 I have so many questions now I'm like thinking coming up with questions and losing it. So, um, I guess some people are listening to it right now and maybe because I'm going to put subtitles and probably some people are thinking but what is actually narcissism what narcissistic personality disorder, due to other people, what is the damages what are the damages and what are the characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder. I know you wrote about the nine characteristics but if you have five of five of them, and you could diagnose yours, not yourself but you could be dying with this narcissistic personality disorder, but I also heard that it is changing now. And this book needs to be advised that's what I heard also from you from the, from the videos. So, what are the characteristics and what actually what kind of damage they actually do to other people. Also for Lydia, I think I'm very curious about your dynamics, because you've been together for such a long time, and I've been with a narcissistic person and it was very, very difficult. And after just breaking up, I realized what, okay, I was there, I'm glad now I'm not there. I will cover the academic part and Lydia, Lydia will tell you how difficult it is to, and how long suffering she is with me. I'm a narcissist, I can't suffer. Academically, speaking from the disciplines point of view, narcissism is when you treat other people as objects. I think that's the best definition of narcissism, pathological narcissism. When you treat other people as objects, objects of gratification, instruments to obtain goals, etc. When you can't empathize with other people in the sense that you don't see them as human, they are things. You think you find them, you make them things. Now this requires several behavioral traits, for example, exploitativeness, the tendency to exploit people, a lack of empathy, I mentioned. Inability to access positive emotions, narcissists are capable only of negative emotions, such as envy or rage, anger, or, you know. And so on and so forth. So we have nine, nine such criteria described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is a book used in the United States, mainly for insurance purposes. And if you meet five of these nine, then you can be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. Of course, if you stop to think of it for a minute, you will see how nonsensical it is. Because if you meet criteria one, two, three, four, five, you are a narcissist, and if you meet criteria five, six, seven, eight, nine, you are a narcissist. But these two narcissists have nothing in common. Right. One to five and five to nine, they're not the same people. And yet they are diagnosed with the same disorder. So this led to the development of an alternative model of narcissism, which will be the diagnostic landscape in the next edition and the sixth edition of the DSM. It is already incorporated in the ICD. ICD is International Classification of Diseases. It's a book published by the World Health Organization. And it codifies all the diseases of humanity, bodily and mental. And so it's much more advanced than the DSM. Also, it's much less influenced by money. Insurance companies and pharmaceutical industries have a huge effect on the DSM, not a good one. So in the profession, we take the ICD much more seriously than the DSM, although the DSM because of America's power, media power, the DSM is much more well known. Now, the alternative model is what we call a dimensional model. It says that narcissism is a spectrum. It's a dimension. And that you could have varieties of narcissism, which are less pernicious, less problematic, more problematic, and so on and so forth. Narcissists maintain their identity or sense of identity and sense of self-worth by deriving input from other people. They are known as narcissistic supply. They are incapable of intimacy because they are not capable of perceiving other people as separate from them with their own needs and hopes and dreams and wishes and so on and so forth. They have problems with empathy. They have problems with aggression. They have problems with depression. And there are two types of narcissists. There is overt or grandiose narcissists. It's a narcissist whose self-perception and self-image is fantastic, inflated, unrealistic, not based on any real-life accomplishments. Miguel Omanayako, that's the overt grandiose narcissist. And we have another type known as covert or vulnerable or shy or fragile narcissists. The victim's victim mentality, right? Yes, that kind of narcissism. It fails to obtain supply. It's a constant failure to obtain supply. It's known as collapse. So it's a form of collapse narcissism. And consequently, he develops victim mentality. He becomes very passive aggressive. He's very cunning and scheming and manipulative. He's as disempathy, lacking in empathy as the overt or grandiose narcissist. But he often has something called pseudo-humility. He pretends to be humble, helpful, healer, saviour, rescuer. These are very dangerous types because they fake and imitate empathy. They pretend to love other people, to support them. And they actually then inflict damage. When they get close to you, when they feign intimacy, which is not there, then they inflict damage. The grandiose overt narcissist is a bit stupid. It's a kind of Donald Trump narcissist. In your face. That's who I am. I'm perfect. I'm amazing. I'm brilliant. I'm this. I'm that. And you're a stupid and you're a loser. I'm a winner. The covert narcissist, you don't see him coming. It's like a snake in the grass. Yeah. What? I really don't like this. Most of the people are like that because they are in the past. They didn't define themselves. Why to be sneaky? What is wrong with you and with the other? What are you ashamed of? Like you left dreams and someone else lives in a fantasy land and has very easy life. What was that? Go lucky? Happy go lucky. Happy go lucky. Fake it till you make it. You know, these are the Americanism. Okay, so people in people's nature is to envy. Because we all have to compare with the other and to know more about ourselves. It's what narcissists need is narcissistic supply the others input. We also need others input. Right. We need to know. We exchange opinions. We communicate. We come up with some idea. We realize that idea. Same does the narcissist. But what is the difference that I will make it for most of us, not only I to benefit, but many other people to benefit. All the involved. Not all the narcissists. Narcissists, they see everyone as an object. It's their function to supply him with ideas. Someone else's function to give him money. Someone else's money to invest in his business. And nothing with no responsibility to get something in