Successful Relationships with Borderlines, Narcissists (Compilation)

The first thing we should do is decatastrophize.

One of the main processes in decompensation and acting out is catastrophizing.

The borderline anticipates unfavorable outcomes and consequences. She foresees humiliation, abandonment and rejection.

So she catastrophizes. And she's reacting not toShe is reacting to her catastrophizing imagination.

She sees the future. The future is dystopian and bleak. She's reacting to the future, to the present.

You need to bring her back to the present through a process called de-dicatastrophizing. You need to bring her back to the present. You need to ground her.

You can ground her physically by hugging her. You can ground her verbally by reassuring her that you're not about to abandon her or humiliate her or reject her. On the very contrary, they're very much in love with her.

You can bring her back to reality by reestablishing reality testing.

Ironically, for example, by attacking some of her assumptions as untenable or fantastic or paranoid or delusional.

So there are many ways to de-catastrophize, but you must absolutely diffuse the time bomb of acting out by reestablishing reality as the yardstick and the benchmark of all her future behaviors.

You can do this also by mirroring her.

And she becomes aggressive and violent, on the verge of acting out, you can mirror her behavior.

Mirroring has a very powerful effect on the borderline. It calms her down. She suddenly realizes what she's doing. She kind of wakes up from this stupor and the nightmare and she's back in reality.

Another thing you can do is use techniques for impulse control.

Redirect her impulses. She wants to do A, you redirect her to do B. She wants to be aggressive with something. You redirect her aggression. You re-channel her aggression and hurl it, use it in some other way. Redirection via reframing and via remotivation.

There are many techniques for impulse control.

Again, I'm not going to review all of them. You just go online and type techniques for impulse control.

When you witness the decompensation and the acting out of the borderline, it's clear that she is not acting out the way a narcissist would, or the way a psychopath would.

It's not acting out because she is emotionless, because she has no empathy, because she is vindictive, because she wants to hurt you, or because she's goal-oriented wants to take something from her.

Acting out is very clearly, highly emotional. She's hurt, she's hurting, she's bleeding and she wants you to experience the same pain. She wants to hurt you not in order to hurt you, but that you could share the experience of her pain. She wants to have a shared experience of hurt with you, a universe of hurt where both of you will belong.

So her acting out is about you actually, and it is the outcome of something we call emotional dysregulation.

She is overwhelmed by her emotions. They're too strong for her. She can't cope. She's drowning. And she's dragging you down with her.

You need to help your borderline with her emotional dysregulation.

Number one, teach her to talk about her emotions, to communicate her emotions, help her to verbalize her emotions.

Number two, ask her to label her emotions, to call them by name.

Because the borderline experiences her emotions as a cloud. The emotions are diffuse. Very often she doesn't know what's happening. She's totally disoriented.

In many cases, she goes into a dissociative state. She depersonalizes. She derealizes or she becomes amnesiac.

At any rate, she is very hard pressed to say what's happening inside her head. Very often a borderline would tell you I'm having a brain fog. It's a brain fog. I can't tell you what's happening.

You need to force her, to help her, to collaborate with her, to label her emotions. You can ask her are you feeling anger? Are you feeling envy? Are you afraid?

You need to help her to call her emotions by name.

When this is done, when she had gained a handle, when she had gained a label, she comes down because just labeling the emotion provides her with control over the emotion.

And her problem is dysregulation, which is a fancy word for lack of control. She loses control over herself. Labeling helps her to regain control.

Then teach her to externalize her emotions.

Ironically, the borderline acts out because she bottles up. She bottles up emotions. She's very wary, hypervigilant and cautious. She's very unlikely to communicate efficaciously with you.

So instead, she bottles up everything. She acts pseudo stupid. She doesn't talk much or she talks about irrelevant things or she diverts the conversation or she kind of digresses and you know tries to avoid the painful topics.

Teach her to externalize her emotions behaviorally, to show that she's angry, to demonstrate her envy or jealousy, to act appropriately other negative emotions or positive emotions, teach her to externalize behaviorally her emotions.

But also teach her to talk about her emotions. And you can do this by using a variety of techniques.

One of the most powerful is known as chair work. Chair, like what you sit on, chair work.

You can ask her, for example, to put her anger on an empty chair and then to talk to the anger in the empty chair, to have a dialogue with her own anger.

You can ask her to put her envy, her hatred, her fear on the chair. Talk to her abandonment anxiety. Interrogate the abandonment anxiety, ask the abandonment anxiety for help, chair work, dialogue with the emotions, via the methodology and instrument of an empty chair.

And finally, you can use techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy, or you can attend cognitive behavioral therapy in order to negate, in order to counter negative thoughts.

The borderline has negative automatic thoughts, which leads to catastrophizing, and lead to despair and depression and anxiety. The borderline assumes the worst.

And because she assumes the worst, the worst outcomes, the worst. Because of this, she sinks into anxiety and depression.

Anxiety and depression are very strong concomitance of borderline. They are comorbid with borderline very often. And they are usually the outcome of these negative automatic thoughts, which CBT is very successful at eliminate.

Learn the techniques of eliminating automatic negative thoughts or simply attend a few therapy sessions with her.

Having learned to control her negative thoughts, having learned to label her emotions, having dialogued with her anxieties and fears, having verbalized what's happening inside her, having externalized her emotions via behavior, the risk of acting out, the risk of emotional dysregulation, the risk of decompensation, these risks are much reduced using these techniques.

One of the main problems of the borderline is that she cannot, as she cannot regulate her emotions, she cannot control her anger.

Borderlines are very angry and they're angry in a very violent and aggressive way.

You need to learn anger management techniques. You need to teach your borderline to cognitively restructure.

Cognitive restructuring is a major anger management technique. It's simply teaching the borderline to think about things in a different way.

To consider triggers, triggers stimuli provocations fears frustrations to consider all this in a totally different way maybe as positive opportunities for growth and learning for example.

Cognitive restructuring established communication protocols, very rigid and strict communication protocols. If she wants to say something she has to say it according to the protocol, no personal attacks, no attacks on the other, like if you want to say something, for example, if you want to say what you're doing is hurting me, don't blame, don't accuse, don't say the way you're misbehaving is really bad.

Instead, say, I'm in pain. Talk about yourself. Don't talk about her. Describe your own reactions, your own internal state, rather than attacking her.

That's an example of a communication protocol. Establish communication protocol and adhere to them religiously. Communication protocols are very powerful tools which prevent a lot of misunderstanding and pain down the road.

Finally, introduce humor. Humor is the best antidote to anger.

Whenever she's angry, don't mock her. Don't invalidate her anger. Don't minimize her. Don't minimize her. That's not what I'm saying.

But say something humorous that suddenly exposes the whole situation as irrational and if she's amenable to humor this will diffuse the anger.

The borderline has what we call mood lability. Mood lability, her mood is as dysregulated as her emotions.

Mood lability can be counted with physical activity, a sleep schedule, a series of rigid routines. The routines provide structure, provide a skeleton, so rigid routines and with stress management techniques.

