Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. Abuse Victims MUST Watch This! (with Psychotherapist Renzo Santa María)

1. 00:00 we can jump right into the the questions if that’s okay. Yeah, let’s go. We’re good to go. Okay. Um, today we’re going to talk about a a
2. 00:11 topic that I think it’s really important and crucial for the understanding of narcissistic abuse and it’s about
3. 00:18 healing. Right. So, by the way, I know you did a seminar about this uh
4. 00:24 recently. So, I’m I’m very curious about your your answers. Um Sam, is complete
5. 00:32 healing a possibility? Um or is it maybe more realistic to talk about adaptive
6. 00:38 management? What expectations should the victims have after narcissistic abuse?
7. 00:45 I would say that it’s much closer to complete healing, a complete a complete reversal of the damage. The prognosis is
8. 00:52 pretty good with one exception. If you have entered the relationship
9. 00:58 um already compromised as far as your mental health, for example, if you’ve
10. 01:04 entered the relationship in a post-traumatic state or if you entered the relationship with borderline
11. 01:10 personality disorder, in other words, if you have had mental health issues prior
12. 01:16 to the relationship with the narcissist, then the relationship with the narcissist and narcissistic abuse would
13. 01:23 would tend to exacerbate some clinical aspects and some clinical features of your pre-existing condition
14. 01:30 of your premobidity. So that’s the only exception. But if you’ve entered the relationship relatively stable as far as your mental health, then the prognosis is excellent
15. 01:42 and there would be a full reversal of most of the most of the damage. Okay. Um, from your clinical and and personal perspective, why does narcissistic abuse generate a type of
16. 01:55 trauma that maybe traditional PTSD models fa fail to fully capture? Right?
17. 02:01 What makes this trauma qualitatively different? Yeah. First of all, I would like, of
18. 02:07 course, to to clarify um that I’m not a clinician. I’m a professor of psychology.
19. 02:14 Yeah. So while I do have secondary clinical experience, in other words, I have the the clinical experience of people who work with me who are therapist and I read of course the literature, case studies, sometimes case notes even I don’t have a firsthand clinical
20. 02:31 experience. So that’s important to be honest in in all exchanges it’s important to clarify one’s position. Yes. Still having said that I am the father
21. 02:42 of narcissistic abuse. I coined a phrase in the 1980s and the question always arises why did you bother to designate a
22. 02:49 spec a special type of abuse why wasn’t it enough to say abuse you know you have
23. 02:55 been abused by a narcissist why why did you think some vaknin you know why did you think in the 1980s that we need a
24. 03:02 special label and I think we we do need a special label and with the passing decades I have become even more entrenched in this view I I believe I I believe even more that this is needed. Mhm. I think the the main reason is that
25. 03:21 whenever you are in a relationship with a narcissist and it could be a romantic relationship, intimate relationship,
26. 03:27 workplace relationship, friendship, any kind of interaction, a prolonged sustained interaction with the narcissist. You are actually interacting with a human being who is halfbaked, who
27. 03:42 is not full-fledged. A human being who miss who is missing critical dimensions of what it is to be human. This kind of human being lacks empathy
28. 03:54 or effective empathy. Lacks emotional empathy. Lacks the ability to access positive emotions. Is overwhelmed by negative effectivity.
29. 04:05 Is antagonistic usually prone to conflict. is um and if we use the
30. 04:11 language of psychoanalysis and object relations theories then this kind of person is unable to tell the difference
31. 04:17 between external object and internal object. So he doesn’t regard you as a separate external human being. He
32. 04:24 regards you as a figment in his mind as an element in his fantasy as a part of his imagination. He doesn’t really believe that you exist. And this kind of person is prone to fantasy. There’s a pronounced fantasy defense. So this kind
33. 04:36 of person is divorced from reality, detached from reality, has impaired reality testing and so on. There are
34. 04:44 those who are religiously inclined who say or would say that to be in in touch
35. 04:50 with the narcissist is to be in touch with evil. So you have the likes of Scott Peek and Jordan Peterson and so
36. 04:57 on. They say well narcissism is just another name for name for evil. And of course on the extreme side there are
37. 05:04 those who say that narcissists are demons or possessed by I think I’ve heard that. Yes.
38. 05:10 I think all these people all these people regarding of the terminology and language they’re adopting what they’re
39. 05:17 trying to say is that the nar the narcissist is alien. The experience of being with a narcissist is very similar to the experience of being with an alien
40. 05:28 species. And this I I fully agree with it is
41. 05:34 now the narcissist what the narcissist does first first of all he the narcissist superimposes on you his own
42. 05:41 deficiencies now when I say his when I use the male gender pronoun half of all
43. 05:48 narcissists are women of female but for convenience sake I’m going to continue to use the male pronoun so he superimposes on you his own deficiencies For example, the narcissist has never experienced proper separation,
44. 06:03 individuation from the mother, from the maternal figure. So, he doesn’t allow you to separate. He annexes you. He
45. 06:11 consumes you. He assimilates you. He creates a symbiosis with you. He doesn’t allow you to be to have personal
46. 06:18 autonomy, independence, agency, decision-making capacity, friends, families, a life, a job. He isolates
47. 06:26 you. He constricts you. It constricts your life and because he never experienced separation. He doesn’t do
48. 06:33 separation. Doesn’t know what is separation. Second thing for example is the narcissist is empty inside. There is
49. 06:39 no functional self. There is identity diffusion or identity disturbance. And
50. 06:45 so consequently the narcissist wants to empty you to hollow you to take away
51. 06:52 your core identity. That’s another example. The third the third example and the last one I promise
52. 06:59 when we are talking about the fact that the narcissist imposes his own deficiencies on you. So the third
53. 07:06 example of this is the narcissist essentially is two or three years old psychologically speaking emotionally
54. 07:13 speaking it’s a case of stunted stunted or arrested development a disruption in the formation of identity and self. So the nar is 3 years old and he regresses
55. 07:25 you. He infantilizes you. He forces you to become a child because he’s a child.
56. 07:32 And so there is a lot of infantilization in this. And ultimately not only do you lo lose your identity and agency, you
57. 07:40 lose your adulthood when you’re in this kind of relationship. Yeah. Now, narcissists unknowingly, not
58. 07:47 deliberately, not premeditatively, unlike psychopaths, narcissists use a series of machavelian techniques. For example, they gaslight. They don’t
59. 07:59 know that they’re gaslighting. Unlike the psychopath, it’s not intentional. They confabulate. They have memory gaps,
60. 08:06 so they invent stories as to what might have happened. They they have a fantasy defense. So they force you to to be immersed in the fantasy. But the the impact of all these behaviors is that
61. 08:18 you feel ghastly. You feel that you’re being gaslighted. You know, you lose your own reality testing. You no longer
62. 08:25 can gauge and evaluate reality properly. You become estranged from reality and estranged from yourself. So this is one example of Makavelian technique. Another example is entrainment. It’s when the
63. 08:38 narcissist uses verbal cues to essentially synchronize your brain waves with his brain waves. And I’m kidding you not. That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s a recent discovery in neuroscience. And then he has a vector of invasion, a
64. 08:54 vector of penetration and he enters your mind and he installs an application. The
65. 09:01 process is known as introjection. He introjects himself into your mind. to create an introject of the narcissist and this introject is with you even when the narcissist is long gone physically.