return. At least even thank you. They don't say they just withdraw the vanish. And when, of course, other people will also vanish. They gave part of them. Something, you know, was produced or and there were some money, you know, for everyone, but the narcissist took them all for himself. And he doesn't know what to give people with ideas with money with they live and the narcissist fails. He will lose all the money. He doesn't know. He doesn't have the brains how to use it. It is part of self destruction. What I call it the dark side. We all have the dark side. You call it shadow. I discovered later. But the point in all these narcissists and narcissism thing is that narcissists think, and they are actually convinced that they matter only. We do. We do. Okay. We do. Okay. So to, since he said this, you asked before, how can we are together when she says this that only he matters. I learned from my parents. I had an abusive mother. I'm not going to talk about it. She, she was asking, you must do this have to do this is for family is for for all of us to be more happy. Okay, so give me what do you want me to do. I will make it just to see your smile on the face to be satisfied and that but then leave me alone. This is my narcissistic pattern that I learned. So, but with that, in time, I build boundaries. She was not fair for something. Like a snake, right, trying, you know, from the other door, but you will do also this and you will do also this, but I rejected her for many things. I withdraw. I was not talking to her for years, even though I was the major. I was angry at her. I did not abandon her. I did not. I did not. I was there for still keeping her pleased, because she did have some positive things. She had some good intentions, not to me, of course, I will give, I will supply her but what she gets, she will give to others. So I sustain her image of a good mother, but she knew very well that she was not good to me. However, she heard it. And, and that's it about her. That's the same dynamic that I learned from her that I'm having with Sam. Okay, you are, you are the captain, you know the best. Okay, what, what is that that you want? I agree with it. I will please you, I will do it, but I will also enjoy that. You will not, you just reject me, abandon me or, or whatever dismiss me, but I will insist that I will stay here. I will help you, but also, you will help me when I need. So it's, it's like a blackmail also, I'm not happy with that. But, but there is a relationship that it's fair. Transaction. But transactional for good for both of us. Okay, that is because of my upbringing. I was good to everyone until today I'm good with everyone. That is my, but when they close the line, when I see the, the hint of not being fair, and there is nothing I ask for favor, right. And there is nothing in return. That person is, you know, I can't trust that person anymore, I can't rely on that person anymore. And that's it. The one that bonds us is that he is honest, even brutally owned. That is, that is the real bondage. It's not the trauma bond that I had. From the trauma bond that I had, I learned something. But with him, I implement the all the knowledge that I had in the past, not only from home, but with many other people. So, it's a good feeling to live with yourself, knowing, being aware that snakes, that people provoke you for different reasons, and you should be smart to know where to engage and where whom to help. Is it for both of you? Is it for mutually beneficial? Yes, is it mutually beneficial? So I think that malignant self love is that product of me and Sam. It's our only child, but we don't know. Yeah, so there are two types of, you said, cerebral narcissists and somatic narcissists, cerebral, cerebral narcissists are very smart. I know such people here as well. And sometimes I think it's really petty sometimes because they're amazing. They really have a lot of knowledge, speak so many languages. But they sometimes really act like a child, vulnerable child. And it is very hard to be with a child as an adult. So I guess that's, does it apply to also somatic narcissists? Well, that's a long question. I will try to break it up. And then I would like to talk a bit about envy, shame and dissociation. These are critical features of narcissists. When the child is exposed to trauma and abuse, the child has two options. He can merge with the abuser. This is a process known as identification, introjection, incorporation. So he can merge with the abuser. He can become one with the abuser. And this kind of child grows up to be a narcissist. The other option is to cater to the needs of the abuser, to please the abuser. This kind of child becomes dependent or a people pleaser when he grows up. The child who becomes a narcissist, he, as I said, emerges of fuses with the abuser, but he's still suffering pain. He's still being punished. He's still being ignored or being violated. He needs to isolate himself from these impacts. And yet at the same time, he needs to be an abuser. So he constructs a god-like imaginary friend, a god-like imaginary friend known as the false self. And he creates the equivalent of a private religion. The false self is god-like. It's all-knowing. It's all-powerful. And it protects the child. It defends the child against the abuse of parental figures or caregivers. So when the child is beaten up or sexually molested or instrumentalized or parentified or whatever, it's not happening to the child. It's happening to the false self. This is a decoy mechanism. Decoy. Like it's happening not to me. It's not happening to me. I'm not here. I'm not here. I'm not here as known as dissociation. It's happening to him, to this, to the false self. And then the child, because this is a god, the false self is a god, the child sacrifices himself to this god. This is human sacrifice, like in primitive religions. He sacrifices himself. He sacrifices his true self to this god. And by sacrificing himself to this god, he becomes one with this god. He becomes one. From that moment on, all that's left is the false self, this imaginary friend, this piece of fiction. It's a story. It's a narrative. It's not real. The child itself vanishes forever, can never be recovered. He's dead. Zombified, if you wish. Now, the false self is godlike. So it needs to be superior. It needs to be perfect. So the child asks itself, what am I good at? What am I good at? If I take my assets, my advantages, and leverage and develop them, invest in them, then I'm going to be perfect. Then I'm going to be superior. If I'm intelligent, and I study a lot, and I learn a lot, then I'm going to be superior to other people. I'm going to be almost perfect, actually. I'm going to be a walking, talking and psychopedia. So this is the