 Here we go, okay Well, my journey began about two and a half years ago. I Woke up from the fog of the narcissistic Relationship I had I was 47 at the time I'm 49 now Turns out my life was led by a codependent part so I was Well, I woke up and you were one of the people that I started following You know during the relationship. I was googling things like Why is my spouse controlling why why are they so critical? Why do they have to be right all of the time and it was really the discard googling that behavior that really put it all together for me and I've just been down a journey of realizing how unconsciously aware I was All of my parts coming back into myself It's been painful but rewarding and Now what I've the the work that my therapist did with me was IFS coaching and you and I talked about it I watched your video on IFS. I have a few questions about that And especially the self because using IFS I truly believe that We really do all have a self and I'd love to pick your brain about that And I'm getting so I learned how to coach it. I read Jay early's book. I've read No bed parts transcending trauma You know did some courses and things like that and it's it's very powerful what it Does to bring people because what I love about it is that it's a compassionate approach You know when we get out of the relationship with the narcissist we're so hard on ourselves because I'm sure you'll have better insights on that than I do but from what I take from watching your videos and things is that We basically From the reparenting aspect from our own repetition compulsion. They became our parent All of my parts protected me from feeling not feeling my unworthiness But they were no match for the narcissist So what's your take on that? Would that be correct and assuming that? I think it's simpler than that. The narcissist regresses you to infancy And because he regresses you to infancy Most of the parts that serve you as an adult most of the protective parts They're disabled simply disabled Time it's time to travel You find yourself in the position of an infant with the narcissist fulfilling The maternal role the mother role even if the narcissist is a male The maternal role in the sense that the narcissist idealizes you the same way a mother idealizes the newborn The narcissist offers you on the face of it unconditional acceptance and love The same way a mother Initially at least offers the same to her newborn So the narcissist fulfill the maternal role and the condition is that you should regress yourself to become an infant and therefore It should become dependent On the narcissist you should suspend autonomy personal autonomy agency You should not conflict with your idealized version The narcissist as I said idealizes you and then he internalizes this idealized image. This is this process is known as introjection And then the narcissist coerces you to conform to the idealized image And whenever you diverge or deviate from the idealized image the narcissist becomes punitive and rejecting The same way a bad mother does because that's the only model he has and So you'll find yourself infantilized increasingly more infantilized increasingly more dependent You regulate your internal environment via the agent via the good services or the bad services of the agency of the narcissist the narcissist Stabilizes your moods Or dysregulates you as he sees feet The narcissist becomes your reality testing you begin to see the world through the narcissist eyes You see yourself through the narcissist gaze you perceive yourself through the narcissist gaze and because it initially at least your idealized Holding yourself or perceiving yourself through the narcissist gaze is a very gratifying experience. It's very flattering Uh, because you can do no wrong. You're drop dead gorgeous. You're hyper intelligent and so on so forth and no one can resist this No, right this is especially when one is an infant So It's um, it's a perfect storm You are regressed and then you're exposed to such an onslaught Of maternal perceptions maternal signaling maternal communications maternal behaviors That they're essentially you're experiencing a second childhood But this time with someone who keeps telling you that you are perfection Raphide and that you're godlike Exactly like him So this is a process of co-idealization. He idealizes you and by idealizing you He idealizes himself And you create together a fantasy. This is known as the shared fantasy Create together a fantasy within which Which you inhabit it's a form of a narrative a movie equivalent of a movie or a theater production and within this fantasy um You Essentially reject reality or confront reality you constrict your life your life becomes more narrow The kind of tunnel vision and this is very reminiscent of the dynamics of a cult And that is why we use terms psychological terms clinical terms borrowed From the psychology of cults for example trauma bonding Is a term borrowed from cults Because it is a cult It is a cult. He's the leader. You're the follower It's a private religion because the nazis is false self is godlike He transforms you into a kind of deity or divinity in his mind and then gives you access to this image of you And you buy into it because it's very narcissistically, you know satisfying and so gradually You become you become so detached from reality so Helpless, this is known as learned helpless so helpless And so terrified of abandonment and or finding yourself a baby Without the support of the narcissist without the filtering of the membrane that the narcissist provides And this is a really terrifying prospect So victims at death stage tend to catastrophize and then The nightmare becomes true. The narcissist devalues discards you For his own reasons. This has nothing to do with you. There was nothing you could have done to prevent this It is an autonomous Unfolding of the shared fantasy. It's built. It's a built-in feature. It's not a bug. It's a feature He needs to devalue you and discard you precisely because you're a maternal figure And he needs to get rid of his mother once and for all You know I I've watched I've watched your videos on that cycle of his need for repetition of compulsion. Can you just briefly? um go over that again the you know His cycle of abuse basically is his cycle of the need to separate and individuate yeah uh There are no studies at this stage there's No serious and rigorous studies at least That support the contention that narcissism is genetic or that it has to do anything to do with Abnormalities in the brain The same way for example psychopathy does so psychopathy definitely has a genetic component and involves serious abnormalities structural and functional in the brain This applies to borderline personality disorder However, when we when we deal with narcissistic personality disorder, we don't have this We we fail to find it's not that I mean, I'm pretty convinced that there is a genetic component um for the simple reason that Twins are exposed to the very same parental treatment and one of them becomes a narcissist and the other doesn't um Let alone siblings. So this is strongly indicative of some genetic template. However, we fail to find Um As far as brain abnormalities There are some laughable studies that try to claim that there are some You know structural abnormalities in the brains of narcissists. They are They are bordering on on con artistry. I wouldn't take that as science in any way shape or form. However, what is common to all narcissism Is what we call adverse childhood experiences experiences in childhood which have been traumatic