 For those of you who missed my traditional introduction My name is Sam Vaknin. You don't say and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Lab narcissism revisited and numerous other books on personality disorders too many to enumerate I'm also a professor of psychology in several universities on several continents. Okay. I hope you got this straight Today we are going to discuss a very interesting topic What happens when the narcissist? suspects you When he is hyper vigilant when he spies on you when he invades your privacy When he intrudes when he tries to control and micromanage you Because you constitute a threat a menace What happens when you had become in other words the narcissist per secretary object Stay tuned. It's a long ride, but well worth your money Let me read to you a segment From the latest edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual edition five published in 2013 a Segment which I wholeheartedly disagree with for reasons. I will Touch upon a bit later. Here goes. This is the orthodoxy. This is what we teach in universities Although antisocial behavior may be present in some individuals with with paranoid personality disorder It is not usually motivated by a desire for personal gain or to exploit others as in Antisocial personality disorder, but rather is more often attributable to a desire for revenge Individuals with narcissistic personality disorder may occasionally display suspiciousness social withdrawal or alienation, but this derives primarily from fears of having their imperfections or flaws revealed Paranoid traits may be adoptive particularly in threatening environments Okay The part I disagree with is the differential diagnosis between paranoid personality disorder and narcissistic Personalities or as you shall see for fright. I claim that all paranoid's are actually narcissists Start with a basic fact The paranoid believes that he is the center of some kind of Collusion or conspiracy It could be a collusion or conspiracy by one person for example his intimate partner It could be a group of people for example in the workplace or in the neighborhood pub Where they according to him mock him or deride him or criticize him behind his back Or it could be a collusion on a national level the FBI is after him the CIA is spying on him Someone is planning to assassinate him Regardless of the type of conspiracy theory pet pet conspiracy theory Regardless of whether the conspiracy theory is limited to a single individual or to a group of people or to institutions The paranoid puts himself at the center of these elaborate schemes and plots and in this sense paranoia are is grandiosity in disguise Paranoia is simply another form of grandiosity and the paranoid is nothing but a highly specific subtype of a narcissist In a minute, we will begin to discuss The expressions of paranoia and suspiciousness in your relationship with the narcissist within interpersonal relations and in intimate settings It's not not a nice and pleasant picture anyone who had lived with analysis Had gone through such phases of suspicion paranoia spying extreme romantic jealousy delusion of jealousy envy destructive envy and so This is the topic of today's video before I start. I would like to answer a few of the questions Very very briefly. I promise question number one. What is the inner experience of a narcissist? I Deliberated on this for hours and I think the best description I can come up with Is that the inner experience of a narcissist? Is a whipping crying terrified very very small child Faced with his own death Time and again to be a narcissist is As close as possible on earth to experiencing your own death it's a you you your life is Your emptiness you experience your emptiness. You are in absence. You are a void You are not an annihilated so There are no words imagine. I'm speechless. Can you imagine this? There are very few words which can capture this experience both Harvey Cleckley and Alice Miller Pointed out to the fact that many narcissists are actually very gifted They're good-looking. Just look at me. They're intelligence. Of course me. I mean, they have everything They have all the gifts except one the ability to use any of these gifts as Bromberg says The life of a narcissist is the life Unlived as Cleckley says the narcissist rejects life and as Miller points out the gift a child That's a curse not a blessing This child is trapped in a maze exactly like in every classic horror movie in the shining He's trapped in a maze. He doesn't know how to get out. He's terrified He knows he's gonna die and then he dies and then he resuscitates revives Resurrected only to die again. It's a little religious. You know, it's like a tiny Jesus or a tiny Zalatusta. It's a Zoroaster. It's a bit of a Zoroastrian cycle so in many many religions you have this figure Who dies and then is resurrected and many of these figures are very grandiose And of course all of them are psychotic. So they are mentally ill It's the same with the narcissist. Okay. I Promised it's gonna be brief and I broke my promise already, but I'm a narcissist. I can be forgiven next Monono avare I have received I don't know how many missives and comments and emails and I don't know you got it wrong Monono avare is not what you said. You got it. I mean, I miss I did not express myself properly. I Said in one of my previous videos that Monono avare the Japanese Way of thinking is Actually the opposite the antidote to grandiose thinking. I didn't say it's a form of grandiose thinking I said it's the opposite of grandiose thinking Monono avare is awareness of An immersion in the beauty of the world It's an aesthetic principle But by immersing yourself in the beauty of the world the cherry blossom or whatever You minimize yourself in a way, but not in a bad way. It's not like you disappear or vanish It's like it's more like getting integrated in your environment and Getting integrated not in the fake Indian mystic guru style Not getting integrated by ego death or whatever, you know But getting integrated by growing By becoming one It's an experience of personal growth and development not an experience not a narcissistic experience of Emptiness and vanishing and in this way, it's the kind of nothingness. I'm talking about Okay, keep it for the next video