cerebral narcissist. Other children, at all, they look good. Girls get attracted to them when they are teenagers, or boys get attracted to them when they're teenagers, and so on and so forth. And so they say, my asset, my advantage is my looks, my body. That's how I'm going to become superior. That's how I'm going to become perfect. So I'm going to exercise a lot. I'm going to lift weights. I'm going to bodybuild. I'm going to have sexual conquests. I'm going to have sex all the time. It will confirm to me that I'm perfect, that I'm superior, that I'm irresistible. So the child makes a decision very early on, between ages four and six, makes a decision. So these are my assets, and that's the only way I can become superior and perfect. And they become cerebral or somatic, but there is no time constancy. When the cerebral fails, collapses for some reason. He becomes somatic. When the somatic fails for some reason, for example, you cannot get sexual partners for some reason, or he had an accident. He's disabled. So when the somatic fails, he tries to become cerebral, which is very funny. They look like clowns. He tries to become cerebral. Then he thinks he suddenly believes that he's a genius. He's a philosopher. Psychology is this. I don't know what. And you see these, these clumps of muscles online, who suddenly become public intellectuals. Because they have failed as somatics. And so you see all these bodybuilders and all these, you know, and they are online and they, they pretend to be big intellectuals and big, but they don't have the capacity. So it's very clownish. I want to answer your question about somatic and cerebral. There's a dominant type and a recessive type, latent type. And when the dominant type fails, the other type takes over. And then, and, and flip flop. It's a flip flop situation. Separately from all this, we, I think it would be good to discuss envy, shame and dissociation. These are three critical forces in last season. When the child is abused and traumatized, the child feels helpless and very ashamed of itself. When you fail to defend yourself, when you fail to stand up to yourself, when you're bullied all the time, you feel ashamed, don't you? It's a very shaming reaction. Failing. Failing in general. Yes, she's right. Failing in general. Failing in general is shameful. And this is the failure in your failing to protect yourself, your body, your mind, your soul, everything. It's a massive failure. There's another failure here. You're failing to become who you could have been. You're failing to realize your potential. You get stuck. You get stagnated. You remain a child forever. And yes, you're right. The average mental age is about two. Wow. You're an adult. You watch adults around you. And you can't reach their level. It challenges your sense of perfection. It undermines your grandiosity and false and discreet a lot of shame and vulnerability and fragility. So shame is a critical function. And narcissism is compensatory. It compensates for the shame. If you feel inside that you're weak, you will pretend to be strong. If you feel that you're stupid, stupid, you will pretend to be a genius like me. So whatever you feel that you're ugly, you will go on a sexual conquest to prove to yourself that you're not ugly. Narcissism is totally compensatory. Now we know there was a big debate for 40 years. Now we come to accept this 100% compensatory, even in grandiose narcissism. So this is shame. Just to say, as the things in the environment change, and people are becoming anxious, they can't, they're afraid of the future. They come with very bizarre ideas, what to do, who they are. So, you know, this is that stage when of, and then you compare with the others. You find out that something is wrong with you. So you also, your narcissistic defenses pop up. So it's a loop, you know, one goes into the other. Yeah, this is known as relative positioning. The second thing is envy. Obviously, if you feel inferior, inferiority complex, you feel incomplete, you feel inadequate, you feel imperfect. You envy other people. For their accomplishments, for their looks, for their wives and girlfriends or boyfriends for their property, whatever. Envy is actually a diagnostic criteria in narcissism. It's one of the nine diagnostic criteria. Envy motivates not only covert narcissists, but also grandiose narcissists. And it is the twin of shame. This is an intolerable situation. How can you survive with constant shame and constant envy and the need to disguise them, camouflage them with behaviors and traits that are not fully yours? You know that you're acting. It's a lot of acting here. So how can you survive this situation? You forget. You simply delete. A lot of forgetting. And this is, this amnesia is known as dissociation. Narcissists have enormous memory gaps. And because they have huge memory gaps, every situation that caused them shame, every situation where they were envious. Every time they were criticized, every time someone disagreed with them, every time they thought they were being insulted. This is known as hyper vigilance. Every, so every two minutes, they have to dissociate. They end up not remembering, this remembering 80% of their life. That's why they need, they need someone next to them. Yes. That is my role to not to rely. To remember all the details of their lives. Yes. That is exhausting. And not many women can tolerate that. It's a burden. It's a burden. This is part of something known as external regulation. Like the borderline, the narcissist hands over internal processes to his intimate partner. He expects her to act as his memory, as his narcissistic supply. So she is, she becomes integrated in his mind as an external supplier. Exactly like internet service provider. So there's a history and there's a hard drive. Yes, like external high drive. It's an example. I own one. There was a seminar in London. I said, I'm here at external hard disk. This is dissociation. And that makes the situation even more unbearable. Because to justify, to explain to people the memory gaps, the narcissist creates confabulations. Confabulations are not lies. Confabulation, well, they appear to be lies. They're not lies. Confabulations are stories that make sense. The narcissist says, I forgot the last five minutes. What could have happened? What is likely to have happened? What most probably has happened? What plausibly had happened? And then he creates a story and it becomes reality for him. He bridges the memory gaps. He bridges the memory gaps with many stories that he comes to believe are reality. Even when they are contradicted by evidence. Just to sustain the false image. Continuity. Yes. And I call it reframing. So there was a situation that didn't fit you or you forgot that