationship with a coworker and so on. You are not typ casting. You’re not seeking for another version of the narcissist. Many victim will tell you, victims will tell you that they keep selecting the same type. The mate selection, their
258. 90:45 mate selection is compromised because they’re selecting by type. And of course, they keep selecting narcissist one, narcissist 2, narcissist 3, and narcissist 15 because they’re selecting the same type of person. If you discover that you are dating or you’re
259. 91:00 befriending someone, it’s not the same type. It’s the exact opposite of the narcissist. It’s a sign that you’re healing. you and and those of you who want to learn a little clinical psychology, we say that you are transitioning from narcissistic to anacic anacyic mate selection.
260. 91:21 Next thing, when you meet someone, your good friend, a potential date, you know, when you meet other people, you don’t immediately have maternal or parental impulses. You don’t immediately want to nurture them, please them, protect them, help them, rescue them, save them.
261. 91:43 All these impulses indicate that you have not healed. You fell in the trap of the narcissist because you are mother material, because you are savior. You have a savior rescuer complex, because you believe in the power of love to change other people.
262. 92:04 because you’re prone to merge with other people, to fuse with them, to create a symbiosis. These are all psychopathologies. They’re not healthy. If you meet other people and you’re still reacting as a mother would, as a father would, something’s wrong with
263. 92:20 you. Go back. Go back to square one. You have not healed. You’re not cured. You’re in danger of falling again for a narcissist in a shared fantasy. When you use language, you’re not using us, you’re using uh me. When you are using plural gender pronouns, plural accusative,
264. 92:50 usually it’s indicative of merger or fusion. You’re not in a cult. You are not operating on behalf of the narcissist, on behalf of your partner, on be you’re not responsible for anyone’s happiness. No one’s happiness except maybe very small children, your children.
265. 93:12 Otherwise, you’re not responsible for the happiness of any adult. You’re not responsible for the well-being or welfare of any adult. And you are never ever responsible for the informed decisions of adults. Someone wants to commit suicide, you’re not responsible for this.
266. 93:32 Someone wants to go on a herb brain scheme in a manic phase of bipolar disorder, you’re not responsible for for what he’s doing or what she’s doing. You’re not responsible. You are responsible for your choices, for your decisions, for your actions,
267. 93:48 and you are responsible for the small children that you brought to the world if you’re a mother. Otherwise, you’re not responsible. If you’re beginning to use language like us versus them, you’re in a cult. If you’re beginning to use language like it’s good for us, you are
268. 94:06 not healed. You are not cured. You still feel responsible for the mind and the choices and the decisions and the actions and the happiness and the welfare and the well-being of other people. That’s not the way it should be. If you are still attempting to read the
269. 94:23 minds of other people, you know, to anticipate what they want, you are not healed. No mind reading. You’re not responsible to read the minds of other people, anticipate them and and cater cater to their expectations. You’re not you’re not self-sacrificial. If you’re
270. 94:46 healed, if you’re cured, we are talking about signs of healing, signs of having been cured. Yeah. Then you no longer are self-sacrificial. You do not sacrifice your well-being, your interests, your welfare, your goals. You do not sacrifice them for someone
271. 95:05 else ever. Never. Self-sacrifice is always unhealthy. Period. And don’t let your mother tell you otherwise. So if you’re no longer self-sacrificial, that’s an excellent sign. You do not you you can compromise. Of course, life is a compromise. But if the compromise
272. 95:27 involves sacrifice, do not compromise. Be rigid, inflexible. And do not please people. People pleasing is a sign that you’re not healed, that you are still to some extent codependent. Do not act on impulses and do not let yourself be emotionally blackmailed. I did so much
273. 95:50 for you. You owe me. You owe nothing to no one except as I said to your small children. Do not be impulsive, impulse, anger, rage, hatred, envy,
274. 96:08 fear. These are bad advisers. Do not listen to them. All of them exist. All of them erupt in the aftermath of narcissistic abuse. Ignore all of them. They are not your friends. Do not be an infant. Do not be infantile, immature, purile, adolescent.
