Will you ever be the same person again after narcissistic abuse? Will you be the same girl, same boy, the same man, the same woman you have been before you have met the narcissist? Is it all reversible? Can you reboot yourself somehow? Restart your life?
This is the topic of today's video.
But I'm going to make a distinction between healing, change and crisis.
If you are curious, you're invited to suffer the rest of me to the very bitter end.
And who am I?
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, the first book ever about narcissistic abuse, and I'm a professor of clinical psychology.
I'm glad to announce my recent appointment as a visiting professor in Southeastern European University.
More on that later in future videos.
Right now, let's focus on you rather than on me.
How un-nostic of me!
Okay, Shoshanim, here's the thing.
Every experience in life, every encounter with another person, every circumstance, every change in environment, everything you hear, everything you see, everything you absorb, everything you contemplate, even internal dynamics, thinking, emoting, reacting, everything, the smallest things, the tiniest, the minutia of daily life, everything changes us.
We're never the same person again after every experience, every encounter.
So change is a fixture of life, the only stable, predictable thing in life, the only unchanging thing in life is change, the immutable feature of organisms.
So when you ask, am I ever going to be the same?
Of course you're not going to be the same.
Narcissistic abuse is not an exception.
Narcissistic abuse is an experience, a harrowing experience, bordering on torture.
Narcissistic abuse is an encounter, an encounter with an alien life form known as the narcissist.
And such an experience and such an encounter are no exceptions to the rule.
And the rule is to remind you, every experience and every encounter changes you.
So will and so does narcissistic abuse. It changes you.
But there's a big difference and a big distinction, a critical distinction between change and healing, transformation and recovery.
The fact that narcissistic abuse changes you, the fact that you will never be the same, the fact that you will have transformed in ways which are alien to you, the fact that you feel estranged to yourself, as if you were a stranger to yourself.
These facts, they don't mean that you are not going to recover.
You can fully recover from narcissistic abuse. The prognosis is excellent. You can heal from narcissistic abuse, albeit a changed, wiser person.
Everything we go through in life adds to our years and adds increments, augments, our wisdom. We became more sagacious as we traverse this limited period that we have on earth.
Narcissistic abuse is not something I wish upon anyone.
But if you did go through it, you will have acquired new skills, new self-awareness, new understanding of human nature. In short, you will have become much wiser.
Narcissistic abuse is a crisis.
What is a crisis? A crisis is a break, a chasm, an abyss.
When the order of things breaks down, this leads to disorientation, to confusion.
You can no longer trust your internal reality, and you utterly distrust external reality, especially other people.
There is a theory in psychology. It's known as crisis theory. It includes the concepts that deal with the nature, precipitance, prevention and resolution of crisis, as well as behaviors associated with crisis.
It seems that when we are exposed to crisis as human beings, we tend to react in highly formulaic, settled ways.
All of us, regardless of cultural background, societal history, personal autobiography, all of us regardless of gender, of age, regardless of affinities, allegiances, affiliations, beliefs, values, all of us react identically to crisis.
It is something probably biological or evolutionary. I said that it is formulaic, a formula, on how to survive.
Because crisis threatens your existence, whether it's physical existence, and whether it's mental or psychological existence.
Crisis is existential.
And when you perceive your very life internal or external to be at risk, you react according to set formulas, set diagrams, an algorithm which tells you how to behave. This has been codified as flight, fight, fawn and freeze.
But the truth is that these are minor reactions to trauma.
Crisis is much more profound. It's much more challenging. it's much more ominous, it's much more menacing.
And so you're likely to react to crisis in a way that essentially would alter, transform, change your core identity.
You're likely to become someone else.
It's as if you were saying to the crisis, don't affect me, I am no longer myself. It's as if you were communicating with the external threat and you were saying, look, I am no longer me. I am no longer the appropriate subject of the threat. I have become someone so cataclysmically different that, you know, I am not the right target for the threat.
It's a little like animals, non-human animals.
