Take one narcissist, cross it with a co-dependent and the hybrid that results is known as inverted narcissists.
This is the topic of today's compilation.
You will learn a bit more about the psychodynamics and psychology of the inverted narcissist. You will listen to testimonies from dozens of inverted narcissists and their relationships with classic narcissists, and we will discuss also a variety of etiologies, causation of inverted narcissism, in early childhood, in dysfunctional families and so on and so forth.
I would like to emphasize three points.
Inverted narcissists are in the throes, in the middle, of a shared fantasy with the overt, grandiose narcissist.
The inverted narcissist idealizes herself through the overt, grandiose narcissists in her life. This is a process known as co-idealization. My narcissist is ideal. My narcissist is perfect. My narcissist is a genius. Drop dead gorgeous. What have you? Rich, famous, and so on. And so that makes me special.
This is the core of the inverted narcissistic shared fantasy. She derives her narcissistic supply vicariously through the status or accomplishments or traits of her intimate partner, who is invariably an overt, grandiose, defiant, in your face kind of narcissists.
So shared fantasy, co-idealization, and external regulation.
Watch the interview I granted to the psychotherapist Dalia Zhukowska from Poland, clinical psychologist, and we discuss the issue of external regulation there at length.
And finally, it's important to emphasize that inverted narcissists are narcissists on the one hand, but on the other hand, they're codependents. Inverted narcissists are a subspecies or subtype of a covert narcissist.
The codependency part manifests classically, clinging, neediness, external regulation, dependency, etc.
It's important to emphasize that co-dependents are manipulative. They control from the bottom. They use, they leverage their neediness and clinging to modify the behaviors of people around them, most importantly the intimate partner.
The co-dependent is preoccupied with control, with preventing the prevention of abandonment, exactly like the borderline, and sometimes they're indistinguishable.
The inverted narcissist is the worst of all possible worlds. It's a narcissist, it's a covert narcissist, it's a codependent, it controls from the bottom, it enjoys everything vicariously, at the same time it is fragile and brittle and shy and withdrawn and introverted and you name it. It's angry, it's passive aggressive, etc.
To learn more about the inverted narcissists, there's a link in the description to a sprawling text about this diagnosis which I was the first to describe, to propose, and I coined the phrase inverted narcissists.
So enjoy the compilation, learn more about this highly, highly specific variant of covert narcissism, where this particular type of covert narcissists co-depends on an overt, grandiose narcissist.
So, hello everyone.
Today we have a special guest and I would love to introduce him first. It's a professor Sam Vaknin, the author of the pioneering work of narcissists abuse, Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited. He is also a professor of finance and psychology in SIAS, Centre for International Advanced and Professional Studies.
Hello, Professor.
Thank you for having me. Hello, Daria.
Hello.
Today I would love to speak with you about inverted narcissists. I think it's really interesting topic and not so popular on especially a Polish YouTube site. So I would love toask you some question about that.
Yeah, sure. Go ahead.
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Okay, so my first question will be, do we know developmental roots of inverted narcissists? Do we know any?
Inverted narcissism is a form of covert narcissism. It's just a covert narcissist who derives her narcissistic supply from an overt narcissist. She teams up with an overt narcissist and she basks in his glory.
It's a little like the moon and the sun. She doesn't have a light of her own and her light is the reflected light of the sun. The sun is the overt narcissist and she is the inverted narcissist.
But it's a type of covert narcissist who can be only with an overt, grandiose narcissist. She cannot have any other type of intimate partner.
I'm saying this effectively to answer your question, because the same developmental path that leads to the formation of narcissism, leads to the formation of inverted narcissism. It's just a form of narcissism.
So we would be talking about parents, especially mother, who are unavailable to the child in a variety of ways, an absent mother, depressive mother, selfish mother, narcissistic mother, etc.
Or parents, especially mother, who breach the boundaries of the child, don't allow the child to separate and to develop boundaries.
So this could be a mother who instrumentalizes her child, uses the child to realize her wishes, dreams and fantasies. A mother who parentifies the child, uses the child as a parent figure. A mother who engages in emotional, ambient incest with the child. A mother who treats the child as an intimate partner, for example, etc.
All these developmental pathways lead to classical narcissism, but they also lead to covert narcissists.
And a sub-sub-sub-type of covert narcissists is the inverted narcissists.
Okay, why only the identical types of NPD and inverted narcissists can survive in a long-term relationship? Why it's like that?
Actually, it's not the only case. Any opposite types of narcissism can survive together.
So, for example, a somatic narcissist can survive very well with a cerebral narcissism. An inverted narcissist can survive very well with an overt narcissist. A covert can survive well with an overt. Any two opposing types of narcissism can and do, very often, form long-term relationships, which are very stable, as opposed to the mythology online.
Borderline personality disorder, for example, resembles very much covert narcissism in many respects. And this is why narcissists often team up with borderlines. And while the relationship itself is fiery and stormy and tumultuous and crazy making, and it's still very long term and inherently stable.
So the drama is stable in a way. The excitement, the crazy making, they're predictable, they are features of their relationship, but the relationship itself is functional for both parties.
It is possible to cater to the pathology of your intimate partner, and by doing so, creating a long-term bond and attachment with that partner.
Enabling, for example, is an example of such behavior, where you enable the partner's dysfunctional behaviors, and you create a form of dependency, and so it's a long-term stable relationship.
The inverted narcissist fails to satisfy her basic pathological needs. She cannot obtain supply. She's shy, she's fragile, she's vulnerable, she is not self-efficacious. Her false self is very primitive, the grandiosity is often challenged and so on.
So she gives up. She's avoidant. She simply gives up on life, on reality and other people.
And she finds an overt narcissist. An overt narcissist is very efficient at obtaining supply.
And she tells him, I will be yours. I will be submissive. I will be subservient. Anything you want in whatever field, I will always be here for you. I'll never abandon you. I will act be here for you. I'll never abandon you. I will act as your maternal figure. I will do anything you ask me to.
But you bring home, not money, you bring home narcissistic supply. And you bring home supply for both of us, because I can't get my share.
And so the overt narcissist goes out to the world and becomes, for example, famous or a celebrity. And then the inverted narcissist feels that she is married to a famous guy and that's her supply. Her supply is to be, is vicarious by proxy.
So can we say that for example we have the same criteria for NPD and inverted narcissists but it manifests differently? This is also the case?
Not totally. I will read to you the...
First of all, the diagnosis of inverted narcissists is something that I came up with in the 90s.
At that time, I saw two lacunas, two missing areas, missing diagnostic areas. One was what I called inverted narcissists. And the other one was covert borderline. Covert borderline is a cross between borderline and narcissists, but on a permanent basis. It's like a permanent comorbidity.
And it was missing. The covert borderline thing is sorely missing because we see many borderlines who behave very much like narcissists or even psychopaths and we don't have a proper diagnosis for them. And so I suggested covert borderline.
Similarly, I saw covert narcissists who team up all the time with other narcissists. They are parasitic on other narcissists.
And I said, there's a diagnosis missing here, or sub-diagnosis.
So I created a set of diagnostic criteria.
And here are the diagnostic criteria for inverted narcissism.
