Narcissist’s Self-supply Techniques

I'm a man who keeps his promises. Sometimes.

Well, this is one promise I'm going to keep. I'm going to give you bullet points regarding this video so that those of you who cannot tolerate my face or my voice or both for longer than three minutes can log off having grasped and having heard everything I have to say.

So here it is, the summary of today's video and those of you who would like to learn more can proceed to listen to the rest of the video.

Today's video deals with self-supply.

The techniques that narcissists use to supply themselves when they are unable to secure the supply from the environment, from other people.

The narcissist self-supplies in order to avoid collapse and in order to avoid dysphoria or depression which are usually the married companions of collapse.

And this delusional solution, self-supply of course is delusional, renders the narcissist auto-erotic.

In other words, the narcissist is emotionally invested in himself and there is no emotional investment without a sexual dimension.

So this is known as auto-erotism.

And because the narcissist converts himself into the object of his own infatuation, admiration, adulation and attraction, the narcissist is incapable of being attracted to other people.

And so the narcissist becomes cerebral asexual.

When the narcissist experiences imminent collapse and begins to self-supply, this kind of narcissist becomes cerebral even if typically he is somatic, even if the dominant type is somatic because he also becomes auto-erotic, invested in himself in every possible way and only in himself.

Now plentiful narcissistic supply when there is a lot of external narcissistic supply coming in also poses problems for the narcissist.

The narcissist reacts to an avalanche of overwhelming, drowning, dysregulating supply, unexpected supply by developing a form of fantasy that is resilient, that is counterfactual of course, it's not related to reality, it's a fantasy, but contains elements of siege, betrayal, paranoia, suspicion.

It is not a shared fantasy. It is a fantasy that involves only the narcissist and other people out there who are envious of the narcissist.

The narcissist renders himself the butt and the center of conspiracies and so on and so forth.

Now, an overabundance of narcissistic supply creates residual libido.

Narcissistic supply enhances the narcissist libido.

The narcissist uses some of the libido and then there's change left, there's libido left.

Now you can read about the narcissist's free libido, reserve libido and residual libido in the link in the description.

But suffice it to say in the bullet point summary that a narcissist who is exposed to an unexpected deluge flood of narcissistic supply becomes typically somatic because his libido explodes and there is excess libido and he doesn't know what to do with it, so he somatizes it, he sexualizes it, he becomes hypersexual.

Okay, the techniques of self-supply, which I dwell on in this video, are future orientation, exclusive privilege or superior reference, self-referential transcendence, self-audiencing, self-referential ideation and attribution, contemptuous withholding and paranoid ideation.

And if you want to learn more about these techniques, unfortunately you would have to wade through the rest of the video.

The first part of the video is an introduction to the dynamics of deficient supply and excess supply, both deficient supply and excess supply create problems for the narcissist and he defends against these problems, against these emerging issues by developing fantasies, a fantasy of self-supply and/or a fantasy of siege and betrayal.

In the first case, the narcissist becomes cerebral because he is auto-erotic, he is invested emotionally and sexually in himself, he becomes the object of his own desire.

In the second case of abundant or overabundant supply, the narcissist becomes somatic because the supply generates excess libido, excess if you wish, life-drive or life-force, excess sex drive and he uses it with partners that he objectifies and instrumentalizes and so on and so forth.

This is the summary.

Now go home and ignore the rest of the video or take out your popcorn and have fun with my with moi.

Because so very few of you are watching my videos, I decided to switch to self-supply.

I got myself a pil pilon and this pil pilon never argues with me, never criticizes me, he is always there when I need it and always nods its trunk in perfect adulation and agreement with everything I have to say.

What more can I ask for?

And this is today's topic.

The techniques of self-supply.

When the narcissist can no longer obtain supply from the external environment, he generates supply from the inside but he does it in highly specific ways which I'm going to enumerate in this unwatched video.

And who the heck am I?

My name is Sam Vaknin, I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, I'm also a former visiting professor of psychology and I'm currently on the faculty of SIAS-CIAPS International Advanced Professional Studies and I'm the proud owner of this pil pilon.

Thank you V. Okei, shoshenim, pil pilonim and pil pilonot, it's time to delve right in as we usually do.

First of all, I advise you to watch the previous video on self-supply titled "Self-Supplying Narcissist: Miracle Cure". The link is available in the description which is still mysteriously under the video.

The narcissist self-supplies in order to avoid collapse.