275. 96:32 Give up all this, all these defenses, all these behaviors, all these mindsets. Forget all this. The minute you catch yourself in with an age inappropriate behavior, age inappropriate thought, age inappropriate emotion, become aware and give it up. Delete.
276. 96:51 You’re not an infant. You’re an adult. Grow up or grow up again. Having been regressed by the narcissist, do not idealize yourself. That’s what the narcissist did to you. You’re not ideal. You’re not perfect. You’re flawed. You make many mistakes. Sometimes you’re stupid.
277. 97:14 You’re not maybe gorgeous. You’re not ideal and you’re not perfect. It is your imperfection that renders you human and even attractive sometimes. So give up on your idealized image to which you’ve been addicted in the shed fantasy. Do not self idealize. And of course do not
278. 97:35 self-devalue. Regain reality testing. Regard yourself realistically. Develop introspection and self-awareness. But introspection and self-awareness doesn’t mean that you are you idealize yourself. Doesn’t mean that you see only the positive aspects of yourself.
279. 97:55 Introspection and self-awareness means you see your limitations and your weaknesses and your vulnerabilities and your mistakes and how wrong you are sometimes and how cruel you are sometimes and how immoral you are sometimes. But you also see how talented you are, how
280. 98:11 beautiful you are, how skilled you are. You see both the negative and the positive, the yin and the yang. That’s a sign of healing. Restore your functioning. Force yourself to socialize. Go back to your workplace. Find a job. Interact with your parents.
281. 98:30 Never mind how problematic they are. Develop new friendships. Regain old ones. Work hard on your empathy. When people are traumatized, they’re not empathic. They lose their empathy. Do not allow yourself to become a version of the narcissist. Do not become an
282. 98:47 abuser. Do not identify with the aggressor as Ferencey called it. That’s not a sign of healing. It’s a sign of internalizing the pathology. Do not emote by proxy. Allow yourself to feel and experience your emotions. Don’t delegate your emotions. Don’t
283. 99:11 don’t say I never cry except when I watch mo a movie. Allow yourself to cry because what you have gone through, what you’ve been through is horrible and you should be sad and depressed and you should mourn and grief. Do not suppress your emotions. Do not think your
284. 99:29 emotions are illegitimate, impolite, univil, wrong. Legitimize your emotions and trust. Try to overcome your aversion to trusting people. because you have been betrayed. You have been abused. You’ve been hurt. You’re hurting. And of course, you
285. 99:54 placed your trust in the narcissist and he betrayed you. So, you generalize the lesson. Now, I can’t trust anyone. It’s the wrong lesson. Trust people. Get burned. Absolutely. Get hurt again. Experience losses. Losses and pain are the engines of personal growth and personal
286. 100:17 development. Don’t give up on them. Adopt them. Embrace them. And don’t dread intimacy. Not all intimacy comes at a price. Try intimacy. Try trusting people. Try dating. Try befriending people. Try it all again. Fully expect to be burned again. This is life.
287. 100:39 This is life. We learn from losses. Gains are not very important in life. There’s very little you learn from being right or being successful. There’s a lot you learn, from having failed and having been hurt. So allow yourself to do this and as I said, get rid of the victimhood
288. 101:02 stance and assume responsibility for everything. If you have all these signs, you’re healed. You’re cured. You’re safe to move on. You’re safe to go ahead to the next phase of your life. What has happened to you did not define you. Did not characterize you. It’s not who you
289. 101:21 are. What has happened to you is not who you who you are. You have been victimized. You are does that doesn’t make you a perpetual victim. that you have been victimized doesn’t mean you should adopt victimhood as an identity and a mantle. That you have been betrayed doesn’t mean
290. 101:40 you will always be betrayed. That you trusted the wrong person doesn’t mean that you should doubt your capacity to trust or your gauge of reality. You need to put yourself out there. You need to exit your comfort zone. You need to fail. You need to get hurt. You need to lose.
