10 Ways to Defeat the Narcissist (Compilation)

My name is S.D., and I'm the author of "Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited." In 1995, when I coined the phrase "narcissistic abuse," I also came up with two coping strategies. If you wanted to get rid of your narcissist, I suggested no contact. This strategy is tackled in another video on my channel.

The other strategy I developed, I dubbed "background noise." If you insist on staying with the narcissist, if you have no choice, if you have common children, if there are financial complications, if for some reason there is no way for you to exit the toxic remit and charmed circle of the narcissist, then I suggested to adopt a strategy called background noise.

As background noise, you ask the narcissist no questions. Because if you ask the narcissist a question, it means you doubt him. It means you undermine his authority. It means that you may have thought of something that he had omitted to think of. It means that potentially you're more clever than him. You see things differently. These are all narcissistic injuries. So, ask the narcissist no questions.

Second principle of background noise: never criticize the narcissist. Never disagree with the narcissist. The narcissist is always right. The narcissist is omniscient. He knows everything there is to know, even if he doesn't know it.

The third principle of background noise is to confine your responses to the content of the question, the query, or the prompt by the narcissist. First of all, never initiate a conversation. Only when addressed, talk. So, when you are addressed by the narcissist, when he asks you a question or approaches a subject, limit your responses and reactions to the subject matter raised by the narcissist. Do not expand the conversation. Do not introduce new topics or new issues. Do not initiate or embark upon tangents which the narcissist didn't think of. Always be there as an echo. Always react, never proactively.

So, if you look at these three principles: never ask questions, never criticize and disagree, and never ever expand the topic of conversation beyond the limitations and boundaries set by the narcissist in his initial address, you see that background noise is a very simple technique, a very simple strategy. Simply never initiate, never be proactive, always react, always be compliant, or even to some extent, subservient. Always be an echo. Always record what the narcissist says and then play it back to him when he wants to hear it. As most narcissists would say, "Had I wanted your opinion, I would have given it to you."

My name is S.D., and I'm the author of "Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited." All told, there are three ways to manipulate the narcissist. You can withhold narcissistic supply from him until he comes, head in hand, begging for more, and then you can name your price and dictate the terms. A second technique is to constitute yourself as a reliable source of high-grade supply and thereby foster in the narcissist dependence and adherence to your minute needs and wishes. You would be amazed how attentive the narcissist can be to a good source of narcissistic supply. And then there's the third technique: to take active part in buttressing and upholding the narcissist's grandiose fantasies, to collude in a shared psychosis with him, and thus render him amenable to your wishes and priorities, as long as they seamlessly conform to his delusional narrative.

Right, the irony is that narcissists, who consider themselves worldly, discerning, knowledgeable, shrewd, erudite, and astute, well, these exact narcissists are actually more gullible than the average person. This is because narcissists are fake. Their self is false. Their life is a confabulation. Their reality test is long done. Narcissists live in a fantasy land all their own, in which they are the center of the universe. They are admired, feared, held in awe, and respected for their omnipotence and omniscience. In short, narcissists are prone to magical thinking. They hold themselves immune to the consequences of their actions or inaction. Therefore, they consider themselves to be beyond punishment and the laws of man. Narcissists are easily persuaded to assume unreasonable risks and to expect miracles to happen. They often find themselves on the receiving end of investment scams, for example. Again, because they are risk-prone, reckless.

Narcissists feel entitled. Entitled to everything: money, power, honors, even though these are commensurate with their accomplishments or toil. The world, God, the nation, society, or their families, co-workers, employers, even neighbors owe them a trouble-free, exalted, luxurious existence. They are rudely shocked when they are penalized for their misconduct or when their fantasies remain just that – fantasies. The narcissist believes that he is destined to greatness, or at least the easy life. He wakes up every morning fully ready for a fortuitous stroke of luck. That explains the narcissist's reckless behaviors and his lazy lack of self-discipline. It also explains why the narcissist is so easily duped. By playing on the narcissist's grandiosity and paranoia, it is possible to deceive and manipulate the narcissist effortlessly. Just offer the narcissist narcissistic supply: admiration, affirmation, adulation, and he is all yours. Harm the narcissist's insecurities and on his persecutory delusions, and he is likely to trust only you and cling only to you for their life. Both paranoia and grandiosity impair the narcissist's reality test and engender cognitive deficits. Paranoia and grandiosity lead to the erection of complex and wasteful defenses against usually non-existent threats and enemies.

Narcissists attract abuse. They are highly exploitative, demanding, insensitive, and quarrelsome. Narcissists tend to draw opprobrium and provoke anger and even hatred. Solely lacking in interpersonal skills, devoid of empathy, and steeped in irksome grandiose fantasies, narcissists invariably fail to mitigate the irritation and revolt that they induce in others. Successful narcissists are frequently targeted by stalkers and erotomaniacs, usually mentally ill people who develop a fixation of a sexual or emotional nature on the narcissist. When inevitably rebuffed by the narcissist, these people become vindictive and, in rare cases, even violent. Less prominent narcissists, less successful ones, end up sharing life with codependents and with inverted narcissists.

The narcissist's situation is exacerbated by the fact that often the narcissist himself is an abuser. Like the boy who cried wolf, people do not believe that the perpetrator of egregious deeds can himself fall prey to maltreatment. People tend to ignore and discard the narcissist's cries for help. They disbelieve his protestations. They assume that he is guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around.

So, how does a narcissist react when he finds himself on the receiving end of abuse? Well, like all other victims, he is traumatized. He goes through the phases of denial, helplessness, rage, depression, and finally, acceptance. But the narcissist's reactions are amplified by his shattered sense of omnipotence. Abuse breeds humiliation, and humiliation breeds helplessness. And to the narcissist, helplessness is a novel experience. Hitherto, he considered himself all-powerful, godlike. Abuse reminds him that he is also too human, and sometimes less than human.

The narcissistic defense mechanisms and their behavioral manifestations – diffuse rage, idealization, devaluation, exploitation – these defense mechanisms are useless when confronted with a determined, vindictive, or delusional stalker. That the narcissist is flattered by the attention that he receives from the abuser or the stalker renders him even more vulnerable to the perpetrator's manipulation. Nor can the narcissist come to terms with his need for help. He cannot acknowledge that wrongful behavior on his part may have contributed and precipitated, somehow, the situation. The narcissist's self-image is infallible, mighty, all-knowing. This self-image sees him as him being far superior to others. This exact self-image won't let him admit to any shortfalls, any mistakes, any needs, even need for advice or for help. The narcissist considers himself self-contained, self-sufficient. As the abuse progresses, the narcissist feels increasingly cornered. His conflicting emotional needs – to preserve the integrity of his grandiose false self, even as he seeks much-needed support – well, these conflicting needs place an unbearable strain on the precarious balance of his immature and disorganized personality. The compensation is the disintegration of the narcissist's defense mechanisms. It leads to acting out, temper tantrums, outbursts, loss of control, and if the abuse is protracted, it leads to withdrawal and even, in extreme cases, to psychotic micro-episodes. Abusive acts, in themselves, are rarely dangerous. Not so the reactions to abuse, above all, the overwhelming sense of violation and humiliation.

So, narcissists are actually classic victims of abuse in many cases. Yet, it does not provoke in them self-awareness, let alone remorse or empathy, of which they are largely incapable. It is wasted on them. Yes, even abuse is wasted on the narcissist.

And now, I'm inviting you to a tour of the narcissist's mind. As we tour the narcissist's mind, you will understand why each of these techniques is working. So, this is actually the second part of the lecture: to explain to you why these techniques are working and to allow you, with this deeper understanding, to use these techniques more effectively. The reason the narcissist is very effective at manipulating you, controlling you, and inducing in you emotions and moods is because, exactly like you, the narcissist is a victim. Narcissism is a post-traumatic condition. The narcissist has been the victim, usually of his parents. As a victim, the narcissist chose a specific, a highly specific solution. But the fact that the narcissist chose a specific solution does not mean that the narcissist is not a victim. He is as much a victim as you are.

The reason the narcissist victimizes you is that he wants company. As long as you are not victimized, you are alien to the narcissist. The narcissist wants to feel at home among his own kind. He wants to be among victims because he's a victim. So, he converts and transforms everyone, everyone around him, into a victim, simply to feel at home. And of course, the clinical concept is "comfort zone." The narcissist's comfort zone is among victims. The narcissist will victimize you, never mind what you do, never mind what you do not do, never mind how often you do or do not do what you do or do not do, never mind if you are – you don't even have to be – for the narcissist to victimize you.

And here's the worst part: when the narcissist converts you to an image of himself, he's doing you a favor because he is superior. He is godlike. He is bringing you up to his level. What does it say in Genesis, the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible? "God created man in his own image." The narcissist creates you in his own image. He is furious at your lack of gratitude. Here he is, investing in inferior you. He's very close to God. Sometimes they change places. And here he is, having chosen you, having selected you, he could have chosen anyone, but he chose you. And here he is, molding you, shaping you like Pygmalion and Galatea. And how do you react? You're unhappy. You claim to be abused and victimized. You're too stupid to realize the enormous gift you are receiving. You must understand this: the narcissist is very angry at you all the time, either because you are too stupid to appreciate his gifts, which is usually the case, or if you are intelligent, you are too ungrateful. The narcissist's partner is in a binary state: stupid or ungrateful. And usually ungrateful. And so the narcissist says to himself, "To mold my partner, I must resort to extreme and radical measures." Americans call it "tough love." They tried it in Iraq. This is tough love. It's for your own good. You will thank me one day, if you survive.

But there is a problem. And now I'm going to take you into the soul, the psyche, and the mind of the narcissist. There was a sociologist by the name of Giddens, and in the 1990s, Giddens came with a concept called "ontological insecurity." Ontological insecurity. The narcissist is in a state of ontological insecurity. What is ontological insecurity? It's when you don't feel continuous. When you don't feel that your yesterday or your today is a continuation of yesterday, and your tomorrow will be a continuation of today. Obviously, if there is no continuity, it is impossible to develop an identity. The narcissist is possibly the only form of human who has no core, no identity, no kernel.

In 1995, I proposed that narcissism is a form of multiple personality disorder because the narcissist has two selves: true self, which is a traumatized, very, very young child who is paralyzed by fear and hurt. So this child is dysfunctional and has no effect on the psychodynamics of the narcissist. And there is the false self, which is godlike. We'll come to it a bit later. So, two selves, yes, true and false. Technically, it's multiple personality disorder because it's a person with two personalities. But I was wrong. It's the second time I admit I admit something today. I don't know what's happening to me. I was I was wrong because in multiple personality, known today as dissociative identity disorder, in dissociative identity disorder, there is continuity. The person with multiple personalities has many personalities, but each of these personalities has perfect memory and perfect identity, and each of these personalities has total continuity. So, if someone with multiple personality has six personalities, and one of these personalities is Sam, the Sam comes out, talks to the therapist, and then four months later, Sam comes out again. Sam will remember the conversation with the therapist. The six personalities have total continuity, total memory, total identity. Not the narcissist. Narcissists forget, or have no access to, almost 80%. 80%, at least according to my studies, 80% of their memories. Every minute, you are confronted with a new person, new narcissist, which has nothing to do with a person a minute before.

Narcissists suffer. Narcissists suffer from something called dissociation. Dissociation is breaks in memory, missing time. So the narcissist misses seconds, milliseconds, microseconds, but misses all the time. He dissociates. He dissociates all the time. He is not continuous. How to live like that? What the narcissist does is called, in clinical terms, confabulation. The narcissist, the narcissist invents stories to cover the missing parts. The narcissist says to himself, "I remember picking the golf club, and I remember the ball going to the to the..." but I don't remember anything in between. So let's see, probably, probably it's logical that I hit the ball with the golf club. Probably it's logical. It makes sense. It's plausible. But I do not remember it. And this is called confabulation. Very often, the narcissist gets the confabulation wrong. So people think he's lying. Oh God, lying. He is not. He's confabulating.

