 My name is Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. I wrote the book, but I haven't read it yet. Once I do, I will tell you what I think about it. And about the author. Right, so today we are going to continue to discuss mortification and the false self, but this time in Borderline Women. A bit later in the video, I will recap and summarize the previous video. Some of you have complained that it was too complicated, a bit confusing, too academic, and that I wasn't wearing my glasses through a part of it, which traumatized them. So I promise to summarize the previous video in colloquial speech. So that everyone can understand it, and I will do my best to remember to wear my glasses, because the number of casualties is beginning to exceed the number of my subscribers. So as I promised, today we will discuss the Borderline Woman, who is, by many accounts, the natural compliment to the narcissistic men. I always mentioned my friend, Johan Lachkar, who in 1983 wrote the seminal groundbreaking book, The Borderline Narcissistic Couple. She was a pioneer at that time, but today is common wisdom that borderlines and narcissists team up together, because they gratify each other's emotional needs. They, in the language of Johan Lachkar, they solve each other's archaic wounds. There's a resonance. Later she renamed it the V-Sport, the vulnerability sport. So if the narcissistic men has a modification, is subject to modification, so should the borderline woman be. Why is that? Because both the narcissistic men and the borderline woman have a false self, and both of them have very pronounced grandiosity. I'm moving the laptop because the lighting changes all the time. It's a conspiracy of the celestial bodies against my videos. So both of them have grandiosity and both of them have a false self. If these constructs and these processes and these cognitive deficits are identical, then they should undergo similar psychodynamic processes such as modification. And indeed the borderline woman does undergo modification. But before we go there, I want to discuss elephants and snakes. No, I haven't gone out of my mind yet. It has something to do with narcissists and borderline. And I want to quote from a book called The Problem of the Puea Aeternus, The Problem of the Eternal Youth, by Marie-Louise von Franz. I didn't invent this name. And the book was published in 1970. It's an amazing book about people, mainly men, who don't grow up. People who remain eternal youths, remain children forever, refuse to grow up. Later it was renamed by the therapist Dan Kiley. It was renamed the Peter Pan syndrome. So I want to quote from this book, I mean The Problem of the Puea Aeternus by Marie-Louise von Franz. In antiquity, I'm quoting, it was thought that elephants were terribly ambitious and that if they were not accorded the honor due them, they would die from disappointment. For their feeling of honor was so great that they had to be honored. Snakes love to drink the cool blood of elephants. Snakes creep under the elephant and drink its blood. Suddenly the elephant collapses, which is why whenever an elephant sees a snake, he goes for it and tries to trample it down. In the Middle Ages, the elephant stood for a man who was generous but unstable and moody in character. For the elephant was said to be generous, intelligent, and therefore taciturn. But when he once gets into rage, he cannot be appeased by sensual pleasures, but only by music. And so she says that she has taken this information from a very amusing book. She finds very strange things amusing, but okay. So she says, this I have taken from a very amusing book Polyhysto Symbolius by a Jesuit father Nicolaus Causinus. And in that book I found another sentence that the elephant is perfection, except for being moody and inclined to feats of rage. So here's the elephant, unstable, rageful, and very, very hypervigilant. He is very concerned with the question of is he being properly honored. He believes that he is due honor, he is due respect, and if he doesn't get it, he begins to rage. And there's a snake who, which sucks the elephant's cold blood. I would say that this captures the essence of the narcissistic borderline relationship. Now, as I said, in my view, the main reason borderlines and narcissists resonate is because to a very, very large extent, they are pretty identical. For example, they have a false self, which within narcissists, the false self, yes, I took off my glasses, warning, red alert. In the narcissist, the false self has many functions, and the two most important functions of the false self in the narcissist is, number one, to serve as a decoy. The false self attracts the fire, attracts the abuse. It is a proxy for the true self. It is tough as nails, and it cannot absorb any amount of pain, of hurt, negative emotions. The child invents the false self in order to develop immunity to the indifference, manipulation, sadism, smothering, or exploitation, in short, to the abuse inflicted on him or her by the parents or by other primary objects in the child's life. So, the false self is like the invisibility cloak in the Marvel movies. It protects the child, renders him invisible and