Doormat Covert Narcissist Turns Primary Psychopath

Many of you send me questions and ask, "Can the covert narcissist become a classic narcissist? Can the classic narcissist become a covert narcissist? In the somatic become a cerebral, etcetera?" Seizure? Well, let me tell you something, children. I'm old enough to have dined with the dinosaurs, and I can tell you one thing I've learned in my long and fruitful life: the only constant thing is change. So, yes, every mental construct, every mental health diagnosis within the Cluster B personality disorders, can and does metamorphose into other personality disorders within the Cluster B. Which is precisely why I've been advocating since 1997 to unify all these direct, separate diagnoses into a single diagnosis of Personality Disorder Cluster B, with different emphases. But that's a subject for another video.

Today, what I would like to discuss is what happens to the covert narcissist when he or she, more frequently he, when the covert narcissist transforms. What does the covert narcissist change into when subjected to stress, to humiliation, to rejection, to abandonment, to mortification? We know that borderline women, women diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, are psychopaths. Ask any spouse of a borderline woman, and he will confirm this. Borderline women, when they are stressed, when they're frustrated, when they're humiliated, rejected, dependent, or perceive abandonment, or anticipate abandonment, or whatever, they tend to react like psychopaths do. But they are secondary psychopaths. They are psychopaths with emotions and with empathy, but they're still psychopaths. They react in antisocial ways. They become defiant. They lose impulse control. They don't think about the consequences of their actions. They don't have long-term thinking, etcetera. I've dedicated a whole video to this. It's a video about the borderline woman is a secondary psychopath. I recommend that you watch it.

The covert narcissist, when under similar adversary, problematic circumstances, tends to become a primary psychopath. In more rare cases, in fewer cases, the covert narcissist becomes a classic narcissist. That's more rare, and it's more rare because the covert narcissist has difficulty to solicit and elicit narcissistic supply from the environment. The covert narcissist, you remember, is shy, he is fragile, he is vulnerable, he is avoidant, he is anxious. And so the covert narcissist doesn't have the necessary tools to extract narcissistic supply from other people, either by coercing them, charming them, cajoling them. But I mean, he doesn't know what to do this. So what happens to the covert narcissist in most cases is that he becomes a primary psychopath. And this is the topic of today's, today's conversation, today's video.

And so we started by saying that there is no type constancy. For example, the overt or the classic narcissist can switch from somatic to cerebral, from cerebral to somatic, from inverted to classic, from classic to inverted, etcetera, etcetera. Similarly, the patient with Borderline Personality Disorder can suddenly become a secondary psychopath. Why is that? It's because these people don't have an identity. They have something called identity disturbance, identity diffusion. Instead of a core, a very strong, identifiable core with strict, demarcated boundaries, these people have a cloud, a cloud or a swarm, like a swarm of bees or locusts, or a hive mind. They are all over the place, and they are utterly inconsistent, and they are all-inclusive, and they assimilate and assemble influences constantly. And these influences affect who they are, not only what they remember, not only their moods, mood lability, not only their emotions, emotional dysregulation, but who they are, their identity. Crucially, dependent, crucially depends on input from the environment, on their milieu, on what people tell them, on how they are judged, on criticism or disagreement, on applause or approval, or modulation of admiration, you name it. Feedback, input from the environment, is crucial for the regulation of their internal, internal environment. Actually, they confuse their internal environment with external. Their internal objects are external, the external objects are internal. And this is why they have severe difficulties in their relationships. And this, I've dealt with this in other videos.

