How many of you have played the game of snakes and ladders when you were lads?
You have this board, and then you roll dice, and you move your pawn on the board.
If you reach the bottom of a ladder, you climb up instantaneously and meteorically to the top of the board.
However, if you reach the head of a snake, you descend down this slithery slope to the tail of the snake at the very bottom of the hierarchy.
And this is snakes and ladders, and it reminds me very much of narcissistic supply.
Narcissistic supply is a game of snakes and ladders because the availability of supply, the regularity of supply, the quality of supply, they all depend on the rolling of the dice. Life's dice, the reaction of the environment.
The narcissist acts in certain ways, behaves typically as behavioral patterns, says certain things, utterances, and then awaits the feedback and the input from the environment.
And it is this input that determines the inner composure and the psychodynamics of the narcissist.
It's a bit like snakes and ladders.
You can go up stratospherically with a compliment or praise or applause or attention or adulation or affirmation or fandom.
And then you can descend to the inner recesses of hell on the back of a snake when as a narcissist you're rebuffed ignored criticized humiliated and shamed especially in, something known as narcissistic mortification.
It all depends on the resolve of the player, or the resolve of the narcissist in this case.
Why do we keep playing snakes and ladders, constantly frustrated, constantly losing. Why this game is a form of medieval torture spread on a board? Why do people keep playing it? Why does the narcissists keep seeking narcissistic supply despite all the setbacks and the failures and the defeats and the humiliations and the disgrace sometimes why where does this resolve and resilience where do they come from?
They are founded on the belief in changes of fortune and serendipity.
This is known as magical thinking.
The narcissist is entitled.
He believes that he deserves, deserves the best, deserves the most, deserves to be unique, deserves attention, he deserves, or she deserves, half of all narcissists are women.
This sense of desert, I am owed something, I'm entitled to something, is at the core of the narcissist's magical thinking because it is justice that rules the narcissist's life.
The narcissists believes that cosmic justice will see to it that he ends up being recognized or rich or unique or attended to or catered to or serviced or whatever it's all part of the cosmic fabric, cosmic pattern, if you wish, karmic thinking.
The narcissist says to himself I will go on playing, i'm resolved to continue to play.
Because I believe in an inevitable, in in in a lackable change of fortune.
I believe in serendipity, says the narcissist.
It's because I deserve it. I deserve these miracles. I deserve these secrets. I deserve this law of attraction.
And that is, of course, a prime example of magical thinking.
Magical thinking, therefore, is the motivational, attitudinal background to narcissistic supply, or more precisely to the pursuit of narcissistic supply.
But what happens when narcissistic supply despite everything, despite all the beliefs and the faith and the magical thinking and the miracles and the inevitable serendipity or changing fortune, despite all this, there's no narcissistic supply. What happens when narcissistic supply becomes chronically or structurally deficient, a state known as collapse.
It's very difficult on the narcissist.
Narcissistic collapse is a harrowing experience because narcissistic collapse, the continued absence of narcissistic supply or continued depletion of narcissistic supply.
Narcissistic collapse challenges the narcissist's worldview, the narcissists self-concept, the narcissistic self-image and self-perception as deserving, as entitled, as special, as unique, as Godlike, it challenges, it underminescognitive distortion, aka grandiosity.
The lack of supply or the dwindling of supply kind of collapse around the narcissist his world. They undermine the foundations of his vent and shroud, his worldview.
He can no longer, when narcissistic supply is absent, the narcissist can no longer make sense of the world, of his life, everything looks meaningless.
He is angry and enraged and indignant because he deserves narcissistic supply. Something is wrong in the world. Reality is misconstrued. Stupid people, envious of him, are taking him down.
He resorts to paranoid ideation.
And so the narcissist unravels in the absence of narcissistic supply.
The glue that holds the narcissist together is gone, and all the pieces and fragments and shards of the narcissist fall on the floor, like so many pieces of an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle.
The narcissist attempts to conjure up or to whip up new supply by coaxing people, cosigning them, by somehow pushing them to provide him with supply. He recruits new sources of narcissistic supplying within new and revived shared fantasies.
So it's desperation. When narcissistic supply is in short supply, there is desperation.
The narcissist becomes destitute devastated he catastrophizes anticipates the worst and he flails about he becomes hysterical and much and more and more compulsive in his attempts to reconstruct a pathological narcissistic space within which narcissistic supply will be replenished become plentiful and sources of supply would be abandoned.
And it is a labor of desperation. It's absolute panic. It's a panic reaction.
If this fails, the narcissist tries to self-supply.
I have several videos on this channel regarding this phenomenon of self-supply.