omnipotent at the same time. It's like a Superman cloak, which also confers invisibility and impermeability, and renders the child absolutely immune to pain and to hurt. And the second function of the false self is that the narcissist misrepresents the false self and claims that this is his true self. He says, this is who I really am. There's nothing else, he says. There's only the false self, that's me. The narcissist is saying in effect, I'm not who you think I am. I'm someone else. I am this false self. And therefore, I deserve better. I deserve a painless, more considerate treatment. I'm entitled. The false self thus is a contraption, a device intended to alter other people's behavior and attitude towards the narcissist. It's a manipulative tool. It's an adaptation in the sense that it allows the narcissist to act upon the environment to be self-efficacious, to obtain favorable outcomes. In other words, the narcissist agency in the world is mediated via the false self. But the false self replaces the true self. And in this sense, the narcissist very early on in his childhood, sacrifices himself to the false self. Someone said in one of the comments that the narcissist is kind of a hostage of the false self. And I said it yesterday in the video. And it's very true. He's held hostage. He's held prisoner. He's incarcerated by the false self. He's incarcerated in a magnificent palace. But he still can never leave the palace. Gradually, the narcissist vanishes. And what's left behind is this mirage. This fatamogana, this facade, this concoction or piece of fiction, this movie. Narcissus begins to feel derealized. He feels that he's observing himself from outside. He's depersonalized. And he's beginning to be more and more dissociative. Because there is a disconnect between the narcissist and himself. And his real, his true self. And this disconnect creates discontinuities in memory, which later on translates into a very, very disturbed identity. And so at some stage, the narcissist feels utterly smothered by the false self, utterly trampled upon, utterly enslaved by the false self. And he wants out. It's exactly like an abusive relationship. The narcissist is narcissistically abused by the false self. And he wants out. And so he seeks modification. He seeks the terror of modification. Because this terror causes him to disintegrate, to fall apart. And when he falls apart, he doesn't have the energy to maintain the false self. He doesn't have the will, the attention span, the focus, the mental energy to obtain narcissistic supply. And the false self gradually dissipates, fades away. And so terrorizing, the terror of modification is the narcissist's main tool to get rid of the false self, if only for a few days, a few hours, a few minutes, just to feel liberated. And so after the modification, the narcissist is exposed because it is the false self that forms a shield around the narcissist, it's like a firewall. And the false self is gone. The narcissist is open to the malware of life, is open to abuse, is open to being mocked, ridiculed, humiliated, exploited, is gullible. Remember, he's a child. He's nine to 11 years old. He's nine to 11 years old. The false self protects the narcissist. It has very important functions. And so immediately after the modification, when the false self is disabled kind of, the narcissist harries, even though he feels good with the newly acquired freedom, he is terrorized. He's in a panic state. It's realistic without this big daddy, without this godlike figure that is protecting him. So he harries to reestablish the false self. And he does this by idealizing and punishing the self or by devaluing and punishing the other. Let me explain. One way is to idealize the person or the situation or the discovery that caused the modification to say that person is all good. Yes, he aggressed against me, but he's all good. This situation was actually good for me. It's also idealizing, re-idealizing actually the source of the modification while punishing oneself. And the other method is devaluing the source of the modification and punishing the other. I will come to it a bit later. I said earlier that the borderline patient also has a false self, but the functions of the false self in the borderline personality disorder patient is utterly disconnected, unconnected to the functions in the narcissist. The structure is the same. It's the same. It's a godlike, it's a divinity. It has all the attributes of a godhead, of a deity. It is omnipotent, it is omniscient, it is perfect, it is brilliant and so on and so forth. Exactly like the narcissist's false self, all knowing, all powerful, perfection itself, brilliance, reify. But the false self in the borderline has a different function. The function is the equivalent of a host personality in dissociative identity disorder. I recommend to you to watch the series I've made about borderline women. There are four videos in this series. And there I explain that actually today we are reconceiving of borderline personality disorder as a combination dissociation or dissociative disorder and secondary psychopathy. We think it's a confluence of these two disorders. And so the dissociative