Gaslighting Survival Guide (Compilation)

Summary

so from YouTube to gaslighting uh very similar topic if you if you ask me Today we're going to discuss go deep into the topic of gaslighting We're going to expose a series of techniques either to unmentioned anywhere on the internet and largely even in scholarly literature It starts with a an article published in the Washington Post The article is titled gaslighting how to recognize gaslighting and respond to it It was authored by Angela Hop And it says something that I've been saying over the past 10 years It says "Gaslighting made the leap from psychological lingo to trendy buzzword with the 2016 presidential campaign More recently it has morphed into what Akaman calls a catchall phrase

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

May 10, 2025

Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video.

00:01 so from YouTube to gaslighting uh very similar topic if you if you ask
00:08 me Today we're going to discuss go deep into the topic of gaslighting We're
00:14 going to expose a series of techniques either to unmentioned anywhere on the
00:20 internet and largely even in scholarly literature It starts with a an article published in
00:28 the Washington Post The article is titled gaslighting how to recognize gaslighting and respond to it It was authored by Angela
00:39 Hop And it says something that I've been saying over the past 10 years It says
00:45 "Gaslighting made the leap from psychological lingo to trendy buzzword with the 2016 presidential campaign More recently it has morphed into what
00:56 Akaman calls a catchall phrase often used incorrectly by people referring to
01:03 simple disagreements over issues or interactions that don't don't meet gaslighting's historical definition
01:11 Some mental health experts continues the article are concerned that overusing the
01:17 term could obscure the abusive nature of gaslighting and reduce its power to help
01:23 victims recognize ongoing manipulation For them for these mental health
01:29 practitioners and myself included it's important that gaslighting retain its original meaning the experience of having your reality repeatedly
01:40 challenged by someone who holds more power than you do We're going to expound
01:47 expound on this later in the video and I'm going to finish the video with a series of techniques you can use to
01:54 fight back gaslighting Gaslighting is exactly like extending a hand and
02:00 reaching into your mind and then scrambling it It's as bad as this And it
02:07 uses a series of techniques Some of them would be familiar to you but you probably had
02:13 never associated these techniques with gaslighting We start with deja vu Deja
02:20 vu is when the strange looks or sounds
02:26 familiar when the unprecedented or when something that hadn't happened
02:32 yet something that you're experiencing is perceived as a past
02:38 experience So when a present experience is perceived as a past experience now we can do it we can do it with words
02:46 For example I keep using the word shashanim or a very old German word
02:53 which I've just invented gishlim which means to destroy devastate
02:59 gish The more often I use these words these are at least gish is a
03:06 nonsensical word But the more often I use these words the more familiar they become It's when the strange begins to look familiar DéjaVu is a French word It
03:18 expresses the feeling that one has lived through a present situation before Some people of course immediately interpret deja vu as a kind of
03:29 paranormal or supernatural experience a precognition or a prophecy But in
03:35 reality it's an anomaly or memory There's a strong sense of having been
03:41 here of a recollection The time the place the smells the tastes the
03:48 ambiencece the sounds everything the practical context of the previous
03:54 experience seems to apply to the current experience But this is because of
04:00 uncertainty because of the impossibility of it all I will come to it in a minute and I will explain how deja vu is applied in
04:11 gaslighting by abusers Now gaslighting is much more typical of psychopaths than narcissists
04:18 Narcissists believe their own lies They confabulate and so they adopt and
04:24 appropriate their lies and then they defend their lies um vehemently if you challenge them Psychopaths are goal
04:32 oriented They know exactly what they're doing And the aim of gaslighting is to unsettle you to destabilize you and to
04:40 allow the psychopath to introduce into your mind anything he wishes Again shortly we will discuss how this is done There are two types of dju The pathological one which is frequently associated with epilepsy and it is usually prolonged or
04:59 frequent It has there's other symptoms involved There are other symptoms like hallucinations It's an indicator of a
05:05 neurological or a psychiatric uh illness That's not the kind of deja vu I'm
05:11 talking about The dejà vu I'm talking about is nonpathological It happens to healthy
05:17 people Actually twothirds of the population have had a deja vu experience
05:25 one or more Now we know that deja vu happens when there is dislocation when
05:33 there is disorientation and therefore there's a close affinity between deja vu and
05:40 dissociation For example people who travel often or travel frequently have
05:47 more deja vu experiences than the normal population People who watch movies movie
05:53 buffs aicionados addicted to movies they are much more likely to experience deja
05:59 vu than other people So detachment dissociation are critical And this is
06:05 what the abuser does to you What he does to you he detaches you from your own
06:11 experiences from your own reality And this renders his reality familiar to
06:18 you because you can't really compare his reality to your reality You tend to lie
06:26 to yourself to deceive yourself into believing that his reality is normal has always been there is is familiar That's a very important point
06:38 that you need you need to understand What gaslighting involves is not only a
06:45 divorce between you and your reality testing It involves a substitution
06:51 effect The abuser provides you with an alternative to your own experience to
06:58 your own world to your own reality to your own universe And because you had been detached from your roots so to speak because the abuser obliterates your own memory challenges your own identity It his reality becomes like a
07:16 life raft You cling on to his reality because you have no alternative The
07:22 first stage in gaslighting is destroying who you are destroying your trust in
07:29 yourself destroying your perception of reality and your reality testing destroying your self-efficacy your ability to operate in the environment in order to extract positive outcomes You begin to disbelieve yourself You begin
07:47 to distance yourself from yourself A process known as estrangement And then
07:54 the abuser comes into this picture anomalous anomalous picture of
08:00 derealization depersonalization and amnesia that he had induced in you He
08:07 had induced these dissociative states in you So then he comes and says "Well I
08:13 have a solution for you I have a solution for you You're very amniotic You depersonalize You realize I have a
08:20 solution here Let me give you my reality my world my universe my perceptions my
08:28 experiences my interpretation of what's happening And because you don't have your own alternative anymore you cling to his People who tend to experience
08:41 deja vu are often fragile and vulnerable They're depressed They're anxious They're stressed They're under high pressure Research clearly shows that the
08:53 experience of déjà vu is associated with other mental health conditions However
09:01 transient it also decreases with age We are less aminable to such manipulation
09:08 as we grow older because the weight of the cumul the weight of cumulative experience is too great too big for a single abuser to undermine
09:20 abuse via gaslighting Therefore leverages takes
09:26 advantage of our vulnerability our fragility our
09:33 brittleleness our anxiety and our depression in order to supplant our existence in one reality with another It is a form of
09:46 metaverse It is a virtual reality Gaslighting is about creating a virtual
09:52 reality and then convincing you that it's the only reality in existence And one of the main tools the abuser uses however unknowingly to accomplish this
10:04 goal is entraining I've mentioned entraining in several videos and in my
10:10 dialogues with Richard Granon And training is a process of coordinating
10:18 brain waves Now usually in training clones brain waves via music When people
10:27 play the same music or listen to the same music there's a total synchronization of their relevant brain
10:34 waves And this is entraining But I suggested and I still do that entraining
10:41 can be accomplished with other sounds not only music For example verbal abuse
10:48 If verbal verbal abu abuse has a refrain if it has a rhythm if it has a kind of
10:55 embedded harmony then one can conceive of verbal abuse as a form of music And
11:02 this leads to a phenomenon known as semantic satiation Semantic satiation
11:10 Semantic siation is a psychological phenomenon where repetition causes word
11:16 or phrase to lose meaning for the listener If you repeat the same word
11:22 thousands of times ultimately you will discover to your shock and constonation that the word the word means nothing to you We perceive repeated speech as
11:34 meaningless sounds And this is exactly the power of entraining because verbal
11:40 abuse repeated adnosium repeated constantly becomes sound It becomes
11:48 music which essentially is meaningless And therefore therefore it penetrates
11:56 your linguistic defenses It goes deep into your reptile brain down to the brain stem Music stimulates very ancient areas of the
12:07 brain in addition to the neoortex and the prefrontal cortex but very ancient parts of the brain That's the power of
12:14 music That's why we react to music so profoundly and emotionally And the repetition of the verbal abuse renders
12:22 it meaningless So our linguistic centers disengage and instead we perceive these
12:29 words as a form of wall wall of sound as a kind of
12:37 music Extended inspection extended analysis For example staring at a word or looking at a phrase for a very long period of
12:48 time has the same effect like repetition Exactly the same effect
12:54 Semantic satiation When we are exposed to written or verbal abuse
13:01 repeatedly it loses its meaning and it becomes music and it entrains our brain
13:07 It coordinates our brain waves the brain waves of our abuser In the cortex verbal
13:15 repetition arouses a specific neural pattern that corresponds to the meaning of the word Rapid repetition makes both the peripheral
13:26 sensory motor activity and the central neural activation fire repeatedly and
13:32 this causes what what we this causes what we know as reactive inhibition This
13:38 is a reduction in the intensity and sensitivity of the activity with each
13:44 repetition Habituation is like if you put pressure on your arm at first you feel the pressure but after a while you get used to it and it no longer
13:58 registers James Jacobitz called it in 1962 experimental
14:05 neurossemantics and it is there are numerous studies that have substantiated every single word I've just said I'm
14:11 referring you to Jacobitz It's an early study but also uh Pilotti Antrobus and
14:19 Duff in 1997 and Kenos in 2000 and and
14:25 numerous others Um so this is a wells substantiated phenomenon and so by
14:32 entraining semantically satiating you the
14:38 abuser creates a coordination a synchronicity between his brain waves and yours which
14:46 grants him total access to your mind and allows him to obliterate your previous
14:53 identity memories experiences perceptions s and to supplant to substitute them with his own a good
15:02 description of gaslighting And in this process the abuser acquires
15:09 authority There's a power asymmetry because of intermittent reinforcement and trauma bonding The abuser is on top So there is a power
15:20 gradient We're going to discuss it later when we come to classic um theories of
15:27 gaslighting So the first mechanism is deja vu The second mechanism used in
15:33 gaslighting is exactly the opposite Jamevu ja never saw the familiar is made
15:41 to look or to sound strange Again it's a psych it's a French
15:48 phrase I don't know why the French why French why they caught on to all these techn techniques and mechanisms but it's a fact it means
15:59 never seen it's experiencing a situation that one recognizes in some fashion but
16:06 that nonetheless seems novel unsettling unfamiliar anxietyinducing
16:14 It is the opposite of deja vu Jamevu involves a sense of eeriness creepiness
16:21 There's an impression of experiencing something for the first time despite knowing rationally that you had
16:27 experienced it before several times So jameu also is associated with aphasia
16:35 amnesia epilepsy So it's a dissociative state exactly like deja vu And like deja
16:42 vu the abuser induces in you jame It is precisely the abuser's ability to produce conflicting states of mind
16:54 conflicting dissociations that gives him his immense power over you Jameu is
17:01 commonly experienced when a person momentarily does not recognize a word a
17:07 sound a sight a place a time um that they know that they know They just don't
17:14 feel that they know So there's a divorce between cognition and perception of
17:20 emotion perception of sensor On the one hand you know that you've been here
17:26 before You know you've done that before You know you've experienced it before But you don't feel that you had So this
17:34 creates a divorce between you and reality And it is this daylight between
17:41 your perception of yourself and your perception of reality this crack this abyss that allows the abuser to get through and enter your mind
17:52 anyone repeatedly writing or saying a specific word out loud
17:59 um has has this notion it begins to feel like no way is this a real word no way
18:06 I've heard it before this is an example of ja vu
18:12 um ja vu is associated with a delirious
18:20 disorder intoxication substance abuse um delusions such as the cupgrass
18:27 delusion and so on so forth So it has its place in the pantheon of pathologies
18:34 of the human bi It also induces the impostor syndrome You begin to feel so
18:43 unreal that you begin to experience yourself as an actor as an impostor In
18:51 other words the abuser had exported to you his own self-perception Most abusers
19:00 most abusers um are dissociative Many of them are
19:06 narcissistic and they perceive themselves as spectators as observers of a movie They perceive their lives as a
19:14 kind of film or flick that they're watching or observing with some mild interest They don't really inhabit Abusers don't really inhabit their lives
19:26 They they're from the outside Their lives are like theater productions They're like directors or actors So by
19:34 inducing in you a combination of deja vu and jame they make you feel the same This is
19:42 the initial phase of narcissistic contagion When the narcissist infects
19:48 you with a virus of narcissism and you're beginning to see the world through his eyes You're beginning to
19:54 perceive yourself as unreal as he perceives himself You're beginning
20:00 you're beginning to adopt his cognitive distortions You're beginning for example to agulate him because you had accepted his grandiosity as a realistic assessment of the world It's very similar to
20:17 depersonalization The very reality of reality is doubted
20:24 Derealization abusers also use in order to gaslight dejàu deja means I had
20:32 already lived It's an intense but false wrong feeling of having already lived
20:40 through the present situation It's a form of deja vu but much more intense
20:46 It's very akin psychologically to a true flashback There's no such thing as
20:52 emotional flashback It is nonsensical hype But there is such thing as flashback or revividness Flashback or
20:59 reividness are the outcomes of post-traumatic hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD And
21:08 so deja viq is a mild mild faint form of
21:14 flashback because for a minute there you lose the distinction between reality and
21:20 delusion For a minute there you're really into the alternative reality
21:27 preferred to you and imposed on you by the abuser Unlike deja vu deja vi has
21:33 behavioral consequences because people act in the environment as if it were
21:39 some other reality than what it is It compels you to abandon reality and to
21:47 enter a virtual reality a second life a metaverse There's an intense feeling of
21:55 familiarity And so you prefer to withdraw from real life events or
22:02 activities and inhabit this fantastic space known as paracosm And patients who
22:10 have deja viku justify their feelings of familiarity with beliefs that are
22:16 essentially delusional Now the abuser induces in you the
22:22 javikue by penalizing you if you refuse to adhere to his reality If you refuse
22:30 to enter the reality space that he had created for both of you It's a cultlike
22:36 setting You're like in a cult And if you oppose the cult leader which is the abuser or especially the narcissistic
22:43 abuser then you're penalized On the other hand in addition to the stick
22:49 there's a carrot If you do accept the abuser's reality and act
22:55 accordingly if it has if your acceptance of his reality has behavioral manifestations which he can monitor and witness he rewards you he gives you a
23:06 prize he praises you he elevates you he renders you his favorite etc So they're
23:14 very strong incentives with intermittent reinforcement involved They're very
23:20 strong incentives to let go of real reality and to adopt the fake reality
23:28 which is the abusers's reality thereby experiencing periods of deja
23:35 vik And so these are the mechanisms that are
23:41 used in gaslight There's another much less known mechanism which is what Fuko Michelle
23:50 Fuko the famous social theorist and critic Michelle Fuko called it
23:56 dejalah in madness and civilization a history of insanity in the age of risen
24:03 which is a book he had written and published in
24:09 1961 a large classic So in 1961 Michelle Fuko examined the
24:16 evolution of the meaning of madness in culture law politics philosophy and
24:22 medicine especially in Europe from the Middle Ages until the end of the 18th
24:28 century And Fuko being Fuko it's a bit of a a bit of a complex u uh thing But I
24:37 will read to you a segment um segment an excerpt from this book And remember we
24:44 are discussing gaslighting and one of the mechanisms which are very very
24:50 u not known obscure stealth ambient under the radar
24:59 um surreptitious very penicious and nefarious mechanism used by the abuser
25:06 is the jalah And so Michelle Fuko described the jalah this way He said up
25:13 until the end of the 15th century or perhaps slightly beyond it the death
25:19 theme the theme of death reigned reigns supreme The end of mankind and the end
25:27 of time are seen in war and the plagues hanging over human existence is an order
25:35 and an end that no man can escape menacing presence from within the world
25:41 itself Suddenly as the century the 15th century suddenly as the 15th century
25:47 drew to a close that great uncertainty spun on its axis and the derision of
25:55 madness took over from the seriousness of death From the knowledge of that fatal
26:01 necessity that reduces men to dust We pass to a contemptuous contemplation of
26:08 the nothingness that is life itself The fear before the absolute limit of death becomes interiorized in the continual process of
26:19 ironization Fear was disarmed in advance made derisory by being tamed and
26:27 rendered banal and constantly paraded in the spectacle of life
26:34 Suddenly it was there to be discerned in the mannerisms failings and vices of normal people Death as a destruction of
26:42 all things no longer had meaning when life was revealed to be a fatuous sequence of empty words the hollow jingle of a jester's cap and bells
26:54 The death's head showed itself to be a vessel already empty For madness was the
27:02 being already there of death Death's conquered presence
27:08 sketched out in these everyday signs showed not only that its reign had already begun but also that its prize was a meager one Death unmasked the mask
27:20 of life and nothing more So this is typical
27:27 Fuko Um this is a translation of Khala and Murphy in 2000 It's a typical Fuku
27:34 Fuko I'll try to translate Fuko into normal language
27:40 What Fukos says is in the 15th century Western civilization transitioned from having a