Again, I encourage you to go online and look for stress management techniques.

So mood lability in the borderline is a serious problem, mood swings. Very serious problem. Anyone who had lived with a borderline knows what I'm talking about.

This is not like three days of fun and three days of depression. This is like one hour of fun and two hours of depression and then two hours of fun and three hours of anxiety and then three hours of rage and two hours.

The mood swings are enormous and they are never ceasing.

And so if you want to survive with the borderline, you need to regulate this. You need to control her moods. She needs to control her moods.

And these are what I've mentioned, physical activity, sleep schedule, routines, stress management techniques.

The moods of the borderline are reactive. They are not produced internally. Most of the time they are reactive.

Regrettably, her reality testing is impaired. So what she perceives is very often wrong, very often deformed, very often inappropriate, inaccurate.

So by restoring reality testing, you're going to reduce mood lability considerably.

But because it's mostly reactive, you need to eliminate the triggers and the stimuli and the provocations in the environment and you need to structure her life. You need to help her to structure her life so that she can reduce stress. And the stress leads to anxiety, anxiety leads to mood lability.

Reduce stress and you solve an entire chain reaction.

The borderline outsources internal functions, internal what is known as ego functions. She outsources these to you.

The intimate partner of the borderline is her source of regulation. He is the one with a hand on the key. He is in control of how she feels, her emotions, her moods, her reactions, her explosions, her love.

What the borderline does, because she lacks an inner regulated inner world, because her inner world is one gigantic twister.

What she does is she actually is telling you, help me by regulating me. Be my external control. Be my external board of control. Be my user manual.

I'm transferring my locus of control to you, the borderline says. And from now on, you are my God. You are in charge of my moods my emotions my cognitions my happiness my unhappiness my aggression everything I do you are to blame everything I do you're responsible and accountable for even if I misbehave I misbehave because of you.

This is of course, outsourcing of course, is extremely unhealthy. It's extremely unhealthy.

First of all, because it is counterfactual. It's not true.

Many of the dysregulatory behaviors and emotions and moods of the borderline had nothing to do with you as a partner.

So attributing everything to you is scapegoating you. Don't let the borderline scapegoat you.

Teach her to regain the locus of control. Transfer these responsibilities that she had given to you, that she had abrogated. Transfer these responsibilities back to her.

Do it incrementally. Do it gradually. Do not threaten her. Do not demand. Do not control. Do not chastise and castigate and criticize. Be nice. Be kind. She is not well. Help her to recover.

Provide her with increasing control over herself, her circumstances, her choices, her decisions and gradually her emotions and her moods.

Remove this locus of control from yourself and help her to regain an internal locus of control.

At the same time, help her to develop and reward what we call autoplastic defenses.

Autoplastic defenses is accepting responsibility for your actions and for the consequences of your actions.

Alloplastic defenses is when we blame other people for everything that's happening to us. That implies an external locus of control.

If you are to blame for what's happening to me, then I'm not in control of my life. You are.

You want the borderline to regain control over life also by accepting responsibility for everything she had done, everything that's happening to her.

And it can start with a very simple manipulation of language. Borderlines often say, this happened to me.

You should tell the borderline, no, this did not happen to you. You did it.

Very typical case is when the borderline comes and says, I was drunk and I slept with another man. It happened. It did not happen. You did it.

Restores a sense of responsibility, self-control, locus of control.

Reward these defenses, reward these behaviors when it's warranted. When she does something good, something nice, reward her.

When she does something bad, refuse to accept responsibility. Reject any attempt to put it on you. You're not responsible for her actions. You're not responsible for her moods, for her emotions, for her cognitions, for her misbehavior, for her aggression, for her violence.

The borderline, exactly like the narcissist, tends to idealize and devalue. She idealizes you and devalues you on a daily basis.

These are very rapid cycles, as opposed to the narcissist. In borderline, the cycling is very rapid. She can idealize you and devalue you several times a day.

The problem is when she idealizes you, you're God. When she devalues you, you're the devil.

And she doesn't feel bad when she's in the stage of devaluation. She doesn't feel bad to betray you, to cheat on you, to harm you, to undermine your interests.

So it's very dangerous when the borderline is in the devaluation phase. Because in this phase, when she is devaluing you, she is controlled by a secondary psychopathic self-state. She's a psychopath.

You don't want the borderline to devalue you because she will damage you really seriously and badly. You don't want her to idealize you either because then her expectations are unrealistic and she's bound to be frustrated and disappointed and devalue you.

You want to stop this cycle. You want to stop it dead in its tracks. You don't want idealization and devaluation. You want a realistic assessment of who you are, what you can give, what are your limitations. And you want this realistic assessment to be the foundation of your relationships.

You want, in words, to restore reality testing.

Insist on reality. Whenever she says something wrong, counterfactual, correct her, insist to introduce reality at all times, hundreds of times a day if you have to, repeatedly on the same topic if you have to.

Restoring a reality testing is the only guarantee that your relationship will not end in a self-annihilating nuclear mushroom cloud, which is a typical waya relationship with the borderline ends, ask me.

Maintain the entire picture, integrate her splitting. When she says that someone is all bad remind her that this very person has good aspects, good traits and had behaved nicely with her, was kind to her.

Negate her splitting, negate her projection, act against defenses, do not let her idealize and devalue you or anyone else.

Integrate splitting, maintain the entire picture, serve as a reminder, serve as a database, serve as a repository of the totality of experience.

If she tries to divide experience into black and white, we call it dichotomous thinking, black and white fallacy.

If she tries to divide people in life into black and white, remind her life is actually gray and that people are always in between, partly bad, partly good.

Help her because she's stuck at a very infantile stage, she regresses to an infantile stage where mommy is all good or all bad, you are all good and all bad, etc. Help her to integrate.

One major problem with borderline, and this is the focus of dialectical behavioral therapy, frankly, is self-mutilation, which could lead to suicidality, between 10 and 11% of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder actually commit suicide.

It's an enormous rate.

So the borderline self-mutilates. She can self-mutilate, classically, by cutting herself or burning herself with cigarettes. This is dermatological self-mutilation on the skin. It's visible.

But there are many other ways to self-mutilate.

For example, she can sexually self-trash. She can self-trash sexually. She can do horrible sexual things. Anything from, I don't know, gangbang to sleeping with disgusting men that she finds revolting. I mean, she just to trash herself.

She can abuse substances. She can behave recklessly and as a way to self-harm. You know, if you drive recklessly, you may end up in an accident.

So there are numerous ways for the borderline to self-mutilate, self-harm. The ultimate is suicide. You need to prevent this.

And prevention involves recognizing the warning signs of suicide. And these include extreme mood swings, feelings of hopelessness, giving away possessions, losing interest in activities that hitherto she found interesting, talking about death or suicide, saying goodbye to family and friends, saying that everyone is a burden on her, she doesn't want to see anyone, so schizoid face, withdrawing from friends and family. All these things are signs of impending episode of self-harm.

The problem with borderline is escalation.

