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1. 00:00 If my interpretation is correct based on my own reading as a lay person, the inverted narcissist or the covert narcissist is a relatively recent discovery in the field. Is that right? And can you describe what because I find these people I know them in my own life
2. 00:18 and they go around undetected and it drives me nuts. So I want to bring the covert narcissist to the four. Please enlighten us. Yeah, that’s a very risky thing to do to bring a covert narcissist to the floor, but we’ll see what we can we’ll see how to manage the situation.
3. 00:34 So, first of all, the current the current thinking, the mainstream thinking currently is that all narcissists go through overt and covert phases. So all narcissists are sometimes in your face, defiant, reckless, go-getters, you know, arrogant, haughty,
4. 00:55 disempathic, entitled, obnoxious. I don’t want to continue the list. So that’s the overt narcissist, right? But even overt narcissists go through covert phases, phases of covert narcissism and vice versa. So we no longer as we used to we no longer make a
5. 01:15 distinction between pure pure types like the overt is never covert and the covert is never overt. Got it? That used to be the thinking until about 10 15 years ago and unfortunately it still prevails online because everyone online is like 15 years back.
6. 01:31 But today today we don’t see it that way. Now the covert narcissist is simply someone whose capacity to secure attention narcissistic supply is diminished constitutionally because for example he’s not very intelligent or not very handsome or not very good-looking
7. 01:51 or whatever doesn’t charismatic charismatic not talented doesn’t have the skills or whatever so constitutionally unable to obtain narcissistic supply or has other mental health issues. For example, he’s passive aggressive or he’s seething with envy and resentment or what have you.
8. 02:11 And so some narcissists would spend most of their lives, the majority of their lives being in a covert state. So maybe that’s what we could call a covert narcissist. Okay. So what do they how what are the manifestations of covert narcissism? No, we have two types uh we have three
9. 02:31 types of covert narcissists. One of them is a type that I was the first to describe. It’s the inverted narcissist. And that’s a narcissist who derives her narcissistic supply, her attention. I’m saying her because majority of inverted narcissists are women. Fascinating.
10. 02:48 She deres her her narcissistic supply, her sense of self-worth, her self-confidence, self-esteem by teaming up with a dominant in-your-face overt narcissist. That reminds me that in Germany in the 19th century, if you were married to a medical doctor, they called
11. 03:07 you fra doctor. Even if you didn’t Wow. Even if you didn’t have one year of education, you were still fraed narcissist doctor. She found Oh my god, I love this. Fra doctor. You’re putting that in the lexicon at the nerve. Okay. So, she’s like by teaming up with the
12. 03:28 narcissist, she is vicariously um enjoying the narcissist exposure, the attention he’s getting, the admiration and adulation that he’s subject to and so on vicariously. I’m the narcissist’s wife. You know, this kind of thing. The second type is known as the pro-ocial,
13. 03:48 pro-social or communal narcissist. That’s by far the most dangerous type. I would even say more dangerous than the malignant narcissist because the pro-social narcissist as an communal nar as the name implies pretends to be empathic, loving, charitable, compassionate,
14. 04:10 um pretends to be a dogooder who is hellbent on improving the lot of of other people. So he he would likely be a social activist or he would volunteer for an NGO in the furthest corners of Africa or he would and it’s all done ostentatiously. It’s all for public consumption. It’s
15. 04:32 all very visible on the surface. It’s all conspicuous and so it’s all public facing and communicable and this is a pro-ocial communal losses. The problem with these people is that they are believable. And we have something called the BA rate
16. 04:48 based policy. Never mind that. It’s it’s the fact that people believe 90 to 95% of what they are told without factchecking, verifying, or even exercising minimal critical thinking. So when a narcissist like that comes and tells you, listen, I love humanity. I
17. 05:09 have empathy for all my fellow beings. I’m engaged all my life. I’ve sacrificed my well-being and my wealth and my capacity and talents and skills. I’ve put all of them, harnessed all of them to help humanity. And you you would I mean vast majority of people would
18. 05:27 believe this kind of person and then they enter a shared fantasy and then they easily manipulable. So these kind of people end up being corn artists or swindlers. or they end up uh abusing their positions as as for example members of the clergy. Mhm.
