 I seem to be recording Yeah, so So the thing that That brought me back to your content recently too is I looked up sex and love addiction because I was talking to a friend a couple days ago and he goes to the sex and love addiction anonymous meetings of addict and anonymous meetings and when I looked up that on youtube yours was like in top four videos that popped up about that topic and you said something interesting in there about How you feel that Well, first of all, I think I think we should probably tell people what like What is self sex and love addiction? These are two separate issues actually Yeah, sex addiction is the compulsive need Just a second sex addiction is a compulsive need to have sex. Let me put my back up. I forgot Sorry, it's okay. Don't you have compulsive? There you go. Yeah So sex addiction is a compulsive need to have sex Without any emotional attachment or interaction with the sex partners When the sex partner is essentially objectified and used as a glorified animated dildo or animated sex doll It is very similar to other types of addiction We distinguish two two big groups of addiction One is called substance addictions and the other group is called process addictions addictions to process So the sex addict is addicted to the process of obtaining the sex Not to the sex itself That's something that few people know He is addicted to the chase. He's addicted to the conquest. He's addicted to the aftermath He is addicted to a variety of variables that accompany the sex And that's why a typical sex addict has very brief encounters quickies in a way. He doesn't engage in real involved sex and so Sex addiction has nothing to do with love addiction and conflating the two is very not useful Love addiction is also a process addiction But it is the attempt to regulate internal processes or to cater to psychological needs by believing oneself to be in love Now I'll break this down There are internal processes. For example, you have emotions. These emotions can be very strong Too strong for you. They can overwhelm you a process called dysregulation You have a sense of self-worth Your sense of self-worth comprises your sense of self-esteem and self-confidence You need to regulate this. You need to stabilize it. Some people cannot Their sense of self their self-esteem goes up and down like a yo-yo, you know, they can't control it You have cognitions thoughts Some people cannot control their thoughts They have intrusive thoughts The thoughts intrude and they they can't stop thinking specific thoughts So as you see anything internal can go haywire Anything internal can go awry or get out of control And there are some people who fall in love in order to regulate their internal environment When they fall in love They have a sense of inner peace Oceanic belonging and fitting in They reduce their anxiety. It's a kind of anxiolytic like anti-anxiety medicine They medicate self-medicate with love Not with a partner Not with a partner. It's very important. They don't fall in love with other people They fall in love with love with love itself They need to feel the process of falling in love Because it regulates their internal environment and caters To some needs for example, it raises their self-esteem So many of them fall in love In order to regulate their self-esteem. This also applies to sex addiction Many sex addicts Engage in sex in order to regulate the sense of self-esteem. So In in both these cases It's not about anyone out there The partner is totally irrelevant In the first case of sex addiction It is the process of obtaining sex that helps the sex addict To reduce his anxiety To regulate his self-esteem To feel good about himself To avoid depression, etc, etc And in the case of the love addict It is a process of being in love That Does the same things caters to needs Caters to and regulates internal processes The partner Is fungible interchangeable Anonymous in effect Even in love addiction the partner is essentially a commodity like grains of rice, you know And this Reminds us very much of narcissism Because the narcissist does exactly the same The narcissist uses his intimate partner To cater to his emotional needs The narcissist uses the intimate partner for example to obtain narcissistic supply attention And uses the attention to regulate his sense of self-worth But the narcissist doesn't care Who is the intimate partner? He just cares to have an intimate partner It could be anyone And everyone The partner is totally interchangeable. That's why when the narcissist Discards the partner Walks out on the partner breaks up with the partner the next day. He has another partner if not the next hour Because the partner doesn't matter he's not there It's a figment of fantasy In love addiction in sex addiction and in the addiction to narcissistic supply Addiction to attention known as narcissistic They're all addictive disorders in a way And so It's very disorienting Because when you're on the receiving end of love addiction You feel as if you have never been loved before Love addiction is an hugely intense And so it's a laser focus and you feel That the your lover your intimate partner the the one who loves you Loves you like you have never been loved before and you will never be loved after It's the most extremely intense form of love But And so it's very disorienting to realize at the end of the relationship that it could have been anyone You're not special. You've not been chosen. You just happen to be there And this is what victims reject victims of love addiction because love addiction victimizes Victimizes people same with sex addiction same with narcissism, which is attention addiction Addictions victimize Alcoholics victimize people all the time. They're nearest and dearest the family members. You name it Junkies victimize everyone. They steal money from their mothers. I mean addictions victimize people They're not victimless crimes Because when you talk to addicts, they say why do you care? I'm in you know, it's my body. I'm I'm doing to my body. Whatever I want You have no right to tell me what to do with my body true But you have no right to victimize other people as you habitually do as an addict so What is very difficult for victims in In narcissistic abuse relationship in love addiction sex addiction is very difficult for them to accept That they are nobody's nobody's Anyone could have been there in that bed Anyone could have been there in that so-called love relationship and anyone could have been the last his intimate partner They want to feel special. They want to feel chosen. They want to feel unique They want to feel that there was Sense and rhyme and reason in all that has happened But the reason it's totally meaningless It's accidental so Of course the partner Of the narcissist the partner in the love addiction and the partner in the sex addiction They make their own choices and they are responsible for their choices And they should learn how to not make these choices in the future But as far as the narcissist or the sex addict or the love addict The the partner is around And so we call this pro we call this auto erotism the the love addict Is invested in feeling love The sex addict is invested in his in his own body actually He uses someone else's body to masturbate with The narcissist is invested in his fantasy Of grandiose of grandeur and so and so the partner is just there to uphold the fantasy participate in it But these people are inside their heads They never exit their heads As far as they're concerned there's nobody out there They're just using people the users Love addiction is extremely difficult to to change or to cure Because it really it's really a dopamine rush to be in love It's it's probably the most profound addiction The most difficult to