Why Narcissist Must Abuse You (Adventures in Adversity Podcast)

The way you explain that, and for people who haven't seen your videos, that is very, it makes me look at the narcissist that I'm recovering from.

And I see, I see the why. I see the why.

You see, I didn't have that experience as a child, so it's hard for me to understand.

But looking at as a child that's trying to survive, it's a way to survive. And that child doesn't have the capacity to do anything else at the time.

It makes me sad. It's hopeless.

It's helpless.

And so do you, when that switch starts to happen, is there usually a specific age or is it around the time of the trauma? Or it's an ongoing because of the parents, right?

It's a good question.

Maybe a mother or father.

Maybe before I answer your question, as is my habit, I will add that everything I've just described is known in psychology as dissociation. It's a dissociative solution.

It's like saying this is too much to bear. It's unbearable. It's intolerable. I'm afraid I will die. So I'm going to, I'm going to walk out of here. I'm going to disengage. I'm out of here.

If I have to summarize narcissism with a single sentence, I'm out of here.

So, regarding your question, there is a critical phase in human development.

It was first described by a woman, Margaret Mahler, who together, I mean, at the same time as Jean Piaget, she was studying, she was studying children, observing children, studying them.

And she described the phase known as separation individuation.

It's when the child separates from a mother that is perceived by the child to be safe, a mother who is a secure base.

In other words, the child knows that if he were to separate from mommy, mommy will not punish him. Mommy will not go crazy with fear and anxiety. Mommy will remain stable, predictable, reliable, responsive, even if the child walks away for a while.

So this kind of mother, who's a good mother, allows the child to separate from her and gradually become an individual.

And this is known as separation individuation.

We can trace the emergence of pathological narcissism to the failure of separation individuation.

And this is why in all my work, and not only in my work, but in the work of giants like John Bowlby, in all our work, collective work, we talk about the mother. We don't mention the father.

And everyone online, being politically correct in an age of political correctness and victim, everyone says, why don't you mention the father? They should be equal opportunity abusers, you know, and so on so forth.

It's simply because the father does not fulfill any important psychological function until the age of three.

Father enters the picture more or less at the age of 36 months when a child is 36 months old.

Then father begins to assume very important roles such as socialization, the acquisition of skills, the development of behavioral scripts, including sexual scripts, sexual differentiation.

So father has a massive role in the personal development of a child, but it starts much later.

It is mother who is dominant and I would say exclusive until age 36 months.

If she f's it up, sorry for the expletive. No, I'm a sailor mouth. I curse a lot. Well, if she effs it up, then the outcome is a child who is severely disturbed later in life, may have an attachment style, which is insecure, and therefore he is unable to have relationships, interpersonal relationships, intimate ones, maytherefore he is unable to have relationships, interpersonal relationships, intimate ones, may develop narcissism, may become borderline or develop the borderline side.

I mean, it's the mother. Yes. It's the mother, like, you know, using a political slogan, it's the mother stupid.

So, and so it's the mother that inflicts the damage.

At that point when the child is unable to separate from the mother because she is possessive, she's overprotective, she's anxious, she's depressed.

On the very contrary, by the way. She's absent and neglectful, and the child is afraid that if you were to walk away, you would never find money again.

So, when the mother is dysfunctional, the child sticks to her. We call it the symbiotic phase. The child merges with her, fuses with her just in order to make sure that she would still be there.

And so the child never becomes an individual that adds to the aforementioned emptiness and void.

There is no layer of self or what Freud used to call ego, whatever you want to call it, or identity. This layer is missing because the child was never allowed to become, was never allowed to set boundaries, was never allowed to venture forth and explore the world, was never allowed to interact with peers and learn from them, was never allowed to adopt alternative role models, not MAMI, and so on.

So there's nobody there. There's a reflection of MAMI, an extension of M of mummy, something, but not an individual.

And so pathological narcissism is ripe by age 36 months.

However, we cannot diagnose children, let alone adolescents, with narcissistic personality disorder, because they still stand a chance. It's still a reversible process, more or less until age 12 or 13, still reversible.

For example, if a maternal figure enters the picture, a grandmother, or even the father himself, a maternal figure, someone who fulfills maternal functions, there would be some kind of dynamic which is healing and reclaiming, maybe some sort of...

It's still the damage is there and the damage for life, but the situation would be much better.

So this kind of person would not become a full-fledged narcissist. He would become an a-hole. He would become someone with a narcissistic style.

Yes.

Okay?

So it's still reversible. That's why we never diagnosed someone with NPD, narcissistic, before age 18, and some scholars say 21, and some scholars like Twenge and Campbell, they say 25.

This window of opportunity exists.

However, unfortunately, the overwhelming vast majority of cases, this window of opportunity is never utilized because the family setting, the dysfunctional family is there, period.

Unless a child is physically removed from this setting and sent to a foster family, or God knows where, at the same dynamics applying and continue to impact the child and make sure that there is stunted growth and arrested development.

And so this child ends up being an adult who is unable to attach securely, who is unable to develop interpersonal relationships, he is unable to accept the separateness and externality of other people, who is unable to function in reality because he is immersed and embedded in fantasy, who therefore is unable to gauge reality appropriately, has no reality testing, and has no self-efficacy, and has no access to his positive emotions because he has learned as a child that love inevitably leads to pain, is coupled with hurt. Love is bad.

What is good?

Rage is good.

Control.

Rage, control, anger, envy. These are good because they get results.

But love gets you heartbreak, love gets you you bleed. Love is bleeding.

And this is the adult that you get. This adult is stuck, psychologically speaking, this adult is stuck at the average age of two years old. Emotionally speaking, narcissists are about two years old, two to three years old.