27:48 preoccupation with death to having a preoccupation or an obsession with
27:54 mental illness For courses it makes sense because to be crazy to be mad is
28:00 similar to being dead mentally dead And so mad crazy people and dead people are
28:09 no longer functional They're no longer able no longer able to participate in reality One could say that they are no
28:16 longer in society Fuk says that this cultural transition
28:22 from the emphasis on death to the uh obsession with madness happened when
28:29 western society realized this similarity between being crazy and being dead and
28:36 realized that madness is just as bad as death It's essentially a form of death before the physiological form It seems that this there is a notion of death before death and this is
28:49 dejal Now how does this fit into gaslighting gaslighting involves a
28:55 process of killing you mentally It involves a process of driving you crazy Madness The abuser introduces madness into your system He chaotizes it
29:09 Crazy making He makes you doubt your own existence To all practical purposes you
29:16 die And then he offers you the abuser offers you a resurrection He gives you the option to
29:23 be reborn a second life a second chance But the condition is that you accept his
29:31 reality You will never die tells you the abuser As long as you're with me as long
29:38 as you occupy and cohabit with me in the same space as long as you become an
29:45 internal object an extension of me without will without degrees of freedom
29:51 without challenge or criticism And this is Deja
29:57 Okay back to Angela H of the Washington Post Do you remember the article
30:03 published in the Washington Post a few days ago here's what she says about gaslighting Gaslighting is a manipulative form of communication where a power differential exists said Angela
30:14 Corbal an associate professor and chair of communication studies at Widener
30:20 University in Chester Pennsylvania Gaslighting can o gas gaslighting can
30:26 occur in romantic relationships or friendships between parents and children when seeking medical care or at work I see it as one party distorting
30:39 information and praying upon another's vulnerability said Corbo She likened it
30:45 to a more sophisticated way of looking at bullying Medical gaslighting by the way is very trendy right now It's when a medical professional downplays a patient's concerns tries to persuade the patient that their symptoms are imaginary or the
31:02 result of mental instability Back to the article Gaslighting continues helped Gaslighting
31:11 is a devastating psychological tactic combining elements of manipulation control and exploitation of trust said Naomi Torres McKe a psychologist at
31:22 Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and head of research at the mental health coalition Uh Torres Mc Maki continues
31:31 those things those things manipulation control exploitation of trust those
31:37 things are the building blocks of gaslighting Gaslighting is also a pattern of behavior that occurs over a
31:44 long duration and not on a one-off basis A gaslighter will repeatedly twist
31:50 events to shift blame to someone else And this emotional abuse can result in victims questioning their sanity Experts obvious previously believed that gaslighting was always
32:03 intentional but they now think that it's possible that some gaslighters are not aware of their manipulative behavior which is something I've been saying for well over 15 years Even when the
32:15 narcissist gaslights he is not aware that he is gaslighting His gaslighting
32:21 is not intentional He fully believes in his alternative extended augmented
32:28 virtual reality Psychopaths gaslight intentionally The article continues "Over the long term being on the receiving end of gaslighting can lead to
32:40 lowered selfworth feelings of insecurity depression and anxiety It can also cause
32:47 someone to be consumed with self-doubt said Torres McKe who has worked with many patients who have experienced
32:53 gaslighting It can be difficult to trust people in the future or to connect with people she said Plus you often feel very
33:01 disconnected from yourself because of this experience of feeling out of touch with what's real and what's
33:09 not The article lists a series of signs that you're being gaslit
33:16 and connects gaslighting to toxic relationships uh wish to control someone and losing grip over the partner So it's a
33:28 desperate attempt to regain to regain control over the partner and the signs listed are
33:36 invalidation of your emotions People who gaslight often trivialize or invalidate their victim's
33:43 feelings very undermining comments A common Taurus McKe said for example someone might say "You're just being dramatic." Or "Why do you care about this so much?" Other common phrases
33:54 include "You're too sensitive You're crazy You're imagining things." And don't get so worked up I can add to this
34:02 a long list like you're paranoid And so
34:08 um invalidation is an integral part of
34:14 gaslighting Um it is very disorienting and you begin to question
34:22 how you feel question yourself question your reality because of this invalidation especially when the abuser
34:29 is in a position of authority or when you admire the abuser which is the common cultlike setting with narcissist Another another hallmark of gaslighting
34:40 is the twisting of reality The article says people who gaslight will flip things and twist them back on you Torres
34:46 McKe said they will be adamant that you did or that you said things you know you
34:52 did not Torres McKe describes the situation one partner calling the other
34:58 stupid then that person says hey you called me stupid projection the person who
35:04 initially made the derogatory comment might then say I didn't call you stupid you called me stupid etc etc so these
35:11 are lies intended to distort reality and control the situation but in the case of many narcissists they don't realize it's
35:18 a lie owing to very powerful mechanisms of reaction for defense mechanisms like
35:24 reaction formation projection and splitting Same with borderline Very often they don't realize that they're projecting or splitting Gaslighting
35:35 involves coercion The gaslighter forces you to admit that you're wrong And if you
35:42 refuse to admit that you're wrong you are penalized You're punished He forces you for example to
35:49 apologize Even if you are the one who feels betrayed gaslighters change the
35:55 narrative They blame shift They victimize self victimize They
36:02 make you feel bad and guilty and ashamed and ego donic And so you end up
36:09 accepting their reality You end up apologizing They say to you "You made me
36:16 do it." They pin their bad behavior on you somehow You're the
36:22 source And if you are a people pleaser you take responsibility for things you didn't do This is called autoplastic
36:33 defenses The gaslighter is always assured confident strong
36:41 explosive repetitive He entrains you He makes you feel deja vu and jameu and all
36:48 these mechanisms Jamevu deja vu and so you are you are you're in a
36:55 state of disorientation and and you don't know what to trust and who to trust anymore It's much easier to simply
37:02 succumb to surrender to become submissive and to say you're right You're right I've been wrong and I've
37:08 been wrong all along It leaves you mistrusting your perception you start doubting yourself
37:14 constantly questioning what is real and uh were you overreacting did you misunderstand a certain situation the article quotes um amen if you start to
37:27 have disproportion a disproportionate amount of doubt in yourself that was not previously there that's a sign of
37:35 gaslighting you may think maybe I'm crazy maybe I am paranoid maybe I am too sensitive whatever that person is
37:42 calling you His voice is in your mind This is entraining He's taking over your
37:48 mind He implants his own voice in your mind It's an introject It's an internal
37:55 object It's um and you can't get rid of it In early childhood this is known as
38:02 the imo processing But in it it can can happen to you as an adult
38:09 the the abuser regresses you regresses you to early childhood and then implants
38:15 his voice in your mind and you tend to repeat like a parrot like a robot like
38:23 someone without a will like a zombie You tend to repeat this voice in your mind If this voice says you're paranoid you would say "Well maybe I'm paranoid." If this voice says you're too sensitive say
38:34 "Well maybe I'm hypervigilant and hyper sensitive." You tend to blame yourself
38:40 And you need to understand that you're being gaslit You need to identify the
38:46 situation of gaslighting Is there a power of symmetry is there a question of
38:52 trust do you did you give up on reality as you had known it are you beginning
38:59 beginning to mimic your abuser resonate with him Repeat his
39:05 phrases Adnosium Did he take over you need to you need to recognize a takeover a
39:12 hostile takeover It's a form it's a subtle form of interpersonal abuse because the abuser often doesn't attack you personally He attacks he attacks
39:23 reality He doesn't tell you something's wrong with you He tells you something is wrong with your reality And so it's kind
39:29 of a by proxy abuse vicarious abuse And so it's under the radar is very
39:35 difficult to to spot and to and to tackle But just knowing that you're abused just labeling it gaslighting that's very very important
39:47 Um and some therapists says you are giving yourself some clarity and removing the extra tax on your brain as it struggles to make sense of what's happening Pay attention to how you
40:00 feel Journal Write a journal Write it down Every time you're in doubt write it
40:06 down Document every event however however minute however
40:13 inconsequential You're brewing coffee take a photo just saying something Record yourself Document document
40:20 document Create hundreds of photographs a day in order to fight back Ask
40:27 yourself how do I feel when I'm around that person corbbo suggests the following questions
40:34 Do I feel anxious do I fear that the person is going to contradict me do I find that I might be ready i might be really confident and outgoing when I'm
40:45 not with him but when I'm with him I feel fuzzy Do I think that something's wrong can I identify what's wrong right Write times write dates write down
40:56 places write document feelings Make a detailed minutia record of your life So
41:05 that whenever you self-doubt you can go back to this record and remind yourself
41:11 how things truly were how things stood how did you feel No one will be able to
41:18 gaslight you because this kind of record creates self-rust
41:24 Gradually you will not need these crutches I mean you will you will stop journaling and you will stop writing and
41:31 documenting everything down once your self confidence self-esteem and sense of selfworth had been stabilized regulated and restored Assert yourself If he
41:43 starts to gaslight stop the conversation Torres McKe says "Assert your own
41:50 reality as much as you can and as much as is safe." You could say "No you were the one who called me stupid Don't twist it Don't try to gaslight me It sounds a
42:02 spec says another another psychologist Peek says it sounds like you're having a
42:09 really hard time hearing what I'm saying I know what I felt and it's important for me to voice this This is what you should say to your abuser It doesn't sound like you can take in this
42:20 perspective I no longer want to engage in this conversation You're gaslighting me If you're ready to hear how I felt
42:27 and to discuss it I'd be open to do this at a later time Walk away Call someone
42:34 you're close to Restore your reality testing Tell a friend you know I know
42:40 this thing happened and he's trying to tell me that it's not true I need to share this with you in order to ground
42:47 myself Taurus McKe continues otherwise you only have that one person who is telling you this false reality and it's easy to get swept into that reality and lease
42:59 support Use other people as external memory Your identity crucially depends
43:06 on input from other people And don't hesitate to involve authorities or or
43:12 structures within your environment For example if you are being gaslit at work
43:18 involve the human resources department If you're being gaslit by a dangerous abuser involve the police Don't hesitate
43:26 to involve not only your social network not only your friends and family Remember sunlight disinfects abuse Um in extreme cases you would need to walk away You would need even to resign
43:42 your job But until then try to confront the
43:49 gaslighter Address the situation You Tory McKis Torres McKe
43:55 suggest saying "Hey you're telling me something but my sense is this other thing is right or true How can we
44:01 account for this difference?" Try to reason with a gaslighter because many gaslighters I repeat don't know what
44:08 they're doing See if you can find colleagues who may be experiencing the same thing with
44:15 the same person Taurus McKe continues this strength in numbers If someone is doing it to you it's likely they might be doing it to more people and it can help you get support And finally of
44:26 course talk to a professional If the gaslighting had been all pervasive and lasted for many many years this voice is
44:34 embedded in your mind You need to separate individually from your abuser
44:40 It's exactly like being a 2-year-old Exactly like going undergoing this traumatic process all over again without a safe base So you need a safe base Your
44:51 safe base could be your therapist Recovering can take years You
44:57 need to work with a therapist because you need to feel safe and you need to have external validating input Input Gaslighting is emotional
45:08 abuse This person has taken over your life Talking to a professional breaks
45:14 this pattern and provides a counterweight to your gaslighter The
45:20 therapist is a modeling agent It you model yourself after the therapist It
45:26 provides you with a good enough parent as opposed to the bad or dead parent that your abuser is
45:33 emulating Use all these tools Gaslighting is dangerous for your mental health It's possibly the most dangerous
45:40 technique that abusers use and that is saying a
45:48 lot You're about to watch yet another video about
45:54 gaslighting from a different unusual eccentric angle As usual before I go there I would I want to remind you there are two types of
46:07 gaslighting One often discussed and analyzed and of course with a lot of
46:14 misinformation and nonsense that is verbal gaslighting But there's another
46:20 type of much neglected gaslighting Behavioral gaslighting Gaslighting via signaling
46:28 For example virtue signaling is a form of gaslighting It's when a behavior a
46:36 pattern of behavior a type of conduct choices
46:42 decisions and actions convey information about reality which is erroneous wrong
46:52 misinformation disinformation The gaslighter behaves in ways that
46:59 mislead the target or the victim into misapprehending and mispersceiving
47:07 reality misjudging it So certain
47:13 uh behaviors and certain actions certain courses of action are intended
47:19 essentially to manipulate other people to modify their behaviors to secure
47:25 favorable outcomes This is behavioral signaling gaslighting is distinct from
47:32 the first type which is verbal gaslighting Bear this in mind as you proceed into the remainder of this video But before we go there two service
47:45 announcements This is Mongolia No Mongolia is a bit bigger
47:52 This is a postcard from Mongolia from the ENK Empire ENK
47:58 enkh empire publishers in Mongolia And they just published the first volume of
48:06 malignant self-love narcissism revisited in what else
48:14 mongolian We are very proud uh and excited to see this rendition of
48:20 malignant self love and we are grateful uh to our publishers there Enk empire
48:28 enkh empire Well done The next service announcement has to do with forthcoming
48:34 a series of forthcoming videos about woke movements and victimhood
48:40 movements And uh together with Jordan Peterson and other scholars I helped
48:48 Ginger Koi compile a taxonomy of the psychopathology of walk movements It is
48:54 now available on public.substack.com This is Michael Shelonburgger's and
49:01 Peter Bokuzan's Bookan's blog You can also watch interviews I've given to
49:08 these various personalities and so on so forth But shortly I'm going to I mean within the next few days I'm going to
49:14 release two video compilations one interviews that I've granted regarding
49:21 walk movements and victimhood movements And these interviews have never been seen They they are not on this channel
49:27 So they're new And the second part is a compilation of all the videos I've made about the
49:34 psychological underpinnings and psychological theories that pertain to victimhood movements and woke movements
49:41 So in two parts This is it This is as far as service announcements and let us delve right into the issue of gaslighting
49:57 This is going to be a very short video Really Vaknim you're not kidding
50:06 You promise Please you're not gaslighting us No Shanim I am not
50:13 gaslighting you It's like the famous liar paradox You know there's this guy he says "I always lie." Here's the problem If he's telling the truth then
50:24 he doesn't always lie But if he always lies then definitely he's telling the truth Same here I am not going to gaslight you Trust me Okay Today we are going to deal with a few issues related to gaslighting and
50:41 I propose gaslighting My name is S Baknin and the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited a former
50:48 visiting professor of psychology and currently on the faculty of seaps commonwealth for international advanced
50:54 professional studies it can't get any longer here's the problem victims of
51:01 narcissist and victims of psychopaths experience gaslighting the same way they have an identical experience and they label it gaslighting
51:14 A victim cannot tell the difference between the narcissist's confabulations and the psychopath's
51:21 cunning and scheming lies As far as the victim is concerned he or she is being
51:30 gaslit Now this is the victim side but this channel is an academic channel and deals with clinical psychology
51:41 So we need to have a look at the perpetrator side the narcissist the
51:48 psychopath Gaslighting requires premeditation Gaslighting requires power
51:57 asymmetry and gaslighting requires an unimpaired intact reality testing of the
52:06 perpetrator So the the perpetrator of the of gaslighting needs to know the difference
52:14 between reality and his lies He needs to be able to tell to tell the distinction
52:20 between fantasy and reality The number one Number two he
52:26 needs to intentionally gaslight There needs to be premeditation
52:32 premeditation planning cunning scheming essentially malice
52:39 malevolence The third requirement is power and symmetry I will not go into it right now So by this
52:47 criteria only psychopaths gaslight Throughout the gaslighting the
52:53 psychopath knows full well that he's lying he's deceiving he's distorting
53:01 he's falsifying he's refraraming He knows exactly what he's doing And at any minute he can tell the difference between what's real and what's not real
53:12 what's what's out there and what's fantastic Psychopath maintains intact
53:19 perfect reality testing throughout the gaslighting process Second thing is that
53:25 psychopaths use gaslighting instrumentalize it weaponize it to obtain outcomes They're goal oriented Only psychopaths
53:37 gaslight Narcissists truly believe their own fantasies and
53:43 confabulations Their reality testing is impaired beyond
53:49 repair And they don't do it intentionally They do it instinctively They do it reflexively They do it automatically the way perhaps an
54:00 artificial intelligence machine would do one day in the future This is their programming If there's anyone the narcissist gaslight gaslights it's himself The narcissist self gaslights Then he becomes convinced of
54:17 his own fantasies confabulations narratives fiction and he tries to sell
54:24 it on to you tries to convince you cajol you and convert you into his view of
54:30 reality of which is 100% convinced That's why narcissistices are vehement
54:36 and defensive when you challenge their confabulations because they don't feel
54:42 that they're lying Now of course I'm not talking about white lies and small lies Everyone lies I'm talking about major
54:48 lies like future faking For example narcissists don't future fake They believe in the in this in the future