19. 05:49 Or they end up raising humongous sums of money and then you know taking off to Barbados or wherever wherever these kind of people run away nowadays. Mhm. And so on so forth. It ends badly. all the gurus, all the public intellectuals, all the charitable figures, all the
20. 06:06 mother theas of the world, and I mean the overwhelming vast majority of them in all likelihood are pro-social communal narcissists. How do I know that? Because they’re famous. So fascinating, Sam, because this reminds me of Christopher Hitchens
21. 06:23 writing an expose of Mother Teresa for Vanity Fair. And God did he catch a ton of crap for that. But he was right. he was right to be looking under that hood. And I want to ask you about so we’re talking about in the macro the sort of most extreme examples who you know
22. 06:39 propel themselves onto the global stage but in the micro in in this in in in your own community or your own network of friends or family. I find these people manifest as the following. They’re just so generous. They’re just so giving. They just they they they
23. 06:55 advertise what is is close to a kind of martyrdom. They’ll put the they’ll put others before themselves any day of the week, but they want you to see it. You don’t give a gift behind a closed door. You don’t do something generous for someone without somehow blaring it out
24. 07:11 on social media, which by the way, I think the combination of social media and reality television has embedded narcissism and this kind of narcissism in the culture to the point where it’s becoming normalized so as to be undetectable. Yeah, they are the communal pro-ocial
25. 07:28 narcissist is a precursor the father if you wish of influencers. It’s a kind of influencer, but the influencers are not hiding their commercial affiliations and that they’re benefiting from all this. And so in in this sense, they’re honest and take it. It’s a take it to live it
26. 07:48 situation, right? The pro the pro-social communal narcissist plays on victimhood. It’s as you mentioned, it’s self-sacrificial. It’s I’m the sacrificial lamb and I’m doing this for you and I’m paying a horrendous personal price for doing this, but I’m still
27. 08:04 doing this. Why? because I’m a good person. I’m essentially a good person. That’s my quidity, my goodness, you know. And so these are very dangerous people. And the third type of uh of covert narcissist is someone who is as I said seething with envy and resentment.
28. 08:20 He’s highly grandiose but believes himself to be discriminated against, overlooked. um develop some kind of personal conspiracy theory where people are envious of him and they are they they have a malign intent and they are holding him back or taking him down or conspiring against
29. 08:42 him or or something. So it’s someone who is immersed in a narrative, a sthing narrative, a narrative that fester festering narrative of um look at me, I’m being victimized by everyone, by the entire world because of my superiority. I am supremely intelligent and that’s
30. 09:05 why my academic supervisors hate me or my teachers hate me. I am amazingly skilled and talented and that’s why my boss uh never gives me a promotion. I am my colleagues envy me and that’s why they are undermining my work and it’s always not my fault. This is known as
31. 09:23 aloplastic defense. So this type of covert narcissist blames the world. Institutions, colleagues, neighbors, family members, spouses, children, his dog, you name it, blames the world for any defeat, any mishap, any error, any mistake, any miscalculation, any wrong
32. 09:43 decision, any uh choice that have panned out badly and so on. So this is the third type, the most common type actually of really. Yeah, that’s the most common type. Why do you say, Sam, let’s say even in a in a pro-social context that’s in the
33. 09:58 micro, right? So, just someone in your own community, in your field of vision, that those are the most dangerous kinds of narcissist. What is the worst outcome that could happen? You don’t see them coming. You don’t see them coming. The malignant narcissist is
34. 10:12 a caricature. The malignant narcissist is a narcissist. He’s also a psychopath. And he’s also a sadist. and you see him coming from miles away and you can protect yourself. You can defend, protect yourself. Interesting. If you listen, if you are self-destructive, that’s your ideal
35. 10:31 partner. And many many self-destructive people team up with narcissists and psychopaths and malignant narcissists because this guarantees their own demise. It’s it’s it’s a safe and certain way to end essentially your productive life, if not your physical life. So, but you see
36. 10:49 them coming. You can, you know, you don’t see the pro-social or communal narcissist coming. You don’t see them coming. The covert narcissist is by definition covert. It’s very difficult. We have How do you Sorry. Go on. Go on. We have studies where we have exposed
37. 11:06 people to photographs and email messages of narcissists and people were able to spot overt narcissists. They had um they had what we call the uncanny valley reaction. They became highly uncomfortable. They were able to spot overt narcissist within 3 to 30 seconds. They were
38. 11:26 exposed to a video or a photograph or an email and within 3 to 30 seconds they have correctly the majority of people have correctly identified others who have been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. Overt narcissism triggers something in you, makes you
39. 11:46 feel uncomfortable, something is off key, something is halfbaked, something is wrongly put together. We call it the uncanny valley reaction. Covert narcissists don’t trigger this in you. They are really under the radar. It’s very very difficult to spot them. And
40. 12:03 even I would even say that they are not as aware of their actions as overt narcissists are really. So, it’s not that they’re hiding anything from you. It’s there isn’t even what the overt narcissist knows exactly what they’re doing. Yeah. He know he knows he’s hurting you. He’s
41. 12:20 going to invent some kind of story to justify himself and everything, but he knows exactly what what he’s doing. Very often, the covert narcissist is selfdeceiving, extremely selfdeceiving. We say that the overt narcissist is self-enhancing whereas the covert narcissist is
42. 12:37 selfdeceiving. The covert narcissist just wants to feel at peace whereas the overt narcissist wants to feel superior. So with the overt it’s about superiority with the covert it’s about reducing anxiety. It’s an anxolytic state. An attempt to reduce anxiety. Anxolytic state.