disentangle You can go call turkey or many drugs. You can suffer a lot, but you'll be over them. You can you know, but love Love is everything Love has emotional dimension cognitive dimensions social dimension You know love is intimacy. Love is holding love. Love is such a total solution You know people say love cures all which is another piece of nonsense Because they believe that love is a total solution And so being in love all the time He's a dopamine rush. How would you give this up? Why would you give this up? It's very difficult to convince the love addict That he's an addict or she's an addict and she should give it up She said I would never give up being in love. It's the most amazing feeling in the world When I'm in love the world is in color when I'm not in love the world is black and white I want to live. I feel alive when I'm in love. I feel dead when I'm not in love Why would I choose to not be in love? I want to be in love So it's very difficult to cure this But the love addict Doesn't love it's not love It's it's exploitation and usage. It's not love Love is about accepting that the other party is separate from you And that together you can enrich each other's lives by allowing each other To develop independently And to grow independently This is not love. This is annexation. This is invasion This is this is the the partner in the sex addiction or the love addiction is an object Absolute object There's no love there It's it's a drug a drug to regulate your mood your self-esteem your whatever Yeah, I feel like that's A definite issue that I have that I didn't really realize until recently. Um, even when I was Having sex with this one person she said that I feel like she said I feel like you're not here I feel like I'm having sex with a robot and that at first hit my ego And I'm like, what do you mean? You think I'm not good enough or you know, like I but then recently I realized I have massive intimacy issues like massive massive intimacy issues and I I'm essentially kind of doing Or I am doing what you what you spoke of Like I don't think consciously or I'm just gonna use them. But that is kind of what I'm doing. But also I feel like I get into these relationships with people who are Either it's a codependent and they're feeding my They're being like Did the sex doll in a sense or we're both each other's You know deal those sex doll thingy at the same time because my my last relationship she used to I don't know if this is just like a weird crazy thing or if this is correlated, but She would have conversations with my penis And then I I felt she was used like kind of using my body in a sense, but then then You know, she would talk to my penis have conversations like whisper to it and I would say what are you saying? She's and she'd go It's just between me and him and I thought she was joking and she was dead serious and she would do it all the time so Yeah, this is This phenomenon is called reduction It's when we reduce the partner into a single organ a single part And of course, you know fetishism Fetishism is when we interact sexually with a specific part of the body. For example a food feed food fetish or Breasts or ass or whatever. So fetishism is a form of reduction And so when you When you want to avoid intimacy with a totality of the partner you isolate a part of the partner an organ You know, and then you interact mostly with that organ It's in extreme forms. It's fetishism. Otherwise, it's reductionism And that's common in when both partners have trouble with intimacy Now intimacy We we are lied to you know going back to the beginning of our conversation when we spoke about self-help and everything We are lied to about this too We are lied to We are being told starting at a very early age Adolescence the latest we are being told that nothing is more wonderful than intimacy That we should pursue intimacy that intimacy is the total solution and the total cure The panacea if we will only be if we will only find intimacy, we will find happiness We will find gratification and tranquility for life We will have we will become better people We will grow and develop and accomplish goals Intimacy is the cure all This is of course a distorted view of intimacy Intimacy is hard work Intimacy is hard work And it's an extremely frightening proposition. It's very threatening To be intimate to be truly intimate You need to expose yourself totally You need to be 100,000 million percent vulnerable because if you're only 99 percent vulnerable, you're not intimate You need to be totally vulnerable and exposed to attack And here's the breaking news in a majority of cases you will be attacked People will take advantage and abuse your vulnerability In an overwhelming majority of cases So intimacy is a seriously terrifying proposition Instead of telling us as children or adolescents listen Intimacy is risky In intimacy you need to be 100% vulnerable Intimacy is very hard work day in and day out 24, 7, 60 you know 60 minutes an hour You need to invest yourself in intimacy. You need to commit to intimacy otherwise it won't work And so instead of telling us the bad news about intimacy We are we are sold the disneyland fantasy variant of intimacy which does not exist anywhere like ever So people go and search for intimacy and they get disappointed and heartbroken time and again And then they have two options. They can say The hell with that I'm not looking for interest in intimacy anymore. It sucks Or they say much more commonly something is wrong with me Something is wrong with me Presumably everyone else is having a grand time with intimacy and only I can't do intimacy. So something is wrong with me I need therapy And the truth is nothing is wrong with you Intimacy rarely works It is a convoluted mechanism You need a user's manual of a thousand pages long in the best case intimacy Extremely rarely works And in a majority of cases you will experience loss And heartbreak and hurt and pain and you will be badly damaged and broken And you will have to work extremely hard And then you will be badly damaged and broken So this is the truth about intimacy. So why should we why do I advocate intimacy? Why do I think you should pursue it despite everything? Because it's good for you to be vulnerable This is the path to self-love and self-recognition self-acceptance and self-awareness Intimacy is the ultimate form of therapy Ultimate and it's you know relatively cheap compared to to therapy It is true intimacy that you are forced to face yourself You're pushed to the limits You look at yourself in the mirror and you're naked in every possible way physically emotionally mentally you're naked you're vulnerable You open yourself up to true information about who you are Which is very often not favorable You know It's it's a great exercise At healing and becoming complete Not perfect. No one is but becoming complete There's no other pathway not therapy Not sex Not infatuation and limerence. Not there is no other pathway None except intimacy It is through the agency of the intimate partner the partner who is in you in this mess It is through the agency of this partner That you become you it's a process of becoming And it's your only chance to become if you never experience real intimacy You are never you That's not me. That's Eric wrong You're never you Do you want to be you know some people say I don't want to be me because I strongly suspect that I suck So I don't want to be me I want to be someone else. I want to be Donald Trump. I want to be rich I want I don't know what I want. I want to be you know, I want to be a billionaire I want to be a playboy. I don't want to be me And that's legitimate That's another thing we should accept That many many people don't want to be themselves They want to be someone else. They