54:55 They believe that you're going to get married and have three children and live happily ever after They believe they're going to get become the richest men in
55:02 in the world They believe they're going to divorce and marry you They believe all this They don't future think
55:09 Psychopaths do because they want your money or they want to have sex with you or they want you to provide them with
55:15 access or contacts or whatever There's a reason there There's something behind the scenes There's a hidden agenda ulterior motive That's the psychopath not the
55:27 narcissist How do you experience gaslighting gaslighting is a form of
55:35 dissociation I am pretty shocked and surprised that I couldn't find this very basic insight anywhere in the literature
55:43 scholarly and YouTube self-styled expert nonsense I couldn't find it anywhere But
55:50 stop to think about it for a minute and you will see how right I am because I'm always right Gaslighting is a form of
55:56 dissociation We know of three types of dissociation Amnesia forgetting things
56:05 Derealization when we experience reality as unreal dreamlike
56:12 nightmarish And depersonalization when we experience ourselves as not being there as floating
56:21 above our bodies You know this is not happening to me This is common in trauma in trauma states or post-traumatic uh conditions So these are the three forms
56:32 of dissociation and immediately you see the parallels between dissociation and
56:39 gaslighting because when you experience gaslighting reality doesn't feel real You are forced to derealize The psychopath or the narcissist force you to to
56:51 derealize to let go of reality to lose your grasp on it to doubt your own
56:57 judgment regarding reality and then to adopt alternative facts and alternative
57:04 reality and this is derealization Similarly when you are in the throws of
57:10 gaslighting you feel that you are not you You feel that somehow you have
57:16 abandoned and vanquished your own identity You feel alienated and estranged from yourself You feel that someone else has taken over You feel body and mind
57:27 snatched This is gaslighting And so this is a form of dissociation But how does the narcissist
57:34 succeed or the psychopath succeed to induce in you this state of affairs this
57:40 state of mind how do they coersse you into dissociation via and training The
57:48 narcissist uses entraining to convert you the victim into an extension of
57:56 himself He renders you an internal object But not only does he regard you as an internal object you begin to regard
58:08 yourself as a figment of the narcissist imagination and mind You lose your
58:14 reality You feel unreal You feel that you are reduced to two dimensions a cartoonish figure in the narcissist strip
58:25 the narcissist um assimilates you subsumes you takes over you brainwashes you if
58:33 you wish I don't know which uh which of these terms appeals to you but somehow you lose you lose who
58:41 you are You lose your substance your quiddity your identity your core You you
58:47 become diffused You become like a cloud like smoke and mirrors And then the
58:54 narcissist inhales you in and you become an element in his mind And this is done
59:02 via in training And I encourage you to watch my videos on in training And this allows the narcissist to treat you as if
59:09 you were a part of himself not a separate external object Because
59:16 narcissists don't do external objects They cannot perceive other people's externality and separateness They don't realize or cannot conceive of other people as out there with with your own needs and
59:32 wishes and priorities and emotions and cognitions No such thing as far as a narcissist is concerned You're an
59:38 avatar You're just part of his imagination So the narcissist proceeds
59:44 to experience himself vicariously through you the victim
59:52 Narcissists use victims as extensions of themselves as internal objects that
60:00 allow them to experience themselves by proxy via the victim The narcissist
60:09 experiences his own dissociation his own derealization his own
60:16 depersonalization through you He then forces you to become or curses you to become a part of his shared fantasy and he experiences his fantasy through you
60:29 Gradually you merge and fuse on a cellular level with a narcissist until
60:35 nothing is left of you You become one of his tissues I mean organic
60:41 tissues So the narcissist kind of digests you and then
60:48 uses you as you're you're an object You're an internal object He uses you to
60:55 experience himself And this is what people erroneously call the narcissist
61:02 gaslighting The narcissist has to confabulate in order to bridge over
61:09 substantive memory gaps He he needs to invent narratives and
61:15 stories that make sense somehow of his disjointed disrupted broken existence
61:25 discontinuous nonidentity has to make sense of all this of all this mess The same way someone with multiple personality disorder used to be called split personality or dissociative
61:36 identity disorder also tries she tries to make sense of her existence The narcissist is doing the same He's trying
61:43 to make sense of it all And he creates stories that are plausible probable likely Yeah it must have happened this way There's no other way And then it becomes reality becomes the truth And
61:55 then he imposes this on you and you perceive it as gaslighting It's not It's a desperate
62:01 attempt to convert you to force you to confirm to the
62:07 narcissist that his fantasy is not a fantasy it's reality That his confabulations are not mere or pure
62:14 inventions They've actually happened He wants you to tell him that his false
62:21 self is not false He wants you in short to become his reality testing And this
62:27 is the narcissist gaslighting Psychopath is an entirely different thing And if you want to understand the psychopath
62:33 gaslighting why not watch the two original movies titled Gaslight where you see a scheming cunning con artist who marries a rich woman and then abscon
62:46 or tries to absone with her property and wealth and money by convincing her that she's going insane This is gaslighting This is psychopathic gaslight It's goal
62:57 oriented It's premeditated It's carefully planned meticulously planned every detail And it's intended to drive
63:05 you insane To convince you that your grasp of reality has slipped and you're no longer you're no longer with us
63:12 You're no longer there Your dependency on the psychopath grows as the guide gaslighting proceeds to the point that you no longer trust your own senses You
63:23 need to see everything and hear everything and taste everything and judge everything through the psychopath
63:29 You lose your agency and he becomes your external regulator and external agent
63:36 This does not happen with the narcissist This is not the narcissist is not goal oriented His goal is for you to become his reality tester for you to
63:48 tell him what is reality Psychopathic gaslighting and narcissistic so-called gaslighting are exactly the opposite The psychopath wants to become your reality
64:00 The narcissist wants you to become his reality but he wants you to become his
64:06 reality which is fantastic and confabulated And that's why you feel mistakenly that he is gaslighting you
64:14 Okay listen guys This is video number 246 that I've made about gaslighting
64:20 Really there's nothing more I can say If I didn't dumb it enough for you dumb it
64:27 down enough for you then I am afraid I'm the wrong guy Go and look elsewhere
64:34 This is the the most basic way I can discuss psychopathic gaslighting versus narcissistic confabulation which is mispersceived as gaslight So I hope I made some sense and
64:47 help you to differentiate between these two phenomena although I repeat again as victims this doesn't matter to you
64:54 because the experience is identical So walk away no contact in both cases Have
65:01 a nice lit but not gas lit
65:11 day Okay bubot Today yet another video about
65:17 shared fantasy This time we will try to look at it from a
65:24 different angle You seem to have some difficulties in comprehending
65:31 the concept and some of the behaviors attendant of the concept And this is because a narcissist is inconstant not consistent The narcissist
65:42 is not consistent because the narcissist is dissociative The narcissist is
65:49 discontinuous You have this assumption of an individual with a beginning and an end
65:55 and something in between a continuity like I don't know a flat line or an ECG
66:02 line Narcissists are not like that Narcissists are packets like IP in computers They're
66:10 like packets of information In between there's a void there's deep space
66:16 there's darkness the narcissist erupts into life and then is extinguished erupts extinguished like a candle in bad shape And so because of
66:29 that narcissists don't maintain stability consistency They don't have what we call inner construct validity They It's very
66:40 difficult to capture the essence of the narcissist One day for example he could be enormously incredibly romantically
66:48 jealous and the next day he can turn a blind eye to any
66:54 shenanigans any ostentatious infidelity that you may engage in
67:01 One day triangulation is going to work wonderfully and the next day he's going to you know be immersed in something
67:07 else in obtaining supply for example and isn't isn't going to give a a hoot where
67:13 you're going and with whom what you're doing and then you say to yourself but there's it's like not the same person
67:20 what it's not the same person it's about what I've been saying for 25 years it's a form of dissociation dissociative
67:27 identity disorder it's a private case of a multiplicity of personalities or
67:33 personality fragments or what we call self states Okay So I'm trying to I'm trying to explain shared fantasy from
67:40 this angle and together with the previous videos on shared fantasy you
67:46 ought to have um complete view of the dynamic I
67:52 also strongly recommend that you download the three graphics violet
67:59 violet blue and white graphics of the relationship cycle map with the narcissist Graphics created by Haley Martin Similarly Haley Martin created a
68:11 graphic about contempt the various types of contempt that narcissists feel and
68:17 psychopaths by the way feel towards other people And all these graphics are
68:23 available on my Instagram my new Instagram channel Um narcissism with Vaknim one word narcissism with Vaknney My previous channel had been blocked by Facebook owing to your kind
68:36 complaints So on this channel Haley Martin helps me with creating images of
68:43 memes of things I say So you have the relationship map there and so on But you can also download the relationship map
68:49 from my website and there are links in the description to one of my videos You can find links links to this and don't
68:58 forget to have a look at the uh contempt graphic created by Hilly
69:05 Martin Um as an aside the pandemic seems to have transformed all of us into Saudi
69:13 women with nikabs We all walk around with veils hiding our faces So we have
69:20 all been rendered onto Saudi women The Saudi women finally conquered the world
69:27 and exported their fashion everywhere Courtesy Dr Fouchi and others Jokes
69:34 aside masks masks are good for you I was very strongly against masks when the
69:41 pandemic started but the pandemic has been mismanaged so egregiously by politicians and the American establishment that now we have no choice It's out of control It's really a threat
69:54 Now we have made it into a threat and now we must protect ourselves by any means possible if necessary by becoming a Saudi woman Nothing wrong with that You should try it from time to time And I propose Saudi women I have a few
70:10 clients who are Saudi women And I want to um remind you that during the pandemic I don't provide face-to-face counseling and therefore I don't provide cold therapy because therapy relies
70:22 crucially on a phase of face-to-face counseling level one Instead I provide
70:28 cold therapy technique counseling I'm using techniques from code therapy in phone and email
70:35 counseling and you can write to my email
70:41 svaknmail.com svaknin my name atgmail.com and I'll respond Uh you can
70:49 also go to my website and fret it out my counseling page You can have counseling
70:56 with me You can have counseling with Lydia and you can have counseling with both of us A joint session Today I would
71:02 like to discuss two phenomenon The first one I dwelled upon and that's the shared fantasy But uh another phenomenon which I would like to discuss today is what I call self gaslighting
71:15 Now gaslighting as you might recall is um when abusers they don't
71:22 have to be narcissists or psychopaths and actually narcissists um don't use gaslighting as much as
71:30 often as psychopaths do but any abuser abusers tend to make you
71:39 doubt your reality testing They make you doubt your sanity your
71:46 orientation They make you doubt your interpretation of events They make you
71:52 doubt the explanations the narratives that you construct to explain to yourself what's happening to render life
72:02 in its kaleidoscopic myriad manifestations meaningful So they make
72:08 you doubt meaning They make you doubt significance They make you doubt causation what led to what who did what to whom They make you doubt your sanity
72:20 your grasp of reality And they do this in a variety of ways which put together
72:27 are known as gaslighting and so But sometimes you're doing it to
72:35 yourself and this is gaslighting a self gaslighting Now how did I come to that i
72:41 mean why did I why how was I reminded of that the other day I received a direct
72:48 message from someone saying to me and she wrote to me "You see that you are a
72:56 fraudster your prediction about Remesae the drug that had just been
73:02 approved by the FDA for the treatment of COVID your prediction was totally wrong
73:08 and everything you said was wrong." Now here's the here's the interesting thing I was among the
73:14 first if not the first but definitely among the first in late February and
73:20 early March to suggest that the only class of
73:30 antiviral antivirals I dedicated at least three separate
73:38 videos advocating and I'm talking about the beginning of March advocating rema
73:44 severe as a treatment for COVID I extolled the virtues of remdeae
73:51 I analyzed the mechanism of action of remdeae I suggested to to start with
73:59 clinical trials of gender and I said extremely clearly several times that
74:06 ultimately and finally all the other drugs will prove to be to be inefficacious with one exception remazone metazone as well but remir is it this is the name of the game it's the
74:22 only antiviral that works against covid So I wasn't wrong I was dead right I was
74:30 very very right Why did she Suddenly I I began to ask why did she think how could
74:36 she think that I were wrong she claimed to have listened to the videos How could she have reached a conclusion that I were wrong that I was wrong about doing this severe when I was seriously right
74:48 about doing this What mechanism in her mind what made her
74:56 misar misinterpret what she'd heard and that was self
75:02 gaslighting She wanted she she's not a fan as you as you realize Yes she hates my guts So she wanted to hear there was she wanted to hear she
75:13 wanted to listen to the video and to reach a conclusion that I had been mistaken She expected to hear that I
75:21 being a fraudster got it wrong She came to the video She watched the video with
75:29 preconceptions with expectations and with very very strong desire to prove me
75:35 wrong And this predisposed her to hear something which was not in
75:44 the videos utterly absolutely not There's no way to listen to these videos and get it wrong So she was not actually listening to the video videos She was listening to her
75:56 inner voice She was listening to processes and dynamics in her mind that
76:05 pushed her to falsify reality to confabulate to reframe essentially to
76:12 lie to herself and to lose reality testing She was no longer in touch with
76:19 reality What was she doing she was gaslighting herself
76:25 She removed herself from reality into a delusional space In that delusional
76:31 fantastic space all her wishes came true Sam was a fraudster and he got it wrong
76:38 about MD severe and the pandemic because that's what she wanted very much to
76:44 prove So what was actually said in the videos was blotted out deleted You have
76:51 this power especially as victims You hear what you want to hear
76:57 You hear what you want what you expect to hear You anticipate humiliation rejection abuse
77:05 torture torment agony pain
77:12 exploitation And then you gather information from the environment including information about your abuser and you reassemble it You reframe it You put
77:26 it together in a narrative that justifies your expectations validates
77:32 your fears and concerns and upholds your view of your abuser You have a negative
77:39 view of your abuser You don't want to hear anything that contradicts this negative view You're going to fend it
77:45 off You're going to firewall You're going to ignore it you're going to repress it and deny
77:51 it So any positive information about your abuser would be
77:58 eliminated or even worse you will take the information and reframe it like this
78:05 woman I I was saying on in the videos I don't know maybe 50 times I mean many
78:11 many times rem is great it's going to cure COVID What did she hear remir is
78:19 wrong It's not going to cure COVID She heard exactly the opposite That's what she wanted to hear You are doing this as
78:26 well You're gaslighting yourself Now nothing wrong with that It's not a
78:32 pathology It's known as confirmation bias When we are emotionally invested
78:38 when we are affected deeply emotionally invested in any mental process For example in
78:47 trusting someone or in distrusting someone or in experiencing pain or in
78:55 being traumatized or in being very afraid Whenever we are emotionally invested in a cognitive or an emotional process our brain shuts off deletes
79:10 represses denies and ignores any information that challenges the theory that you had
79:19 constructed or or the bias that you had formed or the narrative that you have
79:26 put together At some point you create a theory A theory about other people and
79:32 about specific other people like your abuser You create a theory about the
79:38 world and about specific events occurrences and circumstances in the world For example your relationship Now
79:45 these theories are very dear to you You're emotionally invested in these theories You want to protect them You
79:51 don't want them to be challenged You don't want them to be under undermined You don't want anyone to tell you you're
79:57 wrong because that's narcissistic injury It challenges your grandiosity and all of us have grandiosity It's a normal
80:04 state of things So you don't want to listen to any of this My abuser is is
80:10 abusive is an animal is bad is evil I don't want to listen to anything which will undermine this or contradict this
80:16 or challenge this And if I do if something penetrates my firewall if
80:22 there's an intrusion and some bit of information comes in which kind of unsettles the precarious tower that I
80:28 had constructed I'm going to reframe this piece of information I'm going to lie to myself I'm going to gaslight
80:35 myself I'm going to ignore reality I'm going to impair my reality testing It's not only about abuse It's about
80:41 everything about political candidates The supporters of Donald Trump don't want to hear anything bad about Donald
80:48 Trump And when there is an avalanche of seriously bad things about Donald Trump
80:54 they reframe these things Every shortcoming becomes an advantage Every
81:00 misdeed becomes smart and clever conduct Every
81:07 um disempathic seriously wicked comment becomes irony and proof of sense of
81:15 humor in a everything he does and everything he says is reinterpreted
81:21 misinterpreted recast reframed confabulated The supporters of Donald
81:28 Trump create narratives that shut out shut off delete
81:35 and ignore any information or data which contradict their already wellestablished
81:43 theory of who is Donald Trump what is Donald Trump who are the enemies of Donald Trump who the friends of Donald
81:49 Trump what's going to Donald Trump going to deliver and win Same with Obama supporters Same with Adolf Hitler supporters Same with any personality
82:00 cult So self gaslighting is an integral very crucial
82:06 process of uh establishing an inner equilibrium and