it happened. You remember some snippets, thoughts. And then you make your own story. Not, I mean you, like a narcissist. And they, well, but this happened. So you can't change the mind of a narcissist. He believes that. So this, I saw how desperate they are to be done. To stabilize themselves, identity, that they are having control. Because they know, and they are aware very much so of their dark side. They call it these dark trials. The urges that they cannot control. And it's easy for them to flip. So the narcissist, they are so predictable. When they flip. And when, and if they put you in the story. Be sure to expect to be blamed to be accused. And even to be taken to court. That they are so convinced in their narrative. It's unbelievable. Sorry to. No, no. When, when your life is 80% confabulation and 20% reality. You live in a story. And this story is known as fantasy. It's a fantasy defense. But if you inhabit. An alternative universe. It's known clinically as Paracosm. If you inhabit a Paracosm, an alternative universe which is comprised of 80% invention. Invented thing. 20% reality. Then your partner. Must join your universe. Because if your partner is 80% reality and you are 80% fantasy. You will not survive as a couple. There will be a lot of friction, a lot of debates, a lot of anger, a lot of your life. You're not like, no, I'm not like this. I'm like, so your partner must make the choice to join your fantasy. And this is known as a shared fantasy. There is a process called coercive snapshotting. I will not go into it. But she joins the fantasy in effect. Even if she thinks she had not joined the fantasy, even if she thinks she's embedded in reality. If she survives with the narcissist, she has joined his fantasy. Yeah. Theory. So she has to lose herself as well. Yes. Part. Part. The part of reality testing. If she has to give up on her independent view of reality on an independent gauge of reality. Now, victims mistake this. They say it's gaslight. It is not gaslight. Gaslighting is intentional, goal oriented. Consequently, it is psychopathic. When the psychopath gaslights you, he knows what is reality and he knows that he's lying. He knows that he is manipulating. The narcissist believes his fantasy. He is the fantasy. He doesn't know that he's lying to you. He firmly believes that it's all true and real. When he promises you to marry you, the second time you meet, to marry you and have children with you, he is not future fakie. He is not lying to you in order to get you to bed to have sex with you. That's the psychopath. The narcissist really believes that he will get married and have children with him because he's in the fantasy. And he doesn't remember. So the next day, he may tell you, you know, let's try it out for a few years and see how it goes. But yesterday you offered me marriage. And he doesn't remember. So he would confabulate. He would say, you must have imagined it. You were drinking alone. And then you produce a recording. You produce a recording on your smartphone where he says, I'm going to marry you and we are going to have three children and you are debating the names of the children. And he would still deny it. Yeah. Yeah. He would say you took it out of context. Right. That's, that's true. Yeah. So there's some, I think there's an understanding among a lot of people, especially here because we don't have a lot of resources. I talked to a few people and then they say, ah, nurses, they are the people who deeply fall in love with themselves. They're the people who only love themselves. And this is, I think this is very wrong, according to the book, your book. Actually those are the people who have no idea how to love themselves. Therefore they didn't know how to love others. Right. So it's even much worse. They don't have a son. They can't love themselves because they are selfless. Ironically. And most of the people who are saying that they are reverting to more obvious type of narcissists, I mean the somatic one, because they want to be beautiful. Even there. Even there. There's nothing. I mean, most of these are referring to somatic narcissism is early childhood failure to develop self structures, including the ego. Narcissists don't have an ego. Yeah. They have super. They don't have an ego because they have a force. Narcissism is about the failure to develop a self. There is no self love because narcissism is a huge reservoir of shame. Yeah. Narcissism is a reaction to shame. There's self rejection, self loading, self hatred, self destructiveness. This is the exact opposite of self love. The exact opposite of self. And why they need someone to love them is actually that they are, and they are choosing empathic partners in life because they have really, they love themselves. They care about themselves. You know, a normal person and the jealousy and envy that they can't do it to themselves. They just take it as it is from the other. They consume the other. They consume. They see what the other is does. How is taking care of himself, herself in this. They copy it. So when they, you have an example of someone who loves yourself every time you want, you miss it. Whenever a narcissist will feel self destructive, self hated. Okay. They go to that source and they are joyful again, wonderful again, accepted. They belong. So they compensate with the other, with the other's emotions because they don't have the country laid to positive emotions. So many women will say that the narcissist drained them emotionally. They became dead. They died. And they call them vampires. They suck the life out of them. So these are just, you know, how people express such dynamic. And to answer your question. And this is actually where, why, what is the real reason of envious narcissists because they know they can't do it because they, they don't have emotions. That is how come they have, I will destroy the other just not to irritate me that to remind me that I am emotionless. And to answer your question. The narcissist cannot love anyone. And you also can never love a narcissist. I will explain the second part. And then I will talk about the first one. This is, this would be a big surprise to many victims. Right. When I say you can never love a narcissist. It's, it's a big surprise, but I will explain why. First of all, the narcissist is not real. There's nobody there. Absence, absence pretending to be a presence. Yeah. The narcissist does not exist. It's a void. It's a black hole. You can never love something. Never changing. And if you love the, what you think is the narcissist, what you are in love with it is an idealized image of an intimate partner that you created in your own mind. It's not the narcissist. You fell in love with a fake hero, a fiction character. That's the