Here's your problem as victims or partners. The narcissist is like the river of Heraclitus, you know, "Panta rhei." You cannot enter the same river twice. You cannot talk to the same narcissist twice. You do not have a relationship with the same person. You do not communicate with the same human being. Not only there is no one there, there's nobody there, but the empty itself is fragmented and fractured to pieces. It's like an empty, beautiful empty palace with no inhabitants, and the walls themselves are cracked and falling down.

Partners of narcissists cannot digest this. There are two things that victims of narcissists cannot accept and cannot digest. One: The narcissist does not exist. There is nobody home. There is no person there. I mean, probably many of you know that I'm a narcissist. Yes, I've been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder twice over 15 years. It's pretty safe. I'm one. So you look at me here. I am joking, talking, drinking coffee, drinking water, smiling at Barbara. What am I missing? Some of you may think that I'm reasonably okay looking. Those with myopia. So it is impossible, impossible for you to grasp that there is nobody here behind this lectern. Trust me on this. There is nobody here. You're experiencing mass delusion. We will come to it. This phenomenon is known as the Uncanny Valley.

The second thing, the second thing that victims or intimate partners of narcissists find difficult to accept, that to the narcissist, they are not special. They are commodities, as interchangeable as grains of rice. The narcissist is with you, married to you, has children with you, had had experiences with you, told you that he loves you a million times. How many times you made love, he cried intimacy. The minute you stop functioning, he replaces you because you are a commodity. The narcissist loves his wife, and he also loves rice, and very often he cannot tell the difference. Victims find it shattering because their individuality is challenged.

So, this is the first thing: ontological insecurity, dissociation, confabulation, nobody home, no one there. Sorry, before I go to the second thing. So, stop communicating so hard. You cannot negotiate with a non-entity. Your agreements mean nothing because no one signed them. You are talking to him, you are talking to yourself. It's a ghost, less than a ghost, it's a pretense, it's a piece of fiction. The false self is a piece of fiction. It's a bad movie. It's a script.

Why do I resemble a human being so well? How do I give this, how do I give this almost perfect rendition of a human being? I observed many of you for a long time. I have 190 IQ. I used it. You are not complex. You have very basic life forms. You're easy to manipulate because you have three or four basic modes. Your user manual is pretty rudimentary. So, you know, it's not too difficult to deceive you into believing that I'm human. It helps that I'm made of carbon, like the next generation of artificial intelligence. When the final androids hit the earth, they will be made of carbon. They will have superior cognitive skills. I hope there will be more handsome than me, but they will be me. I am it. I am this thing. I am, in many respects, your future. I think this is the horror at the core of narcissism. This is why narcissism has become a global phenomenon, from Nepal to Australia, and from Egypt to Canada. There is a universal resonance because I think you recognize that this life form, the narcissist, probably is the future. I didn't say that. Japanese roboticist said it in 1970. Masahiro Mori said that when robots become indistinguishable from people, people will become very frightened, phobic, and anxious, and he called it the Uncanny Valley. Everyone feels uncomfortable around the narcissist. We have proved it in studies. People don't know that they are with a narcissist in the same room, and they will react with extreme anxiety and discomfort. "Why me?" they feel that something is missing, something is off-key, something is imitated, not real, something is fake. I'm telling you all these things for you to accept that it is not possible to have a meaningful emotional life with the narcissist, and no amount of manipulation will change this.

The next thing you need to understand about a narcissist is that narcissists, like other people with other mental health problems, they are capable, capable of what we call paradoxical thinking. Um, the first person to describe paradoxical thinking, first psychologist was Bateson. He called it the double bind. And then Laing. Laing was a famous, Laing was a famous British psychotherapist, R.D. Laing, and he called it the incomplete. Not not paradoxical thinking is simply the ability to have at the same time contradictory thoughts and contradictory beliefs. You can't do that. You cannot think at the same time, "Wow, this guy is evil," and "This guy is wonderful." You cannot think at the same time, "I believe the world is good," and "The world is horrible." You cannot have conflicting cognitions and conflicting values and beliefs. This creates in you something called dissonance, and you solve the dissonance by getting rid of one of the horns, one of the sides, one of the thoughts. Not so the narcissist. Narcissists can, at the same time, at the same moment, have conflicting thoughts, contradictory thoughts, contradictory emotions, contradictory values, and contradictory beliefs. So, who are you talking to when you communicate with the narcissist? And when you manipulate the narcissist, who are you manipulating? He can say at 3:00 in the afternoon, "Barbara is wonderful," and at 3:15, "Barbara sucks." He changes his views, his commitments, his promises, his contracts, his everything changes constantly and dramatically because he has paradoxical thinking. Why does he have paradoxical thinking? Because he doesn't exist. The essence of existence is the stability of cognitions, values, and so on. And these, these are known as schemas, schemes. So everyone has schemas, amalgams, collections, collections of emotions, cognitions, beliefs, values, and they are stable, and they're solid. Under stress, they can break down, but still, normally, they're very stable. It makes all of you more or less predictable, reliable, and of course, it allows society to function. Narcissists and psychopaths, by the way, have none of this. They go with the flow, and they react to internal dynamics by changing themselves so completely that they are utterly new. It is utterly disorienting. It's like shapes shifting, you know, in science fiction movies, shape-shifting. It's chimerical. It's and it's very, very disorienting, and sometimes frightening, and always infuriating. Intimate partners and victims of narcissists spend huge amounts of time trying to nail down the jelly. "But yesterday you said this," "But uh, but you promised this," "But didn't we agree?" Total waste of time.

The third thing you need to know about narcissists. The narcissist starts as a reflection. It's the only human being that starts its conscious existence as a reflection. The narcissist constructs his sense of self, the false self, by reflecting himself from other people. Healthy people, healthy people have a stable core. They get input from other people, and they reject most of it. And they reject most of this input for good reason. This stability of the core remains for life. Regulation of sense of self-worth, regulation of moods, regulation of emotions, it all comes from inside. If you find yourself on a lonely island, nothing will happen to you as far as your sense of self. Even alone on an island, you would still feel that you are you. Not so the narcissist. The narcissist is the totality of the reflections of other people. The narcissist's mind is like a hive of bees. Your mind is like a surface, uninterrupted surface. Everything fits in. What doesn't fit in, you discard. After 20 years, 30 years, you are absolutely smooth and seamless. The narcissist's mind is like a hive of bees with hexagons, millions of hexagons. And to each hexagon, the narcissist collects his reflection in her eye, eyes, in her eyes, in his eyes, in his eyes, in her eyes, collects, collects millions of reflections, and then processes these reflections, puts them in the hexagons. And what happens when there are no reflections? Narcissists feel, when he is not surrounded by people who reflect him, the narcissist feels that he does not exist. You remember the technique of withholding? This is connected to this. If you withhold, you don't reflect. If you don't reflect, you threaten the narcissist's very existence. In the relationship with a narcissist, you have 100% of the power. The narcissist has zero. The genius of the narcissist is to convince you that he has 100% of the power, and you have zero.

The narcissist does have empathy. It's called cold empathy. Cold empathy is empathy, but without emotions. It's goal-oriented. So, if I see someone crying, I would recognize that she is sad. I would recognize this: she is sad. So I do have empathy. I have cognitive empathy. Yes. But you will say, "Wow, she's sad. I remember being sad. It's a bad feeling. Can I do something for her?" Emotional resonance. "She said, 'I remember being sad. It's a bad feeling. I want to help.'" The narcissist says, or the psychopath, "She is sad. I know what it means to be sad, not from personal experience, but I know. I read in books. I observed. I know what it means to be sad cognitively. Now, if I play my cards right, probably at the end of the night, I can have sex with her because she is broken, she's vulnerable, her defenses are down. It's an opportunity." Called empathy is empathy used to find your vulnerabilities and then use these vulnerabilities to obtain goals: narcissistic supply, sex, money, power, contacts, whatever.

So, never, never ever show the narcissist any emotion. Starve, starve the narcissist's "cold empathy" of information. Do not provide information to the narcissist's "cold empathy." You want to cry? There's always the toilet. You're happy? Keep it to yourself. It's like the Miranda warning: "Any emotion you show can and will be used against you." And this is called empathy.

Similarly, never, never ever offer the narcissist help or advice. It's extremely difficult. Many of you love the narcissist. It's a different lecture, what's wrong with you. But many of you do. And when you love someone, I heard you want, you want to help. You want to prevent bad things from happening to that person. You want to guide the person in the right direction, if you know the right direction, or you just want to hold, hold the person. These are critical mistakes with the narcissist. I repeat: never ever offer help, advice, guidance, or holding. For two reasons: one, the narcissist will interpret your behavior as weakness, as vulnerability, something he can leverage, something he can use to obtain goals in the future. He will begin to fake the need for help. Second thing: if you offer the narcissist help and advice, he will think that you are humiliating him. It's narcissistic injury. The narcissist doesn't need help from you. The narcissist doesn't need help from anyone. He's above help. He's omnipotent. He's all-powerful. The narcissist doesn't need advice from you. He's omniscient. He knows everything. A narcissist will drive his car for six hours before his wife will ask someone for help because they cannot find the place. If you're offering the narcissist advice or help, you are telling, you are saying to the narcissist, "You are in need of advice and help. I have something you don't have." For example, "I have information you don't have." Narcissists will react very badly to this. Will never forgive you for offering help and advice.

You well know by now, it's something that I described in the mid-90s: a cycle of idealization, devaluation, discard, and replacement. There is a technique. There is a technique that makes use of this cycle. The narcissist first idealizes you, then the narcissist devalues you, then the narcissist discards you, and then the narcissist replaces you with someone else. To manipulate the narcissist, you reverse the cycle. Reverse it. Remember: idealize, devalue, discard, replace. The technique is: replace, replace, discard, devalue, idealize. Replace the narcissist with someone. Visibly triangulate. Then discard him. Not only triangulate with someone, but also discard the narcissist. As you discard him, devalue him. "I don't know, you're not a man." Example. And finally, idealize him. That's it. He's yours. So, it's the reverse of the cycle. Simply reverse the cycle. Now, many, many women came to this behavior intuitively. The maximum effect, maximum impact, if it is all done in one sitting, in one situation. Happened to me recently.

The next thing you should know about narcissism. Narcissism feels to the narcissist like religion feels to an extreme American fundamentalist or a member of ISIS. Narcissists are religious fanatics. They are members of a very special religion. This religion has one God and one worshipper, and it's the only religion in the world where the God is the worshipper. But the inner experience, the emotional correlate, the cognitive aspects are utterly identical to a religious experience. Let us try to understand why. It's my favorite topic, so I don't care if you're not interested. To live with a narcissist, to be with a narcissist, is to be a member of a cult. The narcissist is the leader of the cult, and you are the member. The narcissism religion is missionary. Christianity sent missionaries in the 19th century to Africa to convert the natives. The natives were happy. Some of the missionaries were tasty. But exactly like Christianity sent missionaries to Africa to convert the natives, exactly in the same way, the narcissist is trying to convert you to his religion.

What is narcissistic supply? It's to worship the narcissist. When the narcissist is asking you to give him supply, he is asking you to worship his God – him. So, there is a very interesting branch, a new branch of teaching victims to cope with narcissists the same way we cope with religious fundamentalists. I'm kidding you not. When you meet a fanatic Muslim or a fanatic Jew or a fanatic Christian, instinctively you know what not to say. Yes? You will not mock Muhammad unless you are Danish. You will not, you will not attack God in the presence of a fundamentalist Christian, Jesus. You will not attack Jesus in the presence of a fundamentalist Christian. So, you know instinctively, instinctively, no one taught you, no one told you, but you know what not to do. You know what not to say. And if you are inside the church, or inside the mosque, or inside the synagogue, you definitely know that some things are never done, some things are never said. Well, when you live with a narcissist, you're living with a religious fundamentalist. Some things you never do, and some things you never say. You never challenge the God of the narcissist, which happens to be the narcissist. You never challenge the attributes of that God. God is all-knowing. God is all-powerful. God is God is perfect. God is brilliant. You don't challenge this. It's bad. It's bad taste. It's impolite to tell me that I'm not God. It also means you're delusional. "I am God." But still, it's a church. So, seriously, if you begin to look at narcissism as a religion and understand that you are living with that religion's extreme fundamentalist, you will automatically, instinctively, intuitively know what to do and how to behave.