Let me remind you what is a collapse.

A collapse is a long period, not a single event, but a long period of deficient narcissistic supply.

An inability to elicit narcissistic supply from the human environment.

A failure at obtaining narcissistic supply from sources extant and potential.

Rejection by sources of narcissistic supply, the dropping off of such sources and the inability to secure secondary narcissistic supply, for example from a spouse.

So the narcissist finds himself in a vacuum of supply, horo vacui.

He finds himself horrified by the lack of supply and he catastrophizes, he says to himself, "I'm never going to obtain supply, it's over."

Now when I say he, it's a she, she is a he, yeah, gender pronouns are interchangeable because 50% of all narcissists nowadays are women who are ready for women's liberation.

So the narcissist self-supplies in order to avoid this condition known as narcissistic collapse because narcissistic collapse often goes hand in hand with dysphoria or depression.

And I refer you to my video on the three depressions of the narcissist. It's an intolerable condition bordering on mortification.

And so the narcissist resorts to his favorite strategy and his favorite solution is fantasy.

It's a delusional solution. It's a solution that says you don't need anybody. You don't need anybody. You are your own best source of narcissistic supply.

You are so far superior to others that your opinion of yourself matters much more than their opinion of you.

And so it is delusional, but it also creates a redirection.

The narcissist redirects his emotional investment, his catharsis from the outside to the inside.

It is a transition, a reverse transition, a regression from object relations to narcissistic self-object relations.

So it's full, full steam backwards to intimacy.

The narcissist becomes auto-erotic.

Now I've been asked an excellent question for a change by one of you.

You asked me, when the narcissist self-supplies, he does not refer to external sources of supply.

So he cannot be cerebral and he cannot be somatic.

What is the type of a self-supplying narcissist?

Is he cerebral? Is he somatic? Is he covert? Is he overt?

All these definitions become meaningless when the narcissist isolates himself, solipsistically, becomes a schizoid, a hermit, and does not refer anymore to external objects, also known as you.

So in such a situation, the narcissist energies, life energies, also known as libido.

Bido is comprised partly of the sex drive, Eros, and partly of a la vital, the life force.

When this life force is directed inwards, the narcissist also becomes auto-erotic.

All his drives, including his sex drive, become self-directed.

In this case, the narcissist is far more likely to become cerebral.

So self-supplying narcissist, the vast majority of self-supplying narcissists become cerebral because they also become auto-erotic and therefore they cannot be somatic.

They can still be cerebral. They can still be creative. They can still produce works of the intellect, but of course they cannot have sex with someone else. And their bodies are objects of sexual desire, so they redirect their sexual desire at themselves, but this sexual desire is far more erotic than proper sexual.

In short, it is far more likely that a self-supplying narcissist would become cerebral or attempt to become cerebral, even if he is not intelligent enough to pull it off.

So many somatic narcissists who are facing collapse because they are getting older, they are getting sicker, they are out of the market, they are out of the market.

Many such narcissists suddenly develop pretensions at intellect.

So somatic narcissists who are faced with collapse suddenly try to become cerebral narcissists.

They try to become gurus. They try to become public intellectuals. They try to become philosophers. They try to become experts in self-style, of course, and self-declare the experts in some field.

So the transition from somatic to cerebral in the case of imminent collapse is very, very common.

Now when the narcissist's supply is deficient, the narcissist is likely to become cerebral.

See the opposite happens when there is plentiful external narcissistic supply. That is also a problem.

Both collapse deficiency and plenty are problems.

There needs to be a fine-tuned regulation of the flow of narcissistic supply.

If you get too much of it or if you get too little of it, the narcissist decompensates, acts out and essentially falls apart. It even becomes pseudo-psychotic.

So when there is too much narcissistic supply, plentiful narcissistic supply, this leads the narcissist to develop resilient, ever more counterfactual, unrealistic fantasies.

But these fantasies are not shared fantasies. They are fantasies of siege and betrayal, the fantasies of paranoia and pain and hurt and shame.

So the reaction to plentiful narcissistic supply is on the one hand increasing hypervigilance, paranoia even, a sense of siege being under siege, a sense of betrayal, referential ideation people are conspiring against me, mocking me, talking about me, gossiping about me, etc.

On the one hand.

On the other hand, the excess narcissistic supply, the narcissistic supply that cannot be consumed because there is too much of it, is converted into residual libido. It generates too much libido.

So too much supply is translated to too much libido.