But today, we are going to deal with the covert narcissist. The covert narcissist has many similarities to borderline personality, but it has a few outstanding features, a few special features. Again, I described these features in a series of videos and in an interview I gave about covert narcissism, and you can find all of them on my YouTube channel. The foundational work in covert narcissism is Cooper and M. G. in 1989, and they were the first to describe phenomena, phenomena such as pseudo humility. The covert narcissist pretends to be modest and humble, but it's a cover for grandiosity. They describe shape-shifting. So they go to these videos and have a look at what covert narcissism. A word of warning: most of the material in covert narcissism online is absolute, sheer, unmitigated nonsense for two reasons. It does not rely on scholarly studies and research, and the second reason is the diagnosis of covert narcissism is extremely new. We don't have a sufficient body of research to substantiate or support any of its features, psychodynamic features, clinical features, and so on. So we are groping in the dark at this stage. Anyone who pretends to tell you what is exactly a covert narcissist is basing, is basing himself, himself on anecdotes, misdiagnosis, or sheer nonsense which he took out of his sleeve. Be careful, be careful. As I would say from my experience, anywhere between 90, that's 90, and 95% of all the so-called information out there, including information given to you by people whose names are preceded by "Dr.", is absolute trash. So whatever you hear, try, try to do your own research. Try to find scholarly articles in academic journals, and so on. Go to reliable websites, and so on, because YouTube is a cesspool of nonsense and worse.

Let's go back to the... and this is a warning I've been giving in each and every video because I am appalled by what I learn by watching online sometimes. Okay, let's go back to the covert narcissist. So the covert narcissist is forced, very often, to be a people-pleaser. There is a proposed subtype of borderline known as shy borderline or honorable borderline. Shyness is a common phrase. It is not clinically substantiated. Many attempts have been made to find such a subtype, we failed. It's precisely the reason why it's not mentioned in any textbook, and it's not mentioned in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. You can find it online, and usually in the work of one or two highly specific therapies. So I'm sure it's very profitable, but unfortunately, it has no, no legs to stand on. In other words, when I'm trying to tell you there's no such thing as a shy borderline, it's completely and unmitigated nonsense. There are borderlines who internalize their aggressive impulses and their ego-discrepant and ego-dystonic emotions, such as guilt and shame. But all borderlines do it from time to time. Borderlines internalize, they switch between internalizing and externalizing. Psychopaths only externalize. They are angry, you'll be the first to know. They are vengeful, you will pay the price. They externalize everything, and you bear the brunt of their dissatisfaction, their unhappiness, their rage, and so on. Borderlines are not like that. Borderlines go through two phases. In the first phase, they actually internalize. They feel, they feel ashamed, they feel guilty, they feel dysphoric, in other words, sad or depressed. They feel anxious, and they accumulate, and they accumulate, and they don't show anything, don't express themselves, don't let it out. And then they erupt. They erupt like a volcano. They become secondary psychopaths. And this is the typical pattern of borderline: the accumulation phase followed by the eruption phase. Very geological. And I think this is the source of the confusion when we come to shy borderlines. The shy borderlines have longer than usual accumulation phases. But all borderlines, all borderlines without a single exception, act out. They can act out by cheating on a spouse, they can act out by breaking objects, they can act out by engaging in extreme forms of silent treatment or catatonic behavior. They can sit on a chair and not move for two weeks. They can act out by not taking a shower for a month, by not leaving, by not getting out of bed for two, for two days. But I mean, there are a million ways to act out. But all borderlines act out. All borderlines externalize their aggressive impulses. This is very crucial to understand.

It's similar with the covert narcissist. The covert narcissist goes through an accumulation phase. The humiliations, the because covert narcissists are hypervigilant, they know that they are deficient, they know that they are lacking, they know that they don't have what it takes to obtain narcissistic supply. In a way, you could say that the covert narcissist is in a perpetual state of collapse. They are perpetual collapse narcissists. And exactly like collapse narcissists, they react with aggression. But it takes a long time, takes a lot longer than usual for the covert narcissist to react with aggression. And then when it does react with aggression, it's highly channeled and highly structured and very dissimilar, not the same, like the aggression of the classic narcissist. The aggression of the classic narcissist is infantile. It's like the temper tantrum of a spoiled brat, an idiot. The aggression of the covert narcissist is very similar to the psychopath. And we come to it, we've come to it in a minute. This is the topic of this video. But the covert narcissist can go for years, for years, without showing anything. Everything underground, everything surreptitious, everything hidden, concealed. That's why it is called covert. Everything is covert. All the bad emotions, bad blood, the animosity, the hostility, the envy, the feelings of inferiority, festering, seething, and then finally erupting. Throughout the life of the covert narcissist, he experiences losses. Men, people have been taking away from the covert narcissist, even what's rightfully his. All his life, the covert narcissist gets used because he is not assertive, because he has no functional boundaries, exactly like the classic narcissist. And because he doesn't know to extract supply to compensate for the wounds and for the errors and slings of fortune, because he doesn't have this arsenal, arsenal of grandiosity and compensatory defenses, he experiences life as a constant state of loss. And everyone takes away from him everything. People take away from him his time, his ideas, his money, his reputation, his women, his contacts, you name it. Even if they don't, that's how he experiences relationships with people. Because he is hypervigilant and a bit paranoid, a bit paranoid, and because he is pseudo, pseudo humble, not really humble, he experiences every interaction as a bruising, a bruising competition in which he is bound to lose. He's bound to lose because he cannot stand up for himself. He feels that he is not, if he's a man, and in any case, he feels that everyone is trampling over him, everyone is stepping on him, everyone is humiliating, burying him in the mud. And it's a horrible feeling. And it's a feeling that provokes even in healthy people, would provoke negative affectivity, negative emotionality, extreme aggression.