The borderline drinks one drink, she drinks 20. It's like alcohol craving writ large.

So she can't regulate her behaviors when she starts to do something she has no intention to end where she usually ends. She had intention to have one drink, she ends up being in a blackout, I'm calling blackout. She had an intention just to flirt with the men, she ends up having sex with him in a dingy, sleazy hotel. She had intentions just to drive in the breeze, but she ends up wrecking the car.

So she escalates.

If you see these signs, they may lead to suicide because she can't stop herself, there's no regulatory mechanism there. She starts with one intention and she ends up with totally different act.

You need to listen, you need to be attuned to her. You need to be like a seismograph.

Do not judge her. Do not dismiss her. Do not discount or invalidate her feelings.

Just be a good listener. Just sit next to her and let her talk to you.

Encourage her and prompt her, motivate her and incentivize her to talk to you by being a kind soul, by loving her truly.

Encourage her to verbalize, encourage her to sublimate her aggression, some way, do something, punch a bag, write a book, read a book, watch a movie, go on a walk. Physical activity is always very important in all these things.

The problem with the borderline is dissociation. She doesn't remember.

Because she doesn't remember things, she can't learn. There's no processlearning. There's no memory.

When there's no memory, there's no identity. There's no identity. There's no one there to learn.

So borderline never learns. It's infuriating because she keeps repeating the same mistake over and over again. She keeps associating with the same people who had mistreated her, disrespected her, raped her again and again. She does everything again and again, the self-harm keeps repeating, the self-mutilation, the wrong choices, the disastrous decisions, the horrible people who had trampled all over her.

She keeps coming back for more because she has no memory. She's totally dissociative. She lives in the presence in the worst sense of the word. She is discontinuous. She has no continuity.

Encourage her to develop continuity. Ask her to journal, to have a diary, where she writes everything that's happening to her, everything she thinks, everything she feels. And then encourage her to read the diary the next day.

So this creates continuity, at least cognitive continuity. Journaling is a very powerful tool.

Mementos, objects that carry memories or associated with memories, something with a smell, something with a taste, a visual thing that provokes her memory. Memory triggers, like in the famous movie Memento.

So memory triggers, encourage her to place post-it notes on the refrigerator, on the door, on chairs all over the house, post-it notes to remind her of things she wanted to do, things she's thinking about.

I mean, there's a close affinity between borderline personality disorder and patients with early onset dementia. It's very reminiscent of some phases of Alzheimer.

You need to reestablish continuity via memory. Encourage her to video record herself because video recordings are much more powerful than written notes. Maybe she should video record herself and keep these recordings for a few days, watch them a few days later to establish this thin thread of memory and identity.

Programmed reminders I mentioned before. Use them a lot. Reminder of this, reminder of this, reminder of that.

Ground her in reality by force, by force of love and kindness. Drag her down. She's floating. She's like an air balloon, you know, a helium balloon.

Drag her down, ground her, moor her in a good way, tie her to your wrist, keep her with you. She's worth it. She's worth it.

Because most borderlines are beautiful, intelligent, heartbreakingly tender women. She is worth the investment and the effort if you're up to it.

And finally, borderlines have transient paranoid ideation, and they are very likely to make you the enemy, the persecutory object.

If you insist on introducing the borderline to reality, if you try to regulate her emotions and her moods, you're bound to clash with her. There's bound to be conflict.

As these conflicts accumulate, she's going to begin to regard you as the enemy. We call it a persecutory object. She's going to begin to develop transient paranoid ideation about paranoia. She's going to begin to suspect you of malevolence and bad intentions. She's going to be wary of you, she's going to be suspicious of you, she's going to interrogate you, she's going to spy on you.

This is common in borderline. You don't need to worry. You just need to take it in stride, it will pass. That's why we call it transient paranoid ideation. It passes.

Insist on reality testing when she's paranoid, journaling, question her, doubt her, counter her paranoia with your own paranoid, mirror her, use a secret code or an exit strategy and agree on it when she is not paranoid. And when she is paranoid, use this secret code or exit strategy or safe word for her to freeze and suspend her paranoid.

So when you say the word, she freezes. She doesn't continue with her paranoid ideation until it passes.

You need to counter all these things, you need to fight. Being with the borderline is a prolonged fight on multiple fronts, every possible front actually.

Now, some intimate partners, some men, because I'm using the example of a woman, with borderline, some men find it worthwhile because the borderlines have gifts to give, which very few women do.

The borderline, the typical borderline maintains her childlike pureness and goodness. A typical borderline when she loves you, you would never ever experience a love like that in your life. It is total love. She is immersed in you.

It's not like the codependent. Co-dependent depends on you.

So in the codependent, there's a strong transactional element.

The borderline loves you essentially unconditionally, like I would say a mother does. But she loves you as a woman, not as a mother.

A borderline is typically a woman's woman because she's very flirtatious, seductive, and so you're into this kind of woman, I mean, she's a woman's woman there's a lot it's a treasure typical borderline woman is a treasure but the price is very high and constant and you need to be on your toes you need to walk on eggshells all the time.

Most men would say the price is not worth the price. I'm one of the few who thought, think, probably will think in the future, that the price is well worth the price.

I have paid a very big personal price for my exclusive choice of borderline women but whatever price I had received made all the prices I've paid well worth it.

Not your cup of tea go away don't even start as you may you may get captivated and trapped avoid contact with borderline women they are very very alluring and addictive if it's not to a cup of tea walk away if you can't do all this things i just mentioned on a regular daily basis hourly basis i mean just walk away it's a full-time job it's a full-time maintenance job if you can and you're up to it a treasure awaits you at the end of the rainbow. Go for it, Dorothy.

So, like many, you love your narcissist. You don't want your narcissist to walk away. You want him to remain in your lives, because when you are with your narcissist, you feel much more alive. You feel that the world is full of colors.

When he is away, when he is absent, when he had abandoned you, the world becomes black and white. Dull, boring, predictable.

The narcissist brings into your life excitement, thrill, novelty, adventure. It's very difficult without the narcissist.

The narcissist actually reflects an idealized view of you. The narcissist makes you in some ways love yourself, or at the very least, love your life. And this is highly addictive.

So I'm going to teach you how to keep the narcissist, how to not lose your narcissists, how to make sure that you spend a long time with your analysis as long as you wish.

But before I do so, a disclaimer.

In 1995, I am the one who invented the no contact strategy. Yes, I'm the guy who invented no contact.

And for well over 10 years until 2004, I paid a very dear price for this coping strategy because the entire profession, psychologists, psychotherapists, marriage counselors, everyone was attacking me.

And they attacked me because they said that the no contact strategy is cruel, is unnecessary, is wrong.

Today, no contact is the standard advice. It's the mainstream coping strategy.

Today you go to a therapist, a counselor, anyone, and they tell you, well, if you can, you know, cut your losses, walk away, dissolve the diet, break the relationship, break up.

