 It seems that I'm recording, I'm not quite sure, but let's hope for the best. No, as long as you're both co-hosts, you should be able to record. We're recording on this side too, but we're also recording a backup in Audacity audio only as well, just in case. We like to put Rupal check everything. Okay, thank you for your help. No problem. This is certainly not my first Zoom anything. I thought we were over it, but we're not. Okay, so just for the audio levels only through Audacity, what did you have for breakfast today? What I had for breakfast today, I had an apple and a pretty oily peanut butter bar. Excellent, your levels are great. That's lovely. So we've got, we're triple locked here. The peanut butter wasn't. Oh really? I love a bit of peanut butter actually. It keeps it going for a good one. I'm going to leave you two to us and we know that we're happy and we're ready to go. And everything is recording. You could actually injure somebody with the book. That was the intent. It's substantial. There was the intent. You're not moving now Paula. It's okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I just, I brought the books as well as time just so I can, you know, it's really lovely to meet you. I can't believe it. I'm a little bit star. I'm a little bit star stuck, but I know you. I know how you get on and talk and I know there's no problem. Let us talk. Okay, so I'll start with your introduction and then I'll obviously ask you about the start with the definition. Allow me to introduce myself. It's going to be shorter. I don't want to take so much of the show on bragging. I'm, I'm, I'll do, I'll do it separately and you go ahead. Yeah. Well, I'm so back and I'm the author of Balignance of love narcissism revisited and many other books about personality disorders. I'm a former visiting professor of psychology and currently I'm on the faculty of see ups center for international. They change a name. It's a Commonwealth Institute for advanced professional studies in United Kingdom, Cambridge, Toronto and Nigeria. They have an outreach comes. So that's me in a nutshell. Yes, and your Bible, of course, I'll just, you know, the Bible for everybody. And Sam, we'll start with your definition of and what is actually a narcissist and maybe the variant types that you know you can come across. A narcissist is a person who cannot conceive of other people as separate from him. He cannot conceive them as external objects. He converts everyone around him into an internal object, everyone significant, everyone meaningful, everyone useful, everyone who can provide him with narcissistic supply. Everyone who can fit into his shirt fantasy and when I say he and he's and him, these gender pronouns are interchangeable. Maybe 50% 50% of people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder are women. So women caught up in this an illustrious field as well. So when I say he, you can safely replace it with a sheet. This is a person who converts everyone into an internal object and then because everyone is an internal object. He feels comfortable, he feels convenient to exploit them to manipulate them to use them to abuse them. He likes empathy, because one does not empathize with one's internal objects and so on. Everything flows, everything comes from this fact that the narcissist is alone in the universe. He is solipsistic, he is the single operating mind. Everyone else is a two dimensional rendition, a caricature, painting, a drawing, an internal object, whatever you want, a voice, whatever you want to call it. So narcissists treat other people as extensions, as instruments, as objects. And I think that's the best definition of narcissists. There are many others, but I think that's the best one. And there's different categories, so there's the overt, the covert. There are different types of narcissists. But today we are beginning to think that we have committed a serious mistake in the past few decades. Until the 1960s, narcissism, pathological narcissism has been perceived as compensatory. The narcissistic person supposedly felt bad about himself, had an inferiority complex, had what we call a bad object, considered himself unworthy, inadequate, a failure, stupid, ugly, you name it. And to compensate for this internal dissonance, for this discomfort, to compensate for this, these people developed pathological narcissism. They said, I'm not stupid, I'm a genius. I'm not ugly, I'm drop dead gorgeous. I'm not what I know I am, I'm the exact opposite. And they created a false self. This was until the 1960s. And then starting in the 1960s, we began to say no, there are two types of narcissists. There are compensatory narcissists, narcissists who don't feel well with who they are. And there are overt grandiose narcissists. And these overt grandiose narcissists actually love themselves. They adore themselves. They think they're perfection. And so this has been the prevailing orthodoxy until recently. But recently we are going back to the roots. We are beginning to believe that overt or grandiose narcissists, narcissists who are in your face, they are defiant, they are always happy go lucky, they're never wrong. They are, you know, this kind of narcissists we believe are actually psychopaths. And the only true narcissist is a compensatory narcissist, someone who compensates for this bed object inside himself. And now within the compensatory range, we have narcissists who externalize their narcissism. They are ostentatiously narcissistic. And they use narcissism to elicit or to trigger or to provoke reactions in people which confirm to them their own inflated fantastic self image and self perception. And we call this kind of feedback narcissistic supply. There is another type of narcissists. It's a narcissist who is not very good at interacting with people. A narcissist who constantly fails to elicit praise and compliments and adulation and admiration, or even attention. A narcissist who is very bad at securing attention from his environment. And this kind of narcissists is known as a covert narcissists. It's essentially a type of collapsed narcissists. Collapse in narcissism is a situation where the narcissist repeatedly and habitually fails to obtain or secure a regular flow of narcissistic supply. And then if this happens over the lifespan, you become covert. You hide the fact that you're a narcissist. You simply hide it. You act. You develop the spian skills. You play act. You pretend you fake. You develop what we call pseudo humility, false modesty. You become pro-social and communal, overtly and ostentatiously charitable and altruistic and moralistic and so on so forth. These are all covert narcissists. Many, many so-called victims and definitely the majority of so-called empaths are actually covert narcissists, in my view. Yeah, you say that you don't even think the empath is a real thing often. You know, a real personality type empath. There's no such thing as empath. It's not a personality type. It's not a clinical term. It's complete, nonsensical online hype. And it's actually inverted narcissists. I think it's a form of covert narcissists. Now, inverted narcissists is a subspecies of covert narcissists that derives narcissistic supply via an intimate partner who is an overt grandiose narcissist. So the inverted narcissists teams up with another narcissist and then she busks in his glory. She obtains supply vicariously by proxy through him. He's very good. Her intimate partner is very good at obtaining supply. She is not. So she teams up with him. He becomes a kind of provider, but not provider of money, but provider of supply. Think of the whole thing as the economy of a drug. It's actually a drug environment. Narcissistic supply is a drug. And think about junkies and pushers. So the inverted narcissists is a junkie and her intimate partner is a pusher. The narcissist is a junkie and everyone who provides him with narcissistic supply is a pusher or a source of drugs. It's absolutely comparable to drug addiction. And indeed you can recast narcissism as a form of addictive response to trauma, early childhood trauma. Which we'll touch on in a little while. Could you maybe just set out for anyone that's not very familiar with narcissistic behavior and narcissistic abuse, which is one of your own phrases that you coined in the 90s in your book. What type of behaviors would such people demonstrate and what kind of things would you look out for? There's of course a very long list of behaviors. It is a common myth that you're unable to spot a narcissist because they're great actors. They pull the wool over your eyes. They deceive you. And then much, much later you find out that they're narcissists and you're devastated. That's a myth. It's complete nonsense. Okay. The minute you come across a narcissist, your intuition, your gut feeling is that something is wrong. Something is right. Something is off key. The narcissist is too much in many ways. He's over the top. He's a caricature. He's not a human being. He's a caricature. And there is a reaction known as the uncanny value reaction where we react to people. We react to entities that simulate human beings. We react to them with unease discomfort. And this is exactly the reaction when you come across a narcissist. So why do people ignore their intuition or gut feeling and proceed with the relationship? Why? Because people are lonely. They're lonely. They're compromised. They're compromised. They deceive themselves. They're malignantly optimistic. They're a theological hope. Shadow of the Angel is this phrase. And so they dilute themselves into thinking either that their perceptions are wrong, the intuition is wrong, or that somehow with their love and investment and commitment, they may be able to transform the narcissist into a normal, healthy, loving, empathic, caring, nice, kind human being. Both are forms of self-deception. Just one second, please. Lydia, would you mind closing the door here? Thank you. I'm sorry. I forgot. My fault. Your other half. Yes, my better half. My smaller half, but better half. Yes, of course. What are the signs? What triggers our intuition or gut feeling? First of all, as I said, they are caricatures. They're exaggerated simulations of human, exaggerated imitations of human beings. You see the imitation. It's very visible. It's conspicuous, the fact that they are imitating a human being. Number two. They almost have a ghost-like. They kind of ghost-like in a way, aren't they? They kind of don't even exist really. They are like a rendition of a human being. Yeah, they're like a CGI script. They're like a rendition of a human being. The second thing is, they treat you differently to the way they treat everyone else. So they treat you nicely. They're very attentive. They're very compassionate. They are emphatically empathic. They are into you completely like a laser beam. They consume every word you say with astonishment and amazement, and they