When the narcissist fails to construct an environment from which he can extract narcissistic supply on a regular basis an environment where narcissistic supply would be predictable and plentiful then the narcissist disengages from the environment becomes schizoid constricts his or her life isolates himself becomes introverted and begins to build from the bottom up a channel or a conduit of self-supply, a system that will provide him with supply which is self-generated.
How this done what is the nature of this supply I've dealt with in multiple videos on my channel search the channel for self-supply or search the mind of the narcissist playlist on this channel.
But sometimes reality is so overwhelming that never mind how delusional the narcissist is, self-supply spatters and then grinds to a halt and ceases altogether.
So this is going down the rabbit hole initially above ground there is this nice entrance the sources of supply narcissistic supply pathological narcissistic space the environment which is conducive to the generation and consumption of supply.
And then when this fails, the narcissist goes into the rabbit hole, on stage one of the rabbit hole, is self-supply.
And if this fails, the narcissist descends even deeper, actually freefalls even deeper.
He becomes depressed and more rarely emotionally dysregulated, a bit like borderline.
The narcissist at this stage, when regular supply has failed and self-supply has failed, at this stage the narcissist acts out by introducing distractions into his life.
So he may suddenly travel all the time, shop compulsively, have casual sex, abuse substances. Whatever the case may be, the idea would be to occupy oneself to the point that there would be no time to confront the terrifying fact of the absence of narcissistic supply.
When you're busy traveling, when you're busy shopping, when you're busy having casual sex and picking up dates, when you're busy at whatever the case is, when you're busy collecting things, hoarding, when you're busy doing these things, your mind is not free to dwell on the painful, shameful, and disintegrative lack of narcissistic supply. You simply forget about it.
And so these are the distractions.
Other narcissists who are confronted with the situation of lack of regular supply and lack of self supply, other narcissists choose drama.
They are having torrid and ill-fated affairs. They invest in risky ventures. They find themselves acting criminally, anti-socially.
So distractions and drama are the two solutions and their psychological function is to clutter, occupy the mind of the narcissist in order to avoid the problem of deficient narcissistic supply.
When you're busy, you're too busy to realize that you're not obtaining supply.
The life of the narcissist becomes chaotic.
Distractions and drama are not conducive to any structure and order.
And it is this chaos that allows him to suspend his addiction to and dependence on narcissistic supply.
We could therefore say that distracting activity, not distractive, but distracting activities, distractions and drama are full-fledged substitutes for narcissistic supply and I've dealt with it in my video yesterday about the role of drama in cluster B personality disorders.
This is very close to the bottom of the rabbit hole.
And when distractions and drama collude in the narcissist's life, they sometimes get out of control. They snowball into an avalanche which threatens to consume the narcissists.
Destructions can easily deteriorate into self-mutilation and self-harm, for example by consuming drugs and alcohol. And drama can easily devolve into crime and worse.
So this last phase, the bottom of the rabbit hole, often devolves into self-defeating and self-destructive acts.
This is the equivalent of molting or shedding ectesis in snakes. You know, snakes shed their skin. It's not actually skin, but never mind. Snakes shed their skin, they molt and they grow new skin.
At the bottom of the rabbit hole of narcissistic supply, this is exactly what the narcissist does. He sheds his skin. He seeks to reinvent himself to create a new, grandiose narrative.
It is the rebirth of the narcissists, the rebirth of sorts of Renaissance. The narcissist emerges from the ashes and you Phoenix. It is a form of creative or disruptive destruction.
So this is the sequence.
Regular supply, all is well. The narcissist is he's egolicolic and egosyntonic.
Then regular supply dries up. The narcissist attempts to self-supply.
If reality is too much, too harsh, reality pushes back and does not allow the narcissist to deceive himself or delude himself into self-supply, self-supply dies away and is not available.
At that point, the narcissist acts out the way a borderline does and also becomes emotionally disregulated and or mood-labile, very reminiscent of borderline.
And then the acting out of the narcissists involves drama or distracting activities, distractions, or both.
The idea is simply to forget everything about narcissistic supply. I'm so busy right now, I don't have time to mourn or grieve the absence of narcissistic supply.
But these activities, the drama and the distractions, lead to self-destruction or self-defeat.
And the narcissist then needs to reinvent himself from scratch, from zero, to rise from the ashes. There's a new, colorful plumed phoenix, reinvent, be reborn, and find a new, or construct a new narrative and a new shared fantasy.
You've heard of all these people who find religion in prison. Yeah, they are born again.
This is an example of narcissistic molting or narcissistic shedding.
And as always, it's reminiscent of a snake or comparable to a snake.
Because narcissists, all being said and done, are snakes.