YOU Pay Price for Narcissist’s Dead Mother: Compulsive Disneyland, Shared Fantasy (with Nova Gibson)

Summary

No text okay so Sam um originally I said to you I wanted to talk about uh trauma bonding but uh yes I had a bit of a change of heart so if it's okay with you I'd love to talk about the narcissist uh cycle the idolization love bombing devalue discard cycle and clearly I've got some questions for you um so yes I'll just start like I'm beginning and I can kind of cut all this out and um yeah we'll get going okay hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Fake Love and No text Flying Monkeys i am so grateful to have another very special guest joining me today i'm sure many of you will

Abuse, Meaning, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Trauma, Vaknin Summaries

May 12, 2025

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00:00 No text okay so Sam um originally I said to you I wanted to talk about uh trauma bonding
00:07 but uh yes I had a bit of a change of heart so if it's okay with you I'd love to talk about the narcissist uh cycle the idolization love bombing devalue
00:19 discard cycle and clearly I've got some questions for you um so yes I'll just
00:26 start like I'm beginning and I can kind of cut all this out and um yeah we'll
00:32 get going okay hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Fake Love and No text Flying Monkeys i am so grateful to have another very special guest joining me
00:44 today i'm sure many of you will have read his work read his book watched his
00:51 numerous videos and gained so much insight from uh from your research his
00:58 name is Dr sam Vaknan now Dr sam is an Israeli writer and a professor of psychology and business studies he is the author of Malignant Self-Love
01:11 Narcissism Revisited and IMF and World Bank affairs consultant for several
01:18 nation states he also was the last editor in chief of the previous political news website Global Politician and he runs a private website with
01:30 content about psychological themes such as narcissistic personality disorder NPD
01:36 psychopathy abuse victimization by stalkers as well as other topics such as
01:42 philosophical and socopolitical and economic issues so
01:48 without further ado I'd like to introduce to you Dr sam Vakn welcome Sam
01:55 thank you so much for joining me here today thank you for having me and we have to thank Wikipedia for the for the
02:02 introduction yes yes i'm so glad you pointed me in that direction um wow what a a wealth of
02:10 expertise that you have look Sam in this episode I wanted to chat with you about
02:18 the narcissist cycle in particular how victims are chosen by the narcissist and
02:27 uh how they're idealized and then devalued of course and devalued and
02:34 discarded so the first question I have for you is one that I get asked so many
02:41 times by my beautiful clients who come to see me in their narcissistic abuse recovery and that is what traits or
02:47 No text vulnerabilities do narcissists typically target when they're selecting victims
02:56 why do these qualities make someone a prime source for narcissistic supply
03:03 that's a myth narcissists don't target anyone and they couldn't care less about your qualities or properties or traits or personal history or predelections or dreams or wishes you don't exist you're
03:16 just an instrument you're a prop in the narcissist theater production um
03:23 victims are disoriented following following an
03:29 experience with a narcissist most victims are disoriented and they feel that the order
03:36 and structure that have permeated and pervaded the universe prior to the relationship has all but vanished they
03:44 feel that everything has been turned into chaos and mayhem so they try to make sense of what has happened and one
03:51 way to to make sense of what has happened is to aggrandize yourself to say I I must have been chosen i'm very
03:59 special i'm super empathic and empath whatever that nonsensical word means i
04:05 am uh kind i'm nice i'm helpful i'm this i'm that and I've been chosen because in
04:11 some ways I'm superior in some ways I'm unique and that is of course a narcissistic defense so narcissist the
04:18 narcissist triggers in you your own narcissism narcissism is contagious the truth is the narcissist couldn't care less who you are the narcissist cares a lot about what he can
04:31 obtain from you what you can give him or her half of all narcissists are women
04:37 i'm going to use the male pronouns male gender pronouns but half of them are women they care a lot about what you can
04:44 give them and I've reduced it to four what I call the four S's if you provide
04:50 the narcissist with two out of these four two of these four then you're in
04:56 you pass the job interview you're accepted and this is sex supply narcissistic or more rarely
05:04 sadistic supply the pleasure of your pain shall we say um safety your willingness to
05:13 stick around despite egregious abuse and misconduct on the part of the narcissist that endows the narcissist with a sense of safety secure base as we call it in
05:24 psychology mhm and finally services you should service the narcissist if you're willing and able to participate in the narcissist shared fantasy and to provide two of these four
05:38 then as I said you're in and it has nothing to do with how empathic you are
05:44 whether you're nice or not what's your personal history how and even how you look
05:51 the narcissist victims the narcissist insignificant others they are completely
05:58 interchangeable they're completely commoditized it's like so many grains of
06:04 rice we don't particularly care how does a specific grain of rice look we care
06:10 about the nutritional value of the of the rice it's the same with the narcissist
06:16 so all these myths and and legends online on people being chosen because of
06:22 their traits because of their advantages because of their empathy because of their compassion because of their willingness to care and help because of
06:33 this and because of that all of them have nothing to do unfortunately with reality and that's precisely why the
06:39 narcissist can transition seamlessly and instantaneously from his last victim to
06:46 his next victim usually within the day if he's very slow that's because they are indistinguishable from each other but of course victims hate to hear that they dislike this they hate to hear this they say "It's not true i've been chosen i've been chosen because I'm super
07:02 empathy and took advantage of it." Or I've been chosen because of this or that there is the opposite question which is
07:09 indeed relevant which victims are attracted to the narcissist while the narcissist is
07:16 indiscriminate and promiscuous anyone would do there are specific types of
07:22 people who are attracted to narcissist and these would be people with borderline personality disorder people
07:30 with dependent personality disorder also known as codependence people who are broken and damaged people
07:37 in the throws of a crisis a life crisis and they're very vulnerable at that point people who are looking for supreme
07:45 self-confidence and leadership so they're naturally submissive mazukis and so on so there
07:53 are specific psychological or psychopathological profiles who are attracted to narcissist inexurably and
08:00 very powerfully the the other way is not true the narcissist as I said couldn't
08:06 care less who you are right they'll they'll settle for whoever's in the the right proximity to them as long as they uh are willing as you said to meet their
08:19 needs in in in some way um I heard you say that they have to be willing so I'm kind of focusing on that word uh Sam because as you know many victims will
08:32 say "Well hey I I actually wasn't willing to you know to to put up with
08:39 that i just found myself here and and I actually don't believe that uh maybe
08:46 many of them do but I don't believe that you know I I meet that certain criteria so what do you say to those people who would uh negate that and say well hey I
08:58 I wasn't looking for this as I said earlier victims desperately attempt to
09:07 make sense of what has happened to them it's exactly like being exposed to a natural disaster or a force of nature
09:13 you ask yourself why me there is survivor survivor guilt you know many
09:20 people die you survive you ask why me there's always the question why me there is the assumption that things don't
09:26 happen arbitrarily the world the universe is not capricious or as Albert Einstein said God doesn't play dice so you know if you ended up being somewhere with someone it must have it must designate must denote some kind of meaning it's a
09:42 meaningful thing people refuse to accept that the universe is is chaotic and
09:48 arbitrary that the vast majority of things that happen to people are meaningless that our lives are
09:55 essentially meaningless that we are just accidents and you know we start as an accident we
10:01 end up as accidents this is a worldview which is exceedingly difficult for people to accept and that's why people
10:08 resort to delusions such as religion and God and other such nonsense because they
10:14 need to make sense of their lives and so one of the there's a monopoly a variety
10:20 of narratives one of the narratives is I'm I'm unique i have been chosen for this suffering the other is I've been deceived i the narcissist is such a good
10:32 actor he pulled the wool over my eyes i was not aware of what was happening to me until much later and then it was too
10:41 late studies since the n since 1970 have demonstrated conclusively that this is
10:47 utter nonsense boulder dash victims are perfectly aware of
10:53 everything within the first few seconds of the encounter actually we have a clinical name for it it's called the
11:00 uncanny valley reaction when victims are potential victims are in the presence of a
11:06 narcissist or a psychopath by the way they react they have a gut reaction
11:13 their intuition there's alarm bells uh going on and uh there is a strong sense of
11:20 discomfort and physiological reactions it's all been documented similarly we're finding out that when
11:26 people are exposed to humanoid robots robots who resemble human beings which resemble human beings they have the uncanny value reaction as well so when you when you when you come across a narcissist the first time when you date the narcissist or first date or
