Okay, Dr.
Vaknin, we are so excited to have you here.
Quick introductions. This is Lizzie here, and she and I are Matadoras.
Nice to meet you.
We were both married to the same toxic narcissist for a combination of about 33 years between the two of us. The same guy.
Pardon me?
The same guy.
The same guy. We were married to the same guy, which is. Yes.
****REDACTED
And we found out that while he was married to Lizzie, he was living a double life and dating another woman and becoming a family with her. And so Lizzie and I set out to find that woman because Lizzie had found some cards and some evidence that with, you know, dates on them and evidence that he was with another woman.
Anyway, we successfully found the other woman. And then we saw him.
Yes. And then he ran off to wife number four after that woman left. And after that, she and I just said, enough's enough. We can't, we have to tell our story we can't just sit by right well this happens to people all over the world and so that's why we started the matadoras.
And then Sally, you want to tell a little short story you, Sally?
Sure. Yeah.
So I'm the founder of Lessons and Growth, Life and Relationship Coaching. I ran into my narcissist when I was in Texas. I'm currently in North Carolina.
And, you know, the usual song and dance with narcissistic behavior. But my story kind of ramped up after I left in which he hired somebody to kill me. He tried to set me up to go to prison. He put trackers on my vehicle. He, you know, was doing kind of anything and everything, you know, had people spying on me, had set me up to be robbed, turned people against me, defamation of character, you know, had people spying on me, had set me up to be robbed, turned people against me, defamation of character, you know, the usual.
So I got away, I left Texas, moved to North Carolina, and I just felt my calling was to help others. Kind of my specific niche is after you've left to help with the healing process and kind of come to terms with what happened, what were the repeating patterns and toxic behaviors within ourselves that we needed to learn in order to move forward without having the cycles repeat. So what was it about ourselves that put a target on our back for these people to see us as potential victims?
So I help people kind of understand that, heal past trauma within themselves. So I work with them after they've left the person, the abuser. So that's kind of what I do and the space that I work in.
Okay. Great to me you all. Can we read it right in?
Sure. Yeah.
So Dr. Vaknin, I know that you are.
Tell me some.
We'd make the whole thing shorter. Yeah.
Well, we'll make the whole thing shorter. Well, call him Sam. Call him Sam. Oh, Sam. Oh, call you Sam. Sorry. I think my headphones are not engaged. Sam. Okay. Sam.
So you are a professor of psychology and an author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. Anything else that you want to talk about for your bio?
I think these are the two salient points. The only thing, maybe a historical commentary. I started the whole narcissistic abuse thing in the 1980s. I suspect long before you ladies were born. In the 1980s? No. No?
Okay. Okay. Ladies, don't tell on their ages.
So, I had to coin a whole new language. A lot of the, many of the words you were using, actually, I came up with them. I coined them, including narcissistic abuse. And then I went online. I was the first and only person online discussing narcissism and narcissistic abuse for well over 10 years. And then many others joined me. And here we all are.
Wow. That's amazing.
And then I know that you had said that you yourself were diagnosed as...
That was the reason I got interested in the whole thing.
That's absolutely fascinating.
Yeah. It's been a long journey. But I suspect your viewers are far less interested in my personal history and reminiscences than in the topic itself. So I suggest we delve right in.
Dive right in. Okay.
So we just have a few questions. And this is for our viewers, obviously, that are stuck in these toxic relationships and unfortunately most of them are trying to find a way out so that's where we lean on your expertise.
But we know one of the most dangerous times is when someone is in the process of leaving a toxic relationship so what would you say would be some of the warning signs that someone should look for in order to navigate through avoiding, you know, narcissistic tendencies to explode and possibly get violent?
Well, each and every one of the questions that you were kind enough to send me in advance, each and one of these questions can be answered in 10 hours and six hours and three hours, because there's so much to talk about. But I will try to limit myself to bullet points on each and every one of these questions.
Start with the first one. I would group the warning signs into three classifications or categories. First one would be aggression. Aggression could be internalized, and then it becomes passive aggression, sabotage, undermining, and so on. Aggression could be externalized, and then it's verbal aggression, physical aggression, and so forth.
Any hint of aggression is a very bad sign, because aggression is not what we call in psychology self-delimiting. In other words, aggression feeds on itself. It's a positive reinforcement for itself. The more aggressive you become, the more aggressive you become. So that's an exceedingly worrying sign.