want to play a game. They want to live in fantasy They want to pretend fake it until you make it live confabulate. What have you we have to accept this We can't fight all these battles all the time and win them all We have to accept that there are such people and stay away if we can But I think a majority maybe not a big majority But I think a majority of people do want to come face to face with themselves at some point They do want to know they do want to know who they are and they do want to become Maslow Abraham Maslow called it self actualization They want to actualize themselves. They want to see where would my potential take me? What else can I do? What can I be good at? And who am I And there is no way to answer these questions for you Except if you're intimate with another person It's kind of like an echo chamber as well. Isn't that there? Yes in many ways Not only echo chamber, but the therapist imposes her own values and beliefs and there's that's million schools And if you don't conform to that school, you are shapeshifted I'm not a fan of of psychology and of therapy strangely because I'm a professor of psychology, but I'm not a fan of either Therapy has a lot to do with it. It's a lot to do with it. It's a lot to do with it Therapy has its uses We're not going to it right now But intimacy far outweighs therapy When it comes to realizing who you are and becoming who you are and actualizing yourself Far outweighs and yes, of course, you have to pay a price What the heck do you know anything that's free? There's no free lunch. Of course, you have to pay price The price you pay is a potential to be heard. Oh, you know what? Let me let me amend this The certainty that you will be heard The near certainty that you'll be heard your big boy go get hurt Go experience loss Loss is the engine and driver of growth and development and becoming loss When you gain when you win Donald Trump loses and winners. It's when you gain when you win You're not yourself Because you conform to societal expectations You're a winner in the eyes of society, but you're a loser in your eyes Loss is individual gain is social So if you want to be an individual you want to be you You need to experience loss and pain and suffering and harm And damage and you need to be broken so that we can set your bones properly Because your bones right now are not set properly. You need to break yourself You know the military knows this you go to boot camp What do they do in boot camp? You think they train you to use rifles? I know I've served three and a half years in the military They don't train you on how to use rifles. This you learn in two weeks They break you They break you They break you because they want to put you together the way they want Which is not Something I support, but they are right about the process You have to break yourself To put yourself correctly together There's no shortcut No shortcut If you love yourself You inflict on yourself pain and loss and harm Self-love is about vulnerability to loss That's self-love. It's a great definition of self-love not the bullshit that Coaches are selling you know online That self-love is about being Being great again You know if you just the giant within all this nonsense. That's not self-love Self-love Is about saying I am imperfect I'm incomplete and very often I'm helpless and hopeless And I can fix myself only through the agency of another person's Presence and gaze And to benefit from this gaze and presence. I need to be me Otherwise, what's the deal? What's the benefit of this? I need to be me really and to get proper input as to who I am and what I am And this input is painful. Of course, it's painful Because you start the the journey Being imperfect. So the the input from your partner would be you are imperfect And that hurts That hurts. It's a narcissistic injury But at the end of this road You will be so at peace with yourself and so one with yourself That you will be the giant This is to become a giant A real giant doesn't have many cars and many beautiful blondes and many, you know And access to coke unlimited amounts of coke. That's not a real giant A real giant is someone who is it who is one with himself at utter peace with who he is Consequently, he needs no one He chooses to have people in his life. He doesn't need them There's a big difference When you introduce people into your life You can either need them. So you're an addict. You're dependent. You're you're nobody if you need people Or you can be in a position where you don't need people at all not one ever nothing no people But you choose to have them in your life when you choose to have in your life It's from a position of strength. How can you be strong by being you? There's no other source of strength Everything else can be taken away from you When we started torture victims I did time I did time in prison in one of the worst prisons in the world Not Not a white collar thing. I was punished. I was punished by the supreme court judge I humiliated and he sent me to one of the worst prisons in the world I went there and I spent almost a year in that prison and so What is the source of strength? What are you left with when you're in such a prison? They took away from me a business empire 40 million dollars. They took away my wife. She divorced me. I lost everything Everything I had holds in my shoes Nothing I was left with nothing But I had me That's what you're left with ultimately You your memories your identity who you are Everything else you think you have you don't have Everything else you think you you don't have the woman who loves you. You don't have your apartment. You don't have Nothing your reputation nothing is bullshit. You have nothing. You have nothing I have nothing. No one has anything Except themselves and if you don't have even that Then I pity you All I have to do is pity you if you don't have even that Like I know you have nothing Anyhow you have nothing I have nothing But I have myself if you don't have yourself even Then you're worse than me worse worse often me, you know, I pity you Sort of come That the whole thing about intimacy see that would explain um why The My leg fetish is a form of reductionism Which oh they don't have that then they're not the you know, it's Damn That's a problem Probably right. That's not a good thing because you're terrified of focusing on the person So you're reducing the person to parts, you know And you're terrified of being you with that person. So you are you with a leg With a leg you feel safe I'm safe with the leg, you know Regrettably it's attached to other parts, you know, so Oh, yeah enough to face the whole thing Okay that and then the um There was a term that I learned from the the the SLA a Emotional Emotional uh Anorexia is that an actual It's not an actual clinical term, but yeah, it's used Yeah But it's not wrong right emotional anorexia like the the idea of it. Yes, the idea is okay. There's no it's not a clinical Yeah, because that's something I I realized. Oh, that's Something that I struggle with heavily as well, which is kind of ironic because I'm uh, I do stand-up comedy Which I feel safe on a stage. I'm so vulnerable But I'm not really being vulnerable You know, you know, thank you. That's why you don't feel vulnerable You when you when you do stand-up comedy, I watch a few When you do I mean all stand-up comedians not only all all all actors all, you know public persona public figures in a way That's why we say public figure That's your figure in the public. That's that's what we call uh persona. It's a mask kind of so whatever If they pelt you with rotten tomatoes, they're not pelting you with rotten tomato They're pelting him the guy who tells the jokes, you know You're one step removed. You want to remove all the time