And to this very day, this is by far the best advice. It's much better than grey rock and any other color of rock. It's much better than mirroring, which is a technique that I also invented. It's much better than any known method to manipulate the narcissist or to cope with him.

Just walk away and it doesn't matter if the narcissist in your life is your son or your daughter or your husband or even your parent, your mother, your father.

Staying in touch with the narcissist is a process of osmotic poisoning.

The narcissist is like a toxic frog. It is aesthetically enticing, but if you touch his skin, he poisons you incrementally, gradually, imperceptibly, until you shrivel and you die like a plant without water.

Why would you wish upon yourselfsuch a fate is beyond me.

But there are some people, women mostly, whose emotional needs are such that the narcissists caters best to their internal processes.

They get from the narcissistwhat they cannot get from any other type of person.

Maybe they have a need to be mothers, and the narcissist caters to the maternal instincts because he is an eternal adolescent, he a child, narcissus is a case of arrested development.

Maybe they're afraid, these women are afraid of intimacy, they have a dysfunctional attachment style. This sits well with a narcissism, his attachment style is anywhere between non-existent and dysfunction.

Maybe they're a bit psychopathic or antisocial and they like novelty and excitement and thrill and the lack of impulse control. The narcissist gives you all that in ample measure.

So some people have been conditioned by years of dysfunctional wrong upbringing to be with narcissists.

There is even a subspecies of covert narcissists, the inverted narcissist, who thrives only when her intimate partner is a narcissist. She basks in the narcissistic reflected glory. She derives the narcissistic supply from her primary narcissistic supply. She is like the moon to the narcissistic sun. Her light is reflected.

So you can't generalize and say that no one should ever be with a narcissist under any circumstances.

There are small groups of people, women mostly, who find a narcissist the only solution. And a diet with a narcissist the only viable arrangements.

And so the first thing is that, having said that, my advice is leave now, live before the effects of abuse, including complex post-traumatic stress disorder, before these effects become entrenched, and leave him before your children begin to pay the price as well. That's my advice.

But if you insist on stay, always against the best interests of yourself and your nearest and dearest, here's a survival manual.

Let's start with the five don't do.

There's five don't do this.

If you do certain things, you incur the wrath of the narcissists, you provoke his rage, you provoke his abuse, and his abuse could be up to little.

You don't want the narcissist to be your enemy. You don't want him to consider you a persecutory object. You don't want to feel that you are deliberately frustrating him.

So here's five things you should never do.

Number one, never disagree with the narcissists, never contradict the narcissists, never criticize the narcissists. Never, if you can, speak if you are not spoken to. Background noise. Just be there. Nod your head. Adulate, admire, reflect back, remind the narcissist of his grandiose moments, his accomplishments, his acclaim to fame, his nine minutes of glory.

That's your job. You're an external memory. You're a repository of all the past narcissistic supply and you provide secondary supply. You regulate the flow of narcissistic supply in the narcissist's life.

You can't do that if you disagree with him or contradict him, let alone if you criticize him. It's bad.

Never offer the narcissist any intimacy. And that includes never offer him advice. Never offer him a help. never offer to help him never give him another point of view never suggest anything never tell him how much you love him never suddenly hug or embrace him uncontrollably impulsively.

Intimacy is a threat.

If you offer the narcissist advice or help, it means that you are superior to him in some way. You know something he doesn't know.

If you have another point of view, that means he did not consider all points of view.

He is godlike. He sees everything. He knows everything. There's nothing you can contribute to him. There's nothing you know. There's nothing. You see that he hadn't already long ago considered.

And if you try to imply that there is, then you are challenging his grandiosity. You're undermining his self-perception and self-image. You are destabilizing the inner precarious equilibrium that it took him decades to establish.

It's bad news, you're bad news, you're becoming bad news.

Intimacy does the same because when you offer intimacy, what you're saying is, I know you.

Intimacy is founded on knowing the other person.

You can't have intimacy with a total stranger.

Intimacy develops and evolves and is a derivative and a byproduct of getting to know each other but the narcissist, like God, is unknowable. Who are you to know him? You don't have the necessary intelligence, you don't have the necessary skills. He's above you. He's so much above you. It's like an ant trying to understand a human being. The gap between you is so long as your chimpanzee, he's human. I mean there's no way you can really know him. You can guess, but you can never know.

Moreover, intimacy is something everyone does. Everyone does intimacy. Everyone and his dog does intimacy.

So if you're offering him intimacy, if you're offering the narcissist intimacy, you're actually telling the narcissist, you're like everyone else. You're average, you're common.

There's no bigger insult.

Narcissus react with rage to two things, ignoring them and implying directly or indirectly that they're not special.

And intimacy does exactly this. It implies that the narcissist is not special, that he is in need of something, that you can't get to know him, that he is graspable, that is, you know, just human.

Narcissists don't regard themselves as human they regard themselves as perfect machinery or gods.

So my next advice is look odd, you know, all a-W-E, look awed by whatever attribute matters to him?

For example, if he puts emphasis on his professional accomplishments, every time he mentions his profession, all his accomplishments, look as though you are thunderstruck. Thunderstruck, nothing short of thunderstruck.

Look like you are adulating and admiring him, prostrating himself before his implied divinity.

Don't be afraid to overdo it. You can be as unsubtle, as obvious, as overt and as manipulative, and as exaggerated, and as caricatured as you want to be, and the narcissist will not notice.

Flattery, adulation, admiration will get you anywhere and everywhere with your narcissists.

He's a kid, it's a child, he's a baby.

If what matters to him is his good looks, keep telling him how handsome is. If it's his professional accomplishments, tell him what a genius is. If it's his success with women, tell him he is irresistible.

Support his delusions. Enhance them. Amplify them. Agree with them. Get yourself incorporated in them.

Show him the effect that his magnanimous benevolence has on you. that his divine deity-like attributes have on you.

I mean, show him how you're transformed by his mere presence. Worship him. Worship him.

Next advice.

Never ever remind a narcissist of reality or of life out there.

As reality impinges on the narcissist's sense of grandiosity. Reality hurts. Reality is injurious. Reality keeps reminding the narcissists. You're so small. you're not as smart as you think you're me you're fallible you're fallible you make mistakes.

So don't remind the narcissist how fallible he is, don't remind him of reality. He hates reality. He wants to divorce reality.

The narcissist withdraws from reality. He has an impaired reality testing. And he constructs a fantastic bubble. And he lives within this fantastic bubble. He inhabits it. He resides in it.

His sense of grandiosity depends crucially on not being in touch with reality or on confirmation bias, filtering out, countervailing information, injurious data and external mortification.

When people humiliate him or insult him or challenge him, or criticize him, or disagree with him, he filters all this out, it's like it had never happened.

Don't remind him of the past. Don't do is do not make any comment which might directly impinge on his self-image, on his omnipotence, on his judgment, good judgment, on his omniscience, on his skills, his capabilities, his professional record, or even on his omnipresence.

He knows everything. He is everywhere. He is all-powerful. He is all powerful. He is the most perfect, most brilliant, most handsome, most everything.