part, dissociative identity disorder used to be called before, once used to be called multiple personality disorder. And in multiple personality disorder, we have a central personality, a central fragment of personality, if you wish. It's called a host personality. And many other personalities which are called altars, altars. They're like alternative personalities. So the host personality moderates these other personalities, moderates the altars. He moderates the internal dialogue between these altars, which is totally unconscious. And also he gives cues, he gives signals. He outs, he switches between the various personalities. So there's a personality that tackles difficult situations. A personality that is sexy, a personality that is a child and so on. And so and the host personality is like a moderator. And like in a presidential debate, you know, okay, you can talk now. Okay, you can go out and then there's a process called switching. The person with a multiple personality disorder with a dissociative identity disorder switches between personalities which are very distinct and very, very clear. Now, the false self and the borderline patient maintains the same function as the host personality in dissociative identity disorder. The host, the false self and the borderline moderates and switches between self states. Now, borderlines don't have full fledged personalities. They are not exactly like people with multiple personalities or borderline patients. Don't suddenly become someone completely different. They don't become suddenly a child or suddenly a woman or suddenly an old man, suddenly a painter or whatever. They don't switch between utterly distinct demarcated personalities, but they switch between what we call self states. Each self state is clearly different to others. So we have like variations in the basic personality of the borderline, which are sufficiently big, the variations are sufficiently big to say that the borderline is transition has transitioned to another safe. So it's like the borderline instead of many personalities has many selves. And mediating and moderating and switching between these selves, between these self states is a central core and this central core in the borderline is the false self. And in most cases, in most cases, the host personality, the false self in the borderline has many features of a secondary psychopath. So it would be defined, it would be impulsive, it would be a bit aggressive, it would be disempathic and so on so forth. So there is this core, which is essentially a secondary psychopath, moderating a whole kindergarten of self states and switching between them according to circumstances and according to internal dynamics. And this core, this false self also regulates the resulting defense mechanisms. This each time the borderline switches from one self state to another, she provokes or she evokes and elicits certain infantile defense mechanisms, sometimes it's repression, sometimes it's dissociation, sometimes denial, splitting and other infantile defenses. And the borderline is doing this because she needs to maintain self constancy, evocative constancy. And to do this, she needs the host personality to regulate and to control everything, to micromanage everything, the switching, the self states, the defenses, and to cohere them, to put them together in a coherent cohesive narrative that makes sense. So the borderline is offering her life as she goes along, it's like she's writing a short story or a novel in which she is the protagonist, while the narcissist has problems with object constancy. In other words, the narcissist finds it very difficult to maintain a clear distinction between an external object and an internal object. And when the external object is gone, the narcissist resorts to the internal object just in order to maintain the belief that the external object has some existence. The borderline has the same thing, but that is not the crucial problem of the borderline, that is the problem of her partners, of her intimate bodies. Let me try to explain again, these are very, very complex and difficult issues in the cutting edge, the bleeding edge of psychology today. So I apologize if it's very difficult to get these things clear. I'm going to first go and I have to repeat myself again and again in a desperate attempt to make sense to you and of course to Mini. Let me try again. Both the narcissist and the borderline have problems with object constancy, object permanence. And this problem is known as object in constancy, creatively so. Object in constancy simply means out of sight, out of mind. When the narcissist doesn't see someone, when that person is not in the presence of the physical presence, not mentally, the narcissist cannot conceptualize that person. So when that person is away, the narcissist is kind of not convinced that the person who is away still exists. So the narcissist's solution is to take a snapshot of that person and when the person is away to interact with the snatcher. The borderline is an identical problem out of sight, out of mind. She doesn't see the person, even her intimate partner, spouse, children. She doesn't see the person. He or she doesn't