Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. Narcissist Pays Heavy Price for Discarding You (Devaluation) (Clip: Skopje Seminar, May 2025)

1. 00:19 Okay, Shashanim, we left the poor narcissist spilling coffee all over himself and devaluing the internal object. Not necessarily in this order. So that was the internal object. So I mentioned to you that devaluing the external object internal object I’m
2. 00:43 sorry creates two types of dissonance. Dissonance number one. How could I have been so wrong about her? I idealized her and now I realize that she is not who I thought she was. So I have been wrong. Narcissists cannot admit to being wrong. It challenges their grandio self-concept.
3. 01:02 Narcissists are never wrong. even when they’re wrong, especially when they’re wrong, they’re never wrong. That’s one dissonance. And the the other types of dissonance is that the narcissist is stuck with an internal object that is now bad or evil or an enemy, a per
4. 01:21 secondary internal object or an internal object that is imperfect, less than perfect, which renders the narcissist less than perfect. Because the internal object, as the name implies, is part of who the narcissist is. It’s internal. And if there is an imperfect internal
5. 01:39 anything, the narcissist is less than perfect. And of course, the narcissist self-concept is that of perfect perfection. So this creates dissonance. And the narcissist then attempts several ways to resolve the dissonance. The first way the narcissist devalues the external
6. 02:04 object. It’s not devaluation. It’s very misleading. But the narcissist, you remember that in the first phase early in the shared fantasy, the narcissist lovebomb love bomb the external object in order to make her conform to the idealized internal object. He tried to
7. 02:22 shape the external object to fit perfectly the internal object by communicating expectations and costs and so on so forth. He tried to somehow influence the traits the behaviors of the external object so that there’s no discrepancy and no challenge and no
8. 02:41 undermining of the internal object. That’s in the love bombing phase. A similar phase is happening now in the other direction. Rather than love bomb, the narcissist just bombs. In this phase, the narcissist devalues the external object. But I similarly,
9. 03:00 it’s an attempt to force the external object to change so as it fits so as to fit the internal object. The internal object has changed from idealized to devalued. So the external object must change from ideal to devalued. So that’s the first attempt
10. 03:22 to resolve the inner conflict, the dissonance by changing the external object by communicating to the external object. Hey listen, the internal object in my mind of you, the internal object that represents you in my mind has changed. Please change accordingly. You
11. 03:41 should also change to fit the internal object. So this is devaluation. This is the phase of devaluation. When you’re idealized, you can do no no wrong. You are perfect. You’re intelligent. You’re irresistible. You are this and you’re that. You’re unprecedented. When you are
12. 03:58 idealized, when you’re devalued, you can do no right. You’re ugly. You’re stupid. You destroyed the narcissist’s life. You’re an enemy. And so on so forth. In both cases, it’s not about you at all. It is just an attempt to avoid dissonance by fitting or molding external reality
13. 04:19 to conform to internal reality and then allowing the narcissist to again ignore external reality and go back inside. So this is devaluation and devaluation allows the narcissist to say okay I have devalued the ex the internal object I have devalued the external
14. 04:42 object so that it fits the internal object and now I can move on to separation. Separation is the discard. The discard phase is a phase that I introduced into the the cycle of narcissistic relationships. Before I came on the scene, there was only idealization devaluation and I
15. 05:02 added the phase of discard. So it’s my baby. And in the dis the discard phase is the narcissist’s way of separating from mother. Mother has been devalued now. So it’s easy to separate from her. you not a big loss, not a big loss to separate from a devalued object. It’s a
16. 05:23 big loss to separate from an idealized object. So, having devalued the idealized object, the narcissist now is ready to separate from mother, from the new mother by discarding her. Again, remember the narcissist interacts first and foremost with an internal object. So
17. 05:43 the narcissist discards initially the internal object not the external object. Anyone who has been in a relationship with a narcissist knows that before the discard there was a period where the narcissist became absent, not interested, withdrawn, avoidant.
18. 06:05 sometimes physically going away, moving, moving out or having affairs or you know this is the internal discard. The internal object has been discarded. But having discarded the internal object again there is a discrepancy a divergence between the internal
19. 06:27 condition the internal state and the external state. The internal object has been discarded but the external object is still there which creates a dissonance. So the narcissist needs to discard you physically as well in order to realign the internal object with the
20. 06:47 external object. And here the real trouble starts when the narcissist discards the internal object. What is he discarding? He’s discarding his internalized mother. is discarding a mother figure and this immediately creates separation insecurity.
