But first, before I answer this question, what qualifies me to discuss it at all?

Well, I’m the guy who first described narcissistic abuse in the early 90s, coined almost all the language in use today. I’ve spent 28 years studying narcissistic abuse. I’ve had the first website on narcissistic abuse, published the first book on narcissistic abuse and moderated and owned the first six support groups for victims of narcissistic abuse. For 10 years, for 10 years until 2004, I’ve been the lone voice online until people discovered the money element, the money potential, and there was a flood of gold diggers.

So these are my qualifications. I feel pretty comfortable to answer these questions.

What do victims of narcissistic abuse, especially those online, want?

Here’s what they want.

They want to be told that they are angels, that they have had no contribution to their predicament, that they are not responsible and should not be held responsible for their choices and decisions they’ve made, for their mate selection, that in general, they are blameless, guiltless, blemishless, impeccable and perfect, immaculate in effect.

They want to be told that the narcissist is demonic.

Narcissist is evil.

The narcissist is wicked, skimming, cunning, monstrous, reptilian, horrible, non-entity, that they have fallen prey to a supernatural force, that they have just been innocent bystanders who were swept away by a malevolent, malicious person.

They want to be told that narcissists are all bad and they are all good.

And this is a pathological, I repeat, defense mechanism known as splitting.

Who else does splitting?

Narcissists do.

Borderlines do.

Splitting is a hallmark of cluster B personality disorders.

Narcissists online, the vast majority of them, engage constantly in splitting.

I am all good. The narcissist is all bad. I am not responsible for anything that has happened. It’s all the narcissist’s fault. He is 100% to blame and so on.

The next thing victims of narcissists want is to learn how to destroy the narcissist, capture the narcissist, kill the narcissist, ruin the narcissist.

They are seething with vengeance and vindictiveness.

And if I’ve ever seen evil, this is it.

This precisely is it.

The overwhelming wish to destroy another person’s life is evil, period, regardless of who that other person is.

Well, except in cases where grave crimes have been committed and so on and so forth.

But generally, among normal people, among people in daily life, vengeance and vindictiveness of this caliber are indicative of serious mental health problems and a modicum of evil.

So this is also what they want to hear.

Then there’s a crop of coaches and self-styled experts with and without academic degrees who cater to these needs.

They cater to the victim’s newfound victimhood status.

The victim’s engaged in signaling. They signal to each other, “I’m a victim. I am entitled to special treatment because oh, I’m so fragile and so vulnerable. And so damaged and so broken and so mistreated and so subjected to injustice that I now have rights. I now am entitled.

Entitlement is a hallmark of narcissism.

And these coaches and self-styled experts cater to this victimhood signaling, often deceptive signaling, by the way, manipulative signaling, competitive victimhood. It’s a phenomenon recently described in literature.

And these coaches and self-styled experts, they tell victims what they want to hear and they laugh all the way to the bank and they make frequent trips to the bank.

Believe me.

One last thing.

What is it that victims don’t want to do?

They do not want to learn. They do not want to study. They do not want to go deep. They do not want to understand what’s wrong with the narcissist, of course, but also what is wrong with them. They do not want to soul search. They do not want to assume responsibility. They do not want to be held accountable. They do not want to acknowledge their contributions to what had happened to them. They do not want any of this.

They want to be told, “You’re all good. The narcissist is all bad. It’s not your fault, none of it, you’re victims.”

And I will teach you how to get back at the narcissist, how to torture and destroy and ruin and take revenge on him.

That’s what they want and that’s what they are getting online.

Not a pretty picture, either with a narcissist or with other ostensible victims.

Yes.

So hello, everyone. We have a special guest today. Some of you may know him. If not, I would like to introduce him. It’s a professor, Sam Vaknin, the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited and professor of finance and psychology in SIAS, CIAPS Center for International Advanced and Professional Studies.

Hello, Sam.

Hello, just two corrections. I’m a former visiting professor of psychology and now I resign my post as a professor of psychology. I’m only a professor of finance.

So psychology is in my past, but still on my mind.

Okay, then.

So today I would like to ask you some questions about how narcissists are affected us and how narcissist voice becomes ours.