It's emotionally. Intellectually, they could be highly developed, of course.

Additionally, narcissists have semantic memory, but not episodic memory.

I will explain the difference.

Semantic memory is if you know how to use Excel and Microsoft Word. If you know how to run a company, if you know how to be a multi-billionaire or the president of the United States. That's semantic memory. How to. It's how to.

Episodic memory is a memory of your life as continuous and centered around a core which essentially defines who you are to yourself.

If you don't have this core and if you're dissociated, you don't have a continuous memory of yourself. You start every day anew.

And this is called identity diffusion or identity disturbance.

It's not the same person. That's why when narcissists get arrested for having committed a crime, they are indignant. They're shocked. They're like, you know, I didn't do that. That other guy did it. It wasn't me.

Because in this sense, narcissism resembles a lot what we call dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder. It resembles a lot this kind of condition.

Yes. Wow.

Andwhat this I think what I had heard in one of your videos is so that narcissist is two years old and emotionally, mentally they might be 30 years old physically, and then they have to outsource that emotional regulation, right?

Exactly.

So every day when they get up and they need a supply to build up that grandiose, keep that delusion going.

It's even more profound. Yeah, it's true. It's all true what you said, but it's even more profound.

First of all, narcissists, exactly like borderlines, they have what we call external regulation.

Now, normal, healthy people, they have a stable sense of self. It's called the self-consent. They have a stable sense of self. It's called the self-consent. They have a stable sense of self-worth. They know that they are worthy, but they also know their limitations and shortcomings.

So they have a balanced view of themselves. And they regulate their emotions and they stabilize their moods internally.

I could say that healthy normal people are their own best friends, more or less. They have their back, their own back.

The narcissist uses other people to do all these functions, to perform all these functions.

So we say that the narcissist outsources the ego functions. Everything that is done internally in a healthy person is done by proxy, vicariously, through the agency of another person with a narcissist.

So the narcissist would walk around and would try to solicit and elicit or coerce people into giving him narcissistic supply.

Narcissistic supply is attention, admiration, adulation, or being noticed or being feared even, because narcissistic supply helps him to regulate and stabilize his sense of self-worth.

It's as if the narcissist says, listen, I don't know exactly who I am. Would you tell me why I am, please? I think I'm a genius. Am I correct in thinking so? So please tell me I am a genius, you know?

So this is narcissistic supply.

But the narcissist is exactly like the borderline also regulates his emotions and his moods from the outside.

For example, if you were to challenge the narcissist or criticize the narcissist, the narcissist would react with depression, who would become depressed.

And in a different way, the borderlinedepression, who would become depressed.

And to some, in a different way, the borderline is the same.

So external regulation is a feature, definitely.

But it's even more profound than this.

The narcissist constructs his existence on the fly.

The narcissist needs thegaze of others to feel that he exists. In the absence of the gaze of others, he feels that he is absent, that he is a black hole. He feels that it's empty.

Same with the borderline, by the way.

The difference between borderline and narcissists is that narcissism is a more advanced stage according to Kernberg and Grotstein and so. Narcissism is a more advanced stage against borderline.

So the borderline's dependence on other people is total. She cannot do anything from the inside, whereas the narcissist can supply himself. He can be his own audience. He can use his own gaze to regulate himself.

But he perceives these gaze as external. Remember that narcissists confuse internal objects and external objects. They confuse.

External becomes their internal, right?

Yes.

So external becomes internal, but also vice versa. So when the narcissist observes himself, he experiences it as if someone is observing him. Even though it's his own gaze.

It's a very complex disorder.

And that's why Kernberg, Otto Kernberg, the father of the field, suggested in the 70s that pathological narcissism and borderline personality organization, they are forms of psychosis. He said that they are on the verge of psychosis, borderline on the border between psychosis and neurosis.

He said that these people have mighty confusion when it comes to reality, to the point that they are actually psychotic. They don't perceive reality appropriately, this confusion.

The clinical term for this is hyper-reflexivity.

Hyper-reflexivity is when the psychotic person, the properly psychotic, for example, the schizophrenic person, expands outwards and consumes the world.

So in the mind of the schizophrenic person, if there is a voice in his mind, in her mind, let's say, his mind, the schizophrenic person would say, it's not in my mind. It's coming from the outside. Or if the schizophrenic person has an image or a scene or a video running through his mind, he would say it's not in my mind. Here I'm seeing it. It's external. It's out there.

And that's known as hallucination.

Narcissus are the same. The same. They utterly confuse external and internal. It's a bloody mess.

Now luckily for borderlines, that's not the case with the borderline. Because she did not progress to that level of pathology.

Got it.

So borderlines, to some extent, not full, but to some extent have a much better reality test.

Yes.

Anyhow, that's, you know, we can talk about it for hours, but I'm trying to give you the gist.

Yeah.

No, so we've kind of gone from, like, how it develops out of that sense of needing to survive, which I under, as someone who has children, when I hear that, that breaks my heart and that a child would have to do that. And it makes it, it's just tragic. And the outcome breaks my heart as well.

That it continues, you know what I'm saying? Like it's a tragedy.

One thing people fail to appreciate is that the reason analysis is resonates so well with victims. The reason they have the power to convert people into victims is that they have been victims to start with.

The narcissist has intimate first-hand experience of victimhood, having been a victim, having started life as a victim.

So they know when they see you and your potential victim material, they resonate with you.

That's why we have the phenomenon of twin flames and soulmates and all these are the bullshit, you know? Because it's all narcissism, yeah. Narcissists resonate with you.

Yes.

Whatis tragic is that both narcissists and their victims, borderlines, codependents, both narcissists and the victims, are one and the same, the members of the same family.