first reason. There's an even bigger reason to seduce you and lure you and captivate you and get you addicted. What the narcissist does, he puts a mirror to you. A mirror. And in the mirror, you see your idealized self. In the mirror, you're perfect. You're amazingly intelligent. You're irresistible. You're drop dead gorgeous. You're unique. You are incredible. You're unprecedented in the mirror. What do you fall in love with? You fall in love with your idealized image in the narcissist mirror. You fall in love with yourself. Through the narcissist gaze, the narcissist provokes in you your own narcissism and you develop a narcissistic love for yourself. That's why it's addictive. The narcissist has a monopoly on this mirror. He is the only one with this mirror. So you think he's the only one with this mirror. If it takes it away from you, suddenly you have to face the fact that you are not perfect, that you have shortcomings and failings and you know, and who wants to face this after having experienced perfection. It's a drug. It's a drug. Actually, that's your validation. Yes. How you see yourself in the in his eyes is your narcissistic supply. Yes, because we all doubt that we're never good enough. How we look, how we perform. That's why we are all narcissists. Yeah, narcissistic. That is the healthy narcissism because it motivates us to change our mind and so on, so forth to regulate emotions. But of course, if you were raised in a dysfunctional family where you did not receive a lot of love, you were criticized all the time. So you develop what we call a bed object. You feel that you are unworthy, inadequate, ugly, stupid, because your mother told you so, for example. This kind of person is much more vulnerable, much more susceptible to the whole of mirrors effect. Yes. This kind of person, when she sees herself in the mirror, she is suddenly not ugly, not stupid, not unworthy, not inadequate, superior, amazing. She cannot resist this. That's why both of us, for example, are very attracted to narcissists. It's a mechanism of binding. That's the trauma. By the way, half of all the narcissists are women. So when I say he is a she and so on. Today they equal themselves. It's not 70 men, but now they're. So there's, I have some questions came up. So, so this mirroring. So when you spend a lot of time with the narcissistic person. I forgot the word to the term, but contagious narcissists, you become a part of, part of it. And actually, you become kind of a narcissistic, or you become the fully narcissistic, or you become a kind of narcissist, but not really. How does it work? However, however, you, you accepted by that. You accepted the shared fantasy. Yes. Okay. That's the, that's true. People who are exposed to narcissists suffer trauma. Yeah. This is not an acute trauma. The trauma known as PTSD. It's not. It's another type of trauma known as complex trauma. CPTS. Now. People with CPTSD and all everyone was exposed to narcissists, intimate partner, friend, family, neighbor, priest, doctor, medical doctor, everyone exposed to narcissists. Even by the way, sometimes within a few minutes. Sufferous trauma. It could be many, many, many trauma. Then he would just feel uncomfortable after, after meeting the narcissists, you would feel disgusted. You would feel uncomfortable. We're feeling ill at ease. You'll want to wash yourself. You will feel like you're dirty. Something bad happened here. I met some entity. It's not human. I don't know. You feel bad. And we call this ego distance. You feel ego disorder. So even a short exposure to narcissists causes trauma. And of course, very low exposure causes massive complex trauma. Now, complex trauma involves elements, psychological elements, psychological elements from borderline personality disorder. So it involves emotional dysregulation. Your emotions are so strong, they overwhelm you. You're incapable of managing your emotions. They come, they come suddenly. They take over you. You freeze. This is known as startle response. So your emotions are stronger than you. This is known as emotional dysregulation. This element is borrowed from borderline. You become narcissistic in the sense that your empathy goes down. Your ability to empathize goes down. You become very defensive, arrogant, more arrogant. Your self-perception and self-image become a lot less realistic, more inflated, more grandiose. These are all narcissistic defenses. You become dissociative. You begin to forget things a lot. Deny. Or deny things, but also forget. Simply forget. So this is dissociative. What is forgetting things? Because this is really resonating with me in a way. Start to forget things. It's a narcissistic defense. It's a narcissistic defense. The narcissist renders you, converts you into a cluster B basket. You become partly borderline, partly narcissistic and partly psychopath. So you will become vengeful, for example. You become vindictive. You become violent or at least externally aggressive. You will become defiant. You will become contrumacious, rejecting authority. All these are features of complex trauma. To the point that many scholars, including the woman who coined, we invented, we discovered complex trauma to determine. Many scholars might sometimes think that we propose to consider all cluster B personality disorders as post traumatic conditions with emotional dysregulation, not as personality. So the victims then, depending on the exposure, depending on the type of narcissists, covert narcissists have much worse effect than overt. Because they create confusion, disorientation. So depending on many factors, the effects can last a few months, but it's common for the effects to last many years. Five years, six years, yeah. Okay, that's a good point. And another thing is, just with your permission, another very important thing. The narcissist implants in your head, puts in your head a voice. This process is known as introjection. You introject the narcissist. There is a voice in your head that represents the narcissist. There's an internal object, which is the representation of the narcissist in your mind. And the narcissist uses something called entraining. And training is simply verbal abuse that keeps repeating itself over and over until you are essentially brainwashed. Yeah. And then there is this voice of the narcissist. And even when he's dead, physically dead or gone, you broke out, you never see him again. You're not contact. You got married, remarried, and you have six children. And you want the voice? His voice is inside your head. And the problem is this. The narcissist's voice inside your head, the narcissist is your enemy. Remember, because you broke up with him. You're now the enemy. You are a secretary object. You want to dead. You want to