Next question you've asked me shadow banning. I don't believe in shadow banning. It's a conspiracy theory, but There is a process called de-ranking on YouTube and there are human moderators Monitoring specific channels and specific videos. These are facts De-ranking simply means that if you use certain words if you antagonize groups of users If you are brutal if you're impolite if you're troll at all if you misbehave if You use foul language If you spam any of these behaviors get you de-ranked your videos will not show up on search results until you know way down and Your videos will be will be on recommended will appear as recommended videos But only after users have watched three four hundred videos from other channels So you will enter the recommended list only after users have been exposed to channels which are more acceptable to you So I'm not shadow banned but Definitely, I have been de-ranked and How do I know that because the number of my subscribers has almost doubled 234,000 now My click-through rate CTR has gone up not down in other words more people are clicking on my videos when they are recommended and yet The number of views on on my videos has declined by 80% Anyone who knows basic mathematics knows it's impossible because if more people click on my videos when they see them I should have had more views if I have more if I have a bigger number of subscribers should have had more views and Definitely, there's no way to explain a decline of 80% except if I've been de-ranked. Okay next question What do I think about prophets of religion with specific names? Here's a general statement prophets of religion Today would have been diagnosed as suffering a psychotic disorder people who claim to know God's will Who claim to know what God wants how God wants you to behave people who claim any knowledge about God's mind our Narcissists grandiose narcissists Because in a finite mind a mortal mind has no access to an infinite mind and in immortal mind end of story and Psychopaths and corn artists use religion to conquer to subjugate and to take your money What about monks and nuns they're asexual schizoids if I put all this together Religion organized and non-organized the very belief in God is mental illness and Religion inevitably and in inexorably attracts mentally ill people It's a mental asylum institutionalized mental asylum End of story. I'm sorry. I'm politically incorrect Which is why it got me de-ranked. Okay Let's get let's get to the point. I Said yesterday that personality disorders are narratives and the aim of these narratives is to disguise and defend against discontinuities in identity and memory the The person who had been traumatized as a child was unable to create a coherent cohesive self the self-constellation the creation of a self a unitary Functional self has been disrupted by all forms of abuse and trauma And so consequently this kind of person has a galaxy of Fragments of self he has a fragmented or fractured self and he tries to disguise this He tries to pretend that his self is healthy and normative and unitary and cohesive and continuous And he does this by creating a story a narrative a piece of fiction a movie script And we call this a personality disorder now, of course Of course because it's a disguise Because it's a piece of fiction because it's a plot because it's a narrative the Personality disordered patient Feels that he or she is an imposter She feels that she's pretending. He feels that he is lying and deceiving others They know that the personality disorder is is a story. It's not real. So they they themselves don't feel real They feel Derealized in the case of the narcissist The narrative is called false self It's everything the narcissist is not The false self knows everything is all-knowing Initiate the false self is all-powerful Nipotent the false self is everywhere omnipresent The false self is perfect and brilliant and a major success or in Donald Trump's language a winner Which analysis is very often is not so The narcissist knows that he's an imposter and he develops the imposter syndrome To cover up for the imposter syndrome the imposter syndrome simply means That personality disorder people feel that they are not really there That the facade that they present to the world is not who they are They feel they have no identity. It's called identity diffusion or identity disturbance And so to cover up for that They have a series of what Bromberg calls ego resources defenses Kind of cognitive deficits. So they have for example grandiosity And they are very hyper vigilant They scan they they want to make sure if there are any threats to expose them for who they are They are terrified because they know they're faking it And very often not making it They know they're faking it and they are dimly aware that people see right through them And so they compensate for it But pretending to be even more so what they are not Via grandiosity and they scan all the time. They are hyper vigilant to see who is about Who is about to reveal them to expose them for the fakes? And the fraudsters that they are and they have referential ideation They all the time think that people talk about them mock them gossip about them, you know they and this this Imbues people with personality disorder with suspiciousness They're all very suspicious suspicious people Gradually over the years They begin to develop the secretary delusions and paranoid ideation Now when you notice that i'm talking about all personality disorders I am not making a distinction between paranoid personality disorder and all the rest I think paranoid personality disorder should be abolished As a diagnosis because all personality disorders disordered people become Inextricably ineluctably in due time all of them become paranoid All of them develop paranoid ideation the secretary delusions and what what is called a persecretary object A persecretary object Is an internal object that represents The intimate partner or represents other people It's persecretary Because it keeps reminding This the personality disordered patient That he or she is faking it That he or she is not real That it's all a theater show a theater production And it's they are about to be exposed for who they really are So it's persecretary. It's a horrible feeling. It's like a