Welcome to my YouTube channel. Make yourself at home. Grab a coffee and listen well.
On this channel, there are playlists, more than 30 of them. The playlists are organized by theme, by topic, and so all the videos on this channel are indexed and belong to one or more of the playlists.
The most important playlist by far is titled Narcissistic Abuse, Healing and Recovery. It is a course and it is free of charge. There are 46 or 47 videos, I think, in this course, in this playlist. Start with the earliest one and make your way up, in time, measure your progress, with each and every one of the videos that you watch.
Take notes, copious notes, repeat, listen again, read the notes, wait a bit, let everything settle down, process what you have heard and learned, and move on to the next video.
Today I'm going to provide you with a checklist, a guide to the totality of the course, to all 47 videos. And so you would do well to listen to this checklist or to this guide when you start the course and when you end the course and maybe even in between.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the only author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, the first book ever written on narcissistic abuse. I'm also a professor of clinical psychology in several universities and high education institutions around the world.
Okay, Shoshanim, let us delve right in. I'm sorry, I'm still sick. Yes, even professors of psychology get sick. And maybe they're sick to start with.
Okay.
Abuse, trauma, recovery, healing. These are buzzwords, key words in every attempt to become more self-aware and somehow to mitigate the damages and the brokenness that emanate from a relationship with a narcissist.
But these abuse, trauma, recovery, and healing are states of mind. They're not objective realities. They're states of mind.
And you must make the transition from submissiveness to humility.
Now, many people confound and conflate and confuse the two.
To be submissive means to give up on your self-control, to abrogate it, to transfer decision-making and choice-making and independent thinking and critical thinking to transfer all these functions to someone else. to say, from now on, I am mindless. I am an unthinking servant at your service and obedience.
This is submissiveness. It is the abrogation of responsibility.
Humility is the exact opposite of submissiveness. It is the assumption of responsibility. Humility is about recognizing your limitations, your shortcomings, your flaws and the mistakes you have made and the contributions you have made to your predicament.
This is humility and it is an absolute precondition for any recovery and healing.
Sometimes it takes time to extricate yourself from a relationship with a narcissist. It requires a duration and an endurance. It's a test of character, resilience and metal.
While you're immured and embedded in the relationship with the narcissist, whether you're trying to get out or not, whether you've convinced yourself counterfactually that there's no exit strategy, they are eight coping strategies.
I developed seven of them, and I regret to say, not the eight, which is possibly the best.
No contact. No contact is not about walking away and never ever communicating with the narcissist again. That's an important part of going no contact.
But no contact is a set of 27 strategies.
And you would do well to find a video that deals with the rules of no contact. This video goes into great length and depth as to how to implement these strategies in order to utterly remove, erase, delete, vanquish the narcissist from your life for good.
The second strategy is grey rock. When you render yourself sufficiently uninteresting and uninterested in the narcissist so that he gives up on any narcissistic supply or gratification that you may have provided and just walks away and tries to find an alternative to you, which is exactly what you want.
Deflection is when you find a common enemy with a narcissist, and you deflect. It's like a decoy. You deflect the narcissist's aggression towards this common enemy and away from you.
Mirroring, I really apologize for all these respiratory effects, special effects. Mirroring is when you mirror to the narcissist, his behavior, when you force him to become aware of his misconduct by simply behaving the same or misbehaving the very same way.
Be careful with this strategy, especially if the narcissist is also a psychopath or a malignant narcissist, because these can become violent.
Then there's the shared psychosis, colluding and collaborating with the narcissist in his shared fantasy, telling him that his false self is not false, that he is not grandiose, that he is indeed godlike and superior, and participating in his happy family, you are my mother, kind of self-delusion.
The next thing is to provide supply.
Narcissists would do anything for supply. The obtaining of supply, the securing of supply lines, and the maintenance of a regular flow of narcissistic supply is the only concern of the narcissist.
And so if you were to become a reliable, trustworthy source of high-grade narcissistic supply, you could do anything you want with the narcissist.
It's a Machiavellian strategy. It's manipulative, but it would give you full and total control over the narcissist.
The next strategy is withholding or being punitive.
That is, when you withhold narcissistic supply from the narcissist, you give him a taste of his own medicine, intermittent reinforcement.
Hot and cold, I'm here for you, I'm gone, I'm about to abandon you, I love you forever. Here, you are the greatest of all. You are a slime and a sleaze bag and so on.
It works.
And this is the eighth strategy intermittent reinforcement.
Never be stable, never be predictable, never be regular. Don't let the narcissist take you for granted. Be there and then vanish kaleidoscopically like a shimmering light on the water.
This is if you're forced to share your life with a narcissist or if for some masochistic reason you have chosen to stay in the relationship.
I strongly recommend to go no contact. And no, it doesn't matter if your narcissist is your son or your daughter or your mother or your father. An abuser is an abuser and is an abuser. And all narcissists should be treated the same way.
Once you've broken up with the narcissist, once you have let the narcissist go, once you have reestablished your boundaries, at least in the sense that you said enough is enough, you put your foot down.
At that point, healing starts.