66. 09:14 So this is just 10% of the damages suffered when you are
67. 09:20 with a narcissist. You lose everything. Your adulthood, your agency, your independence, your capacity to think
68. 09:26 critically, your contact with reality, your everything. You lose everything and you are left with the voice inside your
69. 09:33 head which represents a narcissist and this voice collaborates with other negative introates.
70. 09:41 Yeah, I I was going to ask you just about that because it has become clear to me that many victims tend to
71. 09:49 uh reject or even sabotage their own healing. So yeah, I was wondering if
72. 09:55 there’s something in this dynamic of abuse that programs the victim to remain sick. I think it’s what you’re talking
73. 10:01 about, right? Yes. To to maintain and the to maintain
74. 10:07 and exert the narcissist control long after he’s gone. And the narcissist’s message in collusion with other introjects. If you had for example a mother who used to negate you, a mother
75. 10:19 who used to attack you, criticize you harshly and so on, the narcissist introject would collaborate with the
76. 10:25 mother introject in this example. Okay? They would create a cluster of negative
77. 10:32 automatic negative thoughts, a cluster of negative affectivity inside your mind. And this cluster would
78. 10:38 metastasize. It would take over your decision- making. And and the message of this cluster of voices is actually you
79. 10:47 are unlovable. You’re unworthy. You don’t deserve to be happy. You don’t
80. 10:53 deserve to be healthy. You should destroy yourself, you know. Just go and you know. Yeah. That’s why I think maybe some
81. 11:04 victims or many victims report feeling like they don’t have an identity after the abuse. Um Sam is this damage re reversible somehow?
82. 11:15 All of it is reversible. Okay. With the exception as I said for example if you have borderline personality
83. 11:21 disorder. Yeah. Uh or even borderline personality organization which is not the same.
84. 11:28 Um in both cases you have identity diffusion. In other words you don’t have a stable identity. You don’t have a core
85. 11:34 identity. You don’t have a sense of continuity. And you fluctuate. to shapeshift between
86. 11:41 values, beliefs, tendencies, uh preferences, dreams, hopes, fantasies,
87. 11:47 behavioral patterns, cognitions, emotions, you’re constantly in flux. You’re like a kaleidoscope. So if you’re
88. 11:55 like that, when you have entered the relationship with the narcissist, your identity diffusion would be magnified dramatically. Yeah. And then that might be difficult to reverse. that might be difficult to reverse.
89. 12:10 Similarly, if you’re a codependent or someone with dependent personality disorder,
90. 12:16 you would enter the relationship um as a someone who controls from the bottom,
91. 12:23 someone who displays neediness and clinginess and helplessness in order to
92. 12:29 actually control the partner. So, you would enter the relationship with this, but the narcissist would encourage these
93. 12:36 behaviors. He would infantilize you. They would regress you as a codependent. He would want you to become even more
94. 12:42 codependent. So when the relationship is over, your codependency had become much
95. 12:48 worse than it used to be. So with so these are the only caveats. If you
96. 12:54 entered the relationship with mental health issues, especially especially substantial mental health issues, the
97. 13:01 relationship would have lasting damage. Yeah. But that’s something that happens a lot, right? There are so many people
98. 13:08 that that have codependent tendencies and they engage in a relationship with a narcissist. Um or at least um in my practice I find that they somehow
99. 13:21 there’s some premobility that connects or relates to codependency in their
100. 13:27 history in their family. Yes. Well, we don’t have statistics of course. Yeah. um otherwise I would have cited them. I would have quoted them. Yeah. But we do have anecdotal evidence and we
101. 13:39 have case studies a lot. We have thousands of case studies and so on so forth. And it would seem that the way to
102. 13:45 look at it is is this. The narcissist is indiscriminate and promiscuous. There is
103. 13:51 no type. Narcissists are type independent. In other words, they don’t care who you are. They don’t care if
104. 13:58 you’re empathic, if you’re borderline, if you’re codependent, if you’re psychopath, if you’re healthy, if you’re not healthy, if they don’t they don’t
105. 14:04 care about any of this. They care about what I call the four S’s. They care
106. 14:10 about sex, supply, sadistic or narcissistic services. Services could be, for example, if you have a lot of money or whatever, and and stability, safety, a sense of
107. 14:21 secure base. Yeah. Now, of course, um, one way to obtain supply is is if the partner is
108. 14:28 very good-looking because then you can parade the partner. You can brag about owning the drop dead
109. 14:35 gorgeous partner. So, we have the phenomenon of trophy wives or trophy.
110. 14:41 So, everything you can think of in terms of preferences of the narcissist falls
111. 14:47 under these four under these four S’s. And the narcissist tests you, auditions you. There’s a process of auditioning. The narcissist auditions you and if you meet two of the four, you get the job.
112. 15:00 It’s a job interview. The job description is you need to meet two of the four. So narcissist couldn’t care
113. 15:06 less who you are. However, the reverse is not true. The people who end up with
114. 15:12 narcissists are discriminatory. They are not promiscuous. They do choose the
115. 15:18 narcissist. they prefer to be with narcissists. It’s a choice. And the in my from my
116. 15:27 experience and what I’ve read and what I’ve seen talking to clinicians and so on, it would seem although we don’t have
117. 15:34 data, but it would seem that people with premobilities or pre-existing
118. 15:40 conditions, especially borderline personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, also known as
119. 15:46 codependency. Mhm. Um people who are uh people with post-traumatic conditions um complex
120. 15:53 trauma and PTSD. People with people who are broken and damaged because they’ve just undergone
121. 16:01 some life crisis. They they are after a divorce or they’ve lost a loved one or
122. 16:08 they went bankrupt or they are out of prison or you know some major life crisis. These people are vulnerable.