Tribunal It's like the process the trial by Franz Kafka. There's a tribunal The charge sheet is never presented Yet the trial goes on and you know that you're doomed. You're doomed To be found guilty the verdict is guilty this inner critic this sadistic super ego sets you up for failure in this court And you don't even know What makes you guilty? So everyone is a potential enemy. Everyone is a potential judge Everyone can trigger you In one way or another Everyone is a possible threat Everyone is a is a looming ambient menace Gradually you become paranoid and so sometimes You choose the intimate partner as the persecretary object The intimate partner becomes the repository of your suspicions negative emotionality Anger rage fear at being exposed And so on why because it's the intimate partner the intimate partner has access To privilege information that other people don't have So the more the intimate partner is intimate with you the more she has the potential to become a prosecutor and persecutor The more she has the potential to hurt you the more she has the potential to harm you The more she has the potential to collaborate with others to conspire with others against you Intimacy is a threat Because intimacy is knowledge In intimacy is information intimacy is data Which can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion the intimate partner Doesn't have many choices if If the locus and the focus of the paranoid ideation If the locus and the focus of the suspicions And if if this is in other people if if the narcissist Or the borderline Or the schizoid or if they suspect other people if they if they direct Their paranoia their suspiciousness at others not at the intimate partner The intimate partner can collude in the delusion Can collude in the delusion she can go along With the delusional narrative Of the paranoid conspiracy Or she can oppose it, but if she opposes The paranoid delusion if she opposes the persecuted persecutory delusion if she opposes the paranoid ideas ideation If she opposes the conspiracy theories if she opposes Her partner's way of reinterpreting reality Reframing reality as they are out to get me. They envy me. They want to destroy me I frustrate them with my superiority so they want to pull me down to their level It's if they if she doesn't collaborate with these narratives if she opposes them if she tries to inject a modicum of reality Into the relationship and her partner's mind She becomes the persecutory object So it's a no win situation Either she goes along with the increasingly more paranoid way of interpreting the world Her partner becomes more and more paranoid more more suspicious more more hyper vigilant More and more wary and more and more weirdo eccentric and creepy and she must go along with it Or She tries to bring him back to reality to save him actually To save him to wake him up But when she does this she becomes the focus and the target Of his Persecretary delusions paranoid ideation. She becomes the enemy. She becomes a persecutory object if On the other hand if she is the persecutory object if his suspiciousness Paranoia hyper vigilance enmity Hostility if they are directed at her and not at others She can she again has two solutions She can collude. She can accept her role But then she needs to act accordingly She needs to conform to the paranoid expectations a very classic example is when the Personality disordered partner the narcissistic partner the borderline partner the psychopathic partner have Paranoid ideation regarding the intimate partner that manifests as romantic jealousy. They are convinced the partner is cheating on them They're convinced and there's nothing that can convince them otherwise So some partners begin to cheat And they begin to cheat in order to gratify this paranoid ideation in order to justify the partner in order to actually buttress Help the partner In order to convince a partner that his suspicions are not insane that they are actually reality tested Evidence-based So many many partners Begin to act in ways that justify the paranoia and the suspicion If their part if the personality disordered partner the narcissists the psychopath the borderline expects them to cheat Is convinced that they are cheating? Ultimately after a few years after a few months after a few days, they will begin to cheat Even if they had no intention to and even if cheating is repardonant to them They can't stand it, but they still cheat and they cheat in order to uphold Appold not undermine the paranoid ideation because they realize how important the paranoid ideation is to the functioning To the survival of their partner and they love the partner It's a sacrifice of love Ironically a lot of cheating goes on Because the partner wants it and you love the partner. So you satisfy his wishes The other option you have if you are the target of the partner's paranoia and suspicion Is redirecting the suspicions at other people And that usually includes family members So if you are the target of the narcissists higher irritation suspicion hostility enmity You know if if he if he is spying on you if he is hyper vigilant in your presence If you misinterpret and reinterpret and reframes everything you do as a conspiracy against him, etc, etc You sometimes you redirect all this negative energy at your sister at your mother At his brother At his boss At the government you would tend to redirect this energy. It's another solution Okay, I would like to read to you an excerpt from Theodor Millen's personality disorders in modern life co-authored by Roger Davis And it's about the fanatic the fanatical or fanatic paranoid Pay attention Notice the similarities between the fanatic paranoid and the narcissists Theodor Millen writes Fanatic paranoid share certain characteristics with the narcissistic personality Both seem arrogant pretentious and expansive Both maintain a faint air of content towards other people Whereas narcissists usually achieve some success Fanatic paranoid have run hard into reality Their narcissism profoundly wounded Thus fallen from grace is talking about collapse narcissists Thus fallen from grace The self image of fanatic paranoid This self image of perfection is shattered Fanatic paranoid seek to reestablish lost pride through extravagant claims and intricate fantasies By