 Many of you send me questions and ask, can the covert narcissist become a classic narcissist? Can the classic narcissist become a covert narcissist? Can the somatic become a cerebral, etc., etc.? Well, let me tell you something, children. I'm old enough to have dined with the dinos wars. And I can tell you one thing I've learned in my long and fruitful life. The only constant thing is change. So yes, every mental construct, every mental health diagnosis within the cluster B personality disorders can and does metamorphosize into other personality disorders within the cluster B, which is precisely why I've been advocating since 1997 to unify all this separate diagnosis into a single diagnosis of personality disorder cluster B with different emphasis. But that's the subject for another video. Today, what I would like to discuss is what happens to the covert narcissist when he or she, more frequently he, when the covert narcissist transforms. What does the covert narcissist change into when subjected to stress, to humiliation, to rejection, to abandonment, to modification? We know that borderline women, women diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, they react by becoming secondary psychopaths. Ask any spouse of a borderline woman and he will confirm this. Borderline women, when they are stressed, when they're frustrated, when they're humiliated or rejected, they abandon or perceive abandonment or anticipate abandonment or whatever. They tend to react like psychopaths do, but they are secondary psychopaths. They are psychopaths with emotions and with empathy, but they're still psychopaths. They react in antisocial ways. They become defined. They lose impulse control. They don't think about the consequences of their actions. They don't have long-term thinking, et cetera, et cetera. I've dedicated a whole video to this. There's a video about the borderline woman as a secondary psychopath. I recommend that you watch it. The covert narcissist, when he is under similar adversary problematic circumstances, tends to become a primary psychopath. In more rare cases, in fewer cases, the covert narcissist becomes a classic narcissist. That's more rare. And it's more rare because the covert narcissist has difficulty to solicit and elicit narcissistic supply from the environment. The covert narcissist, you remember, is shy. He is fragile. He is vulnerable. He is avoidant. He is anxious. And so the covert narcissist doesn't have the necessary tools to extract narcissistic supply from other people, either by cursing them, charming them, by cajoling. But I mean, he doesn't know how to do this. So what happens to the covert narcissist in most cases is that he becomes a primary psychopath. And this is the topic of today's conversation, today's video. And so we started by saying that there is no type constancy. For example, the overt or the classic narcissist can switch from somatic to cerebral, from cerebral to somatic, from inverted to classic, from classic to inverted, et cetera, et cetera. Similarly, the patient with borderline personality disorder can suddenly become a secondary psychopath. Why is that? It's because these people don't have an identity. They have something called identity disturbance, identity diffusion. Instead of a core, a very strong identifiable core with strict, demarcated boundaries, these people have a cloud, a cloud or a swarm, like a swarm of bees or locusts or a hive mind. They are all over the place and they are utterly inconsistent and they are all inclusive and they assimilate and assemble influences constantly and these influences affect who they are. Not only what they remember, not only their moods, moodlability, not only their emotions, emotional dysregulation, but who they are, their identity, crucially dependent, crucially depends on input from the environment, on their milieu, on what people tell them, on how they are judged, on criticism, on disagreement, on applause, on approval, on adulation, on admiration, you name it. Feedback, input from the environment is crucial for the regulation of their internal environment. Actually, they confuse their internal environment with external. Their internal objects are external. Their external objects are internal and this is why they have severe difficulties in their relationship and I've dealt with this in other videos. But today we are going to deal with the covert narcissists. The covert narcissists has many similarities to borderline personalityism, many. But it has a few outstanding features, a few special features. Again, I describe these features in a series of videos and in an interview I gave about covert narcissism and you can find all of them on my YouTube channel. The foundational work in covert narcissism is Cooper and Akhtar in 1989 and they were the first to describe phenomena such as pseudo-humility. The covert narcissist pretends to be modest and humble, but it's a cover for grandiosity. They describe shape-shifting. So they go to these videos and have a look at what is a covert narcissist. A word of warning, most of the material on covert narcissists online is utter, sheer, unmitigated nonsense for two reasons. It does not rely on scholarly studies and research. And the second reason is the diagnosis of covert narcissism is extremely new. We don't have a sufficient body of research to substantiate or support any of its features, psychodynamic features, clinical features, and so on. So we are groping in the dark at this stage. Anyone who pretends to tell you what is exactly a covert narcissist is basing himself on anecdotes, misdiagnosis, or sheer nonsense which he took out of his sleeve. Be careful. Be careful. As I would say from my experience, anywhere between 90, that's 90, and 95% of all the so-called information out there, including information given to you by people whose names are preceded by doctor, is absolute trash. So whatever you hear, try to do your own research. Try to find scholarly articles in academic journals and so on and so forth. Go to reliable websites and so on because YouTube is accessible and a cesspit of nonsense and worse. Let's go back to the... And this is a warning I've been giving in each and every video because I am appalled by what I'm watching online sometimes. Okay, let's go back to the covert narcissists. So the covert narcissist is forced very often to be a people pleaser. There is a proposed subtype of borderline known as shy borderline or vulnerable borderline. Shy is a common phrase. It is not clinically substantiated. Many attempts have been made to find such a subtype. We failed. That's precisely the reason why it's not mentioned in any textbook. It's not mentioned in a diagnostic