The second group of symptoms or behaviors or syndromes, or call it what you want, is withdrawal when the person begins to withdraw, but in a bad way, in a kind of, as I said, passive-aggressive way, a withdrawal that is coupled with mood disorders or mood lability, ups and downs, depression and sudden elation and so and so forth.
Physical withdrawal, where the person insists on physical separation. Withdrawal via proxy, it's when the person refuses to communicate with you except via third parties. Silent treatment is an example of such a strategy of withdrawal.
So aggression, withdrawal. And I would say the third category is what we call in the literature, Uncanny Valley. Uncanny Valley is just a fancy name for your gut instinct. You ought to trust your intuition.
Research has shown that your intuition is wrong 50% of a time when it comes to data, when it comes to information, when it comes to specific events, or prognosticating the future. But your intuition is right, 90% of the time, when it has to do with other people. So trust your gut instinct, trust your intuition.
If something feels alright, it's because it is all right. If something feels dangerous, it's because it is dangerous. Just trust yourself. And at the first sign of aggression, when your gut instinct is flaring up or whatever, just walk away.
These are the three categories. Within each category, there are dozens of signs and symptoms and behaviors and so on.
Excellent answers. Thank you so much.
So question number two, how can we recognize the signs that we are possibly in an abusive relationship? I know sometimes people don't even realize what abuse is or what it looks like, but maybe just, again, a bullet point, a few signs that you are possibly or probably in an abusive relationship.
The thing is that abuse is compatible with the psychology of many types of people.
So, for example, an abuser is well matched with a people pleaser. An abuser is well matched with a codependent, with a borderline, someone with borderline personality disorder.
So abuse is a reactive or a responsive behavior. It caters to the psychological need of the victim. Otherwise, they would not be trauma bonding.
This very strong glue that holds abuser and victim together is because they each need each other. It's a danse macabre. It's a collusion. It's a collaboration.
And so educating people as to how to discern abuse and how to flee from abuse is very useful, of course. Waking them up, so to speak, an awakening.
So I would say that there are six major signs. They are like 2,000 minor signs, but there are six major signs.
Number one, if you are disrespected. It's an exceedingly, exceedingly pertinent and salient point. Disrespect means that you are being objectified or dehumanized, that you're considered to be inferior, that there is contempt for you.
Then second sign is a breach of your boundaries, on condition that you have communicated your boundaries unequivocally, not aggressively, but unequivocally, and that you made clear what is the cost of breaching your boundaries. If you have done that and your boundaries are still being breached, that is abuse.
The third sign is aggression, the aforementioned aggression, whether externalized or internalized, aggression in the vast majority of cases, is actually internalized, not externalized. It manifests in a variety of covert, covert, passive-aggressive ways.
So you need to be very alert and attuned to the manifestations and expressions of aggression.
For example, a brutal sense of humor is a form of aggression. Tough love is a form of aggression. Tough love is a form of aggression. Criticizing you constantly is a form of aggression, even if the abuser claims that he is doing it for your own good, for your edification and personal improvement and growth and so on.
So aggression has many guises, it's multifarious, it's shape-shifting. It's a big problem to capture aggression and define it appropriately.
But still, you feel that the intent is hostile somehow.
Again, rely on your gut instinct, rely on your intuition, tells you something's wrong, something's wrong.
The next point is control.
Control usually is coercive. There is a form of micromanagement.
But control doesn't need to be prescriptive. Prescriptive control is, I'm telling you what you are, what you're allowed to do, and I'm telling you what you're not allowed to do. That's prescriptive control.
Control can have many guises exactly like aggression. It is a form of aggression, actually.
For example, I can be intrusive. Intrusion, being intrusive is a form of control. Wanting to know everything about you, every second of your day, what have you been doing? Who have you been doing it with? This is a form of control, informational control.
Control could be spying on you. Control could be using third parties to spy on you.
Control could be deciding to which restaurant you would go without consulting you. Taking the car keys and driving the car. Without asking you for permission. That's control. It's surreptitious. It's stealth. But it's still control. It's a bad sign.
The next sign is instability and unpredictability.
Unpredictability allows the abuser to control you. It creates something called intermittent reinforcement.
It's when a behavior that is unpredictable and unstable, like hot and cold, you know, love you, hate you. This kind of behavior creates a new dependency on the next outcome, on the next stage.