11:42 something of course you know that something is wrong you know that this
11:49 creature facing you is somehow incomplete somehow halfbaked somehow there's something all right something
12:00 not put well together there's some some notes which are off key So how come
12:07 victims insist absolutely insist that they've been deceived by the narcissist's thespian skills and amazing
12:14 acting how come they insist because they deny
12:20 No text uh Sam can I can I just interject there and make myself the victim um and I
12:28 would say to you as a victim that when I met the narcissist they were pretending
12:34 to be someone who was nice and and I believed the persona they No you did not
12:41 believe me you did not believe actually studies show conclusively that you did not believe however you needed you
12:49 needed to believe you convinced yourself you suppressed your instinct sorry S i'd
12:55 love for you to explain uh the difference so so people listening can really understand that something in you tells you that something's wrong and then you deny it there are there's a
13:07 variety of ways to deny it for example you can say "Well nothing's wrong with that guy i'm having a bad day
13:14 something's wrong with me." This is called autoplastic defense so you're blaming yourself for this discomfort or
13:22 this feeling of ill at ease you know you're saying it's something's wrong with me i've had a bad day or whatever
13:29 or you're so lonely and you're so broken and you're so damaged you're willing to compromise you're willing to settle for
13:36 anything the mechanisms are at work are mechanisms of denial reframing you you
13:43 do possess all the relevant information within minutes but you deny it reframe
13:49 it ignore it attribute it to something else to you to the to the circumstances
13:55 to the environment to the situation to whatever just not to the real source
14:01 which is a narcissist facing you narcissists act of course they do
14:07 narcissist act psychopaths are even better actors than narcissists but not for long and this acting is
14:16 easily easily um piercable you can pierce the veil pretty easily and most
14:23 people do within minutes the first studies of the uncani valley reaction were conducted in 1970
14:29 by a roboticist Masahiro Mori in Japan and ever since then we have had a
14:35 growing body of evidence and by now it's overwhelming that people actually do possess the correct information about other people literally within minutes that they weigh around 1,000 factors including 100 biochemical
14:52 markers and that within a few minutes they form a 90% accurate picture of the
14:59 other person mhm while intuition is wrong about the world 50% of the time
15:05 intuition is wrong about other people only 10% of the time our intuition is geared to evaluate other people to gauge other people appropriately although it
15:16 is a complete failure when it comes to reality to the world to events to processes to circumstances when it comes to other people we get it right most of the time but then we say to ourselves I'm being too judgmental or I've had a
15:33 bad day or I'm so lonely let I need to compromise you know I need to compromise or he is having a bad day or it's endearing his behavior is endearing or
15:46 his behavior shows how much he cares about me for example if he's super jealous it's because he loves me if he's
15:53 abusive that's an indication that he's attached to me even much later in the relationship many
15:59 victims justify the abuser they take the abuser's standpoint point of view and
16:06 they justify the abuse in a variety of ways so it's very common to find victims of abuse
16:12 saying my husband or wife as the case may be is very jealous is very controlling but that's because he loves me more than anything in the world for
16:23 example the human mind is malleable and would give you what you want if what you
16:30 want is to find a mate a partner the human your human mind your mind will falsify everything imaginable just to give you that partner that you are looking for that you are seeking you're
16:42 not a scientist when you go on a date you're not a scientist you're not a you know you go on a date with big hopes with expectations with imagination with fantasy a Disney a Disney kind of thing
16:54 you hope maybe he's the one maybe something beautiful is going to come out come up out of this you know you don't
17:00 go on a date and saying "Okay now I'm going to clinically analyze this guy i'm going to observe all these body language
17:06 and behaviors and facial expressions which by the way betray narcissism within seconds." You know the hotty look
17:13 the specific stairs of the psychopath they are they are these cannot be falsified the way the narcissist and
17:20 psychopath interact with other people either they are contemptuous abrasive
17:26 and aggressive or they're overly nice ingratiating and so on in both cases
17:33 it's clear that something is out of the ordinary here and yet you deny and
17:39 ignore all this because you're in need because you're suffering in some way and
17:45 you perceive this as a as a panacea as a medicine as a solution we falsify everything we
17:52 falsify not only a potential date we falsify political views we falsify
17:58 everything is narcissistic defense uh sorry psychological defense mechanisms are essentially ways of
18:06 falsifying reality when you rationalize when you project when it's about
18:12 falsifying and everyone is possessed of psychological defense mechanisms our perception of reality is completely
18:19 almost completely false it's mediated by a filters upon filters upon membranes upon upon filters we never get the true picture but if you were to sit back and
18:30 listen to this tiny voice in the inner recesses of your mind tiny voice that
18:36 tells you what's wrong with this guy he's too controlling or he he appears to
18:43 be acting or is too nice or is too not nice or if you were to listen to this tiny voice you would simply get up and leave simply but you would never do this it's extremely rare you would never do this because you are
18:59 there not not for him but for yourself you're there to cater to your own psychological needs you are needy in
19:06 this situation so Sam what what behaviors No text uh does the the narcissist engage in or or do they engage in different behaviors
19:20 than a a a person who does not have NPD what do they do to uh make their victims
19:29 feel uniquely valued what how do they get them hooked essentially
19:38 I will give you a rule of thumb you and your and our viewers I will give give a rule of thumb here
19:46 narcissism and and definitely psychopathy are caricaturured
19:52 exaggerated human beings the narcissist does everything a normal human being does he behaves in a way
19:58 that a normal human being behaves so does a psychopath it's all absolutely
20:04 normal only it's highly exaggerated if the narcissist is when the narcissist is nice to people he is ostentatiously nice he is conspicuously
20:17 nice he's amazingly nice he's incredibly nice when he is unpleasant and aggressive to people he is abrasive he is on the verge of violence he is
20:28 unbridled and unconstrained and uncontrolled when he is nice to you he
20:34 is laser focused on you he just he's like a sponge he wants to know more and
20:41 more and more and he never talks about himself when it's the other way when he talks only about himself he couldn't
20:47 care less about you he doesn't bother to ask you anything about yourself it's always an extreme it's always a poll of some kind it's always at the very end of the
20:58 spectrum right when you date someone they talk a bit about themselves and they ask you
21:04 questions about yourself and that's normal behavior and so does a narcissist but it's exaggerated if if a nar when a
21:11 narcissist talks about himself it's only about himself and it can go on for hours if he talks about you if he asks you a
21:18 question it's only about you and this could go on for hours there's also the issue of speed
21:24 elacrity any interaction with a narcissist or mostly with a narcissist
21:30 is sped up is like double or triple the speed
21:37 so with a normal average healthy ostensibly human being you know you go through all these phases but they take 3 months with a narcissist they take 3 days
21:49 on a first date he's moving in with you on a second date you get married and on a third date you plan whether you argue
21:56 whether you should have two children or four children together now this happens with healthy people as
22:02 well but it takes six months with a narcissist i'm not exaggerating three four meetings so the elacrity is a major
22:10 warning sign the speed the intensity the focus the overpowering doineering
22:17 overwhelming immersive all consuming environment the narcissist creates which is a good description of what what we call the shared fantasy gradually the narcissist drags
22:29 you away from reality through his gaze he forces you into a tunnel you're
22:36 embedded in the tunnel and everything else around you vanishes evaporates dissipates and you are there alone with him in a universe of your own
22:48 making that's how he now initially the narcissist go through
22:55 phases long before the the love bombing the narcissist spots you so when Lasses
23:02 enters a room he would scan the room a room could be a church a pub family uh
23:10 household you name it any physical space this is known as pathological narcissistic space the first thing he
23:16 does he scans people and you can see scanning it's like physical he would
23:22 move his eyes around and he would he would he would homing on people and then
23:28 measure them take take their measure for like five minutes or he could he could suddenly get stuck for 10 minutes on
23:35 someone staring at them without saying a word glaring and you know so there's this scanning process I call it spotting having scanned the environment the narcissist zeros in on two three people
23:48 he thinks might provide him with two of the four S's and might become willing
23:54 participants in the shed fantasy and then he subjects them to three tests
24:00 essentially and this I call this part of the process auditioning he auditions