It reminds me of conflicts in the world between basicallythe same ethnicities like Serbs and Bosnians. The Serbs and the Bosnians are the same ethnos, the same people. And yet they've had a bloody war, horrible war, genocidal almost. Same to some extent, the Jews and the Arabs. You have this.

And this is the situation with the narcissist and his victim.

They're both suffering.

Yes.

Only the narcissist outsources his suffering because narcissists outsource everything.

Oh gosh, I get it.

They outsource their emotions, they outsource their moods.

When they suffer, they outsource the suffering. That's what they do. They outsource their emotions, they outsource their moods. When they suffer, they outsource the suffering. That's what they do. They outsource.

It's an outsourcing machine.

It's an export machine.

They're exporting everything.

And narcissists constructs his relationships to reenact, to replay early childhood conflicts.

So the narcissists couldn't separate from his mother, and he would not recognize the separateness of his intimate partner.

He doesn't do separateness. He has never done separateness. He's never separated.

The narcissist has never become an individual, so he would not allow you to be an individual. He would not allow you to individually. He would take away your agency or independence, your autonomy or everything. It would control you.

Yes.

Narcissus withdrew from reality into their minds when they were children in order to somehow survive.

So they want you to do the same as an intimate partner. They want you to become an internal object in a fantasy, in a shared fantasy.

It's a child.

It's a child who's trying to cope with a reality that is even beyond the grasp of very, very sophisticated adults.

Yes.

And I baited you into asking me about baiting. I was, yes. Yeah, I baited you into asking me about baiting. I was, yes. Yeah, I baited you into asking.

No, I was going to, and my next question would have been.

So you've got this, by the way, highly intelligent a lot of, like it's not, in my experience, it's not a person that is not intelligent.

I'm speaking from my experience, female narcissist, very successful, very intelligent, very charismatic.

Now, how did, and tell me if you're comfortable talking about my, I'll tell you my experience, and this doesn't have to be a session, but how did my narcissist choose, what was alluring about a certain type of supply or victim. What do they look for?

Yeah, that's a very broad.

Or how do they bait?

How do they, right? How do they start that process?

We should make a distinction between two types of narcissists.

There are the classical types of narcissists, which are the overt and the covert.

Yes.

These are basic prototypes of narcissists, and they more or less have the same goals, the same.

They are after narcissistic supply, their strategies are different.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

And we have another variety of narcissists known as prosocial or communal narcissists. That is a narcissist who is very good at teamwork, who is very good in motivating people, who is very good at building things, was very, very accomplished, a pillar of the community, very moral, ostentatiously moral.

That's the grandiose claim.

I'm more ethical than anyone. I'm more just than anyone. I'm more moral than anyone.

It's a guru, it's a teacher, it's a chief executive officer with a vision, visionary, it's a charismatic politician.

So these are the pro-social narcissists.

Their bait, their lure is dramatically different to the lure of the classic types of narcissists.

Actually, they are so different that even I'm a bit at a loss as to how to perceive this phenomenon.

What the pro-social narcissist does, he tells you, he broadcasts a message, a kind of virtue signaling.

I am morally unimpeachable and impeccable. Therefore, you can trust me. I am also intellectually superior and much more accomplished than you are. Therefore, you can relegate decision-making and responsibility to me.

So now you can enter my fantasy, because fantasy is common to all types of narcissists. Now you can enter my fantasy.

And when you enter my fantasy, I will make all the decisions for you. You're safe. I give you a sense of safety because I'm trustworthy. Trustworthy because I'm moral, I'm ethical, and this and that.

And you can be sure that the outcomes of the decisions are going to be beneficial because I'm experienced and I'm accomplished and I'm a genius and I'm this and I'm there.

And so now all you need to do is just be there and benefit from my presence.

This is, of course, infantilization. This kind of narcissist regresses you to baby stage, to the baby phase.

He's telling you, I am a parental figure. You're safe. You can become a baby again. Take the load of your shoulders. Don't burden yourself. Don't be anxious. Don't overthink. Don't overanalyze. You don't need to worry anymore. Your worries are over. I'm here for you the way a mother should be or a father should be. My love for you is unconditional. My decisions are beyond reproach. I always accomplish goals.

And I will make you safe and prosperous and happy and great again.

So this is the pro-social narcissist, and the bait of the pro-social narcissist is, I allow you to be weak. I give you permission to be a baby.

Because we all have this need to be strong. We are all coping with harsh reality, abrasive, difficult, challenging, hurtful, dangerous reality.

And so we need to be strong. We need to make the right decisions or else consequences could be horrible.

And then someone comes along and tells you, you have my permission to be weak. It's safe. It's safe. Nothing will happen to you. I promise. And you will benefit.

So why not?

So this is the pro-social narcissists.

The classic narcissists, actually majority of them are failures and losers.

Unlike the pro-social narcissists, the pro-social narcissist is a success. Yes. Rises to the top.

Same with the psychopathic narcissists, the malignant narcissists, typically rises to the top.

But they are like maybe 5% of all narcissists. We don't have numbers. But we know, for example, that malignant narcissists are about 2% to 3% of all narcissists.

And pro-social narcissists may be another 10%, I don't know, maybe 15%.

85% of narcissists are classical. They're overt or covert.

So much for the river.

And they're losers.

They're failures. They never make it. They are constantly defeated and get it wrong. They can't read emotional cues exactly like people with autism. And it's a mess.

However, in their intimate relationship, not only, actually, in their interpersonal relationships, they use a highly specific type of bait or lure.

What they do is they introduce you to their inner child, to the remnants of the true self.

They tell you, they actually broadcast to you, I am a broken, wounded, crying, child in need of protection.