endowing themselves with illusory powers They become superheroes or demigods Ready to prevail against an evil universe Eventually delusions of grandeur become their primary coping mechanism By assuming a grandiose identity Fanatic paranoid offset the collapse of self-esteem produced by objective reality They may present themselves as a holy saint Inspired leader or talented genius Elaborate schemes may be devised By which to deliver the world from sin Lead the planet to world peace Solve long-standing scientific problems or create utopian societies This paranoia is needed This grandiosity Often their plans are sufficiently detailed To draw at least some passing interest When their ideas are eventually dismissed by others They are likely to attribute interference to intangible powers Perhaps secret government agencies that have conspired to preserve the status quo Projection, righteous indignation And a sense of omnipotence combined to create a defensive armor in this subtype Developmentally the fanatic paranoid is similar to the compensating narcissists Overindulged and unrestrained by their parents Their imagination of what they might become in life Was given free reign and encouraged by caretakers Perhaps as a means of compensating for poor family status Once beyond the protective confines of the household however Their image of superiority was quickly and unmercifully destroyed by the outside world So completely defeated Saddled with a crushed sense of self-worth And unwilling to face reality Fanatical paranoids retreat deeper inside their private world of fantasy Creating a compensatory universe in which they can assume their former station Fulfill previous ambitions and salvage their existence You see the extreme similarity between The paranoid and the narcissists Even according to Theodore Millen 20 years ago Kofi I swear Okay, a narcissist partner wrote to me these heartbreaking words I have made him sound like a monster and in many ways he really is At the same time I've always seen a vulnerability in him The small terrified hungry child Almost split off from the rest of him And I suppose this is why I tried so hard with him I knew almost intuitively that while his false ego was constantly swelling His heart true ego was starving I tried she writes I tried as hard as I could In as many ways as I could to feed the real person inside And I believed that there was a fragment of that person still alive represented by the child In a way I think the violence of his reactions near the end Was due to my coming so close in arousing these ordinary needs When I realized he has become dependent on me And that I knew it I think he just couldn't take it He could not finally take the chance of trusting me It was an orgy of destruction I keep thinking I could have handled it better Could and should have done things differently Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference But I will say that there was a real person in there somewhere And quite a delightful one But as you pointed out The narcissist would always prefer his invented self to the true one I could not make him see that his real self was far more interesting and enchanting than his grotesque inflated grandiose superman construct I think it is a tragic loss of a truly interesting and talented human being Wonderful it's from the intimate partner of a narcissist at the very very very beginning Of the of the discovery of narcissism online When I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse she was among the first who had written to me People with certain personality disorders mainly borderline narcissistic compulsive obsessive schizotypical paranoid They have a persecutory object It is a tormenting devaluing and sadistic inner voice. It's an introject It repeatedly and authoritatively informs them that they're bad worthless weak immoral and disappointment It is the outcome of a failed attempt to internalize a affected object An object in which there's an emotional investment such as a parent or an intimate partner And such a failure is common When the object behaves in ways which defy or contradict the patient's grandiose fantasies and self-perception Or when the object for example the intimate partner frustrates the patient's attempts To merge or to fuse with the object And such an inner critic a relentless integrated prosecutor and judge Is of course intolerable unbearable And in an attempt to exercise it the patient projects it Usually onto the intimate partner The spouse the mate the lover Then become the outer embodiment or reification of the internal agonizing construct The persecutory object also serves as an organizing and explanatory principle The patient's inner processes and life events are accounted for By attributing them to the nefarious presence intentions and actions of the malicious intimate partner Even the patient's attachment to her spouse Is interpreted as the lamentable outcome of brainwashing of manipulation Everything that goes wrong in the patient's tortured existence Is her partner's fault And almost supernatural emanation from his malevolence or at the very least indifference or rejection The patient tries to coerce To shoehorn the intimate partner into behaving in a way that upholds His newly his newfound status as an enemy and a threat And this defense mechanism is known as projective identification And if the intimate partner has his own issues He will comply in his assigned role. He will transform himself into an abuser A process known as introjective identification Once this is done And the intimate partner really becomes an abuser The patient then proceeds to rebel Against her externalized persecutory object her intimate partner She proceeds to punish punish him to defy him by behaving promiscuously For example by cheating being a slut or a whore devaluing his property She can envy him She can sabotage her partner's career She can passive aggressively Challenge him and provoke him Humiliate reject and undermine his well-being his self-esteem Compromise his public image and standing in society penalizing in myriad ways And naturally the patient then expects a penalty She knows she she has misbehaved She knows She realizes her misconduct And so she expects to be punished And she expects the penalty the punishment to be commensurate