Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video.
- 00:00 immediately after a divorce or the loss of a loved one. So there was a vulnerability involved there. The truth is that the victim of narcissistic abuse is interchangeable, utterly replaceable, a mere service provider. End of story. Nothing more elevated or hallowed or
- 00:21 amazing or romantic. It’s a business transaction. Narcissists are transactional. We’ll discuss the transaction tomorrow. But you as a victim of narcissistic abuse. You fulfilled a role. It’s was kind of a role play. You fulfilled a function. And the minute your function
- 00:40 was over in the shed fantasy, you were over as well. And you have never meant anything to the narcissist beyond what I’ve just said. A service provider. Do you care whether your internet service provider is empathic and kind and compassionate? Do you care whether the guy who
- 01:01 maintains your refrigerator is a nice guy or not really. Service providers are funible. They’re commodities. You have been commoditized and commodified. No one can no one can hear this. You know, people find it very difficult to accept this because it
- 01:22 takes away their sense of who they are. When you when you are you, it makes you special to yourself at least and usually to other people. So if I’m telling you you’re not special, you’re totally interchangeable, funible, replaceable, a commodity, so many grains of rice,
- 01:42 nothing here today, gone tomorrow, easily replaceable. It takes away not only it’s not only a narcissistic injury like oh my god I’m not special. It takes away your core identity because if I’m not special, if I’m not outstanding, if I’m not unique in some
- 02:01 way, if I’m not noticeable, if I’m not being seen, then I’m not. Don’t forget to be seen is
- 02:11 a survival strategy. If you are a newborn and you are not seen by your mother, your life expectancy is very short. You need to be seen. The first thing a baby does is attracting the mother’s attention. It’s the first thing any mother would tell you. Attracting the
- 02:33 mother’s attention. Moving, smiling, these are called behavioral cues. So providing cues, conditioning the mother in effect, creating conditioning. And so the need to be seen is by far the most crucial aspect of human psychology by far. And so you need to be seen. And I’m telling
- 02:55 you, you were not seen. You were not seen by the narcissist ever. And so this is not only shocking, it’s threatening. It’s a threatening message. And that’s why victims go online and say, “Of course I was seen. I was chosen. He wanted me because I was
- 03:12 empathic or drop dead gorgeous or whatever.” Yeah, drop dead gorgeous. You drop dead. He was gorgeous. So So this is these are difficult truths that you that victims of narcissistic abuse and clinicians who work with victims have to assimilate.
- 03:32 Whenever we’re exposed to trauma or less than trauma, we have narcissistic defenses. Every human being, healthy, normal human being has narcissistic defenses. Every human being consumes narcissistic supply. Believe it or not, every human being endures, experiences narcissistic
- 03:53 injuries. These are not unique to narcissists. Every human being has this. Every human being self-supplies. You know when you self soo when you self soo you know I’m great I’m I’m good I’m okay I will be okay these are all narcissistic defenses
- 04:08 narcissism simply means the self the ego so it means self-directed when you’re attacked this way when I’m telling you you’re a service provider you’re nobody you’re nothing you’re replaceable like this your narcissistic defenses kick in and you begin to
- 04:26 aggrandise to self aggrandise you begin to falsify reality You begin to anything just not to feel that you were not sin, which is exactly what the narcissist does to you. And that is the big betrayal. Because the one thing you can expect from someone who claims to love
- 04:44 you or claims to be your friend or even claims to share a workspace with you, the minimum you can expect is to be seen, to be noticed somehow, to be acknowledged. And the narcissist never ever gives you this. It’s one of the major control instruments of the nose.