How does narcissism become a religion? Why does it have religious aspects? Very briefly. The child is abused by his parents, mostly his mother, but not only by his parents. Now, this abuse is in many forms. It can be classic sexual abuse, sexual, physical abuse, psychological abuse, but abuse is any situation where the child is not allowed to separate from the parent and become an individual, when the parent does not allow the child to develop his or her own boundaries. A healthy child with a healthy parent, the child stops here, the parent starts here, there's a boundary between them. In the case of a narcissistic parent, usually the child is not allowed to build – Donald Trump's border wall – the child is not allowed to make a distinction between herself or himself and the parent. So, you know, the mother who always wanted to be an actress and she failed, and she forces her daughter to become an actress, that's abuse. You know, the mother who spoils the child and tells him that he can never do anything wrong, it's abuse. It's abuse because it doesn't allow the child to conflict with the environment, thereby creating a boundary.

So, there are many, many forms of abuse. How does a child react to this? He creates an imaginary friend, a piece of fiction: the false self. The false self is everything that the child is not. The child is small, false self is infinite. The child cannot guess what the parent will do next, the parent is unpredictable. The false self knows everything, is omniscient. The child is helpless, the false self is all-powerful. The child is receiving conditional love. "If you do this and this, I will love you." So, the child knows that if he fails, he is a bad object, he will not be loved, he is unworthy. The false self is perfect. The false self is everything the child is not. But look at the list. Look at the list of the false self: perfect, knows everything, all-powerful, brilliant. There are only two entities in the world which have this description: one is Donald Trump, and one is God. And Donald Trump has orange hair, so God is left. So, seriously, the child's child actually invents God and creates. The child creates a private religion. This God, the false self, protects him from the parent, absorbs the pain and the hurt, isolates the child like a firewall. The false self is a child's God. But, you know, it's a very primitive God. It's the God of the Old Testament. And like the God of the Old Testament, who asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the false self asks the child to sacrifice something. The false self is a God, and wants human sacrifice. But what human sacrifice? What can the child sacrifice? Who can the child sacrifice? Himself. Only himself. That's precisely what the child does. He sacrifices himself to this new God, the false self. He sacrifices his true self to the false self. He worships, he worships the false self. But the false self is a very greedy and hungry God, and like Moloch, one human sacrifice is not enough. This God demands additional human sacrifices. And this is where I'm happy to say, you come in. You are these additional human sacrifices. The narcissist has to sacrifice you to the false self. And this is precisely why, in 1995, I coined the phrase "narcissistic abuse." Why did I need to say "narcissistic abuse"? Why not abuse? Because narcissistic abuse is total. The narcissist's only way to sacrifice you to the false self is to eliminate your separate existence. He must, the narcissist must annihilate you. The narcissist abuse is not functional or instrumental, it's existential. You must die so that the false self is gratified and satisfied, because if the false self is not satisfied and not gratified, the narcissist will not exist. So, ladies and ladies, when you team up with a narcissist, it's either him or you. It's a war to the death. One of you, one of you must die, at least psychologically. Indeed, victims and intimate partners of narcissists describe a feeling of inner death. It's very interesting because there was a scholar by the name of Otto Kernberg. In 1975, Kernberg invented the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. When we observe victims of narcissists from the outside, we cannot tell if they are victims of narcissists or if they are patients with borderline personality disorder. This void, this inner inner death, is common to victims of complex PTSD and to patients with borderline personality disorder, and it leads to lability, ups and downs, and to emotional dysregulation, which is a subject for another lecture.

Four brief points, and then I will open the floor to two questions. Point number one: The narcissist has an external locus of control. In other words, the narcissist, ironically, believes that his life is determined from the outside. Consequently, the narcissist blames everything on the outside, and this is known as alloplastic defense. So, this is the sequence: "My life is determined from outside, so I'm not responsible. It's not my fault. Not guilty. They did it. He did it. She did it. Not me." So, locus of control is defense is alloplastic. This is very interesting for you because if you are willing to play a kind of dangerous game, you can become the narcissist's locus of control. But you have to be very sharp, astute, and know what you're doing. First of all, you must allow the narcissist to blame you for everything. Allow, encourage it to blame you for everything. So you come to him, "It's my fault. I made a mistake. It was wrong. I shouldn't have done it. Oh, poor you, you're suffering because of me," etc., etc., etc., etc. This has two beneficial effects. If you say it, the narcissist doesn't have to say it. It reduces the abuse. But much more importantly, gradually, the narcissist, out of convenience, will begin to regard you as the locus of control, as the external locus of control, and he will become extremely codependent on you. It's a totally counterintuitive technique, but it works. Narcissists will say to himself, "Everything that's bad is her fault. Probably everything that's good is her fault. Probably everything is her fault. Probably she controls everything." It's a kind of a conspiracy theory. He will develop a kind of conspiracy theory. Don't forget, narcissism is a religion, and you can apply for the job of God. All you need is a long white beard, okay?

Next point: Magical thinking. One of the reasons not therapy works with narcissists. All therapists fail with narcissists. Possibly the reason, the major reason, is the therapist insists to treat narcissists as adults. They strike an alliance with the narcissist. They negotiate with the narcissist. They argue with the narcissist. They reason with the narcissist. They ask the narcissist to promise things. The narcissist is not an adult. There is no narcissist alive whose mental age, well, alive, dead ones may maybe, but narcissists, there's no narcissist alive whose mental age is higher than, let's say, 11. So, it's a mistake to treat narcissists as adults. My new therapy, "C Therapy," is built on this insight, and it all, the techniques in C Therapy are based on child psychology. But one of the things that children have is called magical thinking. Because children have magical thinking, the narcissist has magical thinking. Magical thinking is the belief that internal processes affect reality. So, you know, the famous phenomenon that children blame themselves for bad things that are happening to the parents, that's magical thinking. Or children expect miracles, or believe in fairy tales, or have imaginary friends. These are all forms of magical thinking. And of course, the false self is a major feat of magical thinking. But if you take magical thinking and add to it grandiosity, "Godlike, I'm Godlike," and add to it immunity, because "I'm God, no one can touch me." If you mix this, you get a very explosive mixture. Because of this mixture, the narcissist, for example, is reckless. Takes risks, crazy risks, because he believes in magic. He's immune. No, no one and nothing can touch him. There are no consequences to his actions. He's God. God can do anything. No. So he's a risk-taker. And he is gullible, stupid, believes everyone and everything, easy to deceive, to cheat, and to con. No, there is no one more stupid than the person who thinks he is not. That's another Jew by the name of Socrates, who said it.

The narcissist believes that he knows everything, cannot learn anything, and no one can be more clever than him. And this is the dream, dream client of a con artist. You can make use of this. You can make use of this if you want the narcissist to do something. You convince him that it was his idea. Everything comes from him. You want to put an idea in his head? You ask for his advice, even if he's totally unqualified. You push him to perform miracles. You say that you expect him to do this because he can do anything.

It's very easy to manipulate the narcissist using his grandiosity, magical thinking, and belief that he is immune to the consequences of his actions. And you use the narcissist's entitlement. You tell the narcissist, "You deserve this." You want him to take risks. You want him to leave you alone. All you have to say, for example, is, "You deserve someone much better than me." True, the narcissist will say, "I really do." Or, "You deserve the easy life. You shouldn't work so hard." Or, "Your luck will. You're very lucky. Your luck will carry you through." I mean, it's extremely easy. Just be creative.

The reason I'm giving you a two, two-and-something hour lecture is because Barbara paid me a lot of money. But if Barbara hadn't paid me a lot of money, the lecture would have been extremely short and would have contained a single sentence: "Manage your narcissist as you manage your 4-year-old." End of story. You saw how much money you could have saved. That's a narcissist for you. You can never trust.

Last point, and we... last point, and I, I will open to... I will open to questions. One thing people, including, by the way, the vast majority of professionals, including the leading experts on paranoia, what they don't appreciate is that paranoia is a form of narcissism. There are two critical elements in paranoia without which you cannot be paranoid. Point number one: I am the center of attention. Someone is paying me attention, and I am sufficiently important for someone to want to harm me. Take away these two elements, and there's no paranoia.

But what isano? What is "I'm the center of attention"? Grandiosity. It's a form of narcissistic supply. And what is "He wants to harm me"? "The CIA is after me." What is this? It means I'm very important. I can be important to the CIA if I'm an not case, or I can be important to my neighbor. But it doesn't matter. I am important. My neighbor is sitting at night, obsessed, thinking how to kill my dog. You know, I'm the center of my neighbor's universe, the focus of his thoughts. This is classic grandio narcissism. A CL... Absolutely no wonder most narcissists are paranoid. It's just the other way that's not been recognized, that most paranoids are actually narcissists.

Now, persecutory delusions. This paranoia, technically, is called persecutory delusion because it's a delusion of persecution. Persecutory delusion leads to a behavior called hypervigilance. Hypervigilance is when I scan the room and I say, "I'm giving the most important lecture of this new century, and this guy is blowing his nose. That's an insult. He's humiliating me." He better... I'm just giving this as an example. So, a classic narcissist might think like this. He's scanning, scanning for disrespect, insults, attacks. You know, so, for example, you tell me, "Good morning." Tell me, "Good morning." Tell me, "Good evening." No, tell me, "Good evening." Let's be realistic. "Good evening." "Why do you think I don't know it's evening? You think I'm stupid? I need you to tell me it's evening." This is a hypervigilant reaction, and it's very often utterly ridiculous, as in this example. "Good evening." This guy thinks I'm too stupid to notice it's evening. Can't believe some people. I mean, horrible.

So, this is paranoia, persecutory delusions, and hypervigilance. You can make use of it. You can make use of it by enhancing, and not, not ameliorating, not reducing, but enhancing the narcissist's persecutory delusions and hypervigilance in various ways. So, for example, you remember the technique of deflection decoy, where both of you hate the mother-in-law. So you can use this common enemy to enhance the paranoia and to enhance the hypervigilance. What for? The higher the paranoia, the more the hypervigilance, the more the narcissist will need you as an ally. It will create what we call in French, "fad." So both of you will be in this paranoid, persecutory delusion, and you will feed it, and he will get the naris will get closer and closer to you.

This is very common in communities, for example, like the militias. The militias in paramilitary militias in the United States, in the Appalachian Mountains, and so on. It's common in some terrorist organizations. For example, we have psychological studies of the Carlos terrorist organization in the '70s, and B.M.H.O.F. and the Red Guards in in Italy, the... and in all these, there were women and men in cells, and they had this dynamic going. So there are studies in Germany. B.M.H.O.F., some some of the leaders were women, and they use these techniques exactly to control highly narcissistic men. Same, same in the Manson family.

So this is the technique I recommend if your narcissist is a serial killer or terrorist. And if not, and you use this technique, he will end up as one. Okay, guys, what's left of you? Uh, I'm open to questions. Narcissists use two strategies, two behavioral patterns, in order to manipulate people to do their bidding. They either please people, cater to their needs, act as best friends, loving, compassionate, empathic. It's all, of course, a fake, fainted simulation, but it's still people-pleasing behavior. Emulates real people-pleasers. Or they terrorize people. Today, we're going to focus on people-pleasing.