And so you become addicted to these ups and downs and these cycles because you anticipate the good while ignoring or repressing or denying the bad.
That's another sign.
And there are many, many, many more. But I think these are the key signs to look for.
Excellent.
Very, very, very well said. Thank you.
Thank you.
So I think two and three are going to be kind of together, because I think those are, you know, some tactics that you had mentioned within that.
No, actually, I prepared something special for three.
Oh, very good. Great.
Okay, so number three.
So what are some common?
Number two of the signs that you're being abused. Number three are the techniques that the abuser is using.
Okay.
Excellent. Great.
****REDACTED
They're not necessarily co-exam.
So again, there are hundreds of techniques, literally, hundreds.
In my original work in the late 1980s, and the first edition of my book was published in 1999, that's also very early on. In that book, I've identified well over 60 techniques. And that was a very long time ago. It was like three decades ago.
We've learned a lot since then. There are probably easily, 100 frequently used techniques of abuse.
Wow.
But I think the major ones are the following.
Gaslighting, making you doubt your own perception of reality, your ability to gauge reality and your judgment of reality and of other people.
So that you become highly dependent on the abusers' reality testing. He becomes your interface with reality.
When I say he, of course, women are also abusers. It's not limited to men.
So reality is mediated via the filter of the abuse of filters reality for you.
That's gaslighting. It's a control. It's a manipulative Machiavellian control technique.
The next is intimidation. Straightforward intimidation.
Intimidation could be overt, threats and so on, could be covert. Could be a menacing body posture, constant body language, words that create uncertainty or fear, and so on.
So intimidation.
Unpredictability that I've mentioned.
Guilt-tripping and emotional blackmail. These are forms of abuse, of course, because when you guilt-trip someone, then you're able to control them and modify their behaviors.
Triggering someone when you push someone's buttons, when you know what they're sensitive to, allergic to if you wish, afraid of, and so on, and you keep pushing these buttons as a strategy, not occasionally, not unintentionally, but as a strategy, this leads to internalized CPTSD, internalized complex trauma in effect.
It's as if the trauma is happening inside, not outside.
And then there is the maternal protective posture.
It's when the abuser actually behaves as a child would and triggers in you maternal and protective instincts, thereby captivating you, baiting you, luring you into a fantasy, or the shared fantasy, in the case of a narcissists, or into a fantastic space in the case of a psychopath and so on.
It's always a fantasy, by the way. It's always a dream. It's never real.
The abuser's worst nightmare is reality. He needs to divorce you from reality and from anyone who can anchor you in reality, your family members, your friends, your social network, because they are bridges to reality. He needs to de-realize you.
Now, de-realization is a dissociative mechanism. It's a pathology.
So he induces in you a pathology in a thing. He renders you borderline, if you wish. He creates a simulation of a borderline state, a borderline personality organization, by forcing you to dissociate, to cut off reality all the time.
So this game of a little child, I'm a small child, I'm a little child, I'm in need of protection, I'm in need of comfort, of soothing, of love, of this game is highly abusive because it cuts you off from reality. It's a fantastic figment, what we call a paracosm in clinical psychology.
Then the last strategy or technique or whatever is the smear campaign and the flying monkeys.
Flying monkeys is a phrase I coined. It's not borrowed from the Wizard of Oz. That's a common misconception online.
Anyhow, flying monkeys and smear campaigns are the long arms of the abuser. It's like sending an army overseas to invade a country or whatever. So it's a long arm of the abuser. It allows the abuser plausible deniability.
It wasn't me. I didn't do anything. I wasn't even there.
And on the one hand, and on the other hand, it allows the abuser to modulate escalation.
Because you could think of flying monkeys as Lego bricks. So you can add flying monkeys or subtract flying monkeys or augment the pressure or reduce the pressure. It's a very sophisticated mechanism. Perhaps the most pernicious abusive technique there is.
Among the flying monkeys, and that is the thing that hurts, you could find your own mother. You can find your close family, immediate family. You can find your best friend.
The abuser is great at converting other people into flying monkeys by falsifying their perception of reality, by compromising their reality testing, in short, by gaslighting them.
It's infectious. It's a contagious mechanism.
So these are really some, sampling of abusive techniques.
There's verbal abuse. There's physical abuse. There's sexual abuse. I mean, there's so many.