and statistical manual. You can find it on the online and usually in the work of one or two highly specific therapies. So I'm sure it's very profitable, but unfortunately it has no legs to stand on. In other words, when I'm trying to tell you there's no such thing as a shy borderline. It's completely unmitigated nonsense. There are borderlines who internalize their aggressive impulses and their ego discrepant and ego dissonant emotions such as guilt and shame. But all borderlines do it from time to time. Borderlines pendulate the switch between internalizing and externalizing. Psychopaths only externalize. They are angry. You'll be the first to know. They are vengeful. You will pay the price. They externalize everything. And you bear the brunt of their dissatisfaction, their unhappiness, their rage and so on. Borderlines are not like that. Borderlines go through two phases. The first phase they actually internalize. They feel ashamed. They feel guilty. They feel dysphoric. In other words, sad, sad or depressed. They feel anxious. And they accumulate and they accumulate and they don't show anything. Don't express themselves. Don't let it out. And then they erupt. They erupt like a volcano. They become secondary psychopaths. And this is the typical pattern of borderline. The accumulation phase followed by the eruption phase, very geological. And I think this is the source of the confusion when we come to shy borderlines. Shy borderlines have longer than usual accumulation phases. But all borderlines, all borderlines without a single exception act out. They can act out by cheating on the spouse. They can act out by breaking objects. They can act out by engaging in extreme forms of silent treatment or catatonic behavior. They can sit on a chair and not move for two weeks. They can act out by not taking a shower for a month, by not getting out of bed for two days. There are a million ways to act out. But all borderlines act out. All borderlines externalize their aggressive impulses. This is very crucial to understand. It's similar with the covert narcissists. The covert narcissists go through an accumulation phase. The humiliations, because covert narcissists are hyper-vigilant. They know that they are deficient. They know that they are lacking. They know that they don't have what it takes to obtain narcissistic supply. In a way, you could say that covert narcissists are in a perpetual state of collapse. They are perpetual, collapsed narcissists. And exactly like collapsed narcissists, they react with aggression. But it takes a long time, takes a lot longer than usual for the covert narcissists to react with aggression. And then when it does react with aggression, it's highly channeled and highly structured and very dissimilar, not the same, like the aggression of the classic narcissist. The aggression of the classic narcissist is infantile. It's like the temper tantrum of a spoiled brat, an idiot. The aggression of the covert narcissist is very similar to the psychopath. We'll come to it in a minute. This is the topic of this video. But the covert narcissists can go for years, for years, without showing anything. Everything underground, everything surreptitious, everything hidden, concealed. That's why it's called covert. Everything is covert. All the bad emotions, the bad blood, the animosity, the hostility, the envy. The feelings of inferiority, festering, seething, and then finally erupting. Throughout the life of the covert narcissist, he experiences losses. People have been taken away from the covert narcissist. Even what's rightfully his, all his life. The covert narcissist gets used because he is not assertive. Because he has no functional boundaries, exactly like the classic narcissist. And because he doesn't know to extract supply to compensate for the wounds and for the arrows and slings of fortune. Because he doesn't have this arsenal, arsenal of grandiosity and compensatory tools that the narcissist has. He experiences life as a constant state of loss. And everyone takes away from him everything. People take away from him his time, his ideas, his money, his reputation, his women. His contacts, you name it. Even if they don't, that's how he experiences relationships with people. Because he's hyper-vigilant and a bit paranoid. And because he is pseudo-humble, not really humble. He experiences a very interaction as a bruising competition in which he is bound to lose. And he's bound to lose because he cannot stand up for himself. He feels that he's not, if he's a man, if he's not a man. And in any case, he feels that everyone is trampling over him. Everyone is stepping on him. Everyone is humiliating him, burying him in the mud. And that's a horrible feeling. And it's a feeling that provokes even unhealthy people. It would provoke negative affectivity, negative emotionality, extreme aggression. In 1939, there was a psychologist, Donald. And he suggested that frustration is automatically converted to aggression and almost fully converted to aggression. So such constant frustration breeds aggression. Aggression is a fixture and feature of the personality. In other words, the covert narcissist is an aggressive personality. But this aggression, even this aggression is counterproductive because he has to suppress it. He cannot show it. He cannot release it. He doesn't allow himself, for example, to be really angry. Instead of being really angry, instead of communicating and verbalizing his rage, his grudges, his complaints, his grievances, the covert narcissist would prefer to be passive aggressive. He would undermine, he would procrastinate, he would sabotage. He would make sure things don't happen. He would disintimate, he would destroy intimacy in a variety of mechanisms and ways and methodologies. And it's all there, this swamp, this swamp of black, of evil and negative. It's all there. And there is a limit to what any human being can tolerate. Covert narcissists are no different. Many of them are human beings. And so there's a limit to what they can tolerate. And they go through life and they adopt a posture of a people pleaser. They feign, first of all, they feign indifference. They pretend to be indifferent to what's being done to them. Like, if I don't show you that it hurts me, if I have a devil may care attitude, if I have a, go ahead, do what you want, see if I care, then I'm impregnable. Then I'm untouchable. Then you cannot hurt me. Then you don't have the satisfaction to see me hurt. You don't have the satisfaction to see the pain in my eyes. I'm going to pretend that, you know, who cares, do what you want. So indifference is a major apathy, indifference is a major defense of the covert narcissist. And