Or perceived as traumatic by the child And at any rate have been abusing Now when we say abuse It's not limited to physical abuse or sexual abuse Or psychological abuse or verbal abuse. These are the classics Actually, the vast majority of narcissists have not been exposed to any of these They've been exposed to alternative forms of abuse which which fly under the radar are much more subtle and surreptitious For example, pedestalizing and idolizing the child smothering Spoiling and pampering the child. These are forms of abuse Because they prevent the child From having any contact with reality and from bearing the consequences of his or her own actions This prevents growth. The child is unable to grow because we grow only through adversity through conflict through loss and through the through the friction with reality So when you Idolize the child when you tell the child you can do no wrong. You're perfect. You're brilliant. You're amazing You're everyone else is to blame. You know for your mishaps and your misfortunes and your failures and so This is abusive This is absolutely abusive When you instrumentalize the child When you force the child to fulfill your own unfulfilled dreams and wishes That's abusive When you parentify the child when you treat the child as your own parent And and force the child to become your spousal substitute. You know, this this is abusive This is much more common than the other variety Now who does what kind of parent behaves in these in these ways? These are insecure parents especially mothers The overwhelmingly the fault lies the fault is with mothers not with fathers Because fathers come into the picture much later in development Mothers are critical in the first 36 months when narcissism is formed, right? So it's mothers essentially these are mothers who are insecure and so unable to let the child go Unwilling to let the child separate and become an individual They're terrified of remaining alone or losing control or what have you they treat the child as an extension a figment um of of imagination or fantasy so these are these are mothers who are What andrey green the psychoanalysts called dead mothers metaphorically dead mothers So they are emotionally absent. For example, they're selfish They're depressive They are overbearing and overprotective. They're controlling. They're instrumentalizing. They're parentifying now the kind of Of what what we nick called called not good enough mother And then the child Has two options basically faces two options Option number one the child can adopt the role of a victim Through a process known as splitting The child says mother is all good. So that must mean that I'm all bad And because I'm all bad I deserve this treatment. I deserve this a bit. It makes sense to me So the child adopts the role of a victim and becomes later in life a co-dependent or a people pleaser And and so on And the other option is the child says I'm going to be the abuser from now I'm not gonna And I'm not I'm never going to be abused again. I'm going to abuse everyone else And the child becomes a narcissist or even in more extreme cases of psychopath and dissociation So these are the two choices Luckily for us a tiny fraction of children choose to become narcissists. It's a source, by the way Choose to become narcissists and vast majority remain either healthy or dependent or people please much more tolerable And less dangerous But this this narcissistic children So the choice is I'm going to become the abuser from now, but how can it how how is this doable? How is this feasible? When you're a helpless helpless little thing Constantly tortured and tormented and abused and you know pushed around You need to divorce reality The only way for you as a child to become The equivalent of your abuser to become As as powerful as your abuser is if you deny reality And so you develop as a child a very strong fantasy defense you create a power course of a virtual reality within which You Lie to yourself that you are as powerful as all knowing as perfect as brilliant as your tormenting parental figure And this this stays for life. It's a coping mechanism that remains for life well into adulthood And and so on and this is known as pathological narcissism And the the godlike quality of the child Is known as force self Because for the child to do this the child needs to deny reality, but not only reality the child needs to deny itself the child says As I am in reality I'm a victim as I am in reality. I'm helpless I'm small I can't read adults adult minds and so So the child says I'm going to give up on all this. I'm going to give up on reality But I'm also going to give up on myself as I am now And I'm going to become someone else. I'm going to become a superman. I'm going to become the force self And so it's very reminiscent of A god the force is like a god And the child makes human sacrifice the child sacrifices itself to this god And then becomes one with this god That's in a nutshell So the the fantasy is based upon the narcissist feeling like the victim in childhood So the fantasy is to lift themselves up to a state of one day. I'm I'm going to be able to control and dominate my environment The way my abuser is controlling and dominating my me. Yeah, I'm never going to be vulnerable again I'm not never going to hurt again I'm not going to never going to experience pain again I'm never going to put myself in a situation of inferiority or submissiveness or exposure I'm going to control my environment. I'm going to control everyone in my environment and so on so forth But to do all this you need to be godlike So I'm the the child reinvents itself The ray rethinks itself into a godlike existence And from that moment on this child clinically is A bit psychotic is is a child that's no longer embedded in reality. He has what we call impaired reality testing And indeed the narcissist the grown-up narcissist the adult narcissist Is in very has a very tenuous connection to reality He doesn't do reality well He he perceives himself wrongly That is called grandiosity. He believes himself to be perfect and genius and amazing and drop dead gorgeous and so forth So he has a misperception of himself and he defends this misperception ferociously If you dare to challenge this Totally inflated fantastic idiotic self-perception. He's gonna lash back Lash out and he's gonna you know become aggressive sometimes violent And similarly the narcissist mistakes reality misreads reality. He misreads other people other people's minds because he has no access to positive emotions He doesn't have empathy or emotional empathy at least so he's he's unable to accurately decipher and decode other people For example, when you try to love the narcissist he interprets it as manipulation. You're trying to manipulate him When you offer the narcissist advice and help He perceives this as a form of aggression because what you're saying is You're not all powerful. You need help Uh, you offer him advice. That means you know better than than he does So that means he's not omniscient. He's not all knowing you're challenging him That's an act of aggression Everything in the narcissist's mind is topsy-turvy It's a world upside down And so that's why people keep failing and keep being astounded and keep being shocked and so on and so forth because they think They think normal even when narcissists go attend therapy, for example, narcissists go to therapy So you have these multi-degree therapists and clinicians And they talk to the narcissist and they try to strike An alliance with the narcissist is known as therapeutic alliance