Abuse is any situation where your boundaries are not recognized and you are not allowed to act separately from the abuser.
When the abuser insists on controlling you to the point of merging with you, becoming one with you, so that you are denied personal autonomy and agency and independence because you're just an extension of the abuser. You're just a tool, you're just an instrument. You're just a prop in his theatre production.
And that applies to all abusers, whether mentally ill or not.
One myth, one common myth, is that all abusers are mentally ill or suffer from personality disorders.
That's completely untrue. The vast majority of abusers are totally mentally healthy.
They are obsessed with control. They're obsessed with control for a variety of reasons. They are sadistic, some of them, and so on.
But majority of them are not narcissists. They're not psychopaths. They're not.
And that's a common myth online.
Wow, my mind is blown right now.
Amazing.
These are bad people.
You know, we used to call them bad people before there was psychology. Just to call them evil people, bad people. Bad people. They're simply bad seeds, you know? That's all.
Yeah.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, this is amazing. Absolutely amazing information. Thank you.
All right. So number four, so how can the victim overcome those feelings? You know, especially when they're trying to separate themselves, you know, from this abusive person. And they've got all these emotions going on. And, you know, are there tactics that they can use to help them overcome all of that?
Guilt, shame, you know, incredible fear, etc.
Yeah. First of all, on my channel, on my YouTube channel, there is a playlist. It's titled narcissistic abuse, healing, and recovery. It has well over 100, totally free videos, which deal with hundreds of recovery and healing techniques and strategies and so on, so forth. Mine and others, not limited to mine.
So this is totally free resource, which I think would be of hell.
Abuses hate sunshine. Sunshine disinfects abuse. It's a disinfectant.
So the first thing is to make it public.
Now, the normal reflex of the victim is to keep it hidden. To keep it hidden. There's a lot of shame. There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of self-castigation. How could I have been so stupid?
There's a lot of self-castigation. How could I have been so stupid?
So there's an attempt to preserve what we call the self-concept.
There are numerous good reasons to keep it hidden, psychological reasons, as far as the victim is concerned.
But that's wrong.
The first thing is to let in sunshine, to disinfect the abuse.
Number two, the victim must regain reality testing. It must regain its foothold in reality, which had been denied it by the abuser.
So the only way to do this initially is to talk to people. People will help you restore reality testing, but you have to listen to them.
Victims initially have strong defenses, strong resistance to the truth. They refuse to listen to the truth.
I mean, I've been subjected to abuse by victims, simply because I was telling the truth, you know.
And so there's a huge resistance of the truth. You need to get rid of this. You need to regain your composure as far as reality is concerned, and you need to get re-embedded in reality, in touch.
Never mind how painful reality is, how abrasive, how harsh, how unwanted. That's your only medicine. You have to self-medicate with reality.
So the second thing you need to do, you need to suppress, repress and erase the abuser's voice in your head.
All abusers install in your head an app, an app that is known in clinical psychology as introject. The process is known as introjection.
It's a voice. It's the voice of the abuser.
The problem is the voice of the abuser is not alone. It creates coalitions with similar-minded voices.
So, for example, if you had a mother who put you down all the time, criticize you all the time, or whatever, the abuser's voice would create a coalition with her voice, and they would both attack you from within.
So it's sadistic, it's self-defeating and self-destructive.
You need to get rid of this voice. You need to identify it, and then you need to shut it up.
If necessary, say it aloud. Shut the F up. I don't want to listen to you. You know? Suppress the introject.
I explain on my channel how to do it exactly. I give the step-by-step methodology on how to accomplish this. We do it in therapy, in various treatment modalities, exactly what we do. In CBT, for example.
So the next thing is you need to get rid of emotional thinking.
Victims of abuse are denied access to reality and denied personal autonomy. Consequently, they are no longer used to thinking rationally.
We employ rational thinking because we are goal-oriented. We want to accomplish something. We want to do something.
But if we are denied independence, if there's nothing we can do without permission, so there's no need to use rational thinking.
So as victims get used, to think emotionally, to think with their emotions. And then they begin to confuse emotions with reality. They begin to confuse emotions with rationality, and they become totally emotionally dysregulated.
So the third element on first step is to re-regulate your emotions, to regain emotional regulation, control of your emotions, and whenever you engage in thinking, which is a cognitive process, you can identify it easily, whenever you engage in thinking, if you spot any hint of emotion, remove it.