not only when you do stand-up comedy From the little that you've told me you want to remove the sex once you're removing stand-up comedy You you're kind of an observer. You kind of stand aside. You you don't Take the risk You don't take the plunge you're You're all the time You're reserved. There's always something in reserve always always a refuge a sanctuary place to run away to Inside your mind, you know And so you're never truly involved or truly committed to anything or anyone You do things and you may do things for decades But that's not like being committed I'm talking about emotions There is a cognitive commitment a professional commitment a sexual commitment, but It's a superficial It's superficial because it never involves Who you are and your emotions this you For some reason which I don't know You are Not comfortable not to say terrified You you crave intimacy. I don't think you don't I think you actually crave intimacy, but at the same time You're afraid of it It's like kryptonite, you know, it's your kryptonite. This is your kryptonite and I think The particular line of work you've chosen which is stand-up comedy Allows you To be you by not being you. It's like Now I'm going to tell jokes I'm going to be politically incorrect I'm going to provoke you and tantalize you and taunt you But If there are any adverse reactions or something I'm I'm pretty protected because it's not me doing this It's I'm not playing the part of a stand-up comedian. I think that's the issue With you and with many actors you're playing the part You're playing the part of a stand-up comedian Now that's a very important distinction You can be a stand-up comedian And you can play the part of a stand-up comedian It's like you're participating in a movie about you Where you played the stand-up comedian I don't know if I'm getting through Oh, no, it makes sense. Yeah, it's like your life is a movie and now in this movie You're an actor And your role in the movie is a stand-up comedian So you do a stand-up comedian in the movie this movie happens to be your life Your life is moving like a movie So you're a bit of a director film director. You're a bit of an observer. You're an actor But the whole thing Is doesn't feel real I think the sense of reality is missing in your life a lot Many things don't feel real to you. I think You go through you go through them But they don't feel real Because you have this observer stance You keep your distance. It's a protective wall. It's like a firewall That's very accurate because I felt I was talking to my friend and I told him I feel kind of like a zombie walking through life Now because the high of the stand-up I need bigger things bigger stages to feel that But now it's kind of just going through the motions. It's just You know, I don't I don't feel and that's why You're absolutely right. I I'm now I'm trying to change that because I crave intimacy I'm terrified of it But I and I keep protecting myself by avoiding it doing monk mode celibacy Moments and then you know, and it's like oh, I'm gonna learn something I don't learn shit. I'm just like I'm protecting myself and that's the thing. I just was able to admit Two days ago I watch you and you're funny. You make me laugh Oh, but you will be you will be A hell of a lot better Stand-up comedian the minute you become you The minute you don't play the stand-up comedian comedian the minute you are the stand-up comedian The minute you fully engage your life the minute you own your life the minute you are in it really in it Not observing it not managing it not directing it not avoiding it in it And this can be achieved only through intimacy Not even therapy intimacy You need to find someone with whom you would not be afraid to be hurt. I guarantee you hurt and loss guaranteed money back But you need to find someone with whom you will not be afraid to experience loss and pain and then expose yourself become vulnerable totally intimate and experience the loss and heartbreak and pain You need to go through this process Otherwise you will never live your life. You're not living your life. You're living a scripted life kind of You need to live your life You have potential because I watch your your To make someone laugh You need to really access them. It's a sublime. It's a sublime art art form in ancient Greece Stand-up comedians in a way there were the the ultimate art form, you know comedians So you need to really touch people. So you know how to really touch people. Obviously it made me laugh But You could be a hell of a little better Just by becoming you Just by becoming you But you need to go through a lot a lot of pain and hurt and harm and loss and everything With someone you can trust someone, you know who will not destroy you just for the for the heck of it just for the fun of it, you know Someone you you say, okay, it may end badly But if it does end badly, she will be my friend in these difficult moments. She will not you know Jump all over me It's funny to say that because that's what I was thinking along those lines. I'm I'm Trying to experience things more now. I wasn't letting myself experience anything except just the comedian just comedy and uh, I'm trying to be a more I guess well-rounded human being or just somebody that experiences Experience a human experience because I felt like I was I was living but not living The past few years, so I will give you the clinical term for this because we are about to wrap up The clinical term for this is called constriction When we are terrified of something for example intimacy or losing control somehow or I don't know addiction or whatever We tend to narrow life We tend to begin to rule out certain things certain activities certain exposures Central vulnerabilities. So we narrow life becomes more and more and more narrow And so we tend to become one track minded We do only comedy. We do only business. We do only politics. You know, we do only we do only sex We do only love addictions, you know, so this is called constriction and it's very typical In your case, there's a process of constriction. You focus on the professional side And you're terrified to confront the privacy Again, I don't know why I I don't want I don't want to to be really intrusive as far as private this is going to be online So I don't want to be too intrusive But the advice I gave you I think is valid You need to experience a relationship with someone you trust You need to be you in this relationship totally vulnerable You need to anticipate loss and pain because they will come But when they do come you need to trust that woman or that person that she would be there for you as a friend want Leverage this to hurt you even more But we try to mitigate and ameliorate the hurt And there are such people I'm 62 years old. I can tell you there are such It's not a myth. They're definitely such people They hurt you and so on but then they they're there for you They carry you through somehow like like in Vietnam in a war They carry you through on their shoulders somehow They have your back I wish you I wish you well It's been it's been good to talk to you Professor back and thank you very much for being on the podcast. I'm definitely taking your advice to heart Thank you very time and guys The uh, I gave you permission Okay, so we are both we are both recording each other Oh, yeah Essentially two FBI snitches I know right We're both, uh, we're just both Benedict Arnold's, you know, we just yes exactly Let us let us jovially betray each other. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes. That's the best form of betrayal Indeed, indeed reciprocity is everything. I agree. Yes. Yes very much. Um, yeah, well, you know, thank you again for, you know, giving me your time I appreciate you being on the thank you for having me podcast. Thank you. Um Okay, so I'll do a little introduction and then we'll just I guess we'll just get into it and yeah um Would you like me to introduce myself save you the the heartache? Yeah, because I'm worried I'm going to introduce you in a very horrible way All right, I want I don't want to do you injustice Well, my name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of malignant self-love narcissism revisited many other books And I'm a professor of psychology in several universities I suspect that's what we are talking we Supposedly will focus on psychological issues or social psychological issues. I assume So I think by way of introduction we can dispense with this and just get on with business Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um So You your videos years ago probably seven or eight years ago saved me from Being in a horrible horrible extremely narcissistic friendship That none of us saw in the friend group And we've we always felt something was kind of off and then I just decided to look into narcissism and your videos popped up And I did a deep dive into like a heavy deep deep dive of What it was a covert narcissism and like the dangers of it and you know how to approach these things and And and and you made me aware of what was actually going on With this friendship, which yeah, yeah, so I'm glad you never could be of help Yeah And after that The friendship because you said the only real way to deal with somebody at that level of narcissism is To basically run away like you can't really do much about it Right because we tried No, no contact right and then and then after that happened because he would do like just the the weirdest things and and he would do a lot of things where Uh, he would hang out with each one of us separately Which brought us into his world, right? But then the few times we would hang out in a group He would say his grandiose things and talk about like chinese history for no reason and weird strange stuff and uh And we'd look at each other and we'd be and we'd go like Why are you what do you hear what he's saying? But alone we couldn't see it We couldn't see it at all and then once we ended the friendship we just we just became a lot happier but uh But yeah, and then and then the thing that stood out to me too was when you were talking about Uh, that you yourself are a narcissist as well And and that was like all I needed to hear. I was like, oh, okay, let's hear it. We have to See what he has to say We just say oh no no contact no contact is a very difficult strategy to implement Especially in anglo-saxon countries and most specifically in the united states because in the united states there's a series of mass delusions Which permeate all the self-help industry and the therapeutic industry Therapeutic industry. So one of these delusions is every problem has a solution There's another delusion you never give up on people people are redeemable You know another solution is if you just want it badly enough you can change yourself And by changing yourself you will have changed other people These are all delusions. They are counterfactual. They're not true. Not every problem has a solution Some people are irredeemable and incorrigible. There's nothing you can do about them anymore You just need to give up on them And of course You may be able to change yourself. It doesn't happen too often by the way Contra to the hype You may be able to change yourself probably tangentially You know fringe in fringe ways but even then Other people are not guaranteed to adapt to your change. They are much more likely to walk walk out on you Or break up with you or something So there are these these foundational myths the mythology of the self-help industry because people make a lot of money Of the self-help industry so it became excruciatingly fallacious and misleading Very dangerous development in volume started in the 60s and 70s and it's it's full force now With all this magical thinking of the law of attraction and the secret and awakened the giant within and all this you know bs It's it's really bad out there. It's really bad out if you're looking for real help You're extremely unlikely to find it YouTube for example, which is a platform where 63 percent of people go looking for help YouTube is infested utterly infested With self-styled experts who have no credentials no experience and no knowledge about what they're talking It's it's State of things in my to my mind Yeah, and even on tiktok, uh, that's where I got even worse. I've noticed where everybody's a um like a master of of this self-help thing and Even psychology, but all the all the all they are doing is regurgitating things. They've heard and then The the audience who I was watching says oh, that's exactly how I feel Oh, you know everything but what's really happening is it's it is just like An echo chamber echo chamber. Yeah. Yeah Did everybody's just agreeing with each other to continue this propaganda? of Just bullshit essentially Well, mind you that's um, that's a social a social phenomenon that permeates or invades other fields of life You have this in politics. You have this in Debates about rights should you have this right or you shouldn't have this right? He's abortional right LGBT transgender you I mean Polarization and echo chambers. That's that's a new discourse There's no real exchange of information opinions and views no real respect For other people for other people and so on so forth. So you you heard like you end up with like-minded people and they They echo and reflect you and you feel comfortable and cozy and you know warm and familiar Yeah So i'm curious a little bit more about your opinions on the self-help industry because I've It's helped me to a certain degree, right? Uh, at least for whatever bottom pit that I was in years ago but you know, because I kind of needed that um that Kind of ignorance, you know To move forward to just like hope and believe in something But there is a point where it's like How much is it helping? And and what's the truth? So I'd like to hear a little bit more about your opinions on the The vast majority of self-help texts are ill founded in the sense that they contradict findings in so in psychology psychology Is very counter-intuitive. It's not a science. It's an aspiration to science, but it's still very good at documented the human mind And what we are finding out in psychology Contradicts something like 90 percent of the self-help advice and self-help pseudo information out there However, the self-help industry provides you with a sense of belonging a sense of community A sense of shared misery commiseration kind of A sense that there is hope a fantasy in effect. It's a fantasy world Where there is hope because everything ultimately turns out for the better everything can be fixed If you only put your mind to it. It's magical thinking. It's very infantile Children have this children believe that if they think about these something about something hard enough it's going to happen Or or conversely if they think bad thoughts these bad thoughts are going to manifest a lot So it's a very it's a very infantile thing, but you know after abuse In the in the aftermath or the wake of abuse and trauma You are reduced to a childlike state You are so hurt so broken so damaged that effectively you are a child Your you regress clinical term is regression. There is infantile regression following trauma and abuse So you are a child and maybe the self-help industry caters to this phase in recovery Where you're so helpless and so hopeless And so infantile that you need parental figures to tell you that everything is going to be okay patchy on the back Promise you you know the horizon and so on so forth. The problem is that that is addictive The