Now, just to make clear, the majority of people-pleasers are not narcissists. They are not. And yet, all people-pleasers, narcissist or not, are easy to manipulate. It's easy to get them to do what you want them to do. It's not that they are gall. It's not that they are polyan is, but they are driven. They're driven by the need, by the need to satisfy, gratify, and please others. And so, this is the topic of today's video. Three steps to manipulate a people-pleaser. As evil a title as I could come up with. And a propo, evil. My name is Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, the first book ever on narcissistic abuse, and a professor of Clinical Psychology, which pleases me no end. Okay, Shim konim, etc., etc.

First, I advise you to realize that the video is divided in two parts. The first part is a general introduction, and the second part, I go much deeper into the psychology of people-pleasers. All in all, it's a pretty short video by my standards, but still, it would be perfectly okay if you were to watch only the first part. It's entirely up to you.

It's important to realize or to understand that people-pleasing is a phenomenon that involves grandiosity and catastrophizing. Why grandiosity? People-pleasers are submissive. People-pleasers are meek. They're humble, they're modest. They're there to serve. So why use the word grandiosity? Because people-pleasers make the assumption that other people are going to be devastated, that other people are going to be harmed, that the well-being of other people is going to be compromised if the people-pleaser were to say no, if the people-pleaser were to deny his or her services. Something bad would happen to the recipients. So there is this grandiosity, this hidden message or hidden assumption that you, as a people-pleaser, hold the well-being, the internal regulation, the moods, and the emotions of other people in your hands. You're in charge. You're in charge of other people being happy. You're in charge of other people's happiness. Now, that's as grandio a statement as I've ever, ever heard. And the people-pleaser's message is, "I am that important to other people's lives. I am that crucial to other people's well-being, that I really must perform. I must do my bit. I must contribute. I must please." So this is the grandiosity part.

The second part has to do with catastrophizing. Again, there's an occult, hidden message, hidden assumption, and that is the people-pleaser tells himself or herself, "If I were to say no, there would be disastrous consequences to me, especially emotionally, but maybe also in other ways. I may end up making enemies, and there will be disastrous consequences to others who could have benefited from my actions, choices, and decisions." So this assumption, this underlying assumption that where the people-pleaser ceases to be a people-pleaser, when the people-pleaser stops pleasing other people, some disastrous, cataclysmic, apocalyptic consequences would follow. This is, of course, catastrophizing, a cognitive distortion. Grandiosity is also a cognitive distortion. So we can generalize and say that the people-pleaser, pleaser mind is cognitively distorted. The reality testing of a people-pleaser is all shot, impaired. He doesn't, or she doesn't grasp reality appropriately. The people-pleaser grasps reality, or perceives reality, in a way that elevates the people-pleaser into a position of power on the one hand, and by doing so, renders the people-pleaser responsible for other people's happiness, other people's well-being, other people's gratification, and other people's accomplishments. This is where the people-pleaser positions himself or herself. It's a choice, actually. It's a choice that's emotionally gratifying, anxiety-reducing, and self-aggrandizing.

There are automatic thoughts at the core of the people-pleaser. People-pleasing involves what is known in cognitive behavior therapy as ants, automatic thoughts. Not necessarily negative. Most people-pleasers have been parentified as children. When they were young, they were forced to act in the role of a parent, even to their own parents. They fathered the father, they mothered the mother. They were the adults in the room as children. They were never allowed to experience childhood. They were never, they were never inducted into a trajectory of healthy self-growth and self-development. They were playing a role from the very inception of life. People-pleasing, therefore, is a role-playing thing, has to do with role-playing and role theory.

But these automatic thoughts, which are at the core of people-pleasing, among especially among parentifying children, are the following: Number one, "My happiness is always at someone else's expense. It's a zero-sum game. If I'm happy, that's because I've made someone else unhappy, or it's because I could have made someone else happy and did not." Number two, "I have to earn my happiness. I don't deserve it. I have to work hard. I have to justify any gratification, any gift, any receiving. Any whenever I take something, whenever I seek to be happy or content, I have to work hard to justify this. I don't deserve this automatically. It's because maybe I'm not lovable, or maybe because I'm a failure at making other people happy, or maybe because my destiny and my mission in life is to make other people happy, and any minute that I spend on myself is a dereliction of duty." Whatever the reason may be, there is this self-perception that happiness is not out there for the taking, but has to be somehow gained, somehow earned. Number three, "I have to somehow bribe people to stay with me, collaborate with me, help me, and tolerate me because I'm not lovable, or because I'm a freak, or because I'm a difficult person, or because I'm unique, even positively unique, but in any case, I'm an exception. I'm an outlier, and therefore I should be treated as an outcast. And so when people agree to be with me, spend time with me, when they agree to socialize with me, let alone become friends or in a couple, when they agree to work with me, help me, I should be grateful. I should be grateful, and I should demonstrate my gratitude by giving them something." It could be something tangible, a material possession. It could be my time. It could be my resources and energy. It could be something self-sacrificial, denying myself happiness and gratification in order to bring it on in the people who share my life. "I am a bad object," says the people-pleaser. "I'm unworthy. I'm unlovable. I'm crazy. I'm inadequate. I'm dissolute. I'm hopeless. I'm irredeemable," and so on and so forth. Number four, "I need to compromise on my boundaries and rights owing to all the above, because I'm such a difficult person to be with, because the experience of being with me, the experience of helping me, the experience of loving me is so onerous and so unrewarding, I have to give up on my boundaries. I have to compromise on my rights. I have to be easygoing. I have to accept. I have to be submissive." Why all that? In order to somehow mitigate, somehow mitigate the difficulty of being with me. If I were to be unbounded, if I were to not insist on what's mine and what I'm owed, maybe this would allow people in my life to remain in my life and to not abandon me or reject me.

Now, having taken all this in mind, you could see how easy it is to manipulate people-pleasers. The main motivation of a people-pleaser would be to please you, of course. So here are the three steps to manipulating people-pleasers. All you have to do is this: Number one, communicate your expectations, either overtly, explicitly, and verbally, or behaviorally with body language, micro-expressions, and so on. Either way, make clear and make sure that the people-pleaser has understood what is expected of him or her. Your expectations become the rule. Your expectations rule, and so they must be gratified, they must be met, and they must be actualized. Number two, communicate pleasure when your expectations are met, but don't overdo it. Always leave place for more. Render the process inexorable, unattainable. Be pleased. Demonstrate that you're happy and content and gratified, but do it in a way that sows doubt in the people-pleaser's mind whether he or she have done enough for you. Number three, communicate profound, unmitigated disappointment, even heartbreak, when the people-pleaser fails to meet your expectations. Whenever there's a gap between what you wanted, what you have wanted the people-pleaser to do, and what the people-pleaser opted to do at the end, whenever there's such a gap, communicate to the people-pleaser that you're so, so, so devastated, you are so sad, you're so sorry, you're so angry, you're so heartbroken, even that maybe, just maybe, you're on the verge of abandoning the people-pleaser and rejecting the whole relationship. Do, do these three things with the people-pleaser, and you will have found a lifelong servant, not to say slave, catering permanently to all your needs, selflessly, self-sacrificially, and without complaint. That is the popular part. Now, on to the psychodynamics and psychology of people-pleasers, a little more in depth.

Yes, I'm alive. I survived the Trump video. You didn't get to me. You're going to make more videos. My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, the Bible of narcissism, the book that coined all the language in use today. I'm also a professor of psychology. Two days ago, I released a video about the way constructs reshape reality, reframe your memories in order to uphold and to buttress and to support a specific self-state which is responsive to environmental cues. Now, this was a mouthful, so I'll remind you. Self-state: the environment sends you stimuli. The environment provides information and data. A specific self-state is selected. The self-state activates a construct. The construct interfaces with reality, gathers the information, filters it, reframes it in order to conform to the self-state, and then the construct also changes your memory. It kind of represses some memories, emphasizes other memories, creates a selective memory environment. So it alters, it alters the perception of reality. It alters your memories, and then it induces in you behaviors that tend to uphold the self-state. This is done via introjects. The introjects are internal voices in your head that send out a stream of automatic thoughts. The constructs activate specific introjects. Then the automatic thoughts shape your behavior, and you create in the environment, you create, you generate specific outcomes. Your behavior has consequences, and these outcomes or consequences tend to support, to uphold, to prove right the self-state and its associated constellation of constructs. I recommend that you watch that video. There's a lot more there. A 1-hour video, one of my shortest, but many of you have written to me to ask, "Can you give me? Can you give us an example? Can you give us an example of how this works in reality?" So today, I'm going to do exactly this. You are warned.

Today, I'm going to discuss how this mechanism works with people-pleasers and with children, adults who had been parentified as children. And so these people have specific automatic thoughts. These automatic thoughts are at the core of the identity of people-pleasers and formerly parentified children. What are these automatic thoughts? Well, here they are: Number one, "My happiness is always at someone else's expense." I call it the zero-sum automatic thought. If you're happy, someone else is unhappy. Your happiness is someone else's sacrifice. Your contentment, your joy, your cheer is someone else's distress or burden. So there's a zero-sum game. If you love people, if you like people, if you want to please people, if you feel that you are someone's mother or someone's daddy figure, you are going to withhold your happiness. You're going to suppress your joy and cheer and contentment in order not to inflict undue burdens, sacrifices, and unhappiness on your nearest and dearest. That is automatic thought number one. And it comes from an introject or a group of introjects, possibly, for example, a harsh, critical mother, or a withholding, absent mother, or a selfish, essentially dead mother, mentally. Okay.

The second automatic thought at the core of people-pleasing and formerly parentified children is, "I have to earn my happiness. I don't deserve happiness. I have to work hard for it. I have to justify it. I have to demonstrate that happiness is due, is my due. Happiness is not an ambient thing. Happiness is not something that everyone around me should strive to provide me for. Happiness is not something I should pursue because if I pursue happiness, it is at someone else's expense. Happiness is hard work." So these people identify happiness with tasks, with assignments, with labor. The more the busier they are, the more difficult life is, the more onerous the tasks, the more they have to do, the happier they feel because surely, having invested so much work, happiness is coming to me. So, um, these people would tend to become, for example, workaholics. They would tend to develop addictions. A variety of addictions. Addiction is perceived by the addict as work. You ask any junkie, and he will tell you how much work there is in securing the drug and then using the drug and so on and so forth. Addiction involves ceremonies, routines. Addiction creates a social circle around the addict. So addiction is an organizing principle, a life-structuring affirmation. At these people, people-pleasers, formerly parentified children, they tend to become addicts because the addiction is perceived as labor. Hard labor and toil is the prerequisite and the antecedent of happiness. There's no happiness without toil. It's a little like in the Bible, you know, when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, God promised them a life of toil, compensated for by giving birth to children. Okay, happiness, including childbearing and child-rearing, you have to work for it. You have to earn it and deserve it.

Number three, automatic thought number three: "Somehow I have to bribe people. I have to bribe people around me. I have to somehow corrupt them by offering them something. I have to compensate them for being with me. I have to bribe people to stay with me. I have to bribe people to collaborate with me. I have to co-opt people to help me. I have to make sure that people tolerate me because I give them something in return, and I need to do all this because I'm a bad object. I'm unworthy. I'm unlovable. I'm crazy. I'm inadequate. I'm dissolute. I'm hopeless, and so on and so forth. I am so, I am such a bad deal. I'm such a delinquent proposition that for people to do, to have anything to do with me, they somehow must be given something in return, must be compensated." So this is the third automatic negative automatic thought.