24:06 them so he he he finds out whether they are likely to be submissive and
24:12 cooperative he he finds out whether the these particular people can provide sex are amidable to providing sex uh are they able to provide the services he's looking for are they good sources so
24:25 superior sources of high-grade narcissistic supply or if he's a sadist
24:31 do they respond well to pain in a way which is arousing and exciting um and so
24:37 on so forth so there there are these tests the auditioning phase and then if you pass the audition you get you get
24:44 the part and it's a movie so Sam can I just ask you then um who No text doesn't pass the test who who is the narcissist going to go yeah well if you
24:56 don't find out if you don't find the narcissist immediately instantaneously irresistible then you don't pass the
25:02 test if you don't have a car and you don't drive and the narcissist is looking for a chorefare a driver you
25:09 don't pass the test i'm kidding you not if a narcissist is looking for access to
25:15 something or contacts a social network instantaneous social network to leverage this network
25:22 for some reason to obtain supply and you're not you know you're schizoid you're avoidant you're introverted and
25:28 so on you don't pass a test it depends on the specific narcissist with his specific goals the specific services he
25:35 requires your ability to provide narcissistic supply so for example if you're dumb you don't pass the test
25:42 because dumb people provide lowgrade narcissistic supply right so there is
25:48 this testing going on starting with sex do you find him irresistible are you willing to be submissive in sex are you willing to engage in kink kinky willing to be kinky and so on it's an integral
26:00 part of narcissism because narcissists are autoerotic in other words they make love to themselves they're sexually attracted to themselves via the agency
26:11 and intermediation of a partner so you need to be there just to facilitate the
26:17 narcissist's infatuation with himself that requires a lot of kink so there's this initial test and then the next test is services do you have a card are you wellconed are you outgoing are you this
26:28 are you that do you look if if his thing is somat if he's somatic if he places an
26:34 emphasis on how you look then your looks etc so are you able to provide
26:40 services the next thing is u is uh supply are you willing to provide and the final thing is can he trust you to be there regardless of how much and to
26:54 which extent he tortures you in other words will you stick around despite the egregious abuse that he's about to
27:01 inflict on you and here How do they How does he do that how do how do he how No text does a narcissist assess a victim for torture because a victim would describe
27:13 that stage as I guess uh fireworks and lightning bolts and and you know the
27:20 love at first sight where it sounds like that's a bit late sorry that's a bit
27:26 later that's a love bombing i'm coming through you're still at the auditioning stage this is the auditioning stage he
27:33 evaluates the question of whether you will stick around by gauging your maternal aspects because he's looking
27:41 for a mother the whole thing is about finding a mother so he's gauging your maternal aspects he may ask you openly
27:48 if you're a mother if you have children or he may he may trot out he may
27:55 introduce you to the childlike aspects of his personality he may infantilize in
28:02 front of you and gauge your reaction he he kind of introduces you to
28:08 his inner child and the inner child in the narcissist is suffering is hurt is traumatized is in need of protection and help he triggers your overprotective maternal instincts and he sits back and
28:21 he evaluates you if you react as a mother would to this display of
28:28 childlike infantilized features of the narcissist then you're in because this means that you're a mother by nature and you're unlikely to abandon him unlikely
28:39 to walk away unlikely to break up with him or dump him despite everything that he's about to do to you so now we transition to the next phase you've passed the audition with flying colors
28:51 you're the perfect psy and now we pass to the next stage and the next stage is a love bombing which is a stage we'll
28:57 describe in the love bombing phase what the narcissist does he idealizes you you can do no wrong you're drop dead
29:03 gorgeous you're hyper intelligent you're unprecedented he's never had such an experience in his entire life you're the most amazing creature that he's ever come across he would not conceive of spending another minute without you da
29:14 da da da da and all this intended actually to idealize himself not
29:21 you what he does when he idealizes you is idealizing himself because if he is in possession of such a prized object if he is if he is your so-called intimate
29:33 partner if he owns you because in his mind he owns you narcissists are incapable of perceiving your
29:39 separateness and your externality what they do they snapshot
29:45 you they introject you they create an internal object that represents you in the narcissist's mind so from that moment on you belong to the narcissist you're a figment of his imagination at
29:58 that point you need to be ideal because the narcissist is ideal the narcissist
30:04 is godlike he's perfect he's omnisient he's omnipotent is everything's dreamlike you know it can't be that an internal object in the narcissist's mind
30:15 will be less than perfect imperfect no way so he needs to to photoshop you he
30:22 takes a snapshot of you and he photoshops it and he renders you perfect
30:28 in order to preserve and maintain his own perfection and this is a process known as co
30:34 idealization having idealized you now you belong to the narcissist and because
30:41 you are his possession he's in ownership of you it elevates him for example if
30:47 you are drop dead gorgeous and he owns you it makes him
30:53 irresistible if you are hyper intelligent and he owns you it means that he is a genius it all reflects on him having idealized you in a love love bombing phase so the lovebombing phase is not
31:09 about you it's about him he's trying to convince himself actually he's talking
31:15 to himself when he tells you "Wow you're amazing." He's not telling you "Wow
31:21 you're amazing." He's telling himself "Wow she's amazing." because he's trying to shape-shift you to mold you to fit into the perfection that he is he's
31:34 godlike okay so now the love bombing is over you're both idealized you're an object in his mind in what we call an introjector an internal object in his mind and it's time to move to the next
31:45 stage and the next stage is converting you into a maternal figure at this stage is the dual mothership that your mothership as a narcissist strikes a bargain with you he says "I'm going to
31:57 love you the way a mother loves her newborn i'm going to love you unconditionally i'm going to idealize
32:03 you the way a mother idealizes her baby in return you're going to do the
32:09 same to me you're going to idealize me the way a mother idealizes her baby i'm going to be your baby and you're going
32:16 to become my mother i'm going to be your mother you're going to be my mother." Dual mothership and as a maternal figure I need you to be there for me i need you to accept me i need you to embrace me i need you to
32:27 love me i need you to hug me i need you to to support butress my fantasy my self
32:34 my inflated fantastic self-concept the way a mother would tell her her kid you're amazing you're the most beautiful
32:41 kid in the world you Yeah same okay so this is the bargain and most most people
32:48 at this stage of the shared fantasy are already very deep in they agree they consent they give consent that point at the height of the love bobby the
32:59 narcissist starts to abuse you egregiously he starts to really torture
33:05 you and torment you and and he cheats on you he he he
33:11 he there's ele strong elements of control coercion and so on and the question is
33:18 why the day before you were the queen the day before you were impeccable the
33:24 day before you were perfection raified what happened what happened he's testing you he has converted you
33:32 into a mother but are you a real mother or are you just faking it he needs to what do you call what do you call that No text phase narcissistic abuse narcissistic abuse but would you say
33:45 when they're at that heightened point of the lovebombing stage and then it just
33:51 basically comes to a screeching halt and they start to abuse you would you say that's when they begin to devalue you no
33:59 on the very contrary it's integral part of the idealization what the narcissist is trying to do by abusing you is to
34:06 prove to himself that you are a perfect mother who would love him unconditionally and would never walk away would never walk away never mind what he does to you you stick around you're supportive you are empathic you
34:22 provide sakore you're there for him it's part of the idealization that's what people fail to understand the initial
34:29 phase of the narcissistic abuse is is a continuation of the ideal idealization it's putting you to the test to prove to himself that you're indeed a perfect
34:40 mother okay now so sorry Sam so why do then they not
34:49 just start off with the really egregious abuse like to begin with why is it that
34:57 um so much of the time it it it seems to start off gradually where the the
35:03 victims don't trust you he can't trust you not to walk away he doesn't know yet you have
35:10 established the parameters of the shared fantasy and you've agreed you've struck you've struck the dual mothership
35:17 contract you agree to be his mother he agrees to be a mother but are you a real mother don't forget narcissism involves
35:24 paranoid ideiation he's very suspicious of you he's very hypervigilant he's very weary he needs to test you but if he tests you too extremely to start with
35:35 you'll walk away he he cannot be certain that you will not walk away because maybe you're faking so he starts gradually this is the first phase of narcissistic abuse and then he escalates
35:48 and escalates constantly testing you at some point he stops this is okay she has established her credentials as a perfect mother she's still here that despite everything I've done to her still here