immediately start to idealize you. And they tell you that you're the most fascinating person they've ever met and that you are so intelligent and so beautiful and so business or that. And at the same time, they insult the waiter. They shout at the cab driver. They humiliate the people at the next table. So when you see a discrepancy between the way you are being treated and the way everyone else is, that's a narcissist. The next thing is that narcissists take over. They immediately assume a position of dominance. They decide what movie you're going to see, which restaurant you're going to go to. They take the keys to your apartment and they lock your door. They shove you into the nearest cab. They immediately monopolize you and the situation. Do not allow you to have any agency, any independence, any decision-making powers, and so on and so forth. And I would say that maybe a fourth sign is inappropriate effect. So you may be discussing something horrible, like, I don't know, the war in Gaza, and they're going to laugh. The reactions are going to be inappropriate. So this is another indicator. There are many, there are dozens, there are so many indicators that are utterly impossible for you not to notice that you're with someone who is mentally ill. Not impossible not to notice. It's possible to lie to us, which a vast majority of people do. And so before we start into how they go about that, how do they actually see the person before we talk about the stage setting and all of that? How do they actually see the person, the people who they care about or who they're supposed to care about, you know, their loved ones around them? Do they, they don't really see them, do they? You have used words which have no place in the narcissist's vocabulary. You've used words like, you've just used words like here and loved ones and so on. This is no place in the narcissist's vocabulary. The narcissist is not interested in who you are. So it is a myth and online, again online nonsense that narcissists choose intentionally empathic and kind and nice people. They don't, they couldn't care less if you're empathic and kind and nice. They don't care who you are. They care about what you can give them. They care about what they can take from you. And they are focused on four things which I call the four S's. And that is sex, supply, narcissistic or sadistic, torturing you is great supply. And safety, your constant presence owing to trauma bonding or addiction or whatever. So supply, sex, safety and services. You're supposed to service them in a variety of capacities. A short fare, a personal assistant, a cook, a mother and so on. So the narcissist focuses on whether you can give him two out of these four. And if you can, he couldn't care less about your traits, your beliefs, your values, your personal history, your family, your loved ones, your nearest and dearest. Your interests, your vocation, your occupations, your hobbies, your hopes, your fears, your dreams, none of this is of any interest to the narcissist. You're like an internet service provider. We want the internet service provider to provide us with reliable broadband. And we don't particularly care about the personality of the people who are working in the internet service provider's office. So you're a provider, you're a supplier and that's it. And they isolate people, these type of personalities, they isolate the people, the supply. So the first thing they do, they convert you into an internal object. If you pass the test, if you succeed in the job interview and the narcissist believes that you can fit into a shared fantasy and you can provide him with supply and or sex and or services. And you're safe, a safe person in the sense that you're unlikely to just walk away, break up with him, abandon him or betray him. If he reaches this conclusion, your profile fits. Not your profile, but the profile of what you are able to give him fits. Then he moves on to the next stage, he converts you into an internal object. He begins to ignore your external existence. He is unable to accept or even to experience your separateness and your externality because as a child, he was not allowed to separate from the mother. He never experienced separation, individuation. So he doesn't allow you to be to be a separate person or object. Now, if you are too independent for his taste, if you are too agentic, if you have a modicum of personal autonomy, if you have too many friends, family, a support network. If you are able to secure SACOR elsewhere, advice, that's a threat. That's a threat to the safety element in the four S's. So in this case, the narcissist would need to constrict your life. The clinical term is constriction. The narcissist would need to constrict your life. So as to render you safe, it's not a malevolent attempt to kind of control you and then torture you and not. It's about himself, it's about him, not about you. He wants to feel safe with you. And he cannot feel safe with you as long as you as an external object keep conflicting with your representation in his mind, which is the internal object. You need to conform 100% to the internal object. The narcissist idealizes the internal object. He divorces the internal object from reality. And you need, therefore, to seize your separate existence and to mold yourself to shape yourself in the form of the internal object. And of course, if you make decisions on your own, if you have choices which are not influenced by the narcissist, if you maintain reality testing, so you are able to conflict with the narcissist, disagree with him and criticize him and so on, then you're diverging, you're deviating from the internal object and you're no longer can be considered ideal because you are a threat to the precarious balance of the internal landscape of the narcissist. If you challenge one of the internal objects, which happens to represent you in the narcissist mind, then all the other internal objects are at risk. The principle of introjection is at risk. So you're threatening the narcissist world view. The narcissist perception of reality, which is totally devotion reality. You're threatening all this. So he needs to get rid of you. He needs to convert you into a secretary of from idealization. He switches to devaluation. Of course, the narcissist pushes you to undermine the internal object because he needs to separate from you. He reenacts his early childhood conflicts with you. You stand in for his mother. You're like a mother maternal object. So he needs to separate from you. And so he needs to convince himself that there's a good reason to separate. And the good reason is you have changed. Something's wrong with you. You are the you are the bed influence. You have how you have been acting. You've deceived him. You've manipulated it. You're just, I don't know, a goldier. So he converts you into a secretary object and enemy within an enemy inside his mind. And then he devalues it. And by any means necessary. The evaluation involves and be very dangerous. The evaluation involves a recasting or recharacterizing of the internal objects in terms of persecution, danger, risk, threat and so on. And then of course he needs to get rid of the threat. And he would go to any extent because the threat is existential. When you challenge the narcissist internal world. You be you have read you become an existential threat. It's no longer about money or power. It's about his existence. Because he can't bear any, any sense of reality. I listened to you a few weeks ago talking about. Reality, reality has not been kind to the narcissist in his early life. And he has chosen as a child. To transition from reality to a Paracosan fantasy world. Where there is a deity or a divinity. With which he merges and this divinity is the false. So he becomes a God. In a fantastic world. The coping mechanism. It's the only way to survive the extreme environments which breed narcissism. Abuse in these environments doesn't necessarily mean physical abuse or sexual abuse. Abuse is any situation where the parent does not allow the child to become a separate person. To acquire personhood. The parent does not allow the child to separate to individuate the parent does not allow the child to have boundaries. The parent invades and breaches the child's boundary. The parent merges of uses with the child. The parent instrumentalizes the child. The parent parentifies the child. And some parents sexually abuse the child or physically abuse the child or verbally abuse the child. But you know a spoiled pedestalized idolized child. Is a is being abused. These are forms of abuse because the child is denied access to reality. And to his peers. So he's denied the ability to grow and develop. And he's denied the capacity to become an individual. So these are all extreme forms of abuse which threatened the existence of the narcissism. Of the body narcissism of the child who is about to become a narcissist. So this kind of child. Cannot tolerate. An environment which doesn't allow him to become. It's an environment that doesn't allow the child to become. An environment that kills the child assassinations the child. Objectifies instrumentalize the child. So to escape this because it's because this induces a lot of rage in the child. And a lot of shame in the child. And the child is unable to externalize the rage and the shame. Because my mother and father are not legitimate targets of rage and shame. So he internalizes the rage and shame up to the point that they threaten his life. So then the child needs to escape. Needs to flee the situation. And he creates a very complex. Fantasy space. Paracosm is the clinical term. Fantasy space. And he populates this fantasy space. With. Something an entity which is the exact opposite of the child. The false self. These Godlike Godhead figure is divinity. This deity is everything the child is not. The false self is all powerful. The child is helpless. The false self is all knowing and therefore can predict the behavior of a dance. The child cannot predict the behavior of the adults in his life. They are capricious. The arbitrary. They're absent. They are manipulative. They are so. It's terrifying. So gradually the child says okay. The only way to survive. Is to merge. With my God. To sacrifice myself. To this God. It's a primitive religion. The child creates a primitive God. A Moloch. And then the child sacrifices his true self. To this God. It's human sacrifice. The child seizes to exist. But reappears. As the false self. Merges and fuses with the false. It becomes one with the false. And from that moment on. The child is invulnerable. Untouchable. Invincible. You can't hurt a God. So never mind what you do to the child. After the emergence of the false self. He is immune. He is impermeable. He is untouchable. He can never experience pain. Or hurt or fear. A God. And that lasts throughout his life span. To the very day he dies. Yes. Because you mentioned that. You