In 1939, there was psychologist Donald, he suggested that frustration is automatically converted to aggression and almost fully converted to aggression. So such concentrated frustration breeds aggression. Aggression is a fixture, a feature of the person. In other words, the covert, the covert narcissist is an aggressive personality. But this aggression, even this aggression, is counterproductive because he has to suppress it. He cannot show it. He cannot release it. He doesn't allow himself, for example, to be really angry. Instead of being really angry, instead of communicating and verbalizing his rage, his grudges, his complaints, his grievances, the covert narcissist would prefer to be passive-aggressive. He would undermine, he would procrastinate, he would sabotage, he would make sure things don't happen, he would dis-intimate, it would destroy intimacy in a variety of mechanisms and ways and methodologies. So, and it's all there, this swamp, this swamp of black, evil, negative, you know, it's all bad. And there is a limit to what any human being can tolerate. And covert narcissists are no different. Many human beings, and so there's a limit to what they can tolerate. And they go through life and they adopt a posture of a people-pleaser. They feign, first of all, they feign indifference. They pretend to be indifferent to what's being done to them. Like, if I don't show you that it hurts me, if I have a devil-may-care attitude, if I have a, you know, go ahead, do what you want, see if I care, then I'm impregnable, then I'm untouchable, then you cannot hurt me, then you deliver the satisfaction to see me hurt, you don't have the satisfaction to see the pain in my eyes. I'm gonna pretend that you're, who cares, that what you want. So indifference is a major, apathy, indifference is a major defense of the covert narcissist. And in very extreme cases, they become numb and expressionless, literally expressionless. They have like a blunt face. And because they poker face, poker face, not to show their hand, you know, it's covered poker. Anyway.

And the second thing they do, they collude in their own abuse. They collude in the plunder, they collude in the pillage, they collude in the invasion of their territory, in the violation of their own boundaries. They collude in their own maltreatment and mistreatment and humiliation. Cuz they internally, they perceive that if they collude with this, then they are in control. If they made it happen, then they made it happen. It's thick. They started the process, they controlled it. So they tell themselves stories. The covert narcissist can tell himself, "I allowed people to abuse me because I'm self-destructive. I'm so destructive, I'm self-defeating. I actually used them. I used these people as pawns. They, I, I took them in. If they were my instruments, they were my tools for self-destruction." So they, they create this false, fake narrative. They reframe situations which are essentially abusive situations, which involve loss and pain and hurt, devastating hurt. They reframe it as, "I made it happen." Those of you who watched the previous videos about mortification, this is the classic mechanism where an external mortification, something that happens to the narcissist from the outside and challenges his personality and his grandiosity and the cohesion and coherence of his ability to function. So when this happens, the narcissist sunglasses, replaces the story, reframes the story. Instead of saying, "Someone hurt me from the outside," they say, "I made this person hurt me." That when they replace external mortification with internal mortification, they restore the locus of control. If someone did something to you from outside, then you're not in control. There is an external locus of control. But if you say, "I made them do it, I provoked them, I, I took merely that they, my abuse them, so they abused me back. You know, I rejected them, so they rejected me. I humiliated and humiliated me. I took something from them, their pride, their well-being, their happiness." So they took something from me. If you reframe the story this way, you made things happen. You are godlike. It's a grandiose defense. So covert narcissists have this a lot. And so they try, they try somehow to control the situation. And one way to do that is to be totally self-destructive, self-defeating, passive-aggressive, sabotaging, undermining. Even perhaps the word evil fits here somehow, but even in the sense that disembarks without everything. That's one strategy.

