 narcissism is contagious how can you tell if you have been infected how can you tell if you have become a zombie narcissist this is the topic of today's video but before we go there the self-supply corner by the time you watch this it'll be a bit of an old news but still today I received an invitation I've been nominated as a finalist for the Mental Health Award 2023 it's an award given by the G20 health summits the G20 health summits is a world tour of health conferences and summits in well over 50 cities in the world it's a gigantic event and I'm not sure it's whether it's annual or biannual or even decadal I am not quite sure regarding the frequency but this year I'm among the finalists for the mental health award and even if I don't win it's still a great honor well done Sam okay Shoshanim what can I do you know I am right it's will be just our secret another thing a few days ago I publish the 28th yes that's 28 the 28th article in academic peer reviewed journals some of them open access others not so this these are this is 28 articles in five years not bad so again self-congratulation to you and would you mind moving on to the topic of the video okay okay dr. Wagner I will before you start to watch this video you may wish to have a look at the video titled you and your body after domestic violence rape battering perpetrator and society collude I've included a link to this video in the description for those of you who are wondering the description is always under the video not over the video so there's a link there I'm going to introduce you to a new concept a concept which will help us a mechanism process which will help us to understand how narcissism infects how is it contagious why people around the narcissist end up being considerably more narcissistic than they have been before and this is the concept of coercive synchronized or mirror snapshotting introduction now my favorite is coercive snapshotting or coercive introduction because the narcissist punishes you if you don't adhere to his demands requests expectations and signals if you don't pick up on his wishes if you don't fully comply with the environment that he has created for you if you don't fit into his shared fantasy if you don't collude with his delusions and with his grandiose self-image if you don't do any of these things the narcissist punishes you to be anything from silent treatment treatment to verbal abuse in in very extreme cases also physical abuse so that's why I prefer the term coercive snapshotting or coercive introduction but what what does it mean Vakni you're great at coining new phrases would you mind explaining a few of them to us mere mortals awaiting your sagacity not before I have a gulp of my fortifying wine yes it is wine the narcissist as you recall entrains you he synchronizes his brain waves with your brain waves using verbal abuse repetitive verbal abuse as a kind of music so he creates the effect of entraining he brainwashes you he mind controls you and he mind snatches he takes over you outsource many internal processes to the narcissist you develop external regulation and external locus of control you feel that you have been somehow hijacked kidnapped that you're a hostage maybe willing hostage but still a hostage everything seems unreal as if you were as if you woke up to find yourself in a kind of rendition of a mental asylum and that is a narcissist and training but the narcissist entrains you to interject his expectations now this is a super complex concept and bear with me while I bear with you the narcissist when he first comes across you when he decides that you are a potential as an intimate partner or source of narcissistic supply the narcissist creates a snapshot of you and then he internalizes this snapshot and photoshop see he idealizes it and this creates an idealized internal object an idealized introject in his mind that represents you you are the external object and in his mind there is an internal object that stands in for you that is you in his mind so the narcissist cannot tell the difference between internal and external he continues to interact with the internal object as if it were you but the narcissist needs you to collaborate in this he needs you to collude with him he needs you to agree that you don't exist only the internal object does so the narcissist entrains you to interject the idealized internal object in his mind look how complex it is the narcissist forces you to adopt to assimilate to digest to accept to become one with your idealized image in his mind the narcissist wants you to merge seamlessly to fuse inextricably with a snapshot of you in his mind he pushes you to interject the way he sees you he pushes you to define yourself and your existence via his gaze his gaze the way he sees you as an idealized internal object his gaze comes to define your boundaries his gaze sustains your self-esteem and your self-confidence his gaze tells you who you are and his gaze his gaze replaces your reality testing something that feels a lot like gas lighting but actually is not so the process of coercive snapshotting is when the narcissist wants you to disappear as an external object and to accept the reality of the internal object as a full substitute and replacement to you the narcissist tells you I want you to not exist independently of the internal object I want you to become the internal object I want you to act as the internal object I want you to lose your agency and your autonomy and I want you to become full a full reflection faithful image of the internal object that represents you in my mind the narcissist coerces you into internalizing the internal object in his mind that represents you so he wants he wants the two of you to share this internal object he wants you to merge with the internal object to fuse with the internal object thereby removing any deviation any divergence and any contradiction between you as an external object and the internal object that represents you in his mind and this is of course a great definition of the shared fantasy the sharing of the interject the sharing of the internal object coercibly on pain of punishment if you don't comply and you don't obey and you don't follow through these are the rudiments of the shared fantasy and of course the narcissist uses all the tools that is disposal intermittent reinforcement silent treatment you name it humiliation shaming so the narcissist comes to you and says I have an image of you in my mind