And they try to design together with the narcissist a treatment plan with treatment goals And they don't realize That the narcissist is a child It's a stunted Stunted child the narcissist is four years old maybe in the vast majority of cases. It's a four year old And so To negotiate with the narcissist an alliance to agree on a treatment plan. That's beyond idiot. It's in aim And so even even therapists even clinicians make this mistake there. It's extremely difficult to understand Three facts about the narcissist Number one. There's nobody there Narcissist the narcissist is an absence pretending to be a presence Nothing there Nothing it's all imported from the outside It's like a country that has no natural resources and has to import everything from outside cars bread. You name it everything comes from outside Number two the narcissist is unable to perceive you as separate and external The narcissist doesn't do othery. He is unable to perceive you to perceive your separateness and externality He regards you as an internal object inside his mind. Why? Because the narcissist has never experienced separating He's never done through the experience of separating from mother So he's constantly embedded in a womb like Matrix like symbiotic state And he's unable to perceive you as outside himself regarding as an extension and other time something like that and and and this leads to problems with empathy and and You know interacting with you intimacy and and so on so forth because we don't exist As far as the narcissist you don't exist Then how can he love you? How can he have intimacy with you? How can he cater to your needs? How can he guess or evaluate the wishes? Etc etc etc and if you don't exist And you make demands. It's very annoying Because I don't have a right to make demands. You don't exist Similarly, the narcissist does not exist Narcissists don't don't do existence and they don't do separateness So they can't attribute these qualities to you And finally narcissists don't have a self. They don't have an what Freud called an ego because An ego or a self Takes time to form. There's a process of formation And in the case of the narcissist it is disrupted The process is known as constellation and integration Which leads to the emergence of what we call the self or the ego depending on the model These are disrupted in narcissism So narcissists Need to outsource the functions of the self or the functions of the ego They need to have other people do it for them. This is known as external regulation And that's the case also in borderline personalities When you don't have An internal machinery Then you need to rely on other people's machinery and this is why the narcissist for example is very compulsive About obtaining narcissistic supply Narcissistic supply Is an affirmation that the narcissist's false self Is not false and is a self So it's it's as if the narcissist needs you to keep telling him I see you You do exist I see you you do exist And you exist exactly the way you think that you exist Exactly the way if you think you're a genius, you're right. You're a genius You think you are drop dead gorgeous. You're right. You're drop dead gorgeous. So You're not lying to yourself. You're not self deceiving and narcissists need this feedback constantly And they force people to give them this feedback and they punish people who don't Mm-hmm. I left it Because there's nothing there imagine the horror Of weighing up one morning and realizing you're not there There's nobody there The only way I can relate to it is Mm-hmm at about nine months into my healing. I woke up and realized Like the my people pleas are realizing my whole entire life I had two emotions happy or angry and Everything was driven off of me needing to be seen as a good person so avoiding conflict and um you know, just Everything about me. I woke up realizing everything about me was how the outside world saw me and No awareness of how I'd seen myself And so that's the only way that I like when I relate to A narcissist void is how is the comprehension that I have The need to be seen Is very primitive very primitive It's a survival strategy Because a baby a baby who is not seen is a dead baby Baby needs to attract the mother's attention or the father's attention the caregiver's attention Is otherwise the baby will not be fed Babies are born With mechanisms to attract attentions. They are known as queuing mechanisms Babies are born. They know they have to cry They know they have to make a smiley face. They know these these are all intended to Provoke attention to garner attention So this is a very primitive survival thing And when you grow up in an environment, which is dysfunctional in attentive neglectful abusive traumatizing, whatever Um, there is a deficiency in being seen. You're not seen Or you're not seen properly because if you're seen as an instrument or an object That that's not the same as being seen as you Right It's it's not you. It's your utility that is seen So you we need to be seen as who we are not as what we can accomplish right While in dysfunctional families love and being seen Are conditioned on performance Of one kind or another so People who people pleases co-dependence narcissists, I mean What's common to all of them borderlines? Of course, what's common to all of them Is the need to be seen but they adopt different strategies to obtain this outcome the narcissist believes that there is a direct connection between being seen and accomplishments performance So the narcissist tries to perform in a variety of ways If he cannot make it he fakes it But one way or another he performs. He's a performer. He's an actor The people pleaser believes that if you if you were to cater to other people's needs Please them and so on so forth. They will notice you. They will pay attention to you. They will see you somehow And that's also a performance based system. It's also about performance The borderline resorts to something called external regulation She uses the intimate partner Oh, he 50% of all borderlines are men Borderlines use the intimate partner in order to regulate their internal environment their moods their emotions and so on so forth And they do this By becoming helpless. So exactly like co-dependence They use helplessness neediness in order to emotionally blackmail the Partner the intimate partner or the friend to kick to actually regulate them So the borderline could say I can't live without you the co-dependent would say Um, wow, you're so wonderful. Only you can fix this. I can't fix it So there's a lot of there's a lot of ostentatious helplessness and neediness Mothers do this mothers and mostly mostly mothers Use this kind of emotional blackmail when they are dead mothers when they are As I said insecure and they refuse to let the child separate and become an individual and walk away a good mother pushes the child away It is a myth a very deleterious very bad myth that a mother should kind of Love the child never let the child go support the child have the child's back This is seriously wrong parental advice seriously wrong A mother is not a friend. This is what friends do the mother's role Is to push the child away to expose the child to frustration to adversity to loss to pain to hurt to his peers to rejection To the harsh aspects of reality That's a mother's role These are the three conditions sine qua non for growth If the mother wants the child to grow and become an adult happy functioning balanced adults adult She must allow the child to walk away from her, but many mothers can't So they emotionally blackmail the child. You