82:12 inner peace a sense of calmness and resilience allows us to carry on with
82:19 our lives If we were to question all the time everything we think we know about
82:25 other people about specific people about the world about events about morality I
82:31 mean we we would never get anywhere We would freeze The world anyhow bombards us with gigantic amounts of information Studies have shown that we absorb only 5% of the information that is offered to us by reality Otherwise we would drown
82:49 we would freeze like a very bad tablet or device We'll simply
82:55 freeze So it's a denial of service attack If we open ourselves to all all
83:01 the information out there we have to choose We make selections and choices all the time And we make sure that this
83:08 the selected data the selected info fits well with previous info with previous
83:16 data and with our with the theories within which we accommodate this data and information and this leads of course to resistance to learning resistance to
83:27 change and don't think that this is only among laymen in my own profession among
83:34 my colleagues I frequently encounter resistance to change That's true in
83:41 physics where I'm active That's true in psychology where I'm active That used to be true in economics where I was active
83:47 when I was active in that field There is enormous resistance that the
83:53 Thomas wrote a book called the a book about scientific revolutions and he said that the paradigm shift changing your mind changing your view of how things work is a very
84:07 excruciating and honorous process is I mean people are resistant People fight
84:13 to death to maintain their views and ideas of the world and not to accept any
84:19 challenge or change I am right now in the throws of suggesting a new conception of
84:26 addiction And you know there is this dogma that alcohol is a
84:32 depressant and that alcoholism is a brain disease Let me share something with you
84:38 There's no proof of either If anything alcohol is a disregulator So it leads to ups and
84:46 downs in moods in emotional processing and so on But ups and downs not only
84:53 downs Anyone who drinks will tell you this When you drink you feel good You have the buzz You don't feel bad You don't become depressed You become depressed a bit later or a lot later the
85:06 day after maybe but you're depressed the day after probably also because of hangover and other effects It's not a
85:13 depressant it's a disregulated This minor change just to accept reality that alcohol does it's not a depressant It's been a mistake We were mistaken No one no one accepts it
85:27 You should see the fighting over this And when I suggest that if 40% of the brain is dedicated to
85:36 addictions and to processing addictions maybe addiction has an evolutionary advantage somewhere Maybe it's a
85:43 positive adaptation not a negative thing Wow You should see the reactions You know alcohol is a disinhibitor It's a disinhibitor Um it makes you actually feel good
86:00 So an addiction is a normal state and and this this
86:06 modifications it's a fourth world war third world war I don't know what to call it Is it a brain disorder or a
86:14 disease here's another bit of nonsense Yes of course alcohol has an effect on the brain Everything has an effect on the brain Sugar has effect on the brain I mean everything has an effect on the
86:24 brain Everything that passes the brain blood barrier has an effect on the brain But what caused what what preceded what
86:33 we definitely don't have answers to this And to say that alcoholism is a brain disorder is to lie You know I don't mean words That's not only nonsense It's
86:46 facious because we are we don't have any conclusive studies that demonstrate that
86:53 alcoholics were born with a specific proclivity or disorder or abnormality or
87:00 dysfunction in the brain None So you know don't feel bad Self
87:09 gaslighting is whenever people defend the status quo Whenever they don't want
87:16 to exit their comfort zone whenever they have developed laboriously with a lot of investment a lot of thought a lot of dedication a worldview an opinion a
87:30 judgment and then they would take information and data and falsify them
87:36 and transmogriphy them and transform them and ignore them and deny them and
87:42 repress them and combine them wrongly with other pieces of data and information and do anything in their
87:48 power to preserve the equilibrium the
87:54 homeostasis This is self gaslighting I said that rem dese is will
88:02 prove to be the cure to COVID ultimately She heard that I said exactly
88:09 the opposite Why she wanted me to be wrong I am the abuser I'm the monster
88:15 I'm the narcissist I'm the psychopath She couldn't accept that I may have been
88:21 right She wants me to be a fraud She wants me to be wrong So she misheard and
88:27 she didn't mishar a single instance She misheard three hours of
88:34 videos That's the power of self gaslighting Now to shared fantasy Karen
88:41 and Gammon I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly Karen and Gammon started in
88:47 the black community Blacks gave this uh these monikers use
88:55 these monikers to describe whites Um Karen was a grandiose entitled
89:03 contemptuous white woman irritable irrassable aggressive unpleasant white
89:10 woman And Gammon was the male equivalent of Karen and started in in communities
89:17 of color But then it emerged as usual By the way minorities always lead the way Uh trends start with minorities high high status minorities like elites
89:30 like aristocracy intellectual elites or low status minorities but always minorities
89:36 Change starts in minority uh um communities because they have very little to lose They they can gamble they can take risks they seek novelty Their only
89:47 chance is to unsettle the existing established order That's the only way to
89:54 progress So everything starts there That's the firmament So black communities were using Karen and Gammon and then about 20 years later it became you know now everyone is using Karen and
90:05 Gammon and and now it applies not only to whites but equally to people of color
90:11 and grandiosity entitlement contempt are colorblind And when I described the the
90:20 narcissist and the relationship cycle of the narcissist many people said to me
90:26 "Well he's a g that's a gam or a Karen Uh you're describing a gam or a
90:32 car." Not not really but step by step I want to start with a comment by Anamonte
90:40 if that's her real name Anamonte is a viewer
90:46 uh saw one of my videos and left a comment Thank you Sam You gave me all
90:52 the final answers and the strength to understand and wake up Every narcissist takes you in with a mask of a father and
91:00 the wonderful fantasy ends when you realize that under the mask there is just a child full of pain You abandoned
91:08 him because you wanted a man Thanks And I thought this is a wonderful summary
91:14 within a single sentence of the entire dynamic So I'm going to read it to you again and there's nothing you can do
91:21 about it Um every narcissist takes you in with
91:27 a mask of a father and the wonderful fantasy ends when you realize that under
91:34 the mask there is just a child full of pain You abandon him because you want a
91:40 men Thanks Thank you Anamonte And I answered "Yes," exclamation And most women cut off the
91:52 sex with a vunderin genius child or with a sexless father guru and they seek
91:59 intimacy with a man or they abandon the narcissist
92:05 altogether There is no infidelity I I wrote to her There's no infidelity or
92:11 unfaithfulness involved even when there is deception even when there is cheating
92:17 So I I distinguish two elements There's the sex with men outside the
92:23 marriage extrammarital sex or some other form of betrayal nonsexual betrayal But
92:30 there going outside the marital bond going outside the
92:36 couple and in a normal couple in a healthy couple that would be unfaithfulness infidelity adultery But not not with a narcissist In my view
92:48 there may be deception The intimate partner of the narcissist may lie to the narcissist about her behavior what she did last night That's deception It's an entirely different issue But there's no
93:00 unfaithfulness and there's no infidelity Women when when the when someone is with
93:08 a narcissist with narcissist intimate partner she doesn't prefer another man
93:14 to the narcissist She prefers a man to a child or to a
93:21 father or to a guru She opts for a man rather than for
93:27 these other roles You see if you have as an intimate partner a healthy normal loving caring
93:36 sexual partner men let's say in this case you can reverse the genders You can reverse the gender pronouns Replace he with she etc Don't let me repeat this every two minutes So if you're with a
93:49 healthy man as a woman if you're with a healthy heterosexual you're with a healthy man and and so on and so forth
93:57 loving caring sexy etc etc and you stray you cheat one night stand love affair That's infidelity That's unfaithfulness because you had chosen another man to your men over your men You had a man You
94:14 had a man at home and you preferred another man That's unfaithfulness That's infidelity But the intimate part of a narcissist doesn't have a man at home
94:25 She has a child She has a father Sometimes rarely mostly she has a child
94:33 When she goes with another man when she has intimacy with another man sexual emotional doesn't have to be sexual when
94:40 she offers herself in any way to another man as a friend as a lover as it's not
94:47 that she makes a choice between two men the man at home and the man out at work
94:53 or the man at home and the man in the bar That's all that's happening She's not choosing another man She's choosing
95:00 a man a man at home She has a child She doesn't have a man She's a virtual
95:07 single She's single She doesn't have a man so she's not choosing another man So he's not she's
95:14 not unfaithful There's no infidelity here Um so you can say okay so why does
95:22 she stay with him it's it's not it's immoral to stay with him and to be with with with
95:31 men Those who remain in the relationship with the narcissist had agreed to assume the role of his surrogate mother Why i
95:40 don't know They pity him or they cannot countenance hurting him They don't want
95:46 to hurt him They see the wounded small frightened child crying in the corner They can't hurt this child They simply can't hurt him They pity the child So
95:57 they can't dump the narcissist They can't abandon the narcissist But on the other hand they need a man They're
96:03 they're women They have sexual needs They have emotional needs They have intimacy needs They have good time needs
96:10 They have need for fun to have fun They they they are women And at home what
96:16 they have is a child 100% unadulterated unmititigated
96:22 child So it's not that they choose a man one man over another Is they choose to
96:28 be with a man over being with a child and they remain with a child because they don't want to hurt the child because they pity the child And maybe some of them who are seriously delusional malignantly optimistic keep
96:40 hoping that one day this child might reveal his adult side as he had done
96:46 misleadingly during the grooming phase and the love bombing phase But they still seek fulfillment as women
96:54 elsewhere either with other men or with children or or they become walkaholic Never mind the betrayal has and the abandonment has many forms Cheating with
97:05 with other men is is only one Cheating with men is only one one way There are many ways to upsent yourself emotionally or to upsent yourself physically and finally to just walk away Pack your
97:17 things and walk away It's a very complex dynamic because it is not a dynamic between two adults It's a dynamic between an adult and a child But a child who has expectations
97:30 of an adult that this child pretends to be an adult and you are trapped with
97:36 this insane child Child who thinks he's an adult and then one day you wake up and
97:45 you look at the mirror and you see a child It's a
97:51 psychedelic bad trip LSD terrifying experience Imagine that you all your
97:58 life you thought you were a woman You were told you're a woman Men courted you You had sex with me I you thought you were a woman in a world without mirrors And one day you came across a
98:11 mirror at the airport You look at the mirror and you see that you're actually a man Can you imagine the shock the
98:18 narcissist goes through his life believing himself to be an adult treating himself as an adult demanding respect as an adult fulfilling adult roles It's role playing it's acting it's
98:31 play acting He doesn't really feel in it He feels he's playing a role like a script He he regards his life as a movie And then one day he passes the mirror at the airport and he looks in the mirror and he sees this this tiny child this small child you know tiny child 3
98:51 feet Imagine the shock Imagine the disorientation the discombobulation the
98:57 imagine the storm the fire the volcanic eruption the
99:04 tectonic shift in his mind the moment he finally accepts that he's not an
99:11 adult And so you know many people told me
99:18 during the love bombing phase and the grooming phase the narcissist is future faking No he is not future faking I
99:26 would have used this phrase had it been appropriate Future faking is a predatory technique It's when a predator with clear goals in mind with a clear
99:38 plan makes false fellacious lies and promises about the future which he knows in advance he has
99:50 no intention to fulfill It's part of a strategen It's a subtifuge It's in other words scamming or con artistry That's not the
100:01 narcissist He doesn't future fake He truly believes his promises and his lies He's entering a shared fantasy a shared psychotic
100:12 state The narcissist is not predatory He is acquisitive He's not a psychopath The
100:20 psychopath is predatory Psychopath is going to look at you and say "Wow this woman has a lot of money I'm going to promise her marriage I'm going to promise her children I'm going to promise her undying love Then I'm going
100:30 to take all her money and I'm going to dump her That's future faking That's future faking He's going
100:36 to groom that woman to take her money That's future faking The narcissist
100:43 takes a look at the same woman and he for he's infatuated He's in love She's ideal She's brilliant She's amazing She's perfect She's intelligent She is the epitome in essence and quintessence
100:54 of femininity She is and she is has never been like her before or after will ever be after etc etc And then he falls
101:02 for it He falls for his own fantasy fantastic space his own concoction He's
101:08 not predatory He is acquisitive He wants to acquire her He wants to drag her and
101:14 bring her into his shared space where everything is pink and Disneyland where every promise becomes true just by virtue of uttering it This
101:25 is magical thinking If I only say something aloud it must be true If I
101:31 think something it will manifest and become This is narcissistic thinking Psychopath never loses touch with reality Absolutely not Psychopath knows
101:42 exactly what he's doing Sometimes he loses control of his impulses Sometimes he rages Sometimes he's reckless Often
101:48 he's reckless That's because he doesn't care He rejects life He doesn't give an
101:54 S you know but he never loses touch of reality He knows exactly what he's doing Any second and every minute he knows to tell the difference between reality and fantasy not the
102:06 narcissist The DSM defines narcissistic personality disorder as a disorder of
102:12 fantasy Fantasy is a psychological defense mechanism So when the narcissist makes you promises about the future how
102:18 lovely it's going to be how perfect it's going to be how you're going to live happily ever after you have you're going to have children the most perfect
102:25 children and you know future together and he will make commitment and investment and he will change himself for the eenth time when he makes all these promises He is not lying to you that he's not faking There's no faking
102:37 in this future He really believes it's going to happen Why because he said it and because he wants it very much The thing you can easily see that the
102:49 narcissist in this sense is a child because children have magical thinking of this kind They confuse fantasy in
102:57 reality wish fulfillment It's a dream state In dreams we very often fulfill
103:03 wishes and when we are inside the dream very rarely do we know that we are dreaming Usually we think we are in reality The narcissist mental state is a
103:14 dreamcape It's a constant mental dreamcape dream state And it's easy to
103:22 see that the narcissist is not an adult in in many ways For example
103:29 um let's take a typical man a healthy normal typical man and a woman
103:36 When there is a romantic attachment immediately there are three three triggers in both parties male and female
103:44 There are three kind of um behaviors that are triggered and they are partly
103:50 biological There is abandonment fear of abandonment and fear of loss which translates into romantic jealousy If a competitor enters the scene a serious
104:01 competitor there is possessiveness the intuitive perception of the other as an
104:07 object objectifying the other and rendering the other property Now we all do this This is why in psychology we
104:14 call people objects because we all objectify other people The amount of
104:20 data and information about other people is so gigantic that we have to reduce and to abstract We select a few points and we connect the dots and create an
104:31 introject We create an internal representation which is essentially an object So there is possessiveness and
104:38 there is competition especially with men but not only of course with women as well adult healthy normal adults Adults
104:46 when they get attached when they get bonded especially romantically they show romantic jealousy
104:54 They show possessiveness and they show competition And so when you look at the narcissist for example the cerebral narcissist no way All he has is fear of
105:06 loss and abandonment He is not possessive and he's not competitive He couldn't care less He couldn't care less His wife can be out every single night
105:18 of the of the week return home drunk at the small hours of the morning and he wouldn't even bother to ask where were you who you were you with and what were you doing He's not possessive He's not
105:34 competitive But the second he sees a hint a hint of a shadow of a possibility
105:40 of abandonment or loss it triggers him And that's the only
105:46 artifact in the arsenal in the in the in the inner world of the cerebral
105:52 narcissist Loss of abandonment Loss Abandonment Fear of abandonment Anxiety about
106:01 loss No possessiveness No competition Now this is typical of children Children are not competitive
106:07 and they're not possessive but they do have enormous tremendous or to paraphrase another
106:13 narcissist huge uh abandonment anxiety separation
106:19 anxiety fear of loss Children have this and they don't have possessiveness They're not comp So children as the
106:26 children their children very young children pre-edipible children children
106:32 before the edipus complex is when you when you as a child develop the edypus complex you begin to be jealous romantically jealous you you're in love with mother
106:44 and you're romantically jealous of father and you become very possessive of mother and you're competing with your
106:50 father that's the edible stage Narcissists get stuck
106:57 pre-edipally They are not even sufficiently developed to de to have the edypus complex They get stuck before they're like babies Infant formula Infant
107:12 formula Risk of loss Hint of abandonment Shadow of desertion They go crazy Otherwise reassure them that you're
107:25 always going to be back Yes you're going on a vacation with another man you know for two weeks but you'll be back He doesn't mind He doesn't care Important is your presence in his
107:37 life not to be abandoned That's child It's totally childlike It's totally childlike
107:46 uh some subtypes of narcissists somatic narcissists and especially psychopathic
107:52 narcissists they have all three They have romantic jealousy which is essentially abandonment anxiety
107:59 transformed The romantic jealousy they are possessive and they're competitive
108:05 So somatic narcissist and psychopathic narcissist do have all three but they
108:12 have the ideology the reason the causation the causes beyond these three
108:18 is not the same like healthy or normal person and also the length and the intensity of these emotions For example