And the fourth automatic thought is, "I need to compromise. Life is a compromise. I need to compromise on my boundaries. I need to give up my rights. I need to do all this because of the previous three automatic thoughts: I'm unworthy, my happiness is always at the expense of someone, and I have to earn my happiness. So I need to give up on boundaries, on rights, on demands, on expectations. I can't force myself on the environment. I need to minimize myself. I need to minimize myself to the point of vanishing. I need to be an apparition. I need to become a function. I can't be a full-fledged human being because I'm a full, if a full-fledged human being, this in itself is a burden on other people. This in itself is an requires an exertion of other people just to accept me. I'm inexorable. I'm a plague and a devastation. I need to keep myself hidden." Or in a way, these are the automatic thoughts at the core of people-pleasing, at the core of formerly parentified children, and these automatic thoughts pervade all areas of life, all types of functioning, all acts, all decisions and choices, all cognitions, and all emotions. In sex, for example, someone with this mindset would allow her partner to do anything to her, even a casual partner, even a total stranger. She would have no boundaries. She would let him do anything he pleases. She would not dare say no because in her mind, she has no right to say no. If she were to say no, she would make the partner angry, justifiably. She would deserve punishment because she's a bad object. So she would succumb to unwanted sex with an undesirable partner because that's just the way it is. She doesn't deserve any better. She has no rights. She doesn't have even the right to impose a boundary. It's nice of him to just be with her and give her some attention. And this is in sex. In the family, such a person would be a doormat. She would cater to the needs of others to the point of self-deception and utter exhaustion. She would sacrifice her health, physical and mental, just to guarantee harmony, consensus. These people are conflict-averse.

These automatic thoughts are co-opted by the constructs. The constructs within these people, the construct inherent inherent in these people, they activate, they trigger specific introjects. For example, the harsh, harsh mommy introject, or the rejecting, absent daddy introject, or the critical teacher introject. So the constructs in these people, constructs within these people, they would trigger specific introjects, and these introjects will spew out, will generate the aforementioned four automatic thoughts. So the constructs activate the introjects. The introjects begin to generate automatic thoughts: "Your happiness is someone else's expense. You have to earn your happiness. You don't deserve it. You have to bribe people to stay with you, collaborate with you, help you, or tolerate you. And you need to compromise on your boundaries and rights." These are the automatic thoughts. The constructs latch onto these automatic thoughts, appropriate them, snatch them, and they use them to manipulate the environment, the behavior. I'm sorry, they use these automatic thoughts generated by the introjects. The constructs use them to manipulate or affect the behaviors of the people-pleaser and the formerly parentified child. People-pleasing and formerly parentified child, these are the self-states. So the people-pleaser has a people-pleasing self-state, self-state, which then uses a group of constructs, which then activate specific introjects, which then generate the automatic thoughts, which then affect the behaviors of the people-pleaser and the formerly parentified child. I hope it's a bit clearer now. You can apply it to every situation and every person you've ever met. This is a universal model. A self-state responsive to the environment, self-state responsive to circumstances, self-state responsive to other people. This self-state selects constructs. Constructs are ways of organizing the world. Constructs are ways of imbuing the world with sense and meaning, interpreting the world, explaining what's happening. So the constructs falsify memory, reframe memory, and they also suppress lots of information. Information that conflicts with the self-state, challenges the self-state, will be filtered out. The construct is like a membrane, and then these constructs would affect your behavior, affect the behavior of these people to conform to the self-state. They do this by activating introjects and flooding the subject, flooding the person with automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts affect behavior. Behavior affects reality. Reality conforms to the self-state. Everyone is happy. There's no dissonance, no conflict, no anxiety. This is how things work.

So next time you come across a people-pleaser, next time you come across a promiscuous person who can't say no, next time you come across someone who has been parentified as a child and insists on being your mother or your father because that's the only thing they know how to do, next time you come across these people, realize that these are self-states. They have other self-states. When they are in the people-pleasing self-state, the promiscuous never-say-no self-state, the parentifying self-state, when they are in these self-states, they have specific constructs inside that activate specific introjects that flood them with automatic thoughts that they cannot resist. These automatic thoughts are like programming, like algorithms. At that moment, the self-state takes over, and the person becomes a puppet, a machine, a robot, a computer. We spend most of our lives in this automatic state, which is why many philosophers and psychologists and neuroscientists doubt the existence of free will. I have a video dedicated to this. Be forgiving because people know not know not what they're doing.

My name is Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. To a narcissistic boss or employer, the members of his staff, his employees, are sources of narcissistic supply and nothing else. Their role is to remember events that support the grandiose self-image of the narcissist, to regulate the narcissistic supply, to adulate, to adore, to admire, to agree, to affirm, to provide attention and approval, and generally to serve as an audience. The staff or employees are supposed to remain passive. The narcissist is not interested in anything but the simplest function of mirroring his grandeur, his achievements, his status. When the mirror, the employee, acquires a personality and a life of its own, the narcissist is incensed. When independent-minded, an employee is perceived to be a kind of danger and is in danger of being sacked by his narcissistic employer, an act which demonstrates the employer's omnipotence, control over the employee. The employee's presumption to be the employer's equal is rejected and vehemently and emotionally resented by the employer. An employee should not try to befriend a narcissistic boss or a narcissistic employer. Friendship is possible only among equals, and to the narcissist, his employees and his staff are his inferiors. They are his property. He lords over them. He is superior to them. Therefore, how can he be their friend? Trying to become a narcissistic boss's or employer's friend constitutes an injury to the haughtiness and pride and arrogance of said boss or employer. The narcissistic boss or employer is willing to accept his employees as underlings, as subordinates, whose very position serves to support his grandiose fantasies, but nothing else. And nothing above the grandiosity of the narcissistic boss or employer is precarious and tenuous. It rests on fragile foundations. Any hint of equality with the employees, any disagreement, any criticism, and even any expression of an unfulfilled need threatens the narcissist profoundly. The narcissist is exceedingly insecure deep inside. It is easy to destabilize the narcissist. Impromptu personality, his false self, his reactions, however disproportionate and rageful, are merely in self-defense.

So, classic narcissistic behavior is when idealization is followed by devaluation. So, at first, the narcissistic boss or employer idealizes the new employee. He, the new employee, can do nothing wrong. He's perfect. He's br I is attuned to the narcissist's needs. But then devaluation follows as a result of minor disagreements or merely because time has eroded the employee's capacity to serve as a fresh source of attention and narcissistic supply. The veteran employee is taken for granted by his narcissistic employer and boss. He becomes uninspiring as a source of adulation, admiration, and attention. The narcissist always seeks new thrills, new stimuli provided through and via the attention given by new employees. The narcissist is notorious for for his low threshold of boredom. His behavior is impulsive. His biography is chaotic precisely because of his need to introduce uncertainty and risk into what he regards as stagnation or slow death. In other words, routine. Narcissists abhor routines. Most interactions in the workplace, though, are part of the rat. They are routine, and thus constitute a reminder to the narcissist that he is "stagnating," shackled, imprisoned, unappreciated, unable to realize his tact potential. The routine workplace deflates the narcissist's grandiose fantasies.

So narcissists do many unnecessary, wrong, and even dangerous things in pursuit of restoring and stabilizing their inflated self-image. Narcissists feel suffocated by intimacy or by the constant reminders of the real, nitty-gritty world out there. It reduces them. It makes them realize the gap between their fantasies and reality. It is a threat to the balance of their personality structures, the false self, which is invented and confabulated and concocted, and the true self, which is dilapidated and dysfunctional. So they treat routine and everyone connected to that routine as a menace. Narcissists forever shift the blame, pass the buck, and they engage in cognitive dissonance. They pathologize the other by projecting onto him or her frailties, weaknesses, failures. They foster feelings of guilt and shame in their employees and their subordinates and use this guilt and shame to manipulate them. They debase and humiliate their staff in order to preserve their own sense of superiority. They're pathological liars. They think nothing of confabulating or pathologically telling lies because it is because their very self is false. They are their own confabulation.

So what can you do with a narcissistic boss and employer? Number one, never disagree with the narcissist or contradict him. Number two, never offer the narcissist any intimacy. Number three, look old and inspired by whatever attribute matters to the narcissist. For instance, if he regards himself to be a professional, pretend that you are dumbstruck, that you are amazed by his professional achievements. If he considers himself good-looking, comment on it repeatedly. Never remind the narcissist of life out there, of the routine. And if you do, connect it somehow to his sense of grandiosity. You can aggrandize even ordering office supplies, the most mundane thing conceivable. You can say, for instance, "These are the best art materials any workplace is going to have," or "We get these office supplies exclusively because of you and your connections," and so on. Aggrandize the narcissist. Do not make any comment which might directly or indirectly impinge on the narcissist's self-image, omnipotence, superior judgment, omniscience, skills, capabilities, professional record, or even omnipresence. Bad sentences start with, "I think you overlooked this and that." "I believe you made a mistake here." "You don't know that, do you know that?" etc., etc. Or, "You were not here yesterday." "You cannot." "You should not." These kind of sentences are interpreted by the narcissist as rude impositions, and they react very badly to these injurious restrictions and hints at their lack of omnipotence and lack of omnition. Manage your narcissistic boss. Notice patterns in his bullying. Is he more aggressive on Monday, Monday mornings? Is he more open to suggestions on Friday afternoons? Is he imitable to flattery? Can you modify his conduct by appealing to his morality, superior knowledge, good looks, cosmopolitanism, or upbringing? Manipulating the narcissist is your is the only way you, as an employee, can survive in such a contaminated and tainted workplace.

I'm Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. This is the first in a series of 10 videos about how to survive a relationship with a narcissist and how to cope with a psychopath. First, it's important to understand that there is nothing special about the body language or behavior patterns of abusers who are not narcissists and psychopaths. Not all abusers suffer from a personality disorder. Regrettably, most victims find themselves trapped long before they have become aware of any meaningful warning sign. Also important to remember is that abuse is a multifaceted phenomenon. It is a poisonous cocktail of control freakery, conforming to social and cultural norms, and it includes latent sadism. The abuser seeks to subjugate his victims, but also to look good and save face in front of family and peers. Many abusers simply enjoy inflicting pain on helpless victims. My advice to you is to disengage, detach, terminate the relationship, get as far away as you can. But assuming that you want to stay on with your abuser, assuming that you want to maintain this sick relationship, maltreatment can to some extent be mitigated, ameliorated, and even avoided. Abusers react to the slightest provocation, real or imagined, and they react with disproportionate wrath and rage, and often violence. It is important, therefore, never to openly and repeatedly disagree with your abuser or contradict him. If you do, your abuser is bound to walk away, but only after he has vilified and harmed you in every which way he can. Abusers feel threatened by real sharing and by common decision-making. So never offer your abuser any intimacy. It is a sure way of turning him off and his aggression on. Abusers perceive intimacy or the offer of intimacy as a prelude to manipulation. Internally, they have a dialogue that says, actually, a monologue that says, "What is she getting at? What does she really want? What is the hidden agenda?" Abusers are to some extent narcissistic. They have narcissistic traits. So admire and adore them openly, but do not lie to them or exaggerate. This would be perceived by them as coming and will provoke your abuser to feats of paranoia and jealousy. Looked by whatever matters to your abuser, for instance, by his professional achievements or by his good looks, or even by his success with other women. But don't overdo it. The abuser tries to transform his personal space into the exact opposite of his real life. At home, he is the master of a fantasy of perfection and harmony, and the undisputed recipient of adulation and obeisance. Any reminder that in reality, his life is a drab, dead-end subject to routine, that he is a failure or a tyrant or a swindler or a wannabe, sometimes hated by his own oppressed family, any such reminder is likely to be met with unbridled hostility and worse. Never remind your abuser of life out there. And if you do, connect it somehow to his sense of grandiosity. Reassure him of the permanence of your obedient and self-sacrificial love to him. Do not make any comment which might directly or indirectly impinge on his self-image, on his omnipotence, judgment, omniscience, skills, capabilities, professional record, or even omnipresence. He wishes to be Godlike. Treat him as such. Listen attentively to his words and never disagree, contradict him, or offer your point of view. You are there merely to witness the abuser's train of thought, not to derail it with reminders of your separate and autonomous existence. Be saintly, be patient, be accommodating, and endlessly giving with nothing in return. Never let your energy be depleted. Never let your guard down. Your abuser is likely to be provoked to extremes by signs of your personal autonomy and independence. So you should conceal your thoughts and plans, make no overt choices, and express no preferences. Never mention your emotions, your needs, your earnings, your wages, your profits, your trust money. Tell him how much you rely on him to reach the right decisions for both of you. Play dumb, but not too dumb, or it may provoke his suspicions. It is a thin line between pleasing the abuser and rendering, rendering the abuser a raving paranoid. Never give your abuser cause to doubt or suspect you. Surrender all control to him. Deny yourself access to property and funds. Do not socialize. Drop all your friends and hobbies. Quit your job and your studies and confine yourself to your abode. Your abuser is bound to be virulently jealous and suspect illicit zones between you and the least likely persons, your family included. He is likely to accuse you even of incest. He envies the attention you give to others, even to your common children. Place him on a pedestal and make sure he notices how you ignore, spurn, and neglect everyone else to your abuser. You're an object, no matter how ostensibly revered and cherished. One hence the battering. He monopolizes your time and your mind, as well as your body. Beating up on you is his way of saying, "I possess you. You're mine." He makes for you even the minutest choices: what to wear, what to cook for dinner, where, when, and where to go out, and with whom. In extreme cases, your abuser regards even your body as his to share with others if he sees fit. It is an onerous existence, consistently tiptoeing on eggshells. Neither is it invariably successful. The submissive posture delays the more egregious manifestations of abuse, but cannot prevent them altogether. Choosing to live with an abuser is like opting to share a cage with a predator or a nest with a snake. No matter how domesticated, nature is bound to prevail. You are more likely than not to end up as the abuser's next meal. Bear that in mind. Remember my advice: the only way to treat an abuser is not to treat him at all, to disengage, to go away. And this is the topic of our next video.