43. 12:59 Yeah. So it’s really really really penicious insidious. And when when the covert narcissist finds a way to obtain supply by pretending to be a good person and by deceiving not only himself but millions of others, you can imagine the damage. I find that these people also are never
44. 13:20 given rarely if ever given to expressing what I would consider a healthy degree of anger. You know they they are it seems that their investature is in in their public facing role. They are even killed. They can take anything. Nothing is a big deal. Everything is cool
45. 13:40 because to be angry would somehow be I don’t compromise compromise their image. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you’re talking about covert narcissist. That’s very true because as I mentioned earlier, they are passive aggressive. Mhm. Passive aggression is when you do not
46. 13:57 express anger overtly, when you do not verbalize it, when you do not communicate it, when you are not trying, when you’re not attempting to influence the behavior of other people by telling them, “I’m angry at you.” There’s no honesty, right? Covert narcissism is a dishonest
47. 14:14 condition. And what the covert narcissist does instead, he’s being passive aggressive. He sabotages you. He undermines you. He poisons your mind with a trickle incremental kind of so uh
48. 14:30 while the overt narcissist is highly overt. So there’s nar narcissistic rage. When the overt narcissist is angry at you, it becomes disproportional and crazym. It’s a form of acting out. And we call it narcissistic rage. It’s unique to narcissist. It’s not exactly
49. 14:47 anger. It’s not an attempt to modify your behavior. It’s an attempt to annihilate you. Yes. Or or at the very least subjugate you at the very least. Yes. Sam, what do you do? I guess we’ll leave we’ll leave it with this. This I think is the most common question we have
50. 15:04 gotten from our audience. As a non-narcissist, if you are forced to be in proximity with a narcissist, you either realize you are married to one or they are in your family and there’s no getting away from them. You realize that there’s a covert among you. Agreed. The
51. 15:22 most malevolent, destructive, difficult to spot. How do you defend yourself? Let’s start with the fact that I mentioned you spot a narcissist within three to 30 seconds. 3 seconds. There are studies by in Harvard and so these are serious universities and serious
52. 15:40 studies. You spot them. Don’t kid yourself. Don’t deceive yourself. Don’t say I’ve been played. You know, the narcissist is such a great actor and I’ve been played. I discovered this months later. Not true. In all likelihood, you knew that something was wrong within seconds.
53. 15:59 And so this is the fact, the first fact. Second fact, the longer you are exposed to the narcissist, the more likely you are to develop narcissistic defenses and ultimately to be to resemble the narcissist very very much. You’re likely to become a narcissist.
54. 16:16 Narcissistic defenses involve for example a reduction in empathy becoming much more aggressive or even violent verbally abusive at least and so on. So nar narcissism is contagious it’s infectious. Point number three narcissistic abuse is not like other types of abuse is not
55. 16:36 like being bitten you know which is bad of course battering is bad but it’s not the same. It’s not like being uh subject to financial abuse or legal abuse or or I don’t know verbal abuse. It’s not the same. All other forms of abuse limit themselves to an aspect of you, to some
56. 16:54 dimension of you, to some area of of your life, to some particular group of friends, to some to your bank account, to your sexuality, to it’s an annexed part of your life. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a I wouldn’t say it’s in the fringe, but it’s limited. Other
57. 17:10 types of abuse are limited. Narcissistic abuse is unlimited. The main goal of narcissistic abuse is to eliminate you as an independent agentic entity and to reproduce you as an internal artifact in the narcissist mind. Mhm. That is annihilation. That is
58. 17:31 eradication. That’s not abuse. I think narcissistic abuse, the phrase that I coined, I beginning to regret it. I think I should have coined the phrase narcissistic eradication. Never too late, Sam. Yeah, never too late. Yeah, right. I’m young. So, so, uh,
59. 17:49 you you can tell the difference because with classical types of abuse, it’s a touch and go. The abuser is there, then the abuser is not there, then the abuser, it’s intermittent. It comes and goes. With the with narcissistic abuse, it’s all pervasive. It’s all consuming.
60. 18:07 There’s no rest bit. There’s no rest. There’s no break. There’s no pause. It’s it’s it this is it. This has become your life, you know. And well, as you said at the top of the show, it’s a mind virus once it gets into your mind and that parasite takes
61. 18:23 hold of the host body. The narcissist could be away for a month. It doesn’t matter. It’s working on you. It’s very true. The the clinical term is introjection. The narcissist introjected insinuated himself into your mind never to leave unless you take care of it via
62. 18:41 therapy and so on. But so uh when you feel that the abuse is this kind of abuse that is taking over you a hostile takeover when when you are losing your identity we wake up in the morning and you say that’s not me. I don’t feel the same. I can’t believe I can’t believe I’ve
63. 18:57 said that. I can’t believe I’ve done that. I can’t believe I’ve made this choice. Second, you know, if you can’t believe, if you find yourself incredulous and incredible, in the worst sense of the the meaning of the word, then it’s time to go because you are becoming him.
64. 19:15 You’re becoming your narcissist. And that’s that’s a very dangerous process because the triggers in you very infantile primordial primitive defenses like splitting. It reduces your capacity to empathize. It takes away your sense of identity and and core self.
65. 19:33 It renders you more automatic, more robotic. It makes you a schizoid. In other words, you you begin to isolate yourself. Self isolation. Forget the narcissist and so on so forth. These are detrimental and deletterious impacts that would take years to un unravel in
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