in very extreme cases, they become numb and expressionless, literally expressionless. They have like a bland face. And because they have a poker face, they have a poker face, not to show their hand, you know. It's covered poker in a way. And the second thing they do, they collude in their own abuse. They collude in the plunder. They collude in the pillage. They collude in the invasion of their territory in the violation of their own boundaries. They collude in their own maltreatment and mistreatment and humiliation. Because they internally they perceive that if they collude with this, then they are in control. If they made it happen, then they made it happen. It's they, they started the process. They controlled it. So they tell themselves stories. The covert narcissist can tell himself, I allowed people to abuse me because I'm self-destructive. I'm self-destructive. I'm self-defeating. I actually use them. I use these people as pawns. They, I took them and they were my instruments. They were my tools for self-destruction. So they, they, they create this false fake narrative. They, they reframe situations which are essentially abusive. Situations which involve loss and pain and hurt, devastating hurt. They reframe it as I made it happen. Those of you who watched the previous videos about modification. This is the classic mechanism where an external modification, something that happens to, to the narcissist from the outside and challenges his personality and his grandiosity and the cohesion and coherence of his ability to function. So when this happens, some narcissists, some narcissists replace the story, reframe the story. Instead of saying, someone hurt me from the outside. They say, I made this person hurt me. They replace external modification with internal modification. They restore the locus of control. If someone did something to you from outside, then you're not in control. There is an external locus of control. But if you say, I made them do it. I provoked them. I humiliated them. I abused them. So they abused me back. You know, I rejected them. So they rejected me. I humiliated them. They humiliated me. I took something from them. I don't know. They're pride, they're well-being, they're happiness. So they took something from me. If you reframe the story this way, you made things happen. You are Godlike. It's a grandiose defense. So covert narcissists have this a lot. And so they try, they try somehow to control the situation. And one way to do that is to be totally self-destructive, self-defeating, passive-aggressive, suppotaging, undermining evil. Perhaps the word evil fits here somehow. But evil, not in the religious, philosophical, ethical sense, but evil in the sense that disempathic, without empathy. That's one strategy. But there is another strategy, which is much more common, by the way. Covert narcissists try to be people-pleasers. They try to have no boundaries, no dignity, no self-respect, or even to pretend to be crazy, no sanity. They're like the perennial clowns or the king's joker, you know? And in this way what they're saying is, look, I'm childlike. I'm childlike. I'm defenseless. Don't hurt me. I will give you anything you want. I will do anything you want. You can take from me anything you want. What do you want? You want my wife? Take my wife. You want my money, take my money. That's it. Do what you want. But I'm defenseless. So don't hurt me beyond what you absolutely have to do. And so they say to themselves, whatever people can do to me and to mine, people around me, my love, my nearest, my dearest, is limited by their pity, by their compassion. Maybe by their sense that there is nothing more to take. Maybe people will stop hurting me when the maintenance cost becomes too high. So some covert narcissists become people pleasers and rely on the kindness of strangers to borrow a term from a streetcar named Desire, the famous theatre play movie. So they rely on the kindness of strangers. They rely on the pity, compassion of strangers. And others, as I said, they become passive-aggressive. And they do this so that the cost of abusing them will skyrocket and escalate. And at some point the abuser would say, okay, enough is enough. It's not worth it. But of course this makes everyone around the covert narcissists feel unsafe, unprotected, especially his women, especially his wife, his spouse, his girlfriend, but not only his colleagues, his children. They feel unsafe. They feel unprotected because it's not a lack of assertiveness. It's willingly, willingly forgoing boundaries, dignity, self-respect, sanity, predictability, safety, they feel insecure. And of course they feel disillusioned. Everyone around the covert narcissists feels disillusioned. So ironically, even the covert narcissist's people-pleasing is not the normal type of people-pleasing, not the same type of people-pleasing. In a typical people-pleasing setup, the people-pleaser pleases people sacrificially. She or he, she usually says, okay, my interests are less important than your interests. My well-being is less important than your well-being. I'm going to sacrifice my happiness, sacrifice my future, sacrifice my well-being for your sake. It's not healthy, but it's far more sane and grounded than the covert narcissists' version. The covert narcissists' version is not to say I will sacrifice something for you. The covert narcissists' version is to say if you want to take something from me, whatever it is, even if you're taking from me my pride, my dignity, I will vanish, I will disappear, and by disappearing, I will undermine you because then there will be no one to take anything from. And indeed, the main strategy of the covert narcissists is the vanishing act. Suddenly, he or she is nowhere to be seen. Nowhere to be seen absenting themselves, not only physically, actually rarely physically, but absenting themselves emotionally. Not there. I'm not here. You can't hurt me. I'm not here. And it's a passive-aggressive strategy, but in their minds it's a people-pleasing strategy. So for example, a covert narcissist may tell you I'm leaving you alone because you want to be alone, or I don't care what you do with other women because I want you to be happy. In other words, I'm not here. The covert narcissist realizes that he is mentally ill, that she is utterly dysfunctional if it's a female covert narcissist. They realize this. They're incapable of maintaining even the rudiments of a relationship. Sometimes they're not capable of having sex, proper sex, not sadistic sex or masochistic sex or kinky sex, proper sex. They definitely are not able to gauge reality properly or to act in reality self-efficaciously. It is this lack of