123. 16:15 They’re susceptible. and they gravitate towards the narcissist because the narcissist exudes
124. 16:22 an overwhelming sense of self-confidence. Yes. Self-confidence of the narcissist is infectious. If the narcissist is also psychopathic, if we are talking about a malignant
125. 16:33 narcissist, they would have superficial charm. So they would be they would be outwardly charming. And so
126. 16:40 yes, I would I would say that everything when I said the prognosis is good, this
127. 16:46 optimistic pronunciation has to do with people who were relatively mentally healthy and
128. 16:53 nonvulnerable in the beginning of the relationship and you’re right that I’m not sure what’s the percentage of such
129. 17:00 people. I I was wondering still is there anything we can do for these people for
130. 17:06 people with with BPD with uh dependent disorder. Um because uh would they have
131. 17:13 to work in therapy uh towards um recovering or healing maybe the original
132. 17:22 uh personality disorder or mental problem. Yeah. Well, we need to distinguish between the clinical features of the
133. 17:29 original premobidity of original condition before the relationship with a narcissist and the added impacts of having a relationship with a narcissist. So for example, a narcissist regresses
134. 17:41 you and infantilizes you. That can be tackled in therapy. You need to actually
135. 17:48 um go through the entire process of growing up. You need to you’re a child now. You’ve been regressed. You were
136. 17:54 infantilized. So you need to separate from the narcissist and individuate. You need to regain your core identity and individuality by separating from the narcissist. This can be accomplished in
137. 18:06 therapy. For example, internal family system therapy, transactional analysis therapy, um, uh, schema therapy. These three that I’ve just mentioned are very
138. 18:17 good at inducing separation individuation. Similarly, self psychology, cohort is very good at this.
139. 18:25 Um, psychoanalysis is good at this, but it would take the rest of your natural life to get anywhere with this. So,
140. 18:32 yeah, I don’t recommend it. So, that’s one example of the damage inflicted by the
141. 18:38 narcissist on you that regardless of your pre-existing conditions is reversible.
142. 18:45 Another another example, the narcissist took away your agency, independence, personal autonomy, and so on so forth.
143. 18:51 Of course, you can regain this. Another example is the narcissist isolated you to the point that you could no longer
144. 18:58 gauge or evaluate reality appropriately. You lost your reality testing. The narcissist became the sole interface
145. 19:06 between you and reality. We can teach reality testing in therapy. And here for
146. 19:12 example, cognitive behavioral therapy would be very useful because cognitive behavior therapy helps you to debunk
147. 19:20 automatic negative thoughts and to replace them with realistic thoughts. Cognitive behavior therapy is a
148. 19:26 touchstone. The touchstone is reality. So everything the narcissist did to you
149. 19:33 could be reversed. Everything regardless of whether you’re borderline or this or that. But the only
150. 19:40 thing the only lasting damage in case for example that you’re border in case you’re borderline the only lasting damage would be that your identity diffusion would be much more pronounced
151. 19:51 much more frequent and much more difficult to cope with even in therapeutic setting the this
152. 19:58 this clinical feature would be exacerbated. Okay. for people that don’t have these
153. 20:05 pre-existing conditions. Um, what would you say maybe would be the the first actionable steps someone can take to to
154. 20:12 rebuild a sense of self after the abuse? Because you were talking about, you know, uh, separation individuation all
155. 20:19 over again. So that’s a lot. Yeah, that’s quite a lot. I agree. The therapy could be extended.
156. 20:25 Therapy could be extended. The damage is massive and all pervasive. Therapy could and probably should be extended. minimum six months I think but probably we’re talking years sometimes two three years
157. 20:36 and yeah you’re right that it’s on multiple levels multiple dimensions of the personality of cognition of
158. 20:42 executive functions of of effect management of I mean it’s the damage is enormous
159. 20:49 but reversible luckily now the first thing I think the advice I give people which is not a
160. 20:55 popular advice especially among clinicians because it takes away a lot of their income come I I recommend to people to not attend therapy initially
161. 21:06 and I will try to explain why only initially of course therapy is a critical integral feature of healing and
162. 21:14 recovery you can’t do it on your own you can’t accomplish this alone you need help structured help by someone who knows what he’s doing but initially don’t go to therapy why
163. 21:25 okay because you have the narcissist’s voice inside your mind yes If you go to therapy, the voice of
164. 21:33 the narcissist would hijack the therapy. For example, imagine that you attend
165. 21:39 therapy immediately and the therapist provide you with insights about yourself. The nar the narcissist inside your mind would hijack these insights and leverage
166. 21:50 them against you. So for example, the narcissist could create a depressive reaction. When you
167. 21:57 get an insight that is a bit critical, the narcissist would amplify the narcissist in your mind. The introject
168. 22:03 would amplify it and would induce depression. If you get if you get an insight or or
169. 22:10 there is a process that leads to some uncertainty. For example, the therapist can tell you you should exit your
170. 22:16 comfort zone. Exit your comfort zone. It’s a good advice, but it creates uncertainty. The voice of
171. 22:23 the narcissist, the introject would hijack this advice and would induce in you anxiety. So the the voice of the narcissist in your mind would pathize contaminate the therapeutic process
172. 22:40 as it contaminates everything else. It contaminates your friendships, your relationships with your family, your
173. 22:47 view of your history, your everything. This voice contaminates, pollutes. It’s a pollution. So, the first thing you
174. 22:54 should do before you attend therapy, you should do your best to get rid of this voice. Now, it’s not as complicated as
175. 23:02 it sounds. Mhm. All you need to do basically is whenever you hear an internal voice, write it
176. 23:10 down. Just write it down and then try to identify which of these sentences belongs to your own authentic voice and
177. 23:21 which of these sentences is alien is is coming not from you. Now some of these sentences may be coming from your mother intro. Some of these sentences from a
178. 23:32 teacher, from a peer, some peer, you know, ex-lover, your ex, whoever you
179. 23:38 have, you have hundreds of voices in your head. Every most human beings about 5% don’t have this, by the way. It’s a
180. 23:45 recent discovery. It’s a recent discovery in neuroscience that 5% do not have an internal dialogue. I I was pretty shocked. I thought it was universal. But 95% do have it. So, and you have dozens if not
181. 23:59 hundreds of voices. Everyone who has ever crossed your life, everyone you have ever interacted with in in a
182. 24:05 relatively significant or meaningful way, you have an introject. You have a voice inside your head representing this
183. 24:11 person. Yeah. So, you would end up fulfilling many pages, you know, with with statements
184. 24:17 and sentences because you will discover that these voices are talking to you constantly.
185. 24:23 Now, there’s a coalition of these voices. There’s a cluster of these voices which represent society in the
186. 24:30 process of socialization. And there it’s also known as conscience, your conscience. Yeah, there’s a coalition of voices. There’s a
187. 24:36 coalition of voices of parental figures and so on. And I will give you a rule of
188. 24:43 thumb, a very simple rule after you write down all these sentences, how to identify which of these sentences is
189. 24:50 really you. M voices or sentences that are negative
190. 24:56 about you that try to drag you down, take you down, harshly critical,
191. 25:02 they they create an image of you or a self-concept of you which is essentially
192. 25:08 um negative. These are not your voices. This is not your voice.