I think it’s really important thing to understand in the healing journey for everyone who was affected by narcissists.

So yes, maybe let’s start by describing a typical profile of a victim of narcissist abuse.

Narcissists team up, they create couples. We are talking only about intimate relationships, but actually everything we’re about to say applies to friendships, the workplace, studies. All relationships with narcissists are structured the same way because narcissists don’t recognize or experience intimacy.

As far as the narcissist is concerned, there is no such thing as intimate relationship. All relationships are the same and the goal of all relationships is narcissistic supply.

The intimate partner provides also services, sometimes sex, sometimes other things, but generally the narcissist doesn’t have a preference for any specific type.

If you provide the narcissist with what he needs, then you’re good to go.

So many narcissists team up with psychopaths, for example, many narcissists have border lines as partners, co-dependence, or just normal, healthy, regular people.

It is a myth. It’s not true that narcissists have a preferred type.

Narcissists couldn’t care less if you have empathy because I go online and I see many victims and self-start victims, so-called empaths, I don’t know what else. They keep saying, “The narcissist chose me because I’m a good person, because I have empathy.”

Narcissists couldn’t care less if you have empathy. He doesn’t have empathy. He doesn’t need empathy. He needs supply and services.

So the narcissist is indiscriminate, is promiscuous, but it is true that certain types of people are more attracted to narcissists.

So for example, borderline, people with borderline personality disorder would be more attracted to narcissists, and the same goes for dependent personality disorder, also known as co-dependency.

Bodies and borderline are the most attracted to narcissists because narcissists provide them with the illusion of safety and external regulation.

The borderline cannot regulate her emotions. She cannot control her moods. She has lability. She has dysregulation. She outsources her mind, her internal processes, to the narcissist.

So he becomes a part of her mind. This is known as external regulation.

The co-dependent teams up with the narcissist because the narcissist is delighted to take over all the daily functions to control the life of the co-dependent because the narcissist feels grandiose. He feels like he’s godlike.

So the co-dependent allows the narcissist to feel godlike, and the borderline allows the narcissist to feel like her best friend, her rock, the one who calms her down, the one who gives her inner peace, the one who reduces her anxiety, the one around which she feels stable and safe and wonderful.

So that’s why they are attracted to narcissists.

Okay, I understand.

So how has it come that narcissist’s voice is becoming ours? How would these processes look like?

The narcissist does what Josef Goebbels said.

Josef Goebbels said, if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it’s true.

The narcissist’s secret source, his secret technique, is repetition.

The narcissist simply repeats.

He has a limited repertory of sentences. Some of these sentences are highly positive. They are sentences of idealization.

So in the love bombing phase, the narcissist would repeat the same sentences, but they would be positive sentences. They would idealize.

And also has a repertory of negative sentences.

And when he abuses you, he will repeat these negative sentences.

Now we have known since 2006 that if you repeat the same sentences again and again, they have an impact on the brain. They somehow affect the brain.

It’s very similar with music. It’s the same with music.

But we didn’t know how it’s done. And now we know how it’s done. It’s a process called entraining.

It seems that if you repeat the same sentence again and again and again, and if you are a figure of authority, if there’s an asymmetry of authority or perceived as an authoritative figure or if the other person is dependent on you, so there is an asymmetry of power or asymmetry of trust, then these sentences would synchronize your brainwaves with the abuser’s brainwaves. There will be a synchronization of brainwaves.

Literally, physical brainwaves.

So your brain would become a replica of the abuser’s brain.

It’s terrifying. It’s much more than brainwashing. Much more than brainwashing.

It’s simply taking over your brain and making your brain an extension of the abuser’s brain.

And that is known as entraining.

Now we discovered entraining in music. We found out in experiments conducted 10 years ago that when people play music together, their brains become one brain. All the brains of the members of a rock band or a folk group, all the brains of all the members, the drummer, the bassist, the singer, all the brains begin to emit somewhat tenuously identical wave patterns. They become essentially a single brain, like a colony, like a hive, a single brain.

And this is what happens in abuse.

The abuser creates a single brain with you.

So effectively this is merger and fusion.

From that moment on, the only voice is the abuser’s voice. You don’t have a voice anymore.