Go along with that. Conform, confirm, accept, uphold, buttress, amplify, add.

Bad sentences, start with the words.

I think you may have overlooked. Or maybe you made a mistake here. Or I don't know if you know but, or you were not here yesterday. So, or you can't do that or you shouldn't do that.

All these things are rude, injurious, challenging, hurtful, frustrating and above all malevolent. You become a persecutory object. You're out to get him. You're out to get him you're out to ruin him.

It makes you look stupid. I mean you're an idiot if you can't grasp his magnificence, if you can't grasp the masses his perfection and brilliance his genius his irresistibility something's's wrong with you. Maybe he made a mistake. Maybe he'll not the right partner.

Now, he says, react very badly to restriction placed on their freedom and to challenges to their grandiosity.

Generally speaking, don't start sentences with the first pronoun. Don't start sentences with the word I, mine, mine.

You don't exist as an autonomous entity. You have no personal autonomy. You're not independent. You're an extension.

You are not separate from the narcissists. You have merged and fused with him. You are a construct within his mind. You're an internal object.

Any time you say I, it reminds him that you are outside him, that you are not controlled by him, that you may hurt him by abandoning him.

Now, as he said, object in constancy. They fear abandonment and separation because they're babies. Babies fear abandonment and separation, out of sight, out of mind.

Never mention the fact that you are separate independent entity.

The narcissists in this sense are nothing short of psychotic. They confuse internal objects and external object and you're internal.

I hope you get the gist. This is what not to do.

Now what about what to do?

How to make your narcissist dependent on you? How to make him want to stay with you?

If you insist on staying with him, of course, which is highly counterproductive and so destructive. But it's your choice. I respect your choice. I recognize your personal autonomy. Maybe I'm not a narcissist, who knows.

So, how to make him want you? How to make him never leave you?

Number one, listen attentively to everything the narcissist says, agree with everything he says.

Even if he says, it's evening and it's morning, it's evening.

Narcissists are never wrong. They're the only ones who can change, who can review, who can revise, who can modify and alter what they had said.

You don't have these rights. You don't have administrator rights. You don't have administrator rights. You are a user. You're a client but not an administrator.

So he rules the computer. You can't hack. You can't enter. You are not allowed to disagree.

Even if he makes the most outlandish, egregiously insane and idiotic statements, counterfactual, you must accept them, agree with them, enthusiastically and vehemently, and even add to them, support them.

You don't have to believe what he says. You don't have to believe a word the narcissist says, but let it slide. Let it slide as if everything is just fine. Business as usual.

Advice number two. Personally offers something absolutely unique to the narcissist, which they cannot obtain anywhere else.

If he likes kinky sex, be more kinky than sexual. If he likes food, cook ceaselessly a variety of cuisines.

Always be prepared to line up future sources of primary narcissistic supply for your narcissists.

Because you will not be it for very long, if at all.

You need to become a source of sources. You need to become a database of potentials.

He needs to refer to you as he would refer to Google. You need to become a search engine.

If you take over the procuring function, if you take over the scouting function, if you take over casing the joints for the narcissist, they become that much more dependent on you, which makes it a bit tougher for them to pull their roti stuff, which they will do in any case, but much less so.

The more the narcissist is dependent on you, the less he will abuse you, and the less it will take the risk that you will abandon or dump him.

Advice number three. Be endlessly patient. Endlessly patient. It's a child, a young child.

The average mental age of most narcissists is between four and six.

So be endlessly patient. Remember your own children if you have any. Remember when they were four.

Go out of your way to accommodate the narcissist, keep the narcissistic supply flowing liberally, and keep the peace, relatively speaking, use child psychology techniques, interact with your narcissist as you would have interacted with a baby.

Be endlessly giving. Be endlessly giving.

You may find this a very unattractive proposition, but it's a take it or leave it proposition.

You have to give, give and give, and you have to be ready to receive nothing in return.

Your position is to give. Your reward, the prize, the gratification isn't giving.

You need to be a giving person. You need to be needed, as Lydia Gaggelof's caputzi.

You need to feel that by catering to someone else's needs, your love is in this case, you are the one who is being fulfilled.

And it's not altruism, It's actually a form of control.

Co-dependence control via giving.

So this way you will control your narcissist. The more you give, the more he is under your thumb. The more you can manipulate.

Next, be absolutely emotionally and financially independent of the narcissists.

I repeat this. Be emotionally independent of the narcissists.

Don't let him regulate your emotions and stabilize your labil moods. Don't make him the source of your inner internal regulation.

And do your best to gradually build up financial independence. Steal money from him and put it away. In some countries it's called the Black Fund. You know, save money, steal money here and there. Put it away for a rainy day. Make sure you have a reserve. Take what you need. Take the excitement. Take the engulfment.

Refuse to get upset. Refuse to get hurt. When the narcissist does or says something, dumb, rude or insensitive, and he will. He will. He will because he recognizes no boundaries and he does not recognize it as a separate entity.

He's talking to himself. He's talking to your representation in his mind, something that I call a snapshot. You're an internal object. He can't, by definition, hurt you, or slight you, or humiliate you, or insult you. You can't be rude to yourself.

And yelling back, sometimes works well. This is part of my mirroring technique but you should reserve this to special occasions if you don't want to erode the efficaciousness of this technique.

The more you use it the more it's like inflation with money, you know. The more money you print, the less valuable the money. The more you yell back, the less it has effect.

Use it on special occasions when you fear that your narcissists may be on the verge of leaving you.

Silent treatment is a better ordinary response, but it must be carried out without any emotional content. You must be detached, you must be cold, you must be impervious, you must be apathetic and indifferent. You must appear to be bored with him. And I'll talk to you later when I'm good and ready, when you are behaving in a more reasonable fashion and just walk away.

Use manipulative techniques.

The only way to survive in a relationship with the narcissist is to counter his manipulations with yours, leverage his manipulations against him like in martial arts, use the enemy's force and power and momentum against him.

If your narcissist is cerebral and he's not interested in sex, what should you do?

Well, give yourself ample permission to cheat on him, to have hidden sex with other people. Be discreet. Don't be injurious. Don't be ostentatious. But you need sex. Do not deny your needs. If you feel like having sex, it doesn't give it to you. You have a full moral right to look for it elsewhere.

Your cerebral narcissist will not be indifferent to infidelity. So discretion and secrecy is of paramount importance.

But there's a difference between discretion and secrecy and deception. Usually cerebral narcissists and their spouses or intimate partners or mates, they settle into something called don't ask, don't tell.

Don't rub it in his face, but don't deceive. There's no need to deceive. He will never, he doesn't care. He will never even ask you anything. You go out, you come in, who cares? Who he doesn't care who you're with, on the contrary, by the way. He's relieved. This chore is someone else's problem, some other men's problem.

And if your narcissists is somatic and you don't mind, join in. In endlessly interesting group sex encounters.

Make sure to choose properly for your narcissists because they are indiscriminate. They don't care about sexually transmitted diseases and so on. Better to control the situation.