193. 25:14 Your voice is a friend. Your voice is always positive. Not your voice is not
194. 25:21 Disneyland is not like stupidly positive but your voice is balanced. Your voice
195. 25:27 always includes a major positive component. Your voice is always
196. 25:33 friendly, always has your back, always supportive of you, gives you sakur, compassionate, affectionate, etc. If you come across a statement in your
197. 25:44 mind, statement in your mind, an introject that tells you, for example, don’t go don’t go on dating, you’re you know, you’re pretty ugly, that’s not your voice.
198. 25:56 If you have a voice in your mind that tells you you’re really not good with money, if I were you, I wouldn’t start this business. That’s not your voice. That could be your mother’s voice, your
199. 26:06 father’s. It’s not your voice. If you come across a voice that says, “You’ve been through a lot right now.
200. 26:14 You are not at peak performance, but things are going to be okay. I trust you. You’re resilient enough to survive and to thrive.” That is your voice.
201. 26:26 Mhm. So, having done this for a while, you will begin to notice that your authentic
202. 26:32 voice, your friend, your internal friend is actually becoming dominant and is silencing the other voices gradually. It’s a gradual process. When
203. 26:43 could you literally silent it? I’m sorry to interrupt you. Sorry. Could you literally Could you literally silent it? Like, you could also do this. Yes, you could verbalize. It’s called verbalization. You could say, “Shut up.”
204. 26:54 Absolutely. Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re quite stupid. Look at your own life. Like you look at your
205. 27:00 own life. I mean, okay. Who are you? Who are you to tell me this? And you absolutely you can have debates. You can have
206. 27:06 uh fights fights conflicts. You can be antagonistic, you know, with with these
207. 27:12 voices, you know, but ultimately the more you listen to the to the authentic voice, it’s going to take over and it’s going to prevail. is going to
208. 27:23 eliminate and silence all the other voices. Yeah. At that minute when you feel that most
209. 27:29 of the time you’re talking to your authentic voice which is as I as I mentioned positive optimistic but
210. 27:36 balanced when you are in touch with this friend really and it’s most of the time
211. 27:43 you you’re listening to this voice you’re ready for therapy. Okay. If if you go to therapy when the
212. 27:50 other voices are dominant, they’re going to hijack the therapy and use it against you. It’s like the famous Miranda
213. 27:56 warning. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court in your internal court, you
214. 28:02 know. No, you’re absolutely right. Um I have found that um there is so much
215. 28:08 resistance even when people uh know what to do they can really engage in the
216. 28:14 behavior they tend to sabotage the situation and they do not um overcome it. Um
217. 28:20 for example here in in in Latin America um therapists work a lot with EMDR or
218. 28:27 body centered uh therapist therapists. Um would you
219. 28:33 say that’s a good approach? Uh it’s an excellent approach. Uh I have I have something I developed
220. 28:39 something called the ninefold nine-fold path ninefold path to healing and it has
221. 28:45 three components. It has uh body, mind and function. You should absolutely start with the
222. 28:51 body. Yeah. Uh the body creates the body generates feedback feedback loops that have a
223. 28:58 pronounce impact on the mind. Even exercising could have great impact. But
224. 29:04 as Vander Culk and others have said, you know, the body keeps the score. The seat of your trauma, the container, the
225. 29:10 repository is your body. You cannot process your trauma effectively if you totally ignore your body only through
226. 29:16 your mind. You cannot do that. And the reason is very simple. There’s no mystery about it. It’s not something you know aashic
227. 29:24 aashic record. The reason is that when you went through the trauma, when you have experienced the trauma, this has had physiological impacts.
228. 29:35 Yes. Your blood pressure went up, your heartbeat went up, your your immune system went down, you were much more
229. 29:42 sick, insomnia, sleep disorders. All of these are typical accompaniments or side
230. 29:49 effects of of trauma. So when you want to reverse the trauma, you need to
231. 29:55 tackle initially these symptoms which together amount to a syndrome. You need
232. 30:01 to tackle these symptoms initially. Yes. And then you need to learn how to use your body to reverse trauma or at least
233. 30:09 amilarate it and then to resist trauma because you can learn to resist trauma. By the way, may I may I add one?
234. 30:16 Yes. One very unpopular observation. People talk about trauma the way they talk about cancer or tuberculosis
235. 30:24 as if it was some kind of clinical entity. Totally objective, not dependent
236. 30:30 on anything like and that’s of course nonsense. Trauma is not a clinical entity. Trauma
237. 30:38 is a subjective reaction and it critically depends on hundreds of
238. 30:45 other variables. In other words, you could expose 10 people to the same event and only one of them would be traumatized. The other would walk away unscathed, untouched, unaffected. That’s
239. 30:58 a fact. Yeah. So that goes to show that there is a
240. 31:05 vulnerability to trauma. The trauma is the outcome. Excuse me for
241. 31:11 a minute. Yes, I’m worried. The trauma is the outcome of an
242. 31:17 interaction between an external event or set of events or environments
243. 31:23 and something in you. You need to be primed for trauma. You need to be ready
244. 31:29 for trauma. You need to be on the verge of trauma anyhow. So um you need to
245. 31:36 develop resistance to trauma. These nine other people they are resistant to trauma. You are not. M
246. 31:43 there is a deficiency in you. Deficiency you’re not resilient. So that’s not popular because when I say this people
247. 31:50 people you know oh everyone would have been traumatized. Not true at all. That’s not true. Not true.
248. 31:56 And today we know for example that’s the latest um guidelines. We know for example initially until about 2 three years ago we used to debrief people like
249. 32:07 they had a trauma and we would immediately we would immediately ask them to repeat the trauma or recall the
250. 32:14 trauma and to describe the trauma and to and today we know that this is a big disaster because when you debrief people
251. 32:22 immediately after the trauma it imprints the trauma. there’s an imprint and then it’s very difficult to reverse it. But this is also indicative of mechanisms of
252. 32:34 resilience to trauma because uh people who are traumatized when they
253. 32:41 reexperience the trauma the trauma deepens. Yeah. People who are not traumatized when they
254. 32:47 recall the event it does not create any trauma. So the recall in people who are
255. 32:55 susceptible to trauma seems to enhance the trauma which is proof positive that these people have reduced immunological response if you
256. 33:07 wish psychoimunological response to trauma. They’re primed for trauma. I call it they’re primed for trauma.