get less and less connected. As time goes on. To that child. That is split. Would you say it's a split? Would you just say the child is hidden into the background? There's no child. The child dies. There's only the false self. The false self survives. It's the only survivor of this mega disaster. This catastrophe. It's a false self. The child disappears. Into the false self. Because the child judges this. Deals this. Survivor strategy. Completely understandable. You described it. A few weeks ago. In one of your lectures online. And you said. You're working the cannot tolerate nature. And a mere observer of your own life. Never present. One day waking up to realize you would never wake up again. Caught in an endless looping. Silent film. An alternative. Existing as a non entity. And. So. I'm going to go and ask you about the setting up of the stage. For. You developed your own. From your own framework. You started with Sanders. As you always refer to him. 1989. And you developed. Your own. Your own psychological. Conceptual framework. And. I just wanted to ask you about that. And. So you started with shared. You started with Sanders and then you. In addition to your idea of dual mothership. So. Yeah. Can you tell us all about that? And how you framed it. The narcissist. Starts off as a child. But then grows up. And has he. As he becomes. An adult. At least physiologically. He's obsessed with normalcy. He wants to be like everyone everyone else. He wants to be normal. Or he wants to be considered normal. He wants to be considered normal. An accomplished person. An unusual person. But still normal. He doesn't want to be considered. Crazy. Or you know mentally ill. So. Nazis is a very focused on presenting a facade. Of normalcy. And so. What does a normal person do. They find an intimate partner. They have relationships. So Nazis is our obsessed. With relationships. Much more than. Much more so than normal. Than truly normal people. Truly healthy people. Nazis is obsessed with it. Because. It's an ostentatious display of normalcy. Such agency. It's like it's like some gay people. Who are. Who are ego dystonic. They're ashamed of their sexual orientation. They get married. They get married and say see. I'm married. I have children. I'm not gay. The clinical term for this is reaction formation. You. You create a set of behaviors. And you make statements. That be lying. That define who you truly are. So if you are. A latent homosexual. You will be homophobic. And say I hate homosexuals. You're doing this. To protect yourself. To defend against the shame. Of being homosexual. In your mind. Similarly the Nazis. Defends against the shame. Of being who he is. By pretending. Or insisting to be treated as normal. And so what's more normal. Than a relationship. So the Nazis goes around. Hunting for people. For friends. Intimate partners. Even colleagues and so on. And. He tries. To elicit from them. A confirmation. That his false self. Is not false. That he is not delusion. That his life is not a fantasy. That he is embedded in real. Reality testing. Clinically speaking. Is what Freud used to call an ego function. It's a function of the ego. The ego. Is just a word. There's no such thing of course. No one isolated an ego in a laboratory. But the ego simply means. The interface with reality. When we interface with reality. And we get feedback from reality. Which modifies our behaviors. That's the ego. Nazis doesn't have this. He has forsaken reality. In his early childhood. So he doesn't have an ego. Ironically. They're selfless. Yes. They don't have an ego. They don't have a self. And so what they do. Is what we call external regulation. Borderlines do this as well. Borderline regulates their emotions. And their moods. Via an intimate partner. So. They outsource. Internal regulation. It becomes external. The externalize regulation. The Nazis does the same. But the Nazis is regulates. His sense of existence. His sense of self worth. And. His perception of reality. Via other people. He is regulation is external. His reality testing. Is outsource. So he goes to. He goes to other people and he says. I'm a genius. Right. Tell me I'm a genius. Of course, his false self. Is that of a genius. And maybe in reality. Is a moron. But he wants people to tell him. That is delusional. Fantastic inflated self perception. Run the yourself. As a genius. He is not delusional. He is not grandiose. It's a truth. He wants them to provide reality testing. For him. Same with an intimate partner. When the Nazis is fine. Someone who he deems to be a potential intimate partner. He. The first thing he does. He converts her into an internal object. And tries to convert her into a source of supply. And. He hands over. Regulatory function to the intimate partner. He tells the intimate partner. From now on. I want you to confirm to me. That my false self is not false. That it is reality. That I am truly a genius. Irresistibly handsome. Whatever. I want you to tell me this. I want you to confirm this to me. But. Who does this. Mother does this. Mother with a newborn baby. She idealizes the baby. Because raising children sucks. Truly sucks. The only way to survive. The process of upbringing and raising children. Is to lie to yourself. To deceive yourself. By idealizing the baby. So what the Nazis. Does. He says I want you to idealize me. I want you to tell me. I want you to tell me. That I'm perfect. I wanted to tell me that I'm a genius. I wanted to tell you. I want you to tell me that I'm irresistibly handsome. In short. I want you to treat me the way a mother treats her baby. I want you to idealize me. And once you've idealize me. I want you to love me the way a mother loves her baby. Unconditionally. And now. Because I can't. Be sure. I'm a bit paranoid. I can't be sure whether you're active. Whether you're just manipulating. Maybe you're just telling me what I want to hear. I can't be sure. Of your motivation. And of your identity. Because I didn't even bother to get to know who you are. So. What I need to do I need to test you. I'm going to test you by abusing. If I abuse you egregiously. And you still love me. You still provide me with love. That's unconditional love. Then I know. That you're a maternal figure. I know that you're idealizing me. I know that you are telling me what I want to hear. Because you love me. And now we can stay together. So this is the core function of narcissistic abuse. It's essentially a test. Initially. Later it has another function. But initially it's a test. And this is the core function. Initially it's a test. And from that moment on. The intimate partner is a maternal figure. It's a mother. The second mother. But this leads to a conundrum. The problem. The narcissist has had. A very bad relationship with his. Original mother. With his real mother. Otherwise he would not have become a narcissist. So now. There's an intimate partner. She's compliant. She's submissive. She's obedient. She's obsequious. She tells the narcissist what he wants to hear. She loves him unconditionally. Never mind how much. To what extent he abuses her. In short. She's the perfect intimate partner. But she's still a mother. She's still a maternal figure. And narcissists hate mothers. Because. The physical mother has done to the narcissist. So. This creates a dissonance. On the one hand the narcissist. Needs. The intimate partner. As a maternal figure. It's a safe environment. He goes back to the womb. He's again a child. Loved as a child. Adored as a child. Treated as a child. Cosseted as a child. It will end well. Who knows. On the one hand. On the other hand. It's a mother. This detested hateful. Loved. Figure. So he needs. To separate from them. What he has failed to achieve with his original mother. He now needs to accomplish. With his new mother. He needs to separate from her. And only this way. He needs to have a visual. Person. Acquire a self. And a personhood. He needs to sacrifice. The way he has sacrificed himself early on. Now he needs to sacrifice her. And so he needs to devalue. He needs to push her away. He needs to discard her. He needs to get rid of her. But she is wonderful. She loves him. She cares for him. She loves someone like that. By devaluing. By telling himself. That she is actually an enemy. By converting her idea. The idealized internal object. That represents her in his mind. Converting this object into an enemy. A persecutory object. What I'm trying to tell you is that. Devaluation and discard. Are not the outcomes. Of the intimate partners behavior. Choices and decisions. Or traits. No. They have nothing to do with the intimate partner. It's a built in feature. In the shared fantasy. The shared fantasy. Is built. Constructed. To inexorably lead. To a reenactment of the set. Of the failed separation individuation. With the original mother. It's what Freud called. Repetition compulsion. Always doomed. It's always doomed. But it's doomed. It's doomed because that's the way it's built. The shared fantasy. Is built to lead. To a second attempt at separation individuation. Which might work this time. Maybe it will work. So. Of course it doesn't work. And the losses keeps. Repeating the shared fantasy and separation. The valuation shared fantasy. Is multiple intimate partners throughout his life. And to his dying day. Possibly in the afterlife. I don't know. I'm not privy to them. Yes. So you have the shared fantasy. Then the stage one idealization. Stage two is the as you just described. The dual mothership phase. And then. Stage three the mental disregard. So I found it interesting. You know when I was preparing the notes and that. And. In that mental disregard stage. And. It's the separation process by discarding. The victim or the person. You know who is in the relationship with. With the with the narcissist. His mind by creating dissonance. But the result of that has two adverse effects. For him. So. You know that it's. It's a very difficult psychological process. That particular. Stage and they have a. It results in abandonment. Anxiety separation and security. A narcissistic injury. So can you tell us a little bit about that. Stage and what happens. Yeah, but first I think. Thank you for reminding me. I need to elucidate a bit. The dual mothership. Yes. Because I've explained how the intimate partner becomes. The narcissist mother. But. The narcissist also becomes. The intimate partner's mother. The narcissist idealizes the intimate. And then he provides her with. Access to this idealized image. Of herself. The intimate partner begins to. See herself. To perceive herself. Through the narcissist idealizing. Gaze. She sees herself through the narcissist. Eyes. As perfect. Ideal. Amazing. Drop dead gorgeous. Hyper intelligent. Unique and unprecedented. And it's absolutely intoxicating. And addictive. I call it the whole of mirrors effect. I love that description. Yeah. The intimate partner. Doesn't see the narcissist. She sees