But there is another strategy which is much more common. By the way, covert narcissists try to be people-pleasers. They try to have no boundaries, no dignity, no self-respect, or even to pretend to be crazy, no sanity. They're like the perennial clowns or the Kings, the King's Joker. You know, in this way, what they're saying is, "Look, I'm childlike, I'm childlike, I'm defenseless. Don't hurt me. I will give you anything. I will do anything. You can take from me anything. What do you want? You want my wife? Take my wife. Want my money? Take my money. That's it. Do what you want, but I'm defenseless. So don't hurt me beyond what you absolutely have to." And so they say to themselves, "Whatever people can do to me and to mine, people around me, but my loved ones, my nearest, my dears, is limited by their pity, by their compassion. Maybe by their sense that there is nothing more to take. Maybe people will stop hurting me when the pain threshold becomes too high." So some covert narcissists become people-pleasers and rely on the kindness of strangers, to borrow a term from "A Streetcar Named Desire," the famous theater play. Moving. So they rely on the kindness of strangers, they rely on the pity, compassion of strangers and others. As I said, they become passive-aggressive. And they do this so that the cost of abusing them will skyrocket and escalate. And at some point, the abuser would say, "Okay, enough is enough. It's not working." But of course, this makes everyone around the covert narcissist feel unsafe, unprotected, especially his women, especially his wife, his spouse, his girlfriend, but not only his colleagues, his children. They feel unsafe, to feel unprotected because it's not a lack of assertiveness. It's willingly, willingly foregoing boundaries, dignity, self-respect, sanity, predictability, safety. They feel insecure. And of course, they feel disillusioned. Everyone around the covert narcissist feels disillusioned.

So ironically, even the covert narcissist people-pleasing is not the normal type of people-pleasing. Not the same type of people-pleasing. And in the typical people-pleasing setup, the people-pleaser pleases people sacrificially. She or he, she usually says, "Okay, my interests are less important than your interests. My well-being is less important than your well-being. I will sacrifice. I'm a sacrifice my happiness, sacrifice my future, sacrifice my well-being for your sake." It's not healthy, but it's far more sane and grounded in the core than the covert narcissist version. The covert narcissist version is not to say, "I will sacrifice something for you." The covert narcissist version is to say, "If you want, if you want to take something from me, whatever it is, even if you're taking from me my pride, my dignity, I will vanish. I will disappear." And by disappearing, I will undermine you because then there will be no one to take anything from. And indeed, the main strategy of the covert narcissist is the vanishing act. Suddenly, he or she is nowhere to be seen, nor to be seen. Absenting themselves, not only physically, actually rarely physically, but absenting themselves emotionally. Not there. And not here. "You can't hurt me. I'm not here." And it's a passive-aggressive strategy. But in their minds, it's a people-pleasing strategy. So, for example, a covert narcissist may tell you, "I'm leaving you alone because you want to be alone." Or, "I don't care what you do with other women because I want you to be happy." In other words, "I'm not here."