I know you find this particular advice very off-putting and even shocking what I will participate in trifling, I will participate in trysts, I will participate in threesomes, I will swing with my narcissist or I will agree to kinky sex, humiliation, sadistic sex, no way.

Well, if you don't, he will go ahead anyhow. But he will go ahead anyhow without your control, without your knowledge. He will bring home diseases. He will do horrible things. He will give all your money to someone.

You must control him as a child. The only way to control the narcissist is to co-opt him, to cooperate with him, to collaborate with him, to become a part of his world.

If he's into group sex, so should you. If he's into threesomes, you should be one of the three. And if he needs sexual partners outside the marriage, outside the diet, outside the, then you know, procure. Bring him your friends. Bring him some other people.

You must control the situation.

They're heedless. They're very undiscriminating in respect to sexual partners. And that can get very problematic.

Not only sexual STDs, but for example, blackmail.

If you're a fixer, then focus on fixing not the narcissist but fixing situations preferably before they become situations.

Do not attempt to fix another narcissist for two reasons. He's not fixable. And the second reason he's gonna resent it really badly. It's gonna create a lot of friction and a lot of conflict. And then he's going to dump you because he would perceive this as a challenge to his grandiosity. Constant challenge to his grandiosity.

So let it go. Let it slide. Ignore it. Focus on objectives, on goals, on situations. Fix what needs fixing. Ignore your narcissists.

Don't for one moment delude yourself that you can fix the narcissist. It simply will not happen.

Not because they are being stubborn. They just simply can't be fixed. End of story. Not every problem has a solution. Narcissism is one problem that has no solution, not even cold therapy.

My new treatment modality, cold therapy, doesn't cure narcissism. It eliminates the need for grandiosity and it destroys the false self. That's it.

If there is any fixing that can be done, it is to help your narcissists become aware of their condition that you can do gradually, gently, subtly, patiently, patiently, lovingly, compassionately, without challenging, not head-on, not in a confrontational and not in a narcissistic manner.

Don't be grandiose. But you can gradually make him become aware of his condition. It's very important. Don't go into negative implications, into accusations in the process.

Make it positive psychology, not negative psychology.

It is like living with a physically handicapped person and being able to discuss calmly, unemotionally, what the limitations and benefits of the handicap are, of the disability, and how the two of you can work with these factors with his disability rather than trying to change his disability.

If someone is quadriplegic, the only thing you can change is the wheelchair. Change the wheelchair.

Finally, most importantly of all, you should know yourself.

You focus too much on him. All victims focus too much on the abuser.

They refuse to see themselves and their contribution to what is happening.

They deny, sometimes ferociously, sometimes malevolently, their own narcissism and their own unsavory behaviors.

You must know yourself. It's a source of power.

What are you getting out of the relationship? Are you actually a masochist maybe? Co-dependent, perhaps?

Why is this relationship attractive to you? Why is it interesting?

Define for yourself. What good and beneficial things you believe you are receiving in this relationship.

Define the things that you find out for, bad for you.

Develop strategies to minimize this harm, this hurt, this pain, the evil aspects.

Don't expect that you will cognitively be able to reason with the narcissists to change who they are.

You can't negotiate with them. You can't agree with them.

They break promises and contracts because they have no constancy.

You don't honor a contract with someone who faces in and out of existence.

I mean, you're out of sight, you're out of mind, you don't exist. You're back, you exist.

How do you maintain continuity when you're in a permanent state of inconstancy and dissociation?

It's hopeless.

Don't make agreements with the narcissists, contracts, compacts, promises, decisions, it's ridiculous.

What are you negotiating with, the four-year-old?

You may have some limited success in getting your narcissist to tone down on the really abrasive and harmful behaviors, the behaviors that affect you, which emanate from the unchangeable, the immutable, what the narcissist is, is essence.

So we can modify behavior. You can modify behavior. To some extent.

Don't expect too much. This can only be accomplished in a very trusting frame and open relationship.

And I want to suggest to you a few resolutions, personal resolutions, New Year resolutions if you wish.

Resolutions are notoriously fragile and ephemeral, but victims of abuse cannot afford this cavalier attitude.

Your mental and too often physical health, they depend on strictly observing the following promises to yourself.

Number one, I will treat myself with dignity, 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 other people what I regard as permissible and acceptable behavior and what is off limits and out of bounds.

Number three, I will not tolerate abuse. I will not tolerate aggression in any shape, form or disguise. I will seek to terminate such misconduct instantly and unequivocally. If I can't, I'll walk away.

Number four, I will be assertive and unambiguous about my needs, wishes and expectations from other people.

I will not be arrogant, but I will be confident. I will be assertive. I will not be self-effacing. I will not be meek. I will not be selfish. I will not be grandiose. I will not be narcissistic. I will not be haughty.

But I will love myself. I will care for myself. I come first in the best sense of the world.

For me to love others, I must love myself. For me to care for others, I must first take care of myself.

Number five, I will get to know myself better. I will study myself, I'll make myself into a topic of study. I will render myself my project.

Number six, I will treat other people as I want them to treat me. That's a very ancient wisdom. I will try to lead by way of example.

Number seven, if I am habitually disrespected, regularly abused, or if my boundaries are constantly ignored and breached, I will go no contact. I will break up. I will terminate the relationship with the abuser forthwith. Zero tolerance. Zero tolerance.

First try and you're out. And no second chance would be my maxims for self-preservation.

I wish you luck with your narcissist. It's not an easy ride.

Some of you think that it's the only ride in town. You're wrong. There are many buses where this one has departed.

But you insist to ride a specific bus, polluted, dirty, infected? It's your choice. At least do it properly.

The other day, I came across an amazing, unprecedented phenomenon. A comment on one of my YouTube videos that I failed to delete. It's a pleasure, you know, I can't control it.

Okay Shoshanim, what did the comments say?

Sam, that's me. How exactly does the intimate partner regulate the borderline's emotions? How does the regulation occur? What does the partner do to affect emotional regulation in the borderline?

Now, I coined the phrase external regulation to describe a form of internal regulation, and I did this in order to discombobulate you. Look it up.

External regulation is when the process of internal regulation is misattributed to an external source.

Now, in healthy, normal people, the control of moods, emotions, interaction with reality, realityan external source.

Now, in healthy, normal people, the control of moods, emotions, interaction with reality, reality testing, etc. All these come from the inside. There is a sensation, there's a feeling, there's an experience of innate control, in hearing, something that is embedded somewhere in your chest or something.

In external control, the control of moods, emotions, reality testing, cognitions, you name it. Emotions are the main thing, but many other things are being regulated on a regular basis.

So in external regulation, the internal processes of regulation continue apace, exactly like in normal or healthy people, but the individual firmly believes that the regulation is coming from the outside.

This is a kind of misattribution, or if you wish, kind of attribution error.

And this is the topic of today's video.

How does the borderline experience this regulation that is coming from the outside, the hand of God if you wish?