You know, when non-human animals are faced with a threat, they pretend to be dead. They pretend to be dead, or they camouflage themselves.
It's as if the animal is communicating to its predator. Listen, I am no longer the animal that you seek. I am no longer the prey that you like. I am a different animal now. Look, I'm a dead animal. I'm a corpse. Or I am not an animal at all. I'm a leaf, or I'm a branch, or I'm a rock.
Human beings react the very same way. They pretend to be dead, and they experience this inner death. They experience a process of losing their vitality, of deanimating.
They gradually shut down function after function until they are rendered zombie-like, exactly like non-human animals. Human animals pretend to be dead, they play dead.
And at the same time, they communicate a message of, I am no longer who I used to be, so I am no longer the correct aim or correct target for the threat.
And this whole thing is known as a maturational crisis. It's also known as life crisis, normative crisis, or in Gail Sheehy's work, passages.
A maturational crisis is a life-changing event or interaction or a life-changing relationship that lead to a massive change in who you are and even more so in how you perceive yourself.
Now, life-changing events could include marriage, divorce, retirement, the loss of a loved one, etc., being fired, etc.
All these events lead to a maturational crisis.
Maturational crises, in plural, lead to personal growth and development.
Crisis lead to growth.
Traumas do not lead to growth.
Traumas lead to the exact opposite of personal growth. Traumas lead to regression.
Crisis leads to growth, personal development and moving forward.
We all encounter maturational crisis or life crisis in the course of our development and we all change significantly psychologically behaviorally and this is known as adjustment when we fail to adjust to a changing environment, changing circumstances, changing challenges, other people when we change, fail to adjust, this is known as adjustment disorder.
An adjustment disorder is a dysfunctional reaction to a developmental crisis or a normative crisis or a maturational crisis.
The problem with narcissistic abuse is that it is so negating, so vitiating and so vicious.
Narcissistic abuse is about taking away your personal autonomy, your core identity, your agency, your independence, your ability to think, your ability to act, your capacity to make decisions and choices.
It's about rendering you inanimate. A mummy, Egyptian one.
So narcissistic abuse is much more extensive and much deeper than any other maturational crisis.
The reaction to narcissistic abuse is therefore highly unique.
The reason we react to narcissistic abuse so disastrously, the reason the recovery and the healing from narcissistic abuse takes such a long time is that the narcissist takes over your mind.
He entrains you and brainwashes you. He becomes one with you.
He regulates your internal environment. He enmeshes with you. He merges with you, he fuses with you in a symbiosis.
It's difficult to let go because you no longer exist except as an extension of a narcissist, a figment in his imagination, an internal object in his mind space.
Narcissistic abuse challenges critical assumptions about the world, about people, and about relationships.
When we are young, we create theories, theories about the world, theories about what makes other people tick about the psychology of other people.
Their motivations, their actions, their choices, their decisions, their traits.
We create whole theories about other people.
These are known as theories of mind.
And the process of creating theories of mind is known as mentalization.
When we are young, we also create theories about relationships.
We model these theories about relationships on our primary relationship with mother and father with the parental figures.
These theories about relationships with other people are known as internal working models or IWMs.
And so what the narcissist does to you in the bouts of narcissistic abuse, in the throes of narcissistic abuse, when you are immersed in the paracosm, in the shared fantasy, which is highly debilitating, denuding, abusing, vitiating.
When you are in there in this alien planet, what the narcissists accomplishes is that he destroys all the theories that you have constructed as a young person. He destroys your theory of mind.
You no longer understand other people. You no longer grasp or glom what makes them tick because you don't comprehend the narcissist.
He destroys your internal working model about relationships because there's no relationship, like the relationship with a narcissist if it can be called a relationship at all and of course it destroys your trust in your ability to perceive the world and reality appropriately and efficaciously.
The narcissist challenges 10 assumptions that every human being makes.
Assumption number one.