The covert narcissist realizes that he is mentally ill, that she is utterly dysfunctional. If it's a female covert narcissist, they realize this. They know that they're incapable of maintaining even the rudiments of a relationship. Sometimes are not capable of having sex, proper sex, not sadistic sex or masochistic, sane or kinky sex. Prophecies, they definitely are not able to gauge reality or to act in reality self-efficaciously. It is this lack of self-efficacy that underlies covert narcissism. Covert narcissists are narcissists who failed to act efficiently on the environment, failed to extract supply, to regulate his internal psychodynamics, to allow him to function. So it's a failure. The essence of covert narcissist is rarefied failure. Recklessness is defeated. And so even if the covert narcissist decides or minimal targets, like, "I will hold on to what's mine. I will hold on to who is ready with me. I will hold on to to my wife because I love her. I will hold on to my possessions because they're mine." Even these decisions are not defensible. He doesn't have the resources even to to implement this kind of super minimal, you know, targets, which are the lowest of the lowest can. And so gradually, everyone comes to regard the covert narcissist with a mixture of wariness, because it's like, you know, it's like a snake, you never know when he will lash out and do something. So with a mixture of wariness, you realize that there's some, some processes going on in the background that you will never be given access to. Stealth, stealth processes, ambient processes, not good processes, something, something giving you realize that processes there which are not totally healthy, indefinitely not benevolent. There's a lot of malice, malevolence, malicious in the air, ambient. So people treat the covert. People, when I say people, I mean men and women, by the way, it's a rare case where both men and women treat someone the same way. So where it is pity, revulsion, and contempt. Gradually, covert narcissists experience only these reactions from others. They are never loved, never held, never kissed, never embraced. They never, they never, they never feel at home. They never feel welcomed and accepted, let alone unconditionally. They only experience is contempt, disgust, revulsion, wariness, "better keep away from them," and pity overwhelmingly.

And so some covert narcissists, of course, are gifted, and people are envious of the gifts of such a covert narcissist. And many people project this envy and their sense of guilt and shame for abusing the covert narcissist by becoming even more aggressive. There is an unholy, unholy, an awesome cycle of aggression with the covert narcissist. His reticence, his reluctance to engage, his inferiority, his pseudo humility, his fakeness, his identity diffusion and instability, his cunning, his passive aggression, they provoke aggression, they provoke an aggressive reaction, an aggressive reaction from his environment. But then people are ashamed that they had reacted to him this way. They feel guilty, and sometimes they envy him for some of these people. So this provokes even more aggression. And this more aggression provokes the covert narcissist to be even more covert and more narcissist. So this provokes more aggression. The covert narcissist cannot extricate himself from this never-ending cycle of maltreatment and mystery. I mean, covert narcissists, in all the videos that you see online, YouTube, they have been portrayed as some kind of demons, devilish entities who are out cunningly to subterfuge and Machiavellian ideation. They've just spent all their days thinking how to destroy you. Not so. The typical covert narcissist is actually very, very sad, very broken, very damaged, and wants very much not to be himself, but can't. They can't. Ultimately, covert narcissists lose everyone. Everyone walks away having squeezed the covert narcissist dry of any usefulness. The covert narcissist is so, it is so impossible to have any type of productive, happy, mutually rewarding, reciprocal relationship with the covert narcissist that people very often and very fast gravitate to a transactional relationship with the covert narcissist. They take something from him, and if he insists, they give him stuff. But it becomes a transaction. Now, a covert narcissist can start a love affair, and within six months, it will not be about money. He can establish a business with full trust and loyalty, and within a year, his business partner will have betrayed him and introduced another someone else instead of him, substitute for him. And he's constantly betrayed, constantly abandoned, constantly dropped, because he offers nothing of himself. And he offers nothing of himself first of all because there is no self, exactly like a classic and overt narcissist, there's no one there. But he also offers nothing of himself because he's hypervigilant, paranoid, suspicious, and he is afraid to offer something.

So there is something I call the doormat, doormat narcissist. From time to time, the doormat narcissist tries to fight back. The doormat narcissist is a covert narcissist who was trampled upon to the point that he became like a doormat, and he also adopted doormat strategies. "Give him, give him before you're destroyed." I mean, the alternatives are: don't give in, be defiant, and be destroyed, or give in. So there's this variant of covert narcissist which I, tongue-in-cheek, call the doormat narcissist. From time to time, the doormat narcissist tries to fight back. But even the ways that he tries to fight back are utterly dysfunctional and counterproductive. As he tries to fight back by emulating, then imitating a psychopath, a primary psychopath. A covert narcissist looks around, "This is, look at me. Hello. Am I everyone? Everyone has sex with my wife. Everyone stole my money. Everyone who believes me mocks me, ridicules me, criticizes me, criticizes me, disagrees with me all the time. Whatever I'm doing is considered to be passive-aggressive, cunning, disgusting. People are revolted. People pity me. People make jokes at my expense." Covert narcissists have something called referential ideation. They think everyone is gossiping about them, making jokes at their expense. So finally, the covert narcissist says, "Okay, can I be different? Let me try to be different. Can I stop all this? Can I, can I extricate myself from this cesspool, from this system?" And he looks around, "This is, wow, you know what? Psychopaths get it right. No one, no one messes with psychopaths. No one dares to screw with a psychopath. Psychopaths rule. Psychopaths rock. I'll be a psychopath."

