 This is the latest entry in my debunk the online charlatans series and Today we're going to discuss the differences between narcissistic collapse narcissistic injury and narcissistic modification and why would we do that because the vast majority if not all online Self-styled experts with and without academic degrees are getting it utterly wrong So let us be charitable and altruistic and lend them a helping hand Because charitable and altruistic are my middle names Okay start with the easiest narcissistic injury narcissistic injury is any event any speech act any action any information that undermine challenge the or contradict the narcissists grandiosity the narcissist inflated fantastic self-perception and self-image Clinically, it's a cognitive distortion the narcissists cognition Misperceives reality falsifies it reframes it And so anything that challenges grandiosity causes narcissistic injury and in the vast majority of cases narcissistic injury induces frustration aggression and what is known as narcissistic rage It's a one-time thing. It passes and the narcissist moves on usually Now narcissistic injury is not read my lips not narcissistic modification narcissistic modification is any sudden abrupt unexpected public shaming and humiliation of the narcissist in front of significant others could be family members, but usually significant peers or Publicly in the media or whatever so it has to be public It has to include humiliation shame and exposure and it has to include an audience of people the narcissists values as potential sources of narcissistic supply as role models as reference points and so on so forth if one of these elements is missing It's not narcissistic modification. If it's not done in public, but in private It's narcissistic injury could be a massive narcissistic injury But it's still an injury and the narcissist will recover via Narcissistic rage if it's not done in front of meaningful significant other others it's not modification and If it doesn't involve humiliation shame exposure And if it doesn't enhance the narcissists fragility and vulnerability That's not narcissistic modification narcissistic modification results in Decompensation the deactivation of all the narcissists major Defenses and that includes his false self. He remains in the wake of modification. He is Skinless he is he has no protection He cannot reframe reality you cannot lie to himself anymore He is face-to-face with himself in the mirror and he experiences Disregulation clinically he becomes a borderline replete with suicidal ideation and depression That's modification as you can see it has nothing to do with injury Collapse narcissistic collapse has nothing to do with modification or injury narcissistic collapse is the repeated prolonged Failure to secure narcissistic supply to extract Narcissistic supply from the environment in short a failure of self-efficacy But it has to be over a period of time It has to be repetitive and without a single exception It has to deal exclusively with narcissistic supply or the inability to obtain supply or to secure supply And it has to conform Somehow enhance the narcissists sense of shame Inferiority complex and inherent fragility collapse Leads to type in constancy Following a collapse the narcissists reverts to another type of narcissistic from somatic to cerebral from cerebral to somatic From covert to overt from overt or covert It's a desperate attempt to secure supply by trans by self transformation It never works and there is finally a reversion to the dominant type the original type Collapse is at the core of covert narcissism Covert fragile shy vulnerable narcissism is a permanent state of collapsed narcissism And so if you were to study covert narcissists, you would be actually witnessing slow-mo slow-motion Narcissistic collapse now do not confuse Narcissistic collapse with narcissistic failure as many many many like 99% of self-styled experts do Including self-styled experts with PhDs So narcissistic failure is a stage in Personal growth and development in early childhood The phrase was coined by growth Stein who was a psychoanalyst and he describes The traumatized and abused child's failure to become a narcissist the child attempts to become a narcissist tries to develop a false self Grandiosity is on and fails when the child fails The child remains stuck in a phase that is known as failed Narcissism this failed narcissism is a precursor. It's the antecedent of borderline personality disorder So people with borderline personality disorder are actually Failed narcissists failed narcissism has nothing to do with collapsed narcissism Non-narcissist Can be a failed narcissist by definition because he's or he or she is a narcissist All many narcissists can be collapsed narcissists, but they can never be failed narcissists so shoo that tsunami of nonsense out there is beyond mind-boggling and I Don't know how to counter it except through these snippets of education And of course the narcissistic defenses of these styled Self-styled experts will prevent them from learning. They don't need to learn. They know everything They have never written a paper on narcissism. They've never published anything on narcissism They've never taught narcissism. They've never learned narcissism and yet they are experts on narcissism What to tell you it's a miracle it's a wonderland this YouTube and Tiktok and all these social media platforms where everyone can suddenly become Whatever they want to be effortlessly and without commensurate investment and commitment to any long-term process of learning and study Everyone and his dog and his mother-in-law are experts on cluster B personality disorders Well, let me lend you a helping hand Dark triad personalities are not narcissists. They are not psychopaths dark triad is a combination of subclinical narcissism That means narcissism that cannot be diagnosed Subclinical psychopathy that means psychopathy that cannot be diagnosed and