exist. She finds it very difficult to maintain the continuity of external objects around her. If she doesn't feel them and touches them and shouts at them and argues with them, makes love to them or something, she is not fully convinced that they exist. But when the narcissist, the narcissist's solution is a snapshot of the external object with which he continues the interaction when the external object is away. The borderline solution to object in constancy is simply to forget about the object, about the external object. Narcissist, out of sight, out of mind, so now I will interact with a snapshot of that external object who is gone. Borderline, out of sight, out of mind, out of existence. He is gone. He's dead. End of story. I'm free. I'm alone. I can do whatever I want, which would explain, of course, many borderline behaviors, reckless behaviors, impulsive behaviors. The borderline knows cognitively, cognitively, that when she cheats on her husband, it's going to hurt him a lot. It's going to devastate him, maybe. It's going to cause trauma for life. An example. But he's not with her at that moment. He's not sitting next to her. He's at home. And so in the borderline's mind, he doesn't exist. Even worse, she may perceive it as abandonment and rejection that is not with her. But at the very least, he doesn't exist. So she feels that she is free and alone. She's single. She can be with that other man. She's not really cheating on her husband because there's no husband. Why there's no husband? He's not sitting next to her. She cannot touch him. In extreme cases, borderlines carry with them objects that belong to loved ones or to significant others. And when they feel that they're losing object inconsistency, they touch these objects. It's a little like psychic mediums. You know, when you go to a medium, psychic medium, she tells you, did you bring me a handkerchief of your daughter, etc. So it's like through the object, through the handkerchief, through the, I don't know what, it's a souvenir. It's a trophy. Serial killers have this as well. They take trophies from their victims. This is a trophy. A ratifies and symbolizes the victim. And this whole psychological process is known as synagogue. So borderlines and narcissists have difficulty to move smoothly and continuously from one minute to the other because people go out of the room. Usually people go out of rooms, into rooms, away, back on business meetings, something. And this ruins completely the continuity and consequently the consciousness of narcissists and borderlines. Only the borderline doesn't care. At the core of the borderline, there's a secondary psychopath. And that secondary psychopath regulates her internal environment. It is her fault's self. And this secondary psychopath is very defensive and very protective of the borderline and will not let anyone and anything hurt the borderline. So in the case of the borderline, modification has different consequences. Let me define again what is modification. Modification is an extreme and intolerably painful form of shame-induced traumatic depressive anxiety. When you are humiliated, when you are ashamed, when you are ashamed, disgraced in public, you are forced for a brief moment to see yourself as other people see you. And these people are hostile, they're not your friends, otherwise you would not be ashamed. If you're healthy, you have your own internal equilibrium, internal balance, some homeostasis. You know who you are, you know your limitations, you know your good sides, your bad sides, nothing much from the outside has any real long-term effect. But what if you depend crucially on outside input, on feedback from the outside, from others, on other people's gaze? What if you regulate everything, your moods, your emotions, your sense of self-worth, your self-esteem, everything self-confident, everything you regulate, your shema, your cognitions, your everything you regulate, by resorting to feedback from other people, then they become super critical. It's dangerous if these people are hostile. It's dangerous for your internal peace, for your inner peace, for your ability to function. So, modification, as we will discuss a bit later, is very dangerous to the narcissists, I would even say in many, many cases, life-threatening. With borderline, it's a bit of a different picture. The narcissist seeks modification to be able to get rid of the false self for a split second. When he's modified, it's extremely painful, it hurts, he wants to die, but at the same time, he is finally himself. It doesn't last long, because immediately the narcissist tries to re-establish the false self, but it, it lasts, it can last even months, up to a year, up to a year without the false self, imagine. This scar tissue taken away, all the scabs reopened, narcissists bleed profusely. It's a death sentence, but the narcissist still seeks modification, because together with a death sentence, it's also a life sentence, he finally feels true to himself. For the first time, or for the second time, whenever there's modification, he feels himself, not the outcome of multiple gazes of 100 people. His mind, the mind of the narcissist, is a hive mind, it's