Healthy people can engage in partly emotional thinking. You cannot afford it as a victim. For a while. You will get healthy. The prognosis is excellent, by the way.
But when you're in this stage, you are not healthy. Abuses make you mentally unhealthy. It's unfortunate, but it's true.
So you need to think of yourself as someone in need of help, someone who is not right in the head, temporarily, until you are right in the head again.
And the last point I would make is that you need to abandon the abuser's hooks.
Abuser has hooks into you, has cast hooks into you. It's like fishing. You're a fish, and there's a hook in your mouth.
You need to get rid of these hooks. I mentioned one of these hooks.
The abuses alleged suffering inner child.
You know, you see the abuses say, deep inside there is this suffering child.
If I only give him love and compassion, he will be okay. He will flourish. His behavior will change.
Get rid of this. Forget this. This is a hook. This is a bait. You need to unbate yourself.
So you need to make a list, a mental list or a physical list. You need to make a list of everything that he has told you that made you addicted to him, or made you protective of him, or made you love him, or made you compromise your own principles and standards and boundaries.
All these are hooks, debates, and you need to let go of them.
It's very painful to let go of them. Because if your maternal instinct or reflex has been triggered, you're a mother. You have to get rid of your child. You have to give up on your child.
Never mind that this child could be twice your size and, you know, muscular. It's still your child. And you have to give up on your child.
Never mind that this child could be twice your size and, you know, muscular. It's still your child and you have to give up on your child.
It's very painful.
All these baits and hooks are your hot button topics. He knows how to push your button. He has to press your buttons. He knows how to program you, your program.
And you need to deprogram yourself. It's like cult, exactly like what we do in cults, with cult members.
Okay, that's in a nutshell. Very big nutshell. Yeah.
Wow. This is taking me back to, wow. It's been a long time since I've been with my ex, but this is all taking me back to all those things. And they are so true. They are so true. Goodness. Thank you.
Okay. Question number five. What strategies can we use to protect ourselves and our children during and after the separation?
Lizzie had a good friend that was murdered by her husband, and he didn't ever even show any signs of physical abuse. It was just all emotional.
And then he, you know, he somehow caught wind that she might be leaving. She hadn't even left yet, right, Lizzie?
And so he said, hey, let's meet at this certain place, which she did feel uncomfortable about it because she reached out and, you know, stated the fact that it seemed strange.
And then he took her life and his own life and left the children orphaned.
So obviously this is something that's near and dear to our heart.
So what strategies should we use?
Obviously, we know our intuition is a huge one.
But are there any other strategies that we should use to protect ourselves and our children?
Yeah. I'm going to, what I'm going to say now is going to provoke all of you, probably, and sound utterly counterintuitive.
But everything I say, because I'm a professor, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a clinician. I'm a professor of psychology.
So I have to teach people.
So in order to teach people, I have to learn.
So I spend most of the time learning, a small amount of time teaching.
And there are some counterintuitive things.
And because they're counterintuitive, it grants the abuser an advantage.
People follow common sense.
Abuses are not common-sensical.
They're not. It doesn't make sense to abuse people.
So totally self-defeating strategy. It's crazy. It's crazy making, you know. So you need to be crazy.
So here's the first thing. Your children come second, not first.
And the reason is something known as modeling. Modeling is a concept in a theory known as social cognitive theory or social learning theory. It says the children are exposed to models, role models. So they're exposed to a father, they're supposed to a mother and so on.
Now let's for discussion sake, assume that the father is the abuser and the mother is the abused party.
The children are going to observe, they observe all the time. They observe and absorb, observe and so on.
And then they make up their minds, which of the two parents to follow.
What I'm trying to say is that you have precious little control over this process.
The only thing you can do is serve as a good role model.
But you can't really control the outcomes, which many, many people think they can.
They actually cannot. It's counterproductive if they do try. It pushes the children away. It creates a bad model.
So your children come second. You need to take care of yourself and you need to provide your children with a good role model. Healthy, resilient, strong, rational, non-aggressive, and so on.
You need to work on yourself first and foremost.
There is this famous metaphor, you're on an airplane, and so on, and so you put the oxygen mask first and the children come second.
Children come second, period.
Number two, you need to suppress your empathy. Your empathy is your enemy.