with her egregious misbehavior And then she becomes paranoid because the punishment is looming The punishment is imminent and above all it's inevitable. She becomes paranoid Hypervigilant and exceedingly anxious And these dissonant emotions Only augment her perception of the intimate partner as a source of unmitigated Sadistic control and judgment an imminent and only present threat And the fount of ambivalence She develops a love hate relationship But do narcissists tend to react with paranoia When they are threatened or when they feel threatened And how long do these attacks of paranoia last? Does the narcissist forever Decry and fear the subjects of his paranoia his persecutors his enemies Specific paranoid reactions tend to fade fade and the narcissist frequently Homes in on new agents of persecution new envious people new enemies Arguably the most hurtful thing about the relationship with the narcissist is the ultimate realization How interchangeable one is as far as the narcissist is concerned The narcissist is hungry for narcissistic supply. So even his paranoia Is grandiose. It's a fantasy aimed to regulate his sense of self-worth It is true his paranoia That the narcissist proves to himself that he is sufficiently important center of attention Interesting target enough of a threat to be threatened back to have people conspire and worry about it. In other words To be the subject of incessant focus yet this Untoward mode of attracting narcissistic supply wanes easily if it is not fed constantly It is true. However That many narcissists are paranoid by nature. Remember what the atom million said Narcissism is a deformed emotional reaction to the narcissist's perception of the world As unpredictably hostile precariously balanced illusory In such a universe the inclination to see enemies everywhere To guard against these enemies and to imagine the worst this inclination this proclivity is almost adaptive Almost functional if the world is bad, you should be a badass If the world is hostile, you should be doubly hostile and you should preempt the world You should attack first abandon first Torture first hurt first Moreover, the narcissist falls prey to delusions of grandeur Important men like him deserve important enemies The narcissist attributes to himself influence and power Much greater than he actually possesses and such overreaching power Would look very dubious without a proper set of enemies and opponents The victories that the narcissist scores over his mostly imagined foes and enemies These victories serve to emphasize his centrality and superiority An unfriendly environment and the threat it poses Overcome by the superior skills and traits of the narcissist These are an integral part of the personal myth of the narcissist Narcissism remember is a religion. It's a mythology and narcissist is the godhead and the worshiper It's a one-man cult The narcissist partner is made his spouse his lover his girlfriend The partner usually craves and encourages The narcissist paranoid or threatening attention Her behavior and reactive patterns Tend to reinforce his behavior and reactive patterns. It's a game of two A vicious cycle vicious in the fullest sense of the world Especially if the intimate partner has their own issues. For example, if she's a borderline But the narcissist is not a full-fledged paranoiac He maintains his reality testing His paranoid reactions are triggered by reality itself An egg done by the ostensibly innocent The narcissist partner or mate or spouse or colleague or whatever Actually, the narcissist partner is likely to feel barren and vacuous When these games are over for example after she divorces him. She is a drama queen She's adrenaline addicted. She needs these this constant, you know Play for two She needs the surprises and the traits and the the adventure Moreover, the paranoid lives in constant fear and tribulation And this plus the deficient structure of the narcissistic personality Allow the partner to assume a position of superiority Elevated moral ground and sound mental health. Remember all the empaths The partner feels justified in regarding the narcissist as inferior A child a monster A demon an invalid a misfit that makes her superior angelic blameless and blemishless Very sick She tends to play the missing parents The intimate partner more often even plays the role of the psychologist in their relationships How many emails do I receive from women who claim to have diagnosed their husbands and vice versa? Playing the guru playing the psychologist with no qualifications or training whatsoever And in this mind game which passes for a relationship The narcissist is assigned the role of the patient in need of care Of being objectively mirrored for his own good by the partner this and doubts the partner with authority And provides her with a way to distance herself from her own emotions and deficiencies And from the narcissist, of course This presumption of superiority this grandiose defense Therefore is analgesic It reduces pain The partner is permanently enmeshed in a battle to prove herself Both to her ever critical and humiliating narcissist partner and to herself She wants to prove that she is worthwhile to restore her shattered sense of safety security self-esteem self-worth And and she must resort to narcissistic techniques to do that Gradually she becomes a situational narcissist And this phenomenon is narcissistic mirroring It happens because the narcissist succeeds in turning himself Into the partner's preferred or even exclusive frame of reference The mental axis around which all judgments Revolve the fountain of common sense and prevailing logic the source of all knowledge and authority on everything of importance The narcissist's paranoid illusions Extend not only to intimate settings They're all pervasive take for example therapy the therapeutic setting One of the most important Presenting symptoms of the narcissist in therapy is his or her insistence that he or she is equal to the psychotherapist In knowledge experience social status skills The narcissist in the therapeutic session Spices his speech with psychiatric lingo and professional terms to prove his equality to the therapist The narcissist distances himself From his painful emotions by generalizing and analyzing them by slicing