Are you the Saint Paterno victim? Do you find yourself repeatedly, unwillingly in situations where you are being abused, disrespected, obstructed or at best shunned and ostracized?
Why is that?
There is a simple step you can take to prevent this from happening again.
This is the topic of today's uplifting video.
My name is Sam Vaknin and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, a former visiting professor of psychology and currently the faculty of CIAPS.
Before we go to the video's topic, I would like to clear a few of your quandaries and queries.
Number one, many of you have written to me to tell me that I'm wrong. Of course, no one writes to me to tell me that I'm right. Many have written to tell me that I'm wrong and that narcissists and psychopaths are capable of morality, self-serving morality, but all the same. And they deploy this morality, sometimes ostentatious morality, in order to accomplish their goals, narcissistic supply in the case of the narcissist, manipulation, gas lighting and other features or strategies of the psychopath.
Goal orientation determines the narcissist and psychopath's morality.
When I use the word "know", when I said in my video yesterday that the narcissists and psychopaths are incapable of knowing morality.
They are incapable of moral reasoning and they are definitely incapable of moral behavior.
I didn't mean it in the cognitive sense.
There are many narcissists and psychopaths who are judges and lawyers. And of course, they realize the connection between actions and consequences. And of course, they are aware of the various systems of morality in West and East.
That's not what I'm saying.
Knowing in psychology has a different meaning to the colloquial use of the word knowing. Knowing in psychology requires internalizing the knowledge, reacting to the knowledge emotionally.
The narcissists and psychopaths are unable to realize the causality, the connection between their choices, misdeeds, misbehavior and misconduct, and the untoward deleterious outcomes.
And it's not because they don't know cognitively that actions lead to outcomes. They're not stupid.
It's because they haven't internalized it. They don't really believe in it. They feel immune to the consequences of their actions.
It's as if this causal chain, this chain of cause and effect applies to other people, to everyone else.
But the narcissists and psychopath are exempt. They're above the law. They're immune to the consequences of their actions.
They don't feel, they don't emote, they don't feel that they're deserving of punishment. They have no concept of desert as it applies to themselves.
So when a psychopath who is a judge or when a narcissist who is a lawyer commit a crime, they know damn well what's in the books. On the books, they know well what punishment to expect if they get caught.
It's just they don't believe they will get caught. And if they do get caught, they believe they'll get away with it.
And they feel utterly immune, utterly oblivious to the consequences of their actions in their world, in their fantasy worlds.
Actions don't carry, don't lead to adverse outcomes because they are godlike. They are omnipotent. They're omniscient. They're above human laws and mortal regulations and morals.
Got it?
Okay, next.
People ask me, is the psychopath capable of love?
And I answered yes.
The narcissist is incapable of love.
Narcissists are incapable of accessing positive emotions. They have these emotions. Narcissists have these emotions, these positive emotions.
But these positive emotions are trapped in an underground chamber. The narcissist doesn't allow himself to access these emotions because this would bring up many additional negative overwhelming life-threatening emotions like shame.
So narcissists do not tap into the positive strand or the positive theme of emotions that they do have.
Consequently, narcissists don't do love. They don't do anything positive. Narcissists have only negative affectivity, envy, ragehatred, and so on.
Psychopaths are capable of what they call love. There's a lot of mislabeling. Many narcissists would insist that they are capable of loving and are in love and have loved.
But this is, of course, fantasy. It's a figment of the shared fantasy.
Similarly, psychopaths. The psychopath's love is a euphemism for possession. Possessing someone is a psychopath's way of loving. It is limited only to select members of the psychopath's in-group.
However, the narcissist is incapable even of this limited version of psychopathic love.
So in this sense, the narcissist is much worse off than even the worst psychopath.
So now to today's topic.
You constantly find yourself in environments, in situations, and with people, poisonoustoxic people, other people. And they keep abusing you. They keep disrespecting you and your wishes. They keep breaching your boundaries. They keep obstructing your goals. They keep ostracizing and shunning you. They keep mocking and ridiculing you.
Why is that? Why are the butt of derision and apparently some kind of hatred?
Dignity is never about winning. Dignity is about fighting for what you believe in.
If you are out there, competitive, ambitious, out to win at all costs, this is going to antagonize many people. And you're going to create a lot of bad blood and ill will. And then people will turn around and give you a taste of your own medicine.
So the first rule is fight for what you believe in, regardless of the expected outcomes. Even if you know for sure that you're going to lose your dignity and self-respect rely on this.
But why would you need to cultivate and nurture your dignity and self-respect? Why is this important?
Because of the information asymmetry. You know about yourself much more than anyone else will know about you. There is an information asymmetry here.
And this information asymmetry dictates how other people treat you.
People pick up cues from you. This is social learning theory, modeling. People look at you. People observe you. People analyze you. People gossip about you. They form an opinion based on the information that you provide them. Almost 100% by the way.