self-efficacy that underlies covert narcissism. Covert narcissists are narcissists who failed to act efficiently on the environment, failed to extract supply, to regulate his internal psychodynamics, to allow him to function. So it's a failure. The essence of covert narcissism is rarefied failure. Defeat. The covert narcissist is defeated. And so even if the covert narcissist decides on minimal targets, like I will hold on to what's mine, I will hold on to who is already with me. I will hold on to my wife because I love her. I will hold on to my possessions because they're mine. Even these decisions are non-defensible. He doesn't have the resources even to implement this kind of super minimal targets which the lowest of the lowest can. And so gradually everyone comes to regard the covert narcissists with a mixture of weariness because it's like a snake. You never know when he will lash out and kind of with a spiked tongue will do something. So with a mixture of weariness you realize that there's some processes going in the background that you will never be given access to. Stealth. Stealth processes. Ambient processes. Not good processes. Something give you. You realize there are processes there which are not totally healthy and definitely not benevolent. There's a lot of malice, malevolence, maliciousness in the air. Ambient. So people treat the covert... When I say people I mean men and women. By the way it's a rare case where both men and women treat someone the same way. So weariness, pity, revulsion and contempt. Gradually covert narcissists experiences only these reactions from other people. They are never loved. They are never hugged. They are never kissed. They are never embraced. They never feel at home. They never feel welcome and accepted let alone unconditionally. All the experiences, contempt, disgust, revulsion, weariness people will keep away from them and pity, overwhelming pity. And so some covert narcissists of course are gifted and people are envious of the gifts of such a covert narcissist. And many people project this envy and their sense of guilt and shame for abusing the covert narcissist by becoming even more aggressive. There is an unholy, unholy, unwholesome cycle of aggression with the covert narcissist. His reticence, his reluctance to engage, his inferiority, his pseudo-humility, his fakeness, his identity diffusion and instability, his cunning, his passive aggression. They provoke aggression. They provoke an aggressive reaction from his environment. But then people are ashamed that they had reacted to him this way. They feel guilty. And sometimes they envy him for some of his gifts. So this provokes even more aggression. And this more aggression provokes the covert narcissist to be even more covert and more narcissistic. And this provokes more aggression. The covert narcissist cannot extricate himself from this never-ending cycle of maltreatment and mistreatment. I mean, covert narcissists in all the videos that you see online, YouTube, they're portrayed as some kind of demons or devilish entities who are out cunningly to with subterfuge and Machiavellian ideation that they've just spent all the days thinking how to destroy you. Not so. Not so. The typical covert narcissist is actually very very sad, very broken, very damaged and once very much not to be himself. But can't. They can't. Ultimately, covert narcissists lose everyone in their life. Everyone walks away having squeezed the covert narcissist dry of any usefulness. The covert narcissist is so it's so it is so impossible to have any type of productive, happy, mutually rewarding, reciprocal relationship with the covert narcissist that people very often and very fast gravitate to a transactional relationship with the covert narcissist. They take something from him and if he insists, they give him some. But it becomes a transaction. A covert narcissist can start a love affair and within six months it will all be about money. He can establish a business with full trust and loyalty and within a year his partners will have betrayed him and introduce someone else instead of him. Substitute for him. He's constantly betrayed, constantly abandoned, constantly dropped because he offers nothing of himself. And he offers nothing of himself first of all exactly like classic and overt narcissist. There's no one there. But he also offers nothing of himself because he's hyper vigilant, paranoid, suspicious and he is afraid to offer something. So there is something I called the Dormat narcissist. From time to time the Dormat narcissist tries to fight back. The Dormat narcissist is a covert narcissist who was trampled upon to the point that he became like a Dormat and he also adopted Dormat strategies. Giving. Giving before you're destroyed. I mean the alternatives are don't give in, be defined and be destroyed or give in. So there's this variant of covert narcissist which I tongue in cheek called the Dormat narcissist. So from time to time the Dormat covert narcissist tries to fight back. But even the ways that he tries to fight back are utterly dysfunctional and counter productive. He tries to fight back by emulating and imitating a psychopath. A primary psychopath. The covert narcissist looks around and says look at me. Look at me. Everyone has sex with my wife. Everyone stole my money. Everyone humiliates me, mocks me, ridicules me, derights me, decries me, criticizes me, disagrees with me. All the time whatever I'm doing it's considered to be passive-aggressive, cunning, disgusting. People are revolted, people pity me. People make jokes at my expense. Covert narcissists have something called referential ideation. They think everyone is gossiping about them. Making jokes at their expense. So finally the narcissist says okay, can I be different? Let me try to be different. Can I stop all this? Can I extricate myself from this cesspool, from this system? And he looks around and says wow, you know what? Psychopaths get it right. No one fucks with a psychopath. No one dares to screw with a psychopath. A psychopath gets his way. Psychopaths rule, psychopaths rock. I'll be a psychopath. And so when covert narcissists attempt to become self-efficacious, when they attempt to reassert control over their lives and to establish functional boundaries, they do so by imitating primary psychopaths, not secondary, like the borderline. The borderline becomes a secondary psychopath. A secondary psychopath is someone who engages in antisocial behavior, impulsive behavior, socially unacceptable behavior, unethical behavior but still maintains emotions and empathy, so she feels bad about what she's doing. The covert narcissist tries to imitate and emulate very successfully