problem with the self-help industry is addictive You can't extricate yourself even when you have Transversed even when you have matured or graduated the infantile phase And you are ready ready to take on life with its challenges and everything Yes, you still remain addicted to the self-help industry the self-help industry Perpetuates for example the victim stance It keeps telling you that it wasn't your fault That you had contributed nothing to the predicament you found yourself in That it's this it's all a morality play between good and evil and you were the good side and you're all good It's it's what we call a splitting defense So the messaging of the self-help industry Is that You are essentially a passive object You have been the recipient of a force of nature of some kind A natural disaster The narcissist for example is demonized and compared to tornadoes and viruses and I don't know what It's it's as if you have you bear no responsibility whatsoever for the choices you have made Decisions you've taken Your emotions and cognitions or you you you were just a magnet A passive thing Now this is an extremely bad mindset Because at some point you need to grow up And you need to take responsibility for your actions and contributions in order to not Repeat the cycle in order to not enter re enter the same trap again And this is what the self-industry self-help industry fails you Because for monetary reasons for pecuniary reasons for profit They want you to remain a victim for as long as possible Because victims consume the consume books the consume self-help courses the consume retreats and seminars And workshops They they're good consumers So they want to freeze you in this state of mind And if if at all possible to keep you this way till the day you die so It's pernicious. I think the the disadvantages far outweigh the benefits In my view overall looking at it overall Yes, they cater to your needs in the first six months of the trauma and abuse When you're really down on the floor and you know, you need someone to lift you up They cater to this need They place you within communities of like-minded people like experienced people and that's very helpful But after that They fixate you in a seriously bed state of mind as a victim As a child as and they never let you go. They have their claws in you. That's the end of it. They're like pushers. It's a drug industry So drugs have benefits I mean if you've done drugs, you know, you know, they Initially they're they're very uplifting and they're wonderful and you know, but You get addicted and then you end up homeless and worse yeah, that um I can relate to that because well, not the homeless part, but I can relate to that because uh uh When I wasn't doing Anything with my life really I consumed so much content of self-help of just belief and anything's possible And I'd read these books and just read other people's stories about how they were homeless And I became millionaires and just achieved everything and I'm still sitting there just like You know with my dick in my hand not doing anything Like just going nowhere, right? And then it wasn't until I actually started doing Holding myself accountable and started doing things and taking action that I started consuming less and less of it and then the magic of The these these self-help things started to lose its power As I started to kind of I feel like that's when I Start to enter the real world in a sense in my mind Exactly. It's a fantasy as I said. It's a fantasy. They create a fantastic space for you Where you are blameless and blemishless and flawless and perfect and angelic and the reification of good And you're a hapless victim It was never your fault and never your contribution And you made all the right choices and you couldn't have known and you know This is what a mother would do to a two-year-old or a six-month-old I mean she would cost him and protect him and a bad mother by the way A bad mother a mother who denies her child access to reality is a bad is seriously bad mother So that's a what a bad mother would do And beyond a certain point it's counterproductive. It's debilitating it it it renders you dysfunctional and leery of reality wary of reality and You know because it's a catastrophizing narrative It's a narrative which says basically it can happen to you again any minute Because you have done done nothing to deserve this. There's nothing you can do in the future to avoid it you know It's it's a very catastrophizing and disabling narrative That's at the core of the self-help industry. It didn't used to be the case by the way You know the first ones who came out with self-help books were very very serious Psychologists such as Carl Rogers So the first self-help authors Were heavyweight psychologists and all they tried to do was popularize The lessons they've learned in psychology but then there was this This avalanche of democratized democratized discourse Anyone and his dog can publish a book on amazon kindle kdp, you know Anyone can declare himself or reserve an expert by virtue of having had a single abusive relationship Anyone um can ossify credentials or lie about credentials There are no gatekeepers There's a process of disintermediation in the sense that no one is protecting you from bad content from wrong content You know in the 60s and 70s and 80s we had editors We had curators when the internet started we had moderators Today there's nobody there You are you're on your own this there's a tsunami of nonsense misinformation disinformation and malicious information that tsunami and You you're on your own no one is kind of There were at the beginning of the internet there were curatorial projects There was for example the open directory project and so on Were editors used to choose prime content on the internet There's nothing like it anymore. It's You know ranking is by popularity and and They're they're commercial interest that push bad content just because the the authors of content pay And and that includes youtube by the way YouTube sponsorship agreements with specific specific channel content creators and so on regardless of the quality of the content So it's really really bad out If you are So and people lost trust in experts They lost trust in scholars and experts and academics So there's no one to go to They don't trust the mainstream media There's no one left You you look to your peers You you try to you know Somehow fit into other people's experiences But you fail to realize that other people's experiences have very little to do with you actually Because you are so fundamentally different to other people Every one of us is a unique creation I sound like an evangelist, but But that's the truth every one of us psychologically is a unique creation Extremely so unique that it's it's like we share one percent psychological DNA me Wow, you you can learn very little from other people's experience Which is my beef with psychology, but I think psychology will never be a science We can learn very little from other people's experience. We Some warning signs maybe, you know, but even that is you know, highly idiosyncratic highly individual So you need experts you need experts that people lost trust in medical doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists and physicists No one trusts anyone for anything And there is this wave of egalitarianism I have my facts who have your facts and If you have a phd in biology, it doesn't make any difference Because my ideas about biology are equal to your ideas despite your education And so I've I've been on a forum a few years ago And there's a guy a guy said the battle of Hastings was in 1066 It's a battle in view 19 was in 1066 and the other guy said no it was in 1038 And the first guy said well, here's a link to an encyclopedia