like a beehive, input from this person, judgment by this person, opinion of that person, feedback from this woman, input from that man, I mean, he puts all of these together, he makes collages, he makes kaleidoscopic collages of all this constant stream of narcissistic supply, and based on this, he reconstructs himself, time and again and again and again, he reinvents himself and reconstructs himself, he vanishes and reappears, vanishes and reappears, vanishes and reappears, it's absolutely dizzying, not to say nauseating, and so it's very hard work to be a narcissist, this is very energy depleting, no wonder most of them are depressed, anxious, and it's very liberating, this freedom from the false self, no matter how brief, and only modification affords this freedom, and that's why narcissists seek it, borderlines on the other have a different reason to seek modification, they pursue modification in order to feel alive, not free like the narcissist, alive, the borderline patient has a psychopathic core, secondary psychopathic core, she needs to introduce novelty, she's a novelty seeker, she is addicted to thrills, she's an adrenaline junkie, she's reckless, she's a risk taker, and she all the time destabilizes her life by engaging in or engendering chaotic drama, she's a drama queen, the reason she's a drama queen, because only drama guarantees novelty, thrill, risk, recklessness and so on, drama is her way, the borderline's way of gratifying or satisfying the needs of the inner psychopath, the inner secondary psychopath, and so that's why she's so dramatic, but and that's the only way she can experience transformation, and so modification is the ultimate form of drama, in a modification state borderline patient is confronted with the truth about herself, her vulnerability, her weakness, her fragility, the constant danger she is in to disintegrate and harm herself, borderlines are suicidal, at the very least they self mutilate, many of them, not all of them, many of them, so modification is the borderline's way of feeling alive, it's a form of self-mutilation if you think about it, because it's humiliating, it's insulting, it's confrontational, it's dangerous, it's frightening, there's hostility in the air, there's a lot of hatred, there's shame, these are negative emotions, she brings it upon herself and that's the equivalent of self-mutilation, but she does that in order to create drama, to experience transformation, it's the only method open to her, sometimes she uses modification as a form of self-tratching, self-punishment, and that's also a kind of self-mutilation, modification in borderlines is self-inflicted, and it is self-inflicted because the borderline constantly anticipates abandonment and rejection, many borderlines are terrified of abandonment and rejection, they have abandonment anxiety or separation anxiety or loss anxiety, but some of them are not, they're not anxious about this, but all of them, without a single exception, anticipate, predict that they are going to be abandoned, going to be rejected, important things are going to be withheld from them, and ultimately they're going to suffer through this process of separation, and the borderline copes with this anticipatory abandonment, with this fear or anxiety or prediction that abandonment and rejection are about to happen, one of the ways the borderline copes with it is by inflicting modification on herself, so when she's modified, she is effectively abandoned, because what is modification is when you are humiliated, when you're ashamed, when you're disgraced, when you are aggressed, when someone aggresses against you, when you are in a hostile environment, or when you realize things about yourself which are utterly unacceptable, and if you realize it and others will realize it, they will abandon you, etc, etc, so modification is a form of self-inflicted pre-emptive abandonment, and the borderline's type of modification is different to the narcissist, the narcissist's modification is 99% cognitive, narcissist is totally self-aware, totally there in the situation, monitors, absorbs and remembers every single moment, every insult, every humiliation, every shameful incident, every disgrace emitted and inflicted upon him, and he keeps regurgitating it, he keeps ruminating, it becomes total obsession, with the borderline it's different, she wants to feel alive, she also anticipates abandonment, she creates modification, for example she misbehaves egregiously, everyone says, you know, you're horrible, how do you behave this way, you know, it is a punishment and so on, so she creates modification artificially, she brings upon herself modification, then she feels alive, because modification always entails drama, always entails chaos, thrills, risks, so she feels alive, but she realizes that because she had inflicted modification upon herself, she is about to be abandoned, so there's pre-emptive abandonment there, she abandons and then she dissociates, she cuts off the memory, she becomes dissociated, what is to dissociate, the dissociate is to disappear, so once she is modified, the borderline chooses to disappear, but some borderlines instead of dissociating, thereby