Secrecy is the abuser's weapon.
It seems people, when they've been through an experience like this, they want to hide it, they're ashamed.
What is this place for secrecy?
There's a compliment to this. There's another sentence that says that sunshine disinfects abuse.
What I meant to say with these two sentences is that the narcissists or the abuser's power over you is the fantasy.
He makes you feel that any exit strategy is betrayal, it's a form of betrayal. You're betraying him. And that you are ruining something beautiful.
He invests in your aesthetic sense. It's like you've created something amazing together, like a cathedral or something together. And now you're pulling the rug from under him and it's all going to crumble, having invested so much in it and so on.
So you're both an aesthetic criminal, like burning a work of art, you know, in a museum, or throwing acid at something.
On the one hand, and on the other hand, you're a traitor. You're also a mother who is abandoning her child, you're also many other things.
But these are the two crucial features.
And so you feel ashamed of yourself. You feel ashamed of yourself for three reasons, for the aforementioned two, but also because you begin to realize how stupid you've been.
To end up with a narcissist, you need to be gullible or suspend judgment or something, not very clever.
It is a criticism over you. I mean, being in a situation with a narcissist means that something is wrong with you. However unpalatable it is to hear.
So people deny that and they feel ashamed of it and they repress it and they so on and so forth, and this plays right into the hands of the narcissist.
As long as you keep quiet, you're an accomplice in the fantasy. It's exactly like legally, if you keep quiet on a crime, you become an accomplice. If you know about a crime, you have to report it, if you don't report it, you go to prison, simple as that. There is a responsibility.
And so you become more deeply embedded in the fantasy.
Now we all, emotions are in the interplay with all of us.
So even if you resent the fantasy and you hate the narcissist, the longer you're with him, there's habituation, there is emotional investment. It can't be denied. There are good moments, you know, rosy retrospection. There are good moments and so on.
The longer you stay, the more infected you are. It's called rosy retrospection. The good moments and so on. The longer you stay, the more infected you are. It's contagious. Simply contagious.
Now, what do you do when you're sick? You go to see a doctor.
What does it mean? You share with the doctor.
I mean, if you go to see a medical doctor and you keep mum, you don't say a word, nothing much will come of it.
Going to a doctor means, medical doctor means that you have decided to make public your condition. The public is small. It's the doctor and the nurse. But it's still a public.
If you need help or if you're in a... You need to make it public. You need to talk to your friends and to your family and to your colleagues and maybe to professionals and so on. You need support. You need to make it public not only for the advice that you're bound to get or help that you're about to receive, assistance and so on, but you need to go public because it breaks a taboo.
Fantasy comes with a taboo. Omerta, vendetta, you know, it's like the mafia. You don't talk about these things to the cops.
So you keep itand it's like the vow of silence. If you break the vow of silence, there will be vendetta and you will die. There's a taboo attached to the fantasy. Breaking the taboo is a powerful symbol of liberation and regaining of agency.
Even if you don't get any good advice and no help and nothing, and everyone even mocks you all, even if you are disbelieved, very often the reaction would be disbelief.
Oh, he's such a nice guy. Come on. Something else will be wrong with you.
And he will try to convince people that you're the crazy one, the smear campaigns and so on.
It's an arduous path. It's not easy.
But the very fact that you have exited the confines of the fantasy and involved third parties is liberating, empowering, and the taboo is gone. The moment the taboo is gone, you are in the position to walk away.
So this is one thing.
Second thing is the other sentence. Sunshine infects abuse in the sense that abuse is either criminal. In many cases, it is criminal or it's frowned upon socially. It's socially unacceptable.
And narcissists are actually pro-social, they're conformist, because narcissists need other people, they're dependent on other people for narcissistic supply. They're not like psychopaths.
Psychopaths are loners. A psychopath is a loner. He's a hunter, he's a predator.
A narcissist is a two-year-old dependent baby. Big baby in an adult body.
So, narcissists would not risk the approbation and chastisement of society.
So if you go public, the very exposure would constrain the narcissists. It would change his behavior. It's a form of behavior modification.
Like, I'm going to tell the whole world of what you're doing. You may end up in prison, or you may end up being shunned by society, even by your peers and so on so forth. There's a price to pay.