36:00 okay i can trust her she's a mother now that she is a mother I can move on to the next phase in the shared
36:07 fantasy one c one comment here one disclaimer or caveat or call it whatever
36:13 the shared fantasy is inexurable it's a machinery in motion
36:19 it consumes both the narcissist and his victims it's not something the narcissist controls not something he can reverse that he can do nothing once it's
36:30 set in motion it goes to the very end so there's nothing you could have done because I hear many victims you know they say "If I only had had I only acted
36:41 this way had I only not done this had I only loved him more had I only loved him less had I only there's nothing you
36:48 could have done you are both captives the cogs and wheels of the shared fantasy." End of story it's a machinery
36:54 in motion so the next phase is devaluation why would the narcissist
37:01 need to devalue you because you're a maternal figure then narcissism today we know that
37:07 pathological narcissism is a failure in early childhood dynamics and I'm not going right now into the question whether there is a genetic component in narcissism brain abnormalities and so on probably there
37:19 are there is no evidence of this yet it's very likely that there is a genetic
37:25 hereditary component and a brain abnormality however everyone agrees no exception that without adverse childhood circumstances there would be no
37:37 pathological narcissism even if there is a genetic propensity or predisposition and even if there is a brain abnormality they are not triggered they're triggered by childhood abuse and
37:50 trauma so this is in the background of all narcissists that we have ever interviewed clinical settings case
37:56 studies they all have a period of childhood abuse and trauma abuse and
38:02 trauma have many forms they're multifarious you could have classic abuse physical verbal sexual you could
38:09 have other forms of abuse instrumentalizing the child using the child to realize your your own unfulfilled dreams and wishes parentifying the child spoiling the child tempering the child being overprotective these are all forms of abuse
38:25 okay so we know that pathological narcissism is a failure in early
38:32 childhood dynamics that lead to the emergence of the self
38:38 these dynamics in children who became later narcissists these dynamics have been massively disrupted consequently the narcissist does not
38:49 possess a fully integrated fully constellated self he doesn't he's selfless ironically
38:57 no ego narcissist have no ego to speak of and one of the reasons is the mother did not allow the narcissistic the child did
39:08 not allow the child to separate from her and to become an individual the critical
39:14 phase of separation individuation has been disrupted in early childhood narcissist never separated from his mother of origin his biological mother and he never became an individual has never become an individual so now he's trying to make up for lost
39:32 time he's trying to recreate the dynamic within his new mother the new mother is you and he wants you he wants to recreate with you the same dynamics in other words he wants to separate from
39:44 you and become an individual he failed with his original mother she wouldn't
39:50 let him separate she was what we call a dead mother emotionally she wouldn't let him separate so now he needs you you're
39:57 the new mother you're the standin and he's going to separate from you and he's going to become an individual despite you he's going to walk away from you the way he should have when he was 2 years
40:08 old and was not allowed to but how to separate from you remember you are an idealized figure your perfection rified
40:16 and embodied and personified your amazing counterpart and you are above
40:22 all the instrument of his own idealization so how would he get rid of you how to do
40:29 that he needs to change the way he sees you it's a precondition from separating from you so he devalues you initially he devalues the internal
40:40 object that represents you in his mind and then in order to avoid dissonance to
40:47 avoid a gap to avoid the divergence he devalues you as well so that the
40:53 external object you and the internal object match they are both
40:59 devalued having devalued you the ground is set for the reenacted separation from
41:07 the original mother now you are the mother so he separates from you that's a discard the discard is a phase that I
41:14 was the first to describe most of this language I coined in the 80s and 90s including narcissistic abuse so I had to
41:22 describe this it was never mentioned in the literature in any literature so I had to describe it and so I chose the
41:28 word discard and it has to do with so if you look at it devaluation and discard is
41:35 just other words for separation individuation it's exactly the same
41:41 childhood dynamic carried forward to adulthood with a new mother oh my goodness and then he gets rid of and
41:48 he's Sam before we go on can I just ask you about some of the techniques and No text strategies that the narcissist uses in when they're devaluing you when they're
42:01 separating and and creating that new identity uh things can you talk to us about um uh phenomenon such as uh gaslighting the silent treatment
42:14 isolation projection all of those tactics they use to make you feel
42:21 devalued and of course confused because this person has done a shape shift on you yeah again there is a confusion especially online between narcissists and psychopaths in order to gaslight you need to be able to tell the difference
42:37 between reality and fantasy and you and the gaslighting is always premeditated deliberate intentional and goal oriented there's a goal to be accomplished by
42:49 gaslighting consequently narcissists do not gaslight because they are unable to tell the difference between reality and
42:56 fantasy and almost they're delusional and almost everything they do is not premeditated
43:03 or intentional it's driven driven from the inside and is unconscious however the victim
43:10 experiences it the same way whether you are gas lit intentionally by a
43:16 psychopath or you are gas lit unintentionally by a narcissist who is not aware that he's gaslighting you you
43:23 as a victim experience it as gaslighting gradually you lose what we call reality
43:29 testing you begin to doubt your own judgment um and your own ability to evaluate and gauge reality and because this becomes a source of serious fear terror even and
43:42 discomfort you begin to avoid reality altogether you begin to constrict your life you begin to withdraw and avoid
43:51 um what the narcissist does essentially boils down to two major groups of
43:57 techniques they're in the devaluation phase we'll come in a minute to the devaluation but the one group of
44:04 techniques involve uh intermittent uh reinforcement intermittent reinforcement
44:10 is unpredictable behavior which is diametrically which is mutually exclusive so I love you I hate
44:17 you co cold and hot you know so you can't predict the next behavior and you
44:26 become highly dependent on the source of the behavior because the person who behaves unpredictably holds the keys to your well-being to to the stability of
44:37 your moods to your emotions and so on you become dependent on this person so
44:43 the intermittent reinforcement group of techniques have to do with control
44:49 basically the second group of techniques has to do with um I would say contempt contempt and uh paranoia
45:01 so these groups of techniques involve putting you down humiliating you shaming
45:07 you denigrating you diminishing you uh comparing you unfavor unfavorably to
45:13 other people ignoring you completely the silent treatment you're not worthy of my
45:19 communication you know it's a it's a signal you're you're unworthy in clinical terms we say that
45:26 the narcissist is trying to inculcate in you to create in you an internalized bed
45:32 object the same way the narcissist causes you to doubt reality or your perception of reality he causes you to
45:39 doubt your perception of yourself and you're beginning to lose your identity there is an erosion in identity later on you have what we call identity diffusion or identity disturbance you no longer recognize yourself your actions surprise
45:54 you you say "I can't believe I've done this i've never done this before." You begin to feel alienated and estranged
46:01 like you're a stranger to yourself and all this is because the narcissist embeds in you
46:08 voices that challenge your knowledge of yourself the certainty that you used to
46:15 have about yourself and replace it with a much inferior version view of yourself
46:23 and this whole thing is called entrainment entrainment is a new discovery was first described in
46:30 neuroscientific literature um 12 years ago we discovered that using
46:36 rhythmic sounds repetitive rhythmic sounds we can coordinate we can synchronize the brain waves the physical
46:43 brain waves of of two brains the narcissist basically does the
46:49 same he's he uses verbal abuse an emanation of sounds which are usually repetitive they're like mantra or whatever and they're regular and so on and there is a modiccom of entrainment brainwashing if you wish and all this has to do with the second group which
47:07 are which are based on contempt and paranoia the paranoia kicks in a bit later when the narcissist converts you
47:14 into an enemy or clinically speaking into a persary object the narcissist
47:20 begins to see you as a threat to the inner balance the his internal landscape where
47:27 all the internal objects are in harmony they're all in an equilibrium and the fact that you are diverging from the internal object that represents you in his mind threatens the
47:40 whole structure the whole house of card and so he begins to regard you as an
47:46 eminent threat serious present danger and at that point you become an
47:52 enemy and he then conceives of you as evil malevolent
47:59 malicious and so on so these are the the stages intermittent reinforcement is a group of techniques
48:05 not only one contempt and installation of a bad object via entrainment and
48:11 brainwashing and so on bad object in you and finally converting you into a