108:26 if the psychopath or the somatic narcissist becomes possessive becomes jealous and becomes competitive and it's
108:33 not working he will dump you Where the healthy normal partner may try for
108:40 months and years to restore the relationship to recover from the infidelity to do something to to change
108:46 himself to change you to modify behaviors to make new agreements to establish communication protocols
108:53 Psychopath and and somatic narcissist may be momentarily possessive and competitive but they move on They move
109:01 on We can go into it in another video So women who are with narcissists they are
109:07 virtual singles They are like single single mothers with a petulant child or
109:14 with a stern father at home You know many women leave their with their fathers or many women live with a sing
109:20 with a child and they are single mothers These women date they go out on dates
109:26 Same with a narcissist intimate partner She goes out on dates She goes out on dates or she has
109:32 very intimate uh relationships with with men emotional or physical or
109:38 both because at home she doesn't have a man She is a petulent child spoiled brat
109:46 entitled self-style genius usually or intermittent
109:52 bursts of a stern disciplinarian harsh father whichever the case may be If you live at home with a father or you live at home with your child you're still
110:04 free to date And these intimate partners feel absolutely free to date or free to
110:10 to stray or or free to develop a parallel parallel life at work or with
110:16 their children or with their friends girlfriends I mean it's like they have their private life and at home they have a child Like every single mother you know dating is an outlet It's an it's an
110:28 escape from the dreary drab day-to-day pedestrian tasks
110:35 And so narcissists sometimes do fulfill adult roles They do fulfill adult roles
110:41 For example I mentioned um I mentioned um father Father is an adult
110:48 role I mentioned guru Guru is an adult role So the narcissist does fulfill
110:56 adult roles but he plays them He play acts them And he plays these roles only
111:02 in order to acquire the intimate partner and to lead her inexurably into the
111:08 shared fantasy Once he can take the intimate partner for granted once he is
111:15 asscertained of her permanence object permanence object constancy once in other words he is sure that she will never abandon him the other trolls go out the window They go out the window
111:26 and he becomes almost 100% child The adult trolls are brief They're devoid of
111:33 true responsibilities chores There's no commitment there It's not real It's a
111:39 it's a it's a role It's a role play And the investment in the adult
111:45 roles which precede usually the shared fantasy The narcissist plays adult roles in love bombing grooming and honeymoon
111:52 phases So the investment in these other trolls is proportional to the narcissist
111:58 expectations and to the benefits it deres There's no future faking Um there
112:04 is manipulation but it's not intentional not deliberate not goal oriented not
112:10 psychopathic It's intuitive it's reflexive It's like animal nature you know it comes from the from the
112:17 reptilian part of the brain stem It's a manipulative ploy that involves self
112:23 delusional selfdeceiving roleplay by everyone involved Everyone pretends it's reality when it's not And in the initial phases the nasty
112:34 says "Okay I will play the father I'll play the guru I'll play the adult I will even make you adult promises I'll even
112:42 I'll even uh tell you that I'll be a great husband and a father Anything you want to hear I'll play the adult." But
112:49 not like I play the adult in order to deceive you I'll play the adult because I'm I'm convincing myself that I can be an adult that I can be normal if I only wish to It's magical thinking A narcissist with extreme object inconstancy and with abandonment anxiety
113:05 for example a compensatory narcissist In a compensatory narcissist the grandiosity the
113:11 overt obnoxious grandiosity masks disguises an inordinately low
113:18 sense of self-worth and self-esteem So this kind of narcissist will have an extreme extreme object of
113:26 inconstancy and abandonment anxiety and he reacts all the time This kind of narcissist reacts all the time with
113:33 romantic jealousy to his intimate partner's infidelity or alternative
113:40 double life or behavior as a single Why because this kind of
113:46 narcissist has constant abandonment and loss anxiety His sense of self-worth and self-esteem and self-confidence are so low that he anticipates abandonment humiliation and rejection any minute And
113:59 so he's constantly in a state of romantic jealousy Same with border lines Same dynamic in border lines But most narcissists are not compensatory They really believe that they are superior geniuses gurus amazing perfect brilliant
114:15 incredible and I know what So these kind of narcissists they turn a blind eye to adultery to betrayal to an alternative
114:22 life to single behaviors These kind of narcissists go about their business of securing plentiful and
114:29 regular narcissistic supply They don't care about you They don't give a where you are what you're doing and with
114:36 who As long as you promise to be home back home back to take care of your
114:43 child We must distinguish romantic jealousy from humiliation All narcissists feel
114:50 humiliated And they feel humiliated because of their inability to lead normal lives in which they are not
114:57 compelled to share their women or to give their women up to to other men It's
115:04 humiliating to to never have an intimate partner who is only yours An intimate
115:11 partner you don't have to share with other men It's a very humiliating thing because you know you're crippled It's
115:17 like you are quadriplegic You're an invalid There's nothing you can do about
115:23 it Chronic illness generally you know in medicine how we call illness cor chronic illness insult It's called insult Serious The clinical term in medicine is
115:34 insult It's insulting to be incapacitated to be disabled to the
115:40 point that you can't have anything that is exclusively yours anyone that is only
115:48 yours that you have to share with others These are the unavoidable outcomes of the narcissist disability and ubiquitous dysfunction He can't for example provide
115:59 for the needs and requirements emotional and physical of his intimate partner So he has to he has to let her share herself with other other men He can't in
116:11 business behave as an adult So ultimately everyone steals his ideas or
116:17 he's replaced by someone else It's a form of cheating You know when your boss picks up someone to replace you to substitute for for you at work and then fires you that's
116:28 cheating It's exact equivalent of infidelity or unfaithfulness And narcissist go through through this kind
116:35 of humiliation daily Narcissists switch from internal to external motification
116:41 real fast But they do first at first experience
116:48 agonizing trepidation and mayhem Internal mortification is very a very bad feeling It's like an an internal
116:55 monologue I'm defunct I'm deficient I'm deformed I'm disabled I'm incapacitated I'm invalid I can't be normal I can't
117:04 have happiness I can't have a partner who would be only mine I can't keep my
117:10 job People will always prefer others to me My intimate partner will prefer other men to me because I'm not a man My boss will prefer other employees to me
117:22 because I'm not an employee I'm not an adult I refuse to be an adult I refuse to grow up Peter Pence says it openly in
117:29 the book I don't want to grow up It sucks And being cheated on that I keep
117:35 mentioning It's only the tip of an iceberg And I'm mentioning it because being cheated on recreates the original
117:43 conflict with the mother So it's really really bad It's like an echo chamber of all the previous pain that the narcissist had experienced with his mother So only only infidelity only
117:57 sexual cheating or emotional cheating with with men has this resonance within the narcissist and only this can lead him to mortification All other forms of humiliation lead to narcissistic injury Cheating infidelity unfaithfulness with
118:13 men leads to mortification because it recreates the original environment
118:19 ambiencece of painful and hurtful childhood But the naris is in a constant state of humiliation Women cheat on him Women abandon him Businesses he he creates go
118:31 bankrupt Projects he initiates fall fall apart His his long-term self-efficacy is
118:38 zero He's an impostor and he suffers from the imposter syndrome Helen Deutsch
118:44 there's a sense of lost agency a sense of external total external locus of
118:50 control and faced with such trenchant failure If you were faced with such
118:58 inexurable repeatable recurrent inevitable inelectable unavoidable failure like guaranteed failure and loss
119:06 are guaranteed If someone were to tell you listen from now on here's a letter from God guaranteeing that everything
119:12 you try to do you try to make a family you try to fall in love you try to have an intimate partner try to establish a
119:18 business you try to publish a p a book whatever you try to do guaranteed you will fail and you will lose And even when you succeed internally you will consider it a failure because your
119:30 standards are perfection Your false self is unremitting It's grandiose
119:37 unrealistically grandiose And you have the super ego who tortures you the inner critic So you always fail guaranteed
119:44 What would you do what would you do if you were faced with such an internal environment well there are two options The first option is this The first option is suicide
119:55 Um it's a it's a form of internal mo taking internal motification to its logical conclusion I'm so impaired I'm
120:03 so disabled I'm so I'm so effed up I'm so you know good for nothing I better put an end to it all It's suicide That's the first rational frankly option And
120:16 then the alternative is to say what causes me pain is reality and everyone and everything in reality Simple I'm going to divorce reality And I'm not going to divorce reality by becoming
120:28 psychotic That's too that's too extreme I'm going to divorce reality by becoming delusional fantastic grandiose And that will move me from
120:39 internal motification I am corrupt I am decadent I am disabled I am imperfect It
120:46 will move me to an external motification Everyone is malicious Everyone is envious of me The world is hostile It
120:53 should It's a jungle out there It's a win-lose It's a zero sum game So these are the two options of the narcissist Suicide or grandiosity It's a
121:04 no-brainer Of course you would choose grandiosity But it's also a catch 22
121:10 because to defend one's fantastically inflated view of oneself to defend one's grandiosity from
121:18 challenges from stark reality from a lack of patience and and
121:24 malice of other people This brings with it its own set of humiliations betrayals
121:31 abandonments derision slides challenges and put downs When you try to defend
121:37 your grandiosity you look like a buffoon You look like a fool and people
121:43 treat you disrespectfully Whichever way you turn you're
121:49 humiliated You're humiliated by your intimate partners by your recurrent failures in everything Constantly
121:55 defeated You're in the defeated state of mind So you try to compensate for it by pretending that you are a winner not a
122:03 loser You're a winner You lie to yourself and especially to others And you force others to lie to you
122:09 Narcissistic supply that you're the greatest most amazing the most perfect and so on so forth But this also brings
122:16 humiliation defeat failure betrayal abandonment There's no escape
122:23 And this is where I want you to understand
122:30 narcissism Similarly to the chronically addicts
122:36 narcissists are their disorder You can't separate the narcissist from his
122:43 narcissism Chronically sick people have gradually become their sickness Addicts
122:49 become their substance Narcissists become their narcissism The
122:55 disorders displace these people Narcissism displaces the narcissist The
123:01 narcissist transmogrifies changes shapeshifts and is consumed and digested
123:08 by his dysfunction from individual to dysfunction Only the disease is left
123:14 behind having consumed and sped out the person that used to be It's a second
123:21 death First time around the true self dies is sacrificed like human sacrifice
123:28 to the new god the false self Then the false self proves to be not efficacious
123:34 False self proves to be not the solution And then the disease takes over and it's
123:41 the second time the narcissist dies in a process known as
123:51 motification Narcissists often make you doubt your own sanity your hold on reality your
124:00 perception of what is true and what is not But does this amount to gaslighting
124:07 isn't the same as gaslighting Narcissists often tell you things that are expressly untrue
124:16 counterfactual fly in the face of everything you know and most other people
124:22 know And yet do narcissists lie
124:28 narcissists also insist on an autobiography that is largely made of
124:35 invented material trying to bridge gaps in
124:41 memory Are these inventions narratives pieces of
124:47 fiction are these lies are these deceptions
124:53 selfdeception or other deception and do they involve gaslighting this is the topic of today's
125:02 video When I say he it applies to she Of course half of all narcissists are women
125:09 And it applies to all settings intimate relationships marriages family
125:17 friendships the church football club you name it The army you name it So the
125:24 narcissist re relates to other people The narcissist maintains interpersonal
125:30 relationships by utilizing the shared fantasy That's the way he interacts with
125:36 the world And yes that's the exclusive way interacts with the world because narcissism is a fantasy defense
125:43 Let me provide you with a few distinguishing marks few distinguishing
125:49 points and then we will head on to the um discussion
125:56 itself Gaslighting is always premeditated It's
126:02 intentional It is goal oriented It is the aim is to secure some
126:08 goal and it involves an asymmetry of power The person gas lit is somehow weaker more
126:21 helpless less resourceful than the
126:27 gaslighter Lying is lying Knowingly deliberately intentionally with
126:35 premeditation making a statement that the liar knows is untrue Now in both
126:42 gaslighting and in lying or deception the person who
126:48 commits these misbehaviors is aware of the distinction
126:56 between fantasy and reality He is firmly grounded in reality He knows what he's what he's
127:03 saying is untrue is counterfactual is wrong And yet he uses these techniques
127:11 to manipulate his human environment and to secure goals And so this is the critical
127:20 differential diagnosis If you know if you can tell the difference
127:27 between reality and fantasy and you still gaslight and you still lie and you still deceive you're a
127:35 psychopath Because narcissists cannot tell the difference between reality and
127:41 fantasy Consequently narcissists never gaslight and very rarely lie They lie
127:49 you know like everyone everyone else white lies and so on but they never lie as a strategy These are psychopathic
127:55 strategies Narcissists are demented They can't tell the difference between
128:01 reality and fantasy They're on the cusp of psychosis That's not some bakni
128:07 that's autober They're on the cusp of psychosis They're no longer with us And so they they don't sit there scheming and cunning and planning and
128:18 they they don't do this They just lapse into fantasy They elope They they vanish
128:25 from reality And they do it so often that 90% of their lives is
128:31 composed of of these kind of fantasies So today I'm going to discuss a
128:38 mechanism in narcissism known as confabulation which superficially resembles gaslighting and
128:46 lying but is not But before we go there let me once
128:53 and for all clarify the controversy about dissociation and disassociation
128:59 Please listen well and please visit the website that I'm about to recommend That
129:06 is the official repository of all terminology in psychology And if a certain word is not there there's no
129:13 such word period And anyone who uses it is ignorant profoundly ignorant of
129:19 psychology and the subject matter
129:26 A charlatan is anyone who claims expertise in a field that is not
129:33 his So if you are a physicist and you discuss theology or if you're a
129:39 neuroscientist and you discuss psychology you are taking the risk of
129:45 being considered a charlatan Now more to the point there is no such word as disassociation Only people who are profoundly ignorant of psychology would use this word You don't have to believe me You I suggest that you go online to
130:02 the APA dictionary American Psychological Association dictionary Type the word disassociation See what you get Let me
130:13 help you No such word exists And indeed no such word exists in psychology Case
130:22 closed Let's move on And today we are going to discuss another word much
130:28 disputed confabulation Now this word does exist in psychology but it has had
130:36 a long and convoluted history My name is Sam Baknin I'm the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited and many other books on personality disorders I'm also
130:47 a former visiting professor of psychology and I'm on the faculty of
130:54 seams Okay Confabulation Confabulation as I said has a long history It was first described in psychotic disorders then in
131:07 dementia And finally Elizabeth Loftus and others have extended the use of the
131:13 word confabulation to describe any lapse of memory which is compensated for by
131:22 inventing scenarios So any situation where there's a memory gap where you
131:29 forget something and then you invent a story or a narrative to bridge the memory gap to somehow overcome it We'll discuss it a bit later Let's start with the APA dictionary American Psychological Association dictionary The authoritative body of terminology in our
131:46 field the field of psychology Confabulation The dictionary says the
131:52 falsification of memory in which gaps in recall I are filled by fabrications that
132:00 the individual accepts as fact It is not typically considered to be a conscious attempt to deceive others You hear that narcissists confabulate
132:11 They're not trying to deceive you They're not gaslighting you Psychopaths do
132:17 So confabulation occurs most frequently in kosakov syndrome alcohol damage to
132:24 the brain and to a lesser extent in other conditions associated with neurologically based amnesia such as
132:31 Alzheimer's disease In forensic context says the dictionary eyewitnesses may
132:37 resort to confabulation if they feel pressured to recall more information
132:43 than they can remember So people confabulate even healthy people even normal people when expectations are that they should remember something and they can't some people most people actually would
133:00 confabulate Confabulation is the narcissist's attempt to bridge gaps in his memory
133:09 Dissociative gaps Dissociation dissociative gaps to he
133:15 attempts to bridge these gaps by constructing scenarios of what is most likely to have
133:23 happened He he remembers point A in time and he remembers point C in time but
133:31 there's something missing between A and C And then he asked himself he asked himself what possibly could have
133:38 happened what most plausibly has happened and what is the most probable
133:44 scenario or narrative or script which would link point A in time with point C
133:51 in time and then he comes up with point B And point B is the confabulated
133:57 scenario or the confabulation It is a theory Confabulation is a theory of missing
134:05 time But the narcissist believes that the theory the confabulation is real and
134:12 true Now there are two reasons for that First of all confabulation by its nature
134:18 is selfdeceiving even in healthy normal people And that's why many witnesses
134:26 insist on the witness stand counterfactually in defiance of the facts They insist "But I've seen it I'm sure I've seen it But you couldn't have seen it." "Yeah but I'm sure I've seen it." So this is um a feature of confabulation It's very convincing It's
134:44 a kind of self-suggestion hypnotic state if you wish This is especially true in
134:50 mentally ill people with psychotic disorders dementia and so on and so forth These