his life and hurt In and neatly packaging the results into what he thinks are professional insights His message to the psychotherapist is there is nothing much that you can teach me I'm as intelligent as you are. You are not superior to me. Actually We should be we should collaborate as equals in this unfortunate state of affairs in which we inadvertently find ourselves involved and this This grandiosity Leads to paranoia because there is a lingering suspicion that the therapist is mocking mocking the narcissist Deriding his clay is you know grandiose inflated claims does not agree with his self-assessment The less predictable the world the more ominous and precarious it is the more paranoid the reactions to this world are Sometimes through the mechanism of narcissistic mirroring the partner reacts to a prolonged period of emotional deprivation and stress By emulating the narcissist himself The narcissist is then likely to reproach the partner by saying you became I and I became you You have changed so much. I don't know you anymore The narcissist has a way of getting under your skin They cannot the partner cannot evade the narcissist because the narcissist is part of of of life Part of the partner's self and identity as internalized and introjected as any parent is Even after a long sought separation The partners of narcissists typically still care for the narcissist greatly Enough to be mulling over the expired relationship Ruminating about the relationship endlessly The partner discovers to her horror That she may be able to exit the narcissist life But he is unlikely to exit her life Paranoid ideation The narcissist's deep-rooted conviction that he is being persecuted by his inferiors detractors powerful ill-wishes and critics paranoid ideation Serves two psychodynamic purposes It upholds the narcissist's grandiosity But equally important it fends off looming threatening intimacy Let's discuss these two functions So we start by grandiosity enhancing paranoia Being the target of relentless ubiquitous and unjust persecution Proves to the paranoid narcissists how important he is How feared he is, how weighted he is, how envied he is In short, he is the center of the world Being hounded by the mighty and the privileged Validates his pivotal role in the scheme of things Only vital, weighty, crucial, essential principles Principles Only important people are bullied and intimidated the way he is Followed, harassed, stalked, intruded upon The unconscious inner dialogue is If I am sufficiently important To be plotted against If I am sufficiently important To be the focus of conspiracies I am important The narcissist consistently baits authority figures Contumatious He baits authority figures into punishing him And so by this, by being punished he upholds His delusional self-image is worthy of attention and of punishment This provocative behavior is what we call projective identification The paranoid delusions of the narcissists are always grandiose They're always cosmic, historical His pursuers, his detractors, his critics, his persecutors They are influential, they are formidable They are never inferior There is equals or superior, they are after his unique possessions How to exploit his expertise or special traits They want to force him to abstain and refrain from certain actions Or they want to goad him Goad him into certain actions Or they steal his ideas and plagiarizing or something The narcissist feels that he is at the center of intrigues And conspiracies of colossal magnitudes Alternatively, the narcissist feels victimized By mediocre bureaucrats and intellectual dwarves Who consistently fail to appreciate his outstanding Really unparalleled revolutionary talents, skills and accomplishments Being haunted by his challenged inferiors Being hunted by people who can't appreciate what he has to offer It substantiates a narcissist's comparative superiority Driven by pathological envy These pygmies, these dwarves, these midgets Collude to defraud him Badger him, envy him his due Denigrate, isolate and ignore him unjustly The narcissist projects onto this second class Of lesser prosecutors His own deleterious emotions and transformed aggression Hatred, rage, seething, jealousy Those are his qualities, but he attributes him Acrimates his qualities to the people who conspire against him The narcissist's paranoid streak is likeliest to erupt When he lacks narcissistic supply When narcissistic supply runs short, the narcissist becomes paranoid The regulation of his labial sense of self-worth Is dependent upon external stimuli He needs adoration, adulation, affirmation, applause Notoriety, fame, infamy, something He needs attention Or any kind To feel that he is a lie, that he exists And when such attention is deficient The narcissist compensates by confabulating By lying to himself, by self-deluding Narcissists don't do reality-faking When they fake, it's real The narcissist constructs underground narratives In which he is the protagonist And he uses these narratives to force his human environment into complicity Put simply, the narcissist provokes people to pay attention to him By misbehaving, or by behaving oddly And then there's a second type of paranoia Which is intended to fend off, to defend against intimacy Paranoia is used by the narcissist to ward off, to reverse intimacy To create this intimacy The narcissist is threatened by intimacy Because it reduces him to mediocrity and ordinariness It makes him common It exposes, intimacy exposes his weaknesses and shortcomings It causes him to act normally, and to seem normal The narcissist also dreads the encounter With his deep buried emotions, hurt, envy, anger, aggression And he believes that it is the intimate partner Who is in intimate relationship Which forces on him these emotions, or triggers them at least The paranoid narrative legitimizes Intimacy repelling behaviors Legitimizes conduct that destroys intimacy Such as keeping one's distance Keeping secrets Alloofness, reclusion, aggression, intrusion of privacy Spying, lying, desultoriness, itinerancy, unpredictability Idiosyncratic or eccentric reactions Sex withdrawal, emotional absence, etc, etc Gradually the narcissist succeeds Succeeds to alienate his intimate partner To wear down all his friends, colleagues, well-wishes In