48:18 pseudary object par paranoid ideation on the part of the narcissist and he acts against you as if you're threatening him
48:26 the the bad news is that a lot of this stays with you after the narcissist has left you or you have left the narcissist there are traces more than traces there are these hyper structures remain with
48:38 you for example the narcissist's voice remains embedded in your head long
48:44 after the narcissist is no longer in your life physically it's there it talks to you manipulates you it controls you
48:51 it undermines you it challenges you it doubts you it's there all the time and
48:57 it's not a positive voice ever that's not the idealizing voice that's a
49:03 devaluing voice so that's one example but the change are dramatic yes sorry go
49:09 No text ahead dan can sorry can I just ask you um if the the narcissist is uh I'm
49:16 understanding wanting you to reflect back to them how they view themselves
49:22 then why do they want to view you as this horrible enemy if they're looking
49:31 for that image of of of themselves why do they make you need to separate
49:37 because your mother they need to separate from you what way is there to separate from you he needs to devalue you what reason is there to separate from you if you're ideal if you're loving I mean why would
49:48 he separate from you he's not insane so he needs to he sees you then why do they
49:54 they go about um I enacting these behaviors these strategies such as
50:00 intermittent reinforcement uh where they will you know make you wait and never let you know when the
50:07 reward is coming so you'll hang around for long periods of time why do they do that which is going to make the victim stay if they're trying to separate it's
50:18 a control strategy the narcissist don't forget is possessed of paranoid ideiation so simultaneously he goes about the business of the shared fantasy which involves separation and
50:29 individuation and in order to separate he needs to change the way he sees you so now you're devalued otherwise there's
50:36 no reason to separate but while he's doing all this he's perfectly aware that he's misbehaving he doesn't call it misbehavior he doesn't regard it as misbehavior but he's aware that he's
50:47 hurting you is a word that is and he's afraid simply afraid there's paranoid
50:53 ideation so he needs to control you it's about control as I said there's a
50:59 control strategy so they're control strategies and contempt strategies and they go to hand in hand
51:05 because when you hold someone in contempt they may strike back at you there is this fact when you mistreat
51:13 someone when you abuse someone when you traumatize someone when you As I said hold someone in contempt when you demean and they may end up you know doing something about it and Nazis is not an
51:25 idiot he's fully aware of that also he has had previous experience past experience where maybe one of the
51:33 victims and so on struck struck back maybe he did suffer consequences we don't know but the
51:41 paranoid ideation is all pervasive and he narcissists always in all relationships intimate or not they
51:47 always try to control the environment they are control freaks absolute control freaks and the paranoid ideation in the
51:54 case of narcissist serves two purposes hypervigilance where the narcissist scans the environment all the time for
52:03 slides insults attacks challenges and so on so this is
52:10 hypervigilance and there is a grandio self-perception in in paranoid ideation because it means that you are the focus
52:16 and the center of attention it's malign attention there's
52:22 a conspiracy against you people are planning to do bad things to you but you're still the center of attention so it's aggrandizing self aggrandising and so it fits the
52:34 narcissistic pathology to be paranoid with you until the very last second when
52:41 the shared fantasy is dissolved the narcissist is hellbent on controlling you on making sure that you won't
52:48 surprise him so much that you won't break out of this prison because if you break out too early the shed fantasy is
52:55 incomplete when the shed fantasy is incomplete he will try to hoover you try to reidalize you and reintroduce you
53:01 into a new shed fantasy sometimes the narcissist succeed to get succeeds to
53:07 get rid of you physically discard you physically or you discard the narcissist physically but he was just beginning to
53:16 change the internal object he was in the beginning of changing the internal object you felt bad and you walked away
53:23 and he was still you know in the business of devaluing you and so it's incomplete when the shared fantasy doesn't reach it its natural conclusion he needs to h over h over h over h over
53:33 h over h over h over h over h over h over h over you it needs to bring you back into the shed fantasy the unfinished business to settle would you
53:39 No text call that the uh the hoovering stage when they they draw you back in i just
53:47 That's what I just said they said twice another round of abuse um Sam I just
53:53 wanted you to explain to our listeners the intentionality because I heard you say
54:00 that um it's it's not actually in intentional when they're gaslighting you
54:07 uh when it's a narcissist that's engaging in this behavior versus the behavior of a psychopath where many victims would say that they know exactly
54:19 what they're doing because they can stop it at the drop of a hat depending on who's watching so can you talk to us
54:25 about that word and and the intentionality of their actions because
54:31 the victims feel like the narcissist knows exactly what they're doing victims need to demonize the narcissist again in order to make sense of what has happened to them they need to aggrandize the
54:41 narcissist they need to make the narcissist this evil wicked demonic entity that took over them and you know
54:47 they need it's a morality play it's like religion something religious has happened to them some epiphany and so on
54:54 while actually what has happened is that an made fun of them and abused them and exploited them and they can't
55:00 admit this they can admit to having been stupid enough to end up with a narcissist as simple as I'm sorry to be
55:07 blunt yeah no one would say I've been so stupid they would say I have been the
55:14 victim of this supernatural force which is all cunning and scheming and
55:20 malevolent and narcissists cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy they're delusional so when they say something they believe
55:31 it they believe everything they say even evident lies they believe it and
55:38 that's why they reject evidence to the contrary never mind how much evidence you present them with they would argue
55:45 they would disagree because they believe we call this process confabulation they don't lie narcissists
55:52 don't lie they confabulate they create alternative realities alternative narratives alternative
55:59 stories then they come to believe this nonsense this fiction that they've created and then for them it's a
56:06 fact and they would defend it to the death as a fact they would never agree with you that it's a lie or similarly
56:15 when the narcissist makes a promise he has every intention in the world to keep it they never do but when they make the
56:24 promise they mean it when they tell you something they believe it's true they're delusional which part of mentally ill people cannot grasp i have no idea they're mentally ill you know not not
56:36 like psychopaths psychopaths are premeditated they are intentional they're cunning they're scheming
56:43 narcissists are just delusional crazy wackos nuts i don't know what other word
56:49 to use okay they'll accept You know I love those terms you use Sam yeah i mean like if a psychotic would come here and say "Do you see do you see
57:00 the the tree there?" And you look and there's no tree and you would tell the psychotic person someone with psychosis
57:06 you would say schizophrenia yeah they would say "But there's no tree." So what are you talking about of course there's a tree i see it you know that's a
57:13 narcissist so narcissists don't gaslight because
57:19 they fully believe what they're saying they believe their version of reality is the only reality and your version of
57:26 reality is wrong they believe this it's not that they are sitting back like the psychopath and they're saying "I know
57:34 reality but now I'm going to pretend that there's another reality in order to confuse confuse her." That's not what
57:41 they're doing they really believe it so the narcissist is trapped in the
57:49 machinery of the shed fantasy as much as you are most of these things are unconscious however I I tell you what I think confuses people narcissists are fully aware of
58:01 their actions they know exactly what they're doing and they maintain they know the
58:10 difference between right and wrong so people say "Wait a minute if they know what they're doing and if they know the difference between right and wrong they're evil they're demonic because they do they act they're aware
58:23 of that yes i think that's what the most confusing thing for victims is if if if
58:30 they actually believe everything they're doing then then how do they how do they
58:38 hurt this person knowing that it's hurting them when especially when their victim is telling them no they don't
58:45 know this is the confusion they know what they're doing but they don't know why they're doing it and they regard
58:53 everything they're doing as morally positive as a good thing right they
59:00 don't regard anything they're doing as bad or evil or wrong or immoral no way so if he's hurting you he would say "I'm doing this to make you a better
59:12 person it's because I love you it's tough love i'm hurting you to wake you up to
59:18 educate you to elevate you to improve you that's what I'm doing i'm isolating you from your f friends because they're not really your friends they just want to exploit you i don't want you to talk to
59:30 your mother because she's poisoning our relationship they don't see what they're doing as as evil or bad or wrong never ever
59:41 period they are fully aware of what they're doing but whatever it is they're
59:47 doing is embedded and an integral part of a fantasy and the fantasy is
59:55 self-justifying because they cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy the fantasy legitimizes