sometimes a primary psychopath. That's a psychopath with no conscience. Like the famous title of the book by Robert Hare. See, someone without conscience. Someone who has no compunction, no regret, no remorse, no guilt, no shame. Nothing. No empathy. Nothing. People are objects to be used, abused, discarded. End of story, next case. This is the primary psychopath. Primary psychopath is not evil in the sense that not any tiny minority of primary psychopaths are sadists. And so these primary psychopaths inflict pain because they derive pleasure from inflicting pain but the overwhelming majority of psychopaths are not sadists. When they do inflict pain when they do hurt people it's instrumental. It's in order to get something. They're goal-oriented, they're goal-focused. They're not all the time very self-efficacious. Many psychopaths are all over the place. I call them the Klekli psychopaths. I make a distinction between the Klekli psychopaths and the Hare psychopaths. The Klekli psychopaths are losers, zeros. But all psychopaths are always clownish Klekli psychopaths and the goal-oriented chief executive officer psychopath. He knows where he's going, knows how to get there. All psychopaths of every considerable variety, primary psychopaths trample on people. All of them use people. All of them abuse people. All of them regard people as objects. All of them don't care. Don't care what their actions are. And so the dormant narcissist looks around and says wow, this works. It's a great strategy. Look at this guy. He has money. He has beautiful girls all over him. He enjoys life. He's traveling. I'll be like him. I'll be a primary psychopath. So he tries to fight back by becoming a primary psychopath. So many covert narcissists, for example, will become become con artists, scammers. They con people out of money. They assert themselves. They assert themselves by taking instead of giving. Most of their lives they give. They have to give to survive. But now they want to take. So how do they take? Fraud. Cheating. Cheating, I mean, monetarily. Money. Stealing. Anti-social activities. Or the covert narcissists would insist on sexual exclusivity at the commencement of an intimate relationship coupled with kinky and sadistic sex. That's his way. I'm the man now. You know? So it's very off-putting. Very off-putting to watch. Because you have this warm, warm of a person. This midget, this zero. This loser who suddenly, you know, puffs up and I'm now I'm now the king. I'm not the rooster. I'm the king of the king of the hill and he's imitating a real psychopaths. Real psychopaths. And it's very off-putting. Because you see that again, again it's a strategy of faking. Covert narcissists know only how to fake. Even when they're talented and so they would build on their talent and their gift and their endowment and fake. They would use it to fake. They would leverage whatever gifts they have. Some of them have gifts. They would leverage these gifts to fake to misbehave. To undermine water. Water, I swear. No one believes me. Okay. But you know what? The covert narcissists is a failure. I said it before. And even here when he tries to imitate a primary psychopath, he fails time and again. People, for example, see right through him. Walk away. Women team up with him and then cheat on him. Repeatedly. Why? Because their needs, emotional needs physical needs are not met. And in the hope that they set them free and let them go once they have made him aware of their ostentatious sexual inflagrant transgressions. Because one thing the covert narcissists is very good at is clinging. Clinging, neediness, emotional blackmail, stalking. You can't just come to a covert narcissist if you are his spouse, intimate partner. Romantic partner. You can't just come and say listen, we are not compatible. Let's break up like two adults. There's no adult there. There's nobody there. Adult or even child. In the case of the classic narcissist, we have a child. In the case of the covert narcissist, you have an absence, but true absence. The narcissist, the classic narcissist provides you with a whole of mirrors. There's a child there that's a true self. It's wounded. It's broken. It's damaged. It's crying. So you can't really interact with it. You can see it as the intimate partner of the narcissist. You can see this child. You can fall in love with this child. You can have maternal instincts and reflexes to protect this child, to nourish and nurture this child, but you can't really reach this child. And there's no real growth or progress. But at least the narcissist provides you with a whole of mirrors. At least he idealizes. At least he generates in you psychodynamic. He generates in you processes. Emotions, emotions, something. Covert narcissist is not even this. It's a howling. Howling, deep space void. There's not even a whole of mirrors. For example, covert narcissist are very bad at idealizing. They don't know how to idealize. But they cling. They are needy. They demand. They stop you. Stalkers come, especially erotomaniac stalkers, come out of the rows of covert narcissist. So covert narcissist is likely to become an erotomaniac stalker or any type of stalker, paranoid stalker. Much more than a classic narcissist. Classic narcissist would just let you go. Replace you. You're interchangeable. You're commodified. You're commoditized. You are dispensable. Not so with the covert narcissist. Covert narcissist would become a stalker or would not let you go. Simply. I mean physically. Would not let you go. Emotionally blackmail you. Threaten suicide. Or something like that. In this sense the covert narcissist has the same behavior like the borderline patient. And like some very sick and extreme cases of co-dependency. Dependent personality disorder. That's the clinical diagnosis. So covert narcissist are very dependent. And when they are pushed to the corner when they are under tremendous when they experience tremendous stress stressors when they're humiliated and rejected and abandoned or at risk of being abandoned and so they suddenly become borderline or co-dependent. And then when this doesn't work they become primary cyclopathy. Of course if you look at it it makes sense because the borderline is a bridge into psychopathy. Remember that the borderline becomes secondary psychopath. So what happens is essentially the covert narcissist when rejected, humiliated, abused, abandoned, stressed etc. Distressed, depressed the covert narcissist then becomes borderline in other words he becomes a secondary psychopath and then becomes a primary psychopath. You can see the logic in the but the internal experience of the covert narcissist of course is different. By