Initially, everything I'm saying, I'm limiting to your question. Your question was about the transition period, from an abuser to, you know, hopefully non-abuser. So, I'm talking about this transition period.
During this transition period, your empathy is your worst enemy.
It makes you treat the abuser humanely.
Big mistake. Serious mistake. Any lawyer would tell you. It's a serious mistake.
So you need to suppress your empathy. Your empathy also got intermeshed with the hooks and baits that I mentioned. Your empathy is the one that pushes you to love the inner child of the abuser, the alleged inner child of the abuser. It's your empathy. It's your empathy and your maternal instinct.
So these are things that are working, they're not in your favor initially.
Next, of course, is you should minimize contact.
At the end of the 1980s, I created a set of 27 strategies, and I gave them the title, no contact. And today, everyone is using and saying, no contact, no contact. That's my original work. And it's 27 strategies, not one.
There's a video available on my channel explaining the 27 strategies, but in the crux of it is you should minimize contact where possible and you should interact via proxy where possible. Like lawyers, accountants, you know, and then people say, but I want my child to have a father.
What for? Which kind of father? Or she's my mother, I can't abandon her.
Why? Why can't you abandon an abuser? Oh, he's my son. I love him. I owe it to him. I gave him life.
These are all excuses to stay in touch.
The victim has a propensity, a proclivity, a strong drive to stay in touch with the abuser. Because it is only the abuser that can take the pain away. The abuser gave you the pain. The abuser gave you the fear. He who gave is the only one who can take it back.
So you feel dependent on the abuser as a self-soothing, as a soothing, sorry, option. He is the only one who can soothe you. You can take away this hurt and everything, so, but it's very bad.
Abuses make use of it, of course. They hover you and they, you know, they come back into your life in a variety of ways, underhanded, overhanded, you know.
No contact is the only thing. Your mother, no contact. Your son, no contact. Your ex-husband, no contact.
The children don't need a father. Bye-bye. No contact.
And there are no ways around no contact. There's no minimal no contact and 96% no contact. No contact is no contact. End of story.
You don't accept his gifts. You don't answer his emails. You don't talk. You don't meet. You don't rehash the past. You don't seek closure. You don't let him visit the kids if you can manage it.
You don't. He's out of your life. End of story. If possible.
Of course, life, sometimes, you know, we're exposed to exigencies and sometimes we're forced to.
But wherever possible, minimize contact.
Some people have a business together, for example. It's difficult. Children together. Okay, I understand. But wherever possible.
Next point is educate. Don't alienate.
And that applies to everyone. Educate your children about what has happened. But do not alienate, alienate them from the abuser.
Don't become a one woman or one man smear campaign, you know, it's bad.
And similarly, educate your family, but don't alienate them. Don't blame them, don't accuse them, don't attack them, don't criticize them.
Educate, don't alienate.
But educate.
Educate the teachers of your children. Educate your children. Educate your friends and neighbors and family. And if necessary, the authorities, and if possible, the media. Educate all the time. That's what you're doing. All three of you are educating. That's good.
And the last point is, you're damaged, you're broken. There is no relationship with an abuser that leaves you whole. That's self-aggrandizing nonsense. No one remains whole. Never mind how strong and resilient and educated and accomplished and amazing. No one remains whole.
So you're broken and you're damaged. Avoid triggers. Do not act impulsively or recklessly. Be measured. Hold it. Slow down. Do not trust yourself initially. Do not trust yourself initially. Wait. Just wait.
You will know when you have been restored, when you have regained your previous identity, because your identity has been taken away, has been absconded with. You're no longer the same person. Don't kid yourself.
Okay. That's excellent.
Excellent, excellent, excellent. All right.
Question number six, and it might kind of intermesh with number five, but how can I cope with the emotional and psychological impact?
There's so much to say that you need not worry about intermission, about overlaps, because there's so much to say that.
Okay, very good. We could talk for many more hours.
So number six is the first thing I think you should let go of pathological hope or what I call malignant optimism.
So it is this malignant optimism or pathological hope that you could have changed things, that somehow things were under, that you were in control of things somehow.
Somehow it's your fault. Had you only acted differently, had you only made a different choice or decision, had you only been there or not been there?
I mean, this is known as autoplastic defense.
Autoplastic defense is when we tend to blame ourselves for things that go bad or go wrong because the alternative is to say we are helpless.
So we would rather feel guilty and shamed than admit that we are helpless.