60:02 everything they're doing so yes you can be aware of what you're doing and still believe that what you're doing is good you know if you read Nazi if you read
60:13 books written by by Nazis in Nazi Germany they say we are exterminating
60:21 the Jews we are killing them yes but it is a good thing we are
60:27 doing we are helping humanity we are protecting and cleansing
60:34 Europe you know what I mean so they justify their abuse they they know they don't regard it as abuse person but it it's serving a purpose and it it justifies the greater good they don't
60:46 see this as abuse abuse is your word they don't see this as abuse you see it as abuse but you see it as abuse because
60:52 you're inferior you're stupid you are evil maybe you are you see it as abuse
60:58 because your reality your perception of reality is wrong your reality testing
61:04 needs fixing not theirs their reality testing is perfect so there's a huge difference
61:10 between narcissists and psychopaths they're not the same and people confuse and many self-styled experts online
61:16 confuse all these they attribute psychopathic traits and behaviors and psych and psychonamics to narcissist whereas it's not the same
61:27 so Sam I I I didn't want to get into it too much in this episode the the difference because I know we could we could talk about that for an entire episode the difference between um NPD
61:39 and psychopathy can you just briefly uh give us a snapshot of the difference
61:46 because it it sounds like like very well many victims may actually be with
61:52 someone who is a psychopath rather than someone who has NPD exactly very well
61:59 said i suspect that many victims online and I visit the forums regularly and so actually not talking about narcissists at all they're talking about for example partners who committed crimes
62:12 regularly and that's not a narcissist narcissists are pro-social narcissists need society
62:19 because they need narcissistic supply they need feedback from people they
62:25 psychopaths are criminalized yes psychopaths commit crimes a lot they talk about people who are extremely
62:31 physically violent and and so on so forth happens with narcissism but it's extremely rare that's much more common
62:38 among among psychopaths maybe half of them are physically violent so yes I think many victims were actually spend
62:45 time with a psychopath however there is a hybrid of psychopath
62:51 and narcissist it's known as malignant narcissist malignant narcissist or psychopathic narcissist is a combination
62:59 of narcissism psychopathy and sadism About 3% of all narcissists are malignant narcissist excluding this group which is
63:11 really psychopathic really gaslight really they they really they resemble psychopaths actually excluding this group the remaining 97% of of
63:24 narcissists are not like psychopath in the psychopaths in the following ways narcissists are crucially dependent on
63:31 other people for input and feedback which they use in order to regulate their internal environment this input and feedback is known as narcissistic supply so
63:42 narcissists obtain narcissistic supply and they use it to regulate their sense of self-esteem and self-worth and
63:50 self-confidence and their self-concept the way they see themselves they patress their fantasies they uphold and support
63:57 their fantasies they need supply all the time they are addicts they're junkies they're junkies of supply the psychopath couldn't care less psychopaths are very
64:08 often lone wolves they're very often isolated like
64:14 you know the uni bomber they are they are people who don't care they don't
64:20 care about input from other people they don't care what other people think they don't need any feedback from the
64:26 environment in order to regulate their internal landscape and psychonamics they are perfectly self-sufficient and so on
64:32 so number one the total dependency on people narcissist absolutely no
64:38 dependency of people cycle one number two but but Sam is it sorry is it black
64:44 and is it that black and white or is there a crossover where someone can be
64:51 uh psychopathic to some degree but also you know have that need uh for the
64:58 attention of of others to or is there are malignant narcissist they're malignant narcissist and in this 3% we have this crossover we have this hybrid but no uh in the pure types pure
65:12 narcissist and pure psychopath there's no no bleeding over this these are pure
65:18 types the second thing the second uh difference is that narcissists cannot
65:24 tell the difference between reality and fantasy it's a delusional disorder and they cannot tell the difference between internal and
65:31 external so if you become the narcissist's intimate partner he regards you as an extension of himself as some
65:37 kind of figment in his imagination as an internal object psychopaths are perfectly capable of telling the
65:43 difference between reality and fantasy and they're perfectly capable of telling the difference between internal and external in this sense the psychopath is a lot more mentally healthy than the
65:54 narcissist narcissist as Kberg said Otto Kberg the father of the field he said
66:00 that narcissism and borderline personalities they're actually psychotic almost psychotic they're like you know up there with schizophrenia it's really bad these are really bad disorders
66:12 whereas psychopathy is more a problem in social functioning in the willingness to obey
66:18 the law and so on psychopathy is more like defiance recklessness is more behavioral whereas narcissism is a total
66:27 ruination total devastation of all the major psychological aspects of of the personality of the individual it's much worse than psychopathy so this is the second difference and I would say that the third difference between psychopathy and and
66:43 narcissism is that psychopaths uh are not don't have repetition comp
66:52 what Freud called repetition compulsions in other words psychopaths are much more agile and much more flexible in their
67:00 reaction to the environment they are consumacious they reject authority they're defiant they're reckless there
67:06 are this there are that i agree they're impulsive psychopaths are impulsive and so
67:12 on but they adapt they're more adaptive they they they're malleable they're
67:18 shape shifters they change they're responsive to the environment and so on whereas a narcissist is highly rigid
67:24 it's totally rigid structure and must go from phase A to phase B to phase C to phase D cannot
67:32 stop cannot change behaviors cannot you know redefine himself rediscover himself
67:38 modify transform nothing it's stuck it's total rigidity and where does empathy
67:45 fit in Sam in in both of these disorders good question we used to believe erroneously until recently we used to believe that narcissists and psychopaths do not possess empathy
67:57 as I said erroneously it's wrong today we know that narcissist both
68:03 narcissists and psychopaths possess empathy only partial empathy so 30 years
68:10 ago I coined the phrase cold empathy called empathy is a combination of cognitive empathy and reflexive empathy
68:18 without emotional empathy the effective empathy part component is missing
68:25 so narcissists and psychopaths can empathize with you but they will have no emotional reaction let me give you a
68:31 crass vulgar example you have a healthy person like a joke beginning of a joke a healthy
68:38 person a narcissist and a psychopath enter a bar and they see a woman they're
68:44 men and they see a woman crying the healthy person would say she's crying now she's crying is the
68:51 cognitive empathy she's crying therefore she said his face will change a bit there
68:59 would be micro expressions reflecting the fact that you're crying that is reflexive empathy and the healthy person
69:06 would feel bad for you would feel bad for you would come to you and say "Why are you crying can I help is there
69:12 anything I can do it feels so bad i can't see you crying." You know that's the effective empathy okay that's the
69:18 healthy person now the psychopath will have a look at you and say she is crying
69:24 that's the cognitive part his face may change that's a reflexive part but then
69:30 he will say she's vulnerable i can have sex with her or I can take her money
69:37 because she's vulnerable he's not paying attention or she's broken you know this is the way I can leverage her
69:46 brokenness and vulnerability to obtain a goal and the goal in this case if she if she's a looker the goal is sex or maybe
69:53 her money or whatever so right that's a psychopath a narcissist would say uh so
70:00 a narcissist would would have a look and say she's crying that's cognitive empathy his face might change reflexive
70:06 empathy and then he would say uh I'm the perfect solution i can make her happy again i'm
70:14 going to restore her i'm going to rescue her i'm going to save her i'm going to become her guru her teacher i'm going to
70:20 be I'm going to restore I'm going to rebuild her world i'm so he's going to aggrandise himself through he's he's
70:28 going to seek in her the image that he sees or wants in himself yes is going to
70:34 idealize himself through her not paying attention to her emotions and not reacting emotionally to her actually the
70:41 psychopath says I can get get her to have sex with me that's a goal and the
70:47 narcissist says I can get her to become a source of supply and participate in the fantasy it's also goal oriented so
70:54 they both focused on goals and they couldn't care less how you feel they have no emotional response to how you
71:01 feel however they do analyze you they do realize you're sad you're broken you're
71:07 damaged and that requires empathy and this type of empathy is known as cognitive empathy and if they have
71:13 facial expressions and so on that's reflexive empathy and together this is known as cold empathy cold like
71:22 Sam I could talk about this all day but um just for I don't want to hold you up
71:29 i know you're tired you can hold me up but people will will not watch getting back to the the idealization
71:38 devaluation discard phase please tell us now why the narcissist discards you how
71:47 they do it and also if they let you know
71:53 that they've they're done with you they want to be rid of you they're so glad you're gone why do they come back why do