291. 102:01 And you need to discover throughout all this that losses and failures are statistical. They don’t happen 100% of the time. And when they do not happen, life is basically pretty good. Thank you for listening.
292. 102:24 I can’t hear the audience. Yakov, >> they mute. >> They muted it. You’re muted, by the way. They mute. Are you sure? Because I don’t see that they’re muted.
293. 102:40 >> I can hear you now. I can hear you. Okay.
294. 102:50 >> And I have questions. Has it been determinated which part of the brain is responsible for narism? >> No. We don’t have any rigorous serious studies that connect uh brain abnormalities, brain regions, brain pathways or chemicals in the brain like
295. 103:09 neurotransmitters and neurom modulators. We don’t have any studies that connect any of this to pathological narcissism. And I think one of the main reasons is that we there is a big disagreement as to what is pathological narcissism and and how to diagnose narcissistic
296. 103:26 personality disorder. As I’ve explained yesterday, 80% of humanity are using diagnostic manual where there is no narcissism. So there is a huge disagreement if narcissism at all exists. In psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder, the extreme form of antisocial
297. 103:45 personality disorder, there are definitely major brain abnormalities in psychopathy. So similarly in borderline personality disorder there are brain abnormalities. These these absolutely have been established in multiple studies and so on. Also the physiology of the
298. 104:06 psychopath the body of the psychopath reacts very differently as far as perspiration, skin conductance, heart rate, blood pressure and so on. So psychopaths have a non-human body if you wish and they have a very very different brain. It’s possible to look at a brain
299. 104:24 in an MRI and immediately to identify a psychopath. It is not possible to do this with a narcissist. However, take into account that many narcissists are also psychopaths. Online the self-styled experts and others. They would tell you that all psychopaths are
300. 104:43 narcissists. That is completely untrue. complete nonsense. Although many psychopaths are grandiose, but they are not narcissists. And they will tell you that many narcissists are sadistic and psychopathic. There’s a lot of misinformation online. The truth is that
301. 105:01 some narcissists are also psychopaths. This co-orbidity is known as malignant narcissists. Now, no one has studied the brains of malignant narcissists, which I think they should because I would bet a lot of money that the brains of malignant narcissists are abnormal
302. 105:24 because of the psychopathic element. But you see, there’s another problem. Imagine that tomorrow we find that the brain of narciss brains of narcissists are different. If we agree that there is such a thing as narcissism which as I told you many people don’t many scholars
303. 105:41 don’t agree but let’s assume we agree and let’s assume there is a brain abnormal how do you know if the brain abnormality is not the result of narcissism how do you know if it is the cause of narcissism so for us to be able to say which is the chicken and which is the egg
304. 106:02 we need to follow people from the moment they were born until they are 45, we need what we call longitudinal brain studies. So we need to your someone is born, we need to begin to take images of the brain as they’re born, you know, and continue to take images until age 45 and
305. 106:25 then we can say then we can say the brain of this baby was abnormal and he became a psychopath. So it’s the brain. Today we don’t have this. >> Today we don’t have this >> students. >> So today we today we we test the brains of students. That’s too late. That’s too
306. 106:49 late because if you’re a psychopath in 40% of the cases it starts at age four with conduct disorder. So if you’re a psychopath when you’re a student you’re already 14 years psychopath. 20 years psychopath and that would should have an impact on the brain. So there’s
307. 107:10 no way to tell if the disorder precedes the brain or the brain is the cause of the disorder even in psychopathy even in borderline. Now if you ask me what I believe because this is the official scientific answer that’s the answer I would give in
308. 107:24 Cambridge. Yeah. But if you ask me what I believe, I fully believe that pathological narcissism involves brain abnormalities because narcissistic personality disorder is a member of the cluster B personality disorder the dramatic erotic disorders