They trigger in you the maternal protective instinct.

Even if you're a male, doesn't have to do, anything to do with gender.

I mean, even a man would protect the baby.

Sure.

So they trigger in you the protective, the savior, the rescuer, the healer, the fixer, complex. They aggrandize you in this way.

They tell you, my well-being is in your hands, because I am this helpless, a tiny creature who is suffering in the corner in the dark, and only you with your love and so on can shine light upon me and make me thrive. And this is an implicit message, not explicit, but it's a very powerful message.

Any victim of narcissistic abuse would tell you that they have come across the child, the inner child of the narcissist.

Yes.

This is bait number one, and bait number two is, I'm going to love you the way you've never been loved before.

I'm going to love you unconditionally, and that's because you're an ideal perfect entity, person. So you deserve ideal, perfect love, which is not conditioned on performance. So I'm going to love you the way a mother loves the baby in the first few months.

Mothers idealize the babies in order to be able to provide care. Babies are a big pain in many parts of the anatomy.

So in order to overcome this, survive somehow, the mothers idealize the babies.

They tell you, oh, this baby is the most beautiful baby in the world, was intelligent, wasn't?

And most of them are not beautiful and very beautiful.

There's idealization going on.

The narcissist does the same to you.

He infantilizes you, regresses you, and tells you now I'm going to love you as a mother would, and love you unconditionally.

And it's because you're perfect. You're ideal.

You don't believe me? Here, I grant you access to your image in my gaze.

Look in my eyes. See yourself through my gaze. See yourself as I see you.

I see you as perfect. I see you as ideal.

You could see yourself the same way. Love yourself because you are deserving of love. You're lovable. You're deserving of love because you're perfect. An idea.

So I call it the hall of mirrors effect.

And the whole thing is, in my work, is described as dual mothership.

You're the narcissist's mother, and he is your mother.

And you get addicted to your own image in the narcissist's gaze. You fall in love with your idealization, with your idealized version.

It's very addictive, very intoxicating to see yourself as perfect, drop-dead gorgeous, hyper-intelligent, unprecedented, amazing, can't do wrong. It's intoxicating.

And you get addicted.

And these are the two baits.

Yeah.

Wow. You just describe my whole experience.

Ooh.

Again, this is empowering for me.

It's just, as you were describing that whole experience, that's exactly what happened to me.

Yeah. And I don't mean to make this about me. This is just my podcast was born out of this experience. And so this is very, absolutely. I don't say anything wrong with it. Very enlightening.

So now, now in that initial phase, when I was in that phase, it turned, then it turned, I remember it turning dark for me when I stepped out of line.

That initial love bombing idealization.

I was called her puzzle piece. You've saved me. You are, you're my drug.

I mean, the adoration was unlike anything I'd ever experienced in my entire life. Ever, ever.

I was told I could be, I could have been an Olympic goalie. I was told I'm, I mean, it was like a, it actually didn't feel like a reality.

And then it turned dark.

And it's almost like what I don't understand is if the narcissist identifies, they've got this, the mother, they've got this relationship going where they're like, okay, I'm in control. I'mglove is going back and forth.

Then when the person that the victim, me, then starts, pushes back in any, when I would push back in any way on anything, that's when it turned.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I just like theword victim.

Evidently, you are survived, so you're a survivor.

Yes.

The word victim is an identity. Victimhood is an identity, and it's an identity that keeps you paralyzed, mummified, like an ant in amber, like in formaldehyde, you know, it's like...

Yes.

Victimhood is not a life-oriented identity. It's a death-oriented identity. While a survivor is a life-oriented identity.

So I dislike the word victim. But I think you've been victimized. Let it be clear. You have been victimized.

But that you have been victimized does not make you a victim. Does not define you. Having been victimized does not define you.

Yes. Does not define you. Having been victimized does not define you. It never defined you.

Because it takes away your power. It disempowers you. It takes away your agency. If you define yourself as a victim, you're perpetrating the abuse.

Yes.

It means you're helpless.

Yes. That's where the narcissist wanted you're helpless.

Yes.

That's where the narcissists wanted you to be. Helpless.

So that's, okay, that's a point.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so they bait you.

There was the covert, the overt, and then you're saying the 5% sort of the very successful, the pro-social narcissists, social communal. So that is the experience that I'm familiar with and that it's interesting that that is a low percentage. I guess I just got lucky.

Yeah.

It's a bad joke. As they go, you got lucky. It's a really bad joke.

But I haven't answered your question. Sure, go ahead.

Yeah. Do you want to let go of that question? Please go ahead.

Yeah. Answer. Please do. I mean, you, go ahead. Do you want to let go of that question?

Please go ahead.

Yeah. Answer.

Please do.

I mean, you're in charge if you want to.

No, I would love to please continue.

So people who end up in relationships with narcissists, such as they are, I call them insignificant others. So people who end up in relationship with narcissists feel what we call in psychology an external locus of control. In other words, they feel that their lives are being determined from the outside by the narcissists, that they feel that they are losing their identity, losing their memories sometimes, definitely losing their capacity to gauge reality appropriately, and so on, and so they gradually dissipate, they dissolve somehow.

It's a terrifying feeling, and that's exactly how the narcissist lives. That is the experience of being a narcissist. Constant dissolution, constant dissolving.

And so victims or survivors, they're trying to make sense of what has happened.

And so trying to make sense of what has happened, they say, well, I must have been chosen.

Must have been chosen.

What has happened to me is unusual, so I must have been chosen. and I must have meant a lot to the narcissists.

For the narcissist to inflict on me, this fury, this rage, this torture, this, to invest so much in destroying me, means that I've meant a lot to the narcissists.