finish. You want to imprison. You want to whatever. So the narcissist's voice inside your head is an enemy voice. And it collaborates with all the other enemy voices in your head. It creates a coalition. So if your mother was an enemy, for example, the narcissist's voice would collaborate with your mother's voice. And they would bring the coalition into objective coalition. And these voices will attack you together. So when you hear the narcissist's voice in your mind, at the same time, you will hear your mother telling you, he's right. He's right about you. So if the narcissist tells you, for example, you're so naive, you're such a people pleaser. You're so stupid. Suddenly, there will be a second voice, which is essentially your mother's voice. Who will tell you, you see, I told you the same. You see, I'm right. This is the power of the narcissist. So in effect, we all have interjections. And we remember from our childhood, because we had to respond to mama's needs. What the mother will say, don't go there. Don't do this. Don't behave like this. Don't cross the street without whatever. All the people, all the people you met in your life. Significantly. Important. All the people you met and you learned something from them that helped you to create your identity. They are your interjections for life, even though they are dead. This is who you really are. So you are defined by other people. In your developing years and people that you may have met when you were experiencing mostly trauma, mostly trauma, because that is hard to overcome. So if you don't know how to self-care when you're in pain, what you should do, which narrative actually would sustain your identity, your character that you chose before, you will not feel a victim to that extent. You will be more defined as a person. So when the narcissist will come in your environment, you have to meet and you have sense for you. Already you develop sense of who you are. Then it would, when you will meet a narcissist, charming, whatever, or overt, you will ask yourself, what's wrong? These are the red flags, you know, what women are talking. But when you will meet a psychopath, you don't have to exchange your words. If your senses are in balance, tuned with your emotions, with your reasoning, with your personality. Okay, when you will meet a psychopath, you want to run. You don't need to say a word. You will feel fear, you will be afraid. And that's why Sam said you sweat and you want to take a shower after that and you are dirty. Many people experience that. And what I'm saying to my clients and counsellor for CPTSD is to go back to their own senses. And to try to experience many more other things and to reconnect them, to reframe them with the introject, the experiences that they had before. So they will, you know, like negate the positive experiences today will negate the back introjects from before. So in this way, we call it, I call it, reframing. It's a pretty good new start. And many, because you said that you feel some resonance, that's why I'm giving you this. Many people should just be, from time to time, remind themselves, okay, you are living with a narcissistic husband. You know, it is expected from him. Now everyone, what Sam said in the beginning, they have a definition, a language, right? They can define. And they will know with whom they are dealing and how to protect themselves. We all have that power because the life in us pushes us to just survive. And you will survive a narcissist as simple as that. No need to complicate things. No need to go, you know, to make a lot of drama because this border is borderline job, not normal with persons or victims. No victim says that he's suffering. He is saying, he said to you, my long, or he introduces me like long suffering wife. I don't see it as I'm suffering. I'm learning from it. I am thankful because I discover my dark side. I know what I'm made of. So who gets the best part of the cake? Let's share it. And again, it's a question of calculus. So mathematical question. If the vast majority of interjects inside your head are negative, the narcissist would have a much easier job of taking over you. And you will have a much more difficult job of getting rid of his voice in your mind because he would have many more allies inside your mind. But if you're upbringing and childhood and later life, majority of the voices inside your head are loving and caring and supportive and helpful, then the narcissist would have a much more difficult job to take over you. You will probably get rid of a narcissist much earlier and the narcissist's voice inside your mind will be silenced by the others, especially by your authentic voice. Every human being has a single voice, which is that person. Not mother, not father, not family, not friends. That person's voice is known as the authentic voice. So it depends. Narcissists who target damaged and broken women do it for a purpose. They're much easier to convert. Right, of course. Much easier to convert and much easier to over. Even after there's a breakup and, you know, it's much easier to reacquire them, to get them back. Because the voice is there. The Trojan horse is inside the mind. It's there, it's working. Okay, I have also, okay, I'll ask you three questions, I think, because before I forget. So the second grade supply or first grade supply and who really becomes first grade and who becomes second grade, first of all. And second, I read a lot on your book and listened that narcissism never heals, which is quite sad. But then now you said this contagious narcissist people can heal lots of years or a few months, which is a good news. And the third question is what is the difference, what is the difference between psychopathic person and narcissists? I think there's a difference between empathy, because I recall you talked about cold empathy. Narcissistic people have some sort of empathy called cold empathy, but psychopaths have no empathy at all. Is this true? No, I'll start with the last question. Both narcissists and psychopaths have cold empathy. The difference between narcissists and psychopaths is that psychopaths are goal oriented and could be sex, money, power, access, luxury life, whatever. The narcissist is not goal oriented. His only goal is narcissistic supply. So the narcissist is a junkie. The psychopath is an operative, functional entity that maximizes or optimizes outcomes. The narcissist is a junkie and he's after supply. So therefore, the psychopath is not dependent on other people. He is ironically not pro-social and communal as the narcissist. The narcissist depends on other people for narcissistic supply. So he must work with other people. He must please other people. He must somehow interact with other people. He suffers. He