Possesses a rigid sense of lack of self-worth.
So in the classic narcissists, the sense of self-worth fluctuates, goes up and down, and the classic narcissist uses narcissistic supply to regulate the sense of self-worth.
In the inverted narcissist, there is no sense of self-worth. Zero self-esteem, zero self-confidence.
The inverted narcissist is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance and beauty, or of an ideal love.
So she is identical psychodynamically. She is identical to the narcissists. They both share the same fantasies. The fantasy defense is the same.
Criterion number three.
She believes that she is absolutely not unique and not special, worthless, and not worthy of merger with the fantasized ideal.
She believes that no one at all could understand her because she is innately unworthy of being understood.
The inverted narcissist becomes very agitated the more one tries to understand her because that also offends against her righteous sense of being properly excluded from the human race.
So you can see it's the mirror image of the novel.
Yes, I can see.
She demands anonymity in the sense of seeking to remain excluded at all costs and in the background. She is intensely irritated and uncomfortable with any attention being paid to her.
And in this sense, she is a schizoid. She is very much a schizoid.
She feels that she is undeserving and she is not entitled. She doesn't have entitlement. She is extinguishingly selfless, sacrificial, even unctuous in her interpersonal relationships. She's a people pleaser to the extreme. She avoids the assistance of other people at all costs. She can only interact with other people when she can be seen to be giving, supportive, altruistic, charitable, and expanding an unusual effort to assist to be useful and helpful.
She lacks empathy, exactly like the narcissist. She is intensely attuned to other people's needs, but only insofar as it relates to her own need to perform the required self-sacrifice, which in turn is necessary in order for the inverted narcissists to obtain her narcissistic supply from the primary narcissist.
I will explain this.
The inverted narcissist needs to sacrifice herself to her narcissistic partner.
Oh, okay.
You know, when the narcissist, when the classic narcissists becomes a narcissist in childhood, the classic narcissist sacrifices his true self to the false self. The classic narcissist destroys his true self in order to become the false self.
The same with the inverted narcissists. She destroys herself. She sacrifices herself, like human sacrifice, to become one with her God, which is her narcissistic intimate partner.
So she needs to disappear. She needs to vanish in order to reappear inside the intimate partner. It's a form of merger and fusion.
Later, if you wish, I will compare it to borderline. It's a very borderline feature.
Yeah.
The next criterion is envy. The inverted narcissist envies other people. She cannot conceive of being envied and she becomes extremely agitated and uncomfortableif even brought into a situation where comparison might occur.
She loathes competition. She hates competition. She avoids competition at all costs if there is any chance of actually winning the competition or being singled out for any accomplishment.
And finally, she displays extreme shyness, lack of any real relational connections. She is publicly self-effacing in the extreme, is internally highly moralistic and critical of other people. She is a perfectionist. She engages in lengthy ritualistic behaviors, obsessive compulsive, which can never be perfectly performed. Not necessarily to the full extent exhibited in obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
She has notions that being individualistic is bad. Being individualistic is a nathema to her.
Now, there are scholars who suggested that there is a form of narcissism which is founded on masochism and it's called the anti-narcissist masochistic subtype. I have a video dedicated to it.
The inverted narcissist combines masochism, borderline features and codependent features. She combines them in a way which eliminates her, which destroys her, which makes her disappear and vanish so that she can become one with an intimate partner. And when she becomes one with the intimate partner, she can directly enjoy his narcissistic supply and gratify her own need for supply.
So she is a lot like a parasite. She enters the body, like a parasite enters the body and eats your food. That's what the inverted narcissus does. She merges with the narcissus, enters his mind, and benefits from anything that happens to him, any narcissistic supply.
Okay.
So could you elaborate more about what you mentioned already about inverted and borderline?
Yes. Thank you.
All three types, the borderline, the codependent and the inverted, which is a subtype of covert narcissism, as masochistic, self-denying subtype of covert narcissists, also known as masochistic anti-narcissist.
By the way, Ellen Rappaport calls it narcissist codependent. I was the first to suggest this diagnosis, but other scholars took it and they changed the names of built on it and so on.
And one of the most widespread tests for covert narcissism is actually based on my work on inverted narcissism. And luckily, they mentioned it. They give me credit, which is good.
So, borderline, codependent and the inverted type of covert narcissism, they all have a few things in common.
The most important is the outsourcing of internal functions to an intimate partner, handing over important internal processes into an intimate partner.
The borderline comes to the intimate partner and she says, I want you to regulate my emotions. I want you to stabilize my moods by being there all the time for me, by not abandoning me. I want you to create in me peace of mind, inner peace, object constancy. I want you to become a part of my mind. I want you to become what we call in psychology an external re-regulator.
And so the borderline gradually disappears. More and more of her internal functions performed in healthy people internally. More and more of them are given to the intimate partner. He becomes an extension of her, and she gradually vanishes, which is why borderlines react with panicwhen they become intimate with someone. They react with panic. It's known as engulfment anxiety.
And that's why borderlines approach an intimate partner and then avoid the intimate partner, approach, avoidance, repetition, compulsion. Because they really give the intimate partner full mastery and control over their brains, over their mind. This is the borderline.
The co-dependent approaches the intimate partner and says, I want you to cater to all my needs. I want you to take care of all my needs.
In a way, I want to become a total infant. I want to become one month old. I want you to feed me and to hold me and to love me and to I want you to do everything for.
I'm going to cling to you and I'm going to show you my neediness and I'm going to blackmail you emotionally by telling you what will happen to me if you don't fulfill my needs, the bad things that will happen to me.
This is the codependent strategy.
The borderline is focused on emotions, emotional regulation. The codependent is focused on needs fulfillment.
The inverted narcissist approaches the intimate partner.
And similar to the borderline, and similar to the codependent, she makes a deal, she strikes a deal with intimate partner.
She says, I want you to take care of my need for narcissistic supply. Without narcissistic supply, I will die. I will fall apart because I'm a narcissist.
But I'm a dysfunctional type of narcissist. I'm not a very self-efficacious type of narcissist. I don't know how to get supply. I fail to get supply. I'm too shy, I'm too introverted, I'm too fragile, I'm too depressed. I can't get supply. I want you to procure supply for me. You get me the supply.
Now, supply in narcissism is the same like emotional regulation in borderline. Same function. It stabilizes the narcissists. It stabilizes, for example, the sense of self-worth. It has a stabilizing and regulatory function.
The supply in narcissism is regulatory. The emotions in borderlines, borderline needs to be regulated.
So the partners of borderlines, codependents, and inverted narcissists regulate the internal environment of these pathological types.
That's where the commonality, that's where they have a lot in common.
Okay, thank you. Thank you for that. It's showing a lot.
Another question that I have for you, can an inverted narcissist become a classic narcissist? Is there any terms that it can happen? And if yes, when?
No one knows.
No one knows because I invented the diagnosis.
It's still being studied.
It's invented it not longer.
Like 25 years ago is nothing in terms of such things.
So no one knows yet.
I can speculate.
I can speculate.
A covert narcissist can definitely become an overt narcissist. An overt narcissist can definitely become covert narcissists. There is no type constancy.