The truth is that narcissists are promiscuous when it comes to mate selection. Otherwise, they couldn't care less who you are.

Yeah.

They couldn't care less who you are. As long as you are vulnerable and accessible and available to be manipulated and so on so forth, you qualify.

You are supposed to provide a narcissist with what I call the four S's. The four S's are sex, supply, sadistic and narcissistic, services and safety.

If you provide a narcissist with two out of these four, you got the job. You're on. If you fail to provide at least two of the four, you're out.

At the same time, the narcissist superimposes on the relationshipa fantasy.

And it is a fantasy of having found a new mother.

And this new mother is unlike the biological mother, the real mother.

There's always the hope that this new mother would allow the narcissists to separate and individuate.

But this raises the question how to separate from this new mother?

Well, the only way to separate from a mother is to walk away.

And this is something that victims of narcissistic abuse must understand.

The process of devaluation and discard has nothing to do with the victim. It's an autonomously unfolding internal psychodynamic, psychological dynamic.

It is a delirious reenactment of early childhood relationships with your original mother.

So the narcissist idealizes you the way a child idealizes the mother.

And then the narcissist needs to separate from you and become an individual.

And to separate from you, he needs to let go of you. He needs to push you away and has to get rid of you. Discard, right?

Justify this, he says, well, I'm getting rid of her because she is imperfect.

The narcissist has to devalue you in order to replay or reenact the separation individuationthat hasn't happened earlier.

But the narcissist needs to make sure that you are not like his biological mother.

Remember that his biological mother traumatized him, abused him, neglected him, whatever. She has been a bad mother, not a good enough mother, a dysfunctional mother.

So, now that there is a second chance with a new mother, the narcissist must make sure that she is not like the original mother.

Otherwise, the narcissist wants to make sure that there won't be another failure of separation and individuation.

So he needs to test you. He needs to see if you are like his original mother.

How? How can this be done?

By abusing you. He's testing you. He's abusing you.

And he says, let's see if she will stick around. Let's see if she truly loves me unconditionally. Never mind what I do. Never mind how far I push the envelope. Never mind to which extent I abuse her and torment her and reduce her and denigrate her and criticize her and do horrible things to her, if she's still around and she still loves me, that's the real mother I've been looking for.

This is the source. This is a psychological source of narcissistic abuse.

It's a test. It's constant testing.

Because a narcissist cannot afford in his mind to make a second mistake.

Now, if you have survived all this, you are the ideal mother.

You're a mother who loves unconditionally, regardless of the misbehavior of the child.

Now that you have been certified as the ideal mother, the narcissist can proceed to the separation and individuation.

So now he needs to devalue you, to allow him to separate from you.

He needs to discard you to become an individual.

Of course, this fails. This fails for a variety of other reasons.

So the narcissist keeps doing it again and again and again to a multiplicity of intimate partners and others.

This is known as repetition compulsion. Clinical term is repetition compulsion.

But that in a so victims need to know it is not true that your behavior had anything to do with the devaluation.

It is not true that your behavior had anything to do with the devaluation. It is not true that there was something you could have done. It is not true that you could have behaved differently and obtained a different outcome. It's not true that if you only gave more love or more attention or more caring or more empathy or more something, more money, things would have been resolved.

The dynamic of the shared fantasy, which was first described not by me, but by Sander, the dynamic of the shared fantasy is inexorable. There's nothing you can do about it and nothing you could have done about it.

So wait a minute, but you say, come on, Sam, that's not totally accurate.

Because the whole devaluation thing started when I started to conflict with the narcissists, criticize, disagree. Or maybe demonstrate independence of autonomy.

So it's then that he started to devalue.

What you don't understand, he pushed you to do it. This is known in psychology as projective identification.

Projective identification is when we project onto people, part of us that we reject, and then force them to behave this way.

So for example, I can project onto you hostility. Imagine that I'm hostile to you. I would project the hostility onto you. I'm not hostile, she is hostile. And then if you're not hostile, I will provoke you to be hostile. Yes. And then I will say, you see, I told you so, she's hostile.

So that's what the narcissist does to you. He forces you to diverge, to deviate from the mother figure, from the internal object. He forces you to be a bad mother. He forces you to not conform, to create daylight between you and the representation of you in his mind.

It's his work. He's fully in control of what you think you're autonomous and independent. You're not. You're a puppet. It's a puppet master. And you are the mummy puppet.

And now, mommy was all good. I need to separate from her. I need to make mommy all bad. I will trigger mommy and provoke mommy and project onto mommy and manipulate to become a bad mommy.

And what is a bad mommy? It's a mommy, for example, who challenges me or criticizes me, or disagrees with me, or offers me help, implying that I need help, or gives me advice when I don't need advice. I'm all knowing. It's a bad mommy.

And victims think that there was a phase in the shared fantasy in which they have been in some control. There was a modicum of control.

You had zero control. When you were in the shared fantasy, you have been suspended. You have been deanimated.

You know, when I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse.

And when was that, the 80s, right?

It was in the 80s, right? Yes.

When I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse and was the first to describe the condition and everything. I came up also with the rest of the language in use today. That's beside the point.

When I described narcissistic abuse, I coined the phrase, my colleagues and peers, they challenge me. They said, why do you need a special category of abuse? Why is it not enough to say abuse? Why do you need narcissistic abuse?

Because narcissistic abuse has nothing to do with abuse. It's not about you. It's about the narcissist.

All other types of abuse are targeted. The target, the target, the financial, financial abuse, elder abuse, emotional abuse and so on.

Narcissistic abuse is not about manipulating you. Narcissistic abuse is about eliminating you, negating you, vitiating you, making you disappear as an external object, and reappear as a totally controllable and manipulable internal object.