know the kind of mothers will say, you know If you leave me, I will die or if I can't live without you Or I sacrifice so much of my life for you. You owe me. You know this kind of mothers. This is emotional blackmail This is what codependence do. This is what borderlines do The analysis comes from a position of strength Because he's the abuser now. So he comes from a position of strength. He says, you know, um, I'm a winner I have so many accomplishments. I'm powerful. I am rich I'm a genius. I'm big. So he comes from a position of control This is now you owe me You owe me because I'm superior You owe me by way of hierarchy There's a hierarchy here That's Jordan Peterson's lobsters. Yeah, you owe me by way of hierarchy Jordan Peterson's work is highly narcissistic in business. Absolutely And I think also when they come in, um For for me personally it was They come in as or especially the last narcissist comes in as someone who To us is perceived as At least they don't right. So we've probably we've had a history of maybe physical abuse or Um You know a relationship that was dull boring but dull and then they come in with this charisma But then they have to to me or to us. It's like this this specialness that At least they don't Do this and we we hold them Higher than life itself, you know, we find that one thing And hold them to that and then we live that the entire relationship holding on to that belief of who we think they are and works for them We should not underestimate the The mental health issues of the victims If you are a thrill seeker If you need excitement if you're an adrenaline junkie Then the narcissist is your dream come true Mm-hmm. If you're insecure um Then the narcissist over confidence ostentatious over confidence is Is as an zoolithic effect reduces reduces your anxiety Mm-hmm If you have never experienced um A happy childhood with essentially unconditional maternal love and sons of orthodontosis is here And he tells you I love you as a mother would because you're ideal You're absolutely ideal. You're perfect. You're perfection And it's very appealing because it's a chance at a second child who with a different resolution happiness If you are fixated on the future if you tend to catastrophize for example, or anticipate catastrophe or you tend to Uh, resent or hate your present because your present is dull colorless Uh, I don't know what you know, uh disappointing Doesn't match your expectations and hopes and dreams The narcissist comes in and offers you a future. So narcissists is Peddles pedals of future. He doesn't future fake. That's a common mistake online Psychopaths future fake The narcissist believes his own promises. He absolutely believes them And in this sense is as deluded as you are He's in it. He's in the fantasy exactly as you are But but it's a fact that he pedals the future. He offers you a future And the future is offering you it's so dramatically different to your present That's an it's an irresistible proposition It's like a way out suddenly the world transitions from black and white to technicolor The world is colorful again So if you're this kind of person who is essentially depressed because what I've just described is depression If you're depressed because of your present the narcissist offers you an antidepressant in the form of a narcissistic fantastic future The narcissist comes along He scans you Something called called empathy called like opposite of what? called empathy cold empathy cold empathy that's um It's a phrase I coined to describe cognitive empathy and reflexive empathy without emotional empathy So the narcissist scans you using cold empathy And he spots all your buttons He knows which buttons to push all your vulnerabilities all your broken dreams All your shattered hopes All your pain All your anguish everything he maps you he creates a perfect map of you And then he knows how to manipulate you And he does He does because exactly like a psychopath analysis is these colors And relentless and ruthless and merciless and so So he pushes he plays you as he would and musical instruments He plays on your on your pain He plays on your fears. He plays on your hurt. He plays on your hopes And he leads you like a pipe piper. He leads you to his fantasy to this promised land of the fantasy of the shared fantasy And very few people can resist this even healthy people mentally healthy people It's a myth that only broken damage people fall for narcissists. That's nonsense Even other narcissists fall for narcissists Even psychopaths fall for narcissists Who can resist the fantasy reality sucks Reality sucks big time Who can resist an alternative? Why do we watch movies? Studies have shown that when we watch a movie there's a process known as dissociation Dissociation is when we cut off the world We ignore the world. That's why when we watch a horror movie we jump We jump we startle there's a startle response because we are not aware that we are in reality. We are we are actually in the movie So why do we watch movies because it gives us a short risk respite away from reality? I don't know if you have noticed that movies are becoming longer and longer and longer not kidding Most movies now are like two and a half hours three hours I think people need to get away from reality for us and and everyone is binge binge watching series and everything You know everyone wants away from reality The narcissist is the Netflix of the mind The Netflix of the mind simple He is the perfect combination perfect package of entertainment and redemption And it has religious overtones And it has contemporary undertones And it's a package that is irresistible I don't know a single person who could resist a narcissist Not one Me now Well that remains that remains to be seen because regrettably the statistics show That once you've been exposed to a narcissist you're actually Desensitized not sensitized in other words exposure to a narcissist Makes you more prone to end up with a narcissist rather than less It's a very bizarre phenomenon, but it's pretty well documented Are those statistics I would assume that those statistics would be Without having done any healing between narcissists There's no such distinction. Even if you go in forums anecdotally Most women there or most people there not only women would say, um, you know I've had three narcissistic partners or five narcissistic partners Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It seems that awareness Self-awareness awareness of who is a narcissist knowledge even Or even scholarship They're not they don't provide immunity There's no vaccination. It's it No vaccination. Um Now in a minute where this is going to shut itself up Okay, but it's a fourth. So what you have to do is wait for five minutes And five minutes hence if you wish to continue click the same link Okay, but you do have to wait for five minutes because it's saving in the background It's saving the session in the background. Okay. All right. Um, maybe you can answer this before it shuts off So why is So sometimes when I work with my clients we work on a healing fantasy protector Right. So they have a protective part that created a healing fantasy and that's why it's so powerful And we get to know this healing fantasy Why is A fantasy so difficult to come out of Okay, so let us let us Exit the session Okay, five minutes and five minutes. We'll meet again. Okay So why? Oh, I remember the question fantasy is um The fantasy is a space Initially when when the child is born the child is unable to tell Um that there is an external world As far as the child is concerned the world