the way this is common with healthy people also. No one experiences the world and himself or herself precisely as other people experience you. That's why talking to people is important. Socializing is a very important self-regulatory function. People provide you mirroring they provide you with calibration they set you straight. So the covert narcissist doesn't experience himself the way other people experience him. For him for example when he conns people, when he cheats on people and steals their money or whatever for him this is setting boundaries, asserting himself. But of course this kind of refraining is confabulated and fallacious. Think about it for a minute. What does a covert narcissist do? A covert narcissist becomes a con artist when he transitions to the primary psychopath mode when he says enough is enough I've been abused I've been molested, I've been everything I'm putting a stop to it. From now on I'm a firm man woman. I am going to get what I want. I'm going to be a primary psychopath. Okay, what am I going to do? I'm going to steal money from people. So even then what the covert narcissist does is he invents a character. The con art, the con art history is built on a fictitious character a fictional character so the covert narcissist invents a fictional character and this fictional character extracts money from it or sex or power or whatever it is that the covert narcissist decided will set him free and make him whole when the covert narcissist becomes primary psychopath he decides on goals goals that make him feel better more eco-syntonic better with himself so whatever the goals are he doesn't dare, the covert narcissist doesn't dare to go out there as himself he creates a character a fictional character and he lets people interact with this character so there's covert narcissist character people and people never interact with the covert narcissist in the primary psychopath phase they interact with the fictitious or fictional character that he had constructed for this purpose but then wait a minute if he had created a fictional character as a primary psychopath for the con job it defeats the purpose again, actually the covert narcissist ends up giving everything of himself to another person it's true that this other person was conjured up by the covert narcissist please try to understand what I'm saying all his life other people took from the covert narcissist everything now he's fed up, he's pissed off he wants to put a stop to it what does he do? he invents yet another person and that invented conjured, imaginary scripted person again takes everything from him the covert narcissist is locked locked into a pattern which he cannot break out of he is used to giving to other people he is used that other people take from him so even when he wants to take something he doesn't feel that he can take it he feels so inferior so lacking lacking in efficacy so such a zero in a loser that even when he wants to steal money from people he doesn't dare to do it himself he invents another person and he gives everything he has to that invented creature to that new entity to that new person again he perpetuates the story of his life again he gives everything to someone else that he had invented this someone else means nothing psychologically it's again not you it's again not him the benefits that flow from the con, from the fraud from the cheating they don't flow to him they flow to this imaginary firewall to this mode of exploration to this partition they flow to this creature to this character and that's where they stop the covert nazis doesn't experience it and if he does experience it by proxy as a secondary benefit like a very distant echo covert nazis doesn't allow himself even as a primary psychopath to enjoy the fruits of his misconduct if he got a drunk woman to sleep with him she's not sleeping with him she's sleeping with a fake man that he created for had created for her if he stole money from a pensioner, from a retiree he didn't steal the money nor does he enjoy the money it's the person he had created the con artist this imaginary figure that takes the money from the retiree, from the pensioner and essentially enjoys it it never gets to him even now he is always one step behind one step removed watching in envy as life unfolds in front of his eyes but unable to touch it unable to reach it because he is looking through a glass darkly it's like in the bible prophet moses god let him see the land of kanan but never allowed him to enter after 40 years of walking the nation of israel through the desert god did not allow moses did not allow moses to enter the land of kanan that was his punishment that's the punishment of the covert nazis he he can see he can grasp he can perceive what it would be like to experience life to live but he can never live he can never really experience he always has to because he is so weary, so afraid so suspicious, so hurt so damaged, so broken so inferior so inefficient he has to whatever happens can happen to the entity that he had invented when he became a psychopath and of course the classic nazis has this on a permanent basis precisely the rules of the false self that's why the classic nazis never experiences life because people are not reacting to the nazis they are reacting to the false self and the false self is not the nazis they are not the same they are the false self has very little to do with the nazis by the way characteristics, traits, behaviors they don't he doesn't share anything with the nazis so if a woman falls in love with the false self not with the nazis if the nazis makes money it's the false self that enjoys it not the nazis nazis is always an observer, a spectator watch my previous video hyper reflexivity the nazis always watches his life from the outside as though it were some curious insect, some object to be perused and studied scientifically it's a horrible feeling it's like you're removed from your own life and what do you do when you don't exist at all who is this who is observing in the case of the covert nazis even this question is unclear covert nazis makes woman women fall in love with a false apparition with an emanation with a thespian project a role play a stage play never with the real him when the grooming phase is over and the potential mate or intimate partner enters the shirt fantasy she discovers to her dismay that the covert nazis had conned her into a relationship with a complete abusive and mentally disabled stranger with him so he presents one facade the love bombing and grooming phase I have a video about these two I think I have a video about everything I have to check so in the love bombing and grooming phase the covert