Narcissistic abuse is about a theater production or a movie where you are nothing but a prop or an actress following religiously a script given to you by the director, the narcissist.

So you are not there in any meaningful sense, and definitely you're not in control, of any figment or element of the fantasy.

And here is when victims trip themselves up.

Go crazy.

Yes, because they say, I've been chosen, and I was an equal participant, and there was something I could have done.

For example, maybe if I hadn't contradicted him, if I hadn't challenged him, if I hadn't undermined him, if I hadn't displayed independence, maybe we would still be together.

No.

All interpersonal relationships of the narcissists end in devaluation and discard.

Now, the mistake of most people is to believe that devaluation and discard has to be physical. Like you have to walk away physically out the door with your suitcase or whatever.

That's not the case. Devaluation and discard can be inside the relationship, can be internalized. The narcissist would simply go emotionally absent, would cheat on you, would have relationships on the side. He would give up on you within the relationship.

So the devaluation discard happens repeatedly in a relationship that lasts 40 years.

Yeah.

With the same person.

Yes.

And that's why we have, for example, hoovering. Hoovering is an attempt to re-establish the relationship, re-idealize the partner.

But some narcissists, they have very long-term intimate relationships, friendships, and so on.

Yes. What they do, they devalue the intimate partner or the friend. They devalue, discard mentally or emotionally. The other person doesn't exist anymore. They're free to act in any way they want. And then they return to the relationship, re-idealize the partner, and start all over again. Same partner, 40 years. Could happen.

Does it? Yes.

Yes.

And that, the term narcissistic abuse, which we talked about that you coined, what in your experience are some of the gaslighting, the confusion?

It's like, for me, it was physical, emotional, mental. It's hard to describe, but I ended up having a total nervous breakdown on the bathroom floor. I had some very dark thoughts, suicidal thoughts. It was bad. It was very bad.

Now, I'm in a great place now.

But thatwas that, that narcissistic abuse, when I realized that I was experiencing that, I've had to rebuild my whole identity in the last 18 months after like physical threats. I mean, all sort of, from all angles.

And the hard part for me is that it had sort of been hidden. But to other people, she is still this.

That's very common, yeah.

And then you start to feel a little cuckoo.

Very cuckoo.

You know?

Because you're like, why did she treat me like that and why not them?

You raised an interesting subject, and I would like to deal with it.

First of all, when it comes to recovering from narcissistic abuse and healing and everything, rather than go through it again, on my YouTube channel, there is a playlist. There's a playlist, and it's titled narcissistic abuse, healing and recovery. It contains well over 100 videos and a step-by-step program for healing and recovery from narcissistic abuse. So I wouldn't like to rehash it. Just go there and start to watch the videos as they unfold.

Yes.

Start with the latest video. The latest video is a summary. The latest video in the playlist is a summary.

But you raised an interesting topic.

What I'm trying to do with each interview is introduce topics that were not discussed in previous interview.

Sure, yeah, yeah.

You raise an interesting topic.

There is a divorce between clinical psychology, academic psychology, and the world, reality.

Yeah.

People who are suffering, people who perceive themselves as victims, survivors, even narcissists.

There's a divorce, absolute divorce.

For example, I'll give you one example. Academic clinical psychology is not interested in the impact of actions on other people, but on the motivation.

In the motivation.

So we ask ourselves, what's the motivation to this specific behavior? What's the psychological dynamics, history, personal history? What has led to this particular behavior?

Whereas victims say, who cares? I care about the experience of this behavior on me, the impact on me, how it affected me, how it destroyed my life. I don't care why he did it. I don't care why, I care what. Right. I don't care why he did it.

I care what. I don't care why he did it. I care what he did.

So take, for example, gaslight.

Narcissists do not gaslight. Psychopaths do.

For gaslighting to exist, we need several components, several elements. So we need a power asymmetry.

But more importantly, I mean, the gaslighter is more powerful than the gas lit, the victim.

But more importantly, we need the ability to tell apart reality in fantasy, which the narcissists don't have, doesn't have. This is unable to tell apart reality from fantasy.

In the narcissist's mind, when he makes you a promise, it's real.

So narcissists don't future fake.

In the narcissist's mind, all his fantasy is reality.

It's real.

It's all real.

This alternative reality, which has nothing to do with real reality, is real to the narcissists.

He doesn't believe that he's deceiving you. It doesn't believe he's gaslighting you. He believes it even more than you. He believes his deceptions. He believes his lies. He believes all this. We call this process confabulation. He believes all this.

Same with psychotic people. They believe the hallucination. If a psychotic people were to tell you yesterday, I witnessed someone killing another person with a knife. The psychotic person is not trying to deceive you. He's not trying to manipulate you. He's not trying to gaslight you. He really saw someone with a knife. It's a hallucination. But he doesn't know that.

Same with a narcissist. The narcissist is proposing to you, giving you access to an alternative reality.

But he doesn't know that it's alternative. He thinks it's the only reality.

So narcissists cannot by definition gaslight because they can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

Psychopaths do, and psychopaths, gaslight intentionally, deliberately, with the aim of manipulating you, destabilizing you, making you doubt your judgment and so.

And therefore making you dependent on them.

But the victim, when I say this to victims, they tell me who cares? It feels like gaslighting. I don't care if the narcissist knows the difference, doesn't know the difference. I'm being gaslit.

The narcissist's attempt to impose on me an alternative reality is felt, his experience like gaslighting.

And this is the big divide between Akadim and, for example, online self-styled experts and so on, victims and so on.

Because they are talking about experience, experienced life.

We are talking about what has led to experience life.

And they don't care about that.