article and the second guy said That's your opinion. My opinion that it was in 1038 End of story Truthism, you know, there's my truth and your truth and you see it You see this poisonous phenomenon had penetrated politics Where the spokesman for Donald Trump said this my facts. There's our facts and your facts and Facts are fungible. They are malleable. They are like, you know, can play with them so It's it's a shaky it's we we are living in a in a global earthquake We are in a constantly in in the epicenter of an earthquake An earthquake in terms of certainties. There are no certainties left Not even facts No one agrees with anyone about anything because everyone is a godlike figure Why is a godlike figure because he has smartphone And he can serve those of those who know how to type And that's a diminishing minority mind Yeah, of course the education system is largely to blame. Absolutely. What's left of it is largely to blame We are regressing so dramatically to you know hundreds of years back It's shocking to behold And yes, of course, I'm an old codger and every old generation says, you know, the new the young generations suck We've been the best etc. And I'm no exception But I'm also a trained observer And I'm very very committed to the truth Extremely committed to the truth and what I see is mind-blowing Mind-blowing in many many respects has been a regression of decades Now it's being acknowledged Now it's being acknowledged, but in many respects intellectual, I mean, there's been Regression of decades in some cases hundreds of years For example, the spread of the occult is Oteric is Oteric is Oteric thinking conspiracy theories Magical thinking this was typical in the 15th century or 14th century before before the renaissance and the enlightenment People were thinking this way, you know in the 13th and 14th century when there was the black death Magical thinking vanished after the 17th century The occult is Oteric. I mean people were doing astrology and and this kind of things Latest in the 16th century 16th century Newton. Yeah, Isaac Newton was still an astrologer and an alchemist But he was the last in the line No serious scientist after that no serious person after that did astrology for 300 years until the 1960s So now astrology is again a big thing And I find it absolutely Shocking. I have no other words to describe That anyone should contemplate astrology and Energy and all this bullshit as serious It's serious things is Regressive in the extreme and and threatening absolutely threatening Who's going to fix the bridges? 50 years from now Who's going to run the computers? Computers are going to be much wiser much more intelligent than we are Who's going to control them? People hardly illiteracy has never been worse in the last 50 or 60 years Illiteracy functional illiteracy has never been worse people don't know how to read People have an attention span of what? 10 seconds 30 seconds sound bites and you know snippets Who's gonna who's gonna cure? Who's gonna administer medic medication? Who's gonna do all this? Who's gonna fix things? I don't see anyone able to do anything people don't know how to calculate without the aid of a calculator or a computer They don't know how to multiply let alone logarithms of this kind of this is advanced stuff They don't know how to do it if they were left to their own devices And and they don't know how to tell the difference between bad information and good information There is what we call discoverability issues. How to discover good content What are the warm-ups of good content is not critical thinking left? People don't know how to think critically There is what we call the base rate fallacy where today People believe 90 that's 90 percent of what they are told At the gate without further verification regardless of the source it's uh I'm I'm Extremely happy that I'm 62 years old. I'm meaning I'm not I'm not interested physicians I'm happy. I'm about to say to depart This place sucks. I don't want to be here anymore No, but you're absolutely right about that the the taking everything for face value immediately and just believing in as fact it's insane because um, especially like tick tock tick tock has made so many like pseudo famous people like celebrities and people trust What they say based off of likeability If they like you I think we someone froze us Oh, someone froze we are so we were frozen for a minute that there's a whole conspiracy theory here. Why we were frozen Oh Yeah, okay big brother big brother We are they froze us they froze us. Do you mean not to you probably or something? Okay. That's right Yeah, by the way, they is one person now. So just saying Yeah, he he they yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah Yeah, um Oh By ranking content according to popular link backs and this kind of thing Google started this revolution of replacing quality with likeability and popularity like an opinion form Information and knowledge cannot be subject to an opinion form You know you want real information And and real knowledge It can't be you can't judge it by popularity. You need to judge it by veracity metrufulness So anyhow I'm sure you heard other things you wish to discuss. So you got on a rant on a rant here. Yeah No, no, I loved it. I loved it. I felt the passion of it I agree. I agree with everything you're saying and uh, it's kind of terrifying to think about that future, but um I did have a question about the you were talking about conspiracies right conspiracy theorists and stuff Is there a correlation between that and narcissism at all because I was talking to my friend yesterday And uh, he brought that up and I was wondering your thoughts on that Yes, we have a recent study published two weeks ago about two weeks ago a relatively robust rigorous study That links very strongly narcissism to Conspiracism and conspiracism is a psychological trait that predisposes you to believe in conspiracy theories. There is such a thing believe it or not So conspiracism is strongly linked to correlated with narcissism So it seems that not people who are narcissists are much more prone to believe in conspiracy theories And one of the reasons is that narcissists have an external locus of control. I'll explain it in a minute The narcissist blames you for everything that happens to it His failures his defeats his miscalculations his bad choices Is f up decisions? It's all your fault because he is infallible. He's perfect. He's godlike. He doesn't make mistakes You found it up. You are responsible for everything that's happening But by doing this by having alloplastic defenses by tending to blame the outside For everything that's happening to him the narcissist is actually handing over control Because he says everything bad that's happening to me Is happening to me because of other people. So they control my life in a way He has an external locus of control and that of course is the essence of a conspiracy A conspiracy theory is the belief That some cabal some group of people some unnamed force Is controlling your life And is responsible for everything bad that's happening. You're not responsible. They are responsible That's typical narcissistic defense So yes, there's there's a correlation, but there's also a correlation between Conspiracism the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories and many other mental health disorders. For example paranoid personality disorder So the tendency to Organize your life and to make sense of your life via conspiracy theories Is a form of mental illness actually It is so powerfully correlated with multiple mental problems That it would seem to to be a form of mental illness and It is not an accident in my view that the sicker The more pathologize our civilization becomes the more we believe