You will be overcome by enormous grief. This is known as prolonged grief, because it seems to never end.
You will develop phenomena, such as psychological phenomena, such as rumination, obsession, compulsion.
To truly let go and abandon the narcissist requires a lot of mourning.
The no contact rules are helpful here, because the less you're exposed to the presence of the narcissist, the less you interact with the narcissists, the easier it would be for you to overcome the grief.
The problem with the grief that follows the breakup with the narcissist is that it involves multiple layers of mourning.
You are grieving your own discarded, delusional, idealized self to which you have had access through the narcissist's gaze.
You are grieving the narcissist as your mother, as a narcissist has assumed a maternal role and provided you with what seemed to have been acceptance and unconditional love.
You are grieving the narcissist as your own child, the narcissist's inner child.
So you're also grieving as a mother who has lost her child.
You're grieving the narcissist as this perfect lover, the one, the twin flame, the soulmate, call it what you wish.
You are grieving over the betrayal, over the loss of innocence, the inability to love or trust again, that's what you believe at this stage, and you are definitely grieving the fantasy, the dream of a shared beautiful future going together into the sunset, happy ever after.
As Kubler-Ross and her descendants have realized, grief is a cycle and it has six stages, and you may revisit many of these stages, time and again.
There's denial, there's anger, there's bargaining, there's depression, there's acceptance, and then there is hope.
There is always hope. Don't be discouraged. Don't be disheartened. Don't give up. There's always hope. Don't be discouraged. Don't be disheartened. Don't give up. There's always hope.
And above all, get rid of your victimhood identity.
It's easy to sink into this, I'm a victim. I'm angelic. I've done nothing wrong. I'm a random target. I've contributed nothing to this. I'm not responsible for anything. And he or she, the narcissist, they are demons. They are evil emanations. They came into my life in order to destroy me and kill me and exploit me and ruin me and this and that.
Don't fall for this narrative. Take responsibility for your actions, your choices, your decisions and your contributions. You were there. You were there. You were part of what has happened.
So realize this in order to derive lessons and for this to never happen again.
The next important step is abandon the narcissist's inner child.
When you first met the narcissist, to lure you in, to bait you, the narcissist exposed you to an inner child, a crying traumatized child, a child in need of protection, a child who is in a corner, in the dark, extending his or her hand to you.
And this treated in you a maternal instinct. Even as a male, even men are protective of babies and children.
So the inner child, the narcissist's inner child, took your hand and led you into the maze, into the labyrinth, let go of this inner child. It's a phantasm, it's ectoplasm. It's an emanation. It's an apparition. There's nothing there. There has never been. It's a simulation. Let go of this child. You have never been this child's mother because the child is a disguise for an empty black hole, all devouring, rapacious and predatory.
Reverse the roles. From now on, you script your life. You direct your existence.
The narcissist becomes an actor, a prop.
Whether it's physically present or not, whether it's merely a voice in your head, an introject, reverse the roles, own the narcissist by appropriating his functions, and then constellate and integrate your parts, your psyche.
And that way, the narcissist will have become a submissive blotch or stain on the wall, nothing more.
It is very important to realize that the narcissist has regressed you, driven you back to your infancy, by acting as a parental figure. The narcissist made you into a child.
And so again, you've experienced the symbiotic phase with the mother. You have gone through a period of merger and fusion with a maternal figure.
You need to separate from the narcissist, and you need to become an individual again. You need to go through a process known as separation, individuation.
You have been catapulted back to the womb by the narcissist and you need to be born again.
Separation involves the silencing of the narcissist's voice in your mind and the activation of your own or reactivation of your own authentic self, your own authentic voice, your own authentic introject.
How can you tell the difference between the narcissist's voice and your voice?
The narcissist's voice is not your friend. It is disparaging. It is critical. It is hypervigilant. It is paranoid. It's very hostile. It's sadistic.
Your voice loves you. Your voice is concerned with your well-being. Your voice is realistic. Your voice is like the voice of a best friend.
Silence the former and adhere to the latter.
At that point, you can individuate.
You have lost your identity in your relationship with the narcissist. He has taken it away and replaced it with something else. With your part in his script, you have acquired a false identity in order to conform to the narcissist's expectations and to meet, to cater to his needs within the shared fantasy, regain your authentic lost self, individuate.
Once a narcissist's voice has been silenced, both abuser and savior, mother and child, all of them are gone. And the only one left behind is you.
Your authentic voice at this stage is disembodied. There's still a disconnect between the voices in your head, including your authentic voice, and your body.
Because your body is still processing and experiencing the trauma.
So you need to go through a phase of embodying.
Individuation requires mindbody work, owning your voice also by somehow reconnecting it to your body.
And again, everything I'm telling you right now is a checklist. You can find detailed instructions on how to do each and every one of these things in the videos in the playlist titled narcissistic abuse from healing and recovery.
Once you have regained your authentic self, once you have become reacquainted with your core identity, once you have reestablished the continuity that has been disrupted by the narcissist's presence and demands, you need to reconstitute three lost functions.