134:58 people are unable to compare the confabulation to reality because they are divorced from reality and that
135:04 applies of course to a large extent to the narcissist This is not vakin This is Kber The narcissist and the borderline are on the cusp of psychosis
135:15 So the narcissist is unable to tell the difference between reality and
135:21 confabulation As far as he's concerned everything that is happening inside his head has a truth value Everything all the internal objects they
135:33 are real He doesn't recognize the existence of external objects For example you He interacts with
135:41 representations of the world in his own mind So it's very difficult for him to say well you know what you're right this
135:49 is confabulation that's not reality you can't do that he can't do that because he has what we call impaired reality
135:55 testing but this is second reason much much more powerful the real reason why
136:01 narcissist would insist that their confabulations are true and real now before I proceed confabulation is not gaslighting gaslighting is intentional
136:14 premeditated involves a gradient of power an asymmetry of power and is goal
136:21 oriented In short gaslighting is exclusively psychopathic Narcissists do
136:27 not gaslight They confabulate And narcissists believe their own confabulation and would have a
136:34 fight with you if you if you challenge the confabulation They would they would prove to you in a
136:40 million ways that the confabulation is real has always been real and has never been invented That this is just a form of
136:47 memory Their confabulation is a form of memory And by challenging their memory you're invalidating them They become
136:53 really really pissed off and aggressive So Narcissist protect their
137:00 confabulations defend their confabulations because their confabulation is the last remaining
137:06 thread connecting them to reality Event B which is totally
137:14 confabulated made made of whole cloth a total invention scenario a speculation
137:21 Event B is the only thing connecting the narcissist to event A and event C
137:27 If you were to scissor or to cut event B the narcissist would remain a drift and
137:34 a float in a sea of amnesia That is terrifying The narcissist protects his own integrity
137:42 and his own ability to function by defending ferociously the
137:48 veracity and factuality of his confabulations But another reason to do this is because
137:55 the narcissist considers himself uh infallible and
138:01 omniscient He never makes mistakes and he knows everything He's a
138:07 know all He's godlike He possesses the entire knowledge of of mankind and he
138:15 never makes mistakes So because it is the narcissist who came up with the
138:21 confabulation the confabulation can never be mistaken and the confabulation is
138:27 informed by the narcissist's grandiosity by his self-imputed
138:33 omniscience The narcissist says "I know everything there is to know so the confabulation must be true I never make mistakes so the confabulation must be real." Defending the confabulation against challenges Defending the confabulation
138:50 from being undermined contradicted defending the confabulation
138:56 from any disagreement is a way to defend and
139:03 isolate the narcissist grandiosity from external attacks It's not about the confabulation
139:10 It's about the narcissist self-image and self-perception as perfect and divine
139:17 The narcissist confabulates Then he says the confabulation is real because he can't tell apart reality from internal
139:24 processes And then having having proclaimed having promulgated the confabulation as real the narcissist
139:32 then remains committed to the reality factuality and veracity of the
139:39 confabulation and would fight you tooth and claw and nail to if you were to
139:45 challenge the confabulation because his grandiosity is invested in it If he is wrong if he's proven wrong about the confabulation then he is not omnicient then he is fallible then he is capable
139:57 of making mistakes and he doesn't know everything that they would destroy him It would constitute narcissistic injury
140:04 or if it is done in public motification So the confabulation is the narcissist
140:10 emotionally invests in the confabulation He affects it to a large extent The
140:17 narcissist's false self is a confabulation rate large The narcissist
140:23 confabulation confabulations are always fantastic They involve a fantasy defense
140:30 The shared fantasy is a confabulation as well Confabulation is may well be
140:36 described as the organizing principle of pathological narcissism Confabulation in narcissism
140:45 is a cover for dissociation Dissociation is an
140:51 imerfection If you dissociate you're not perfect If your memory is discontinuous and disjointed then you're not omniscient and you are prone to mistakes and failures and wrong
141:04 judgments So the narcissist has to deny his dissociation because dissociation is
141:12 narcissistically injurious To admit that he's dissociating is to admit that he's
141:18 mentally ill or that he's imperfect or that he's fallible or that he is um less
141:24 than omniscient less than godlike He can't do that He can never admit to his
141:30 frailty and shortcomings and imperfections Never So he uses
141:37 contabulation to cover for the dissociation to avoid narcissistic injury to to allay and counter the
141:45 challenges to his to his gr sense of superiority and omnipotence and
141:52 omniscience and so on so forth Contabulation is a major tool in
141:58 selfdeception and selfdeception is the hallmark of pathological narcissism
142:05 Narcissist also desperately tries to make is trying to make sense of a chaotic uh disjointed world The narcissist samples the world He has like
142:22 samples and then he's trying to connect the samples with a thread of confabulation It's like he has beads all kinds of beads and he's trying to make a
142:33 necklace Necklace by threading the beads on a confabulation So you see the importance of the confabulation Confabulation holds the beads together Take away the confabulation the beads
142:44 the beads will scatter and there will not be a necklace of grandiosity
142:51 The second function of confabulation is to bridge the gap between immutable internal and mutable external objects External objects such as you the
143:04 narcissist intimate partner or family member or friend or colleague or whatever External objects change all the
143:12 time They grow They evolve They acquire new friends External objects travel make
143:20 decisions get jobs get fired move relocate I mean external objects are
143:28 kaleidoscopic They can't be controlled They can't be pinned down like a butterfly You know they are they're
143:34 alive Life is dynamics Dynamics is change Change is transformation Transformation is disorientation and
143:42 insecurity and lack of object constancy It terrifies the narcissist Your autonomy and independence and agency
143:50 terrify the narcissist Terrify like in horror is horrified And the confabulation
143:58 intends to connect you the everchanging external object with your representation
144:06 in the narcissist mind which is the immutable unchanging fixed idealized
144:13 usually internal logic Here's one object inside the narcissist's mind that never
144:19 changes is always aminable to the narcissist's edicts and wishes and needs
144:26 you know and here's an external object represented by this internal object that constantly diverges and deviates from the internal object One way to bridge this gap is
144:38 coercive uh snapshotting I discuss it in other videos The other way is contabulation By confabulating about you about the external world about his
144:52 internal objects by constructing a narrative or a story or a piece of fiction where all of you fit together
145:00 all of you all of you conform to each other the external object to the internal object the internal object to
145:06 the narcissist etc etc You're all one big happy family inside a story line a script
145:14 which is counterfactual It flies in the fa in the face of reality But the confabulation is
145:22 the glue that holds everything together It produces a fake sense of object
145:29 constancy uh it it reduces mitigates amilarates abandonment anxiety separation insecurity and it creates um an ambiance
145:40 of a secure base maternal like a mother So confabulation is the dynamic the
145:48 mechanism through which the narcissist reconciles the external object with the
145:55 internal object thereby generating a sense of stability and safety that allows him to form object constancy and reduces his
146:06 anxieties Confabulation therefore is a major part of the shared fantasy And finally the third function of the conf confulation is to connect the present
146:18 um to the past In the present the narcissist has a maternal object And by
146:24 the way to be clear the shared fantasy applies to all the narcissist relationships with other people All
146:32 workplace church family friends intimate relationships you name it Shared fantasy
146:39 is the way the narcissist interacts with the world It's his mode of communication He channels he channels his narcissism
146:46 through the shared fantasy in his interpersonal relationships And yes he and she are interchangeable Half of all
146:53 narcissists are women Now all people the narcissist's friends
146:59 the narcissist's family members the narcissist's intimate partner narcissist wife even the narcissist children they
147:06 all converted into maternal figures within a shared fantasy And so the narcissist needs to bridge to connect his present with multiple
147:18 maternal objects and maternal figures with the past where he had only one
147:24 maternal object the real mother the biological mother Confabulation does this Confabulation falsifies reality
147:33 helps the narcissist to view other people as maternal objects Confabulation is the narcissist's way of converting you into a mother The
147:44 narcissist lies to himself deceives himself speculates on your nature tells
147:50 himself that you are actually a mother substitute And this can be done only via
147:56 confabulation of course because it's it's wrong It's not true It's not real So contra here's another way
148:03 confabulation u enables the shared fantasy empowers the narcissist within the shared fantasy and allocates roles to people in the
148:14 narcissist's life As you can see confabulation is not a minor issue It's
148:20 not just when the narcissist tells tells what is erroneously what are erroneously perceived as lies or gaslighting It's
148:28 not just that It's not just when the narcissist insists on a version of a version of events and a version of and a
148:35 version of facts that has nothing to do with reality It's not only that but confabulation fulfills critical
148:41 psychonamic functions in the economy of the narcissist mind And if he had one if
148:49 he were to have one his okay this lecture has not been
148:55 confabulated It corresponds 100% to reality and you would do well to listen
149:02 to it because it would render the narcissist more comprehensible and more manageable One
149:09 should hope My name is Samin I'm the author of
149:18 Malignant Self-Love Narcissism Revisited Today we will talk about
149:24 abuse Abusers exploit lie demean or ignore This is known as the silent treatment They manipulate and they
149:36 control But they use a variety of ways to achieve these goals There are many ways to abuse and many facets of
149:43 it Even to love too much is abusive It
149:49 is tantamount to treating someone as an extension of oneself as an object as a mere instrument of gratification To be overprotective not to respect one's
150:01 privacy to be brutally honest to be with a sadistic sense of humor or to be
150:07 consistently tactless All these are forms of abuse
150:13 To expect too much to denigrate to ignore are all modes of abuse There is
150:20 physical abuse verbal abuse psychological abuse sexual abuse
150:26 financial abuse and even legal abuse The list most abusers abuse
150:34 surreptitiously They are stealth abusers You have to actually live with such an abuser in order to witness the abuse and discern it There are four important categories
150:47 of abuse The first one is overt abuse This is the open and explicit abuse of
150:54 another person This is the type we are familiar with Threatening coercing
151:00 beating lying berating demeaning chastising insulting humiliating
151:07 exploiting and ignoring silent treatment devaluing unceremoniously discarding
151:13 someone verbal abu abuse physical abuse sexual abuse They all forms of overt
151:20 abuse but overt abuse is only the tip of the iceberg There is a second type which is
151:28 control and abuse by proxy If all else fails the abuser recruits friends
151:35 colleagues mates family members the authorities institutions neighbors the
151:41 media teachers In short the abuser recruits third parties to do his bidding
151:48 He uses these to cajul to coersse to threaten to stalk to offer to retreat to
151:56 tempt to convince to harass to communicate and otherwise to manipulate his target The abuser controls these
152:03 unaware instruments exactly as he plans to control his ultimate prey and victim He employs the same mechanisms and
152:10 devices with these intermediaries as he does with his ultimate targets and he
152:16 dumps his props unceremoniously when the job is done Another form of control by proxy is
152:22 to engineer situations in which abuse is inflicting upon another person
152:28 Such carefully crafted scenarios of embarrassment humiliation provoke social sanctions condemnation or programm or
152:36 even physical punishment against the victim Society or a social group thus become the instruments of the abuser against the unwitting victim or
152:47 prey So how do you cope with such abuse by proxy well often the abusers proxies
152:55 are unaware of their role So expose him Inform them Demonstrate to them how they
153:02 are being abused misused and plain used by the abuser Trap your abuser Treat him as he
153:08 treats you Involve other people Bring it into the open Nothing like sunshine to
153:15 disinfect abusive behavior The third category of abuse is what I call ambient abuse or gaslighting It is the fostering propagation and
153:27 enhancement of an atmosphere of fear intimidation instability
153:33 unpredictability and irritation There are no acts of traceable explicit
153:40 abuse There is no manipulative setting of control Yet the irksome feeling
153:47 remains a kind of disagreeable foroding a premonition a bed
153:53 omen This is what I call gaslighting after the famous movie Gaslight In the long term such an
154:00 environment erodess the victim's sense of selfworth and self-esteem Self-confidence is shaken badly The
154:08 victim begins to doubt himself or herself Often the victim adopts a paranoid or a skisid avoidant stance and renders himself or herself exposed to
154:20 even more criticism and judgment The roles are reversed in ambient abuse The victim is considered
154:28 mentally deranged labial and unstable While the abuser is universally regarded
154:35 as the suffering soul So how do you avoid ambient abuse
154:41 run Get away from the situation Gaslighting often develops to
154:47 overt and then to violent abuse You don't owe anyone an explanation Simply
154:53 get away You owe yourself your life Bail out The fourth category is covert or controlling abuse It is composed of a
155:06 few tactics The first tactic is unpredictability and uncertainty In professional terms intermittent reinforcement Let me
155:17 explain The abuser deploying this tactic acts unpredictably capriciously
155:24 inconsistently and irrationally This serves to render other people around him dependent upon the next twist
155:32 and turn in his mood the next inexplicable whim upon his next outburst
155:39 denial or even smile The abuser makes sure that he is the only reliable
155:46 element in the lives of his nearest and dearest And he does that by shattering the rest of the world through his
155:52 seemingly insane behavior He creates a roller coaster a hurricane
155:59 a tornado He perpetuates his stable presence in their lives by destabilizing
156:05 their own How do you avoid that refuse to accept such behavior Demand reasonably predictable and rational actions and
156:16 reactions Insist on respect for your boundaries for your predelections preferences wishes and priorities
156:25 The second tactic is disproportional reactions One of the favorite tools of manipulations in the abuser's arsenal is
156:33 the disproportionality of his reactions He reacts with supreme rage to the slightest offense He punishes severely for what he perceives to be an a
156:44 transgression against him no matter how minor He throws a temper tent over any
156:51 discord or disagreement however gently and considerately expressed by others or
156:57 reacts inordinately attentive charming and tempting or sometimes over sexed
157:03 This is also a kind of disproportional albeit positive reaction This ever shifting code of
157:11 conduct and the unusually harsh and arbitrarily applied penalties are premeditated The victims are kept in the dark the neediness and dependence of the
157:22 victims on the source of justice and on the source of judgment
157:28 past on the abuser In other words these neediness and dependence are thus enhanced guaranteed nurtured and consistently maintained What to do demand a just and
157:42 proportional treatment Reject or ignore unjust and capricious behavior If you
157:48 are up to the inevitable confrontation react in kind to the abuser's abuse Let
157:54 him taste some of his own medicine Another tactic is
158:00 dehumanization and object objectification The abuser dehumanizes
158:06 his victims treats them as objects People have a need to believe in the empathic skills and basic
158:12 good-heartedness of others By dehumanizing and objectifying people the abuser attacks the very foundations of human interaction This is the alien aspect of
158:24 abusers They may be excellent imitations of fully formed adults but actually deep inside they are emotionally absent or or very immature Abuse is so horrid so repulsive
158:37 that people recoil in terror It is then with their defenses absolutely down that
158:44 they are most susceptible and vulnerable to the abusers's control Physical psychological verbal
158:50 and sexual abuse are all forms of dehumanization and objectification How
158:56 to cope with it never show your abuser that you are afraid of them Do not negotiate with Buddhists They are insatiable Do not succumb to black If
159:08 things get rough disengage involve law enforcement off agencies Tell your
159:14 friends inform your colleagues or threaten him legally of course Do not
159:20 keep your abuse secret Whatever you do do not keep it secret Secrecy is the abuser's weapon Share your plight Never give him a second chance React with your
159:31 full arsenal to the first transgression
159:37 Abusers also abuse information From the first moment of an encounter with another person the abuser
159:44 is on the prowl He collects information The more he knows about his potential
159:50 victim the better able is the abuser to coersse manipulate charm extort or
159:56 convert the victim to the cause The abuser does not hesitate to misuse the information he gleaned regardless of its intimate nature or the circumstances in which he obtained it This is a powerful tool in his armory How to cope with this be guarded
160:14 Simply don't be too forthcoming on a first or casual encounter Gather intelligence Don't volunteer it Be
160:22 yourself Don't misrepresent your wishes your boundaries your preferences your priorities and your red lines
160:28 Do not behave inconsistently Do not go back on your word once you have given it Be firm and
160:36 resolute Abusers are engineer impossible situations They create dangerous
160:44 unpredictable unprecedented or highly specific environment in which the abuser
160:50 is sorely needed Abuser makes sure that his knowledge his skills his connections or his traits are the only ones applicable and the most useful in the situations that he himself has wrought
161:03 The abuser generates his own indispensibility And how to cope with that stay away from such quagmires Scrutinize every offer and suggestion by the abuser no matter how innocuous and
161:15 innocent it sounds Prepare backup plans Keep others informed of your whereabouts
161:22 and appraised of your situation Be vigilant and doubting Do not be gullible
161:28 and suggestible Better safe than
161:37 sorry In a previous video I've made I suggested a distinction between two
161:43 types of gaslighting verbal and behavioral
161:49 You could gaslight someone by talking to them by prevailing upon them and training them brainwashing them verbally Language is a powerful weapon You can weaponize language But another possibility is to behave in ways which