herself. Reflected. And she becomes. Self infatuated. She falls in love with herself. Not with her real self. Not a reality. But with her idealized self. Now. Remember what I said about mothers. Mothers idealized babies. The narcissist idealizes. The intimate partner. So he feels. Like a mother. It feels as if a mother is doing this. The intimate partner. Regresses to childhood. She becomes infantilized. The narcissist. Regresses her to childhood so that he can act. As her mother. An idealizer and love her unconditionally. So that she get addicted to him. And to his gaze. And will never abandon. This is the dual mother she. She acts as his mother. He acts as her mother. And this is a good foundation. For trauma bonding. Trauma bonding. Is a form of self harm. It's self harming. It's like suicide by noses. You know, you want to. Punish yourself, harm yourself, trash yourself. Noses is great. They're doing all this. You would willingly help you with all this. Absolutely. So it's a kind of a demo. So. You know, it fits. And so. So. When the devaluation process starts. The narcissist needs to convert. The ideal. Object internal object. The idealized internal object that represents the intimate partner. In his mind. That he has created. That he has created. He needs to convert this object. To the opposite. To a devalued. Inferior. Threatening the secretary object. The exact opposite. White and black. This presents two problems. The first problem is. The narcissist has to admit. That he got things wrong. He has to admit to having. Having. Made a mistake. Yes. If the narcissist idealizes you. And then has to devalue you. It means that his idealization of you. Must have been wrong. So he needs to acknowledge. That he is fallible. Less than perfect. Not omniscient. That flies in the face of his grandiosity. And threatens his balance. The second problem is. That. If the object is the secretary. If the object that represents you in the narcissist mind. Is now an enemy. That means that he has to get rid of. That means that he has to get rid of. Which he ultimately does. But it also means. That he's about. To remain alone. He's about to be left behind. That's his worst nightmare. And abandonment. Anxiety which is the colloquial term. The clinical term is separation in security. Separation is security or abandonment. Anxiety separation. Anxiety never mind. These are terrifying to the narcissist. That. Are terrifying to the narcissist. And to the borderline as well. The narcissist. Can't contemplate abandonment. And. And being left alone. Because he needs an audience. The narcissist. Has a hive mind. He has an empty core. There's nobody there. He's an absence, not a presence. So the narcissist has to. Recreate himself on the fly. All the time. Every second he needs to recreate. His topality. Like if it stops for a minute. If he vanishes. Like a magician's. Slight of hand. So. He needs. To constantly solicit and consume. Feedback from the environment. Also known as narcissistic supply. Otherwise. He will evaporate. Fade. Vanish. Boom. So. If he were to be left alone. That would mean his end. His death. So. Converting the idealized object into the secretary one. Triggers in him. Existential fear of vanishing. And this is why narcissists. Immediately find alternatives. Or. Monkey branch defined alternatives. Before they devalue. Because they can't stay for a single. Second. Without an alternative. This is not about. Being treacherous. Or cheating infidelity or. None of these things. This is about being seen. The narcissist existence. Realize. Crucially and exclusively. On being seen. All the time. If the narcissist. Were to find himself in a situation. Where he is not seen. Then. He would have ceased to exist. There's a famous painting by Dali. Galata. Where she dissolves into molecules. Or into bubbles. Same with the narcissist. He needs an audience. Because it is the audience. That forms his existence. And his mind. He has a hive mind. He has a compounded mind. It's like the eye of an insect. It's actually thousands of eyes. That give the wrong impression of a single eye. But. The narcissist. Is the outcome of input. From thousands of sources. And the input is seamless. Seamlessly congealed. Into an appearance. Of a human being. Of a person. And yet there's nobody there. It's crucially dependent on the maintenance. Of a regular flow. Of this feedback. In its absence. The narcissist would simply freeze. Seize to exist. Imagine for example a robot. Yeah. Who is connected to an electricity outlet. If you put the plan. The robot freezes. The same with the narcissist. The outlet is other people. So converting anyone. Into a secondary object. Is a very threatening experience. I think it's probably the most dangerous stage. Is it? Because. They will literally do anything. And then it's the hoovering thing as well. That can occur often. Where they go back and go back. We'll talk about that as well. The intermittent reinforcement. But the hoovering. They go and they torture. The other person might be trying to get away from them. And they just keep going back and torturing them. And they just won't let that. That that that line of you know. Very often the narcissist. Having having. Having experienced the secretary. Having experienced the conversion of his intimate partner. Into an enemy in his mind. Finds the experience. Harrowing and terrifying. So then what the narcissist does. He re-idealizes the internal object. He repaints it. Renovates it. And then he tries to match. The idealized internal object. With the external object. That gave rise to the internal object. And this is what we call hoovering. And it's when you think about it. It's like they have abused the person. So much with the narcissistic abuse. And then you know they. It's such a messy. Type of. Lifestyle and. They don't see this way. They don't see this way. They don't they don't they would disagree with you. That they've been abusing. First of all they would say that it is a privilege. For you. To be with it with with the. The Nazis would say it's a privilege for you to be with him. You have. Access. To him. Which is a gift. You share his life. To his moments of glory. And accomplishments. You are privileged. You should be eternally grateful. For this amazing serendipity. No. Second thing. The narcissist would recast or reframe all his behaviors. In terms of. In terms which are socially acceptable. He would. Attempt to sublimate them. He would say, for example, yeah. I may have shouted at you. Or verbally abused you. But it was the only way to get through to you. And it was a form of tough love. I was doing it. I was doing it for your own good. You know. So he would reframe or rephrase everything. Again, it's the attempt. To present the facade of normalcy. In benevolence. Normalcy in benevolence. Very few narcissists there are. There are psychopathic narcissists. Also known as malignant narcissists. Also known as malignant narcissists. And sadistic narcissists. They would take pride. In bringing you. In taking you down. They would take pride in dismantling you. In destroying you. This is their art form. It's like art. No. But there's a tiny minority. Only about. We're not quite sure, but only about 3% of narcissists. Either psychopathic or sadistic. 97% of all. Yeah. That's, yeah. That's good. That's a good thing. Yeah, yeah. Because there is a cruel element to all of this too. At times, you know. With the intermittent reinforcement. Which often narcissists. They apply that, don't they? It's one of their. Again, online. Online self-styled experts. Online self-styled experts online. They tend to confuse psychopaths and narcissists. Psychopaths are premeditated. Psychopaths are premeditated. Deliberate intentional and very often cruel. They take pride and pleasure. In inflicting pain on others. They link their dominance. With pain. They rule through pain. They believe that pain. They believe that pain. They believe that pain. They believe that pain. They rule through pain. They believe that pain is a much stronger motivator than love. Fear is the best. So they want to be feared. These are the psychopathic. These are the psychopaths. Narcissists. Is the psychopathic type. Would they also have a traumatic background or is it a biological thing? Not necessarily. Let's put it this way. Many of them do because they've grown up in underprivileged conditions or in poverty or many of them do. And these would tend to be criminalized psychopaths. But studies haven't demonstrated any connection between psychopathy and early childhood abuse or trauma. So it seems that psychopathy is a mix of genetics, brain abnormalities and physiological abnormalities, not only brain. Abnormalities. Biological abnormalities, medical. And of course, an environment which had been conducive to the development of psychopathy, rewarded psychopathy, for example. But narcissists are not malicious. They're not malevolent narcissists. They believe their own lies, for example. That's why we don't call them lies. We call them confabulations. Narcissists never feature things. When they make your promise they intend to keep it. They just never get to it. They never get around to it. But they intend to keep it. So when they make the promise they believe in the promise. They visualize the promise. They live in the promise. Why? Because they're creatures of fantasy. They're very bad when it comes to reality, real life accomplishment, accomplishments, hard work. They're very bad with it. They're dream creatures. So they dream together with you. And they dream is their reality. So if the narcissist gives you a promise about the future, that's his reality. And it's enough to give the promise. You don't really need to work on it or actualize it or realize it. The promise is the reality. So narcissists are not narcissists. The thing about it is that they shape-shift. Narcissists shape-shift. It's how we would describe it. I think you've described it. Narcissists are very malleable and reactive to the environment. Yes, they are shape-shifted. But they're not malevolent. So for example, narcissists don't gaslight. It's a common myth or nonsense online. They don't gaslight. They don't gaslight because in order to gaslight, you need to know the difference between reality and fantasy. You need to realize that what you're doing is not real. When you try to influence someone else's mind and to convince them that their perception of reality is wrong, that's what gaslighting does, you need to know what is real and what is not. Narcissists are incapable of this. They cannot tell the difference between reality, dream, fantasy, wish, etc. So in this sense, narcissists, in my view and in the view of bigger intellects such as Kernberg and others, narcissists, bigger scholars if not intellects, narcissists are psychotic in this sense. They are on the verge of... So what we would understand as gaslighting is actually the narcissist view isn't