And this price is doubly problematic.
There's on one hand, a narcissist is a coward. Most narcissists and bullies are cowards.
But on the other hand, losing your pathological narcissistic space, the way we started, losing it, is a major problem because you have to find a new one, cultivate new sources. It's a long process.
And in this long period, until you have established a new space, in this long period, you are deprived of narcissistic supply. You're in a state known as narcissistic collapse.
If this has been done in public, you're in a condition known as narcissistic mortification, which drives you as a narcissist to develop suicidal ideation, emotional dysregulation, you resemble a borderline to a large extent.
In short, there is hell to pay.
Once your partner in crime, your partner in the fantasy, decided to blow the whistle on you, which is essentially what happens, you're exposed and your gone and you're done.
Because that's it, the taboo has been broken and sunshine disinfects your abuse. You are disabled, you're deactivated as an abuser.
Sam, if let's say you get away and then you look back and you realize that your friends, other people around the narcissist are being abused, is it like the matrix? Can we find people and unplug them or do we have to let it happen? What is the path there?
As I told you earlier, the abuser's fantasy is very addictive.
Starting with the love bombing stage where you fall in love with an idealized, perfect version of yourself, which is highly addictive.
And people buy into the fantasy, because most fantasies make sense, afford you an outlet from reality, and ostensibly lead to better outcomes.
People confuse fantasy with dreams, and dreams with planning. They confuse often.
Daydreaming is actually good because it leads to planning.
But fantasy is not good because it leads away from reality. It is what we call it non-efficacious.
It reduces self-efficacy, reduces your ability to operate in the environment and on the environment in order to extricate outcomes.
If you daydream about a new product and then you team up with some engineers and you make the new product, that's great. It leads you closer to reality.
But if you fantasize that you are the world's leading genius, not having graduated high school, it's a serious problem because it leads you away from reality.
However, people confuse. They confuse fantasy with daydreaming, daydreaming, with planning and so on. So they think the fantasy might take them places. It's a good thing. Great.
And when you try to give them the red pill, you know, blue pill, red pill, you mentioned the matrix, when trying to give them the red pill, they refuse and they turn on you.
Yes.
They turn on you because you are taking away the only thing that gives them solace, the only consolation, and the only redemption and absolution, and the only promise.
People who find themselves in the matrix are people who have already given up on reality. Already. These are people who find reality already unbearable, intolerable, unacceptable. These are people who have rejected reality. They've made a choice.
The last realistic choice they've made is to enter the matrix, to get plugged in. They chose to be plugged in. No one forced them.
When you disconnect them and offer them the red pill, you're the enemy.
So while I understand the natural inclination to warn other people and to expose the narcissists to other people, it's a savior complex. It's in itself a pathology.
I'm going to rescue you, I'm going to save you. I'm going to fix you. I'm going to heal you by protecting you from the narcissist. I have this knowledge and I'm going to protect you from the narcissist.
And it rarely works, it makes you enemies, and it gets you involved in warfare, in battles that are not yours so you become the narcissist enemies smear campaigns these dead worse.
I mean you don't need this you need all your resources and energy for yourself you need to be selfish now.
In the aftermath of a relationship with the narcissist, you need to be selfish now. In the aftermath of a relationship with the narcissist, you need to be selfish now.
You need to reconstruct your identity because it's been taken away from you. You need to separate from the narcissist in your mind, not physically, because the narcissist is in your mind.
And because you have developed a very symbiotic relationship with the narcissist, and you need to unplug.
And then you need to individuate, you need to become you again, and the narcissist regressed you to an early stage.
Narcissus made you a baby. He was your mother, you became a baby.
And so you need to grow up again. You need to retrace everything from age two.
You have a lot of work to do. You can't go around saving other people. You are not saved. You're not saved.
You know the famous metaphor? When you're in a crashing plane, I mean, first put the oxygen mask on you and then take care of your kids. First put the oxygen mask on your face. Take a few gulps, recover, and then take care of your kids.
That was a clip from my interview with Sam Vaknin. Watch the full episode using the link in the description or the box on the screen.