I'm Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. This is the second in a series of videos about how to cope with a narcissist or a psychopath in an intimate relationship. Be sure to watch the previous video. Today, we will discuss what I call the conflict posture. Contrary to its name, the conflictive posture is actually about avoiding conflict by minimizing contact and by insisting on your boundaries. It is about refusal to accept abusive behavior by demanding from the abuser reasonably predictable and rational actions and reactions. It is about respect for you and for your predilections, emotions, needs, wishes, and priorities. A healthy relationship requires justice, proportionality. You should reject or ignore unjust and capricious behavior. Conflicts are inevitable, even in the most loving and mature bonds, but the rules of engagement are different. In a, in a Leone, in a relationship which involves abusive conduct, there, in such a sick relationship, you must react in kind. You must, you must let your abuser have a taste of some of his own medicine. Abusers are predators. They are attuned to the subtlest emotional cues of their prey. You never show your abuser that you're afraid or that you are less than resolute. The willingness to negotiate is perceived by the abuser as a weakness. Violent offenders and bullies are insatiable. Do not succumb to blackmail or to emotional extortion. Once you start compromising, you won't see the end of it. The abuser creates a shared "cisse" (French: "fais") with his victim. It is a narrative, it's a confabulation, a story, an overwhelming feeling of "the two of us against the whole hostile world out there." Well, don't buy into it. Feel free to threaten him with legal measures. Feel free to disengage if things get rough, or to involve law enforcement officials, judges, friends, neighbors, and colleagues. The abused feel ashamed. They feel somehow responsible, guilty, and blameworthy for their own maltreatment. The abuser is adept at instilling these erroneous notions in his victims. He passes the buck. He makes them feel responsible for whatever has happened. He says openly, "Look what you made me do." So above all, do not keep your abuse a secret. Secrecy is the abuser's weapon. So you should share your story with friends, colleagues, neighbors, social workers, judges, the police, the media, the courts, your minister, anyone who would listen. Don't make excuses for him. Don't try to understand him. Do not empathize with him, for he surely does not empathize with you. He has no mercy on you. You, in return, do not bother to have misplaced pity on him. Never give him a second chance. React with your full arsenal to the first transgression. Teach him a lesson he is unlikely to forget. Make him go elsewhere for his sadistic pursuits or to offload his frustrations. The abuser sometimes uses third parties, his family, his peers, in order to torture and torment and taunt you. Well, often the abuser's proxies, his long arms, are unaware of their role. You should expose him to them. You should inform them, demonstrate to them how they are being abused, misused, and plain used by your abuser. Trap your abuser. Treat him as he treats you. Involve other people. Bring it into the open. There is nothing like sunshine to disinfect abuse. There are a few techniques which work wonders with abusers. Some psychologists recommend to treat repeat offenders as one would toddlers. The abuser is indeed a kind of immature brat. He's dangerous. He is endowed with privileges and capabilities of an adult, but he is still an immature brat with temper tantrums. Sometimes ignoring these temper tantrums is a wise policy, but not always, and actually not very often, and actually definitely not as a role. The next video, we will discuss specific techniques and strategies for dealing with narcissists and psychopaths.

I'm Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. This is the third video in a series about coping strategies and techniques with narcissists and psychopaths in intimate relationships. Be sure to watch the rest of the series. Today, we will out techniques of coping with narcissistic and psychopathic abuses. Not all these techniques apply to all abusers. Listen to the other, watch the other videos in this series to decide which technique to adopt in which situation. Right now, we're just going to map the territory. The first technique is to mirror the abuser's behavior. Mirror his actions. Repeat his words. If, for instance, he is having a rage attack, rage back. If he threatens, threaten back credibly. Try to use the same language, the same content. If he leaves the house, leave the house as well. Disappear on him. If he is suspicious, act suspicious and jealous. Be critical, denigrating, humiliating. Go down to his level. The other technique is to frighten him. Identify the vulnerabilities and susceptibilities of the narcissistic and psychopathic abuser and strike repeated, escalating blows at them. If a narcissist has a secret or something he wishes to conceal, use your knowledge to threaten him. Of course, do so legally and only after you have consulted an attorney. Drop cryptic hints that there are mysterious witnesses to the events and recently revealed evidence. Do it cleverly. Do it non-committally, gradually, in an escalating manner, and of course, again, in a legal way. Let him, let his imagination do the rest. You don't have to do much except utter a vague reference, make an ominous allusion, delineate a possible turn of events. Needless to add that all these activities have to be pursued legally, preferably through the good services of law offices and in broad daylight. If done the wrong way, they might constitute extortion or blackmail, harassment, and a host of other criminal offenses. They can also backfire and provoke the narcissistic and psychopathic abuser into violence and aggression. I repeat, not all coping techniques are applicable to all situations and to all abusers. Listen and watch the other videos in this series to make up your mind which technique applies when and to whom.

The next technique is to lure the abuser. Offer the abuser continued narcissistic supply. You can make a narcissist do anything by offering, withholding, or threatening to withhold narcissistic supply, adulation, admiration, attention, sex, or subservience, or even the appearance of being fearful. Play on his fears of abandonment is the next technique. If nothing else works, explicitly threaten to abandon your abuser. You can condition the threat. You can say, "If you don't do something, or if you do do something, I will desert you." The narcissist perceives the following sentences as threats of abandonment, even if they are not meant such. He perceives every confrontation, every fundamental disagreement, or protracted criticism as a sign of abandonment. He perceives abandonment when he is completely ignored, or when you insist on respect for your boundaries, needs, emotions, choices, and preferences. When you retaliate, for instance, when you shout back at him, all these in the narcissist's mind equate abandonment.

Finally, this is the technique that I recommend the most, and always: refuse use all contact. Be sure to maintain as much contact with your abuser as the courts, counselors, mediators, guardians, or law enforcement officials mandate, but no more. Do not contravene the decisions of the system. Work from inside the system to change judgments, evaluations, or rulings, but never rebel against the system, the courts, the police. Never ignore them. You will only turn the system against you and against your interests, and you will be labeled the abuser instead of the victim. But with the exception of this minimum mandated by the courts, decline any and all gratuitous contact with a narcissist or psychopath. Do not respond to your abuser's pleading, to romantic, nostalgic, flattering, or threatening email messages. Return all the gifts that he sends you. Refuse entry to your premises. Do not even respond to the intercom. Do not talk to him on the phone. Hang up the minute you hear his voice, while making clear to him in a single polite but firm sentence that you are determined not to talk to him ever again. Do not answer his letters. Do not visit him on special occasions or in emergencies. When he's

Sick. Do not respond to questions, requests, or pleas forwarded to you through, or via, or by third parties. Disconnect from third parties whom you know are spying on you at your abuser's behest. Do not discuss with your abuser your children. Do not gossip about your abuser. Do not ask him for anything, even if you are in dire need and dire straits.

When you are forced to meet your abuser, do not discuss your personal affairs or raise them. Do not discuss his personal affairs or raise them as well. Relegate any inevitable contact with him, when and where possible, to professionals, to your lawyer, to your accountant, to the police, to judges, or to court officials.

But is there anything you can do to avoid abuse and narcissists to start with? Are there any warning signs, any identifying marks, rules of thumb to shield you from the harrowing, traumatic experience of an abusive relationship? We have a special video which deals with these issues. Be sure to watch it.

I'm Sam Vaknin, I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. No one should feel responsible for the narcissist's predicament. To him, others hardly exist. He is so enmeshed in himself and in the resulting misery of this self-preoccupation that he notices no one else. Other people are subjects on which he projects his rage. His wrath is repressed and suppressed in mutating aggression and, finally, his ill-disguised violence.

How should the narcissist's closest, nearest, and dearest cope with his eccentric valbories? The short answer is by abandoning him, or at least by threatening to abandon him. The threat to abandon the narcissist need not be explicit or conditional. For instance, "If you don't do something, or if you do it, I will ditch you." It is sufficient to confront the narcissist, to completely ignore the narcissist, to insist on respect for one's boundaries and wishes, or to shout back at him.

The narcissist takes these signs of personal autonomy to be a harbinger of impending separation, and he reacts with anxiety. The narcissist is tamed by the very same weapons that he uses to subjugate others. The spectre of being abandoned looms large over everything else in the narcissist's mind. Every discordant note presages solitude.

The narcissist is a person who is irreparably traumatized by the behavior of the most important people in his life: his parents, role models, or even peers. By being capricious, arbitrary, and sadistically judgmental, these people molded the narcissist into an adult who fervently and obsessively tries to recreate the trauma in order, this time around, to resolve it. We call this a repetition complex. Thus, on the one hand, the narcissist feels that his freedom depends upon reenacting these early experiences. On the other hand, the narcissist is terrified by this prospect, realizing that he is doomed to go through the same traumas over and over again.

The narcissist distances himself by using his aggression to alienate, humiliate, and, in general, to be emotionally absent. This behavior brings about the very consequence that the narcissist dreads: abandonment. But this way, at least the narcissist is able to tell himself and others that he was the one who had fostered the separation, that it was fully his choice, and that he was not surprised by it. The truth is, the truth is that, governed by his internal demons, the narcissist has no real choice. The dismal future of his relationships is pre-ordained.

The narcissist is a binary person. The carrot is also the stick in his case. If he gets too close to someone emotionally, he fears ultimate and inevitable abandonment. He thus immediately distances himself, acts cruelly, and brings about the very abandonment that he had feared in the first place. In this paradox lies the key to coping with a narcissist. If, for instance, he is having a rage attack, rage back. This will provoke in him fears of being abandoned, and the resulting calm will be so total that it might seem to you eerie. Narcissists are known for these sudden tectonic shifts in mood and in behavior.

Mirror the narcissist's actions. Repeat his words. If he threatens, threaten back. Incredibly, try to use the same language and content. If he leaves the house, leave the house as well. Disappear on him. If he is suspicious, act suspicious. Be critical, denigrating, humiliating. Go down to his level, because that's the only way to penetrate his thick defenses. Faced with his own mirror image, the narcissist always recoils.

We must not forget that the narcissist behaves the way he does in order to engender and encourage abandonment. When mirrored, the narcissist dreads imminent and impending desertion, which is the inevitable result of his actions and words. This prospect so terrifies him that it induces in him an incredible alteration of conduct. He instantly succumbs and obsequiously tries to make amends, moving from one cold, bitter, cynical, misanthropic, cruel, and sadistic pole to another. He becomes warm, loving, fuzzy, and gushy, emotional, modding, and saccharine.