And I have a theory about how this happens. It's the collapse mortification theory. When the overt narcissists collapses, he cannot obtain supply, and then undergoes mortification, he becomes covert and vice versa.
And similarly, cerebral transitions to somatic. Somatic transitions, tries to transition to cerebral if he has the brain.
So there is no type constancy in narcissism, which is very confusing to people, to diagnosticians, to victims, to therapists, to psychologists, because the narcissist is a kaleidoscope, is shape-shifting. And very little that you know about the narcissist today is going to be valid tomorrow, depending on a state of collapse.
I think the only exception is the inverted narcissists.
Because inverted narcissist is not a whole type, it's a subtype. It's a sub sub-sub-type.
So I don't think inverted narcissists could ever become overt.
However, inverted narcissists can become more covert. They can become, they're shy, they're fragile, they're vulnerable, but they can become more self-centered, more defensive, more hostile, more paranoid. They can become a lot more grandiose. They can even develop entitlement. They can become exploitative. They can become less aware of their limitations and shortcomings. They can develop a sense of guilt. They can get in touch with their own shame and so on so forth.
So while they would still avoid recognition, competition, they would never seek supply actively. They would still have an imposter syndrome. They would still pseudo-omiliki, in other words, they would have false modesty, they would be ostentatiously modest. They would still be prosocial, communal, altruistic, charitable, compulsive givers. This is typical of inverted narcissists and many covert narcissists. They would be moralistic and moralizing, self-righteous and so on.
All this, but they would never cross the threshold into actively seeking supply.
I believe this is the only case where there is type consistency.
So when they are engulfed and merge with a classic narcissist, can they be hurt by NPD as, for example, healthy personality?
No.
Inverted narcissists are never, never hurt by the overt narcissists. They are masochistic. They are masochistic subtypes. And they're very, very similar to the masochistic anti-narcissists. Which I think I have the only video online on this. So I recommend to watch it. But it's in the literature and it's being studied.
Because they are masochistic, they are perfect fit for the overt narcissists.
Because narcissistic abuse is narcissistic supplied to the inverted narcissists.
That's the irony.
The overt narcissists' misbehavior, humiliation, rejection, pain, abuse is to the inverted narcissists a form of supply because it confirms to her the only type of attachment and bonding that she is capable of, masochistic, sadistic.
And it is a form of supply because it is attention. It is attention after all. If someone abuses you, it's giving you attention. He's making you the focus of attention, the center of attention. Because when he's abusing you, he's not doing anything else with anyone else. So you are at the center.
So inverted narcissists perceive abuse has narcissistic supply.
If the grandiose narcissists seeks supply outside, it's great because the inverted narcissists gets part of it. She gets her commission.
If the grandiose narcissist abuses the inverted narcissist, it is great because it's attention. It's a win-win. There's no lose in this situation.
She is absolutely the perfect fit and in this sense they have a symbiotic relationship exactly like a parasite and it's a symbiotic, I'm sorry, symbiotic relationship in the sense that she gives to the narcissist and she gets from the narcissist and the match is perfect. Absolutely.
Yeah. Okay.
So it's clearly showing how they can be in a long-term relationship.
So yeah, totally.
So I have one more question for today about inverted narcissists.
What is the difference between inverted narcissist and the echoism? Because this is the question that people are really asking about that, especially when I'm mentioning about your theory and they're asking, and I think you are a right person to ask you for that. About that.
ECHOism was first described rigorously in 2005, but before 2005, there were many conversations online about the possible eco-personality disorder or what have you.
ECHOism is much closer to codependency than to inverted narcissists.
The echo to the narcissist is focused on gratifying essentially her needs.
She is not focused on self-annihilation or self-destruction. She is not masochistic. She is not centered on obtaining supply. That's a main distinguishing feature.
The inverted narcissist is 100% about obtaining supply. Supply in any form, including abuse.
The echo is much more focused on her own personal internal dynamics and how the narcissists can amplify these dynamics or cater to these dynamics and so on and so forth.
So it's a much wider, she has a much wider area of interaction with the narcissists. And so she is much closer to borderline, much closer to codependent.
And indeed, I never thought there was any need for echoism.
I think there is a match between narcissists and specific types of pathologies in intimate partners. And this match is typical in borderline, is typical in codependent, and I saw no need to add another layer which totally doesn't add to our understanding or doesn't make us better equipped clinically to deal with the situation.
So it's very nice as a game wordplay or something but I didn't see any utility in it.
But at any rate, even if we do adopt the construct of equation and there are some voices online and offline that are studying this.
Actually, in November, I'm going to have a conversation with someone whose main work is focused around, centered around echoism.
But still, even if we accept this construct it has very little to do with inverted narcissists.
Inverted narcissist is a narcissist who had decided to eliminate herself in order to become someone else that someone else being a source of supply.
So where the classic narcissist interacts with sources of supply, he even internalizes sources of supply, he creates internal representations of sources of supply, introjects.
The inverted narcissist wants to become the source of supply.
And that source of supply is only another narcissist.
So she chooses another narcissism, and then she wants to disappear and become that narcissist.
The classic narcissist, if I'm getting supply from you, I don't want to become you. I definitely don't want to disappear. I want you to communicate to me that I exist. I want to see myself through your admiring gaze.
And so by looking into your adoring and admiring eyes, I feel alive. I feel also separate. It allows me to experience separation and individuation, allows me to become.
That's the classic narcissists.
The inverted narcissists, if you are a narcissist, she would look at you and she would say, wow, it would be so wonderful to die and become this narcissist. I want to become this narcissist. I don't want to be me. I don't want to be at all. I want to be this narcissist because he has supply or she has supply all the time, and I want supply all the time.
So it's a suicidal mindset in a way, mental suicide. It's a merger and fusion to the point of vanishing. It's not even going back to the womb.
Because going back to the womb, which is the work of Fairbairn and Gantry and so on, going back to the womb is not about disappearing, it's about transitioning to another state.
The inverter doesn't want to transition to any state. She doesn't want to have any state. She wants to become her source of supply.
And this is unique. There's nothing like it.
Okay, I understand. And thank you so much for that. I don't have any more questions.
I don't have any more answers. So we are perfectly perfect.
So thank you so much, Professor, for your time. It's a priceless end. And talk to you. Take to you soon. Yeah. Bye. Thank you so much, Professor, for your time. It's a price I stand and talk to you. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.
My name is Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited.
Co-dependents are people who depend on other people, for their emotional gratification and for the performance of ego or even daily functions. Co-dependents are needy, demanding, and submissive. They fear abandonment, they cling, and they display immature behaviors in an attempt to maintain the relationship with their companion or mate upon whom they depend.
No matter what abuse is inflicted upon the codependent, she remains in the relationship.
By eagerly becoming victims, co-dependents seek to control their victimizers.
There is a type of codependent called inverted narcissist or covert narcissist. It is a codependent who exclusively depends on narcissists. Or we can call it narcissist codependent.
If you are living with a narcissist, if you have a relationship with one, if you are married to a narcissist, if you are working with a narcissist, that does not mean that you are an inverted narcissist.
To qualify as an inverted narcissist, you must crave to be in a relationship with a narcissist, regardless of any abuse inflicted on you by him.