And so when covert narcissists attempt to become self-efficacious, when they attempt to reassert control over their lives and to establish functional boundaries, they do so by imitating primary psychopaths, not secondary. Like the borderline, the borderline becomes a secondary psychopath. So what happens is essentially the covert narcissist, when rejected, humiliated, abused, abandoned, stress, etcetera, depressed, the covert narcissist then becomes borderline. In other words, he becomes a secondary psychopath. And then becomes a primary. So you can see the logic. But the internal experience of the covert narcissist, of course, it is different. By the way, this is common with healthy people. No one experiences the world and himself or herself precisely as other people experience you. That's why talking to people is important. Socializing is a very important self-regulatory function. People provide you memory, they provide you with calibration, they set you straight. So the covert narcissist doesn't experience himself the way other people experience him. For him, for example, when he calls people, when he cheats on people and steals their money, he would have, for him, this is setting boundaries, asserting himself. But of course, this kind of reframing is confabulated and fallacious.

Think about it for a minute. What does a covert narcissist do? Covert narcissist becomes a con artist when he's when he transitions to the primary psychopath mode. When he says, "Enough is enough. I've been abused. I've been molested. I have been everything. I'm putting a stop to it. From now on, I'm a firm man, woman. I am going to get what I'm gonna be a primary psychopath." Okay, what am I going to do? I'm going to steal money from people. So even then, what the covert narcissist does is he invents a character. The con artistry is built on a fictitious character, a fictional character. So the covert narcissist invents a fictional character. In this fictional character, extracts money from me, or sex, or power, or whatever it is that the covert narcissist decided will set him free and make him whole. When covert narcissist becomes primary psychopath, he decides on goals. The goals of who make him feel better, no ego-syntonic, better with himself. So whatever the goals are, he doesn't do the covert narcissist doesn't dare to go out there as himself. He creates a character, a fictional character, and he lets people interact with this character. So there's the classic narcissist character. People, and people never interact with the covert narcissist in the primary psychopathy phase. They interact with the fictitious or fictional character that he had constructed for this purpose. But then, wait a minute. If he had created a fictional character as a primary psychopath for the con job, it defeats the purpose again. Actually, the covert narcissist ends up giving everything of himself to another person. It's true that this other person was conjured up by the covert narcissist. Please try to understand what I'm saying. All his life, other people took from the covert narcissist, everything. Now he's fed up, he's pissed off, he wants to put a stop to it. What does he do? He lets, invents yet another person. And that invented, conjured, imaginary, scripted person again takes everything from the covert narcissist. Locked, locked into a pattern which he cannot break out of. He is used to giving to other people. He is used that other people take from him. So even when he wants to take something, he doesn't feel that he can take it. He feels so inferior, so lacking in efficacy, so such a zero, in a loser, that even when he wants to steal money from people, he doesn't dare to do it himself. He invents another person, and he gives everything he has to that invented creature, to that new entity, to that new person. Again, he perpetuates the story of his life. Again, he gives everything to someone else that he had invented. This someone else means nothing psychologically. It's again not you. It's a game. Not in the benefits that flow from the con, from the fraud, from the cheating, they don't flow to him. They flow to this imaginary firewall, to this mode, to this separation, to this partition. They flow to this creature, to this character, and that's where they stop. The covert narcissist does not experience. And if he does experience it, it's by proxy. It's a secondary benefit, like a very distant echo. Covert narcissists don't allow himself, even the primary psychopath, to enjoy the fruits of his misconduct. If he got a drunk woman to sleep with him, she's not sleeping with him. She's sleeping with a fake man that he created, had created for her. If he stole money from her, from a pensioner, from a retiree, he didn't steal the money, nor does he enjoy the money. It's the person he had created, that the con artist, this imaginary figure, that takes the money from the retiree, from the pensioner, and essentially enjoys it. It never gets to him. Even now, he is always one step behind, one step removed, watching in envy his life unfolds in front of his eyes, but unable to touch it, unable to reach it, because he's looking through a glass darkly. It's like in the Bible, Moses, Prophet Moses, God let him see the land of Canaan, but never allowed him to enter. After forty years of walking the nation of Israel through the desert, God did not allow Moses, did not allow him to enter the land of Canaan. That was his punishment. And that's the punishment of the covert narcissist. He, he, he can see, he can grasp, he can perceive what it would be like to experience life, to live, but he can never leave. He can never really experience. He always has to, because he's so weary, so afraid, so paranoid, so suspicious, so hurt, so damaged, so broken, so inferior, so, so inefficient, he has to, he has to avoid life. Whatever happens, can happen to the entity that he had invented when he became a psychopath.