actually gaslighting and they just believe. He believes it 100%. He would fight for it. If you were to confront him with evidence, hard evidence, he would fight you tooth and nail. He would dispute. He would disagree. He would seek to refute it. The psychopath if you were to confront him with incontrovertible evidence would fall and go away. Because they know reality. They know reality. I've tried. I failed. I tried to con you. I tried to deceive you. I failed. I'm on my way to the next victim. Not the narcissist. The narcissist would stand his ground. He would argue with you. He would dispute your version of reality. And even if you present the narcissist with incontrovertible evidence like video recordings or audio the narcissist would not countenance that would not incorporate them into a new perception of reality. So narcissism is a fantasy defense. That's the type of psychosis. Would you describe it as... It absolutely borders on psychosis. The difference between psychotics and narcissists is the direction, directionality. The psychotic confuses internal objects, voices in his head. Images in his mind. He confuses these with reality. So if there's a voice in his head that says something, he would think that the voice is coming from outside. If he has an image that passes through his mind he would have an hallucination. He would perceive the images coming from outside. That's the psychotic. The narcissist and this is called by the way clinically hyperreflexivity. The narcissist is exactly the opposite. The narcissist would confuse external objects with internal ones. The psychotic confuses internal with external. He thinks that internal objects are actually external. But in both cases there is a massive confusion between reality and... At least between external and internal. So you can call it reverse psychosis. Inverted psychosis, mirror psychosis but it's psychosis all the same. It's a psychotic state which is a psychotic state which is the outcome of trauma so extreme, so prolonged so all-pervasive and so existential that it led to a dissociative state that didn't have to do with memories because most dissociation is about memories but a dissociative state that had to do with reality itself whereas people who are traumatized as children sometimes forget traumatic events they repress them they repress them, they forget them this is amnesia so it's a dissociative defense against memories or content that is internal that is unacceptable so most people when they are confronted with trauma would dissociate itself the narcissist dissociates not the memory of the trauma the narcissist dissociates the narcissist dissociates all of reality cuts it off completely so kind of forgets it puts it out it doesn't forget the event if you are exposed to sexual abuse as a child you would forget the rape this is dissociation and later on you may develop modernized personality disorder but this is classic dissociation in narcissism but you dissociate the event but you don't dissociate your school days your peers show you have seen on television you dissociate only the event only the traumatic locus, the event the narcissist on the other hand dissociate dissociate the totality of reality that's why narcissists narcissistic dissociation is so ubiquitous and so all pervasive that narcissists I can generalize and say that narcissists have literally no memory no ability to form long term memories and consequently narcissists are incapable of learning so they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again what happened you then sorry you seem to have learned pretty good in life kind of learning autobiographical that's a different skill different different type so they don't learn how to remember they don't derive lessons from life because they don't experience life and they don't remember life simply I once made an exercise with myself in the very early stages of my study of narcissism which was about almost 30 years ago now I'm a professor of psychology and so on at the time I was just a guy trying to understand what hit him what hit me so I'm coming across a convoy of trucks not one truck I believe so I made I did an exercise I wrote down all my memories from my 8 years long marriage to my first wife all my memories every single one of them and then I assigned a time value to the memory for example I'm walking down the street that would be about 15 seconds or 30 seconds I'm opening the jacuzzi faucet that must have been 10 seconds like I assigned a time reasonable time periods too and I discovered that if I were to assemble all my memories without a single exception and assign to them reasonable time frame they would amount put together to about one hour I remember that I recall one hour out of 8 years of marriage to my first wife that's how bad it is in narcissism I mean I've come across narcissistic personalities and they wouldn't remember things that happened last week and I'd say you cannot remember they'd have a whole brand new story maybe completely remember it so that's why they confubulate when you have such gigantic memory gaps in order to survive you need to tell yourself you need to construct a narrative a bridging narrative to bridge the memory gaps you need to ask yourself here I am at point B I recall having been at point A what has transpired between A and B I don't remember I can't remember I'm dissociative so I'm going to invent a plausible probable reasonable narrative as to what it brought me from A to B and then I'm going to believe in it I'm going to claim that it is factual and this is called fabulation and so people are saying self-styled experts are saying the narcissist is lying, he's not lying he's trying to create an autobiography autobiographical memory, personal memory out of thin air that is the real sense of a loss of touch with reality when you describe it like that they literally have don't have a connection with real-time reality the only two conditions medical conditions that are reminiscent of this are Alzheimer's and Korsakov syndrome Korsakov syndrome is a medical syndrome it's the outcome of damage done to the brain by excessive consumption of alcohol so it's the outcome of alcoholism but excessive alcoholism so in these two conditions there's no memory long-term memory formation because it's damage to the hippocampus there's no long-term memory formation so these people try to make sense of their world and of their existence and of their next of key memory the last memory, they're trying to make sense of it's terrifying it's a terrifying feeling people don't appreciate it but it's a terrifying feeling no people don't understand it they also confuse this with intellectual memory and with memory that is utilitarian I'm talking about autobiographical memory who am I my identity is determined by the assemblage and the amalgamation and the aggregation of my memories if I don't have memory I don't have identity people without memory have no identity so this is the narcissist problem but intellectual memory is something completely different I'm in possession of an encyclopedia in my mind not only psychology I do work in physics and economics and philosophy I have other personalities that you're not aware of so I have a whole encyclopedia in my mind I know of them I have a whole encyclopedia in my mind but intellectual memory when it comes to intellectual things is actually possibly one of the best the parallel maybe similarly when I listen to you sometimes you don't even have notes at the same time you just intellectual memory is intact and even superior to some extent similarly similarly other types of memory utilitarian memory come I need to remember something you've done to me so that I can use it against you these are utilitarian memories they're intact the narcissist utilitarian memories are intact survival these are memories that are conducive to survival there's a tiger so these memories are intact it's the autobiographical memory the thread the crimson thread that connects our memories like beads like a necklace this necklace is who we are Indra's net these beads put together are who we are if I were to take away all your memories most of them they wouldn't be you you could still remember by the way when we come across people with traumatic brain injuries and so on they can still read a newspaper they can calculate they can watch movies they can do many things they can dance they can enjoy music they just don't remember who the hell they are they don't know anything about themselves so these are different types of memory people get very confused because it's not true that the narcissist has memory problems he remembers everything I've done to him they do gaslight so yeah they do gaslight it's that the narcissist is an organism like every other organism organisms maintain memories that are useful to them a tiger would maintain memories where antelopes convened by the water but a narcissistic tiger wouldn't have a memory of his own identity it's very helpful in the jungle that's fascinating I didn't actually realise that so that's something I didn't know that I learned today about the memory that's unbelievably debilitating but it makes sense because of the whole trauma element you know that and that happens with people who have deep trauma their memories when you sexually abuse the integrity of your body is challenged but nothing else just the integrity of your body when you are verbally abused some elements of self-esteem and self-worth are challenged but nothing else is shown when you are brought up in a totally abusive environment a total environment of abuse everything is shown every aspect of you is challenged even your own separateness even the fact that you are separate even the fact that you are an entity even your boundaries even your ability to become to transform, to grow, to develop to evolve so you need to cut off the totality of the environment the whole environment that's why narcissistic abuse which is a reenactment of early childhood abuse narcissistic abuse is total it's not like verbal abuse psychological abuse or physical abuse or financial abuse or legal abuse no, it's total that's why I came up with the phrase narcissistic abuse because it is distinct from other types of abuse other types of abuse are dimensional goal-oriented and highly specific narcissistic abuse is about making you vanish is about negating your very existence in separateness is about denuding you denying you your autonomy and agency and self-efficacy narcissistic abuse is about mummifying you the same way Norman Bates mummified his mother in Cycle, the famous Hitchcock movie it's about mummifying you like ancient Egyptian mummy and also mummifying you like a mother it's about converting you into someone you've never been before absconding absconding with your identity rendering you rendering you and abstract and a figment an idea it is so it is so obliterating that it it marries a separate