is integrated with other people. He hates other people. He holds other people in contempt because he's God-like and superior. But unfortunately, he's dependent on other people for narcissistic supply. The psychopath is not. The psychopath very often is a loner, a lone wolf. He doesn't care about other people because there's nothing they can give him except, for example, money. So he doesn't care what they think about him. He doesn't even supply either. None of this. Plus, many of the features of narcissism do not exist in psychopathy. Online, there are many self-styled experts. It's a catastrophic phenomenon. They're spreading misinformation left, right, and center. It's a disaster. And some of these experts have academic degrees. Some of them are even psychologists, but they're not experts on narcissists. So some of these so-called experts are saying that all psychopaths are narcissists. That is rank nonsense. Only a small percentage of psychopaths are also narcissists. The overwhelming majority of psychopaths are not. They're grandiose, but they're not narcissists. So no dependency on other people. And the psychological composition or landscape of narcissism is not the same like psychopaths. For example, psychopaths don't have dissociation. Don't engage in fantasies. Do not have the same kind of shared fantasy like the narcissists. The differences are huge. I would even say that psychopathy should not be a mental health issue. It should not be defined as a clinical entity. A psychopath is simply someone who refuses to play by the rules. Refuses to play by the rules and doesn't care about other people. But he recognizes, for example, that other people are external to him. Not like the narcissists. He is firmly embedded in reality. Psychopath is very grounded in reality. Narcissist is not. Psychopath couldn't care less what you think about him. Narcissist will fall apart if you don't give him supply. These are critical differences. So I think psychopathy is wrongly defined as a mental health issue. It's a social problem, not a mental health problem. And so this is what regards to your first question. In my early work, I suggested that not all supply is the same. Depends who is the source of narcissistic supply. If I get a compliment from Albert Einstein, it's not the same if I get a compliment from my neighbor, obviously. If Einstein says you're a genius or my neighbor says I'm a genius, it's not the same. It doesn't have the same impact. It doesn't last as long. So I suggested that there are grades of narcissism. I also suggested that there is fake supply. Fake supply is when you pretend to give me supply. But I realized that you are trying to play me, to gain me, to deceive me, to manipulate me. You're giving me supply to manipulate me. This is fake supply. There is no grade supply that comes from idiots and I don't know what. It means nothing to me. On the contrary, it may even insult me. So there's negative supply. Negative supply is something that looks like supply, sounds like supply, but actually causes me narcissistic injury. So there's a whole theory of supply. It's very detailed. I forgot what was the second question, which proves that I'm not a genius. Do they heal? So they never heal? Oh, healing, yeah. The victims of narcissistic abuse do not become narcissists. Everyone has narcissistic defenses. Every human being alive and many human beings dead have narcissistic defenses. So the narcissist triggers your narcissistic defenses. The narcissist also provokes psychopathic behaviors. And the narcissist dysregulates you emotionally so you look a lot like a borderline. But it doesn't mean to become a borderline or to become a narcissist or to become a psychopath. No. CPTSD is transitory and that's the difference between CPTSD and borderline personality disorder. That's why it is nonsense. Again, self-styled experts online are saying CPTSD is borderline. No, it's not. Borderline is lifelong. It ameliorates. It's mitigated in the patient's 40s. When the patient is 40, 45, borderline goes down. But it's lifelong. It starts at age 12. CPTSD is always transient. It lasts a few months, a few years in extreme cases, and then it disappears. It reverses completely. It's a very good news. It is prognosis is very good. So will narcissists ever heal? No. Narcissism is not a new fashion. You can take off your clothes. Narcissistic personality disorder is the personality. This is who the narcissist is. That's the essence of the narcissist. If you take away the narcissistic personality disorder, nothing is left behind. There's also nothing to work with with a patient that is outside the disorder. That's why the DSM says that narcissistic personality disorder is all pervasive. It permeates everything. Every emotion, every cognition, every effect, every field of functioning, every area of life, every behavior, every trait, every reaction, every everything is affected and defined by pathological narcissism. There's no way to take it away because then there would be no patient left. So narcissism cannot be healed. What can be done is to modify some abrasive and antisocial behaviors of the narcissist to teach the narcissist, to be more socially acceptable, to sublimate, to convert some things into socially acceptable behaviors and so on. Even then, it's very short-term effect. You work with the narcissist for three years and you are very happy and you become the narcissist yourself. I healed the narcissist. He now knows how to behave in society. He's not insulting people. He's not exploiting people. He's not manipulating people. He's not abusing people. Wonderful. In essence, he's no longer a narcissist. I modified all these behaviors. And if you're lucky, this lasts for six months or until the narcissist is stressed or until he thinks that you've insulted him. It's nonsense. It's simply nonsense. There's no way to change a narcissist. And victims would do well to stop with malignant optimism and what Shadow the Angel is, a narcissist on Instagram, calls pathological hope. They would do well to get rid of this. It's a take it or leave it. Take it or leave it. That's the narcissist forever. You want to take it? Take it with your eyes open. Put your defenses, enhance your positive interjects, put up a firewall and survive next to the narcissist, benefiting from his good sides because, for example, some narcissists are intelligent and can teach you a few things. Some are fun. Some are fun. But don't tell yourself, I'm going to transform the narcissist with my love. I'm going to heal his inner child and his wounds. This is grandiose. This is grandiose to think that you could have any impact on the narcissist where tens of thousands of scholars and therapists have failed. You think that you would