You must actively seek relationships with narcissists and only with narcissists, no matter what your bitter and traumatic past experiences have been. You must feel empty and unhappy in relationships with any other kind of person who is not a narcissist.
Only then, and if you satisfy the other diagnostic criteria of dependent personality disorder, only then can you be safely labeled an inverted narcissist.
Pay attention.
Inverted narcissists are narcissists.
It is clear that hitherto there is a neglected type of narcissist. It is the self-effacing, the introverted narcissist.
This is a narcissist who, in many respects, is a mirror image of the classical narcissist.
The psychodynamics of the inverted narcissist are not clear and the developmental roots are not certain.
Inverted narcissist may be the product of an overpowering and domineering parent or caregiver, or perhaps excessive abuse leads to the repression of the narcissistic self-defense mechanism.
We don't know, but what we do know is that inverted narcissists are self-effacing, sensitive, emotionally fragile, and sometimes socially phobic.
They derive all their self-esteem and sense of self-worth from the outside.
They are pathologically envious. They are likely to intermittently engage in abusive and aggressive and violent behaviors.
But they are more emotionally labile than the classical narcissists.
We can distinguish three types of narcissists.
One, the offspring of neglecting parents. The children of such parents default to narcissism as the prominent psychological defense mechanism against abuse and trauma.
Then we have the offspring of doting, smothering and domineering parents. These children internalize their parents' voices in the form of a sadisticidealand immature conscience.
And they spend their lives trying to be perfect, all-knowing, omnipotent, and to be judged as success by these parent images.
And then we have the offspring of abusive parents. These children internalize the abusing, demeaning and contemptuous voices.
They spend their lives in an effort to elicit counter voices from other people and in this way to regulate their self-esteem and fluctuating sense of self-worth.
It is possible to compose a set of criteria for the inverted narcissist by simply translating the criteria available in the diagnostic and statistical manual for the classical narcissists.
So, criterion number one would be the inverted narcissist possesses a rigid sense of lack of self-worth.
The inverted narcissist's sense of self-worth does not fluctuate, as opposed to the narcissists.
The inverted narcissist is rather stable, but his self-confidence and self-esteem are very low.
Whereas the narcissist devalues others, the inverted narcissist devalues herself as an offering, as a sacrifice to the narcissist in her life.
The inverted narcissist preempts the narcissist by devaluing herself, by actively berating her own achievements of talents.
Inverted narcissist is extremely distressed when singled out for praise, or when her actual accomplishments are acknowledged, or when her superior skills are demonstrated, she is afraid that this might endanger her relationship with her narcissist.
The inverted narcissist is compelled to filter all her narcissistic needs through the primary narcissist in her life.
Independence or personal autonomy are not permitted by the narcissist.
The inverted narcissist feels amplified by the narcissist's own accomplishments and successes.
She lives vicariously, by proxy as it were. She lives someone else's life, her narcissists.
Criterion two would be, the inverted narcissist is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance and beauty, or of an ideal love, to be accomplished through the narcissistic partner, mate or spouse.
Again, inverted narcissist lives through the narcissist life.
She needs him in order to feel that she has accomplished something in her life.
It is through his successes, accomplishments, standing in society, that she feels enhanced, buttressed and well.
Criterion 3.
The inverted narcissists believe that she is absolutely not unique and not special.
Actually, she believes that she is worthless and unworthy of merger with a fantasized ideal which is the narcissist. She believes that no one at all could understand her because she is innately unworthy of being understood.
The inverted narcissist becomes very agitated, the more one tries to understand her, because that also offends against her righteous sense of being properly excluded from the human race. She feels an outcast.
Criterion 4.
Inverted Narcissus demands anonymity in the sense of seeking to remain excluded at all costs.
She is intensely irritated and uncomfortable with any mention being paid to her, with any praise, with any attention actually.
In this sense, inverted narcissism is very similar to the schizoid personality disorder.
Criterion 5.
The inverted narcissists feels that she is undeserving and not entitled to anything.
Remember that classical narcissists feel entitled to everything.
Inverted narcissists is a mirror image.
She feels not entitled to anything. She feels that she is inferior to others, lacking, insubstantial, unworthy, unlikable, unappealing, unlovable, someone to scorn and dismiss and to ignore.
Criterion 6.
The inverted narcissist is extinguishingly selfless. She is sacrificial.
She is even anxious in her interpersonal relationships. She avoids the assistance of others at all course.
She can only interact with others when she can be seen to be giving, supportive and expanding an unusual effort to assist.
So she is sacrificial. She sacrifices herself, but ostentatiously, in full view.
Criterion 7.
The inverted narcissist lacks empathy like the classical narcissist.
She is intensely attuned to others' needs, but only insofar as it relates to her own need to perform the required self-sacrifice.
She needs to self-sacrifice in order to obtain her narcissistic supply from the primary narcissists. She sacrifices to the narcissist, and that's how she gets a narcissistic supply.
But to do so, she must be attuned to his needs. So this is her restricted use or leverage of empathy.
Criterion 8, the inverted narcissist envies others.
She cannot conceive of being envied and becomes extremely agitated and uncomfortable if even brought into a situation where comparison might occur.
She loves competition. She avoids competition at all costs.
If there is any chance of actually winning the competition for being signaled out, she will stay away.
And the last criterion, Criterion 9, the inverted narcissist displays extreme shyness, lack of any real relational connections.
It's publicly self-effacing. He is internally highly moralistic and critical of others, is a perfectionist.
She engages in lengthy ritualistic behaviors which can never be perfectly performed.
So in this sense, she's obsessive-compulsive.
Notions of being individualistic are anathema to the inverted narcissist.
In many respects, inverted narcissists does not exist, except through her primary narcissist, her narcissistic spouse, or mate or companion.
In his absence, she is just a shadow waiting for the main body.
My name is Sam Vaknin and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
A refresher course.
Two narcissists of the same type, somatic, cerebral, classic, compensatory, inverted, etc. If they are of the same type, two narcissists cannot maintain stable, long-term, full-fledged and functional relationship.
To remind you, there are two types of narcissists. The somatic narcissist and the cerebral narcissists.
The somatic type relies on his body and sexuality, as sources of narcissistic supply. The cerebral narcissist uses his intellect, his intelligence and his professional achievements to obtain the same.
Narcissists are either predominantly cerebral or overwhelmingly somatic. In other words, they either generate the narcissistic supply by using their bodies or by flaunting their minds.
If both members of a couple are cerebral narcissists, for instance, if both of them are scholars or academics, the resulting competition prevents them from serving as ample sources of narcissistic supply to each other.
Finally, the Mutual Admiration Society crumbles.
Consumed by the pursuit of their own narcissistic gratification, these two similar narcissists, same type narcissists, have no time or energy or will left to cater to the narcissistic needs of their partner.
Moreover, the partner is perceived as a dangerous and vicious contender for a scarce resources. A scarce resource of narcissistic supply.
This of course is less true if the two narcissists work in totally unrelated academic or intellectual fields, but it still holds.
What happens if the two narcissists are of different types? One of them is cerebral and the other one is somatic.
Then a long-term partnership based on the mutual provision of narcissistic supply can definitely survive.