disappearing, become total secondary psychopaths, what is to be a psychopath, it's to make other people disappear, by mistreating them and they go away, or by killing them or something, one way or another, you make people disappear, so the borderline, once she is modified, chooses one of two, one of two routes, one of two forks in the road, either she disappears, she dissociates, she's gone, bye-bye, or she makes people disappear, by abusing them extremely psychopathically, disempathically, horribly, causing hurt that can never be amended and can never be fixed, disappearance, the disappearing act is at the core of the borderline, first she disappears as a personality, she's fragmented, she's fractured, she's disorganized and chaotic, that's why Kernberg used the term borderline to describe a near-psychotic state, and then other people disappear because she has no object consistency and when they're not next to her she has no one, she's all the time throughout her life, alone, existentially alone, solipsistically alone, and then she creates modification and then either she disappears via dissociation or she makes other people disappear by a psychopathic behavior, disappearance, that's the core behavior and the main light motif of borderline, while in narcissism presence is the core motif, the core light motif, narcissists want to be too present, present too much, they want to be uber present, they want to force all other people to vanish by merging with them, they treat all other people as extensions of themselves, they want to be in other words omnipresent, like God everywhere, the borderline is exactly the opposite, she wants to not be, that's why 11 percent of borderlines tend to 11 percent commit suicide, the borderline's main preoccupation is to not be, the narcissist's main preoccupation is to be too much, the narcissist has an ideal fantastic and grandiose view of his self, we all know this and when an aggressive person challenges this view, the narcissist feels like he is disintegrating and it's a state of terror, there's a famous painting by Salvador Dalí Galatea, where you see there's a painting of a beautiful woman but the back part of her skull is disintegrating into molecules, sort of evaporating into thin air, that's a gnosis, when it when it's challenged either by an aggressive person from the outside or by some realization from the inside, come to that, but when it's challenged by an aggressive person, he feels like he is disintegrating, it's a state of terror, he wants sort of to collect the molecules and put them back together but all over the place is he feels shortly nothing will be left of him and that is external modification, similarly when the narcissist realizes that his grandiose fantastic ideal view of his self is totally wrong, for example if he realizes that he is mentally ill or somehow deficient or limited, he reacts exactly the same way he feels that he is disintegrating into molecules, he is that he is being atomized, but this is internal modification, so external modification is caused by an aggressive person, internal modification by an inner realization of deficiency, of lack of shortcoming and of course in both cases the continuity, the stability, the coherence and the well-being of the self are utterly compromised, totally compromised, it's a very very bad feeling and modification reflects the activity of infantile strategies of coping with frustration and the narcissists and the borderline with babies, they develop like old babies, strategies of coping with frustration, mommy doesn't want to breastfeed me, it's very frustrating, where's my toy, I can't put my big toe in my mouth, you know babies go through horrible frustrations, the likes of which adults can only imagine and so they develop coping strategies to cope with frustration and to also cope with repression, there's a lot of material, first of all there's an avalanche of information and the baby is besieged by ginormous, humongous amounts of data and his brain is growing like mushrooms, I mean and so a big part of it has to be repressed and baby has to learn, the main skill the baby learns is what to ignore, not what to assimilate but what to ignore and this is called repression, but babies cope with repression and with frustration, the borderline and the narcissists develop a dysfunctional coping strategy, grandiosity for example and they have also defense mechanisms that never disappear, while in healthy people, normal people, many defense mechanisms stop operating, are disabled, it's about age two, once you become an individual, once you separate from your parents and you become your own man or woman, your own girl or boy, your own toddler, you have your own individuality, separate, distinct, utterly cut off, demarcated from mommy and puppy, especially from mother, many defense mechanisms become unnecessary, for example, magical thinking or splitting, they're no longer necessary, so they die away, not so with the borderline and the narcissists because the borderline and narcissists fail to separate from mother and cannot become, do not become individuals and so all these defense mechanisms continue to work well into adulthood and when we look