Because the abuser has taken over your brain, his voice is the only voice, of course. His voice synchronizes your brain with his brain.

And so gradually his voice silences all the other voices in your mind.

Now, just to be clear, all people, including healthy people, have internal voices. These internal voices are known as introjects. These internal voices belong to very significant people in your life.

So you have an internal voice of your mother, an internal voice of your father, an important teacher, peers, influential peers, even media figures, even role models, even politicians, even influencers.

They create inside you an introject, a voice.

When you are exposed to narcissistic abuse, via the process of entraining, all these voices, without exception, they are silenced. And the only voice in your head that resonates in your head is the abuser’s voice.

Now sometimes the voice of the abuser will collaborate with other voices inside your mind in order to accomplish some manipulative goal.

So for example, if you have a voice of a mother, an introject of your mother, and this voice is telling you, you are not good, you are bad, you are failure, you are unworthy. So the abuser will collaborate with his voice. His voice will create a coalition with your mother’s voice and will amplify it.

So ultimately what is left in your mind are only the negative introjects, only the introjects that put you down, only the introjects associated with what we call a bad object.

The abuser convinces you gradually that you are bad, inadequate, insufficient, a failure, a loser, ugly, stupid, and so on and so forth.

And he does this by creating these alliances of similar voices inside your mind.

And this is why when the abuser is done, his voice remains inside your mind.

So after this, this process, and when we are, you know, yeah, after relationship, any kind, with a narcissist, can we become NPD then after this kind of abuse?

It’s well documented that people who suffered from complex trauma, CPTSD, begin to display narcissistic and even psychopathic behaviors. They acquire some superficial psychopathic and narcissistic traits. Their empathy is reduced dramatically. The capacity to empathize is dramatically reduced. This is common to all trauma victims, have difficulties with empathy.

And so for a little while, a few months, up to a few years, your behavior is a victim of abuse, prolonged abuse, could become indistinguishable from the behavior of a narcissist or even a psychopath.

But luckily this is reversible as the effects of the trauma were off, as you go, as you’re exposed to therapy, which you should, if you’re a victim of narcissistic abuse, you should attend therapy.

Then these traits and behaviors gradually disappear.

So this is artificial. This is superficial. This is not life form.

Okay.

So after this, when we decided that we are going to the therapy any kind, what we should do first before we start any kind, like, you know, gushed out or internal family system or, you know, psychodynamic doesn’t matter.

But what is the most important thing to do with this, especially, you know, with this voice, because if this voice is affected us, then this voice can take any method and, you know, any experiment, any exercise that we can learn to use this against us. Isn’t it?

Yes. Very true.

That’s very true.

This voice co-ops. It uses anything you learn, anything you learn, especially anything you learn about yourself and then uses it against you.

It’s like, you know, when you’re arrested in the United States, they tell you anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. So it’s the same.

The first thing you need to do as a victim is stop considering yourself a victim. You have been victimized. It doesn’t make you a victim. In other words, don’t adopt victimhood as an identity. Don’t become a victim as a definition of who you are. You’re not a victim. You have been victimized.

That’s the first thing.

The second thing, you must recognize your contribution to what had happened.

If you deny that you have had any contribution, if you say, “I was a perfect angel, I was a perfect angel and my abuser is a perfect demon, he’s the devil,” you know, and so it was an accident. It could have happened to anyone. I did nothing wrong. I did not contribute anything to it.

Then you will never heal. You will never heal and you will repeat the same mistake again and again and again.

All people who are victimized by abusers, especially by narcissists and so on, do contribute to their own abuse and they need to ask themselves, “What did I do wrong?” For example, maybe the way I’m selecting intimate partners is wrong. Maybe I had psychological needs and the narcissist fulfilled his needs in the wrong way. Maybe I wanted to be abused in some way. This is known as projective identification because I consider myself a bad object which should be punished. Maybe I have self-destructiveness and self-defeat and the urge to self-punish because I don’t love myself enough. Maybe there is a self-love deficit.

So the first stage, I am not a victim. That’s not my identity. I have been victimized.

The second stage, I contributed to my predicament. I contributed to the situation that I find myself now.

How did I do that and how not to do this again?