in conspiracy theories because Everything is for everything around us is falling apart. We can trust nothing institutions of crumble anything from the family to the nation state and so Everything is so pathologies and so sick that it infects us Our environment renders us mentally ill So it's much easier for us to believe in conspiracies because mentally ill people believe in conspiracies Yeah, that would make my friend very happy because he He felt that and that just confirms and that's um, and and the fact that an article just came out just recently about that is uh very interesting, um Real quick. I apologize so it looks like that Zoom is saying that Um, I have to yeah, we have we have eight minutes left, but what we can do we can click on the same link And shoot another part and then we can I can kind of combine it or you can combine it. Oh, yeah, we could do that That's true. That's just click on the same link all the time. I mean you can go okay 10 times 40 minutes Okay, perfect. Perfect. Okay. Um, are we still that way? Okay, so Yeah, sorry about that. All right, so, um I feel like Can can a narcissist Who it who is like that can they Are they forever a narcissist? Can they change is it like Inherently just a part of them when you're at that level of narcissism. That's what I get curious about depends if you have narcissistic personality disorder, which is the most extreme form of narcissism Pathological narcissism because there is healthy narcissism Every human being has healthy narcissism The self-esteem and self-confidence rely on Narcissism that you had developed as a child and this is called healthy narcissism But there are pathological forms of narcissism if your narcissism doesn't mature doesn't mature along with you If it remains infantile and you you become an adult Then there is discrepancy between your narcissism and you and this is a pathology So if you have a narcissistic style In other words, if you're an a-hole You can change and modify your behavior in it But if you have a disorder It affects the entire personality in every field of your life and it's incurable Essentially incurable What we can do to some extent is modify the behaviors of the narcissists We can kind of teach or condition the narcissists to become less antisocial Less psychopathic less abrasive less abusive we can do that very successfully But the core of the pathology of the sickness remains and is untouchable So This is When it comes to the extreme form and then within the extreme form of narcissistic personality disorder You have two or three percent of these people who are psychopathic narcissists They combine the best of both worlds. They are narcissists and at the same time they're psychopaths in other words They are going to cater to their narcissistic needs in a psychopathic way They're going to be defined. They're going to be criminalized. They're going to be reckless So these are psychopathic narcissists And so psychopathics the narcissists are Even behavior modification is impossible with these people It's absolutely they you can't reach them They're no longer with us They are there. It's my way of the highway Take it or leave it if you in your face, you know defined Consumacious authority hating reckless crazy making Mfs that's it. No way to get You have Beneath that you have the layer of people with narcissistic personality disorder whose behaviors can be modified and beneath that It's like a glass lace here. It's like an iceberg Beneath that you have the people with narcissistic style about 10 to 15 percent of population And this is simply people who are jerks, you know, and you learn to live with them and they learn to live with you They're adaptable. They're much more flexible And they do change they do they can change so But unfortunately online there's a huge confusion between between all these I mean numerous disgruntled discarded women point to their exes and say he's a narcissist when actually we're talking about the neighbors Or they they they confuse psycho psychopaths with narcissists They attribute to narcissists behaviors which are actually exclusively psychopathic For example gas lighting gas lighting is totally psychopathic or lying narcissists rarely lie Psychopaths lie So there's a huge and humongous confusion online. I mean there's a bloody mess And and everyone lost their their footing and swimming in the murky murky seas of the said self-styled accidents But narcissism narcissists are not good people. So I'm trying to say Narcissists have no empathy. They're exploitative They have very strong fantasy defenses. In other words, they create a fantasy and then they lure you into the fantasy and then never let you go They have a very bad impact on on your own ability to discern reality and and live in it your reality testing They They make you distrust yourself They very often bully you etc. They're not nice people But they're not psychopaths psychopaths are premeditated Psychopaths use manipulative techniques like lying and gas lighting to obtain outcomes To secure outcomes psychopaths are goal-oriented. They are seriously dangerous. They're antisocial when pushed to the limit They become aggressive violent reckless So psychopaths are like narcissists on steroids plus Plus violence and and recklessness and defiance and reactance and so there's like narcissists plus And then you have borderlines, of course and again everyone confuses borderline with narcissists Borderlines have psychopathic phases What I what is called psychopathic self-state? They they become psychopaths if they are Subjected to stress humiliation abandonment and rejection. So it's very easy to confuse a borderline with a psychopath Borderlines are also very grandiose So it's easy to confuse a borderline with the narcissists because the narcissist is also grandiose And borderlines now we know Um, also have a deficient deficiency in empathy And resemble very much narcissists in certain cases All in all The new approach in europe not in the united states because of money money corrupted completely the establishment in the united states But europe is is not corrupted by money. So in europe we see we see the new approach It's unfortunate that it's new because i and many other voices And much more prominent than me have been advocating this for for three decades But also well that ends well in europe they eliminated all these counterfactual distinctions Between narcissists and psychopaths and borderline and they created a single personality disorder with emphasis So you can start your life as a borderline and then become a narcissist for a while and then act as a psychopath And then revert to borderline and then become a narcissist And there is a dominant feature. So you would mostly be a borderline But you can easily transition to other personality disorders because there's a single personality disorder only one And that's that's reality Reality is either you have a personality disorder or you don't And if you have a personality disorder There will be days that you'll be a narcissist and other days will you be a psychopath? And other days will you be when you'll be a borderline and then schizoid and then a paranoid? The personality is disrupted Now many of these conditions are actually post-traumatic conditions narcissists and borderlines They grew up in dysfunctional households And so they were traumatized and abused as children And they developed their personality disorder as an adaptation as an attempt to avoid the abuse or the consequences of the abuse And the trauma so it's a post-traumatic condition I think we should take a break and if you wish Click again on the link and we'll see each other. Oh, yeah, let's uh, let's do this again right now. So We should wait a few minutes for zoom to record the session