I have an internal object that represents you in my mind it's ideal and it's the only reality you're not real the object is real it's a fact that I'm interacting with the object never with you so I want you to become this object I want you to never contradict this object never act against this object never deviate from it never diverge for it I want you to suspend your animated existence outside my mind to become a figment of my fantasy an element of my imagination so this is coercive coercive snapshotting and coercive snapshotting is a mechanism that leads to the formation of a functional shared fantasy on the one hand and on the other on the other hand it's the vector of contagion it's the virus this is how losses is infect people around them because of course the internal objects in the narcissist mind are idealized they're imbued and suffused with grandiosity they are fantastic internal objects they don't reflect reality they reflect the narcissist cognitive distortions and so when the narcissist forces you to become indistinguishable from the internal object that represents you in his mind he also forces you to become grandiose idealized perfect in short he forces you to become a narcissist so in this video I'm going to discuss the psychological dimensions of narcissistic contagion only the psychological dimensions not the bodily signs of trauma and abuse which I've discussed in the video that I mentioned earlier we discuss only the psychological way signs that you had been infected and the major test the major tell and litmus test is have you departed from your previous identity are you no longer recognizable to your loved ones to friends to family do you feel estranged like you're a stranger to yourself do you feel alienated from yourself do you feel a bit unsafe with yourself do you feel labile somewhat dangerous unpredictable indeterminate is there an enhanced sense of uncertainty in you regarding who you are and what you might do your boundaries anything else what if the answer to these questions is yes then you have been infected you've been infected with narcissism but I'm going to break this down to a few elements number one decline in empathy one of the major signs of narcissistic contagion is that you are unable to empathize with people anymore any longer you used to be very empathic no you're not this is a post traumatic artifact post traumatic effect it's been documented in people who've been exposed to trauma anything from illness to an accident so in PTSD we see a substantive substantial decline in empathy and the same to some extent in CPTSD in complex strong it's the first time ask yourself am I being less kind less compassionate less empathic is it more difficult for me to put myself in other people's shoes do I not even want to well you've been infected number two irritability short views inability to tolerate people people are perceived as annoyances or nuisance or very stupid or too demanding or what have you and you react to this with irritability number three impulsivity you used to be very cool-headed you used to take everything into account used to analyze things before you acted your decisions were based on information you were well informed you made informed decisions and now you just go at it you're impulsive you can't control your drives and urges you want to do something you just do it but civity is a major sign of narcissistic contagion next mood mobility apps and downs dysphoria and euphoria you may even suspect that you've developed bipolar disorder the shifts are very rapid and totally unrelated to external events or triggers it's an internal process of a loss of control over your moods an inability to regulate and a roller coaster of ups and downs a cycling that is rapid fire and this is an a surefire sign of narcissistic contagion next emotional dysregulation if you feel that whenever you experience an emotion regardless of what this emotion is negative or positive you're overwhelmed you're drowning you're out of control you react with extreme depression or extreme elation you wish to act emotions translate to actions without any intermediate phase and this is a process known as acting out you decompensate you have no defenses against your emotions they are not filtered they and so these emotions challenge your inner balance equilibrium and stability you feel that you're falling apart and disintegrating whenever you experience an emotion again never mind if it's negative or positive and this is known as dysregulation borderline personality disorder is an emotionally dysregulated disorder and a proper borderline if you suddenly contemplate suicide suicidal ideation or even attempt suicide it's a sign that you've been infected each and every one of these is a sign that you have been infected the more the more checkboxes you take the more of these elements correspond to your current state the more sure you can be more certain you can be that you've been infected now suicidal ideation luckily for all of us self-destructive drives self-defeating behaviors self-handicapping choices and decisions are less common less common but there are a major sign of contagion self-defeating and self-handicapping of course is much more common than suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts and it can wear it can disguise itself it can render itself stealth under the radar you suddenly develop traits behaviors states of mind emotions that you've never experienced before you become clinging you become needy you become sentimental you become impulsive you become reckless you become defined you become contumacious etc etc etc many of these behaviors are self-destructive they defeat your purpose they handicap you and some of these behaviors are misperceived by you but they're new for examples you are suddenly you're suddenly you suddenly develop perfectionism or you begin to procrastinate you postpone things perfectionism and procrastination are self-defeating behaviors because they set you up for failure you become your own worst enemy the narcissist remember the narcissist he's his own worst enemy contagion simply means that the narcissist passes on to you the burden of being a narcissist the narcissist is in a state of prolonged grief he wants you to grieve and mourn the narcissist was unable to separate from his mother an individual he doesn't want you to separate from him and become an individual so he regresses you he pushes you back to infancy when you were