nazis and the classic nazis make the potential partner the intimate partner fall in love with some totally imaginary character with a fictitious character with a protagonist with a screen with a visage but when of course the relationship starts in earnest she discovers the discrepancy between the person or the man she had fallen in love with and the real man and this piece is rough this disillusion sir she becomes angry, disappointed, frustrated she feels that she had been fooled and lied to and deceived and her most fervent wish is to up and walk away by any and all means necessary if she has to have casual sex with a stranger to get rid of the covert nazis she would she would do anything she would rob a bank in the square in the days before social distancing she would do anything just to get rid of it because the pain that the covert nazis inflicts on his intimate partner is double first of all she had been deceived and lied to and that is a very bad feeling always but also she had been fooled so she is a fool he is a constant reminder how gullible and stupid she had been to have fallen in his trap no one can no one can suffer this and again by luring women into his lair I am saying women but of course you can switch the pronouns you can by luring women into his lair the covert nazis is giving himself abundantly but to another man he is luring these women not to himself but to the men he had invented a fictitious character I don't know the irresistible genius the covert nazis is doing the dirty work for this fictional protagonist he is satisfying the grandiose and sadistic needs of this imagined invented created character to uphold and prove his irresistibility to taunt, frustrate, humiliate and dispoil women captivated I don't know what whatever the needs of this imaginary primary psychopath character the covert nazis gets to work he is a servant he is the servant of his own creation it's like the golem the golem in the famous Jewish story where they made from mud and soil they made a kind of monster and then they put the name of God in the monster's mouth and it came alive it's the same with the covert nazis he's a Frankenstein he creates this golem and then he puts the name of God primary psychopath in the mouth and the golem becomes primary psychopath but the covert nazis is a servant of this golem he's working for the golem whatever happens, happens to the golem the sex is the golems the money is the golems the pleasure derived out of sex and money is the golems, the power is the golem everything is channeled everything drains into the golem the covert nazis just does the dirty and work for the golem and these are the needs of the fictional character not of the Dormat covert nazis and the Dormat covert nazis being the people pleaser that he is, he dedicates all his resources to cater to the needs of this fictional character of this imaginary entity the superhero the primary psychopath like a magician it's very difficult to comprehend but imagine that you imagine that you want someone very much but you're very afraid to reveal who you truly are so you invent false identity on Tinder you invent false identity and then you interact with the heartthrob or the drop dead gorgeous but who is interacting not you your false identities interact what are you doing you're maintaining the false identity you're working on behalf of the false identity you have become the false identities indentured servants that's how the covert nazis experiences his life and so women in committed primary diets often complain to casual sex partners to dates or to lovers when they stray when they when they cheat when they commit adultery so they often complain to the partners about the relationship notice the relationship how it's dysfunction brought on the adultery same with men of course men who stray out of committed monogamous sexually exclusive relationships they complain about the relationship they can complain about the partner but they would complain about how the partner functions in the relationship the focus would be on the relationship but typically the spouse of the intimate partner of the of the covert nazis would complain to her cheating partner or to his cheating partner about the covert nazis not about the relationship about the covert nazis and very often she would say things like he doesn't exist or all he knows to do is to be angry or something like this but the focus would be the focus would be on the problem, the dysfunction the reason for the adultery the reason for the extra marital affair the reason for the straying and the cheating the reason for exiting for the extra dyadic sex for exiting the diet the couple the reason is the identity lack of identity lack of core of the partner when the partner is a covert nazis if the partner is healthy the complaints would usually be center revolve around the relationship the relationship is not working because the partner is doing this or not doing this but it would be about the relationship it's important distinction very often the covert nazis intimate partners business partners they like many elements in the relationship with the covert nazis very often they miss these elements after the breakup or after the dissolution of the business they miss these elements there were many elements in the interaction that they liked wanted but there was no way they could countenance the covert nazis himself what he did how he acted how he reacted sometimes is acceptable or even more than acceptable but he himself is not something is seriously awry with the covert nazis himself with who he is or rather with who he is not and it makes even the greatest rewards the greatest gifts greatest adventures the greatest sex and incommensurate compensation it's I don't know possibly it's like having great sex with the sex doll or having a very intelligent conversation with an artificial intelligence up there's a feeling that everything that happens happens independent of the covert nazis every behavior of the covert nazis every contribution, every gift, every endowment every wonderful moment is there but kind of not directly emanating from the covert nazis there's a kind of disjointedness disjointedness between the covert nazis and all the whirlwind and whirlpool around him and these are the only two modes that the covert nazis has the doormat and the primary cycle sometimes after a crisis the covert nazis becomes a doormat and he keeps the psychopath comatose and for very long periods of time he remains a doormat but the primary psychopath always comes to the fore always erupts, always returns always takes over always now two concepts switching transition from one type of personality to another