So they absorb this information that you transmit and emit and broadcast. And around this information, around this core, they form an opinion about you. And this opinion shapes their actions. The way they interact with you. The way they treat you or mistreat you.
People follow your transmissions blindly and uncritically. Very few people are going to challenge the information that you dole out about yourself.
So be careful what kind of data you emit. What kind of attitude you project. What kind of self-negation you broadcast.
Be very careful about the way you treat yourself because people are looking. People are observing. They are spectators and audiences all around. And the way you treat yourself is the way you're going to be treated.
You know the golden rule? Treat others as you would like them to treat you. Well, there's a compliment to the golden rule. Treat yourself as you would like others to treat you.
If you disrespect yourself, people will disrespect you. Everyone almost. If you hate yourself, you will be universally hated. If you constantly self-defeat, self-sabotage, self-obstruct, self-trash, self-destruct, everyone will collude with you and collaborate with you in your own downfall. They will push you over the cliff, over the edge, and watch you tumbling down to your death.
Because that's what you want. Because that's your transmission.
When you tell people, "I want to die. I want to destroy myself. I hate myself. I wish I were dead." They will comply. They're there to lend a helping hand. If you seek pain, people will give it to you. If you're self-destructive, people will gleefully ruin you.
And all this time, people will feel egosyntonic. They will feel comfortable and good with themselves.
Because after all, they're just helping you to fulfill your wishes, to realize your fantasies, and to self-actualize.
If you consider yourself unattractive, unworthy, inadequate, unlovable, so would everybody else. After all, you must know something about yourself that they don't. Information asymmetry.
If you keep telling people, "I'm a monster. I cannot be trusted. I'm a liar. Avoid me. Stay away from me. I'm dangerous." They're bound to believe you. Period.
Even if you are a monster, then you broadcast the opposite. You're a real monster in private, but in public, you broadcast, "I'm a healer. I'm a rescuer. I'm a saver. Savior. I'm a fixer." People will believe you.
This is the base rate fallacy. People believe 90% of what they are told uncritically. They don't bother to check. There's no time. There's no time to go into an elaborate research project as to who you are.
You say you are something? Why not believe you? Definitely, if you say negative things about yourself. If you cast yourself in a negative light, why not believe you?
This is why, for example, in the legal system, a confession is absolute proof, because why would anyone confess to a crime if he hadn't committed it?
If you broadcast guilt, you are guilty. If you wallow in shame and self-pity, people will give you good reasons to do so. They will shame you. They will hurt you. They will cause you pain. They will take you down. They will deny you basic needs, emotional and physical, so that you have an excellent reason to feel disgraced and ashamed and self-pityous.
If you consider yourself a failure and a loser who can never get a single thing right, you will only and always succeed at failing.
Failing constantly is an accomplishment. Your only skill is to fail. Your only success is at failing.
People will set you up for failure and for defeat, because that's what you seek. That's what you want. That's what you're proud of.
You're proud of your failures and defeats and victimhood status and how you've been abused and so on.
All these victims online who brag about how bad their relationships have been and so on, they attract the wrong kind of people. They attract the kind of people who will keep them, maintain them in a victimhood status for life.
Yes, I'm talking about the overwhelming vast majority of self-styled experts on YouTube.
You must realize people are dumb. Now, that's politically incorrect and probably is going to reduce the viewership. I'm probably going to be shadowbanned by YouTube for saying this, but the overwhelming extensive vast majority of people are brain dead, dumb as rocks and I've just insulted many rocks. People are chimpanzees.
You can convince people of the most outlandish and counterfactual claims about yourself.
Be careful what you say about yourself. Be careful what rumors you're spreading about yourself. Be careful with your observable conduct. Be careful when you're depressed and anxious and down under the influence of substances. Be careful because people pick up on these transmissions.
People are watching you the same way they are watching the internet or television. Your entertainment for the vast majority of people and they are stupid as night incapable of telling reality from fantasy or reality from delusion, reality from conspiracy.
Be careful when you make claims about yourself, for better or for worse, if you yourself believe in these claims, if you passionately insist on the veracity of these claims, so will everyone else.
Don't get people to like you by pleasing them. Definitely never get people to like you, to accept you by altering who you are, by changing yourself so as to reduce their anxiety and discomfort.
Affiliation, belonging is overrated. Stay genuine, stay authentic and you will be respected. Fake it, pretend, hate yourself and you will be abused and disrespected and worse.
The only way to turn your life around is to treat yourself the way you want others to treat you. That's the complement of the golden rule, the mirror image of the golden rule.
Don't worry, people will pick up on your new transmissions and they will follow your lead.
Ultimately, people seek to please and to conform. So, never mind how bad it has been until now.
You can turn this train around just by making new claims about yourself, by vociferously protesting the previous version, by becoming someone else and letting everyone know about it.
And lo and behold, miraculously, you will have become that someone else and yet people will start to respect you, they will never abuse you, they will seek your company and they will help you reach your goals.
It's entirely 100% up to you. So, get to work.