symbiotically refused with mother so and he refuses to accept your separateness he is unable to do separation individuation so he rejects your separateness and he refuses to see you or to treat you as an individual contagion means the narcissist wants to make you a fellow kindred narcissistic spirit misery loves company narcissism even more so narcissist wants you to become his co-narcissist his co-conspirator and he wants you to reflect everything that he is everything that he suffers everything that he had suffered everything that he endured everything that he can do and everything that he wishes to do he wants you to become his extension in the fullest sense of the word self-defeating and self-handicapping and narcissistic behaviors if you suddenly develop these behaviors and never had them before you've been infected similarly your cognition begins to be distorted you begin to doubt your ability to adjudicate properly to judge reality for what it is you begin to um kind of ask yourself is this real or is it my imagination my exaggeration or my okay am i calibrated or am i not who should i who should i uh compare myself to the narcissist of course the narcissist induces in your cognitive distortions like grandiosity or the done in kruge effect or other things you begin to inhabit the twilight zone of the narcissist the substitute reality the virtual augmented or artificial reality that the narcissist creates aka shared fantasy you enter this labyrinth and you're unable to exit and you become a hostage at the mercy of the narcissist mediation the narcissist mediates reality for you more and more you found yourself dependent on the narcissist's opinions on his judgments and on his interpretation of what is real and what is not these are all cognitive distortions fantasy is a defense mechanism that induces cognitive multiple cognitive distortions it's a main supreme symptom of narcissistic contagion another thing you suddenly become aggressive or passive aggressive or defined or consumatious reject authority or hateful or envious or raging you've never been any of these things before but now you are these are all known as negative affectivity negative affectivity is intimately connected to aggression it motivates aggression or passive aggression depends if your narcissist is overt or covert covert narcissists infect you with covert narcissism overt narcissist infect you with overt narcissism so if your partner is a covert you will end up being passive aggressive if your partner is grandiose and overt will end up being aggressive at any rate you will end up not being you and the aggression and passive aggression are going to be extensive in other words in all your interactions with all people you suddenly find yourself chastising and castigating and shouting at your mother your best friends your boss your employee your colleagues your employees the neighborhood postman your neighbors it in church aggression had become the way the way you interact with other people and you've never been like this before yes you've never been infected before you also become reckless it's as if you cannot predict and you don't care about the consequences of your actions however dangerous risky these consequences may be this is a definition of recklessness acting without mind to the consequences of one's actions assuming that one is immune to such consequences somehow miraculously godlike divinely and you're big you're developing this kind of immunity as well you begin to not care you begin to act mindlessly unthinkingly impulsively it's as if you don't have a care in the world you're happy go lucky you're untouchable you're untouchable invulnerable invincible this leads to recklessness above all this um this recklessness and the aggression are directed at people they're not just diffuse it's not that you have become a generally aggressive person you react this way when you interact with people you become defiant hateful conchumacious reckless etc when you are interacting with people in other words it becomes a social behavior parameter you your social behavior changes and your relational your ability to relate to people deteriorates dramatically all in all you find that you no longer recognize yourself you keep saying this is not me i've never done this before i don't know what has what overcame me i don't know who i am anymore identity disturbance is a hallmark of borderline personality disorder and many narcissists especially covert narcissists so the narcissist exports his dysfunctions to you and one of the things is identity disturbance your values your beliefs your decisions your choices your preferences your wishes your priorities everything changes on a dime day after day it's as if you have multiple personality disorder as if you have numerous personalities inside you competing for possession of your body and mind and they are these personalities are mutually contradictory they're incompatible they've nothing in common one of them one person one such personality is a cheater a romantic cheater the other one abhors the very thought of cheating one of these personalities is religious the other one is an atheist one of these personalities is aggressive the other personality is not etc etc identity in flux fluctuating when you no longer recognize yourself when you feel estranged it's a major sign of narcissistic contagion and hand in hand with your recklessness acting out defiance contumatiousness and aggression you begin to seek thrills novelty and risk these are characteristics of the antisocial dimension of narcissistic personality disorder both overt and covert it's also typical of covert borderlines who resemble very much narcissists psychopaths of course thrills thrills seeking novelty seeking risk seeking they all become characteristics of your decision making processes the choices you make and the and the path of trajectories you embark upon suddenly you can you can have good sex only when you cheat suddenly you are driven to steal suddenly you drive recklessly or you go on shopping sprees or you spend all your savings in on a two-day vacation or you or you plunge or you kind of waste your children's college fund on frivolities or none of this is familiar to you it's as if you've been visited by your familiar as if you're possessed in the Middle Ages people used to call it demon possession it's as if there's an entity inside you which has taken over you and it's just using your body to accomplish its own