Example, if one of the narcissists is somatic, uses his or her body as a source of narcissistic gratification, and the other member of the couple is cerebral, uses his or her intellect or professional achievements as such a source for supply.
Well, in such a combination, such a dyad, there is nothing to destabilize such a collaboration. It is even potentially emotionally rewarding.
The relationship between these two narcissists, that's the cerebral and the somatic, resembles the one that exists between an artist and his art, or a collector and his collection.
This can, and thus change, of course, as the narcissists involved, grow older, flabier and less agile. The somatic narcissist is also prone to multiple sexual relationships and encounters intended to support his somatic and sexual self-image. Cheating and adultery are not taken kindly even by cerebral narcissists. These may subject the relationship to fracturing strains.
But all in all, in generally speaking, a stable and enduring relationship can, and often does, develop between dissimilar narcissists.
But this rule that opposites attract, cerebral somatic, somatic cerebral, this rule does not apply to a classic inverted narcissists pairing.
Cerebral narcissists tend to pair with inverted cerebral narcissists.
Inverted cerebral narcissists are the only ones who can appreciate the intellectual accomplishments of cerebral narcissists. And the inverted narcissist appropriates the accomplishments of the classic cerebral narcissists as their own.
So, in a couple where one of the members is cerebral narcissists and the other is an inverted cerebral narcissist, the cerebral narcissist generates fame, recognition, celebrity, and the inverted cerebral narcissist appreciates the accomplishment of the cerebral narcissists and appropriates these accomplishments, feeling that he had a contribution.
Similarly, somatic narcissists tend to bond with their inverted somatic counterparts.
Though content to derive her narcissistic supply from the reactions to her intimate partner's achievements, the inverted narcissist being of the same type, still feels envious and frustrated by her relative obscurity.
So an inverted cerebral narcissist feels overshadowed by her classic cerebral narcissists partner.
Being cerebral, albeit inverted, she feels that she too should be recognized or can contribute.
And being unable to do so because of her psychological dynamics, she feels frustrated, aggravated, overlook, discriminated, unjustly ignored.
In the long run, such an inverted narcissist succumbs to her self-defeating urges and seeks to ruin the found of her frustration, her classic partner, despite the fact that he, her partner, also serves as her prime and often exclusive source of narcissistic supply.
My name is Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
Over the years, I have corresponded with many men and women who presented themselves as inverted narcissists.
To remind you, inverted narcissists, or covert narcissists, or narcissists codependent, is a codependent who depends exclusively on narcissists.
So pay attention.
If you're living with a narcissist, if you have a relationship with one, you're married to one, you're working with one, it does not mean that you are an inverted narcissist.
To qualify as an inverted narcissist, you must crave to be in a relationship with a narcissist, regardless of any abuse inflicted on you by him or her.
You must actively seek relationships with narcissists and only with narcissists, no matter what your bitter and traumatic past experiences have been. You must feel empty and unhappy in relationships with any other kind of person, non-narcissists.
Only then, and if you satisfy the other diagnostic criteria of dependent personality disorder, can you safely be labeled as inverted narcissists.
So, here's something a woman has written to me about her upbringing and how it brought about what she believes to be her inverted narcissism.
In the religious culture I grew up in, women are so suppressed, their roles are so carefully restricted. They are the representations in the flesh of all that is sinful, degrading, all that is wrong with the world.
These are the negative gender cultural images that were force fed to us. This is the negative otherness of women as defined by men, and it was fed to me.
I was so shy, withdrawn, unable to really relate to people at all from as early as I can remember.
Another woman writes, I grew up in the shadow of my father, who adored me, put me on a pedestal, told me I could do or be anything I wanted because I was incredibly bright.
But it ate me alive. I was his property and an extension of him.
I also grew up with the mounting hatred of my narcissist brother, who got none of this attention from our father and got no attention from our mother either.
My function was to make my father look wonderful in the eyes of all outsiders. This wonderful parent with a genius Wundakint as his last child, the only child of six that he was physically present to raise from the get-go.
The overvaluation combined with being objectively ignored or raged by him, when I stepped out of line even the tiniest bit, these were enough to warp my personality.
How do narcissists react to competition? Inverted narcissists, how do they react to competition, pathological envy?
A man, an inverted narcissist, describes his relationship with a female narcissist. Quite a rare combination.
He says, I have a dynamic that comes up with every single person I get close to, where I feel extremely competitive toward and envious of the other person.
But I don't act competitive because at the very outset, I see myself as the loser in the competition.
I would never dream of trying to beat the other person because I know deep in my heart that they would win and I would be utterly humiliated.
There are fewer things on earth that feel worse to me than losing a contest and having the other person gloat over me, especially if they know how much I cared about not losing.
This is one thing that I actually feel violent about.
I guess I tend to project the grandiosity part of the narcissistic personality disorder package onto the other person rather than on a false self of my own.
So most of the time I'm stuck in a state of deep resentment and envy toward her, his father.
To me, she's always far more intelligent, likable, popular, talented, self-confident, emotionally developed, morally good and attractive than I am. And I really hate her for that. I feel humiliated by it.
So it's incredibly hard for me to feel happy for this person when she has a success, because I'm overcome with humiliation about myself.
This has ruined many a close relationship. I tend to get this way about one person at a time. Usually the person who is playing the role of my better half, best friends, lovers, partners.
It's not like I'm unable to be happy for anyone ever, or that I envy every person I meet.
For instance, I don't get obsessed with how rich or beautiful movie stars are or anything like that.
It only gets projected onto this partner person, the person I'm depending on most in terms of supplies, attention, reassurance, security, building up my self-esteem and so on.
The really destructive thing that happens, continues this man, this inverted narcissist, he says, the really destructive thing is that I see her grandiose traits as giving her the power to have anything and anyone she wants.
So I feel a kind of basic insecurity because why should she stay with a loser like me? She obviously is so out of my league.
So really what I'm envious of is the power that all that talent, social ability, etc., gives her to have choices. For instance, the choice to stay with me or to leave me.
Whereas I am utterly dependent on her.
It's this emotional inequality that I find so humiliating.
A woman writes, I agree with the inverted narcissist designation.
Sometimes I've called myself a closet narcissist. That is, I've internalized the value system of grandiosity, but have not applied the grandiose identity to myself.
I believe I should be these grandiose things, but at the same time I know that I'm not, and I'm miserable about it.
So people don't think of me as having an inflated ego, and indeed I don't have one.
But scratch the surface, and you'll find all these inflated expectations.
I mean to say that perhaps the parents suppressed every manifestation of grandiosity in me. It's very common in early child. Maybe they have suppressed my narcissism.
So the defense mechanism that narcissism is was inverted and internalized in this unusual form.
A woman inverted narcissist suggests maybe there aren't two discrete states, narcissistic personality disorder versus regular low self-esteem.
Maybe it's more of a continuum. Maybe it's just the degree and depth of the problem that distinguishes one from other.
My therapist describes narcissistic personality disorder as the inability to love oneself.
As she defines it, the narcissistic wound is a deep wounding of the sense of self, the image of oneself.