309. 107:44 and in all other case in all the other three there are brain abnormalities. So it doesn’t make sense that psychopaths have brain abnormalities border lines histrionic but not narcissists. I I fully believe that there are brain abnormalities. I think
310. 107:59 the problem is not brain studies but the fact that to this very moment there is a huge disagreement as as to what is pathological narcissism or even if there is such a thing as narcissistic personality disorder when you can’t agree on the clinical entity how can you
311. 108:17 correlate it with a brain you know it’s an issue >> I have one question >> yes I How to convince a victim with untrainment and grief and so on. Everything you you have talked and how to how to convince the victim to to leave the relationship with the
312. 108:41 narcissist to to go to the therapy and to start to healing. Are there any methods from psychotherapist to to convince the the human being? It’s very very difficult to convince a member of a cult to abandon the cult. It’s very difficult to convince someone
313. 109:04 in within a fantasy to abandon the fantasy. And doesn’t have to be shared fantasy. Doesn’t have to be narcissistic fantasy. For example, we have political fantasies. Nazism was a political fantasy. Donald Trump MAGA is a political fantasy. And it’s very very difficult to convince
314. 109:22 people to leave the fantasy. And so it’s an autonomous process. It is the victim that should come to the realization that something is wrong. Luckily for victims of narcissistic abuse. Most of them are discarded by the narcissist. Ironically, I think the discard is a
315. 109:43 piece of good luck, not bad luck. Excellent. because it is the narcissism that devalues the victim and then throws her out of the shed fantasy and then the healing can start and that’s a majority of cases there now that narcissism is becoming more narcissism now is becoming
316. 110:01 more understood and more people are aware of narcissism so more victims are recognizing the narcissistic abuse and so on and more victims are taking steps to leave the shed fantasy so it’s it’s situation is becoming better. But I think it’s important to understand that
317. 110:20 when you are inside the shell fantasy, you feel very good. It feels good. You belong. You’re accepted. You feel safe. Life is exciting. It feels good. It doesn’t feel bad. There’s no reason. I mean, people can’t see a reason to abandon the fantasy or to abandon the cult
318. 110:40 or to abandon the narrative, you know. And uh what do you have to offer? You have to offer reality and reality is not pleasant. Reality sucks. Reality is horrible. So you come to someone who is in a fantasy in Disneyland and you say in paradise and you say
319. 111:00 you are being abused. You need to leave this and you need to go back to reality. But what do you have to offer in reality? One of the major problems of modern existence is that reality is no longer an attractive proposition. And what we are doing, we are using
320. 111:17 technology to escape from reality. Everything, every modern technology in the past 20 years or 30 years was about escaping reality. Actually 100 years starting with movies, cinema, but especially the last 30 years. If you look artificial intelligence, social media, the metaverse,
321. 111:38 virtual reality, these are all video games, these are all ways to escape reality. And we are escaping reality because it’s not an attractive alternative, not an attractive proposition. So what do you have to offer to victim of narcissistic abuse?
322. 111:55 Nothing much in the modern world. You know, after all to be with a narcissist is exciting, is amazing, is unique, things happen all the time, it’s dynamic. And the shared fantasy has a life of its own. And it’s very very You feel important. You feel accepted. You
323. 112:14 feel the focus of attention. You feel there are many things in the shed fantasy which are irresistible. You fall in love with yourself. You’re finally idealized. Finally, you feel perfect. You so you’re lovable because you’re perfect. You’re lovable. It’s it’s
324. 112:29 really um the shared fantasy is a combination of offerings and baits and lures and seduction and temptations that are very difficult to resist. Yes, thank you very much. >> Okay, Sam. So, I would like to thank you on behalf on my own. >> Thank you.
325. 112:54 >> And on the behalf of the Academy of Applied Sciences. It was the great great uh experience and thank you for your exceptional knowledge. >> Thank you. >> You just clarified the narcissism so in in very in very um uh simple way for us. Yes, but it’s very
326. 113:16 complicated. I know I I still study this for some years. And thank you very much once again. And I hope that despite some things we have overwritten to see you one day in Poland.