And this renders the narcissist somatic in a predatory way.

When the narcissist is exposed to fame, celebrity, adulation, sudden abrupt success beyond the narcissist's wildest dreams, exposure to multitudes of adoring fans, etc.

The narcissist would tend to become somatic, but not only somatic, he would tend to become a sexual predator in the majority of cases.

So we have these two situations.

An imminent collapse, declining narcissistic supply, deficient supply, and then complete lack of supply where the narcissist tries to convert himself into a cerebral narcissist and invests all his energies, emotional and sexual, in himself.

And the opposite situation is when the narcissist is suddenly deluged and flooded with narcissistic supply, especially unexpected narcissistic supply. This enhances his libido, especially the aero spark, the sexual drive.

He becomes somatic. Even if he started off as a cerebral, he becomes somatic and very likely a sexual predator.

Now I've analyzed all this 25 years ago, 28 years ago.

How time passes. 28 years ago, I've analyzed all these mechanisms in minute and intricate detail and it's available in the Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. I will post a link to the segment section of Malignant Self-Love that deals with these issues.

So again, you can find it in the description if you want to delve much further into these amazing transmogrifications and transformations between somatic and cerebral as a way to either compensate for lacking a lack of narcissistic supply or for excess narcissistic supply that threatens to overwhelm, dysregulate and drown the narcissist.

Okay.

So this is in the essay and you can find the link in the description.

I promise you to discuss techniques of self-supply.

Again to remind you, self-supply is when the narcissist gives up on external sources of narcissistic supply and decides that he is his best source of narcissistic supply.

By far the most qualitative, the most superior and he needs nobody. He needs no one.

He can supply himself with narcissistic supply a plenty.

There's no need to resort to an environment which would prove to be injurious and rejecting.

And the narcissist supplies himself in several highly specific ways and I'm going to enumerate them now.

Number one, future orientation.

The narcissist tells himself future generations will appreciate my legacy.

In due time, history will prove me right. I will be proven right by future scholars, etc.

So the narcissist reorients himself rather than be grounded in the present where there's no supply, there's narcissistic injury, there's even mortification, there's constant reminders of failure and defeat.

This kind of present, the narcissist rejects and he starts to reorient himself to become a denizen of the future.

His outlook is future oriented. He keeps talking about his legacy.

Now it doesn't matter what people say about him. Now it doesn't matter that he's being rejected and mocked and ridiculed and criticized and exposed.

None of these matters because the future will vindicate him.

This is technique number one of self supply.

Second technique of self supply is to refer to exclusive, privileged or superior reference to measure, the narcissist measures himself against highly specific handpicked chosen people.

He says to himself, I don't care what the Hoi Po Loi say, I don't care what people say on YouTube. YouTube viewers are low grade, low brown, low level people. They are not my frame of reference. I don't care what people on the street have to say about me. I care only about my peers and my peers are geniuses. My peers are accomplished people. My peers, my potential mentors even are at the top of the game in their profession.

Only geniuses can understand and appreciate my work.

So he gives up, he gives up on the sources of narcissistic supply that they had been tapping hitherto by reframing the situation and saying, I'm rejecting them. It's not that they are rejecting me. I'm the one who is doing the rejection.

This way the narcissist feels that he is in control, he regains and reasserts mastery. He is the boss, he's calling the shot, he's a driver's seat.

This is a reframing, a totally delusional counterfactual reframing of the process.

The narcissist is rejected by potential sources of supply and actual sources of supply.

But rather than acknowledge this fact and endure devastating narcissistic injuries and mortifications, the narcissist says, that's not true. I made them do it or I'm the one who has rejected them. And I rejected them because I deserve better. I deserve an audience which is much more sophisticated, much more chic, much more knowledgeable, much more intelligent, much more everything.

So I'm transitioning from an audience which is beneath me, sources of narcissistic supply which are low grade and whose supply is low grade and fake.

I'm transitioning from this group to an alternative group.

Of course it takes time and there's a transition period, but ultimately I will be recognized by this new reference group, which is far superior to the previous reference group.

This is the second mechanism.

The third mechanism is what I call self-referential transcendence.

Self-referential transcendence is when the narcissist convinces himself.

That is in some ways superior to the overwhelming vast majority of the rest of humanity.

It is self-referential because it is the narcissist who convinces himself.

He is doing the convincing and it has to do with transcendence.