That doesn't mean that other disorders, or for that matter other life stressors can't also cause low self-esteem but I think narcissistic personality disorder is actually low self-esteem that's what the disorder is really about an image of yourself that is profoundly negative and the inability to attain a normal and healthy self-image concludes this inverted narcissist woman.
A woman wrote to me to describe a harrowing childhood which brought about what she believes to be a kind of codependence, codependence or narcissists.
She says, yes, I am a survivor of child abuse, but remember that not all abuse is alike. There are different kinds of abuse. There are different effects.
My XXXX style of abuse had to do with trying to annihilate me as a separate person. It also had to do with the need to put all his negative self-image onto me, to see in me what he hated in himself.
So I got to play the role of the loser that he secretly feared that he was. I was flipped back and forth in those roles.
Sometimes I'd be a source of narcissistic supply for him. At other times, I was the receptacle of all his pain and rage.
Sometimes my successes were used to reflect back on him, to show off to the rest of the family. At other times, my successes were threatening to my father, who suddenly feared that I was superior to him and had to be squelched.
I experience emotions that most people I know don't feel. Maybe they do feel them, but to far less extreme intensity.
For example, the envy and comparison competition I feel towards others. It's really intense. I experience emotions that most people don't feel to that extent.
I guess most of us have experienced rivalry, jealousy, being compared to others. Most of us have felt envy at another success.
Yet most people I know seem able to overcome these feelings to some extent, to be able to function normally.
In a competition, for example, they may be driven to do their best so they can win.
But for me, the fear of losing and being humiliated is so intense that I avoid competition completely. I'm terrified of showing people that I care about doing well, because it's so shaming for me if I lose.
So I underachieve and I pretend that I don't care.
Most people I know may envy another person's good luck of success, but it doesn't prevent them for also being happy for them and supporting them.
But for me, when I'm in a competitive dynamic with someone I can't hear about any of their successes or compliments they had received etc. I don't even like to see the person doing good things like bringing Thanksgiving leftovers to the sick old guy next door because those things make me feel in fear for not thinking of doing that myself and not having anyone in my life that I do it for.
It's just so incredibly painful for me to see evidence of the other person's good qualities because it immediately brings up my feeling of inferiority.
I can't even stand to date someone who looks really good because I'm jealous of their good looks.
So this deep and obsessive envy has destroyed my joy in other people.
All the things about other people that I love and take pleasure in is a double-edged sword because I also hate them for it, for having these good qualities, while presumably I don't.
I don't know. Do you think this is a garden variety, low self-esteem? She asked me.
I know plenty of people who suffer from lack of confidence, from timidity, social awkwardness, hatred of their body, feeling unlovable, etc.
But they don't have this kind of hostile, corrosive resentment of another person for being all the wonderful things that they can't be or aren't allowed to be, etc.
One thing I hate is when people are judgmental of me about how I feel, as though I can help it.
It's like you shouldn't be so selfish, you should feel happy for her that she's successful, etc.
They don't understand that I would love to feel those things, but I can't. I can't stop the incredible pain that explodes in me when these feelings get triggered.
And I often can't even hide the feeling. It's just so overwhelming. I feel so damaged sometimes.
There's more, but that's the crux of it for me.
Anyway, she concluded her letter. Be sure to watch the next segment.
To remind you, there are three videos which include correspondence addressed to me written by inverted narcissists. Most of them women, some of them men.
This is the end of part one. On to Part 2.
My name is Sam Vaknin and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited.
This is the second video in a series of three about inverted narcissists.
I will read aloud letters addressed to me by inverted narcissists, describing their background, inner feelings, psychological dynamics, reactions to the world.
How does a typical inverted narcissist react to compliments?
A woman inverted narcissist wrote to me, I love getting compliments and rewards, and do not react negatively to them.
In some moods, when my self-hate has gotten triggered, I can sometimes get to places where I am inconsolable, because I get stuck in bitterness and self-pity, so I doubt the sincerity or the reliability of the good thing that someone is saying to me, to try to cheer me up or whatever.
But if I'm in a reasonable mood, someone offers me something good, I'm all too happy to accept it. I don't have a stake in staying miserable.
Some women contested the verydiagnosis of inverted narcissists, the very condition. A woman wrote, I do agree that it's atypical on your inverted narcissism and not a milder thing.
But how I see it is that inverted narcissism is partial. The parts that's there is just as destructive as it is in the typical narcissists.
But there are parts missing from the total, the full-blown disorder. And I see that as healthy actually. I see it as parts of myself that were not affected by the pathology, that are still intact.
In my case, I did not develop the overweening ego part of the disorder.
So in a sense, what you have with me is the naked pathology, with no covering, no suavness, no charm, no charisma, no confidence, no persuasiveness, but also no excuses, no lies, no justifications for my feelings, just the ugly, sad self-hatred for all to see.
The self-hate part is just as bad as it is with a full-blown narcissists.
So again, inverted narcissism is not a milder form of narcissism. It's just a pure form.
But because I don't have the denial part of the disorder, I have a lot more insight, continues this woman. I have a lot more motivation to do something about my problems.
That is to self-refer to therapy, for instance.
And therefore, I think, a lot more hope of getting better than people whose defense involves totally denying that they even have a problem.
Another woman wrote to me, when my full-blown XXXX, pathological envy would get triggered, he would respond by putting down the person he was envious of, or by putting down the accomplishment itself, or whatever good stuff the other person had. He would trivialize it, or outright contradict it, or find some way to convince the other person, often me, that the thing they are feeling good about isn't real or isn't worthwhile or is somehow bad, etc.
He could do this because the inflated ego defense was fully formed and operating with him.
When my pathological envy gets triggered, I will be bluntly honest about it. I'll say something self-pitting, such as you always get the good stuff and I get nothing. You're so much better than I. People like you better. People like you better. You have good social skills. I'm a jerk, and so on.
Or I might even get hostile and sarcastic. I might say, well, it must be nice to have so many people worshipping you, isn't it?
I don't try to convince myself that the other person's success isn't true or isn't worthwhile.
Instead, I'm totally flooded with a pain of feeling utterly inferior and worthless, and there's no way for me to convince myself or anyone else otherwise.
I'm not saying that the things I say are pleasant to hear, and it is still manipulative of me to say them, because the other person's attention is drawn away from their joy and unto my pain and hostility.
And instead of doubting their success's worth of reality, they feel guilty about it or about talking about it, because it hurts me so much.
So from the other point, the person's point of view, maybe it's not any easier to live with a partial narcissist than with a full-blown one, in that their joys and successes lead to pain in both cases.
It's certainly not easier for me, being flooded with rage and pain, instead of being able to hide behind a delusion of grandeur.
But from my therapist's point of view, I'm much better off than a full-blown narcissist.
Because I know I'm unhappy. It's in my face all the time.
So I'm motivated to work on it and to change it.
And time has borne her words out. Over the past several years that I've worked on this issue, I've changed a great deal in how I deal with it.
Now when the envy gets triggered, I don't feel so entwined with the other person. I recognize that it's my own pain getting triggered, not something they are doing to me.
And so I can acknowledge the pain in a more responsible way, taking ownership of it by saying, the jealousy feelings are getting triggered again, and I'm feeling worthless and inferior. Can you reassure me that I'm not?