People are rational. People are self-interested. People are not self-defeating. People are not self-destructive. People are not self-defeating. People are not self-destructive. People are not self-harming. People are not crazy making. People, by and large, seek their best interests and want to enhance and augment their well-being. They do so without harming other people. So most people are also good.
This is the first assumption.
But having spent time with the narcissists, you no longer believe this to be true.
You no longer think that people are rational and self-interested and you definitely don't believe or trust that people are good.
From that moment on, you're going to be hypervigilant and suspicious and paranoid about other people.
Assumption number two, which is challenged by narcissistic abuse, justice, order and structure are fundamental to the universe. Reality in people in the universe, inside the world, reality in people are trustworthy.
They are trustworthy because they are predictable. They are trustworthy because they are determinate. They're trustworthy because by and large there's a lot of certainty about life because there is justice and there is order and there is structure and there is karma.
The narcissists undermines all these assumptions with a narcissist you begin to doubt whether there is any justice in the world whether the world is just you begin to doubt whether there is any justice in the world, whether the world is just.
You begin to understand that chaos could be an organizing principle for some people, like your narcissist.
And you realize that even though there is structure, it is very precarious. It can be easily dismantled and destroyed by the acts of certain individuals who are, for example, evil or egotistic, or disempathic or exploitative.
Assumption number three.
The world is not a hostile place. It is not a jungle. At worst, nature is indifferent.
But nature and the world and reality in life, they're not out to get you. There's no conspiracy against you. You're nobody, you're a speck of dust.
So all in all, the world could be hospitable with some investment of energy and resources with some commitment you can make the world a better place a nicer place more habitable.
This is an assumption that you make before you have met the narcissists but once you've experienced narcissistic abuse you're not sure anymore that the world is not a hostile place.
If the world allows, you know, some people say if God allows, but if the world allows, if reality allows for the existence of psychopaths and narcissists, maybe reality is truly dangerous, hostile, minacious and evil.
Principle or assumption number four that we all make and that change, an assumption that is undermined by the narcissist.
And that is an assumption that one good deed deserves another.
If you are good to people, they're going to be good to you.
If you help people, if you're altruistic, if you're charitable, if you're supportive, if you're compassionate, if you're affectionate, if you're empathic, if you're listening, you're going to get the same back.
In the Bible, it says that if you send your bread away, you will get it a hundred times, hundred fold back.
This is the assumption that most people make actually according to research.
And there's of course the opposite assumption that no good deed goes unpunished that if you act in the world as a good person you're a sucker, you're naive. Good person, you're a sucker, you're naive, you're stupid, you're gullible, and you deserve what's coming. You had it coming, you know.
And so when you first meet the narcissist, you still believe that one good deed deserves another.
If you treat the narcissist nicely, if you're kind to the narcissist, if you're understanding, if you're listening, if you're supportive, if you afford the narcissist, SACOR, if you are there for the narcissist, he's going to reciprocate or she's going to reciprocate.
And then you discover that this is not true in all cases and never with a narcissist.
And then you gradually, imperceptibly, glacially transition from the belief that it pays to be good to the belief that being good is the equivalent of being stupid.
And this is a loss of innocence and a loss of sincerity and a loss of integrity that is very, very difficult to regain and to recoup.
You say to yourself, if I try hard enough, if I love him sufficiently, if I invest in the relationship, if I'm committed, if I never betray him, if I'm sincere, things are going to work out.
And then they don't. And they don't, not for any good reason.
They just don't because narcissists and psychopaths don't do intimacy. They don't do love. They don't do reciprocity. They don't do friendship even.
And you learn the lesson. And the lesson is, don't trust anyone, ever. And don't go around doing good things.
Ask for a price. Never be charitable. Never be altruistic. Never be helpful. Never be kind. Never be nice.
This is for suckers and idiots. You have learned your lesson. You have matured. You now know the world exactly as it is, courtesy the narcissists.
The fifth assumption that the narcissists challenges and destroys for you is the assumption that you gain credit with people when you behave well.