mates, spouses Even his closest, nearest and dearest, his family Feel emotionally burnt out, detached The paranoid narcissist ends life as an oddball recluse As a schizoid Derided, decried, feared, loathed, hated, in equal measures His paranoia The narcissist's paranoia, exacerbated by repeated rejections By injuries, modifications, aging And life circumstances, such as the pandemic His paranoia pervades his entire life Diminishes his creativity, constricts his existence, reduces his adaptability and function The narcissist's personality, buffeted by paranoia, becomes ossified and brittle And finally atomized and useless The paranoia succumb, even the paranoia succumbs It disappears and leaves a great void behind The narcissist had been consumed into nothingness In the bed-sense, into emptiness He had become a black hole, swallowing even itself Counter-intuitively with paranoid intimate partners It is better to share everything and to utterly and unmitigatedly be honest No matter how bad and hurtful Reality almost always comforts the paranoid Because it is so much less egregious and menacing Than their own fantasies, suspicions, paranoid scenarios and hyper vigilance What goes through the paranoid's mind is much worse than any possible reality The paranoid's best friend is reality His worst enemy is his own rampant, morbid, catastrophizing imagination Let me give you an example The paranoid is married and his spouse comes to him and says I like this new guy at work I like him a lot, I'm attracted to him The paranoid's inner dialogue is going to be inner monologue is going to be She's honest, she's telling the truth So she's trustworthy If something happens with this guy, she will also tell me It is only human to be attracted to other people I'm also telling her when I find other women attractive Sharing honestly makes me feel safe, secure and good Makes me feel that I'm on top of the situation I'm in control, I will never be hurt and surprised Because I will always know everything in advance and anticipate everything Let's take another example The spouse is attracted to someone at work Guy corresponds with him, chats with him, but doesn't reveal any of this And then the paranoid finds out His monologue in this case is She is human and therefore she is probably attracted to this guy But she's not telling me She's not sharing with me her attraction to this guy She's being dishonest with me Who knows what else she is not telling me She's probably having sex with some of these men that she's attracted to and not telling me I feel threatened, I feel unsafe, I feel insecure, deceived, cheated I feel stabbed in the back, I feel betrayed Things are getting out of control, I must end this relationship He catastrophizes Share, fear with a paranoid partner? On the contrary, share everything Paranoia, I said, is a reaction to deficient narcissistic supply When the narcissist cannot obtain supply, he resorts to self-delusion Unable to completely ignore contrary and countervailing opinion and data The narcissist transmutes them Unable to face the dismal failure that he is The narcissist partially withdraws from reality To soothe himself He administers a mixture of lies, distortions, half-truths and outlandish interpretation of events around you And he has many, he has quite a few solutions And I'm going to focus on two of them which have to do with paranoia The paranoid schizoid solution When the narcissist lacks narcissistic supply Sometimes he develops persecutory delusions He perceives slides and insults Where none were intended He becomes subjects to ideas of reference People are gossiping about him Mocking him, prying into his affairs Spying on him, cracking his email, etc The narcissist becomes convinced That he is the center of malign and malintentioned attention People are conspiring to humiliate him, unleash him Demote him, abscond when this property deludes him, impoverish him Confine him physically or intellectually Sensor him, impose on his time Force him to action, prevent him from action Frighten him, coerce him, surround and besiege him Change his mind, usurp with his time Part with his values, even murder him So, these are some of the reactions to deficient supply And they are so frightening They create a reality that is not reality, it's delusional And it's terrifying So some narcissists withdraw completely from a world Populated with such menaceous and ominous objects These objects, of course, are projections of internal objects And processes in the narcissist But they are still felt and perceived as external Remember that narcissists confuse external and internal objects This is a psychotic process The narcissist now externalizes internal objects Projects them And so some narcissists withdraw from the world They refrain from meeting people Falling in love, having sex They don't talk to others They don't even correspond with people In short, they become schizoids Not out of social shyness Not because they prefer to be alone Like the classic schizoid But out of what they feel to be A choice to avoid threats The world, they say Threatens me The world is dangerous It's a risk I'm not willing to take Or the world does not deserve me The inner refrain is I shall waste none of my time and resources on such a world And this is the paranoid schizoid solution Another solution is the paranoid aggressive or explosive solution Other narcissists who develop the secretary delusions When narcissistic supply is lacking They resort to an aggressive stance A more violent resolution of their internal conflict They become verbally, psychologically, situationally And rarely physically abusive They insult, castigate, chastise, berate, demean, humiliate and deride Especially their nearest and dearest Often well-wishers, loved ones This kind of narcissists explode in unprovoked displays Of indignation, righteousness, condemnation and blame It's an exegetic bedlam They interpret everything, even the most innocuous Innocent, inadvertent remarks They interpret such remarks as designed to provoke and humiliate them These kind of narcissists so fear, revulsion, hate and malignant every envy Anywhere they go They flail and fight against the windmills of reality It's a pathetic for loneside Like Don Quixote But often these narcissists cause real and lasting damage