and mommy mother in inside the world They're one with the child The child has this oceanic existence The child encompasses everything And everything is the child. There are no boundaries in other words This is this condition is recreated in mental illness. For example in psychotic disorders psychotic illnesses the The patient cannot tell the difference between themselves and the in the world That's why when the psychotic patient has a voice inside his head He actually thinks the voice is coming from the outside Because there's no distinction. There's no difference between external objects and internal The fantasy space allows the child To gradually break the world apart To separate from the world To realize that there is a world out there and mommy is also external Not part of the child not in what used to be called a symbiotic phase. So And the fantasy makes it safe It's an experimental um sandbox Where the child can play With variations of a worldview of variations of what is called an internal working model The child also within the fantasy Creates theories about other people How how other people's minds Work how what makes people tick. This is known as theory of mind And so fantasy is an integral part of the transition From self-absorption which used to be called at the time narcissistic libido From self-absorption To the realization that there are other people out there. They're external. They're separate And one could interact with them. One could have a relationship with them And this is known as object relations so from from Narcissistic libido to object. So the child transitions from being Fully immersed inside himself to actually accepting The existence of other people and all this is done within fantasy Take for example the the imaginary friend Many children have imaginary friends They talk to them. They interact with the given names They have a whole life for this imaginary friend Imaginary friends represent external people other people external objects Another example is what is known as the transitional object You see children with teddy bears and blankets And they refuse to let them go They take the teddy bear to the shower and they take the teddy bear to sleep They sleep with the teddy bear. They talk to the teddy bear and so The teddy bear all the all the tattered blanket or whatever it is They are known as transitional objects because they allow the child to transition from self-immersion to object relations in other words the teddy bear represents something outside the child and allows the child to exercise relationships With a safe object An object will not hurt the child will not and this is known as transitional object These are all examples of fantasy space But when this is disrupted When the Usually the mother but not always but in the vast majority of cases when the mother does not allow the child To separate does not allow the child to Realize that there are other people out there that she is not one with a child. There's no merger. There's no fusion That the child cannot control her because she's not a part of him That frustration is inevitable and so his pain and loss when the mother refuses to allow the child to experience all this The child simply remains stuck in fantasy And grows up and becomes a narcissist And you in the narcissist fantasy You are a transitional object like the teddy bear and Narcissist uses you for the same function Narcissist exercises on you. It's a rehearsal dress rehearsal In the hope that you'll be able to separate from you become an individual and then interact with real people That tells you that you're not real In the narcissist mind, you don't have a real existence That's why narcissists are shocked When you accuse them of abuse and mistreatment and you're not real Avatar you're you're I don't know and up They find it very strange annoying That you that you claim to have been mistreated You you don't have the right to make this claim This you're not a you you're not a person Right Yet You're a teddy bear imagine a teddy bear complaining So this is the power of fantasy But without fantasy we would remain stuck in the symbiotic phase would never separate from mother or whoever And we would never never be able to interact with each other in any meaningful way Absolutely. No intimacy. No love. No children. No family. No nothing Not fantasy fantasy is crucial critical And it never leaves us we continue to indulge in fantasies Some of these fantasies are political fantasies for example Others are literary fantasies movies are kind of fantasy and so on so forth This is the power of fantasy and and and for victims of narcissistic abuse who are in the relationships with narcissists Romantic relationships usually or it probably could be children who have a hard time breaking away because they fantasize is it Is it the same concept? Why is it so difficult for us to let go of the fantasy? Is it a denial protective part? What would it what would it be on on the end of us? As I explained before it's a fantasy is much preferable to reality And then a given day It's just a good half because then you have to feel The fantasy is tailored fantasy is custom made reality pushes back Reality challenges you is is harsh is unforgiving Does not cater to your self delusions and self deceit deceit and sons of often realities You have to accommodate reality reality never accommodates you Right fantasy is tailor made It's customized for you It it's handing love. It fits you. It's it's wonderful. It's cozy It's non-threatening. It's always obliging. It's so fantasy is much preferable to reality, of course And it's difficult to let go of but with the narcissists there there's another issue and that's the issue What is called prolonged grief? When you break up with the narcissist you actually go through four separate processes of grieving Whereas in a typical breakup You usually grieve two elements with the narcissist you grieve four as a minimum So in a typical breakup you grieve the partner that you have lost and you grieve the relationship With the narcissist you grieve the partner that you have lost Which is the narcissist even narcissists have good sides. You miss these good sides You would have liked to you know have kept them We failed There's a nail and there's a feeling of failure There's self cast castigating self criticism. So it's it's very So there is this I have lost my partner I miss him I love some aspects of him some dimensions of him some behavior some traits I I contributed to this So I feel a bit guilty bit ashamed Maybe I feel that I've been a bit stupid Maybe I feel that I haven't done enough So there is this element Then you mourn the relationship Which is again An entity the relationship if relationship is separate from the people involved in the relationship It has a life of its own It's an entity it's a separate entity And so you mourn the relationship But in narcissism there are two additional processes of grieving Remember that the narcissist becomes your child When in the beginning of the relationship the narcissist exposes you to his childlike aspects He lets he gives you access to the hurt crying damaged wounded grieving child And this provokes in you maternal instincts even if you're men Even men like babies So it provokes in your maternal instincts and protective instincts You want to hold this child you want to hug this child you want to Calm this child down. You want to wipe this child's tears You want to heal and fix this child with your love and intimacy Mm-hmm Before you know it you become this child's mother Narcissists know this So they expose you to