257. 33:14 So that’s also a kind of response to your init first question when you say is can it be reversed not reversed. Many people in in relationships with narcissists many people who have
258. 33:26 experienced narcissistic abuse are not traumatized. They’re not traumatized because they’re resilient to trauma. Others are traumatized. So it could end up being a
259. 33:38 complex trauma case or it could end up being a very bad experience
260. 33:45 and this also reflects on the prognosis you know. Yeah. So so prognostic there’s prognostic
261. 33:52 value to to this. So, so would you say um it could be an objective for the for
262. 33:59 example for the therapy uh to help people help people develop resilience uh
263. 34:06 to trauma after the uh the narcissistic abuse?
264. 34:12 It’s pretty shocking that there is no such thing in any treatment modality that I’m aware of. Yes, I think it’s pretty shocking. Yeah, I think there is a need and a possibility to
265. 34:24 teach people how to resist trauma, to develop trauma resilience or trauma resistance. I think it’s
266. 34:31 doable. And I think I think everyone should learn this. Not only, you know, not only if you’ve been in a relationship with a narcissist. Yeah. Because whenever you
267. 34:42 whenever you are in a relationship, you you’re vulnerable. Whenever intimacy is just another name for vulnerability. So whenever you are truly intimate, I’m
268. 34:54 not talking about people with insecure attachment style. These people, it’s another example of
269. 35:00 prognostic value. People ironically ironically people with insecure attachment style have a much better
270. 35:07 prognosis because they they’re much less impacted. They they don’t have trauma. They don’t,
271. 35:13 you know, they couldn’t care less. They walk away. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. But with the exception of these kind of people, people with secure or relatively healthy attachment style, non-avvoidant attachment style.
272. 35:24 Yeah. These people uh are vulnerable because they they are
273. 35:31 they are intimate. There is intimacy in their relationships and by definition they’re vulnerable. And you could be
274. 35:37 traumatized even if your partner is not a narcissist. Even if your partner is not a
275. 35:44 psychopath, you could be traumatized because your partner suddenly made a life choice which means that you know
276. 35:50 the relationship is over. You could be traumatized because your partner cheated on you, engaged in infidelity.
277. 35:58 There are million ways to be traumatized, you know. So I think when anyone reaches the age of dating or the
278. 36:05 age of interactions with other people for int for reasons of intimacy that includes friendships, sex, intimate relationships when you reach this age which let’s say I don’t know 12 14
279. 36:20 around this age of early to mid adolescence we need to teach trauma resilience and trauma resistance. Yes. Absolutely. And it’s pretty shocking that there is
280. 36:32 no such thing. It’s even more shocking that when you go to be treated for trauma, all the
281. 36:38 trauma treatments, treatment modalities, that includes mindbody modalities such as EMDR and so on. What they teach you or what they attempt to do, they attempt to reverse the trauma, but that’s it.
282. 36:51 It’s like um you know you you have lung cancer, you come to the doctor, the
283. 36:58 doctor tells you, “Okay, you we’re going to radiate you and we’re going to give you chemotherapy.” But the doctor
284. 37:04 doesn’t tell you not to smoke. There’s no attempt to deal with a with a
285. 37:11 with a cause, but only with the effects with the symptoms. So it’s symptomatology. EMDR is totally symptom symptomatology. total symptomatology
286. 37:22 even to some extent CBT is still too symptotomat too much concern with symptoms
287. 37:30 there’s a lot of emphasis in all the sphere of psychotherapy with symptoms not with and I think that’s a major mistake that is really insightful because yeah
288. 37:42 there’s not an approach that I know of that really teaches you how to um face
289. 37:48 trauma and be resilient when it comes Right. Yeah. Preemptive preemptive approach. Yes. Yes. Preemptive approach. Um prophylactic prophylactic approach. Yeah. There’s no prophylactic therapy like you don’t go to therapy unless something horrible happened to you or unless
290. 38:04 something is not working or unless it’s like therapy fixes things. Therapy shouldn’t only fix things. Therapy
291. 38:12 should prevent things. Exactly like medicine. Yes. I mean real medicine. I I studied
292. 38:18 medicine. In in medicine they teach you actually today the emphasis mostly is about preventing not about urine or
293. 38:25 healing. Most of the emphasis is lifestyle choices and you know and you don’t have
294. 38:31 this. They don’t even teach you how to avoid narcissists and psychopaths. Like why not teach adolescence how to avoid narcissists and psychopaths?
295. 38:42 It’s it’s crazy. They don’t teach you how to how to develop life plans and life goals.
296. 38:49 also crazy how to avoid or how to resist trauma. I can give you a very long list of prophylactic measures which would
297. 38:56 have saved would have saved a lot of pain and maybe would have diminished the earnings and
298. 39:02 profits of many therapists. So maybe that’s the reason I I want to talk talk to you about uh no contact because it is presented as the the gold standard for for healing in this case. What why would you say that is why is is this so important? When I developed the the no contact
299. 39:23 standard in the 80s uh it was a set it was a set of 27 strategies.
300. 39:29 Yes. And I was immediately attacked by the entire profession literally uh
301. 39:35 professors and scholars and clinicians and everyone was attacking me. Mhm. Because they said that uh it’s a very wrong advice and first of all should
302. 39:46 always give a second chance and it is through contact that you gain closure
303. 39:52 and it is through contact that healing can take place. And so the emphasis at that time we are talking 40 years ago
304. 39:58 the emphasis was contact. So the no contact thing was eoclastic and was
305. 40:04 perceived as a seriously harmful advice. To this very day if you go online you can find echoes of this debate and they
306. 40:12 say some vaknin gives harmful advice and then you a bit further and you discover they’re talking about no contact. Today no contact is the gold standard
307. 40:23 and um not only online but I would say even mainstream gold standard. Yeah. Yeah.
308. 40:29 I think and the reason I suggested no contact in the first place which which became much more evident 20 or 30 years
309. 40:36 later. Yeah. Was that the narcissist has an has an immediate impact on you. First of all,
310. 40:43 there’s a series of studies which demonstrated pretty conclusively that you can diagnose someone with narcissistic personality disorder
311. 40:54 accurately 85% of the time if you are exposed to a
312. 41:00 video of that person which is 30 seconds long.
313. 41:07 If you see an email by this person or if you even see a photo a photograph of
314. 41:14 this person and I’m not talking about diagnosticians, clinicians, professors
315. 41:20 of psychology. I’m talking about laymen lay persons. I’m talking about anyone.
316. 41:26 So there’s there are a lot of studies and they were put together in in the famous uh handbook of narcissistic
317. 41:33 personality disorder edited by Keith Campbell and others. So today we know
318. 41:39 that even if you see a photo or a short video or an email you can diagnose narcissist accurately.
319. 41:46 Uh then there was a series of studies in the in the in Harvard University.