So such a narcissist would say, I am hyper moral. My morality is amazing. No one is as moral as I am. I'm strong. I'm inordinately strong. I'm not aware of anyone who is as honest and as strong as I am. I'm gifted. I'm a unique genius. There are only eight other people in the world who are as geniuses as I am. I'm a martyr. I'm a victim. I'm a healer. I'm a savior. I'm the scourge of evil people. I'm going to eradicate evil people. I'm a protector, for example, a protector of women. All these are forms of self-supply.

The narcissist, by referring to himself in a way that is self-aggrandizing, entrenches his delusions of superiority and grandeur.

And this way transcends the temporary hiatus or temporary lack of narcissistic supply.

The next technique is self-audiencing.

Self-audiencing is when a narcissist essentially splits himself into...

He is the source of creativity. He produces works, works of art, works of the intellect.

And at the same time, he is also his own exclusive audience.

Not only is he his best audience, he's his exclusive audience.

So it's a kind of multiple personality.

The narcissist becomes his own critic, his own fan, his own audience, his own follower, his own disciple, his own protege.

And this self-audiencing is manifested in a variety of forms.

For example, the journaling.

The narcissist can write a journal, a diary, and then convince himself that it is an amazing work of art, the equivalent of Anne Frank's diary or I don't know, Marcel Proust.

And one day, the journal or the diary will be discovered and will become a literary masterpiece.

It's an example of self-audiencing.

Another way, self-documenting. Accumulating every scrap of paper, every electronic document that ever passes or crosses the narcissist's variety of devices, documenting, documenting, even going to the extent of recording oral interviews with others, creating a rich, all-encompassing, all-pervasive, ubiquitous documentation of the narcissist's life, living behind a legacy that will be explored by future scholars and will be only then appreciated for what it is.

The documentation of a singular mind.

Another example of self-audiencing is self-appraisal when the narcissist analyzes himself and says, "Objectively speaking, I'm a genius.

Compared to others, I'm exceedingly handsome." So this is self-appraisal.

Of course, the self-appraisal is a direct derivative of the fantasy and therefore it's delusional. It's delusional self-appraisal.

And it is intended to provide the narcissist with narcissistic self-supply.

So these are all examples of self-audiencing.

When the narcissist becomes his own most faithful, most loyal, most adoring, most phoning audience, the next technique is self-referential ideation and self-referential attribution.

It's when the narcissist projects onto other people parts of himself that he is ashamed of, parts of himself that he rejects, parts of himself that challenge and undermine his grandiose inflated, fantastic self-perception.

He projects these parts onto others and then he attributes these parts to others and sometimes even forces others to behave accordingly, something known as projective identification.

An integral part of this process is self-referential ideation, developing ideas about other people and how they see the narcissist.

So the narcissist tells himself, for example, everyone envies me. That is self-referential ideation. Everyone envies me. Everyone is talking about me. I'm the center of attention. I'm the life of every party. I'm being sorely missed. My ideas are influential. Everyone is plagiarizing and pilfering them.

So sentences about other people which reflect directly on the narcissist, sentences about other people's state of mind as it refers to the narcissist. These are self-referential ideation and attribution.

Making assumptions which are fantastic in many cases, counterfactual, not in all cases, but in many cases, making assumptions about other people and how they see the narcissist, their attitude to the narcissist and even their plans, their agenda when it comes to the narcissist.

So this leads gradually, self-referential ideation and attribution, gradually evolves.

The longer the period of collapse and the longer the period of self-supply, self-referential ideation and self-referential attribution gradually evolve into paranoid ideation.

Paranoid ideation is of course self-aggrandizing. It's a form of grandiosity. I am the focus of a conspiracy. I'm sufficiently important to be at the heart of malign intention and attention. Everyone is planning to take me down because I matter, because I'm important, because I'm critical.

And so paranoid ideation places the narcissist at the center. It's a center of a conspiracy. It's a center of a collusion. It's a center of malign intentions. It's a center of malignant attention.

It's not a good center, but it's still the center.

And this is supported by the betrayal and siege fantasy that most narcissists have, and also by self-referential ideation and attribution.

Now, it's very important to mention here that self-referential ideation and attribution and paranoid ideation are both triggered by both a lack of supply, a collapse, and too much supply, an excess of narcissistic supply.

Both situations which are out of balance, dis-regulate the narcissist.