What is taking place in her mind or his mind, half of all borderlines are men? What is taking place in her mind when she interacts with someone, she believes is reaching inside, reaching inside her brain, inside her mind, and rearranging the furniture.

How does it feel? What does she feel? How does she interpret it? What kind of narrative or story is she telling herself?

That's the topic of today's video.

Sam Vaknin, author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, the first book ever on narcissistic abuse and a professor of clinical psychology in multiple universities lately.

Okay, let's delve right in.

We all have a regulatory system. Regulatory systems are a group, a set of interacting mechanisms that act in order to maintain equilibrium, homeostasis, any other stable state.

So regulation within or mediated via the regulatory system is about stability.

The main purpose of regulation is to maintain stability. Even financial regulation, for example, the Fed, national banks, even financial regulation is about maintaining stability.

Now, human beings regulate many things all the time, physiologically, but also psychologically and mentally.

Processes that happen in the brain, they regulate people, for example, regulate consciousness. There are many activities taking place within your mind that are aimed at managing or changing the state and contents of consciousness. Avoiding pain, seeking pleasure, sick and thrills, risks and variety, etc.

Self-destructive activities. Self-harming, chemical intoxication, self-mutilation, activities self-harming chemical intoxication self-mutilation substance abuse. There are also forms of efforts, attempts to regulate states of consciousness. They are self-destructive, self-defeating, they are dysfunctional, they're wrong, but they are still about regulation.

It's everything, many of the things we do have to do with this desperate need to keep the environment, internal environment, fixed, predictable.

What the borderline does, she outsources her ego functions. Functions that normally take place within the individual, in what was known in psychoanalytic literature as the ego, these functions are relegated to the outside.

A typical borderline would outsource these functions to an intimate partner or a special friend, a special person. Someone with whom she feels safe to experience intimacy and to expose her vulnerabilities.

These kind of people are rare and when that borderline finds them, she unburdens herself. She stops to exist in a way, she deactivates herself, and she allows these people from the outside to interfere, intervene in her internal landscape, in her inner space, and carry out the functions that she should have carried autonomously.

This is a symbiotic relationship, and we'll discuss it a bit later.

The transfer of ego functions to the outside, to an intimate partner, to a special friend, to a special person, the transfer, this by the way happens in autism to some extent. This transfer of ego functions is utterly automatic. It's not a decision.

It's not like the borderline sits alone, home, eating a TV meal and debates with herselfwhether to kind of convey her ego functions to someone or relegate them to someone.

This is not the way it works.

When she comes across someone who fulfills the criteria, and I refer you to my video about managing the borderline enchantress, when she finds someone who meets the criteria, she automatically dislodges her ego functions, transfers them to that person, and becomes a passive recipient, receptacle, a container of the other person's decisions, activities, choices, personality, predilections, and so on.

She becomes a blank canvas upon which the other person can paint himself or herself. She's 100% responsive to cues and stimuli from the outside.

It's a very interesting transformation to behold.

And it involves the following.

The regulation of emotions and moods.

The other person, the special friend, the special person, the intimate partner, the other person, is granted absolute power to alter the moods and to control the emotions, to evoke them, to silence them, to trigger them, to deactivate them, total control over the operating system of the borderline.

With a single word, this specific individual can plunge the borderline into complete depression and despair or into narcissistic elation of indescribable proportions.

Power is infinite, unlimited, exorbitant, if you wish.

The same effect on the borderline's moods applies to her emotions.

That person from the outside, the external regulator, can trigger and provoke and elicit any emotion, negative or positive, love or hatred, fear or a sense of safety, anything, envy, compassion.

It is as if the borderline's mind has been transmitted remotely into someone else to do with as he or she pleases.

And gradually with time protocols emerge, keywords, triggers, buttons to be pushed.

The two parties settle into a kind of ritual where one of them has all the power and the other one controls that person from the bottom via her helplessness and neediness in clinging.

It's very reminiscent of codependent dynamics. The borderline signals her needs.

For example, now she needs to be elated. Or now she wants to experience a modicum of depression and despair. Or now she wants to feel love or now she hates or needs to hate and then she expects the partner to respond in kind to push the right buttons to say the right words to behave in specific ways.

When she experiences engulfment anxiety, the partner is supposed to walk away. When she experiences abandonment anxiety, the partner is supposed to be 100% of a time present. When she loves the partner he is supposed to act in a lovable way when she hates the partner he is supposed to be not become obnoxious.

The partner is molded by the expectations of the borderline while maintaining the power to gratify or satisfy or realize these expectations.

Self-actualization of the borderline is a derivative of the decisions and choices made by the intimate partner or the special friend within a ritualized highly structured context and again watch the video about the enchantress the link is in the description.

It is a cult-like situation, it's a paracosm, it's a shared fantasy and it drifts away from reality the longer the partners are enmeshed and embedded in this out of context, de-contextualized, self-generated, on-the-fly ambience and environment.

When the borderline is in this arrangement, when she has found someone she could trust to regulate her from the outside, or someone she could attribute to the regulation that actually takes place inside her.

When she finds someone like that and they have established their shared fantasy, the borderline experiences a sense of unitary completion as if she has been a partial person and then she has found her compliment she has found someone to complete her and to become unitary a single unit a single organism it's a holistic perception.

It's benign. It's not like the narcissist takeover, which is essentially hostile and exploitative. It's not like the codependent strategies, which are Machiavellian in many cases and involve control.

In the case of the borderline it's more about submission. It is true submission, kind of Islam if you wish, it is true submission that the borderline emerges into the wholeness, into the completed perfection that is the symbiotic merger and fusion with an intimate partner or the special person.

At that point, the borderline experiences something very rare for her.

And again, I say her, half of all borderlines are men.

The borderline experiences something very rare.

Balance, equilibrium, homeostasis, a secure base, a sense of safety, stability, predictability, the glimmerings of object constancy.

The borderline is incapable of experiencing introject constancy. In other words, she is incapable of creating stable representations of other people in her mind.

She is capable of object constancy, but she is distrustful of people. She is terrified of exposing her vulnerabilities, of being hurt, rejected, abandoned, humiliated, shamed. She's terrorized by the potential of other people to harm her somehow.

She, therefore, avoids to the best of her ability, intimacy, unless it is with someone who she then designates the special person or the special frame or the intimate partner.

So very few get chosen.

A borderline may fleet, like a butterfly, you know, a light on multiple people, but she doesn't really become herself very often. Takes a special kind of partner.

And then when she feels this internal settling, internal cohesion, internal correspondence, internal resonance that is all encompassing, all pervasive, ubiquitous and yet warm, accepting, embracing.

It is only then that she allows herself to experience object constancy with her loved one, with her special one.

And that feels utterly oceanic. It's like going back to the womb.

And we will discuss in a minute the parental implications of this.

But it's like going back to the matrix, to the womb.

And it is this exactly that triggers in the borderline, her engulfment anxiety.

By going back to the womb, she is being unborn. She is annihilating her soul, annulling her soul.