classification separate taxonomy narcissistic abuse is not like any other kind of abuse the narcissist does to you what his mother did to him he doesn't allow you to separate the way his mother did not allow him to separate he abuses you narcissistically the way his mother abused him narcissistically he does to you everything he is absent and he is dead the way his mother was absent and dead he just replaces childhood with you he is just an actress playing the role of a mother that's as simple as I can put it but to the absolute detriment of the person who gets involved with somebody who is deep into narcissistic criticism it's devastating because it destroys people it's even worse than destroying people people are destroyed by wars and natural disasters it's much more than destroying people it's taking over, it's hijacking you the narcissist uses a technique called entraining again, not intentionally the narcissist entrains you he kind of hypnotizes you or he synchronizes your brain waves with his brain waves by the way actually synchronizes your brain waves with his brain waves he subjects you to cataracts or of dopamine and he plays with your mind and then he takes over your mind and he stores in your mind a voice an introject that never goes away intermittent reinforcement is a way to condition you to change to alter your perception of reality it's a form intermittent reinforcement is about convincing you that only the narcissist is the source of good feelings of positive emotions of the ability to be loved and so on when the narcissist abuses you and hurts you tortures you and so on you keep saying to yourself maybe he's doing this to me right now but this is going to be followed by another phase where he is going to be the addictive source of the most amazing love and enmeshment so the narcissist renders himself as the indispensable exclusive source of your well-being is able to take it away but it is because he's able to take it away with his abuse that he's the only one able to give it back to you he convinces you that your well-being is an object so he can take it away and then once he's taken it away he owns your well-being and then the only way to get it back is to stay with him because one of these days he will give it back to you your well-being he convinces you that your well-being is a commodity and you're a commodity and so your well-being once it had been transferred you can never regain it elsewhere it's like he has a monopoly on your well-being or it takes it away from you and your thought process, your autonomy your sanity if you're told black is white in those situations you'd actually question that reality at the higher levels of the abuse you'd actually maybe it is black fantasy caters to your deepest psychological needs the narcissist is something which I coined the phrase called empathy the narcissist is called empathy empathy is a combination of reflexive empathy and cognitive empathy the narcissist is able to scan you in the interjection process when he is in the process of converting you into a snapshot snapshotting you rendering you in internal logic at that point he scans you and when he scans you he's able to create a map of your vulnerabilities of your armor intrusion points weaknesses hot buttons to push so he uses all this information to create a new dependency and an addiction via operant conditioning Pavlovian basically you become addicted to him not to him, you become addicted to what he can withhold you actually are not addicted to what he gives you you are addicted to what he withholds from you and so at that point you will have lost any separate existence he eliminates your separateness he targets your separateness you will have lost any separate existence you will have become his extension or his subject in a way like a shell like a shell yeah well the inner experience of who you are is much diminished you feel zombie like you feel that you are controlled from the outside a bit robotic you definitely have no agency or self-efficacy anymore and so on it all depends on him so he becomes also the only conduit and the only channel to the outside world you outsource ego functions to him he regulates your reality testing he kind of controls your sense of self-worth and self-esteem he tells you what's wrong with us right so he's your moral compass and so on and projects the projection so he can explain that a little bit I always find that difficult to understand but projection is when you have your heart yes please go ahead when he pushes there they push you know negative things about themselves onto you isn't that basically everyone does it all human beings project when we are faced with parts of ourselves that we feel uncomfortable with or ashamed of parts of ourselves that we reject that don't sit well with our what we do with these parts we tend to attribute them to other people and that's a normal very common defense mechanism it's a primitive defense mechanism but it's common and so Nazis does the same he attributes to you the parts in himself that he finds unacceptable so if he's weak you're weak if he's avaricious you're greedy if he's hateful you're hateful if he's abusive you're the abuser if he's being abusive you're the abuser so this is projection but Nazis go combine projection with two other defenses and that's what makes narcissistic abuse really really devastating force devastating experience Nazis combine projection with splitting so all bad all good I'm all good the narcissist says that makes you all bad or maybe we both are all good in the shared fantasy we're both ideal you're both all good and everyone else is all bad so this creates like a psychosis for Liadu shared psychosis both of us against the world the world is all good we are both a world is all bad we are both all good so splitting and the most devastating the most potent and ruinous defense mechanism of all is known as projective identification it's when the narcissist projects onto you parts of himself that defines unacceptable, burdensome intolerable, shameful parts of himself that feels that will we go to the projection for like a few more minutes then just maybe just have a yeah I was I was cut off when I was trying to explain projective identification projective identification is a third mechanism and it is when the narcissist projects onto you the parts of himself that it feels ashamed of, that he rejects that he finds intolerable and egodistonic and comfortable so you project those onto you we attribute to you these traits and behaviors predilections of his but then he forces you he coerces you to behave in a way which confirms his projections so for example if he is an abuser and he feels uncomfortable with the fact that he's an abuser he would say you're abusing me I'm not abusing you, you're the one who's abusing me but then he would provoke you and trigger you and push you to actually abuse him so that his contention that you the abuser is validated and proven so this is called projective identification and narcissists use all these three projections, splitting and projective identification and I think that for people who are victims of survivors of narcissistic relationships I think that is probably the most damaging part because I think often in times if I'm correct that people in these relationships who aren't narcissists actually have to almost take on these narcissistic characteristics in order to survive it if they do and you know that it's very sad because it makes people into something that they weren't actually by the force of that's quite true by the force by the force of nature of the narcissistic projection and the need to project onto the other person, usually the bad traits that's quite true and that's why it's very and make themselves that's why it's very difficult to teleport yeah would you like to finish your statement very patiently and make themselves kind of put themselves as the good angel and the person they're actually in relationship with as the devil and I think that's a terrible situation to find yourself in an intimate partner relationship where you're constantly being made into the bad cop and being manipulated into that personality that doesn't even really belong to you if you find that that's a very difficult thing that's why I keep saying that narcissistic abuse is about negating you it's about transforming you into something you've never been before it's about upsconding with your identity hijacking you and so on and so forth this is why it's very difficult to tell apart people with CPTSD, complex trauma complex post-traumatic stress disorder people who have suffered for a long time in narcissistic relationships with narcissists it's difficult to tell apart these people from people with borderline personality disorder and there are even calls by Judith Herman and many others to eliminate or abolish the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder to replace it with emotional dysregulation which is post-traumatic in short the professional is considering the possibility that what we used to call personality disorders are actually acquired behaviors under conditions of trauma or post trauma and so therefore many victims behave the same way that narcissists do or even become a bit psychopathic as a survival survival strategy or survival mechanism luckily for victims luckily for victims these are transient phenomena and so with proper therapy and with a lot of self-work and shadow work and behavior in a child work and every other kind of work then ultimately victims tend to recover their original identity and shed narcissistic and psychopathic behaviors and traits but throughout this process the narcissist voice is inside your head this introject is lodged firmly in your mind he has hijacked your mind and he turns your mind against you he collaborates with other voices in your mind that tend to disparage you or discourage you or criticize you so if you've had a mother for example who's been overly critical and overprotective then the narcissist voice in your head would tend to collaborate with her voice in your head and they would form a coalition a coalition against you so you there's a situation of a Trojan horse a fifth column the narcissist even when the narcissist is long gun physically he's still there still in your mind still speaking to you still putting you down criticizing you still berating and demeaning and degrading you it's very difficult to get rid of this introject because the process of entraining is almost the exact equivalent of hypnosis and brainwashing if you wish to use non-clinical term Guantanamo Bay it's the reverse in this is a lot of work a lot of work we know for example that the success rate with classic PTSD post traumatic stress disorder is 30% 30 another 40% never mind the therapy use 30% another 40% recover partially and 30% never recover the narcissist the narcissist abuse yes it's more than that it's striking I think the narcissist