And that's a lot better than making some snide, hostile or self-pitying comment that puts the other person on the defensive or makes them feel guilty.
This woman continues to write, I do prefer the term partial rather than inverted. So partial narcissists, not inverted narcissistic, because that's what it feels like to me.
It's like a building that's partially built, the house of narcissism, uncompleted. For me, the structure is there, but not the outside.
So you can see inside the skeleton to all the junk that's inside, but there's no facade. It's the same junk that's inside a full-blown narcissist, but their building is completed, so you cannot see inside. Their building is a fortress, and it's almost impossible to bring it down.
My defenses are not as strong as a full-blown narcissist, which makes my life more difficult in some ways because I really feel my pain. But it also means that the house can be brought down more easily and the junk inside cleaned out.
How do inverted narcissists think about the past, the world in general?
An inverted narcissist female wrote to me, I don't usually get rageful about the past. I feel sort of emotionally cut off from the past, actually. I remember events very clearly, but usually can't remember the feelings attached to them.
When I do remember the feelings, my reaction is usually one of sadness, and sometimes of relief that I can get back in touch with my past.
But not rage. All my rage seems to get displaced on the current people in my life.
Another inverted narcissist says, When I see someone being really socially awkward and geeky, passive-aggressive, indirect, and victim-like, it does trigger anger in me because I identify with that person and I don't want to.
I try to put my negative feelings onto them to see that person as the jerk, not me.
And that's what a narcissist does, after all.
But for me, it doesn't completely work, because I know consciously what I'm trying to do. And ultimately, I'm not kidding anyone, least of all myself.
Do inverted narcissists experience self-pity and depression? Here is one woman's take.
More self-pity and depression here. Not so much rage.
One of the things that triggers my rage more than anything else is the inability to control another person, the inability to dominate them and force my reality of them.
I feel impotent, humiliated, forced back on my empty self.
Part of what I'm feeling here is envy. That person who can't be controlled clearly has a self, and I don't, and I just hate them for it.
But it's also a power struggle. I want to get narcissistic supply by being in control and on top, and having the other person become submissive and complied.
Do inverted narcissists regret or admit mistakes as opposed to classic narcissists? Here's what one inverted narcissist woman writes.
I regret my behavior horribly, and I do admit my feelings. I'm also able in the aftermath to have empathy for the feelings of the person I've hurt. And I'm horribly sad about it and ashamed of myself.
It's as though I've been possessed by a demon, acted out all this abusive, horrible stuff, and then after the departure of the demon, I am back in my right mind, and it's like, what have I done?
I don't mean that I'm not responsible for what I did.
In other words, the demon made me do it.
But when I'm triggered, I have no empathy. I can only see my projection onto that person.
There's a huge threat to me, someone who must be demolished.
But when my head clears, I see that person's pain. His hurt, his fear.
And I feel terrible. I want to make it up to them.
And that feeling is totally sincere. It's not an act. I'm genuinely sorry for the pain, of course, the other person.
Is narcissistic rage the exact equivalent of the rage felt by the inverted narcissist?
Here's what one woman has to say.
I wouldn't say that my rage comes from repressed self-contempt. Mine is not repressed. I'm totally aware of my self-contempt.
And it's not missing atonement either, since I do atone.
The rage comes from feeling humiliated, from feeling that the other person has somehow sadistically and gleefully made me feel inferior, that they are getting off on being superior, that they are mocking me and ridiculing me, that they have scorn and content for me, and find it all very amusing.
That, whether real or imagined, and I know it's usually imagined, that is what causes my rage.
Nothing else.
Stay with me for the next and last segment of correspondence with inverted narcissists.
This is the end of part two. Move on to part three.
My name is Sam Vaknin and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
Over the years I've corresponded with hundreds of inverted narcissists and thousands of codependents. Here is a selection from this correspondence. This is part three out of three. Be sure to watch the previous two.
Why do inverted narcissists stick to narcissists? Why this selection mechanism?
Well, one inverted narcissist tried to enlighten me.
She said, I am built this way. I may have overstated it by saying that I have no choice, because in fact I do.
The choice is, live in an emotionally deadened monochrome world where I can reasonably interact with normal people, or I can choose to be with a narcissist, in which case my world is technicolor, emotionally satisfied, alive and wondrous.
Yes, I admit, it can also be turbulent, and a real roller-coaster ride for the unprepared, not to mention incredibly damaging for people who are not inverted narcissists, and who fall into relationships with narcissists.
But as I have walked on both sides of the street, and because I've developed coping mechanisms that protect me really quite well, I can reasonably safely engage in a primary intimate relationship with the narcissist without getting hurt by it.
The real why of it all is that I learned as a young child that being eaten alive by a narcissist parent to the point where your existence is but an extension of his own, was how all relationships ought to work.
It's a psychological imprint, it's my love map, my comfort zone. It is what feels right to me, intrinsically.
A pattern of living. I don't know how else to describe it, so you and others will understand how very natural and normal this is to me.
It is not the torturous existence that most of the survivors of narcissism describe. My experience with narcissists to me are normal for me.
Comfortable, like an old pair of slippers that fit perfectly.
I don't expect many people to attempt to do this, to make themselves into this kind of person. I don't think anyone could, even if they try.
It is my need to be engulfed and merged that drives me to these relationships.
When I get those needs met, I feel more normal, better about myself. I'm the outer extension of the narcissist.
In many ways, I'm a vanguard, a public two-way warning system, fiercely defending my narcissist from power, and fiercely loyal to him, catering to his every need, and all this in order to protect his fragile existence.
These are the dynamics of my particular version of engulfment. I don't need anyone to take care of me. I need only to be needed in this very particular way, by a narcissist who inevitably possesses the ability to engulf in a way that normal, fully realized adults cannot.
So it is somewhat paradoxical. I feel more free and more independent with a narcissist than without one. I achieve more in my life when I'm in this form of relationship. I try harder. I work harder. I'm more creative. I think better for myself. I excel in most every aspect of my life.
Not all inverted narcissists feel this way. I excel in most every aspect of my life.
Not all inverted narcissists feel this way.
Here's what another woman had to say.
I go ahead and cater to him and pretend that his words don't hurt.
Later, I engage in an internal fight with myself for being so damned submissive. It's a constant battle, and I can't seem to decide which voice in my head I should listen to.
I feel like a fool, yet I would rather be a fool with him than a lonely, well-rounded woman, without him.
I've often said that the only way that we can stay together is because we feed off each other.
I give him everything he needs and he takes it.
Seeing him happy and pleased is what gives me pleasure. I feel very successful then.
How common is inverted narcissism? Is it yet another form of full-fledged narcissists?
A woman wrote to me, I do think it's uncommon for girls to develop these patterns as they are usually trained to be self-effacing. I certainly was.
However, I have a lot of the very same underlying patterns that full-blown, obnoxiously egotistical narcissists have.
But I'm not egotistical because I didn't develop the pattern of inflated ego and grandiosity.
All the rest of it is there. I have a fragile ego, lack of center or self. I'm super sensitive to criticism and rejections. I have pathological, obsessive envy. I have comparisons and competitive attitudes towards others, and I believe that everyone in the world is either superior or inferior to me and so.