So the first thing is humility. You need to develop humility. You need to be humble and realize that no, you are not in control. You are helpless.
And therefore, by implication, I would say none of this is your fault.
Most abusers operate according to deeply embedded internal psychological dynamics, which have nothing to do with you. You are totally interchangeable.
And here's another lesson that is very difficult for victims to accept.
You are commoditized. You are like so many grains of rice.
You have not been chosen. You've not been chosen because of your traits or properties, you've been chosen because you were available and willing to participate in the game somehow.
So because you're interchangeable, that means that you have contributed little to nothing.
You do need to assume responsibility, but not for the abuse. You need to assume responsibility for your own faulty mate selection, choices, decisions.
You ask yourself, what's wrong with me? Why did I end up in this situation?
But do not ask yourself, what could I have done differently to prevent the abuse?
Nothing. Don't bother. Absolutely nothing.
Reverse the roles. Abusers dictate. You follow. You dictate. Let him follow. Reverse the roles.
Next, suppress the introject. Remember the voice of the abuser in your head?
When you suppress this introject, silence it, the introject, you're able to separate from the abuser.
And the minute you separate from the abuser, you become your own individual. And then you're able to regain your identity.
Now, this is a replay. This is a reenactment of an early childhood process.
When we're very small, like 18 months old, to 36 months old, there is a phase known as separation individuation. It's when we separate from mommy usually, and we become individuals.
And what the abuser does, the abuser regresses you, infantilizes you. He makes you an infant again, because you become totally dependent on the abuser.
And so you become an infant. As an infant, you regress beyond back to the phase prior to separation individuation. We call this the symbiotic phase.
You create a symbiosis with the abuser. So you're a baby. When the abuser is gone, you're 18 months old.
And now you need to separate again, all over again, and become an individual all over again, because you've been regressed.
Back to the womb. Womb, in Latin, is matrix. That's the matrix. You've been in the movie, all of you.
Okay. No dependency.
So separation, individuation is getting rid of dependency.
Next is you need to embody, to embody everything. So whichever stage you're going through, you need to work through your body as well.
This is a wonderful book. The Body Keeps the Score. And I recommend for everyone to read it. So embodiment is very critical.
In other words, don't limit yourself to your mind, to your psychology, but work through your body.
If necessary, meditation, yoga, I don't know what works for you. Whatever works for you. Jogging, hiking. Work through your body. Get intimate with your body.
The abuser divorced you from your body because your experiences during the abuse were very bad.
And we all experience through the body. If you are sad, you feel it in the body. If you are mad, you feel it in the body. If you, whatever happens to you, it's the body that speaks to you.
So you learn to regard your body as the enemy. He, the abuser estranged you from your body. You were estranged, like an strange couple.
You need to make peace with your body and become intimate again. So this is a part of self-loving.
You need to learn or relearn how to love yourself. You have made mistakes, mistakes which were detrimental to your well-being, sometimes your safety, personal safety.
You acted unwisely. You did not listen to your intuition. You do deserve criticism. You deserve to be criticized by yourself. I mean, you deserve to criticize yourself.
So this diminishes self-love. You're very angry at yourself. Anger and self-love don't go well together.
You need to relearn how to love yourself, how to accept yourself, how to become your best friend again, how to trust yourself, and so on.
I have a video dedicated to that as well in the list that I mentioned.
Finally, you need to share. You need to share, you need to share, especially emotions, but not only. And you need to share with people whom you trust.
In other words, you need to reconstitute your social network, but not only in order to have fun and so on, but in order to be able to share.
Now, therapy is a form of sharing, but an expensive one. Good friends are much cheaper, and they are as effective, actually.
Share, share, share all the time. Do not give in to your shame, to your guilt, to your fears, just share. It's very important.
This actually is the main ingredient in healing and recovery.
We know, for example, the people who are alone, they have no social network, die earlier and are much sicker.
So this leaves question seven, but I don't know if we have time. I have time. I don't know if you have time.
Yeah, we have time. Yeah. Okay. This is too good. We just can't cut it off.
Okay. What techniques can I use to manage stress, anxiety, and depression?
I came up with a group of techniques. I called them the nine-fold path. And you can find them on my YouTube channel. I'll summarize it very briefly, as briefly as I can.
That nine-fold path is divided into three groups of three, of three principles.
So the first group is the body.