21. 07:07 Separation insecurity is the clinical term for what online they call abandonment anxiety or separation anxiety. The clinical term is separation insecurity. So the narcissist when he discards the internal object and then the external but even in the early phase
22. 07:27 when he discards the internal he has has lost his mother it’s a mother object so now he is without a mother and he reacts badly with abandonment anxiety with separation insecurity oh my god I’m alone where’s mother it’s a baby it’s a child yes it’s a 2-year-old where’s
23. 07:45 mommy it’s like being lost in a shopping mall when mother is gone you know and so that’s the first problem that arises abandonment anxiety it’s the first reaction and this is no this creates um
24. 08:03 what is called inconstancy or impermanence now we have two types of inconstancy or impermanence we have object inconstancy or object impermanence depending if you follow PG or follow follow others And you and you have introject inconstancy or introject impermanence
25. 08:23 because the narcissist is focused on internal objects not on external reality. The narcissist maintains introject permanence, introject constancy. The let me explain this a bit complicated. The narcissist as a child has had a mother who was unpredictable,
26. 08:46 unsafe, not a secure base, a mother who could not be relied on, a mother who could not be trusted, a mother who was emotionally absent or depressive or selfish or so. The narcissist develops object inconstancy. The narcissist doesn’t trust the permanence and
27. 09:08 constancy of other people. He doesn’t believe that other people are there when he cannot see them when they are not in physical proximity to him because he has no relationship with external objects. Instead, the narcissist has introject constancy while
28. 09:28 he cannot trust external objects, other people. He can trust the internal objects that represent other people in his mind. These internal objects that represent other people, they are stable. They are constant. They are permanent. So in narcissism, we have object inconstancy.
29. 09:54 In other words, distrust of the existence of other people and introject constancy, full trust in the permanence and stability of internal representations of other people. While in borderline we have exactly the opposite. In borderline we have introject inconstancy.
30. 10:19 The borderline cannot maintain a stable representation of other people in her mind. When she is not in the physical presence of other people, the introject fades. The introject disappears. It’s like with the borderline coffee. It’s like with the borderline, out of
31. 10:47 sight, out of mind. When you are not in the physical proximity of the borderline, when you’re not in the same room with her, she cannot maintain a stable representation of you in her mind. So, you fade. You like fade away and it’s very difficult for her. That’s
32. 11:04 why border lines are in panic when you leave the room. That’s why border lines have extreme abandonment anxiety because they can’t maintain an image of you in their minds. The narcissist is exactly the opposite. The narcissist maintains a stable image of you in their mind, but
33. 11:24 as far as you’re concerned, they don’t trust your existence. They don’t trust you there. Okay? So when the narcissist discards the internal object, this creates abandonment anxiety because mother is gone and it also creates introject inconstancy.
34. 11:48 In other words, the narcissist becomes borderline in effect. The narcissist the narcissistic defenses crumble and become a borderline personality organization. The discard is self-traumatizing. Self-traumatizing. It’s like losing your mother on per killing your mother in
35. 12:07 effect. It’s like assassinating your mother. It’s highly traumatizing impact. And the narcissist loses introject constancy and becomes essentially and clinically a borderline. This is a terrifying state. And so what the narcissist tries to do is re
36. 12:27 idealize the external object. So the narcissist attempts to separate by devaluing the external ob the internal object. Then the narcissist devalues the external object to conform the internal object with the external object. Then the narcissist discards the internal
37. 12:47 object and then the narcissist discards the external object. And this triggers enormous abandonment anxiety and enormous introject inconstancy, a borderline state. And so then the narcissist is terrified of the borderline state, the emotional dysregulation, the inability to
38. 13:06 visualize or or reimagine the external objects and so on. terrified of this state. The narcissist tries to bring you back into his life to re idealize you so that he can start the shared fantasy all over again with you. Because within the shared fantasy there is conssonance,
39. 13:27 not dissonance. The shared fantasy is a conssonant state because within the shared fantasy there is full agreement, full conformity between internal and external. The narcissist molds you and shapeshifts you and changes you to fit the internal object. If the internal
40. 13:50 object is idealized, he will change you so that you become idealized. If the external object is devalued, he will change you. So that you become a devalued u you fit the devalued internal object. You change all the time in the shared fantasy. You fl you’re in flux.
41. 14:07 You’re not you. You are never you. It takes away your core identity. It takes it away and you become patty. You become raw material. And he uses this raw material to create sculptures of you. Animated sculptures of you. One sculpture is the idealized sculpture
42. 14:26 then the devalued sculpture. And because these external objects you always fit the internal object, the shirt fantasy is very calming. It’s very anxolytic. It reduces anxiety. It reduces anxiety. The shirt fantasy is anxolytic medicine. It reduces the
43. 14:47 narcissist anxiety. It restores conssonance only only in the separation and attempted separation only then the shared fantasy becomes dissonant because in the attempted separation the narcissist devalues the internal object then devalues the external object then
44. 15:13 has to get rid of them because they ren devalued internal object renders the narcissist imperfect. So he has to get rid of it. Once the narcissist gets rid of you as an external object and the internal object that represents you, at that point the narcissist experiences
45. 15:34 introjecting constancy, abandonment, anxiety, the shed fantasy becomes a nightmare, a psychological nightmare. And the only way to go back to the par paradise state, the garden of Eden state before the expulsion of the shared fantasy is to re idealize
46. 15:55 you. Having re idealized you, the narcissist can start a new shared fantasy with you. And he’s again calm, no anxiety. Mother is here. She is perfect. She loves me unconditionally. and the cycle starts again.