switching is a term borrowed from the clinical psychology of dissociative identity disorder multiple personalities in multiple personalities or dissociative identity disorder when the person whatever that is switches from one alter to another from one personality fragment or one self state to another you can see this there are usually visible signs not always, but usually and this is called switching same happens to borderline you can see distinctly when she switches from borderline to secondary psychopaths ask any disgruntled husband children, lovers over borderline they will tell you you know immediately when she switched to a psychopath it's the same with the covert nazis when she switched to a primary primary psychopath what about modification, can the covert nazis experience modification like the classic nazis yes of course, he's a nazis covert nazis is a nazis only a failed one a collapsed one, but they still are nazis he's certified so he can experience modification but in his case there's an added condition to experiencing modification modification in the covert nazis occurs when the doormat wakes up, is provoked within a shared fantasy which is micromanaged by the psychopath so when the covert nazis is in a phase of a psychopath and for example has a shared fantasy with an intimate partner and then she does something she externally mortifies him the doormat wakes up and then there's a conflict the doormat is mortified and there's a conflict between the doormat and the psychopath it is this conflict that the covert nazis experiences as modification so the covert nazis cannot cannot reconcile two dissonant self states doormat and psychopath when he's a doormat, he's never a psychopath and that's why I keep saying they are not evil, they are not psychopathic when they are doormats so when he's a doormat he's not a psychopath when he's a psychopath he's never a doormat on rare occasions owing to external modification the doormat can wake up even as the psychopath is in charge and this creates a conflict because they are both especially the doormat the genuine self states it creates a conflict by the way exactly the same happens with multiple personality disorder when for example therapy is mismanaged or sometimes it happens that two dissociative alters to remind you someone with multiple personality has a core personality it's called the host or the moderator and many many other personalities which are called alters, alternatives alternative personalities so usually there are rare diagnosis where this is not true rare dissociative diagnosis where this is not true but in the bulk of vast majority of dissociative diagnosis the alters don't know about each other when alter one is in control all the other alters are dormant inactive when alter six is in control alter one is dormant and inactive they don't know about each other they don't communicate with each other they don't inform each other except through the mediation and the agency of the host personality sometimes therapy is mismanaged and two dissociative alters are forced to meet each other and to communicate with each other and this creates enormous breakdown enormous dissonance leading sometimes to psychosis psychotic disorder this is the equivalent of modification in someone with multiple personality same with the covert narcissist he can be mortified when this happens when the dormant is forced to confront the psychopath to realize that there is a psychopath how the psychopath looks what he does to people and so on the qualities of the dormant the characteristics, the traits behaviors are not the exact diametrical opposite of the primary psychopath the dormant abhors the primary psychopath and of course the primary psychopath abhors the dormant because he thinks the dormant is weak and deserves to die so there is a lot of self-destruction in the process the psychopath wants to kill the dormant he regards the dormant as a vulnerability as a weak despicable wretch who needs to be eliminated and the dormant regards the psychopath as an abomination as the beast they are both at each other's throats fighting in the internal space it approximates very much dissociative identity disorder multiple personality even as the dormant continues to process the modification the psychopath it continues at pace with his exploits and so he forcefully dissociates the dormant in order to function what the psychopath is trying to push the dormant back in to bury him to deactivate him kind of when the covert narcissist experiences external modification, for example he has been horribly publicly humiliated his defences crumble the dormant exits but the psychopath is in control bloody hell I have to bury this I have to eliminate him because it's weak, it's vulnerable, it's a danger same dynamic exactly exists in multiple personality dissociative identity disorder the host personality activates protector personalities personalities that protect the fragmented hyper structure or superstructure of multiple personality and if the core personality is at risk, the protector personality will emerge and protect most protector personalities most protector personalities in MPD, in multiple personality most of them are psychopaths primary psychopaths people sometimes say the covert narcissist is gifted but he is high maintenance and difficult it's very typical for the covert narcissist to lose jobs because of this women say he's interesting, he's fun to be with he's great sex maybe even he's lovable but there's something very wrong about him and we cannot put the finger something is right someone puts the parts together wrongly there's this uncanny valley feeling and feeling of key, of note something is not okay and you can't really verbalize it you can't identify it accurately and this is a feeling that covert narcissist provokes even more than the classic narcissist classic narcissist is a bumbling, clownish, grandiose pompous, verbose fool a fool of himself fool you know that I mean you say it immediately the covert narcissist is different you very often the covert narcissist passes as totally normal for very long periods of time but every time you meet him there is in you this alert constant background alert that you want to shut off because there's no reason or rhyme or indication why it should be activated but your intuition knows better any time this alert is on walk away in 1995 I invented the no contact strategy I've been criticized for well over a decade by therapists and so today it's the mainstream no contact red alert, warning sign walk away do not speculate and do not be grandiose and assume that you can diagnose the person or that you can fix the person don't you can't both