be the one. This is grandiose. You can change it. So the last question, because I set my time and I can see I have 10 minutes left. I feel like we can talk more on this subject. If you agree, maybe we could talk another time. Possibly, yes. Thank you. So how do we prevent our children to become narcissists in the future? That's what you say. Okay. I had my own problems. I wanted to resolve. I went into child psychology much deeper and there was a summit of resilience. How to, what was important not to be more resilient, resilient to narcissists, resilient to psychopaths, resilient is simple. To learn, children should be encouraged to learn at all times. Their parents should be aware. Should be aware what are their expectations of the child and not to enforce them, impose them. In fact, when I face parents, I tell them, look, you are both narcissistic. We all are, but if I will know what is your narcissistic trait, I will tell you how not to express it to your child. So awareness of narcissism by both parents, defining the traits and influences on their children. So they will protect the child of pain, of emotional pain and to let the child, to encourage the child to experience more and more things by explaining at the same time what is going on there. So if this is a cup, this is a cup made of these two smallest details just for the child to get first the orientation of the environment. So to recognize the objects, to recognize the environment so they can have their self of being capable of sustaining themselves to be aware, to just get to teach the child to self-care, to be more aware of the environment. So just a second, this is the first stage between two, four, five years. The boundaries, what he mentioned, when the child after two years will start to be exposed to other, to their fears, they are going into the world. They will have to socialize so the parents should enforce, I mean, should make it, you know, more pleasurable social gaining to allow their friends with their children to come to them. They will go to them, you know, to meet, to have some times together to be more happy, to make why interesting things. As I witnessed and as I see, they take their mobiles, they put cartoons, now you see it. No, the children should be engaged in the conversation. Never mind if it is tough or not, if they will not understand and if they will ask the parent to explain, yes, the parent to be, to explain it, not to spare the child of being hurt, because this is the way how the child will experience what is hurt, will learn what is hurt. Then the mother should tell the child, this is how you will protect whenever you will see that someone, a child with a storm in the head, you don't stand, you just go, you don't ask what is his attention. You will just put yourself out of the way, of his way. You understand? These are the things that the mother, mother, because she, the child has most confidence in the mother. The child knows that the mother will never abandon her, him. Then when the child trusts the mother first, actually trusts anyone who cares, but the mother should also make that distinction, to make that distinction, not to show the child that he cannot, the child should not trust the guy with the stone in the head. You understand? To show the differences. Mother's role, father's role, to teach the child in the formative years to get a sense, to develop the senses from the environment when the child will enter the second phase, when we'll start to socialize, we'll be ready to enable, we'll be enabled to make the difference what is good, what is right. So the child will have more trust, confidence. The self-esteem will be good enough. And also in this age, when they are socializing, it's very narcissistic trait, but if they are not narcissistic, they will not see what they are made of. They are very competitive. So the mother should regulate, the parents should regulate the competitiveness. That doesn't mean if the guy has some toy that they should buy to their children. They should say, but he likes it. Why would you like to have that? So there are ways of doing that, but for a child not to become narcissistic later is to teach him how to care of himself or herself. With the emotionally to enable the child to connect with others, because narcissists don't connect with anyone, because that is also part of the environment, not only the object, but also the people. And how to be fair in effect? Yes, the child should be provoked. In social media, there are fights and so on. Yes, you should fight for yourself. I will teach you how to fight. It's not like, okay, you should not fight. The parents should teach the child how to preserve what they think of them that was validated by the parents and the others until then. Parenting is complicated though by social media, the online environment. Social media were constructed around narcissistic traits. Social media encouraged shame by comparing yourself to others. Social media encouraged envy, of course, with likes and so on and so forth. Social media encouraged grandiosity. So there is a problem with exposure to the online world, which complicates parenting, even good parenting, makes it almost impossible. Suicides among young people have increased by 48% in the last decade. Wow. 48%. These are the children of the transitional generation. This number is nothing compared to the following numbers. Depression has increased by 300%. Anxiety has increased by 500% among young people. What's happening to the world? I think we have relegated the role of parenting to technology companies. Starting with television, long before internet. Long before internet mothers used to put children in front of television. That's true. The TV raises the children. Now the computer raises the children. Well, okay. So we have only two minutes because I set the timing. I think it ends, right? So thank you so much. I also have a lot of new information just talking to you, aside from the books. And I really would like to talk to both of you again. Let me know if you have time. You can also arrange, if you wish, you can arrange a public podcast. So you can invite people to a place and it can be projected on a screen. I could give a lecture, for example, something like that. And they could ask questions. The audience can ask questions. So it's done in many countries. You can just put many people in a hall, a lecture hall, and a screen and project the image on a screen. So today technology helps us to connect. Yes, that's the advantage. And thank you so much. I'm so happy it's going to end. And then let's talk again. The opening of the book is on 13 next Wednesday. And I'll send you this next week. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. A nice day there. Bye for now.