And of course, the classic narcissist has this on a permanent basis. Precisely the roles of the false self. That's why the narcissist, the classic narcissist, never experiences life. Because people are not reacting to the narcissist, they are reacting to the false self. And the false self is not the narcissist. They are not the same. They are, the false self has very little to do with the narcissist, his characteristics, his traits, his behaviors. They don't, he doesn't share anything with us. Let such a woman fall in love with a false self, she falls in love with a facade, with the narcissist. If the narcissist makes money, it's the false self that enjoys, not the narcissist. Loss is it always an observer, a spectator. Watch my previous video, hyper hyper reflexivity. The narcissist always watches his life from the outside, as though it were some curious insect, some object to be perused and studied scientifically. It's a horrible feeling. It's like you're removed from your own life. And what do you do when you don't exist at all? Who is this who is observing? In the case of the covert narcissist, even this question is unclear. Covert narcissists, women fall in love with a false apparition, with an emanation, with a thespian project, a role player, a role at a stage play, never with the real him. When the grooming phase is over, and the potential mate, intimate partner enters the shared fantasy, she discovers to her dismay that the covert narcissist had lured her into a relationship with a complete, abusive, and mentally disabled stranger. With him. So he presents one facade, this love bombing and grooming phase. I have a video about these two. I think I have a video about everything. I have to change. So in the love bombing and grooming phase, the covert narcissist and the classic make, make the potential partner, the intimate partner, fall in love with some totally imaginary character, with a fictitious character, with a protagonist, with a, with a, with a screen, with a visage, a mirage, a mirage. But when, of course, the relationship starts in earnest, she discovers the discrepancy between the person or the man she had fallen in love with and the real man. And this piece is rough. This disillusionment. She becomes angry, disappointed, frustrated. She feels that she had been fooled and lied to and deceived. And her most fervent wish is to up and walk away by any and all means necessary. If she has to have casual sex with a stranger to get rid of the covert narcissist, she would. She would do anything. She would rob a bank. She would stand naked in the in the square in the days before social distancing. She would do anything just to get rid of him. Because the pain that the covert narcissist inflicts on his intimate partner is double. First of all, she had been deceived and lied to, and that's a very bad feeling always. But also, she had been fooled. So she's a fool. He is a constant reminder how gullible and stupid she'd be to have fallen in his trap. No one can, no one can suffer this.