72:01 they continue i think I think if you were to replay or rewind what we've discussed you will see that I answered these questions yeah i I remember talking about hoovering but I I just wondered if you could give us a little bit more insight into the actual discard
72:17 and and what's going through the narcissist's mind when they've gone that's it i I've had enough i am now uh
72:24 normally moving on to that new supply he devalues you so there there are two
72:31 layers there's the unconscious layer the need to replay the the dynamics with the mother and there is a conscious layer
72:38 the conscious layer you're being idealized and you're being devalued once you've been devalued you're worthless you've been devalued you can no longer serve as a source of supply because now you can do no right you're
72:50 stupid you're ugly you're this you're that you cannot ideal help the narcissist idealizing so you can provide
72:57 services but you know not sex not supply not and who cares if you're there or not
73:03 you are there are damage damaged goods you know so having devalued you and that
73:09 is the first stage already the narcissist loses all interest in you a process known as
73:15 daexis and then after that the narcissist becomes paranoid about you he begins to ask himself is she plotting
73:23 against me is she conspiring against me is she malevolent is she evil is she planning to do something to me and so on
73:29 so you become an enemy of course an enemy is intolerable the narcissist discards
73:35 overnight narcissist switches to complete i mean the discard
73:41 is an abrupt act it's never a process it's not like discarding you in stages you know take
73:48 two weeks pack your things nazi simply gives up on you in a split second flip
73:54 of a coin and you're gone and uh usually he insists on a physical representation
74:00 of the discard he insists that you move out however if you refuse to discard yourself he will discard himself so what
74:07 he will do if you refuse to discard himself he will start to travel and find lovers everywhere he will simply vanish
74:15 from your life it will disappear so either way he will get rid of you one way or another it will be literally overnight the the problem that victims have is that the devaluation phase is
74:28 like an iceberg 90% of it is happening underground and in the unconscious even the narcissist
74:35 is not fully aware and so when the devaluation finally erupts over the surface when
74:42 there's the 10% and then the discard it comes as a shock it comes as a surprise the narcissist stews stews inside himself the process of
74:53 devaluation is a kind of uh thing that's happening internally gradually the
75:00 contours and the shape and the content of the idealized image changes and the image becomes dark and ugly and stupid and so there's a new image emerging this
75:12 can take years sometimes sometimes decades sometimes months sometimes weeks
75:18 but it's a process no one is aware of this process not the narcissist not the
75:24 partner no one it's unconscious at some point the narcissist suddenly becomes aware he wakes up one morning he says
75:30 "Oh my god I thought she was intelligent she's actually very stupid and look at her she's old and ugly i mean it comes to him as well as a sudden abrupt
75:44 realization he's not aware that this has been h taking place for for months now
75:50 he's not aware he's aware of the outcomes of the process so then
75:56 overnight you're devalued and then later you become an enemy and he wants to get rid of you immediately he can't stand
76:02 you just can can't stand you you irritate him you annoy him you and he wants to get rid of you and if you want
76:09 to get rid of yourself if you want leave the room I'll leave the room so he goes away there's also sometimes in very
76:16 long-term relationships which last 40 years and 20 years and 40 50 years and whatever people say but it's not true
76:23 some narcissists are married to the same woman you know for 30 years yes yes but
76:29 within these 30 years there are numerous cycles of idealization devaluation
76:35 discard idealization devaluation discard within this the marriage so you will
76:41 have like one or two years of idealization one or two years of evaluation and then the narcissist would disappear for two years would travel
76:48 somewhere have another lover and then he would come back to the same marriage and again the cycle was done so So Sam why is it that they so
77:02 often make that discard when they just detach and act like you never existed
77:09 why do they so often make that discard so cruel why does it have to be so
77:15 memorable because victims will often say as you you know that they did it on my
77:22 birthday or it was Christmas or I I was sick or it was just so incredibly cruel
77:31 you remember that the discard on the surface level the discard represents a much deeper psychological process which
77:38 is unconscious and that is the need to separate from a mother figure from a maternal figure he needs to separate
77:45 from the mother and because the initial mother the original mother did never allowed him to separate was very
77:52 clinging and protective and insecure and selfish and wouldn't allow him to separate he needs to make sure that this time it happens he needs to make it really extreme unambiguous unequivocal clear cruel aggressive he needs to make
78:10 sure that there's no going back he needs to make sure that this particular mother the new mother gets it there's no
78:17 misunderstanding here i am separating from you mother and I'm doing it in a
78:24 way that you can this time you cannot tether me you cannot hold me back you cannot you know hold hold me as a
78:31 hostage so he needs to make it ostentatious he needs to make it
78:38 conspicuous explicit un undebatable indisputable he needs to make it so that
78:44 everyone understands what's happening okay so that's one thing second thing he's in panic he's in panic because in
78:51 his mind uh the partner is a is an enemy by now it's a secretary object and he's
78:59 afraid simply afraid he needs to get rid of her because she constitutes a threat i'm saying he she remember half of all so he he she constitutes a threat and he
79:11 needs to get rid of her many many narcissist the discard phase develop extreme paranoid
79:17 ideation and so this is the second reason the third reason is that you are
79:23 an enemy so you need to be punished justice needs to be restored you need So this is a morality
79:30 play the narcissist is all good you're all bad this is called splitting this is the splitting defense mechanism narcissist see themselves as all good you're all bad and as an all bad wicked
79:42 evil entity you need absolutely to be penalized and you need to suffer for
79:48 your misconduct and your evil intentions and your and your failure to conform to
79:55 the idealized image it's a failure you failed him you betrayed him it's a betrayal so of course he's angry at you and aggressive and he wants to punish you you were supposed to be the perfect
80:06 mother forever and ever amen and you failed him because suddenly for reasons
80:12 that he's not aware of you became a different person you used to be ideal
80:18 and now you're exactly the opposite you used to be gorgeous now you are ugly used to be clever now you're stupid what happened it's a betrayal sometimes he says she's doing it on purpose she is acting stupid she's not stupid or she's
80:31 neglecting herself she could be gorgeous but she's neglecting and she's doing it to to torture me she's doing it on
80:38 purpose you know she's doing it to me the narcissist yes he's doing it to me
80:44 and I'm angry at her it's like a kid listen the mental age the psychological age of of a narcissist is between two
80:50 and three years it's a kid it's a infant or toddler with a temper tantrum and
80:58 he's angry at mommy and he wants to punish her and he will say bad things and he will break plates and he will
81:04 break his whatever toy has and and so on that's the discard is discarding mother
81:10 is and then there's a huge hope in the wake of the discard the narcissist
81:16 experience enorm experiences enormous relief and a huge hope it's a hopeful
81:22 event what this is what victims fail to understand they think the discard is traumatic to both partners like the
81:28 narcissist is also traumatized that's why he's coming back to hoover them no the narcissist in the wake of the
81:35 discard is a liberated men he finally can become an individual divided he got
81:42 rid of his mother this time he failed with the original mother he succeeded with his mother he can now become an
81:49 individual his own men he's relieved he's exalted he's elated he is in an
81:56 amazing state you know until the same dynamics set in first of all the
82:02 internal object is still active while the external object is gone discarded
82:08 internal object is still there what to do about it creates this and then he cannot be an individual never mind how hard he tries don't don't forget he doesn't have a self
82:20 he's not in possession of a self he has a self but it's like not constellated not integrated identity diffusion it's a
82:26 mess like borderline so there's no way he can become an individual it's not because it's not a question of finding a
82:32 new mother separating from her and becoming a human being a man a entity a
82:39 person personhood no there's no solution to this so he needs to find another
82:45 mother urgently he needs another mother i think you've just answered my next question which was going to be uh so if they want to be an individual why do
82:57 they have that next victim that next target just ready at on hand to to start
83:05 the process again because because what I'm hearing is that what I'm hearing you
83:11 say is that as much as they want to be an individual they get to that stage where They failed and they've just got
83:18 to go through that cycle where they find that mother figure and start the cycle all over again yes because they fail to become an individual they succeed to separate but they fail to become an
83:30 individual it's too late you can't form a functional self at age 40 never mind
83:37 what self-interested coaches and therapists would tell you that's nonsense you cannot create what Freud