It's like people say, who cares if the narcissist is a tortured child and they're being traumatized? He's not traumatizing and abusing people. He's no evil. He's no bad. Who cares why he's being evil or wicked or bad?

And of course the clinician, the clinical, sorry, academic clinical, psych, would say, of course I care. That's my job. That's my field. I care about why people become evil. Right.

This is the big divorce. That's why it's very difficult for, and that's why, for example, you don't have a single YouTube channel, I'm the only exception, a single YouTube channel with a recognized academic authority on narcissism, not Kimball, not Twenge, not you name it. Not one of them has a YouTube channel.

Why?

You have people with a doctorate in psychology, but psychology is a huge field. So that you have a doctorate in psychology does not mean you're an expert on narcissism.

And there is not a single true expert on narcissism online, not one.

Anyone who claims otherwise, you know, what they are.

Not one.

Because the clinical academic, if he goes online and opens a YouTube video, no one will watch.

Who cares?

Because it's about that narcissist.

It's about that narcissist and why they...

It's about it.

And people don't care about it.

They want the recovery piece in the why. The narcissist damage me, destroyed me, this, then, now what do I do about it?

I want to take revenge, or I want to rebuild myself or I want to.

Yes.

You know, it's a how-to approach.

It's a how-to approach, no?

So there's this gap, unbridgeable gap between the...

Yes.

And so that was my full experience.

And then I also experienced, and I know you have videos on this as well, so we don't have to repeat.

But the smear campaign, if there's any aspect that you haven't touched that you want to touch on here.

But basically, I survived a very, very bad smear campaign. I have a great support system. And it was very difficult.

But that smear campaign, like instead of the discard, instead of being just discarded, they also have to make sure that narrative is correct so they can secure future supply, right?

Yes.

Because the one I know already has new supply.

But that happens almost exclusively when there's involvement of third parties.

Yes.

That means if the breakup has been somehow public, public, I mean, family members, or wider public, there has been a witness to the dissolution of the bond, or supposed bond, then a smear campaign would take place in order to kind of create the appearance of, as you said, self-justifying, self-enhancing narrative.

Yes.

It's not about you again.

The smear campaign is not about you.

No.

It's about the narcissist.

The narcissist is trying to impose the shared fantasy on a larger audience, on anyone who's been exposed to the...

Yes.

So we have something called narcissistic mortification.

Narcissistic mortification is when the narcissist is subject to sudden devaluation or sudden shaming in the presence of other people when they're witnesses.

This would lead to a smear campaign.

Yep, I did that and then that was my punishment.

Yeah, this would lead to a smear campaign.

But if you're alone with a narcissist on an island and you're both, you know, castaways from a shipwreck. And you have had this love bombing and shared fantasy and devaluation and discard, there would be no smear campaign even after you are rescued.

There's no need for it.

Smear campaign is what we call impression management. It's the management of impressions. It's a management of public opinion, so to speak.

And in this sense, it's not very different to propaganda. It's a form of public opinion, so to speak. And in this sense, it's not very different to propaganda. It's a form of...

Yes, exactly.

And so be very careful when you break up with a narcissist.

Definitely, if you're the one to initiate it, but even if the breakup is a discard, be very careful at the face of the discard not to involve third parties, especially as witnesses.

Afterwards, I think the opposite advice is really. It's correct.

Afterwards, you need to expose the abuse, and you need to expose the abuser, and you need to involve people, support network, family, friends, the authorities, if needed, afterwards.

But when you're still with a narcissist, going through the motions of the shared fantasy, the devaluation, the discard, if you bring third parties into the picture, this will trigger impression management module. And you will be subjected to a smear campaign.

Yes, that is exactly what happened. I got the hell out. I had a total breakdown and then involved, reached out for support and then the smear campaign was vicious. Thankfully, I remember you posted a quote about like the people that believe that shit, good riddance to them anyway.

And then thank God I had people that were like, Bree, we believe you. And I'm like, thank you. Because I was like, do I believe? Do I know? I don't know. And they're like, you're good. And I'm like, okay.

The smear campaign is a great example because the victim perceives it as the victim and everyone else involved, including flying monkeys and all the...

They perceive it as gaslighting. It's an attempt to change reality, to alter reality, to introduce an alternative narrative, which is nothing to do with reality.

However, the narcissist who engages in the smear campaign believes it.

Really?

Yes.

This is not like people online are saying, no, it's vicious, evil, it's planned.

No, he believes it. He believes you are the abuser. Really? He believes you are, you have mistreated him, stole from him, lied to him, deceived him, and you deserve punishment. You mortified him, humiliating him, shamed him, or her, never mind. You deserve punishment.

So again, a smear campaign is a fantasy extended.

Got it.

And the fantasy is superimposed on a wider circle.

But there is the belief in the fantasy. There is an emotional investment in the fantasy.

Now, smear campaigns are used by psychopaths also.

When the psychopath uses a smear campaign, it's an entirely different story.

Psychopath knows that he's lying. He knows that it's all part of a well-oiled machinery to bring you down, take you down.

Sure, sure.

Wow.

So...

These are delusional people.

You heard the word delusional?

Yes.

Oh yeah.

And I remember I called her that once.

We were always fighting in the car. And I was never allowed to drive and it was always fighting in the car. And then whenever I would push back, I was told, why are you getting so mad? And I would say, I'm not mad. I'm just actually saying my opinion. And then she would say, here we go again. Here we go again. You're being dramatic.

And then I have OCD. So when I would like, we're rumination, OCD kind of, she'd be like, here goes your OCD. Like you're thinking it's your OCD again.

That didn't happen. You imagine that.