By merging and fusing symbiotically with her loved one, the borderline vanishes. She gradually transitions from full-fledged organism to a single ovum or sperm or whatever and then not even that there's a risk of disappearing altogether and this creates engulfment anxiety and the famous approach avoidance repetition compulsion it's all about the avoidance and mitigation of pain.

The motivating force, if you wish, the motivating dynamic, the motivating emotional landscape in the borderline's life is hurt and pain, agonizing, excruciating, debilitating, fiery, consuming pain.

Her entire life is dedicated to the designing and implementation of strategies to skirt this pain, to avoid it, to mitigate it, to ameliorate it, to ignore it, to deny it, to reframe it, to do something with it.

When she finds a person to love, when she finds an intimate partner or a special person or a special friend, what have you, she allows herself to feel the pain. She allows herself to feel the pain she allows herself to feel the pain she perceives love as pain she perceives love as a form of slavery addiction it's painful it's a painful experience and her solution is to self-infantilize.

She regresses. She becomes an infant, a toddler than an infant, then a newborn, then in the womb. She infantilizes, regresses almost to a previous incarnation, if you believe in this kind of nonsense.

And at that point, she expects the intimate partner or the special friend to assume the parental role and the parental discourse.

She child defies herself, she reduces herself into a childlike state, fully expecting the other partner to respond in kind bybecoming a parental figure and engaging in parental speech.

And so this is the way she avoids the pain.

It is as if she says, I'm a child, don't hurt me. Or as if she says, I'm a child, I'm incapable of understanding the profundity and extent of adult pain.

And so having been consumed by her intimate partner, by her lover, by her special friend, having consumed, subsumed, assumed, having merged and fused, having become this perfection, which is holistic and which is a secure base, safe, stable, determinate, predictable, this introduces structure and order into the borderline's otherwise utterly chaotic personality organization world and life. It reduces the chaos, it's an anti-chaos strategy.

And within this structure and order, she strikes a bargain. She negotiates a deal. It's a contract. It's not transactional. She's not a gold digger. It's not transactional. Give and take. I'll give you sex. You give me money, for example. Not this kind of thing.

But it is still contractual. There are rights, they're corresponding or commensurate duties. And there are rituals and protocols. They're all very rigid and embedded in any deviation, any divergence from this contractual landscape triggers the borderline, renders her extremely anxious, paralyzed with fear, anticipation and injuries and mortifications.

Borderline is a very, very fragile structure, very fragile person and as distinct as opposed to the narcissist. She does not have well-developed narcissistic defenses and so she's a kind of narcissist without the shell, a turtle without the shell. And this is why she keeps getting overwhelmed internally as well as externally. She has no defenses to speak of except very primitive infantile defenses which are not up to the task. For example, splitting.

She needs nurturance. She seeks satisfaction and gratification of her wishes and aspirations, dreams and hopes and fantasies, accomplishments. She needs a horizon. She needs hope.

The borderline's relationship with her loved ones is a relationship of eternal hope. Hope springs eternal there. It's not malignant optimism. The borderline is pretty grounded in some ways because she is highly paranoid and suspicious. She sees through people. Most people are transparent to the borderline.

But she wants some hope because she is by nature depressive and even suicidal. She needs some counterpoint. She requires some counterweight. And it is the role of the intimate partner to provide them with hope.

It is the mere presence of the partner. The partner doesn't have to do much, honestly. It is the mere presence of the partner that is sufficient. The mere constancy of the object, the mere existence, the mere availability of the partner or the loved one or the special person, they're enough to ignite in her a flame of hope.

And it is not a consuming flame. It is an energizing flame. It is the warmth in a cold winter day.

This is how she perceives the relationship. Like some kind of a flame. A flame that keeps you warm, a flame that keeps away the wild animals, a flame around which you can tell stories, narratives that comfort, that reduce anxiety, that make the world habitable. It's like a campfire.

The intimate partner has to intercede with reality. Reality is intermediated via the intimate partner or via the special person.

The borderline has no access to reality, no contact with reality, except through the intimidation and intercession of other people, people she trusts.

I call it vicarious reality testing.

We know a lot about regulation. I call it vicarious reality testing. We know a lot about regulation, regulatory functions. There is even a theory known as regulatory focus theory.

Regulatory focus theory is a conceptual framework. It discusses motivation and behavior.

The theory suggests that people are fundamentally either promotion oriented or prevention oriented.

When people make decisions and choices, when they pursue certain courses of action, when they anticipate consequences and outcomes, when they position themselves, when they adopt goals and so on so forth, they're either focused on prevention or focused on promotion.

And according to the theory, promotion-focused self-regulation is concerned with nurturance, with accomplishment of needs, and with the pursuit of wishes and aspirations.

This, the borderline is incapable of, except through the intermediation of another person.

The promotion-focused self-regulation except through the intermediation of another person.

The promotion focus self-regulation results in sensitivity to positive outcomes and to relative pleasure from gains.

Freud would have called it the pleasure principle.

Prevention focused self-regulation is concerned with safety and security needs and is focused on meeting duties and obligations. It results in sensitivity to negative outcomes and to relative pain from losses.

This is exactly the internal landscape of the borderline.

She is prevention focused, her self-regulationis intended to prevent pain and other adverse consequences.

And so the theory says that your disposition towards either obtaining gains or avoiding losses influences your dominant motivations and affects your behavioral choices.

This is exactly what happens with the borderline.

Her propensity, her disposition towards preventative measures, avoiding pain, reducing stress, walking away from untoward adverse dangerous circumstances, not dangerous but unpleasant circumstances.

This attitudinal, motivational space of the borderline causes her to adopt strategies which relegate promotional self-regulation to an intimate partner or a loved one or a special friend.

It's as if the borderline says, I am half a person. As I am, all alone, I'm half a person. I'm capable only of preventing, I'm capable of preventing loss and pain, but I'm incapable of making myself happy. I'm incapable of experiencing pleasure.

And so I need you, my intimate partner, I need you, my special person, I need you, my loved one. I need you to bring pleasure and happiness into my life and it is via pleasure and happiness that I regulate my internal environment that I avoid for example suicidality.

This is more or less the deal between the borderline and her loved ones, her nearest, dearest and closest.

And when we apply regulatory focus theory to borderline, we understand the borderline's communication patterns, the way she organizes her life, the organizational principles that control her life, the way she performstasks, many things, I will not go into them right now.

I hope I've answered the question that this video started with.

It's not easy. It's not easy to understand or accept a person who vacates herself, empties herself on purpose.

She kind of accepts her emptiness, her void, the black hole, which is her essence, and tries to fill it in, tries to negate it somehow, via other people.

But she does it intentionally and deliberately, strategically.

And so it's the equivalent of embracing the emptiness as a tool of motivating people to negate it.

This is the paradoxical nature of the borderline's existence.

She is an emptiness. She seeks to destroy herself by destroying this emptiness.

And she derives pleasure, satisfaction, comfort, a sense of safety, all the positive emotions, love by destroying the emptiness that she is.

It's a paradoxical strategy: the only way for you to be happy is to not be anymore.