You need to pay attention to your body, you need to regulate your body, and you need to be protective of your body, your health and so, so forth.
The second group is the mind.
You need to emphasize authenticity. You need to be yourself as much as possible. You need to be positive, positivity, and you need to be grounded in the present. You need to, that's known as mindfulness.
So in the mind part, you have authenticity, positivity and mindfulness.
And in the functional part, you need to act in three ways.
You need to be a vigilant observer.
Vigilant observer means you need to monitor reality all the time, but not be suspicious and paranoid.
Just monitor it, the way a scientist would do, let's say.
So this is the vigilant observer.
Why?
Because during the years or months or whatever that you have spent with the abuser, you have learned to outsource this to the abuser, this function.
So the abuser became your eyes and ears and your interface with reality.
You need to regain this capacity.
So you need to observe.
Next is the shielding sensor.
The shielding sensor, you need to build a censor or a censorship against introjects, against internal voices that try to put you down or to take you down.
You have many such voices. It's not limited to the abuser. Some of us have mothers who did this to us, fathers, teachers, influential peers, even media figures.
Don't let people, don't let these voices, drag you down, denigrate you, demean you, criticize, chastise. Don't let them.
There's a simple test. How would you identify these voices?
They don't like you. They don't love you. They sound more like enemies, or not even frenemies, but enemies.
So when you hear an enemy voice, you know, I mean, Israeli, I don't know about you, but I mean, Israeli, we shoot them down. When you were in a drone, you shoot it down. That's an introject.
These introjects are not your friends, so you need to take care of it. That's the shielding sensor.
And the last function is the reality sentinel. That's the test, what we call reality testing.
You need to, in the wake of your relationship with the abuser, you've been immersed in fantasy for a very long time and you've learned to see the world through the abuser's eyes. You've been gaslighted and so on.
So you would tend to misidentify fantasy as reality.
And you need this third function, the reality sentinel, to tell you, this is fantasy, this is reality, and, you know, stick to reality.
That's a very difficult thing to re-develop or to accomplish, because fantasy is very comforting. Fantasy is soothing. And fantasy, you control fantasy. You can tailor fantasy. You can customize it.
So it feels like a second skin, while reality pushes back. Reality grades, you know, there's friction with reality. There's no friction with fantasy.
So this is the test, by the way. The test of the reality sentinel, if it feels uncomfortable, it's reality. If it feels too good to be reality, it's not reality. If it feels too smooth, too frictionless, to fitting, perfect, resonant with you, and so it's probably not reality.
I think these are the nine elements.
Al-Rica, very briefly, body, attention, regulation, protection, protect your body.
Mind, be authentic, be positive, and be in the present. Mindfulness.
And functions maintain a vigilant observer. Always be alert, but don't be paranoid. A shielding sensor to silence the voices that are trying to damage you, and a reality sentinel.
I think these nine principles encompass everything we know about recovery and healing, to the best of my knowledge, as far as I know.
Excellent. Absolutely love it. Where were you back when we needed you?
I don't know.
I've been around since the 1980s. Where were you, lady?
I know, where were we? Geez, goodness gracious.
Okay, well, Dr. Vaknin, this has been an absolute pleasure and fantastic answers, like really, really excellent, deep wisdom that I know our audience is going to absolutely cherish. So I can't thank you enough for your time. And where can people find you?
I know you said you have a YouTube channel. Is there anywhere else that people can find you in your work?
Well, the YouTube channel, most of my work is academic, so I'm afraid it won't be accessible to a typical, you know, layman.
But the YouTube channel is my way of creating a bridge between academia and the public, and fighting off many self-styled experts who are contaminating the field.
But there's 1,700 videos on the recovery and healing playlist, as I said, there's more than 100.
And every topic, every topic you can imagine in relationships with abusers, I've been doing it for 15 years on YouTube. So there's a lot there. Every topic is covered in a playlist or in a compilation. There's also a playlist of compilations, the compilations of thematic. I believe anyone can find something there.
Okay. Excellent. All right. Ladies, do you have anything else to add?
No, just thank you so much. It was such a joy. I appreciate it.
Thank you very much. Very, very insightful. Definitely brought back a lot of memories of exactly how I felt at that time. So definitely resonated with everything you said and really, really grateful and appreciative.
Thank you so much.
Thank you all three. Take care.
Thank you. You too. Bye bye.