Machiavellianism That means manipulativeness These are people who cannot be diagnosed as narcissists cannot be diagnosed as psychopaths But a highly manipulative and they have a narcissistic style and some psychopathic traits and behaviors So once and for all all of you self-styled experts Dark triad is not narcissism is Not psychopathy not not like an N. O. T. It's a simple word. Even you can grasp it it is a combination of people who are almost narcissists almost psychopaths and They're a bit manipulative in short your spouse your boss your friends your colleagues all of them Can be dark personalities without qualifying as narcissists or Psychopaths now having learned this from me Teach your dog and teach your mother-in-law So that you don't continue to spread nonsensical misinformation everywhere Thank you Trauma and emotional dysregulation are unbearable They threaten the inner peace and inner equilibrium The balance the sense of stability and sense of self that we all maintain Anyone can be exposed to trauma sudden or complex prolonged an Emotional dysregulation is a reaction Not only in borderline personality disorder But in many other mental health conditions and even among healthy people Taken to extreme exposed to stress and anxiety which are intolerable the processing of dissonance stress and anxiety Often leads to dysregulation And so this causes enormous distress and naturally Exactly like people who have contracted cancer People who are traumatized people who are emotionally dysregulated Are all over the internet looking for answers looking for experts Looking for the truth and looking for correct information How to tell if the person you are listening to is a real expert on cluster B personality disorders and psychology in general or Talking out of a highly specific part of his anatomy and is actually a con artist charlatan Sam Vaknin to the rescue. I'm gonna give you a simple test If the person you are listening to is using the word disassociation This is someone who has never read a psychology textbook psychology paper psychology article and never said in a psychology class That is someone who has no idea what he's talking about and Pay attention an academic degree is no guarantee of expertise Psychology is a ginormous field. You could have a PhD in psychology and know next to nothing about cluster B personality disorders and or Dissociation So if he or she use the word Disassociation Click off move on watch my videos, of course, because I would never use this word. I Would use the word disassociation Now disassociation is one of a family of defense mechanisms. The other two are Compartmentalization and isolation These are three defense mechanisms intended to compartmentalize isolate cut off slice off repress bury eliminate impulses thoughts cognitions beliefs ideas values and above all memories which are traumatic painful hurtful or Dissonant the conflict with each other they cannot coexist In the mind without generating mayhem and chaos something known as dissonance So when the psyche comes across such situations it isolates certain ideas impulses thoughts or emotions and and memories and forgets them isolates them relegates them to the unconscious and this is dissociation When this when dissociation fails All other defense mechanisms shut down a process known as Decompensation it's very dangerous the integrity of the individual the Equilibrium which is always precarious in any case Can be unsettled. There could be a rapid process of disintegration dysfunction sets in The mind is geared engineered you could say to prevent this from happening and its main weapon its main tool is dissociation We recognize three major forms of dissociation amnesia which is forgetting memories relegating them to the never never lens of of the mind So that they are no longer active They no longer possess energy and the ability to interfere with the mind with the conscious with consciousness This is amnesia Derealization where the entire situation is perceived or rendered as unreal as if it were a movie or a theater production This is not real. What's happening here? So I'm not I'm not at risk. There's no danger I'm not I'm not gonna not gonna fall apart because none of this is really happening. It's like a dream a dreams case escape And deep personalization. I'm not here. This is not happening to me. I'm divorced and detached from my body I'm somewhere else These three mechanisms amnesia Derealization and deep personalization together constitute the dissociative spectrum in very extreme cases When the stress and the anxiety and the fear and the threat are too much They nothing no defense mechanism Can ameliorate them or mitigate them or cope with them efficaciously even dissociation has a hard time Of somehow managing the situation in these extreme cases. We have dissociative identity disorder Now there are many many variants of dissociative identity disorder One of them used to be known as multiple personality disorder, but there are many others This is a hot-button topic Nowadays in psychology, but dissociation is actually a daily occurrence even in healthy people and It is part of the die of the diagnostic landscape And even diagnostic criterion in borderline personality disorder and other mental health issues So dissociation Appears either as a dynamic in certain mental health conditions or even As a criterion for example in psychotic disorders and borderline personality disorder and so on So it's a very important topic and issue and there's no way No way for you to claim that you know anything about psychology Without having been exposed to dissociation as a critical mechanism So What is Disassociation Disassociation Is when people who know what they're talking about like moi Put distance between themselves And people who spew nonsensical misinformation online Pretending to be experts That is the only form of dissociation known in psychology Have fun and do not dissociate this mini lecture for your own good