When the narcissist is exposed to an avalanche of narcissistic supply, when he's deluged with narcissistic supply, and it's abrupt, and it's unexpected, he doesn't have the tools to cope with it, he develops a siege and betrayal fantasy where he is at the core of some malign malignant attention, conspiracies, and collusion.

And that's because everyone wants to take him down. Everyone envies him. And he's becoming too influential.

And so the powers that be, for example, want to destroy him.

So this is a reaction that is a form of self-supply when narcissistic supply is deficient, and a form of desperate attempt to regulate when narcissistic supply is overwhelming and dis-regulate.

Okay?

Now, the last technique of self-supply is contemptuous withholding.

The narcissist isolates himself, becomes a hermit, you know, schizoid. And he says to himself, withdrawing my presence, my absence, these are punishments. I'm punishing people.

They could have enjoyed my company. They could have benefited from my ideas. They could have basked in my personality. And they gave all this up in their infinite stupidity. They didn't appreciate me. They didn't reward me. They didn't supply me. They didn't notice me.

So I'm holding them in contempt because only stupid people would have missed my shining presence. I'm withholding myself. They don't deserve me. They don't deserve my contributions and my output.

I'm alone because no one is on my level. And I know no one is on my level because they wouldn't give me narcissistic supply, which I richly deserve.

So there is contempt here. And the contempt leads to withholding, withdrawal, and avoidance as punitive measures against potential sources of narcissistic supply or actual sources of narcissistic supply who ceased to supply the narcissist.

The narcissist perceives a lack of supply, the withholding of supply. He perceives it as an act of aggression. He perceives it as a malevolent, malign act.

The narcissist cannot countenance the possibility that he doesn't deserve narcissistic supply.

He believes that his very existence is in itself a cosmic event of spectacular proportions.

So when people with load supply, when they refuse to provide the narcissist with supply, when they provide the narcissist with negative supply, they criticize him, they disagree with him, when they suddenly cease to provide supply, having supplied the narcissist in the past.

The only explanation the narcissist has is there is malice here. There's malevolence.

This is done on purpose. It's an act of aggression or passive aggression. It's intended to destabilize me, dysregulate me, destroy me, devastate me, take me down, ruin me, push me to do something crazy, to act out in order to entrap me.

So the narcissist then devolves into a resilient, entrenched, unassailable fantasy of betrayal and siege and paranoia and hypervigilance and suspicion.

He convinces himself that his value, his grandiosity is fully justified and buttressed and supported by this evidence.

The very fact that everyone envies him, everyone is trying to take him down, everyone is refusing to provide him with narcissistic supply that he so evidently deserves, these very facts prove conclusively how important he is, how critical he is, how influential he is, how powerful he is.

Because only powerful, influential, important people are at the butt of conspiracies and collusion.

Paranoid ideation comes to the main form of narcissistic supply at the end of the process of self supply.

Now self supply is still vastly preferable to dependency on external sources of narcissistic supply.

Self supply is the closest that the narcissist can come to, I wouldn't say healing, but to social functioning.

By self supplying, the narcissist stops harming other people. By confining his attentions and his intentions to himself only, the narcissist is abrasive and antisocial dimensions and aspects are all but eliminated.

He withdraws into a world of fantasy that is essentially psychotic. And yes, clinically this is very unhealthy, but the manifestations of narcissism which are harmful to others, hurtful to others and dangerous to others all but vanish when self supply becomes the dominant mode of narcissistic supply.

And that's why I think the focus in the treatment of narcissism should be on teaching the narcissist to self supply in a way that does not devolve into delusionality and paranoia, to teach us the narcissist to self supply in a benevolent manner.

For example, to self- audience, self-audiencing is harmless, it's innocuous, future orientation is okay, referring to specific highly privileged, superior, exclusive people in his mind. That's also okay as long as that's not deteriorate to irutomania delusions.

There are ways to redirect and channel the narcissist's energy so that the narcissist's self supplies and the self supply is sufficient.

So the narcissist becomes self-sufficient and self-contained and yet the narcissist's self-sufficiency precludes behavior that harms other people.

For example, when the narcissist's self supply is no longer in need of a shared fantasy, he gives up on the shared fantasy way of relating to other people. So people don't suffer anymore, they don't become figments of the narcissist's imagination captured within his shared fantasy like so many ants in amber. When the shared fantasy is gone as a solution replaced by techniques of self supply, no other people are involved except the narcissist. So a lot of suffering is ameliorated and reduced and eliminated and isn't this the goal ultimately of all psychotherapy and healing?. ###