this child Which is in every narcissist the core of every narcissist so And so you have to give up on your child When there's a breakup a discard You you're actually mourning your child And finally you're mourning your idealized version By breaking up with the narcissist you lose access to to the idealized version of yourself That you had access to through the narcissist gaze The narcissist monopolizes this access You can interact with your idealized version. You can fall in love with your idealized version You can admire yourself You can feel gratified You can feel elated and excited and amazing and so on so forth, but only through the narcissist gaze You don't love the narcissist because there's nobody there Someone there What you do love is the way the narcissist loves you You fall in love with the way the narcissist sees you you're being seen in a way That has no competition Is it comparable to any other experience? It's the most intense experience you're ever likely to have And so you miss this you grieve this You want it back. It's kind of addiction It's like cold turkey. It's withdrawal symptoms For sure So simultaneously you have these four grieving processes We know for example that the broken heart syndrome is not a metaphor There's real damage to the heart. That's a japanese a japanese discovery And so it's real. It's not imagined And this isn't a typical healthy breakup breakup between two healthy people Right. Even there the damage is immense In the trauma scale we have a trauma scale The number one trauma is the loss of a child The number two trauma is divorce And here with the narcissist you experience the loss of a child You experience divorce you experience the loss of a relationship and you experience above all the loss of yourself Because you're not the same You're not the same after the relationship And you're totally disorient You can't find yourself anymore You're not similar to the narcissist. You don't have a core any longer You're unmoored. You're unmoored. You're floating. You're drifting And it seems as if you were you will drift forever. It's there's also There's no hope There's no so there's a lot of catastrophizing. It's a very bleak picture If you combine these four breathing processes I think That narcissistic abuse Is the number one trauma and it exceeds the trauma of losing a child That is why in the late 80s and early 90s. I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse Mm-hmm These people at the time scholars were asking me there was Decades ago long before narcissism became a buzzword You know at that time I remember that scholars asked me. Why do you need to coin a new phrase? Why not say abuse by narcissists abuse by narcissists? I said no because narcissistic abuse is a fundamentally different phenomenon It's not the same like every other type of abuse The narcissist Needs to annihilate you He needs to negate you. He needs to eliminate you Because he needs to convert you to an internal object And into a mother And that is counterfactual. It's not true So he needs to make sure That you don't conflict with this With this role that he assigns to you So he needs to mummify. It's like the famous movie cycle each cop's movie Mm-hmm. Where the guy Norman Bates Mm-hmm mummifies mummified his mother And he continued to interact with her enough in a shared fantasy so That's what the narcissist do First of all, he kills you mental He kills you psychologically completely then he mummifies you Then he internalized them internalizes this Egyptian mummy And he continues to interact with this mummy in his mind Mm-hmm And this is the core and the essence of narcissistic abuse During this process Since you're colluding in the shared fantasy otherwise you wouldn't be there You agree to this self-sacrifice You become a human sacrifice but With volition willingly you volunteer And the narcissist takes away your essence Takes away your your heart if your soul, I don't know which metaphor you wish to use Mm-hmm Takes away Music cannot afford. It cannot gamble. It cannot speculate on your obey Obasance on your obedience On your collaboration on your it doesn't do collaboration. It doesn't do it doesn't recognize you as external So he cannot take the chance He needs you in animate He needs you dead Simple So they take away your autonomy to keep you the way that they need to perceive you as the external object And to be able to deal with the internal object They don't perceive you as external object, but they need you to not contradict or not conflict with internal Well, yeah, okay because internal object is unreal counterfactual They need you to to cease to exist They need you to stop living Because life is change Life is unpredictable life is uncontrollable life is anything can happen, you know Mm-hmm So as an internal object for example, you will never abandon the Nazis Nazis have separation insecurity abandonment anxieties because they don't have object constancy They they don't perceive you as external so you can disappear any minute Like a magic show, you know So but as an internal object, Nazis feel safe You will never abandon him as an internal object. You will never criticize him He will never disagree with him as an internal object. He's in control Mm-hmm But how can this work if you have your own life your own friends your own family your own interests your own Pursuits your own hobbies your own profession no way Mm-hmm. No way So this is part of their need for their own repetition compulsion to separate right so they We meet in the beginning perfect idolization They internalized that idolized idolized object in their mind They immediately start to in their mind discard the external object Control not not so much discard but convert it controlling Uh kill it I think it's not devalued before the devaluation to kill it to render it an object to inanimate object Okay, so that's where they objectification Okay, so then they so they kill it in the mind. So then they that's when devaluing No, they don't kill it in the mind. They kill it in reality Okay, so what happens is there is an internal Object which is a realized and then the narcissist goes about Killing you destroying you mentally Rendering you an inanimate object totally inert Totally dead zombie life and this he does in reality So that you don't conflict with the internal object and this is known as narcissistic abuse and Then comes the devaluation and so but this is in the idealization stage and this is what I call coercive snapshot The narcissist snapshots you so there's a snapshot Then he photoshopped the snapshot. This is idealization And then he coerces you to become the snapshot But the snapshot is dead. It's a photograph So he converts you from video to photo He converts you into a still photograph In reality not in his mind right reality. He takes away your life. He deanimates you And then at some point Because the shared fantasy is about separating from mommy and becoming an individual or so He needs to separate from you and then to separate from you. He needs to devalue This has nothing to do with the first stage Okay So it's it's it's it's idolization and an immediate Removal of you as the object External is an external Okay, and so is there any what would the dialogue? Is there any dialogue or is it just an immediate like of the killing of the object? The the narcissist first of all tests you he wants to see whether you're a good mother Will you love him unconditionally never mind what he does Will you accept him regardless of any egregious misbehavior? So he Torches you he abuses you he traumatizes. He cheats on