When the narcissist is faced with a prolonged period of deficient or irregular narcissistic supply, when the narcissist collapses, many narcissists become schizoid, avoidant. They run away from painful reality. They pretend that fantasy is reality. They withdraw. They become hermits.
That is the schizoid phase in the narcissistic cycle, an inevitable phase, which is often accompanied by mood disorders, dysphoria or depressions of all kinds.
Now, during this period, the narcissist's only interlocutors, the only presence in the narcissist's life, presence says in the narcissist's life, are his internal objects.
Obviously, since the narcissist avoids external objects, all he is left with are the representations of these external objects in his mind.
During the schizoid phase, the narcissist self-supplies.
I encourage you to watch the videos about self-supply. Links in the description.
He does not venture out. He does not solicit. He does not coerce. He does not cajole. He does not compel. He does not beg. He does not impress. He does not communicate. He is avoidant. Remember? He withdraws. His life is constricted.
So rather than interact with other people, he supplies himself.
But self-supply carries with it its own risks.
Because when the narcissist self-supplies, his introjects, the internal objects in his mind, they become the audience. They become his admiring and adulating and affirming public. So the narcissist self-audiences, he develops an internal theater replete with and populated by numerous internal objects, introjects, voices, memories and so on and so forth. And these become his reference group. He derives narcissistic self-supply from the introjects, from these internal objects. He becomes utterly solipsistic and one would even say psychotic. Clinically, this condition involves delusional disorders and psychotic elements. The narcissist no longer inhabits the external world. He is totally immersed in and a denizen of his own mind. And he shuts himself off from the environment. He becomes a recluse. And so in the schizoeth phase, when the narcissist self-supplies, his introjects and voices and internal objects are his audience and his public, and he can self-motify amazingly by failing at accomplishing something, by getting in touch with his own shame or with his own negative affectivity, early childhood artifacts, the outcomes of early childhood abuse and trauma, the narcissist then experiences modification.
It's as if he were exposing himself to his new audience, to his new public, which is himself.
So a narcissist, for example, can suddenly realize something about himself. He can suddenly gain unwanted, undesired insight about himself.
And this insight illuminates the narcissist's frailties, deficiencies, defects, problems and inadequacies.
And the narcissist then feels ashamed, feels humiliated in front of the introjects and the internal objects in his mind, which during the schizoeth self-supply phase he perceives as external public, a kind of audience, self-audiency.
Now this process, this process of shaming oneself, humiliating oneself in front of oneself, this process is known or should be known as self-motification.
Of course, all of us sometimes are ashamed of ourselves. All of us sometimes interact with voices inside our heads, mother's voice, father's voice, a teacher's voice, a role model's voice. All of us interact with these voices and try to justify ourselves. All of us sometimes feel humiliated and ashamed when we realize that we've done something wrong.
This is known as conscience. It's a cluster of introjects.
So this is not a new phenomenon, but in the case of the narcissist, because of his fragility, because of his vulnerability, and all narcissists are compensatory.
The all narcissism, pathological narcissism, is a compensatory mechanism. It compensates for an innate sense of inferiority, inadequacy, known as the bad object.
So when you, as a healthy person, when you get in touch with your shame, with your conscience, when you castigate and chastise and criticize yourself for something you've done, this would usually yield behavior modification. You would change your conduct. You would make decisions. You would make choices that would guarantee that this kind of shame would not recur, not happen again.
In short, in a healthy person, shame, negative affectivity, guilt, conscience, they lead to growth. They lead to personal development.
In the narcissist, shame and similar negative affects, envy and so on, they lead to disintegration. They lead to a process known as decompensation.
The narcissist defenses are deactivated. The narcissist is left face to face without any protection, any firewall, any partition, face to face with his primordial, atavistic, early childhood, profound shame, profound rage, profound envy, deep seething, unrequited. The narcissist abreacts.
The narcissist essentially falls apart and this is self-motification.
So it is possible for the narcissist to modify himself by acting in a way which he would consider or humiliating in front of the introjects or the internal objects in his mind.
Because remember, the narcissist cannot tell the difference between internal objects and external objects. He is exactly like the psychotic. He cannot tell the difference.
So as far as the narcissist is concerned, being shamed and humiliated in public, in front of external objects, real people out there is the same as being shamed and humiliated in front of internal objects.
So in the schizoid self-supplying phase, self-motification does happen sometimes.
The narcissist is aware of this risk, of this danger.
So what he does, he stalks. He self-stalks. He stalks his internal objects.
He internalizes stalking. It's a form of maintaining introject and object constancy by revisiting, by monitoring, by surveying, by supervising, by micromenergy, the galaxy of internal objects and introjects and voices in his head.
The narcissist is trying to make sure that these voices will not gang up on him, and cause him mortification, and he also attempts to make sure via this self-stalking that these internal objects will not abandon him, will not suddenly evaporate or disappear or be rendered per secretary.
So he stalks his internal objects in order to maintain the constancy and quality of his introjects.
The borderline does the same, by the way. She stalks her internal objects, but she stalks her internal objects because the borderline has not introject constancy. So she needs to revisit her internal objects to convince herself that they are still there.
That's not the case with the narcissist. The narcissist is very powerful, dominant, I would say, overwhelming introjects. That's not his problem. His problem is object constancy.
But when the introjects are the only objects, which is the case in the schizoid phase, when there isn't an external object to correspond with it, to correspond to the internal object, then the internal objects in the schizoid self-supplying phase become the only exclusive objects, and the narcissist treats them the way he would treat you as an intimate partner or a source of narcissistic supply.
The borderline does the same, by the way. She stalks her internal objects, but she stalks her internal objects because the borderline has not introject constancy. So she needs to revisit her internal objects to convince herself that they are still there.
That's not the case with the narcissist. The narcissist is very powerful, dominant, I would say, overwhelming introjects. That's not his problem. His problem is object constancy.
But when the introjects are the only objects, which is the case in the schizoid phase, when there isn't an external object to correspond with it, to correspond to the internal object, then the internal objects in the schizoid self-supplying phase become the only exclusive objects, and the narcissist treats them the way he would treat you as an intimate partner or a source of narcissistic supply.
The borderline does the same, by the way. She stalks her internal objects, but she stalks her internal objects, as though there were no differences between them. Sometimes he interacts with you out there, external, separate, as an intimate partner, but make no mistake about it, he is actually interacting with your representation in his mind, with your avatar, with the icon in his brain that represents you.
And so it's very easy for him to transition from the real you out there to the you inside his head, the internal you, and to continue the relationship internally.
And of course, like every relationship, even if it is with an internal object, the cycle proceeds apace, idealization, devaluation, discard, and potentially, modification.
This is a narcissist's self-cycle, self-supply, self-stalking and self-motification, without having a self at all.