To themselves and to others The narcissist is the center of the world He's not merely the center of his world As far as he can tell, he is the center of the world And this isn't our comedian delusion It's one of a narcissist's most predominant And all-pervasive cognitive distortions The narcissist feels certain that he is the source The prime mover and shaker, Prima Causa Primo Movens Of all events around you He is the origin of all the emotions of his nearest and dearest The moods of everyone depend on him He is the found of all knowledge He is the first and final cause He is the beginning as well as the end Yes, Alpha and Omega, God And this is understandable The narcissist derives his sense of being His experience of his own existence And his sense of self-worth From the outside, not from the inside He minds people for narcissistic supply The way many people mind for Bitcoin He's Bitcoin, his cryptocurrencies, Agulation, attention, reflection, fear Their reactions stoke his furnace They are the coal in the mind Absent narcissistic supply The narcissist disintegrates He self-annihilates When the narcissist is unnoticed He feels empty and worthless Or not at all He feels he is not there He feels transparent, invisible The narcissist must delude himself Into believing that he is persistently The focus and object of attention Intentions, plans, conspiracies, feelings, Strategies of other people The narcissist faces a stark choice Either be or become the permanent center of the world Or cease to be altogether This constant obsession with his locus With his centrality With his position as a hub This obsession leads to Referential ideas of reference This is the conviction that one is At the receiving end of other people's Speech acts, behaviors, even thoughts The person suffering from delusional ideas Of reference is at the center and focus Of the constant and confabulated Attentions of an imaginary audience In most cases When people talk about anything At the corner of a room The narcissist is convinced that He is the topic of discussion What other topic can there be? When people quarrel, fight He is most probably the reason for the fight When they smirk He is the victim of their ridicule If they are unhappy He made them unhappy If they are happy, he made them happy If they are happy They are egotistical for ignoring His contribution to their happiness Decisive contribution He is convinced that his behavior is Continuously monitored, criticized, supervised Compaired, dissected, approved of Or imitated by other people The narcissist deems himself so indispensable So crucial Such a critical component of other people's lives That his every act His every word, his every omission Is bound to upset, hurt, uplift Or satisfy his audience Some reaction To the narcissist, everyone is an audience It all emanates from him And it all reverts to him He is the be-all and end-all The narcissist has a circular and closed universe He is the world His ideas of reference are a natural extension Of his primitive defense mechanisms Omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence Being omnipresent Being present everywhere Explains why everyone, everywhere Is concerned with him and talks about him Being omnipotent and omniscient Excludes other lesser beings From enjoying the admiration, adulation And attention of people And yet The energy depletion And the attrition Afforded by years of tormenting Ideas of reference Inevitably lead to paranoid or paranoiac thinking If you constantly believe that people are talking about you Concern with you, monitor you, supervise you If you are in a constant state of self-imputed surveillance You become paranoid And to preserve his egocentric cosmology The narcissist is compelled to attribute Fitting motives and psychological dynamics to other people And such motives and dynamics have little to do with reality In all cases They are projected by the narcissist On to others So as to maintain his personal mythology Let me put it simply, or more simply The narcissist attributes to other people His own motives and motivations His own psychological processes and psychodynamics And since narcissists are mostly besieged By transformations of aggression Since mostly they experience rage and hatred and envy and fear These emotions they often attribute to other people The narcissist is envious, so other people are envious The narcissist is hate-filled Other people are hateful And so the narcissist tends to interpret other people's behavior As motivated by anger, fear, hatred or envy And is directed at him Revolving around him Because he is the axis The narcissist often erroneously believes that people Discuss him, gossip about him, hate him Defame him, mock him, libel him, berate him Underestimate him, envy him, fear him, steal from him He is Sometimes rightly, by the way Convince that he is, to others The source of hurt, humiliation, impropriety and indignation And the narcissist knows Just knows That he is a wonderful, powerful Talented and entertaining person But he only explains Why people are envious of him Why they seek to undermine and destroy him Because he is perfect And so the narcissist is unable to secure The long-term positive Love, admiration or even attention of resources of supply Because of his misbehavior, because of his abuse People end up hating him People end up deriding him People end up decrying him People end up walking away Abandoning him Women end up cheating on him I mean People end up betraying him Stabbing him in the back Because of his abuse He knows this And he knows that long-term He cannot rely on people On their love and commitment and investment So he resorts to a mirror strategy In other words, the narcissist becomes paranoid Better to be the object Of often imaginary and always self-inflicted Derision, scorn and bile Than to be ignored He says to himself, if I cannot be loved, let me be hated If I'm about to be betrayed, let me betray first Or let me prepare myself Being envied is preferable to being treated with indifference If he cannot be loved, the narcissist would rather be feared Or hated than be forgotten And there you are In the midst of this whirlwind Vortex About to be swallowed into the deepest abyss Of this So-called man or woman that you're with Extricate yourself No contact