at these people, our initial reaction is wow, they're so childish, yes, you're right, they're childish, they're infantile, in adulthood a self-inflicted internal notification usually is used to compensate for an external notification or at the very least to disguise it and an external notification is used to compensate for an internal notification or at the very least to disguise it, let me give an example, but before that, yet another reminder, forgive me for repeating so much, people clearly find the material very difficult to digest and its new material is perfectly understandable, external notification usually when an aggressive person or group of people attack you, challenge you, humiliate you, shame you, disgrace you, mock you, ridicule you, etc etc, that creates external notification, internal notification when the narcissists or the borderline are exposed to insight, insight with the T, realization, some understanding, when they suddenly see themselves in the mirror they say I am not fantastic, I am not grandiose, I'm not brilliant, I'm not perfect, I'm far from perfect and I'm definitely not omniscient and omnipotent, that is shocking, it's like you would look at the mirror and you would see someone else's face, it's as shocking as this, as shocking as this, there's a syndrome called the cup dress syndrome in psychology where people mistake their loved ones for other people so a husband would look at his wife and see another woman, it's absolutely breathtakingly terrifying, it's the stuff of horror movies and the narcissist goes through this many times and this is internal modification, so when there's internal modification, the narcissist cannot cope with it and he comes up with external modification and when there's external equally he cannot cope with it, he comes up with internal modification, generally, narcissists and borderlines became narcissists and borderlines because they're weak, constitutionally weak either genetically or for some other reason, they're fragile, they're vulnerable, they're damaged, they're broken, they can't cope, the main thing a borderline patient would tell you in therapy I can't cope, the main thing a narcissist would tell you in therapy of course I can cope, while at the same time clearly clearly displaying total inability to cope, so coping is a problem and what these people do, borderline narcissists, instead of coping, tackling the problem head on, honestly, sincerely, maturely, instead of doing this they confabulate, they lie, they create substitutes, they disguise, they modify, they hide, they refrain, they're playing games, game, the whole thing is a game, that's why the narcissist is looking for a playmate, the whole thing is a movie, it's not real, derealisation, depersonalisation, many many borderlines describe their lives as autopilot, they describe themselves as observers and spectators, it's a theatre show, so clearly they can't cope with external modification or internal modification, too much for them, so they compensate, they disguise, when there's internal modification they will use external modification to disguise, they will invent I mean an external modification to disguise it, so for example imagine that someone, that a narcissist realizes that he is evil, that he is evil, simply, he is hateful, he is contankerous, he is unpleasant, he is obnoxious, he is mean and nasty etc, in other words a typical narcissist, imagine the narcissist realizes this, but I mean realizes this, not just knows it, knows it cognitively, not just having been told this, but suddenly from the inside there's an insight, cognition coupled with the equivalent of emotion, the narcissist says, oh my god if he is religious, oh my god I'm bloody evil, I'm hateful, what have I been doing to people all my life, that's internal modification, but he can't cope with it, so what he does instead, he replaces it with an external modification, so he would say, well maybe I am hateful, maybe I'm obnoxious, maybe I'm aggressive, maybe I'm unpleasant, but it's because people hate me, they make me do it, they make me misbehave, they don't love me, they conspire against me, they undermine me, they treat me unjustly, in other words a persecutory delusion, paranoid delusion, a conspiracy theory, which is an external modification, replaces the truth, I'm evil, I'm obnoxious, which is an internal modification, and vice versa, the narcissist has an external modification, yes for example he's been shamed, humiliated, disgraced in public, he can't cope with it, so he would create an artificial internal modification to cover up for it, he would say yeah well maybe my wife cheated on me, which is an external modification, but it is all my fault, I made it happen, in other words I'm in control, which is an internal modification, the internal modification is I'm bad, because I'm bad, I drove her to cheat on me, the external modification is she cheated on me, humiliated, when there is external modification the narcissist would prefer the internal, when there is internal modification he would prefer the external and the need to reframe narcissistic modifications is because the modification threatens the integrity of the sin, the very