goals to satisfy its own desires and yes this metaphor is not a metaphor the narcissist interjected himself into you the process of entraining is intended to force you to synchronize your brain with the narcissist's brain literally the waves measurable the waves we can measure in EEG and so then the narcissist forces you to accept his internal objects as if they were external objects and that includes the internal object that represents you in his mind you're no longer out there you're inside the narcissist's mind you're captive in his skull and it is there that you're imbued and exposed to these new behaviors new trades new qualities among them thrill novelty and risk risk thinking these are not you this is not you this is this is him or her this is the narcissist now the narcissist also as a bonus inculcates in you teaches you forces you coerces you to use his primitive infantile early defense mechanisms how does he do this how does he accomplish this I told you he regresses you when the narcissist snapshots you he then regresses you to an infantile stage to your infantile stage to your early childhood when you were when you were younger than 36 months old that time you were still fused and merged with mother in a symbiotic state narcissist becomes your mother and you merge and fuse with him as a 36 year old toddler or 24 36 months old toddler or 24 months old toddler you share with the narcissist the same primitive defense mechanisms the narcissist regresses you pushes you coerces you to become a baby and as a baby you have only primitive defense mechanisms the same way the narcissist has only primitive defense mechanisms infantile defense mechanisms because the narcissist is an infant it's a case of what used to be called arrested development so suddenly you begin to project projection things you reject in yourself things you don't like about yourself you suddenly attribute to other people suddenly you begin to split you develop what is called dichotomous thinking you divide everyone into black and white together with the narcissist you create a you create a shared psychosis a shared psychogenic event so with the narcissist you create a cult it's we against them it's you with the narcissist against the world this is splitting the narcissist encourages you to split rewards you every time you split every time you conform with the internal object every time you show behaviors that he can understand or appreciate every time you resemble him and mimic him and imitate him every time you become him every increment of losing yourself and finding him the narcissist rewards and every time you show a hint of agency a trifle independence a shed a shade of autonomy narcissist punishes you severely gradually you are conditioned the narcissist conditions you to become him and as a replica because you you become a replicant as a replicant of the narcissist as his clone of course you split the way the narcissist does or the borderline you see the world in terms of black and white good versus evil everything becomes morality play for example even when the narcissist has exited your life even when the narcissist is low gun you are still a slave to the narcissist programming to his contagion your mind and brain are still infected so you still split victims of narcissistic abuse still engage in splitting they still see the world as all bad or all good they are all good their abuses are all bad they there is a morality play here they are all moral their abuses are all immoral these these are splitting that's a splitting defense who did you get the splitting defense from so-called empath so-called victim who did you get it from you got it from the narcissist every single time you split people you split the world you split your situation you split your history every single time you adopt a victimhood identity you are in debt to the narcissist he did this to you every time you do any of this you're acting as a narcissist that's why I keep saying empaths are actually covert narcissists they have been infected they're zombies they're narcissist zombies not only do you adopt the narcissist state of mind internal structure internal objects and and defense mechanisms you also adopt these behaviors you become exploitative goal oriented merciless callous ruthless relentless and forgiving you develop repetition compulsions you approach and avoid you you become you become immersed in automatic negative thoughts about yourself and about others your whole internal working model the way you see the world your theory of mind the way you perceive other people all these get infected corrupted and distorted you develop dissociation exactly like the narcissist you forget things that are uncomfortable egodistonic challenge your view of yourself or you forget things that threaten to drive you away from the narcissist to see him in a true light because it's being inside the shared fantasy it's cozy it's wonderful it's seeing yourself through the narcissist gaze as an idealized object makes you fall in love with yourself it's irresistible it's addictive you don't want to be you don't want to be cast out and expelled from this garden of Eden so you dissociate you forget things you like to yourself you deny you repress all these are narcissistic mechanisms the vast majority of victims of narcissistic abuse at the end of a relationship however brief are infected narcissistic contagion e can can occur within hours often does exposure to narcissists which is longer than two three hours already creates a modicum of rudimentary narcissistic contagion of course if you've been exposed for years or weeks or months let alone decades you you're infected you're infected you've become a narcissist you've become his replica you've become his clone you need to detox you need to decontaminate you need to separate you need to individuate you need to rediscover yourself you need to raise yourself because you're now a child you need to raise yourself you need to parent yourself you need to become your own mother for you i've dealt with all this in other videos but do not kid yourself and do not deceive yourself and do not deceive others into thinking that having been exposed to this malevolent evil dark entity has had no effect on you whatsoever that it did not demolish your defenses eradicate your boundaries penetrated you and invaded you in every way possible physical and mental don't don't lie to yourself don't deceive other people admit it and get to work