162:05 convey the wrong information about reality This could also alter the mind
162:12 of your interlocutors or people around you You could gaslight by behavior You could
162:20 signal gaslighting And so today I'm going to discuss a few variants of behavioral
162:28 gaslighting And I would put them under the under the rubric under the headline
162:34 gaslighting by proxy When you use other people third parties to gaslight someone
162:42 I'll focus on three examples flying monkeys triangulation and the Kman drama
162:50 trial So let's put things in order You could gaslight someone
162:56 verbally You could gaslight someone by behaving in ways which
163:02 mislead people into believing the wrong things about reality And you could gaslight someone by working with other people with third
163:13 parties to distort reality and to make the victim doubt her judgment and
163:20 perception of the world This is gaslighting by proxy Start with flying
163:26 monkeys Flying monkeys usually collaborate with an abuser in order to convey wrong
163:36 information misinformation fake news if you wish They their ma the main role of
163:42 flying monkeys is to impose upon the victim an alternative view of what has
163:50 happened uh reinterpretation or a revisionism of
163:56 the history of the relationship to somehow make her doubt her memory and
164:04 any um kind of interpretation of the memory So that at the end by the time
164:13 the flying monkeys are done the victim becomes highly dependent on other people
164:20 for her reality testing So she's likely to ask "Is this real am I just imagining this am I making this up am I crazy?" Flying monkeys are very powerful
164:31 tools because sometimes the connection between the flying monkeys and the abuser is not known
164:39 They are the long arms of the abuser They are secret agents And because they
164:47 pose flying monkeys pose as objective as neutral their power of persuasion is
164:56 much higher much stronger than the abusers The flying monkeys are a very
165:03 important uh weapon in the arsenal of the abuser
165:09 And what they do is essentially gaslighting by proxy
165:15 Triangulation is also a case of gaslighting by proxy The
165:21 triangulator is not really interested in the target of triangulation In other
165:29 words let's put it this way Triangulation involves introducing a third party into a relationship in order
165:37 to elicit an emotional reaction from your partner So in order to get a rise
165:44 out of your partner to provoke some um some feelings and some reactivity or
165:52 reactance And you do this by introducing a third party flirting with someone sleeping with someone collaborating with
165:59 someone and so on so forth in order to provoke a reaction This is of course a form of gaslighting because usually the third party that is introduced into the
166:10 diet into the couple is pretty meaningless The person engaged in triangulation doesn't really care about the third party Um a woman who flirts with another man
166:24 ostentatiously so as to provoke her partner doesn't really care about that other man she's flirting with She cares
166:31 about her partner She cares about the emotional reaction of the partner She wants to get a rise out of the park
166:38 A man who visibly and conspicuously teams up with another
166:45 person in order to provoke his business partner doesn't really care about that
166:52 new uh other person The or the idea is to mold and
166:58 shape the behavior of his partner channel it in a way that is helpful and
167:04 conducive and beneficial to the triangulator The triangulation falsifies the perception
167:11 of reality as it provides false information The person who is
167:17 triangulating is conveying misinformation and disinformation The person who is
167:23 triangulating is saying this new guy or this new girl or this new partner mean a
167:29 lot to me I am even considering or contemplating abandoning
167:36 you But this is not true because that new partner that new girl that new boy
167:42 that new person they mean nothing They're just tools They're just instruments in the triangulation process
167:49 So the information conveyed about them the information communicated about them is wrong And that is of course the
167:56 essence of gaslighting wrong information that reshapes the perception of reality and
168:03 renders it misperception Attri attribution that is erroneous
168:11 Attributing motives attributing beliefs attributing actions attributing traits
168:18 in an erroneous way In this sense projection is a form of gaslighting albeit unconscious
168:27 And finally the Carpan drama tribe is also a form of gaslighting In the Carpan
168:33 drama tribe there's an abuser a victim and a rescuer or a
168:40 savior The victim switches or shifts from the
168:46 abuser to the rescuer or savior But as Kartman has noted in his work on
168:54 the drama triangle I have a video dedicated to it These roles are not fixed The victim al often becomes an
169:01 abuser The abuser often becomes a victim and the rescuer and savior could become either or exit exit the triangle the
169:09 equation So it's clear that the drama triangle is manipulative Its main aim is
169:15 to communicate but it communicates not information It communicates
169:23 disinformation The role of the savior and the rescuer is essentially tri a
169:29 form of triangulation This rescuer and savior is introduced into the triangle
169:35 as a form of triangulation The idea is to triangulate with the savior and the rescuer in order to
169:42 modify the behavior of the abuser But to do so the abuser needs to
169:48 be fed the wrong information about the relationship between the victim and the savior or the rescuer And because
169:56 there's a lot of wrong information communicated channeled and conveyed within the drama triangle The drama
170:03 triangle is an encapsulation of a private case of gaslighting It's gaslighting simply
170:11 These are three examples of gaslighting by proxy To summarize gaslighting by proxy
170:18 is any situation where third parties are used in order to gaslight someone They
170:25 could be flying monkeys They could be triangulators or people to triangulate
170:31 with And they could be rescuers and saviors and fixers and healers
170:37 especially selfproclaimed ones All these cases are gaslighting by
170:44 proxy Have
170:50 fun My name is San and the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism
170:57 revisited Ambient abuse also known as gaslighting is the stealth subtle
171:05 underground current of maltreatment that sometimes goes unnoticed even by the victim herself until it is too
171:13 late Ambient abuse penetrates and permeates everything but it is difficult
171:19 to pinpoint and identify Gaslighting is ambiguous equivocal atmospheric
171:25 diffuse hence its insidious and pernicious effects It is by far the most dangerous
171:31 kind of abuse there is Ambient abuse or gaslighting They are
171:37 the outcomes of fear Fear of violence fear of the unknown fear of the
171:43 unpredictable the capricious the arbitrary the pending Ambient abuse is perpetrated by
171:50 dropping subtle hints by disorienting by constant and unnecessary
171:56 lying by persistent doubting and demeaning and by inspiring
172:02 um an air of unmitigated gloom and doom Ambient abuse therefore is the fostering the propagation and the enhancement of
172:13 an atmosphere of fear of intimidation of instability unpredictability and irritation There are no acts of traceable explicit abuse There are no
172:24 visible manipulative settings of control Yet ambient abuse yields an irksome
172:31 feeling a kind of disagreeable foroding a premonition a bad omen It's in the air
172:40 In the long term such an environment erodess the victim's sense of selfworth and self-esteem Self-confidence is
172:48 shaken badly Often the victim adopts a paranoid or a schizoid stance keeps away
172:54 from society and thus render renders herself exposed even more to criticism
173:01 and judgment In ambient abuse the roles are reversed The victim is considered by everyone to be mentally deranged and unstable and the abuser is universally
173:13 acclaimed as the suffering soul and victim There are five categories of ambient abuse and they are often combined in the conduct of the same abuser First of all
173:24 there's inducing disorientation The abuser causes the victim to lose faith in her ability to
173:31 manage and to cope with the world and with its demands She no longer trusts her own senses her skills She doubts her skills She doubts her strengths She doubts her
173:42 family doubts her friends um she doubts fundamentally the
173:49 predictability and benevolence of her environment The abuser subverts the target's focus by disagreeing with her way of perceiving the world by arguing
174:01 with her judgment by disputing the facts of her existence by criticizing her incessantly and by offering plausible
174:08 but specious wrong facious alternatives The abuser constantly lies And by
174:15 constantly lying he blurs the line between reality and nightmare By recurrently disapproving of
174:22 her choices and actions the abuser shreds the victim's self-confidence and
174:28 shatters her self-esteem By reacting disproportionately to the slightest mistake she makes he intimidates her to
174:35 the point of paralysis Second type of gaslighting is incapacitating
174:41 The abuser gradually and surreptitiously takes over functions and chores previously adequately and skillfully
174:47 performed by the victim The victim finds herself isolated from the outer world a hostage to the goodwill or more often the ill will of the abuser of her capttor
174:59 She's crippled by his encroachment and by the in inexurable dissolution of her boundaries and she ends up totally dependent on her tormentors whims and
175:10 desires plans and strategies She needs his permission to go out to the world and to interact with anyone Moreover the abuser engineers impossible dangerous and unpredictable
175:22 situations that are unprecedented or highly specific And in these situations he makes sure that he is sorely needed
175:31 The abusers leverages his knowledge his skill his connections or his traits as
175:38 the only applicable and the most useful ones in the situations that he himself
175:44 has engineered The abuser generates thus his own indispensibility and fosters in the victim growing dependence The third type of ambient abuse is what is known as shared psychosis or previously it was called fad in French
176:03 The abuser creates a fantasy world and in this fantasy this fantasy world is inhabited by himself and by his victim
176:12 and it is besieged by imaginary enemies invented by the abuser He allocates to the abused to the victim the role of defending this invented and surreal universe She must swear to secrecy She must stand by her abuser no matter what
176:28 She must lie fight pretend offiscate and do whatever it takes to preserve this
176:34 oasis of inanity and insanity Her membership in the abuser's kingdom is
176:41 cast as a privilege and a prize but it is not to be taken for granted She has to work hard to earn her continued affiliation in his work She is constantly being tested and evaluated by
176:53 the abuser Inevitably this interminable stress reduces the victim's resistance
176:59 and her ability to see straight The fourth type of ambient abuse
177:05 involves the abuse or misuse of information From the first moment of an encounter with another person the abuser is on the problem He collects
177:16 information The more he knows about his potential victim the better he able he
177:22 is to coersse to manipulate to charm to extort to convert the victim The abuser
177:28 does not hesitate to misuse the information he had gleaned regardless of its intimate nature or the circumstances
177:35 in which he has he had obtained the information This is a powerful tool Finally there is control by proxy If all the previous tactics fail the
177:46 abuser recruits friends colleagues mates family members the authorities institutions neighbors the media
177:52 teachers anyone any third party to do his bidding He uses these people and institutions to
178:01 cajol to coersse to threaten to stalk to to offer to retreat to tempt to convince
178:07 to harass to communicate and otherwise in other words to manipulate his target He controls his unaware people and
178:15 instruments exactly as he plans to control his ultimate prey He employs the same mechanisms and
178:21 devices to move his third parties and proxies around as he does later to uh
178:29 order the victim around and he dumps his props unceremoniously when the job is done Another form of control by proxy is to engineer situations in which the victim is forced to abuse a third party Such care carefully crafted scenarios of
178:46 embarrassment and humiliation provoke inevitably social sanctions So the victim is condemned uh or even physically punished Society or a social group thus become the instrument or instruments of the abuser He first provokes the victim into socially
179:03 unacceptable behavior and then uses society to punish the victim
179:12 Hello Jackie I'm Sam Hi Sam Welcome Welcome It's such an
179:19 honor to to have you with us today Thank you Thank you for Thank you for having
179:25 me Today we are supposed to discuss gaslighting I understand Right
179:31 Gaslighting awareness and recovery Yes Right So if you allow me I will open with a kind of three to five minute introduction to gaslighting in the clinical sense I'm a professor of
179:42 clinical psychology I'm not a clinician So I I tend to gravitate towards academic knowledge But it's useful to agree on a terminology and then to make a distinction between the
179:54 way the victim experiences gaslighting and the way the perpetrator thinks about gaslighting So let's start
180:01 with the definition Clinically we believe that gaslighting should include three elements Number one
180:09 an a asymmetry of power Asymmetry a lack of symmetry of power So that the
180:17 gaslighter is perceived as somehow authoritative with the with the ability
180:23 to define reality In other words the gaslighter has the capacity to establish
180:29 what we call reality testing Gaslighter becomes the interface to reality That's
180:35 condition number one Number one Condition number two is that the gaslighting the act of gaslighting is
180:41 premeditated It's deliberate It's part of a plan It involves cunning and
180:47 scheming and sometimes an elaborate production in order to deceive or
180:53 mislead the victim And the third element by far is by far most the most important in my view And that is that the gaslighter is able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy
181:06 In other words that the person effectuating the gaslighting is not
181:12 delusional And so now let's let's apply these three criteria to the victim and to the perpetrator See what happens Very surprising things happen actually when we apply these For example narcissists
181:26 narcissists are delusional They they are fully committed and in and invested in their fantasies They believe their fantasies They
181:37 believe their lies and their deceptions and their promises So narcissists actually do not gaslight
181:44 and they do not future fake because they're too delusional to realize the difference between reality and fantasy between between the world as it is and
181:55 delusion They're simply delusional and then they delude every everyone around them Psychopaths however do gaslight
182:04 Psychopaths are goal oriented They are ruthless They are callous They are disinhibited They're defiant They're consumatious They reject authority and so on so forth And this sets the ground
182:17 for an attempt to redefine reality in a way which would be highly machavelian highly manipulative and of course would result in some outcomes which are favorable and
182:29 beneficial to the to the psychopath So psychopaths gaslight Narcissists fall in the trap of their
182:36 own fantasies and deceptions and so on However from the victim's point of view
182:42 there's no difference The victim experiences both the narcissist and the
182:48 psychopath as gaslighters because both narcissists and psychopaths try to falsify the victim's
182:55 ability to grasp reality and gauge it appropriately Both of them try to supplant the victim's grasp of reality and perception of reality with their own for different reasons The narcissist does it because he's mired is imured and he's immersed
183:14 in fantasy and the psychopath does it because he wants your money or he wants to have sex with you or he wants to have
183:21 power over you somehow But the victim couldn't care less because why would the victim care about the ethology or the motivations of the psychopath and narcissist the outcome is identical So
183:33 this is kind of to set the stage for our conversation
183:39 Thank you Thank you for that I think it's it's very important to to differentiate and have an understanding
183:45 um between both you know and the the reason behind it And just to introduce
183:52 myself I'm Jackie Yates and I'm a
183:58 a do uh group and individual therapy for many years I also facilitate groups at
184:05 circles and um you know circles is a leading platform providing group therapy
184:14 um for uh narcissistic or for navigating narcissistic abuse and I think it's been
184:23 so beneficial in helping um members who feel so isolated
184:30 from manipulative manipulative tactics like gaslighting
184:36 um come together and connect and be able to share their experiences like you've said and we will
184:43 go into um you know gaslighting and so I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are
184:51 professor um is it a more I know it's a variety of
184:58 factors but when we're looking at the you know more of a is a conditioned
185:05 response or a learned behavior Where does the where does the
185:11 distinction lie coming from it being narcissistic to sociopathic more
185:19 manipulative or uh learn or more you know grandiose in that effect Does that
185:27 make sense yeah Um I think a better word to use
185:33 would be psychopathic rather than sociopathic But um sociopathic sociopath is the old term for psychopath actually Yes So um the
185:44 narcissist is committed to a fantasy It's a shared fantasy It's a fantasy which incorporates a narcissist and the
185:51 narcissist intimate partner or friend or whoever And the
185:57 narcissist uses um a distortion of reality or distorts
186:03 reality in order to adapt it to the fantasy The fantasy rules reality has to
186:09 adapt It reminds me of Albert Einstein Someone asked him "What if your prediction regarding light passing by
186:15 the sun wouldn't pan out wouldn't you know?" And he said "Well then the sun has a problem." So it's the same here
186:23 You know reality has a problem the fantasy roles So this is the main the main
186:30 motivation of the of the narcissist He is not so much interested in manipulating you Is narcissists are not
186:37 goal oriented The only the only thing the narcissist is looking for is what we call narcissistic supply which is essentially attention So narcissists are addicts
186:50 They're junkies They're junkies of narcissistic supply And the best way to secure narcissistic supply is to
186:56 surround yourself with people who keep telling you that the fantasy is real that your grandiosity is grounded in in
187:05 truth that you're being truthful about yourself If you say you're a genius then you are a genius and so on So all kinds
187:12 of fans and acolytes and psychopans and so that's the best way to secure a regular uninterrupted flow of narcissistic supply and the environment that is conducive for this is a cult
187:24 essentially a cult So narcissists create cultlike fantasies and they are they
187:33 fall in their own traps They believe their own lies and fantasies and deceptions and and so forth The
187:39 psychopath as I said is goal oriented So if you see someone who is trying to
187:46 alter your perception of reality to alter your consciousness Um but his or her goal is
187:54 just some kind of agilation or admiration or securing some kind of um
188:01 applause or affirmation or confirmation or whatever then that's a narcissist
188:07 But if someone is trying to alter your perception of reality and ends up saying "Well now you need to pay for this with
188:14 hard cash or now let's go to bed or now you know that's a psychopath It ends
188:20 with a goal It ends with a and you're right and it's something you mentioned group therapy You're right that the only
188:27 way to counter gaslighting is to have a social network to have access to other people Other