Self-mothering, in other words, self-love, self-saving, in other words, your sense of agency and self-efficacy, and the choosing and affirming of life, negating your depression, resisting your anxiety, eliminating your catastrophizing, and rewriting or reframing your automatic negative thoughts and your negative schemas.
Learn to love yourself. Self-parent, become your own parent, your own good parent.
Self-love involves four elements, self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-trust, and self-efficacy.
Learn much more about each and every one of these elements on the playlist.
Regain the following truths.
The relationship with the narcissist has reprogrammed you. It's like an occult. Your mind is no longer your own because it is infested and infiltrated by counterfactual falsities and statements.
So you must regain the following utterly true facts and statements, beliefs. You need to believe in the following.
Narcissistic abuse challenges, assumptions about the world, about people, your theory of mind, and about relationships, your internal working.
Here are statements about the world, about reality, about other people, about relationships and about society, which are supported by science, well at least supported by psychological studies. You must believe these. You must regain your footing.
Number one, people are rational and self-interested to some extent.
But most people are just good. They may be irrational. They may be self-destructive.
But the vast majority of people are good at heart. They are essentially good.
Number two, justice, order and structure are fundamental to the universe.
Reality and people in it are, by and large, trustworthy. Don't be naive, but don't be paranoid. Look around, be aware of your surroundings and of yourself, but do not become hypervigilant. Do not become the narcissist.
Number three, the world is not hostile. At worst, the world is indifferent, but it is extremely rarely hostile.
Number four, one good deed deserves another.
Versus the narcissist version, no good deed goes unpunished.
If you try hard enough, if you're sincere, if you invest, if you commit, things will work out.
Success is not guaranteed, but sometimes the effort, sometimes the path, sometimes the journey, are success itself, reified.
Number five, you gain credit with people when you behave well.
This credit is not forgotten, nor ignored, and is very likely to be repaid.
Number six, reality is a shared experience. This is known as intersubjective space. Reality is a shared experience. People are very much alike.
Number seven, being alone is worse than being together. Except if you are with an abuser of course.
Number eight, you deserve love.
Number nine, you can trust yourself. You can trust your judgment. You can trust your reality testing. You can trust yourself love.
You have come across a consummate apex predator. So you were not prepared for it. You were susceptible. You were defenseless. No one has taught you the ropes because very few know them.
Give yourself a break. Forgive yourself.
Number 10. There is always a way to undo wrong and evil, because they are rarely intentional. Regret, remorse, guilt, shame and conscience are common to almost all people. Narcissists and psychopaths, accepted.
There's a nine-fold path to healing, and you should pay attention to all nine dimensions of the process of recovery.
Number one, your body. Your body requires attention, self-empathy, regulation, control and protection. Your health matters and counts.
Number two, your mind. Your mind requires authenticity, which we discuss, positivity and mindfulness, being embedded in the present, not letting yourself fantasize about the future, daydream endlessly, and not mourn and grieve the past, ruminuminate and so and so forth. Past orientation and future orientation are dysfunctional. Only the present matters. You're here. You're now. End of story.
Number three, functions. You need to become a vigilant observer, not hyper-vigilant, not paranoid, not suspicious, not on your toes, but observing all the time, absorbing all the time, learning all the time.
You need to become a shielding sensor. You need to protect yourself from hostile introjects, toxic people. You need to cleanse your external environment and your internal space.
And you need to be a reality sentinel. You need to reality test all the time.
Am I fantasizing? Am I being delusional? Am I wrong?
Ask yourself these questions again and again and again, because in the wake of narcissistic abuse, you are disoriented, you're befuddled, you're confused beyond words. You're not sure where you are. And even worse, you're not sure who you are.
So, reality test, reality test, reality test, these are very crucial.
Make seven resolutions for a narcissistic free life. Print them out if you need to. Place them on the refrigerator with a magnet. Do what you have to. Repeat them as a mantra morning and evening before you go to sleep.
These are the seven resolutions which should guide your life. Henceforth, if you follow them, you will never ever fall for a narcissist or a psychopath again.
Number one, I will treat myself with dignity and I will demand respect from others. I will not allow anyone to disrespect me.
Number two, I will set clear boundaries, and I will make known to others what I regard as permissible and acceptable behavior, and what is out of bounds.
Number three, I will not tolerate abuse and aggression in any form or guise. I will seek to terminate such misconduct instantly and unequivocally.
Number four, I will be assertive and unambiguous about my needs, wishes, boundaries and expectations from others. I will not be arrogant, but I will be confident. I will not be selfish and narcissistic, but I will love myself, I will care for myself, I will have compassion for myself.
Number five, I will get to know myself better all the time. It's a lifelong project.
Number six, I will treat others as I want them to treat me. I will try to lead by way of self-example.
And finally, number seven, if I'm habitually disrespected, abused, or if my boundaries are breached and ignored, I will terminate the relationship with the abuser forthwith. Zero tolerance. No second chances will be the maxims of my self-preservation.
Follow these seven principles and your life will look completely different and not only with the narcissist.
And now, head over to the playlist and start by watching the oldest video. Make your way up, progress across time to newer and newer videos until you come to the very end of your healing and recovery process and the very beginning of a new you. Good luck.