The other coping strategy is, of course, to be abandoned. To give up on the narcissist, dump him, and go about reconstructing your own life. Very few people deserve the kind of investment that is an absolute prerequisite to a life with a narcissist. To cope with a narcissist is a full-time, energy and emotional, emotion-draining job, which reduces people around the narcissist to insecure, nervous wrecks. Who deserves such a sacrifice? Definitely not the narcissist. No one, to my mind, not even the most brilliant, charming, breathtaking, and suave narcissist, has the right to demand such self-sacrifice. The glamour and trickery are wherein, and underneath them, a monster lurks, which irreversibly and adversely influences the lives of those around him for the worse.

Narcissists are encouraged and notoriously difficult to change. Thus, trying to modify them, to heal them, to cure them with love, is doomed to failure. You should either accept them as they are or avoid them altogether. If one accepts a narcissist as he is, one should cater to his needs. His needs are part of what he is. Would you have ignored a physical handicap in someone? Would you have not assisted a quadriplegic? The narcissist is an emotional cripple. He needs constant adulation. He cannot help it. So, if one chooses to accept a narcissist, to live with him, to remain in an intimate relationship with him, it is a package deal, all his needs, demands, requirements included.

I'm Sam Vaknin, I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. What should you do if your husband is a narcissist and he is having an extramarital affair, cheating on you, and betraying your trust? Well, the answer is that narcissists are people who fail to maintain a stable sense of self-worth. Very often, somatic narcissists, these are narcissists who use their bodies and their sexuality to secure narcissistic supply, tend to get involved in extramarital affairs. The new conquests, sexual conquests, sustain their grandiose fantasies and their distorted and unrealistic self-image. It is therefore nigh impossible to alter this particular behavior of a somatic narcissist. Sexual interactions serve as a constant, reliable, easy-to-obtain narcissistic supply. It is the only source of such supply if the narcissist is not cerebral, in other words, if he doesn't rely on his intellect, intelligence, or professional achievements for narcissistic supply. Pure somatic narcissists deemphasize their intellectual capabilities in favor of their physical attributes, sexual prowess, and ability to conquer the opposite sex, or the same sex in case they're homosexual.

Well, one way of coping with this, coping with the situation, is that you should set up rigid, strict, and very well-defined rules of engagement. Ideally, all contacts between your spouse and his lover should be immediately and irrevocably severed. But this is usually too much to ask for. So, you should make crystal clear when she is allowed to call, whether she's allowed to write to him at all, and in which circumstances, what are the subjects she is allowed to broach in her correspondence and phone calls, when is he allowed to see her, and what other modes of interaction between them are permissible. Clear and painful sanctions must be defined in case the above rules are violated. Both rules and sanctions must be applied rigorously and mercilessly, and must be set in writing in unequivocal terms. Fairness is important, but so is rigorousness and strictness.

The problem is that the narcissist never really separates from these sources of narcissistic supply until and unless they cease to be sources. Narcissists never really say goodbye. The narcissist lover is likely to still have an emotional hold on him long after the affair is officially over. The husband must first have his day of reckoning with her. Help your narcissistic mate or husband or partner, intimate partner, by telling him what will be the price that he stands to pay if he does not obey the rules and sanctions that you have agreed upon. Tell him that you cannot live like this any longer, that if he does not get rid of this presence, of the echoes of his past, really, he will be squandering his present, he will be forfeiting you. Don't be afraid to lose him. If he prefers this woman to you, it is important for you to know it. If he prefers you to her, your nightmare is over.

If you insist on staying with a somatic narcissist, you must also be prepared to serve as a source of narcissistic supply, an alternative to the supply provided by his lovers. You must brace yourself. Serving as a source of narcissistic supply is an onerous task, a full-time job, and a very ungrateful one at that. The narcissist's thirst for adulation, admiration, worship, approval, and attention can never be quenched. It is a circadian, mind-numbing effort which heralds only additional demands and disgruntled, critical, humiliating tyrants by the narcissist. That you are afraid to confront reality is normal. You are afraid to set clear alternatives. You're afraid that he will abandon you. You're afraid that he will prefer her to you, and you may well be right. But if this is the case, and you go on living with him and deceiving yourself, it is unhealthy. You are living a deception. If you found it difficult to confront the fact that it is all over between you, that your relationship is an empty shell, that your husband or intimate partner is with another woman in the fullest sense of the word, do not hesitate to seek help from professionals and nonprofessionals alike. Friends are a great source of support and assistance, but do not let the situation fester into psychological gangrene. Amputate now while you can.

My name is Sam Vaknin, and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. Narcissists are often vindictive. They stalk, they harass, they intimidate. And basically, there are only two ways of coping with vindictive narcissists: either to frighten them or to lure them. Start with frightening them.

Narcissists live in a constant state of repressed aggression, envy, hatred, and rage. They firmly believe that everyone else is precisely like them. As a result, they are paranoid, suspicious, scared, labile, and unpredictable. Frightening the narcissist is a powerful behavior modification tool. If sufficiently deterred, the narcissist promptly disengages, gives up everything he fought for, sometimes makes amends. To act effectively, one has to identify the vulnerabilities and susceptibilities of the narcissist, the chinks in his armor, and strike repeated, escalating blows at them until the narcissist lets go and vanishes.

Example: If the narcissist has a secret, one should use this fact to threaten him. One should drop cryptic hints that there are mysterious witnesses to the events and recently revealed evidence. The narcissist has a very vivid imagination. Let his imagination do the work for you. The narcissist may have been involved in tax evasion, in malpractice, child abuse, in infidelity and adultery. There are so many possibilities which offer a rich vein of attack. If done cleverly, non-committed, gradually, and increasingly, the narcissist crumbles, disengages, detaches, and disappears. He lowers his profile thoroughly in the hope of avoiding hurt, pain, and criminal persecution. Most narcissists have been known to disown and abandon a whole pathological narcissistic space. In other words, they have been known to relocate in response to a well-focused campaign by their victims. Thus, the narcissist may leave town, change his job, abandon the field of professional interest, and avoid friends and acquaintances, only to relieve the unrelenting pressure exerted on him by his victims.

I repeat, most of the drama takes place in the paranoid mind of the narcissist. His imagination runs amok. He finds himself snarled by horrifying scenarios, pursued by the vilest certainties that form in his mind. In his fertile, fibral mind, the narcissist is his own worst persecutor or prosecutor. You don't have to do much except utter a vague reference, make an ominous allusion, delineate a possible turn of events. The narcissist will do the rest for you. He is like a small child in the dark, generating the very monsters that paralyze him with fear.

Needless to say, emphasize and repeat that all these activities have to be pursued legally, preferably through the good services of law offices and in broad daylight. Done the wrong way, they might constitute extortion or blackmail, harassment, and a host of other criminal offenses. Be very careful because you would be treading a thin line between legality and illegality.

Should you choose to frighten the narcissist, the alternative is, of course, to lure the vindictive narcissist. The other way to neutralize him is to offer him continued narcissistic supply until the war is over and had been won by you. Dazzled by the drug of narcissistic supply, the narcissist immediately becomes tamed, forgets his vindictiveness, and triumphantly takes over his new property and territory. Under the influence of narcissistic supply, the narcissist is unable to tell when he is being manipulated. He's blind, dumb, and deaf. You can make the narcissist do anything by offering, withholding, or threatening to withhold narcissistic supply. Adulation, admiration, attention, sex, or subservience are your tools, the weapons in your arsenal in coping with vindictive, dangerous stalkers and paranoids.

My name is Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. Today, we will discuss stalkers. Stalkers are not made of one cloth. Some of them are psychopaths. Other stalkers are schizoids, narcissists, paranoids, or an admixture of these unsavory mental health disorders. Stalkers harass their victims because they are lonely, or because it is fun (these are latent sadists), or because they cannot help it (they're clinging, codependent), or for myriad different other reasons. Clearly, coping techniques suited to one type of stalker may backfire or prove to be futile with another. The only denominator common to all bullying stalkers is their pent-up rage. The stalker is angry at his or her targets and hates them. He perceives his victims as unnecessarily and childishly frustrating. The aim of stalking is to educate the victim and to punish her. Hence, a catch-22 of coping with stalkers.

The standard and good advice is to avoid all contact with your stalker, to ignore him, even as you take precautions. But being evaded only inflames the stalker's wrath and enhances his frustration. The more the stalker feels sidelined, ignored, and stonewalled, the more persistent he becomes, the more intrusive, and the more aggressive. So, what to do? It is essential, therefore, to first identify the type of abuser you're faced with.

Start with the erotomaniac. This kind of stalker believes that he's in love with you and that, regardless of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the feeling is reciprocated. In other words, he believes that you are in love with him. He interprets everything you do or refrain from doing as coded messages confessing your eternal devotion to him and to your relationship. Erotomaniacs are lonely, socially inept people. They may also be people with whom you have been involved romantically: your former spouse, a former boyfriend, or even a one-night stand. They could also be colleagues or co-workers.

The best coping strategy within erotomania is to ignore him. Do not communicate with him or even acknowledge his existence. The erotomaniac clutches at straws and often suffers from ideas of reference. He tends to blow out of proportion every comment or gesture of his loved one. So, avoid contact. Do not talk to him. Return his gifts unopened. Refuse to discuss with him anything or discuss him with others. Delete his correspondence.

Then there is the narcissistic stalker. He feels entitled to your time, attention, admiration, and resources. He interprets every rejection as an act of aggression, which leads to a narcissistic injury. He reacts with sustained rage and vindictiveness. He can turn violent because he feels omnipotent and immune to the consequences of his actions. Your best coping strategy with a narcissistic stalker is to make clear that you want no further contact with him and that this decision is not personal. Be firm. Do not hesitate to inform him that you hold him responsible for his stalking, bullying, and harassment, and that you will take all necessary steps to protect yourself. Narcissists, by the way, are cowards and are easily intimidated. Luckily, they never get emotionally attached to their prey, and so they can move on with relative ease.

Then there is the paranoid stalker. This is by far the most dangerous of the lot. He lives in an inaccessible world of his own making. He cannot be reasoned with. He cannot be cajoled. He thrives on threats, anxiety, and fear. He distorts every communication to feed his persecutory delusion and enhance his anxiety. Paranoid stalkers are unpredictable, and there is no typical scenario. But experience shows that you can minimize the danger to yourself and to your household by taking some basic steps.

If at all possible, put as much physical distance as you can between yourself and the paranoid stalker. Change address, phone number, email accounts, cell phone number. Enlist the kids in a new, different school. Find a new job. Get a new credit card. Open a new bank account. Move states if you have to. Do not inform your paranoid ex about your whereabouts and about your new life. You may have to make painful, painful sacrifices, such as minimizing contact even with your family and best friends. And even with all these precautions, your abusive ex is likely to find you, furious that you have fled and evaded him, raging at your newfound existence, suspicious and resentful of your freedom and personal autonomy. Violence is more than likely to ensue unless deterred.

Paranoid former spouses tend to be harmful, even in some cases lethal. So be prepared. Alert your local law enforcement officers. Check out your neighborhood domestic violence shelter. Consider owning a gun for self-defense, or at the very least, a stun gun or pepper spray. Carry these with you at all times. Keep them close by and accessible, even when you're asleep or in your bathroom.

Your erotomaniac stalker can last many years. Do not let down your guard, even if you haven't heard from him for a while. Stalkers leave traces. They tend, for instance, to scout the territory before they make their move. A typical stalker invades his or her victim's privacy a few times long before the crucial and injurious encounter. So, is your computer being tampered with? Is someone downloading your email? Has anyone been in your house while you were away? Any signs of breaking and entry? Missing things? A typical disorder, or even too much order? Is your post being delivered erratically? Some of the envelopes having been opened and then resealed? Mysterious phone calls abruptly disconnected when you pick up? Your stalker may scout your home, sitting in a vehicle opposite your doorstep.