188:35 people who who you can trust other people who can provide with a counterweight to the messaging and the
188:42 signaling emanating from the narcissist and the psychopath Refusing to grant the narcissist and
188:48 psychopath a monopoly on reality testing not using the narcissist and
188:54 psychopath as your only gateway to reality but consulting others consulting
189:00 others talking to others uh exposing the strategist and the psychopath and in
189:08 essence disinfecting the environment and allowing you to develop immunity immunity to this viral
189:15 infection which shatters your perception of reality Well I love I love that you
189:21 know disinfecting because it is it's toxic and you know and it's it's a form of dissociation um they they want to you to not believe
189:35 your own sense of reality They want you to dis you know have cognitive
189:42 distortions and they want you to almost believe their own uh cognitive distortions and bring you into their world So they almost want to you know encapsulate you swallow you into their own world and that's the plan So it's I
189:59 like what you say is to disinfect and and so they are like it's a viral um I
190:06 like that So to when they are in the groups and they're hearing and they you know they feel that they're not alone So
190:12 they and also by you know they it's about power and control and isolation So
190:19 they now know that it's not them it's and they don't feel so alone So it's
190:25 really powerful when they start to share and you can hear the that sigh of like
190:31 relief It sounds like you you with my husband or it sounds like you with my wife or it sounds like you we our mothers are twins You know that's what you hear in the group setting and it's it's really nice how they do connect and they can share So gaslight I think is
190:49 very disorienting It's very disorienting You are no longer sure of your own
190:55 judgment You are you lose trust in your own senses You you begin to conflate or
191:04 confuse evidence with hearsay So what the narcissist says is evidence What the psychopath says is
191:12 absolute an absolute fact and real evidence hard evidence began becomes dubious So so it's a it's a topsyturvy world where the narcissists
191:24 and psychopaths lens substitute for reality You give up
191:30 reality Of course um this requires certain initial
191:36 vulnerabilities We call it a preorbid state This requires a preorbid state in
191:42 the victim In other words not everyone would be aminable to
191:48 gaslighting There is inbuilt resistance to gaslighting in in almost all of us
191:54 Now some people take it too far and they become conspiracy theories and and some
192:00 people are just engaged in critical thinking but I would say the overwhelming majority of people are
192:06 pretty immune to gaslighting So people who do fall for gaslighting they have inbuilt pre-
192:15 morbid initial vulnerabilities For example they may have they may be very insecure generally speaking about everything not only about
192:26 reality especially about themselves They may have um problems
192:32 with authority They may overrespect authority We we call it we call it over perception
192:38 They may have an over perception of reality of authority I'm sorry They may
192:45 um they may be willing to sacrifice a lot in order to secure the longevity of
192:51 the presence of the intimate partner including their own sanity essentially and so on and so forth So
192:58 there may be people pleasers who will tell you what you want to hear and gradually gradually this habituation
193:05 when you when you tell the narcissist or the psychopath yes you're right yes you're right yes you're right just to please them gradually it becomes a form of brainwashing you're entraining yourself you you become your own worst
193:17 enemy you self gaslight in a way self gaslighting is a is a major component of
193:24 gaslighting you gaslighting is a collusion It's a collaboration It's a
193:31 tango Both participants engage in gaslighting The one engages in gaslighting the other and the recipient or the victim self gaslights adopts this
193:42 framework So if you for example if you're a person
193:48 who fails to make sense of the world you perceive the world as arbitrary chaotic
193:55 threatening intimidating incomprehensible and so on so forth then
194:01 you would suspend your judgment gladly and easily when someone comes along displays self-confidence and tells you "I know better or I know best If you
194:13 were just to follow me you you wouldn't be responsible for your actions then because I I will make the decisions and so on So this gaslighting is not limited
194:24 to individual interpersonal relationships There's a lot of gaslighting in politics for example of
194:30 course it's a it's also a collective phenomenon
194:37 Absolutely And I also wanted to ask you because it's it's being brought up a lot in in groups and and individually but also of
194:48 late um gaslighting by proxy So you know obviously with the you
194:56 know flying monkeys um triangulation
195:02 and could it be I wanted to ask your advice on this um
195:08 narcissistic uh parental alienation Could that be a form of gaslighting by
195:14 proxy where a parent would alienate their child and use the child as a
195:20 flying monkey would the child be used as a flying monkey could that be by proxy
195:27 anyone anyone can be used as a flying monkey As I said before it's a cultlike setting You can set up a cult with a single adherent or a single follower which could be a child You can set up a
195:39 cult with 40 million people and then you become president you know So these are
195:45 cultlike settings And within a cult there is a suspension of disbelief a
195:51 suspension of critical judgment um and a total o total obeisance or to
195:58 total submissiveness when it comes to to the leader And so a cult is a hive mind It's
196:07 a single mind actually It's it's known as the cult mind in clinical literature It's a hive mind And when when this hive mind um interacts with a potential
196:19 victim or with with someone external an outsider it has the advantage of simulating a multiplicity of of
196:31 independent minds So a cult mind masquerades as if it is not a cult mind not a single mind not a hive mind but just an agreement or a
196:42 consensus between multiple people When actually that's not the case at all So I
196:48 had a friend who used to say if someone tells you that you're drunk you can safely ignore them If two people tell
196:55 you you're drunk you can safely ignore them But if three people tell you you're drunk go to sleep So numbers count
197:03 numbers count The ability to mobilize an army of yessayers an army of people who
197:11 would who would agree with you in a way And this ability is is crucial in in
197:17 gaslighting because then you you can destabilize the the victim much much
197:23 more In other words if you are if you're alone with a victim the victim might still retain her critical thinking and
197:30 an ability to negate your messaging But what if you if you confront the victim
197:37 together with 10 other family members and all of you are saying the very same thing and none of you are telling the victim you're wrong Your perception of reality is wrong Something's wrong with you You're crazy You are unstable You are Well that that has weight Numbers
197:54 Yes quantity converts into quality in this case
198:01 Definitely Definitely So in in your in your opinion I mean
198:08 when we look at generally when we're in groups and we we speak about recovery and I I think we focus on awareness
198:16 awareness and identifying what gaslighting is is is very important
198:23 trying to establish or reconnect and and finding trust within yourself again
198:29 because you lose a lot of trust because of loss of selfidentity and um you know I think
198:37 journaling mindfulness being able to fact check
198:45 um one one member I remember her she said that her her partner kept on hiding
198:53 the keys She kept putting the keys in in the exact same space And
198:59 he said he'd never seen them She must be losing her mind you know And so another
199:07 member had actually this was in the group had said she should take pictures And she started doing that And he she
199:17 you know took pictures And that was her reality checking And that helped her a great deal So she had now the evidence and she was checking for herself also mo most importantly for herself that she wasn't
199:33 losing her mind So it was very helpful and it was great to see that she was
199:41 getting the trust back within herself So things like that were encouraged and
199:47 just you know identifying any unhealthy
199:54 behaviors and like you say ju just eliminating the toxic
200:04 people I think the minute you start to doubt yourself I mean the inception of
200:11 gaslighting is easily recognizable it's the first first time you ask yourself
200:17 um is my memory Has my memory some somehow gone arry can I can I trust my perception of what has happened or what what is happening the minute you start to doubt yourself that's the onset That's the onset of gaslighting At that moment you
200:36 have to develop humility You have to become humble You have to say "I can no longer
200:42 trust myself to gauge reality and to evaluate it and to perceive it appropriately I can no longer do that
200:49 I've lost this capacity I therefore need to resort to external means such as
200:57 photographs videos journaling resorting to third parties as
201:03 witnesses uh other forms of of evidence You need to outsource your
201:10 reality testing but to outsource it um
201:16 to preferably to outsource it to objective activities such as journaling
201:22 and so on But you need to outsource it definitely you no longer can trust yourself from from that moment on and
201:29 but to do that you need to be humble It requires a lot of humility and most people lack it lack
201:37 this So they'd rather they'd rather be gaslighted or gas leaked than admit that
201:45 they are essentially weak and vulnerable and fragile And so this is step number one
201:52 Then you engage in all the activities which you mention which you've mentioned which I I think are great Yes absolutely You need to document reality all the time Think of yourself consider yourself from that moment on as a documentary
202:04 filmmaker you're documentary filmmaker and you're documenting your
202:10 life So this is stage two the documentary film making um thing And
202:17 stage three you need to create a circle of trust You need to surround yourself
202:23 with several people Not one not two not three Don't fall in the same trap again
202:29 But you need to surround yourself with two with two three four five people whose opinions you could trust because
202:37 they are disinterested So strangely friends are not so helpful Intimate friends are not so helpful
202:48 because they're likely to tell you what you want to hear And there's always there will always be this lurking
202:54 suspicion Are they telling me this because they want to calm me down because they love
203:00 me because they or are they telling me this because this is reality so you need to rely on three four five people who
203:07 are disinterested in you have no interest in you are not emotionally invested in you not your good friends
203:14 not you know your banker your lawyer your accountant your five people your grocery you know I mean the pizza delivery guy someone
203:25 part of the objective and you you need to create a circle of trust and then whenever you're in doubt about reality you need to refer to all of And I call this operation this activity
203:37 kind of activity I call it polling You need to create an opinion poll about reality And you you poll them polling like P O L My my accent is very thick
203:49 I'm sorry No it's great I understand So polling you you need to pull reality
203:55 among these four five people in your circle of trust So if you document everything as a a documentary filmmaker
204:02 would do and if you consult your editorial board this circle of trust
204:08 your producers if you wish yes then you are bound sooner or later to emerge from
204:14 the gaslighting because you're bound to come across so many contradictions between the opinions of the people in
204:21 the circle of trust between the documented evidence and what the psychopath analysis are telling you that
204:29 you will soon lose trust in them as guardians of reality and you will have regained your reality testing And you
204:37 can do that while in a relationship with narcissists and psychopaths You don't need to wait until you break up with them You know you can do that while you're in there It's very dangerous to be to be subject to gaslighting because it's it's a
204:53 manipulative machavelian It's a manipulative technique that is essentially insidious and pernicious and
205:00 as I said in many respects goal oriented Ultimately the narcissist wants you to become a zombie in a shared fantasy so you'll be zombified and the psychopath wants to take your money or sexually assault you or have power over you in
205:16 some way and get to someone else through you and so on So it could be dangerous indeed the the two movies there were two movies in 1940 that were they were
205:27 titled gaslight and the word gaslighting comes from these movies and in both movies the woman in the movie who is the victim um is is at risk she's her life is threatened the
205:44 gaslighting is an integral part of a bigger scheme to actually assassinate killer so Gaslighting is very dangerous Shouldn't be taken lightly at all
205:57 No No Definitely Definitely not Definitely not I think it's it's
206:04 very important to to as you identified like you say the minute you doubt yourself everything that you said was really important and um you know prioritize your feelings over being
206:20 right You know I'm going to say something a bit strange When you're with the narcissist or the psychopath and you're beginning to doubt your reality testing you begin to doubt your perception and gauging of reality Become
206:31 a conspiracy theorist Assume the worst Assume that
206:37 there's some kind of conspiracy against you against you Develop paranoid ideiation It's it's these are
206:44 pathologies These are not healthy things But these are not healthy things within
206:50 healthy environments But when the environment is sick when the environment is
206:56 unhealthy sometimes some coping strategies even though they are
207:02 essentially pathological are positive adaptations In other words paranoid ideation when you
207:09 are with a narcissist and a psychopath is highly recommended Yes To assume that you're the subject of
207:16 a conspiracy is pretty safe actually Okay So so do that Yes And do your research all the time All the time Do
207:27 research I mean if the psychopath tells you it's 5:00 run to the nearest watch
207:33 If he tells you it's Wednesday look at the calendar Distrust even the most evident
207:40 statements Statements which are ostensively you know Distrust everything That's paranoid
207:47 ideation Be hypervigilant Be on your toes because gaslighting starts small
207:54 It's Wednesday It's not Tuesday That's how it starts Starts very small Yesterday we ate we ate chicken
208:02 not not meat you know No you're wrong about that Was chicken Wasn't meat It
208:08 doesn't start big you know I'm going to take all your money and rape you Yes Small very small and that's the
208:15 insidious nature and I wanted to just ask you also because you know we get varying different cases um
208:27 but some partners will agree to go for for for counseling but there's a bigger and from what I'm
208:38 hearing you say and I don't know I mean I never but there's the bigger game It's
208:45 not for the real purpose of getting better or or
208:51 changing or growing or healing shall I say So where the partner is a narcissist or a psychopath yes Totally
208:59 manipulative This is so and so and I'm going to ask you and I've always thought because like any you know
209:10 being in training and experience wise unless a person
209:17 wants to change to grow themselves it's not going to happen Unless you want to change or for your own self it's not you
209:29 can do you can you only have control over your behaviors your responses your
209:35 reactions So anything's possible but if you don't want to do it yourself it's not going to happen right i mean what are your thoughts on that and if you drag and if
209:46 you drag your narcissistic or psychopathic partner into the into the therapy setting couple therapy or
209:53 whatever that's that's a form of gaslighting That's a form of self gaslighting You're gaslighting yourself
210:00 because the reality is this therapy would be useless And what you're doing you're gaslighting yourself You're
210:06 saying no The reality is that there's hope This is pathological hope That's what I call malignant optimism It's not
210:13 healthy You'd better face reality And the reality is that narcissists and psychopaths are hopeless Certain behaviors of narcissists can be
210:24 modified Certain behaviors abrasive antisocial behaviors of narcissists can be modified in
210:30 therapy Psychopaths are completely hopeless I mean there's nothing that can be done not even behavior modification
210:36 But certain behaviors can be modified But the core issues can never be touched untouchable
210:42 At this stage at least we don't have any treatment modalities that have any efficacy with narcissists I mean meaningful efficacy not modifying this behavior or that behavior So this is a form of self
210:54 gaslighting to say I'm going to drag my partner who is evidently a narcissist or a psychopath or has been diagnosed even
211:01 with narcissistic personality disorder antisocial personalities I'm going to drag him to therapy and the therapist
211:08 will affect a miracle and suddenly you know that that's selfplay Absolutely and just at a ch uh children I think it's age 15 it might be
211:20 different different countries obviously but um where uh an adolescent is
211:27 diagnosed with conduct disorder or oppositional defiant disorder is there
211:33 any kind of treatment modality there that can help to try and delay
211:40 a form of positional positional defined disorder is a very controversial diagn agnosis Okay Uh because it implies that
211:48 refusal to obey authority um is some kind of mental illness and
211:54 there's a lot of debate about this Sounds a lot like social social engineering or social control However
212:01 conduct disorder is a much much more validated construct It's much more a much more serious diagnosis 40% of children with conduct disorder go on to develop full-fledged
212:14 psychopathy So we consider conduct disorder to be psychopathy for children or psychopathy light
212:21 and um early interventions in in early interventions with with children with
212:28 conduct disorder are pretty efficient Prognosis is pretty good The problem is that in a society that is permissive a society that is highly
212:40 individualistic a society that is increasingly more and more narcissistic and psychopathic even there are scholars like Campbell and Twang that they deal with these questions In such a
212:52 society contact disorder would be I mean clinicians would be very loathed to
212:58 diagnose conduct disorder They would be very averse to slapping this label on a
213:05 child and consequently interventions would come way too late in adolescence for example where it's already way too late Similar situation we have with borderline personality disorder where
213:17 diagnosticians and clinicians are very afraid to tell the patient you have borderline personality disorder or at the very least you're emotionally disregulated and they're very afraid to say this and instead they molly coddle and cozy up to the patient and that's
213:34 not that's a disservice It's a derive but
213:40 uh if a child were to be diagnosed with conduct disorder especially prior to age six but
213:49 even between 6 and 9 years old then the prognosis is actually excellent
213:56 Unfortunately the vast majority of them are not They are diagnosed with contact disorder and adolescence and then then
214:03 it's too late I think I think the um time is Yeah they
214:12 told they told me to limit it to 30 minutes So sorry Okay Well not your fault Why do you assume responsibility for this there's the two of us here
214:23 Okay Well it's so nice chatting to you Thank you I enjoy talking to you too Okay Thank you so much professor Thank
214:31 you for your wisdom your insight your experience Thank you for your kind words And I hope this is not the last time
214:37 Maybe we'll talk again You too Thank you so much Thank you Thanks so much Bye Bye Take care Bye You too Bye

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