And then I would just shut down and I'd be like pull over. She wouldn't pull over. It was like a fucking nightmare. Sorry, my French.

But I have distance now. Like, she's in my community, but I have it, Ithe, the, when you said exposing the abuser, I have done that and I'm proud of myself.

There is also, like, there's fear because she has, like, physically, physically has come after me a few times, but thankfully, there were people that separated her from me.

Wow.

That's crazy.

That's unusual in narcissism, by the way.

Narcissism, not physical. Oh, really? Psychopaths are, yeah, it's crazy.

That's unusual in narcissism, by the way.

Narcissist not physical.

Oh, really?

Psychopaths.

Okay, because, yeah, she's a domestic abuser, so she must be a psychopath then.

Yeah.

When you've got enough distance, like, and I'm very stable and I'm very supported and I'm in everything is great.

Is her seeing me doing well? Is that still a threat if she has new supply?

Depends.

Yeah.

When the narcissists generates a new fantasy, the smear campaign is a new fantasy.

So when a narcissist operates a new fantasy.

That happened, yeah.

Or explanatory fantasy, interpretative fantasy.

Sure, sure.

The clinical term is hermeneutic fantasy.

So when the narcissist generates this, he needs to, there's role casting, he needs to cast you in a role.

The role could be one of two.

You're evil. You're wicked.

This is known as the external solution. Libby, Libby was a scholar who described all this. This is known as the external solution.

So you're wicked.

The other solution is you're crazy.

Oh yeah.

I am crazy.

And even some narcissists would go further and say, she's crazy and I made her misbehave. I made her do it.

Okay. So you're either crazy or evil. And then the narcissist finds a new target.

Develops a new short fantasy with this target, internalizes the target, snapshots, creates internal object.

The whole story starts all over again.

It's nauseating because it's the same. It's identical.

At that point, you reside in the narcissist's mind, you remain stuck in the narcissist's mind as a persecutory object, as an enemy.

You, as an external object, a gun, is your gone, but the representation, the avatar remains. And it's a secretary, it's an enemy avatar.

So your well-being, your success, your accomplishments, having found another partner, your happiness, they're all triggers.

There are triggers as far as the object that represents you in the narcissist's mind is still persecutory or enemy object, hostile object.

So the narcissist has two ways to resolve this.

One way is to take you down, destroy you.

And the other way is to reacquire you, re-idealize you, and take you back, something.

This is known as hoovering.

The narcissist never gets rid of your representation in his or her mind.

Till the day, they die.

And this object is in one of two states, is what we call psychodynamically active object, infused with energy.

And then the narcissist interacts with this object, has debates with the object, attacks the object, internal object, and so on.

Or it is deactivated, it's psychodynamically inactive, and then it could be forgotten from, but it's always there and always activated at some point.

Once you are inside the narcissist's mind and he is inside yours, there is a fusion.

This process is known as entraining.

There is a fusion of your minds in some way. There is a coordination of your frequencies, kind of.

By the way, physically, your brains coordinate physically.

Wow.

From that moment on, you're in a symbiotic state, and I would call it entanglement.

Yes.

Physics in quantum mechanics.

Yeah, the quantum, no matter how far the particles are, right?

No matter how far the two particles that used to be together.

These are two particles who used to be in a molecule, for example.

If you then send them away, light years away, they still affect each other.

So this is entanglement. There's entanglement here.

The narcissist carries you in his mind forever.

Sometimes you're active. Sometimes you're forgotten.

You're always there in their unconscious.

Then you reemerge into consciousness. You're activated again.

And he has to resolve this.

One way to resolve this is to get rid of you physically, not to kill you, but like if you die or even if you move away very far.

Yes, that helps them.

And the other way is to reacquire you, to repossess you somehow.

And then it's okay because you're, by virtue of having been re-idealized, your internal object becomes ideal again.

And the narcissist idealizes himself through you.

Co-idealization.

Yes.

She's ideal.

For example, like owning a flashy car or, you know, she's ideal, she's dropped dead gorgeous, she's with me, that means I'm attractive.

The proofs that I'm attractive.

So, he idealizes himself or herself through you.

Yes.

That's another solution, re-idealizing you and by extension re-idealizing himself or herself.

But these are the only two solutions.

You are entangled. You're bound for life.

Yes.

And I know I want to keep an eye on time here. I can talk to you for like five more hours.

I think we should say goodbye because no one online can survive more than one and a half hours.

Yes.

So to kind of wrap this up, the message is there is the light at the end of the tunnel is taking yourself from that victim mentality to survivor, focusing on yourself, and knowing, I guess knowing forever that I will forever be impacted, but I can move forward myself.

We all pay a lifelong price for substantial mistakes.

Yes.

Whatever the mistake may be.

Yeah.

Yep.

You drive your car, you have an accident, you lose a leg. It's life long. You have children. One of them proves to be a delinquent, juvenile, and then a criminal. It's life long. You marry the wrong guy. You end up in a relationship with the narcissists.

We have to accept that life is implacable, unforgiving, and we have to understand that there are consequences to our decisions and choices and actions and so on. Even if we were innocent in the process of decision-making, innocence plays no role in reality.

No.

It's a myth.

It's just, it is what it is.

The narcissist is with you for life.

Now, there are two elements here, you and the narcissist.

You cannot change the narcissist, but you can change yourself.

You can. And again, I refer you to the playlist, narcissistic abuse, healing and recovery on my YouTube channel. I think some of the videos might resonate.

Yes. Yes.

Thank so much I'm incredibly grateful and I will be following you and I can't wait to share this and it's going to help a lot of people.

Thank you. I think it was a good interview. Thank you very much.

Yes. Thank you Sam. Take care. Bye. I'll send you the file. Thank you.