abuse is it's not PTSD it's complex trauma which is distinguishable from PTSD so the prognosis is a bit better but the fight is uphill and the voice in your mind never lets go and it's you're sometimes compelled self destructively to perpetuate the abuse on your own your self gaslight or your self criticize or your self defeat so sometimes you just want to give up you want to give in to this voice validate it justify by ruining yourself sabotaging yourself and it's been developed that habit has been developed if you're in a long term relationship with somebody exposure is critical but even exposure of one hour is sufficient to damage you even exposure even extremely short exposure is sufficient to damage you it's the trauma is mini trauma it passes on for a few days but it's sufficient to damage you it provokes powerful defense mechanisms such as repression so you are defending against something which is threatening very threatening and I'm talking after one hour of exposure to a narcissist let alone one year one decade that's why the only solution is to walk away no contact I was just going to say that your advice is just no contact we'll stop yes all the attempts to manage the narcissist to heal the narcissist to collaborate with the narcissist to co-opt the narcissist to strike an agreement with the narcissist to contract with the narcissist or some kind of alliance with the narcissist to collaborate to cooperate with the narcissist this own nonsense and it's all playing with fire you need to walk away because the narcissist damage is subterranean is subtle is not discernible is not visible it's not conspicuous rarely ostentatious narcissist the narcissist is like slow acting poison it's in the atmosphere it's ambient and if you don't walk away your defenses are going to crumble and you're going to emotionally dysregulate and you're functioning will you become dysfunctional everything will collapse the center will not hold you have to walk away don't think that you are strong enough to cope with the narcissist don't believe whether you give the narcissist including love and compassion and empathy will do the trick don't be grandiose you are not you are not a worthy adversary for the narcissist no one is and Sam the reality is is that when that can happen to people and it does happen so often the narcissist in the relationship will just walk away anyways because it's done its job it's provided him with a sense of reality it's even better if the person crumbles they want you to be destroyed because they can walk away and that's the cruel element to it too they don't want you to be destroyed they don't want you to be destroyed but they want to get rid of you and the process of getting rid of you is destructive to you because you've been emotionally invested in the shared fantasy develop a set of beliefs about that person that proves to be wrong you lose your self-confidence your trust in your ability to judge people properly your trust in interpersonal relationships and your trust in cosmic justice and everything the foundations are shaken but there is a grandiose there's a lot of grandiosity involved on the part of the typical victims and survivors because they somehow convince themselves that they're going to be the ones who survived this they're going to be the ones who prevail they're going to be the ones who got away who made it no one gets away no one makes it even if you think you've made it years pass and you think you've prevailed you're victorious you've tamed the narcissists you've exposed them horribly and submissive and what have you even if you think this way you're deluding yourself he's waiting in wait he's ambushing you and he's ambushing you not always physically he's playing with your mind and he's playing with your mind not necessarily intentionally so he can't even stop it it's totally an automated process falling prey to some machine that is inexorable and goes on and on and on and there's no off switch you don't want to get near the narcissists you don't want to experiment with this you don't want to see if what I'm saying is true you just want to walk away just walk away and you walk away you walk away the minute you feel uncomfortable you're on a first date you open the door he stands there framed by the door frame and you look at him and something feels wrong something feels off key something feels alright it's an uncomfortable feeling because he's smiling and he's good looking and he's charming he's carrying a bunch of flowers and you know and you say to yourself how can I reject him now based on what? it's a first date I don't even know the guy but you should listen to your intuition and slam the door in his face and in his flowers face you just don't let him into your life him or her into your life if your gut instinct tells you something is wrong something is wrong and if your gut instinct is wrong it's not a big loss there are many fish where this fish came from yeah and it's the insidious nature where it all starts and you know it just it's crescendos on and suddenly the person that's involved has no way out so they think but the grip the death grip of a narcissist yeah there's also something called the sunk cost fallacy the sunk cost fallacy is to say to yourself I've invested so much in this relationship you know I've wasted seven years of my life or I've had so many hopes and dreams I've input money and effort and love and so this is called the sunk cost fallacy good money after bed you buy you buy a stock and it goes down so you buy more rather than getting getting rid of the stock of the shells you know when your investment or speculation go wrong you get rid of them you don't double you don't double on them so if a relationship goes sideways or south you just call it off you don't redouble your efforts it's a wrong gambling strategy I think you used to say detox go on deep gig just walk away you used the term detox recently yes you need to detox because narcissists as I said infiltrate your mind the hijack it it's intoxicating it's habituating there's a habit involved you also fall in love with yourself when you give up on the narcissist it's a process of multiple mourning it's prolonged grief because you grieve the narcissist you grieve the person you thought would be your life partner then you grieve yourself in the relationship the way the narcissist has given you access to your idealized image the way that is triggered self infatuation and self limerence self love you grieve that then you grieve the child the narcissist is a child and so you bond with this child maternal instincts exist even in men not only in women you bond it you become protective you become love it triggers love and so you mourn you grieve over this child that you you've interacted with in the narcissist adult body you grieve the dream and the fantasy you've had together narcissists are great at creating kind of cult cults one men cults and they're the cult leader and they're the cult follower or member the cult has a narrative you grieve that too you grieve the fact that you have to exit back to the glaring sun of reality reality is never as enticing and as thrilling and as amazing and as spectacular and technical as the fantasy is you grieve the broken promises there's a lot of grieving involved when the relationship with the narcissist ends much more than when the normal relationship ends and heartbreak in a normal relationship is a major trauma major pain so even in a normal relationship heartbreak is just about the worst thing that can happen to you now imagine this magnified ten times because of the multiple layers of grieving involved and this is when you end the relationship with the narcissist you're trapped in a cycle of grieving and self-grieving that you can't extricate yourself from and sometimes you say well the only way is to go back and this is self-hoovering you hoover yourself you convince yourself that you've misjudged the narcissist that whatever has happened was circumstantial circumstances have changed so now it's not going to happen again or that perhaps you've been expecting too much if you were to modify your expectations render them more more realistic things will work out and so on you self-hoover you do the job for the narcissist and so many people come back and if they don't come back to the original narcissist they find another narcissist so it's very very common for victims of narcissistic abuse to have gone through three, four, five relationships with narcissists even though they have become fully aware of the one relationship it's just that narcissism or being with a narcissist is an addictive experience and victims of narcissistic abuse become junkies junkies for the abuse abuse is addictive for multiple reasons so they become junkies and they seek the next abuser and the next abuser, and the next abuser Freud called it repetition compulsion oh yes, he mentioned that so I want to ask just a couple of questions as well before we go for a few more minutes even though I spent the day talking to you happily so I wanted to ask you just are you religious at all and do you ever find moments when you can reach beyond the false self do you do that at all do you pray, do you have any connection with any higher power I consider such beliefs or even suggestions as a form of mental illness it's known as delusional disorder regrettively religions have a lot of money and a lot of power and a lot of political power especially in countries such as the United States so we are not at liberty to diagnose religious people when they should be diagnosed with delusional disorder probably should be medicated as well religions, most religions have been established by mentally ill people and only feeble minded, the feeble minded the weak, the constitutionally weak and the mentally ill have to resort to deceiving themselves with utterly infantile nonsense such as bored or angels or I don't know what other idiocy props up in these circles that the vast majority of the population are stupid and weak and feeble minded and mentally ill is a well known fact that's an unfortunate fact but it's still a fact maybe it's a politically incorrect fact but it is a fact so religion caters to these vulnerabilities to the great rejoicing of all kinds of preachers and priests who thrive financially as well on this, they laugh all the way to multiple backs as they abscond with people's savings and emotions and so on I regard religion and even not institutional religion but the very belief in such nonsense is an exceedingly pernicious phenomenon I am not an atheist in the sense that I cannot say conclusively whether God exists or doesn't exist I think the question is preposterous and ludicrous because there's no way to answer it ever in principle so that's my that's my gentle response non abrasive response you can imagine when I'm abrasive I sure can so I think we'll have to have the last question and I'll ask you either