you. He he tries everything to push you away And this is a test If you keep on loving him then you're a good mother. You love him unconditionally So there's a test element in his mind. I'm going to test her. He is very paranoid narcissists are very paranoid So he constantly assumes that you are I don't know a gold digger or that you are manipulative or that you are You are a narcissist. You're a psychopath. Yeah, so he needs to test you all the time So this is a conscious element where he's testing you Another conscious element is that he says to himself She is too independent She criticizes me all the time. She disagrees with me. That must mean that she's stupid Or that she's evil and wicked and so so he begins He begins to resent you For your personal autonomy and because it keeps undermining The idealized internal object the snapshot And then he coerces you then you move into a stage of course coercion He coerces you so if you dare to criticize him he becomes super punitive He punishes you he throws a temper tantrum. He withholds money and sex He attacks you he humiliates you in public. He does something to teach you a lesson Never ever to criticize him again If you dare to disagree with him he demonstrates to you how stupid you are and so so He conditions you He creates what we call negative reinforcements So gradually you learn the lesson you say it's not worth it to disagree with him I will never criticize him again. It's not worth the outcome, you know It should become submissive. You become obedient You you you become your connections You become Intimate you you're intimidated. You're terrified. You are so you you want to please him you want to Or maybe you're afraid of him. So whatever the reason may be You become not you You deny yourself And the denial reaches the point that you become zombified you become a totally objectified At that point you match The idealized snapshot and there's a short honeymoon So when you're at your lowest The narcissist is at his best Because then you conform totally to how he sees you the idealized image And then it's time to move on to devaluation because now it's time to separate now that you have proven yourself to be a good mother Now it's the time to separate an individual Something he has failed to do with his original mother But how to separate from you you're an ideal object How why would anyone separate from an ideal object? So that must mean that you are not an ideal object And then he starts to devalu the devaluation is preparation for the separation And the only way to separate the narcissist can separate from you is by discounting you The discard is a symbolic reenactment Of childhood separation individuation That's why It's nonsense what people say online That he separates from you because you see through him or he separates from you Because you contradicted him or you separate from you because you conflicted with him. You disagree with him. We had a fight Even if you are the most caring compassionate affectionate Loving accepting submissive obedient person in the universe and in human history You would have been devalued And discarded. This has nothing to do with you. You could have done nothing about it This is an internal psychodynamic internal dynamic That is unfolding inside the narcissist's Demented mind It's a crazy person stop trying to make sense of it Everyone is trying to make sense of the narcissist. He's evil. He's malicious. He's this he's that is a not case Stop trying to make sense of it It's crazy you know And that is distinct from the psychopath the psychopath is premeditated Is malevolent Is sadistic Is goal-oriented psychopaths Are optimizing machines. That's why Many criminals are psychopaths actually not narcissistic so People confuse psychopaths with narcissists because they want to make sense of everything They want to believe in the essential goodness of people. They want to believe the world the universe has some structure and some order And some rhyme and reason some cause and effect No, the narcissist is a force of nature You can't make much sense of a hurricane Or a virus Or a tiger That's what the narcissist is That's been your misfortune That you came across a narcissist And yes, narcissism is infectious So regrettably you carry narcissistic antibodies and narcissistic genes and everything in your in your mind And it may erupt time and again. In other words, you may acquire additional narcissistic problems You may discover that you yourself became a big narcissistic Your behaviors are more narcissistic. You're less empathic You are You know more psychopathic and social This is it rubs off Fortunately, fortunately For victims These are transient phenomena They don't they and they are also easily treatable and so it's fortunate But it depends on the exposure if you've been exposed to narcissists for 40 years It's a long way to differ. It's a lot of work Right We'll to recover from this And I I think I almost had to You know, I think as I can see where I had narcissistic parts of me As a codependent people pleaser, but I and I but I can also see how I almost had to use But there had to be this balance, right? So like instead of putting everybody's needs first, I had to To separate from the relationship. I really had to become really narcissistic, right? I had to only focus on me. I had to split him as all bad to recover I had to idolize myself to lift myself back up, right? So I I had to use some of this narcissistic stuff on myself to recover, but then eventually I didn't want to stay there With I want I do want to ask you Um Conscious awareness How consciously aware because I see a lot that they know exactly what they're doing, you know, and I personally don't believe that I I don't think narcissists are very conscious. How can you live in fantasy and be consciously aware? So And so What is an overt narcissist a little more consciously aware than a covert narcissist and So can you kind of just talk about conscious awareness a little bit? I think there's a lot of confusion about About that because people people's conflate behaviors and actions with motivations All narcissists are fully aware of what they're doing fully aware of what they're doing Because they're not delusional and they're not psychotic and they're not schizophrenic and they're not Um, intellectually challenged, they know what they're doing A majority of narcissists are aware of the consequences of their actions They think they're immune to these consequences. They think they're godlike. They're above the law They're unlikely to get caught And they get very pissed off when this is proven wrong But the majority of narcissists Uh, know what they're doing and know where it's going to lead to and all understand the impact of their actions on other people actions choices decisions on other people however extremely few narcissists Understand why they they behave the way they do Very few narcissists understand the psychodynamic roots the psychological reasons for their choices actions and decisions and so They are clueless when it comes to their internal processes And so because they are clueless And because they are dissociative they have memory gaps. They have problems with memory What they do Is they confabulate confabulation is not lying Lying is psychopathic lying is when you can tell the difference between fantasy and reality And then sell the fantasy to other people knowing full well that it's not reality. That is what psychopaths do The narcissists cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality when the narcissist comes up with Something that is not factual He