320. 41:52 Yeah. And these studies demonstrated that you can judge people generally appropriately if you’re exposed to them
321. 41:59 for 30 sec for three seconds. Three. Mhm. Why is that? Because your state of mind
322. 42:07 changes. The discovery was that when people for example were exposed to to a narcissist
323. 42:14 via photograph or video or email for 30 seconds they be they develop acute acute
324. 42:23 discomfort bordering on anxiety and later on I coined the phrase uncanny
325. 42:29 valley reaction. Uncanny valley is not my phrase but uncanny valley reaction is my phrase. So I coined it to describe
326. 42:36 the the reaction to narcissism. In other words, even 30 second with a
327. 42:42 narcissist create the equivalent of anxiety, discomfort at least, but definitely acute discomfort. Imagine 30 days, imagine 30 months,
328. 42:56 imagine 30 years. M if you want to avoid severe mental health impacts, there is no way you can interact with a
329. 43:07 narcissist. There is no benign interaction. There is no closure. Of course, narcissist never affords you
330. 43:13 closure, but there’s also no benign uh why is that? Because a narcissist is
331. 43:19 a predator. And he he’s the narcissist has been conditioned to push buttons.
332. 43:26 is a predator who pushes your buttons. First of all, narcissists have cold empathy. Cold empathy is another phrase
333. 43:33 that I coined to describe a combination of cognitive empathy and reflexive empathy. So, narcissist scans you within the first few seconds. Scans you,
334. 43:44 identifies your vulnerabilities and weaknesses, and then pushes these buttons. He doesn’t have an emotional
335. 43:51 reaction. He doesn’t say, “Oh my god, he’s sad. He says, “Oh my god, he said
336. 43:58 how great. Now I can do now I can accomplish something.” You know, he’s vulnerable. His defenses are down. I can accomplish something. So using cold uh empathy, the narcissist then proceeds
337. 44:14 to play on your vulnerabilities and weaknesses and frailties and insecurities and fears and he plays on
338. 44:21 these things. He amplifies them. He us he leverages them to modify your behavior to take over your mind to to to destroy your core identity to take away
339. 44:33 your agency and independence so on and so forth. And all this is accomplished literally on a first date.
340. 44:40 Literally before you know it on a first date it is the narcissist who is making all the decisions where to go, what to
341. 44:48 eat, how long to stay. Suddenly there’s a hostile takeover and you’re no longer
342. 44:54 I’m talking about a first date. So the only solution, the only practical
343. 45:01 advice is no contact. Of course there are many situations where no contact is impossible. And then there are other
344. 45:08 techniques, some of them developed by me, some of them by others that are second best. So there will be gray rock grey rocking the narcissist not providing the narcissist with
345. 45:19 attention and narcissistic supply mirroring. I mean there are other techniques but if you can at all no
346. 45:27 contact and one more thing about no contact. If you have a narcissistic son
347. 45:33 as his mother, you should go no contact. If your father is a narcissist you should go no contact. If your mother is 89 years old and dying, you should go no
348. 45:44 contact. This is all All these stories are excuses to remain
349. 45:51 in touch with the narcissist. So, I don’t buy any of them. Okay? And um I even I even I can even
350. 46:00 demonstrate to you how people invent situations, create situations
351. 46:06 in order to stay with in touch with the narcissist and they’re not aware of it. For example, litigation in court.
352. 46:13 They go to court and they say to themselves, you see, I hate the narcissist. I’m attacking the narcissist. I’m suing the narcissist. But but actually behind the scenes it’s
353. 46:24 a way to stay in touch. People victims deceive themselves.
354. 46:30 Victim victims create narratives that explain why absolutely they must stay in
355. 46:37 touch like he’s my son, he she’s my mother, he’s my father or I need to sue
356. 46:43 the narcissist. These are all excuses. Yes, there are um even more complicated
357. 46:50 scenarios. I think when there are a shared children uh they work together
358. 46:56 there is uh financial dependence um even then I I I mean of course you
359. 47:03 have to to go no contact but it’s really hard for for some people how would you tackle that yeah
360. 47:09 it’s not hard it’s complicated hard means that you have an emotional response to the no contact like you want
361. 47:16 to be in contact but it’s hard it’s hard on you That implies an emotional background.
362. 47:23 What you mean to say, I think, is that it’s complicated. Yeah. And yes, it’s complicated. So if you
363. 47:29 have common children, maybe you should communicate via via lawyers. Maybe. Yes.
364. 47:35 If you work together, maybe you should no longer work together. Yeah. If you live in the same city and you
365. 47:42 have to see him because he’s in the same street, maybe you should move away. Yes. Of course it’s complicated. Of course,
366. 47:48 it’s costly. Yeah. If you’re financially dependent, then McDonald’s has openings. You can flip hamburgers. Yeah. Even even if you are a PhD and you used
367. 48:03 to be a professor, you can still flip hamburgers because your mental health is the number one priority. But people tell themselves stories. They deceive themselves. They say I can’t leave my job or I’m dependent on him or
368. 48:19 I have common children or there are extreme cases
369. 48:25 where for example there is what we call coercive control. Yes. So the narcissist took away all your
370. 48:32 personal docu documentation, locked you in the house, you don’t have a key, the telephone is disconnected and so well that’s imprisonment. That’s a crime by the way. Yeah. So there are very extreme cases
371. 48:44 where you have to be in touch with a narcissist. But in 30 years of practice, yes, I have yet to come across anyone who succeeded to convince me that they have
372. 48:55 no choice but to be in touch with a narcissist. Not one case of thousands.
373. 49:02 Yeah. You you you also talk about um well these people are also immersed in a
374. 49:08 fantasy, right? uh when talking about the shared fantasy and that’s something I see a lot because
375. 49:14 um uh there’s the emotional weight for these people to
376. 49:23 unconsciously behave for example like the mother of the narcissist and that’s
377. 49:29 sometimes the main reason I see people cannot get out they are trying to help him to to save him to take care of him how do How do you deal with that?
