 This is the avoidance part. The approach part has to do with the need to establish a shared fantasy with an external object and then the need to convert the external object into an internal object which in turn can be converted into a secretary object. This is a crucial, crucial observation. The bad objects, the bad internal objects in a narcissist mind are all representations of external objects. For the narcissist to have a bad object, he needs you. The narcissist needs you so that he can convert you into a bad object and the narcissist needs a bad object to get rid of the toxic waste that he is constantly generating internally. I can't overemphasize this point. It's crucial. The narcissist must interact with external objects. The narcissist and the schizoid, they are compelled, they're driven, they can't help it. They must team up with external objects. Why? Because they need to convert these external objects to bad objects. Why? Because they need to offload to transfer the toxic waste that they constantly produce onto the bad object and from the bad object onto you. You are the narcissist's garbage disposal dump. You are the toxic waste dump. The narcissist uses you as a repository in reservoir of his shadow. You are the narcissist's externalized shadow but there is no way for the narcissist to externalize his dark sick side before he had internalized you. To externalize, to project, to get rid of, to throw out the sick pathological decaying, decomposing, decadent, destructive, stinking, horrible, toxic part of himself. To get rid of this gungrenous, to amputate this gungrenous organ, there's only one way to accomplish this. You need to take all this baggage, baggage of toxicity and and decomposition and you need to offload it on a bad object, bad internal object and bad external object. That's why the narcissist needs you. He needs you because he needs a supply of bad objects all the time. He reaches out to people, he flirts, he seduces, he does anything. He creates shared fantasies with business associates, with romantic partners, with colleagues, with neighbors, with family members. He does this so that he can then snapshot you, internalize you and dump all his SHIT on you, onto you, converting you into an internal toxic waste dump. And then he projects this bad object, which is now laden and burdened with the narcissist toxicity. He projects it onto you, replete with the luggage, replete with all the dirt and all the trash and all the toxins and all the poisons and all the bad emotions and all the fears, replete with all this negative emotionality. Now residing within the bad object and this internal bad object used to be you. And so he's giving you back this internal bad object, contaminated, adulterated, deadly, poisonous. And this is the approach part. The narcissist approaches, you converts you to internal objects, so then he approaches the internal object. He imbues it with toxicity, then he projects it onto you and you become the secretary, you become toxic, you become the abuser, the narcissist becomes the victim and then he avoids you. And he avoids you by shunning you, by abusing you. So what you see from the outside is like approach, avoidance, love, hate, ambivalence, good treatment, caring, empathic, lack of care. Even I would say disdain and contempt. You see this, this intermittent reinforcement because the narcissist is not interacting with you, is interacting with your representation in his mind. All the bad objects in the narcissist's mind, all of them are representations of people outside of real people of external objects. And the narcissist uses all of them as repositories of toxicity, as toxic waste dumps. And to do that converts them to bed internal objects. Once this is done, once this is accomplished, once the narcissist got rid of you in effect, by poisoning you. It's exactly like poisoning. The narcissist gave you back the internal bed object which had represented you for so long, gave it back to you, but it's radioactive and you acquire radiation sickness. Give it back to you. At that moment, the narcissist is alone. He goes back full cycle, full circle to the separation phase. You remember how we started this lecture in the separation phase from mother when the narcissist had separated from mother as a baby. There was a void, there was a space, deep space, there was an emptiness, there was an empty core. The narcissist goes back there, having discarded you, having dispensed with you and with your, and with a bed internal object that represented you, having got rid of you in every possible way internally and externally. The narcissist has reverted to the separation phase. Anyhow, the narcissist sees you as a mother. The narcissist regards his intimate partner, actually everyone around him, as mother and father figures. So discarding you feels like separation. It's relieving, it's liberating, it's adventurous, it's courageous, it's grandiose. It's a good feeling, not a bad feeling if he is the one who had taken the initiative. If you took the initiative, it's modified, but if he took the initiative to discard you, it's the greatest high in the known universe. It's a literal high. It's a sense of utter cellular liberation. The narcissist has re-established a safe, solitary space in which he can feel finally that he does exist, individuation. The narcissist goes through separation, individuation. You're the mother figure. He converted you into a bed object. He gave you back the bed object with its luggage. Now you're a persecutory object. Now you're a bed object. You're horrible. Now you're the enemy. So he discards you. That's the separation phase. Your mother figure. He discarded you as a mother, not as an intimate partner, as a mother. That's the separation phase. And following the separation phase, the narcissist individuates. He becomes an individual. He has this solitary, endless universe in which he can become himself. He then falls in love with himself, limerence, infatuation, literal, with his newly discovered self. Because his new self contains only good objects. He just got rid of the bed object. At this stage contains only good objects. It's totally idealized. And the narcissist falls in love. The only time the narcissist feels as an individual and the only time the narcissist is truly in love in the fullest sense, fullest meaning of this word is after separation, initiated separation, after discard, initiated discard. Now don't confuse this with being discarded. If you are the one who abandons the narcissist or rejects him, that's an entirely different story. The narcissist's object inconsistency and he reacts with modification. I've dedicated a few videos to this other process. In healthy people boundaries define the personal space. With the narcissist boundaries are the space. That's a very critical distinction. Healthy people have kind of perimeter. They have border police. You know, where you show a passport and so on. They have border police. Then inside there's the hinterland. There's the country. And many, many good things are happening in the country and so on. So it's a healthy environment. With the narcissist the boundaries are the space. He can feel, he feels that he has a space only when he enforces boundaries and his boundaries are rejecting, humiliating, sadistic, aggressive. Narcissus identifies boundary setting with aggression. He identifies boundary setting with sadistic humiliation and only when he does this he has a sense of personal space which healthy people have just by placing the boundaries. To remind you of the reason that narcissists go through this process is to test your sufficiency and efficacy as parental figures within the shared fantasy. The narcissist is expected to provide unconditional love and acceptance. Never mind what he does. Never mind his misdeeds and his misconduct. Never mind how ostentatiously he had hurt you. So he's testing you. He wants to see if you're a good enough mother. He is reenacting early childhood conflicts and he's deriving some cases, sadistic pleasure from the whole process. But as you can see the narcissist lives inside his head in the fullest sense of the word. He interacts with only with sorry the lamp went on. He interacts only with internal objects and he uses external objects as conduits, as ways to reach into internal objects. With these internal objects he has everything he needs. He's totally self-sufficient. He's schizoid. He has sex, orthoerotic. He has services and he has supply.