about the hookup culture that you discussed or otherwise the record of narcissistic personality type how they've been recorded and there's a higher levels I know we spoke to Michael Schellenberg about trying to use all of this rise in narcissistic behaviour in a good way I thought that was very interesting I'm not sure what the question is sorry so I'll go to know what I'll ask sorry Sam, I'll edit this myself I don't need to be so you've spoken about the hookup culture and the damaging effects and its rise in society you seem generally sad about the situation and urge women to come back and that men need us you describe a vast number of women as being men with vaginas do you think that feminism has become completely distorted and in your opinion have women paid too high a price and what is the price men have had to pay or do you think that they are not rising to the challenges that are confronting them at this point as in they are finding it very difficult to accept and adapt to the changes that have been brought about and are preparing to hide out this of course marries a whole talk it does really in itself but in a nutshell I think changes in mainly in technology have rendered muscle power less needed or even I would say obsolete and what men have been bringing to the table all these millennia was muscle power basically there is no there is no difference between female brain power and male brain power but there is an essential difference in muscle mass between men and women and this constituted the competitive or relative advantage of men over women allowed them to dominate women throughout at least since the start of the agricultural industry and now this is no longer needed most economic value added nowadays has to do with brain power or with the ability to connect and interact empathically with other people the helping profession and both these women are either equal to men brain power for example or they are superior to me when it comes to networking so in the new economic technological environment women have an edge and so we are marching towards a matriarchy I think it's inevitable that within 50 years 100 years maybe less women would be in charge men have nothing much to offer anymore to the world women would be in charge now men are not taking this lying down they are very angry and resentful about this whenever power changes hands the old is pitted against the new and so men don't know how to behave in this new environment either they withdraw and become avoidant things have been happening a lot and they are missing in action so for example in education men are avoiding education and women to constitute the majority of academic degrees in the world or men become aggressive and violent toxic masculinity as it is known but there is not many ground right now there is no consensus among men about how to behave how to counter what they perceive as a threat of a feminine takeover of the world so men are lost and I don't think they can prevent this historical trend of a female takeover women on the other hand have committed a series of pretty catastrophic mistakes first of all they have allowed their bitterness as victims of men and women have been victimized by men for millennium but they have allowed this bitterness to dictate their new consciousness and their new agenda revenge is never a good policy prescription you could ask Nelson Mandela it's never a good idea and women are vengeful and hateful nowadays it's payback time for many women it's payback time the second mistake rather than come up with a feminine model of how humanity should be the way men have come up with a masculine model in the past rather than do this women have adopted the masculine model so women want to women want to out men men they want to be more masculine than men they don't want for example to introduce an alternative of empathy and compassion and networking and cooperation and collaboration which women are very strong on they don't want this they want to be ambitious they want to make money they want to subjugate they want to punish the men they want to women became as violent and aggressive as men these are studies by Lisa Wade that showed that women nowadays have a masculine self image that is a disastrous mistake for women that they have chosen to become men is a disastrous mistake for men and women and the third mistake is that women want it all they want to be mothers they want to be bosses they want to be employees they want to be scientists women refuse to accept a trade-off there is a trade-off in life if you are pursuing a career you are very unlikely to find a lifelong intimate partner to have children it's a fact if on the other hand you choose family and home as your vocation or avocation then you are very unlikely to prosper in a career so for example the whole debate about wage equality is nonsensical because it represents women's perception that they should have it all they should have a wage equal to men but not put in the same number of hours or days or years because they are raising children women have to accept that everything in life is a cost there is no free lunch they have to accept this and these are the three catastrophic mistakes of third and fourth wave feminism I don't know how we are going to recover there is no doubt in my mind that women will be in charge shortly but what kind of women ugly women vengeful women hateful women sadistic women narcissistic women psychopathic women will be in charge and then may I ask what will be the difference between this kind of regime and the previous regime of men this would be just men with vaginas I say that today there are two types of men with penises and with vaginas there are no women anymore or at least no women that matter I do think that there has been a loss of identity I don't know if you would call it identity but women have certainly either lost or given up or compromised their femininity that's I would agree with that I don't say I am a feminist because I think even to say that I need to be or something I do believe in men and women and their roles and not just their traditional roles but their masculine feminine roles with each other and I do believe that we've turned into we've made a bad turn here and I think we are seeing a plane out with the childlessness childlessness rates and the people who are living singly so many of us particularly in 30% live singly all their life 40% 40% we're seeing the results of it I feel in and on your side but I think it's a bad thing for us all I think it's a private case a private case of a much bigger much larger and much more threatening phenomenon and that is the sacrifice of synergy for victimhood we no longer seek synergy we no longer seek to work together to collaborate we no longer pursue agendas and goals which are common commonalities we seek to be victims even feminism is a victimhood movement of course me too is definitely a victim movement these are victimhood movements so today if you're faced with the option to work even with your former abuser work together towards a common goal even if you were in charge you would dump all this you would give up on all this just in order to acquire a victimhood identity this is competitive victimhood all victims compete in a limited victimhood space who is more victim than the other now men are claiming to be victims of women with some justification so victimhood are the organizing principle not dignity Campbell the famous sociologist said that we've transitioned from the age of dignity to the age of victimhood but I think the situation is even much worse than this we've transitioned from the age of collaboration or operation to the age of victimhood adversarial victimhood hateful victimhood victimhood which seeks to eliminate the other and this is not sustainable species wise it's not sustainable we're not going to survive this we're not you see for example dropping replacement rates in other words population is dying dying off in many many countries in Japan is 25% people over the age of 65 they're dying and Japan is not an exception China is heading there so we're short anywhere between 200 and 300 million children we're short there's not overpopulation there's overpopulation of old people like me we're short in the young end we are very short it's a deficit, a normal deficit we're dying as a species we're committing suicide but it's very slow and glacial there are still many people around because of medicine medicine keeps us alive artificially I should have died 20 years ago but this is this is a delusion this is self delusion of course with the technology as well in Japan I think an awful lot of young people under the age of 30 barely have had a date I could not badly spend so much time the study published in South Korea two days ago about 60% said they have every intention to never have a relationship 60% of young people under age 25 never have an intention to have a relationship that's 60%, 80% said they would never get married there's no the other is perceived as a nuisance or a threat other people are perceived today either as nuisance or threat not as a delight not as a wonder not as a miracle not as something that opens you up and causes you to grow up and evolve and develop no other people are perceived as taking your time bothering you disturbing you that's in the best case in the worst case they want to take you down they're your enemies they compete for your job so there's little incentive to interact with other people society is disintegrating and technology is reflecting this our technology is nowadays so lexistic I always give the example of a screen when I was growing up when the lost dinosaurs were dying we had this huge screen and 2000 2000 of us were sitting in front of this screen eating popcorn and sharing the same image on the screen this was known as cinema then 20 years later there was another screen and but this time it was a much smaller screen so only 20 people could watch it and share the popcorn the content and this screen was known as television and then there was another screen and this time only two or three people could sit opposite this screen facing this screen and sharing popcorn and a common experience and that was the computer and today we have a screen where only one person can have any experience and that is the smartphone the screens are metaphors what has happened to us we used to be communities of 2000 people now we are communities of one so simple as that let's call it a day here it's been a pleasure I'd say talking to you all day thank you I think yeah I have such a good time for you and I really appreciate it I appreciate it I really really do I'll be in touch and hopefully we'll do something again next year I've just been so happy to meet you really happy to meet you thank you have a nice day there and happy new year Merry Christmas happy new year have a lovely time and hi to Lydia as well I will take care bye pleasure