378. 49:40 Because you often say um one must exit the shared fantasy the shared fantasy. But how do you do that? It all boils down to
379. 49:51 two clinical phenomena. One is loss loss aversion. When you aver when you’re
380. 49:57 averse to loss, you consider loss as the most horrible thing that can happen to you. Yeah. And the second thing is malignant optimism or malignant hope, pathological hope as
381. 50:09 shadow the Angelus calls it. So um the narcissist
382. 50:17 offers you a way out of reality. In order to fall, in order to comply or
383. 50:24 collude with a narcissist in the creation of the shed fantasy and its maintenance, you need to be someone who
384. 50:30 is seriously disenchanted with reality. Seriously disappointed, seriously hates
385. 50:36 you hate reality. And it is a narcissist who is the master of fantasy. The narcissist is offer
386. 50:42 offers you a deal. He says, “I’m going to take you away from reality. I’m going to introduce you into
387. 50:48 my reality, my alternative reality. And within this alternative reality, you’re
388. 50:55 going to be idealized so you can fall in love with your perfect image, image of perfection. You’re going to feel safe because I’m going to make all the choices and decisions. So you will never ever be
389. 51:06 responsible for anything. You will never, you know, you will never have to think. You and within this
390. 51:13 fantasy, there will be a lot of excitement and thrill. It’s very colorful. It’s technical fantasy. It’s a
391. 51:20 little like a movie. And this is irresistible to people whose reality is
392. 51:26 drab and dreary and black and white and repetitive and routine. And so
393. 51:35 if I were to venture a guess, a precondition for for collaborating with a narcissist in his shared fantasy is that you’re a bit depressed. that there is a background of dysmia of some kind a bit um turned off by
394. 51:52 reality looking desperately to escape escapism. Yeah. Yeah. And then you you enter the the fantasy and it is everything the narcissist promised you. It’s exciting and
395. 52:04 thrilling. It’s uh unpredictable. It’s full of color. You feel safe
396. 52:11 because you have a mother. The narcissist is your mother. you suddenly have a child because a narcissist is also your child. That’s my mothership principle. So it caters to your maternal instincts
397. 52:22 and maternal instincts men have maternal instincts also. It’s not limited to no. So you can be you know a mother by proxy or vicariously a mother. It it’s
398. 52:34 perfect. It’s a perfect alternative to reality. It’s a it’s a virtual reality
399. 52:41 and so it’s very addictive and very intoxicating and very difficult to break
400. 52:47 because what what do you have to offer to these people? Imagine that you talk to a victim and say you are in a
401. 52:54 fantasy. You should stop it. Stop the fantasy. She’s going to ask you stop the fantasy and go where? Stop the fantasy and do what? Stop the fantasy for what’s what’s the
402. 53:06 alternative you’re offering me? Reality. That is what you’re offering me. I did reality before. It didn’t work. It’s not
403. 53:13 working for me. And so it’s very difficult. Additionally, of course,
404. 53:20 there is the double bonding. There is the trauma bonding which is the outcome of intermittent reinforcement
405. 53:26 and there is also the drama bonding because drama you you develop tolerance
406. 53:33 to drama. So you need to escalate the drama all the time but you also develop an addiction to drama. So drama becomes
407. 53:41 a defining feature of of of your life and of who you are and and so on. What I’m trying to to say I think is that fantasy is a total solution. Yes,
408. 53:52 it’s not a partial solution. It’s not a daydream. It’s not it’s not um a fantasy is not limited to a highly specific
409. 53:58 aspect of reality or fantasy is a complete alternative to reality. Like
410. 54:04 you have to choose. If you choose reality, you can never have any kind of fantasy. If you choose fantasy, you can
411. 54:10 never have any kind of reality. And increasingly more and more people are choosing fantasy. Fantasy is becoming very fast an organizing
412. 54:21 principle of of reality. Look at all modern technologies. Look at the movie cinema. It’s it’s to escape reality. You escape
413. 54:32 reality for two hours. It’s dissociated. Look at social media. Look at artificial intelligence. Look at the multiverse. All these technologies have one thing in
414. 54:43 common. They are fantasy based technologies. Video games, they afford you an a
415. 54:51 dissociative escape from reality. And today, children play video games.
416. 54:57 Young young people under the age of 18, they play video games six and a half hours a day.
417. 55:05 Yeah, that’s the average. They play video games six and a half hours a day. What
418. 55:12 do they do with the rest of their time? Mostly social media. What does it teach us? People do not
419. 55:18 want to be in reality. They don’t. And technology caters to this need. And who is the greatest
420. 55:26 master of fantasy? Who is the uber meister of fantasy? It’s the narcissist. Pathological narcissism is a fantasy defense. Mhm. Everything in the narcissist’s life is a fantasy. His false self, his shared
421. 55:42 fantasy, his everything is fantasy. There’s nothing real in narcissism. Narcissist can cannot tell the
422. 55:48 difference between fantasy and reality, between external object, internal object. In this sense, narcissism is a
423. 55:54 bit pseudocychotic. Yes. And so the narcissist comes to you and says, “Not only am I going to give you an alternative world, which is as exciting as any movie you have ever
424. 56:05 seen, but I’m also going to take away from you
425. 56:11 your responsibilities, your duties, your obligations, your accountability, your so that you feel not only safe but you feel angelic. You
426. 56:23 feel absolved. You feel like you are you are impeccable and immaculate because
427. 56:30 any mistake would be mine says the narcissist. Any mistake would be my mistake. Any decision would be my
428. 56:37 decision. Any consequences would be my consequence. I assume all this
429. 56:43 so that you can become a child in effect within the fantasy you become a child because only very small children don’t have any responsibility don’t make any decisions make no choices and so on
430. 56:56 small children you see the same situation in dictatorships in dictatorships or even in
431. 57:02 authoritarian regimes like what is happening now in the United States with Donald Trump yeah
432. 57:08 the leader the leader comes to the population and says, “Give me all your power.
433. 57:16 Give me everything. Make me the sole decision maker. I will make all your
434. 57:23 decisions for you. All your choices and so on. If anything goes wrong, you’re blameless.
435. 57:30 You didn’t make the decision. I did.” It’s a relief. It’s anxolytic. It reduces anxiety to be
436. 57:38 in reality. As Jean Paul Stoa said, to be in reality is the unst of having to
437. 57:44 make choices. When you are in reality, you have to choose. You have to decide. And things can go wrong and very often
438. 57:51 go wrong. That creates anxiety. If someone comes to you and says, “You no longer need to do any of this. It
439. 57:58 reduces your anxiety. It’s anxolytic.” And that’s the power of fantasy. It
440. 58:04 takes away your depression because it’s very thrilling and colorful and it takes away your anxiety. Fantasy is a cure to depression and a
441. 58:15 cure to anxiety combined. A peel like a pill like the matrix like the blue pill in the matrix.
442. 58:22 Yes. Yes. Well, this has been a a master class,
443. 58:29 Sam. Um, thank you. Thank you so much. How are you on time? Do you have time
444. 58:35 for a couple more questions? Yeah, thank you. Um just just to
445. 58:42 um to finish, I was wondering if maybe you because I agree with you. People
446. 58:49 deceive themselves a lot in this situation and it’s really hard to be conscious and aware of what’s really going on, right? So what would you say are the maybe the most common mistakes
447. 59:01 survivors make during recovery to prolong their suffering?