Sometimes I kind of wish I had developed the inflated ego of a complete narcissist because then I would at least be able to hide from all the pain that I feel.
But at the same time, I'm glad that I didn't, because those people have a much lower chance of recovery.
How can they recover if they don't acknowledge anything is wrong?
Whereas it's pretty clear to me that I have problems, and I've spent my life working on these problems and trying to change myself and to heal.
So what does it look like this battlefield of relationships between narcissists and inverted narcissists?
Here's an insider view from a woman who wrote to me.
She says, you have asked, can a narcissist and a non-narcissist ever maintain a long-lasting marriage?
Well, it would seem that a non-narcissist would have too much self-esteem to lend himself to a lifetime of catering and pandering to the narcissist's unending need for unearned adoration and glory.
I, as a non-narc, go tired of these people in their unremitting attempts to drain my psyche within a relatively short period of time. And so I abandoned them as soon as I realized what I was dealing with to preserve my own sanity.
Other women feel differently.
It depends on the non-narc, says one of them.
Narcissism is rigid. It's a systemic pattern of responses. It is so all-pervasive and so all-encompassing that it amounts to a personality disorder.
If the non-narcissist is a codependent for instance, then the narcissist is a perfect match for him or her and the union will lost. A
woman describes the daily mechanics of living with the narcissists. You have to pimp for the narcissist intellectually and sexually. If your narcissist is somatic, you are much better off lining up the sex partners than leaving him to do it. Intellectual pimping is more varied. You can think of wonderful things and then subtly string out the idea in the most delicate of packages and watch how the narcissists cogitate their way to their brilliant discovery, while still bask in the glow of their perfection and success. The point of this entire exercise is to assure your supply, which is the Nalcese himself. It is not to punish yourself by giving away a great idea, or to abase yourself, because of course you're not worthy of having such a great idea on your own but who knows it may seem that way to the inverted narcissist it really depends on how self-aware the inverted is another woman the only rejection you need to fear is the possibility of losing the narcissist. And if one is doing everything else right, this is very unlikely to happen. So by emotionally independent, I'm talking about being self-assured, doing your own thing, having a life, feeling strong and good about yourself, getting emotional sustenance from other people. I mean, let's face it, a drug is a drug, is a habit. Habits are just and what they are not, are the be and all of love. Habits are part of commitment and serene, symmetrical, balanced emotional perfection, that is the ideal of the romanticized love for a lifetime, all-American relationship free. An inverted narcissist confesses, I am terribly turned on by narcissists. The most exciting moments of my life in every venue have been with narcissists.
It is as if living and loving with normal people is a great thing by comparison, not fueled by sufficient adrenaline.
I feel like a junkie now that I no longer permit myself the giddy pleasure of the rush I used to know when I was deeply and hopelessly involved with a narcissist.
I'm like a lotus eater, and I always feel guilty about this, and also sorry that I ever succumbed that first time to my first narcissist lover. Another woman agrees, I'm exactly this way way and I feel exactly as you do, that the world is a CPM motion picture, but when I'm intimately involved with a narcissist, it breaks out into three-dimensional technicolor, and I can see and feel in ways that are not available to me otherwise.
In my case, I developed this inverted narcissism as a result of being the favorite of my father who so completely absorbed me to his personality that I was not able to develop a sense of separation. So I'm stuck in his personality in this matrix of needing to be engulfed, adored by, and completely taken over by a narcissist in my life. In turn, I worship, defend, regulate, and procure a narcissistic supply for my narcissist. It is like the mold and the molded. Another woman writes, in my case I realize that while I can't stop loving my current narcissist, it isn't necessary for me to avoid as long as I can understand. In my way of looking at it, he is deserving of love, and since I can give him love without hurting me, then as long as he needs it, he shall have it. My personal theory is that dogmatic religious culture is a retarding influence of the growth and maturation of those heavily involved. More and more autonomy and hence personal responsibility seems to be blithely sacrificed to the group mind spirit. It is as though the church members become one personality, and that personality is narcissistic, and the individual just falls under the weight of that kind of group pressure, particularly if you're a child.
If I displayed behavior that made my mother look good to others, I was insipidly overvalued. When I dared to be something other than who she wanted me to be, the sarcastic criticism and total devaluation was unbelievable.
So I learned to be all things to all people. I get a heavenly high from surrendering my power to a narcissist, in catering to them, in having them overvalue and need me. And it is the only time that I truly feel alive.
We have very little choice in all of this. We are as vacant and warped as a narcissist.
Vaknin was wont to say, I don't have a personality disorder. I am a personality disorder.
He defines who we are and how we will respond. You will always and only have real feelings when you are with the narcissist.
It is your love man. It is a programming within your psyche.
Does it need to control your behavior? Not necessarily.
Knowing what you are can at least give you the opportunity to forecast the effect of an action before you take it.
So, loveless, black and white may be the very healthiest thing for you for the foreseeable future.
I tend to think of these episodes with narcissists as being cyclical. You will likely need to cut loose for a while when your child is older, but you will revert.
A woman writes, Do not feel ashamed, please. Should a physically handicapped person feel ashamed for their handicap? No, and neither should we.
The trouble with us is that we are fooled into thinking that these relationships are guilty pleasures.
They feel so very good for a time, but they are more akin to addiction satisfaction than being the right match or an appropriate relationship.
I am still very conflicted myself about it. I wrote a few months ago that it was like having a caged, very dangerous animal inside of me. When I get near narcissists, the animal smells its own kind and it wants out.
I very carefully micromanage my life. This means that I daily do fairly regular reality checks, and I keep a very tight rein on myself and my behaviors. I'm also obsessive compulsive.
Another woman writes, I feel as though I'm constantly on an emotional roller coaster.
I may wake up in a good mood, but if my narcissist partner does or says something which is hurtful to me, my mood changes immediately.
I now feel sad, empty, afraid. All I want to do at this point is anything that will make him say something nice to me.
Once he does, I am back on top of the world.
This pattern of mood changes, or whatever you want to call them, can take place several times a day, each and every day.
I've gotten to the point where I'm not sure that I can trust myself to feel any one way because I know that I have no control over myself. He has the control. And it's scary.
Yet I've sort of come to depend on him, determining how I'm going to feel.
When I was first involved with my cerebral narcissist, concludes another inverted narcissists, I was like this.
But after a while I just learned to become more emotionally distant. The ups and downs were just too much.
And I found emotional gratification with other people, mostly girlfriends, and one or two male friends.
I make a point of saying that the invert must be or become emotionally and financially independent, and if you don't want to do this, he will lead you up, and when he has finished with you and you are nothing but a husk, you will be expelled from his life in one big vomit.
It is really important for you to start to take responsibility for your own emotional wellness, says this woman, without regard to how he treats you.
Remember that the narcissist has the emotional maturity of a two-year-old. Don't expect much in the way of emotional depth or support in your relationship, he simply is not capable of anything that sophisticated.
This concludes excerpts from my correspondence with inverted narcissists. Be sure to watch all three parts and to read the chapter Inverted Narcissusin my book, Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited or online on my website.