That if you act with people kindly, if you are empathic, if you are altruistic, if you act with people kindly, if you're empathic, if you are altruistic, if you're helpful, if you're collaborative with people, they're going to remember this. They're going to remember this and one good turn deserves another. And so they're going to remember this and they're going to treat you the same.
Your good deeds, your beneficent choices, your benignity, these are not going to be forgotten. They're not going to be ignored. There is credit accumulating in the bank of goodwill.
And what you learn with the narcissist is that he is incapable of remembering, he is incapable of memory, he is dissociative.
And not only is he incapable of memory, he feels entitled to the good treatment that you give him. He doesn't think it's anything special. He doesn't think that your kindness and your niceness and your empathy and your affectionate attitude and your compassion, he doesn't think that these should be appreciated, even admired. He doesn't think so at all. He thinks he deserves it, naturally, without any investment on his part, without any commitment, without any effort, without any hard work, because relationships are hard work.
And so because of that, it seems as if you never have credit with the narcissist. It's as if every morning you start from zero, from scratch.
And you learn to distrust people's ability to reciprocate, to pay back or to pay forward.
Principle number six.
Reality is a shared experience. We all experience more or less the same reality.
This is known in philosophy as the intersubjectivity principle or the intersubjective space. We all share the same space. All our subjectivities, all our minds, share the same space and we understand reality identically unless we are psychotic or otherwise mentally ill.
People are very much the same. Everything I know about myself applies to other people. This is the foundation of empathy, of course.
But when you have graduated from the narcissistic abuse university, the higher education of the narcissist, you no longer believe this. You no longer believe that other people necessarily share the same experiences as you do. You no longer believe there's a common ground, a common denominator, some way to communicate, a common language. You no longer believe this.
You feel isolated. You feel solipsistic. You feel atomized. You feel as if you could never reach out to other people and be accepted and be understood. You feel as if the narcissist has rendered you some kind of mutation, some kind of freak.
And when you try to communicate what has happened to you in the internment or incarceration in the narcissist's castle, when you try to convey the enchantment that took over you, the crazy nightmarish dreamscape that you have had to endure with the narcissists, the surrealistic dimension of your coexistence with him in a shared fantasy, this paracosm.
When you try to talk to people to communicate with them, they don't understand you. You realize then that you have been rendered so unique by the narcissist that you no longer share things in common with other people.
Your experience has made you so different that maybe you begin to doubt your own humanity.
This is the narcissist's gift to you.
Next, foundation seven of human existence.
The belief that being alone is worse than being together. That togetherness is preferable to aloneness. That solitude should never be the default, that you should always seek some affinity, some interaction, some commonality, some happiness, some contentment and some togetherness with other people, as friends, as intimate partners, maybe your own family members, children, whatever.
The belief that sharing physical space and mental space with other people elevates you, makes you feel better, enhances your health somehow.
Having experienced the narcissist, his absence masquerading as presence, his abuse, which is perceived by the narcissist as tough love, his entitlement, having gone through the hell of the narcissist, tough love, his entitlement, having come through the hell of the narcissist, you're no longer quite sure that solitude is not the preferable option.
Many victims of narcissistic abuse have made a vow, a pledge to never be with another person again, to remain solitary for the rest of their remaining lives.
And that is because they have learned that hell is the other person, that sometimes a wrong choice, a wrong mate selection, could lead to consequences, could lead to a togetherness which is a concentration camp.
And so in order not to repeat the same mistake again, they withdraw, they avoid, they constrict their lives, and essentially they self-cancel. They self-eliminate. They self-annihilate.
Next, we all have an assumption, if we are mentally healthy, we all have an assumption unspoken, uncommunicated, ambient, atmospheric assumption that we deserve to be loved. We deserve love.
It doesn't have to be fireworks. It doesn't have to be loved we deserve love it doesn't have to be fireworks it doesn't have to be orgasmic or ecstatic it doesn't have to be colorful it doesn't have to be spectacular and it definitely doesn't have to be dramatic but we all deserve love we are all essentially lovable but we all deserve love. We are all essentially lovable.