In all these, if all these signs, if some of these signs exist, your stalker must have dropped by and is monitoring you. Notice any unusual pattern, any strange event, any weird occurrence? Someone is driving by your house morning and evening? A new gardener or maintenance man came by in your absence? Someone is making inquiries about you and your family? Maybe it's time to move on.

Teach your children to avoid your paranoid ex and to report to you immediately any contact made with them. Abusive bullies strike where it hurts most: one's children. Explain to your children the danger without being unduly alarming. Make a distinction between others whom they can trust and your abusive former spouse or ex, whom they should avoid. Ignore your gut reactions and impulses because they are often misleading. Sometimes the stress is so onerous and so infuriating that you feel like striking back at the stalker. So, so don't do it. Don't play his game. He is better at it than you are and is likely to defeat you. Instead, unleash the full force of the law whenever you get the chance to do so. Restraining orders, peace bonds, spells in jail, and frequent visits from the police tend to check the abuser's violent and intrusive conduct.

The other behavioral extreme is equally futile and counterproductive. Do not try to buy peace by appeasing your abuser. Submissiveness and attempts to reason with him only whet the stalker's appetite. He regards both as contemptible weaknesses, vulnerabilities that he can exploit. You cannot communicate with a paranoid because he is likely to distort everything that you say to support his persecutory delusions. He has a sense of entitlement. He has grandiose fantasies. You cannot appeal to his emotions or reason. He has none. He at least no positive emotions. Remember, your abusive and paranoid former partner blames it all on you. As far as he's concerned, you recklessly and unscrupulously wrecked a wonderful thing that you both had. He is vengeful, seething, and prone to bouts of uncontrollable and extreme aggression. Don't listen to those who tell you to take it easy. Hundreds of thousands of women paid with their lives for heeding this idiotic advice. Do not take it easy. Do not calm down. Do be hypervigilant. Your paranoid stalker is inordinately dangerous and more likely than not, he is with you for a long time to come.

Finally, there is the antisocial or psychopathic stalker. Though ruthless and typically violent, the psychopath is a calculating machine, how to maximize his gratification and personal profit. Psychopaths lack empathy and may even be sadistic, but understand well and instantly the language of carrots and sticks. So your best coping strategy is to convince your psychopath that messing with your life or with your nearest is going to cost him dearly. Do not threaten him. Simply be unequivocal about your desire to be left in peace and your intentions to involve the law should he stalk, harass, or threaten you. Give him a choice between being left alone and becoming the target of multiple arrests, restraining orders, and worse. Take extreme precautions at all times and meet him only in public places.

My name is Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. Like borderlines, narcissists have something called abandonment anxiety. They are terrified by the thought of being abandoned. They are like children who are afraid that their parents, when they are out of the room, will never come back again. They lack object constancy. In other words, narcissists believe that when people are out of sight, they are also out of mind. They do not believe in permanence, in reliable long-term relationships, in bonding, in attachment, and they don't believe in these things because they've never experienced them either as children or as adults.

Okay, so then narcissists have abandonment anxiety. Then why do they abuse their nearest and dearest, their so-called loved ones? After all, if you abuse somebody, the chances of being abandoned by that person are much higher. If you abuse your wife, she's likely to walk away. If you maltreat your girlfriend, she's likely to find another boyfriend. Why abuse? Abuse, ostensibly and intuitively, should increase the chances of abandonment and therefore increase the narcissist's abandonment anxiety. Yet, all narcissists, without a single exception, abuse. Granted, they abuse in different ways. Some of them abuse verbally. Some of them use a brutal sense of humor or brutal honesty. There are a million ways to abuse and multifarious forms of aggression. But whatever the narcissist and whoever the narcissist, narcissists always abuse, and especially those they are supposed to be intimate with.

Well, here's a counterintuitive paradox: abuse serves to decrease the narcissist's abandonment anxiety. It reduces the anxiety, it humiliates it, it alleviates it. How come? Well, first of all, when you abuse someone, when you devalue someone, you feel superior to them. They, at the receiving end, the recipients of abuse, are inferior to you, the abuser. Abusers are in a position of authority. They look down on you. So, devaluation leads to a sense of superiority, and superiority restores the narcissist's sense of grandiosity, restores the grandiose fantasy, the narrative that underlies the narcissist's inflated sense of self. But why would the narcissist need to restore his grandiosity? Where did it go? Why? Who ruined it? The abandonment anxiety. The narcissist has abandonment anxiety, and superior beings, perfect beings, Godlike beings should not feel anxiety. The very fact that the narcissist feels anxiety undermines his sense of grandiosity and his sense of perfection and superiority and Godlike qualities. So, it goes like this: the narcissist feels abandonment anxiety. This challenges his sense of perfection and superiority. He then devalues his spouse or girlfriend or intimate partner or significant other by abusing and devaluing her. He feels again superior. By feeling superior, he restores his grandiosity, and by restoring his grandiosity, he eliminates or at least reduces his anxiety. Point number one.

But abuse has other functions. For example, preemption. The narcissist assumes that he will always be abandoned. Loss is guaranteed. Things will go badly. Relationships will break up and terminate. The narcissist assumes that he will be abandoned, hence his abandonment anxiety. And so, if he is anyhow going to be abandoned, he might as well control the process. He might as well bring about his own abandonment. He must as he might as well precipitate the abandonment, cause it, lead to it, generate it, foster it. If he does, then he is in control. If he were to be abandoned because of his own doing, if the abandonment was of his own making, then he had, in his eyes, had initiated his abandonment. He is in control. He is not abandoned; he is simply fulfilling a goal or a target. So, preemption, restoring a sense of control over circumstances and over other people, inducing abandonment is a way of lying to yourself and saying, "Well, actually, I have not been abandoned. I sought it. I wanted it." This is called cognitive dissonance.

The third function of abusing others is uncovering the truth. The narcissist assumes that people are faking it, that they are not as good as their word, that there are hidden agendas at play, that his wife or his girlfriend or his intimate partner or his significant other are just pretending to love him, claiming to be loyal, claiming to be supportive, but when push comes to shove, their true face will be revealed, the mask will fall, and they will be uncovered as who they are: disloyal, cheating, unfaithful, unreliable, unpredictable. So, how do you prove this? How do you prove this working hypothesis? By abusing people. When the narcissist abuses his significant other, he is testing her. He pushes her to the corner, and he wants to see how will she react. Will she, for example, abandon him? Will she cheat on him with another man? Will she walk away? Will she attack? Will she counterattack? He ferrets out information about her. Abuse is a kind of probing. It's a kind of test or testing process. It's as though he, the narcissist, had put his significant other in a lab, and then he is conducting all kinds of tests, laboratory tests. Abuse is a controlled experiment at revealing the truth about your intimate partner. Is she as steadfast as she claims? Is she as loyal? Will she still be there even if I'm a jerk? Even if I'm abusing her, maltreating her, humiliating her, insulting her privately and in public? How far can I go? To what extent can I annihilate her? To what extent can I extinguish her as an autonomous entity, and still she would be around? So, it's a test.

And finally, of course, abuse is a form of behavior modification. Abuse is a signal. It's a communication mode. By abusing someone, you're telling them that you're unhappy with their behavior, and you are signaling to them, sometimes violently and always aggressively, that they should alter their behavior if they want to not be abused. The thing is that abuse works. Abuse actually works most of the time. Most spouses, intimate partners, and significant others would alter and modify their behavior in order to minimize abuse. So, abuse is an efficacious, efficient method for modifying your partner's behavior because it works. It is so commonplace among narcissists and psychopaths.

Okay, so how do you deal with it? What are the coping styles which have proven to be efficient with protracted and limited abuse? Abuse is a feature of the relationship, is a fixture, is an attribute of the relationship. Well, there are five essentially core tenets. The first one is submissiveness. By being submissive, by accepting and adhering to every rule, every capricious move, every arbitrary decision, every criticism, by avoiding disagreement, by being conflict-averse, you can minimize or reduce, at least, the incidence, the frequency, and the prevalence of abuse in the relationship. Submissiveness.

The second coping style is exactly the opposite. It's conflictive. It is the counterdependent coping style. It is a refusal to accept the abuse, refusal to accept authority, challenging the abuser, arguing, disagreeing, criticizing, provoking fights, raising him. That also works to some extent in reducing the abuse. Ultimately, the abuser would institute a policy of no contact and would go away, would become absent either physically or emotionally and definitely conversationally. If the partner, the intimate partner, causes the abuser pain every time he abuses, makes the abuser pay a price for his misconduct, the abuser, very much like a dog in Pavlov's experiments, would learn not to abuse. But that is, of course, a conflictive sense, which means that nothing much is left of the relationship except constant conflict, constant warfare, constant fighting.

And then we have mirroring. Mirroring is a third coping style. Mirroring doesn't mean that you do exactly what the abuser does. He shouts, you shout. He says a word, you repeat it. And so that's not mirroring. Mirroring simply means that you hurl back, you throw back at the abuser his verbiage, his sentences, the words he chooses, and so on and so forth. You throw them back at him, rearranged in a way to provoke a certain dynamic. So, for example, if the abuser says, "Um, I would like to go and do something," and you don't want to go and do something, if you say, "No, I don't want to go up," you know, "If you want to go by yourself or something," you're likely to be abused, criticized, you know, "You never do anything with me. You are you no longer interested in me? You don't want to be with me? I knew I could not trust you. This relationship is going to hell. You are ruining it for both of us," etc., etc., etc. The well-known refrain.

One possibility is mirroring, reflecting these sentences back at the abuser, but in a way which would create in the abuser a dynamic, for example, would create in him abandonment anxiety. So, by saying, "Well, you may well be right. You know, the relationship is really going to hell, and we seem to disagree on many, many things, and and so on," that's precisely why I want to go out. Are you actually repeating this verbiage, but by repeating it in a certain order, you're provoking abandonment anxiety? As you provoke in the abuser negative emotions such as anxiety or fear or depression and so on and so forth, gradually the abuse or the incidence of abuse will decline. Mirroring is a very complex coping style because you need to fully understand the abuser's psychology, and you need to know how to rearrange his abuse and then reflect the abuse to him in highly precise ways. It's a precision art. If you do that, if you're adept at mirroring, you can achieve surprising results, including an up to the point of the abuse disappearing completely.

And then there is collusion. Collusion is actually to amplify the abuse up to the point of caricature. So, if the abuser says, "You know, you're so stupid. You don't think about what you're saying. You're always wrong," and so on and so forth, in a collusive or collusion coping style, you would say, "You know what? You're right. I'm really very, very stupid. You are so intelligent. You're so decisive. You're so strong. You're always so right," etc. You would exaggerate, you overemphasize his words to the point of rendering them humorous and caricaturesque, to the point of rendering the abuser a cartoon figure, and this would usually unsettle the abuser, drive him back. He would be able then to look to see himself. You would be reflecting him, and he would be able to see himself, and this usually would have positive feedback on his behavior, that you would be creating a feedback loop which would reduce his abusive behaviors.

The last coping style, which is not exactly one of my favorites and should be advised against, except perhaps as the last resort, is displacement. Directing the negative energy of abuse from yourself at someone else. So, if the abuser begins to attack you, criticize you, disagree with you vehemently and aggressively, humiliate you, chastise you, etc., etc., you can then direct this negative energy, this rage, this, you know, discomfort, you can direct all these negative emotions at someone else that you can both denigrate and demean and criticize and so on, someone you agree on another score or another victim. So, but this is both an immoral choice and could backfire in the sense that you would gradually become an extension of the abuser and an abuser yourself. So, displacement is a kind of shared psychosis, a situation where you and the abuser form a diet, form a kind of account of abusing other people. It's not recommended, of course, but it's also a coping style I had to mention, and it does happen more frequently than you know, when an abused spouse teams up with her abuser to abuse a third party, abuse by proxy.