83:44 used to call ego you cannot create these functions late in life let's say when
83:51 you when you have crossed late adolescence you're done you're this is
83:57 it for life everything in you is set not in stone of course changes are possible
84:03 and so on but not major changes like you can change a few things your behaviors new knowledge and so on but you cannot
84:10 change who you are who you are essentially is the process ends at the
84:17 end of adolescence this is what adolescence is all about so it's too late there's nothing he can do about it
84:23 he thinks if he finds a new mother and a new mother and a new mother one of these mothers will allow him finally to become himself there's no self there so he cannot be himself the narcissist
84:35 experience is that of an emptiness exactly like the borderline personality disorder but people think that emptiness
84:42 is a poetic poetic metaphor it's not it's a diagnostic criterion in the
84:48 diagnostic and statistical manual one of the criteria of borderline personality disorder is internal
84:56 emptiness a narcissist is an absence pretending to be a
85:02 presence there's nobody there and this feeling of all consuming emptiness this
85:09 black hole that threatens to digest the narcissist is terrifying and the narcissist needs other people to fulfill this emptiness to constantly simulate a
85:21 life he's using other people to simulate a self to simulate a life to simulate an
85:28 existence all a simulation and this is he this consumes his
85:34 entirety is this is what he's all about and so when is in an intimate
85:40 relationships he expects the maternal figure to cater to to plug this hole in
85:47 him to to eliminate the black hole to make him feel alive a borderline would
85:53 would describe this a borderline would tell you when I'm in with an intimate partner I come alive i feel alive and
85:59 when I'm not with someone I feel dead she would say this but a borderline is much more honest narcissist is much more fatacious so narcissist would never admit it but it's exactly the same
86:10 experience this what we call skitsoid empty core the total soypistic
86:19 isolation the inability to become inability to be the
86:26 you that interacts with the world there's no you and you therefore cannot interact with what and it's a desperate
86:33 quest to become simply to finally become you're like a potential but not a human
86:40 being and you want to be to convert yourself into a human being and you
86:46 people people have to help me some people will give me feedbacks others will give me input adulation admiration
86:52 this that love the ultimate solution is love what kind of love maternal love because I need this love to be unconditional adult love is conditional adult mature healthy love is
87:05 conditional that's not the kind of love I need says the narcissist i need unconditional love
87:11 right Sam i'm I'm pretty sure that you you've answered once again my next
87:17 question uh which was going to be uh why does the narcissist
87:23 uh if they're they're done with you they're sure they're going to discard you um then h how do they make that point in time when they start looking
87:37 for the next supply when when do they distinguish that uh I can see this
87:43 coming to an end i better start looking because I simply can't be alone with this true self
87:52 not not true self false self narcissist don't have Sorry false self false yes the false self is a narrative it's a
87:58 piece of fiction that uh upholds supports an inflated fantastic counterfactual self-concept right his
88:06 image of himself as godlike um it's a good question the narcissist
88:12 starts to look for replacements and substitutes
88:18 um when the devaluation becomes conscious so you remember there's a an
88:24 unconscious phase of devaluing the internal object in the unconscious phase the
88:31 internal object that represents the partner in the narcissist's mind that object is being devalued but the
88:38 narcissist is still not aware of it once the devaluation of the internal object is complete it erupts into consciousness the internal the suddenly narcissist
88:49 wakes up one morning and says "Oh my god I got it all wrong." He doesn't say I got it all wrong he's always right but
88:55 she has changed she has changed or she's under the influence of people bad people
89:01 her friends are bad her family is bad be that as it may it's no longer the person I've idealized so when this become when this reaches awareness at
89:12 that point the narcissist begins to look for substitutes and he's not looking for
89:18 substitutes the way one would make a map or something he begins to develop relationship alternative relationships
89:25 full-fledged in other words he begins to idealize he begins to sport he sports he
89:31 auditions and he begins to love bomb and idealize someone else and this takes place as the internal object the
89:39 devalued internal object erupts into consciousness the narcissist to avoid discrepancy to avoid dissonance devalues
89:47 the external object and then there's a discard and so towards the middle of the relationship when the devaluation sets in the narcissist already begins to look for substitutes right they they simply can't be alone
90:03 with that they can't be alone in this sense they're always It's a very pertinent it's a pertinent observation
90:09 they can't be alone because this this is typical of borderline borderline personality disorder
90:15 borderlines cannot be alone um and Kberg suggested that pathological
90:22 narcissism is actually a defense against borderline he says all narcissists are
90:29 at the core border lines but they have defenses against the borderline core the
90:36 borderline personality organization there's a defense defenses and these defenses are what we call pathological
90:42 narcissism when these defenses fail which is which is called the compensation when these defenses fail what is left is the borderline core so
90:53 when the narcissist is humiliated when the narcissist becomes aware of his own shame when the
91:00 narcissist is discarded when the narcissist discards someone so he's momentarily without a shared fantasy in all these situations the defenses crumble there's a decompensation what's
91:13 left behind is a borderline is someone with emotional dysregulation is afraid to be alone has suicidal ideiation exactly exact description of a borderline you know it's fascinating
91:26 absolutely fascinating oh my goodness I could talk to you all you know there was a psychoanalyst there was a psycho
91:33 analyst uh there was a psychoanalyst um his name was Gstein and Gstein said
91:41 that Nazis Narcissist border lines are failed narcissists he said what happens is the child becomes a borderline child subjected to abuse trauma and so on
91:52 becomes a borderline then borderline is an unpleasant situation because there's emotional dysregulation overwhelmed by your own emotions there is mood liability it sucks it sucks to be a
92:03 borderline so the child attempts to develop defenses against the borderline state he says the child who succeeds to develop defenses and subdue the
92:14 borderline state is the narcissist the child who fails is the borderline
92:20 interesting uh conception by the way I'm having a three-day free seminar
92:27 please tell everyone about it um Sam or um put put a link in the comments because I'm sure there will be many
92:33 people who want to unfortunately it's in person only in person oh
92:39 damn i guess we won't be able to see it here from Australia but look Sam one
92:45 last question what are the long-term effects on victims such as um you know the ones we hear about all the time anxiety um you
92:57 know self-doubt trust issues um just all of those issues that endure
93:04 way after they've been discarded by the narcissist like how do they what are
93:11 some practical strategies for victims to be able to heal understand process their
93:18 trauma and eventually move on well that's exactly the seminar and rather
93:24 than answering this in detail because this merits a separate conversation
93:30 rather than answer I would refer people to my YouTube channel where there is a
93:36 playlist the playlist is titled narcissistic abuse healing and recovery
93:43 the playlist is constructed is made up of 100 plus videos and they're constructed as a course they are like
93:51 you have start with video number one video number two video number three and the videos describe all the impacts of
93:57 narcissistic abuse the long-term effects and how to get rid of them how to heal and recover all the list is based on recent science and recent discoveries
94:08 and so on and rather than answer you I suggest that people go to the playlist and go through it and I think they will
94:16 get I mean every all the questions will be answered absolutely sounds like an absolutely amazing resource guys so make sure you go to Dr sam Baknan's YouTube
94:28 channel so look Sam I just wanted to say thank you so much for giving me so much
94:37 of your valuable time it's been an amazing discussion i know I've learned so much and I would be thrilled if you
94:45 would come back and chat with me again but we can talk about that later but I just wanted to say thank you i know that
94:52 there will be so many people out there today who will come to your channel and and and learn from it and who will also obviously listen to this episode and
95:03 gain so much insight as I have so um yes
95:09 thank you Sam and I I really hope to see you again soon thank you for the opportunity and have a nice day then night have a nice night have a good night byebye thanks Sam

Summary Link:

https://vakninsummaries.com/ (Full summaries of Sam Vaknin’s videos)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html (My work in psychology: Media Kit and Press Room)

Bonus Consultations with Sam Vaknin or Lidija Rangelovska (or both) http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/ctcounsel.html

http://www.youtube.com/samvaknin (Narcissists, Psychopaths, Abuse)

http://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings (World in Conflict and Transition)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html (Biography and Resume)

Summary

Abuse, Meaning, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Trauma, Vaknin Summaries

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