The narcissist takes this away from you because what the narcissist communicates to you consistently, relentlessly, indefatigably, is you are not worthy of love. You're not worthy of love because you're flawed, you're deficient, your failure, you're no good.
What the narcissist does, he exports to you his internalized bad object. He infects you with his own sense of inferiority, shame, and his own lack of lovability in his own eyes.
Now when I say he's, her, he, I mean half of all narcissists are women. Okay.
Number nine. Before you have met the narcissist, you essentially trusted yourself. You trusted your judgment. You trusted your reality testing, your grasp of reality. You trusted your judgment. You trusted your reality testing, your grasp of reality. You trusted yourself to love yourself, to have your back, to be your own best friend. You trusted to be selective about who to associate with and who not, who to be friend and who not. You trusted to make essentially the right decisions, choices. There was a moment element of trust between you and yourself.
The narcissist takes it away from you.
By the end of the relationship with the narcissists, have you been exposed to narcissistic abuse, you no longer trust your judgment. You no longer trust your judgment about the narcissist and you no longer trust your judgment about anyone.
It's as if you were saying to yourself, I'm so stupid or I'm so defective, I am so bad at evaluating people that I ended up with a narcissist I may do this again and I will not survive a second time so I don't trust my capacity to trust I don't trust my capacity to judge I don't trust my capacity to evaluate and I don't trust my ability to be certain to attain certitude I don't trust my perception of reality I may be gaslighting myself. And I definitely don't love myself if I've ended up with a narcissist or a psychopath.
Something is wrong with me. Something is wrong with me.
Having made these choices and decisions and mate selection, having elected to spend my life with this kind of person, it means that I hate myself. It means that I'm self-defeating and self-destructive.
How can I trust myself? Henceforth.
And finally, we believe, all of us believe, that there is always a way to undo a wrong, a mistake, even evil. We believe we can undo these things.
Because we say to ourselves, when people do wrong, when people misbehave, when people are evil, they don't mean to be. It's rarely intentional. There are a few people who are psychopaths. It's not intentional.
There's always regret. There's always remorse. There's always regret. There's always remorse. There's always guilt and shame. Everyone has a conscience. It's common to all people.
We can trust people. We can trust people to do the right thing. We can trust people to make amends. We can trust people to compensate us if they've wronged us.
There is this belief.
And then you come across a narcissist, let alone the psychopath.
And you realize that some wrongs cannot be undone. Some evil is structural and constitutional. Some people never regret, never experience remorse, never feel guilty, reject their own shame and do not possess a conscience.
It is enough to come across one exemplar, one specimen of such a person in order to lose trust in all people.
And this is the crux of narcissistic abuse.
You have had an experience with one person or two people or three, and generalization is a fallacy, it's a logical fallacy. You generalize and you catastrophize. These are pathological, dysfunctional reactions. It's like you've been burned by hot water so you blow on cold water.
So this is where therapy comes in. You need cognitive behavior therapy to get rid of all these generalizations, automatic negative thoughts, and other fallacies and misconceptions. It would be a good start, cognitive behavior therapy.
I want you to know that whether you select cognitive behavior therapy, schema therapy, Gestalt therapy, DBT, if you're borderline, I want you to know. The prognosis is excellent. The overwhelming vast majority of victims of narcissistic abuserecover and heal completely.
Are they changed?
Of course they are changed by this horrendous experience. Who wouldn't be? But they're changed. But they're okay. They're changed. But they're functional. They've been transformed. But they are capable of happiness and contentment.
They're back to business. They're back to life, they engage other people, they act efficaciously in their environment. Everything is well, but you need to invest in yourself, you need to attend therapy, you need to seek help from professionals and non-professionals as well. You need to regard your healing and recovery as a project.
Because what the narcissist has done, he has dismantled you, he has broken you apart, he has disintegrated you. He has broken you apart. He has disintegrated you. He has dissolved you.
And like Humpty Dumpty, you need to put yourself back together.