448. 59:07 Basically two. One is the belief that you can talk to the narcissist, you can
449. 59:14 negotiate, you can compromise, you can maybe reverse some of the damage through the narcissist or collaborate with the
450. 59:21 narcissist or work with the narcissist or reach a modus vendi with the narcissist or do anything with the
451. 59:28 narcissist. Oh yeah. So this gives you the legitimacy to remain
452. 59:34 in touch with the narcissist with some kind of as I said malignant optimism that the narcissist still has something to give you which would make you feel better or restore you somehow and so on and so forth. The truth is of course that the
453. 59:50 narcissist is incapable of providing you with anything because he has taken everything.
454. 59:57 He has taken everything. Why would he give anything back? So if you want closure, he would never give you closure
455. 60:03 because to give you closure is to empower you and to disempower the narcissist.
456. 60:10 If you want to compromise and negotiate with the narcissist, it’s impossible because it’s my way or the or the highway. It’s uh narcissists are highly consumious. They reject authority. They
457. 60:21 are defiant. They a bit antisocial or dissociative in this sense. And they’re not open to negotiation and compromise. Absolutely not. If you expect the narcissist to
458. 60:33 restore you somehow um by allowing you to love him or displaying on the very
459. 60:41 contrary some compassion or some empathy or there’s of course a doomed a doomed cause and so yes. So the greatest first mistake is
460. 60:52 to say I am staying in touch with the narcissist because the narcissist has something that can benefit my mental health. He took away something from me. He can
461. 61:03 give it back and that is of course the foundation of intermittent reinforcement because in intermittent reinforcement
462. 61:10 the abuser takes away something from you which only he can give back to you.
463. 61:16 Yes. Like I hate I hate you now but I’m the one who can love you. I can reverse the
464. 61:22 hatred. I am cold but I can be warm. So he take first he takes something then he
465. 61:28 gives it back. And this take and give, give and take, take and give, give and take. Conditions you. It’s a form of
466. 61:34 conditioning. So yes, there is this belief that yeah the narcissist took a lot from me. He took
467. 61:41 my independence. He took my identity. He took my money. Maybe he took my sex. He took my every he took everything from me
468. 61:49 but now he has these things and maybe he will have pity on me or maybe for all
469. 61:55 all time’s sake or maybe he is actually quite rational and reasonable if you
470. 62:01 know how to talk to him or maybe if I love him enough or maybe or maybe somehow all these toys that he has taken away from me he’s going to share these toys or he’s going to give them back to me. It’s very infantile thinking. It’s like two two years old who are fighting
471. 62:18 which are fighting over toys you know. Yeah. So this is the first mistake. First mistake is do not be in touch with the
472. 62:25 narcissist. There’s nothing to get and he can continue to take from you. Don’t kid yourself. Yeah. And the second mistake is the exact opposite to demonize the narcissist.
473. 62:37 When you demonize the narcissist, you engage in an infantile primitive
474. 62:44 defense mechanism known as splitting. The narcissist is all bad. That makes me
475. 62:50 all good as a victim. Wait a minute. If I’m all good, then
476. 62:56 whatever has happened to me has nothing to do with me. I didn’t contribute anything to it. I was just there being
477. 63:05 an angel. And this demon came and you know did things to me. Why is this bad? It’s bad
478. 63:14 for two reasons. When you say that things were done to
479. 63:20 you, that you contributed nothing, that you’re responsible for nothing, that you
480. 63:26 had nothing to do with your abuse, that you were an inert object, a recipient, a
481. 63:32 receptacle of the abuse, a container. You are disempowering yourself. You are
482. 63:38 creating an external locus of control. You you are not a master of who you are
483. 63:45 and of your life. If you say the narcissist had all the power and I was completely powerless,
484. 63:54 this is learned helplessness. Yes, you will never heal. You will never recover as long as you claim to have been 1,000% helpless.
485. 64:06 To recover and to heal is to regain agency, to regain power, to selfmpower.
486. 64:15 The only way to do this is to take responsibility for bad decisions that you’ve made,
487. 64:24 stupid choices, for remaining in the relationship despite everything, for being getting addicted to fantasy. You need to take responsibility for this thing. The minute you do, it becomes
488. 64:36 clear that the narcissist is not as powerful as you make him to be. that you
489. 64:43 actually do have the power to not repeat these mistakes again. Yes.
490. 64:49 So, and the second problem with this approach of the narcissist is demon and I’m an angel. No, is that you remain stuck in a victimhood stance. You your victimhood becomes your
491. 65:01 identity. Victimhood is not an identity. It’s a historical fact. You have been victimized. That doesn’t
492. 65:13 make you a lifelong victim. Yes. Something happened to you
493. 65:19 and that’s it. Victimhood is like I don’t know um pregnancy. Let’s take the
494. 65:27 case of pregnancy. The fact that you have been pregnant once doesn’t make you pregnant for all life. Mhm. You have been victimized. It’s not your identity. The minute you adopt victimhood as your identity, it becomes a major problem because
495. 65:43 victimhood is a fantasy. And so victimhood becomes addictive.
496. 65:50 You see, when you’re a victim, everyone pies you. You get sympathy. You
497. 65:57 have rights. You feel entitled. You have rights to special treatment. As a victim, you feel entitled. You make
498. 66:03 money. If you write books or make videos, you you make money. So you have every incentive to continue to be a
499. 66:09 victim. And what’s the only way to continue to be a victim? To be victimized.
500. 66:16 Your brain pushes you to be revictimized so that you can maintain the profitable
501. 66:23 victimhood status. If victimhood is your identity, then you will be victimized all your life. Now this is not speculation. We have studies
502. 66:34 that show that people with borderline personality disorder who perceive themselves as victims are revictimized
503. 66:44 much more than people who do not consider themselves victims. So revictimization in borderline personality disorder is much higher than
504. 66:55 in other conditions because most people with borderline personality disorder have this victimhood uh stance. We have
505. 67:03 studies by Gabby, four studies by Gabay and her partners, colleagues. Um the the the victimhood, the victim
506. 67:14 about victimhood identity, pretty amazing studies. She desri she described competitive
507. 67:21 victimhood. She described how victims compete. I’m more victim than you. My abuser was much worse than your abuser. And then they leverage their victimhood and demand special treatment and make
508. 67:32 profits make and how this becomes a victimhood for life. This is the Gabay
509. 67:38 studies which are now by now seinal studies. We have additional studies. I’m not going to all this. So
510. 67:46 these are the two mistakes. I’m going to continue to be in touch with my narcissist because he’s holding the key to my healing or I’m going to assume a victimhood stance
511. 67:58 by becoming an angel I will make my narcissist a demon. That’s also a bad solution.
512. 68:06 Okay. Um Dr. Sambaglin, thank you so much for
513. 68:12 your time, for your work. uh you are always very inspiring to me and I hope
514. 68:19 everybody everybody sees this because I think it’s it has uh very important information. So it’s it’s really nice and thank you for your time again. Always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for having me again.
515. 68:30 Yeah, take care. Take care. Thank you.