believes it So if the narcissist tells you something about himself something that has happened or they believe it They firmly believe it and they they defend it ferociously if you dare to Doubt it or whatever they they go at you when they lash out at you because they believe it So confabulation is when you try to bridge memory gaps And when you try to make sense of your actions decisions and choices By inventing something concocting something out of thin air And then fully believing it So for example a narcissist would be extremely abusive and reduce you to tears The narcissist knows that he's being abusive and sadistic and insulting and humiliating He fully realizes this all narcissists do They also realize that you're likely slightly to make you sad Hurt in pain Or majority of narcissists would understand this connection But then all narcissists would say I'm doing it for your own good This is tough love You know, I'm just trying to help you So they would create a justification of this misbehavior of this abuse of this torture A justification and then they then they come to believe this justification Although we know in psychology in clinical psychology, we know that they're doing it because they are for example sadistic Or because they're controlling or because there's nothing to do with tough love or any kind of love And it's not for your own it's nothing to do with you actually because they are unable to perceive external logic But the overwhelming vast majority of narcissists would tell you I'm doing this for your own good example so Another example a narcissist would say I know that I'm Abrasive I know that I'm a humiliated people. I know that I shouted people. I know that I put them down. I know this But this gives me a competitive advantage This renders me efficient. This makes me productive So they're proud They are what we call emotionally invested. They're affected They're emotionally invested in the disorder. They say without my narcissism Without my the way I am if I were not the way I am I would not have been that creative If I were not the way I am I would not be that productive That prolific that amazing that I wouldn't have been a winner. I would have been a loser so This glorification and glamorizing of the disorder Is an example of confabulation But confabulation can be much more basic The narcissist starts at point a and he finds himself at point d And points b and c are missing. He has a memory Short short circuit. It's known as this audition. So the narcissist tells himself I remember being in point a and now I'm in point d What could have happened? What what most likely has happened? What is the most plausible explanation for this transition from a to d? Ah, it must have been q And then he tells you Um, I have stopped I started in a I transitioned through q and I ended in d And then if you tell him but you couldn't have transitioned through q Because I have proof that you were in point z Not q He would attack you He would say that you're lying manipulated. They would deny written evidence. They would deny recordings Video recordings They would deny everything and anything because the confabulation is perceived as reality One last thing before we say goodbye And this is the four s's There is a myth online that narcissist the narcissist chooses you Because somehow you're special. It's a self-aggrandizing myth Propagated by the so-called empaths Which in my view the vast majority over covert narcissists that I see that But there is a smith that you're chosen Especially because of your qualities and of course superior quality because it's self-aggrandizing. So you are super empathic You are amazingly nice So wonderful and special and angelic and blamishless and blameless and so on so forth and that's why the narcissist chooses you Narcissists don't care who you are because narcissists cannot perceive external objects Moreover, if you're truly empathic and loving The narcissist would perceive this as a weakness It would disgust him Narcissists are disgusted by love and empathy because this shows that you're a weak person. It's a vulnerability You're not chosen Because of who you are you're chosen because of what you can give the narcissist And what you get gives the narcissist is summed up in my rule of four s's sex services Supplying narcissistic and sadistic and safety Being there present Never abandoning the narcissist These are the four things If you give the narcissist Two of these four You're in to qualify Two of these four Sex and services services and safety safety and supply supply and sex any two of these four You're in to go the job you pass the job interview Period Who you are is meaningless. That's why narcissists end up with border lines with other narcissists with psychopaths With nice kind empathic people with people pleases with co-dependence with border. I mean you name it Narcissists are indiscriminate abusers equal opportunity abuse Mm-hmm Yeah, I got it. I I see that on the on the online space and uh, it's Being told what you want to hear to make you feel better. I think to get out of a dark space I I get why it exists. Um, do you do you have time maybe for one more? Is narcissistic personality disorder an attachment style within itself? No Narcissistic personality disorder is a severe mental health impairment But it is true that um An overwhelming majority of narcissists have what we call insecure attachment styles That several such attachment styles fearful avoidance and so Irregular So these attachment styles are typical of narcissists not only of narcissists. They're typical of narcissists Not there's generally a god-awful confusion between traits styles And the disorder Mm-hmm. So for example You have online self-styled experts with and without academic degrees and i'm saying self-style because they don't know what they're talking about because they're not experts on narcissism Even if you have a phd in psychology that doesn't make you an expert on narcissism Right, I see that's a lot. They say for example all psychopaths are narcissists Which is utter unmitigated trash A small percentage of psychopaths are also narcissists, but what is common to narcissists and psychopaths is grandiosity Grandiosity is a trait It's a it's a cognitive distortion actually And it's common to border liners also to bipolar disorder also to Paranoid disorder It's a trait. It's not it's not narcissism. Grandiosity is not narcissism Similarly an insecure attachment style Is not narcissism It's common to narcissism, but also to psychopaths also to border lines also to paranoid also to schizoid Schizoid personalities or that also and also and also it's a it's It's like ingredients in foods you can find salt in many foods That you find salt in two foods doesn't make them the same food Yeah, that's that's what i'm seeing and i'm i'm you know also Some attachment styles can have some traits that can seem that are abusive right and and then So it's it's kind of because everybody's becoming self-styled. It's it's it's becoming a little bit of a Yeah, it's a mess out there. It's a huge mess. I mean I I'm spending all my all my time on youtube and trying to correct things gas lighting is misunderstood everything. It's a bloodiness I think we have to say goodbye before we are okay abruptly and rudely Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you for doing this with me and uh, I'll see you on youtube Please send me by email your details. I want to place them in the description You're okay. I will do that. Instagram and everything. Okay. Okay. All right. It was a pleasure. Take care. Bye professor