And again, by luring women into his lair, I'm saying women, but of course, you can switch the pronouns. By luring women into his lair, the covert narcissist is giving himself abundantly, but to another man. He is luring these women not to himself, but to the man he had invented, a fictitious character. I don't know, the irresistible genius. The covert narcissist is doing the dirty work for this fictional protagonist. He satisfied the grandiose and statistic needs of this imagined, invented, created character to uphold and prove his irresistibility, to taunt, frustrate, humiliate, and despoil women. Captain either one, whatever the needs of this imaginary primary psychopath character, the covert narcissist gets to work. He is the servant of his own creation. It's like the Golem, the Golem in the famous Jewish story, where, you know, they made from mud, mud and soil, they made their kind of monster, and then they put the name of God in the monster's mouth, and he came alive. It's the same with the covert narcissist. It's a Frankenstein. He's a Frankenstein. He's Dr. Frankenstein. He creates this Golem, and then he puts the name of God, primary psychopath, in the mouth of the Golem, becomes primary psychopath. But the covert narcissist is a servant of this Golem. He's working for the Golem. Whatever happens happens to the Golem. The sex is the Golem's. The money is the Golem's. The pleasure derived out of sex and money is the Golem's. The power is everything. Everything is channeled. Everything drains into the Golem. The covert narcissist just does the dirty work for the Golem. And these are the needs of the fictional character, not of the doormat covert narcissist. In the doormat, the doormat covert narcissist, being the people-pleaser, it is he dedicates all his resources to cater to the needs of this fictional character, of this imaginary entity, the superhero, the primary psychopath, which he conjured up like a magician. It's very difficult to comprehend. But imagine that you invent, imagine that you want someone very much, but you're very afraid to reveal who you truly are. So you invent a false identity on Tinder. On Tinder, you invent a false identity, and then you interact with a hot frog or the drop-dead gorgeous. But who is interacting? Not you. Your false identities interact. What are you doing? You're maintaining the false identity. You're working on behalf of the false. You have become the false identity's indentured servant. That's how the covert narcissist experiences his life.

And so women in committed primary relationships often complain to casual sex partners, to dates, to lovers, when they stray, when they cheat, when they commit adultery. So they often complain to the partners about the relationship, notice the relationship, how its dysfunction brought on the adultery. Same with men who stray out of committed monogamous, sexually exclusive relationships. They complain about the relationship. They can complain about the partner, but they would complain about how the partner functions in the relationship. But their focus would be on the relationship. But typically, the spouse of the intimate partner of the covert narcissist would complain to her cheating partner or to his cheating partner about the covert narcissist, not about the relationship. About the covert narcissist. And very often she would say things like, "He doesn't exist," or "All he knows to do was to be angry," or something like this. But the focus would be the focus would be on the problem, the dysfunction, the reason for the adultery, the reason for the extramarital affair, the reason for exiting from the extra-dyadic sex, exiting the dyad, the couple. The reason is the identity, or lack of identity, lack of core, of the partner. When the partner is a covert narcissist, if the partner is healthy, the complaints would usually be centered, revolve around the relationship. The relationship is not working because the partner is doing this or not doing this, but it's about a relationship. It's an important distinction. Very often, the covert narcissist's intimate partners, business partners, they like many elements in the relationship with the covert narcissist. Very often, they miss these elements after the breakup or after the dissolution of the business. They miss these elements. There were many, there were many elements in the interaction that they liked, wanted. But there was no way they could countenance the covert narcissist himself, what he did, how he acted, how he reacted. Sometimes is acceptable, more, even more than acceptable. But he himself is not something. Something is seriously awry with the covert narcissist himself, with who he is, or rather, with who he is not. And it makes even the greatest rewards, the greatest gifts, greatest adventures, the greatest sex, and commensurate compensation, insufficient compensation. This, I don't know, possibly it's like having great sex with a sex doll, or having a very intelligent conversation with an artificial intelligence. There's a feeling that everything that happens happens independent of the covert narcissist. Every behavior of the covert narcissist, every contribution, every gift, every endowment, every wonderful moment is there, but kind of not, not directly emanating from the covert narcissist. It's a disjointedness between the covert narcissist and all the whirlwind and whirlpool around him. And these are the only two modes that the covert.

A narcissist has the torment in this primary cycle. Sometimes after crisis, the covert narcissist becomes dormant, and he keeps the psychopath comatose for very long periods of time. He remained. He might be related or not, but the primary psychopath always comes to the fore, always erupts, always returns, always takes over. Always.

Now, two concepts: switching is the transition from one type of personality to another. Switching is a term borrowed from the clinical psychology of dissociative identity disorder, multiple personalities, or a multiple personality's own social identity disorder. When the person, whatever that is, switches from one alter to another, from one personality fragment, on one cell state to another, you can see this. They are usually visible signs, not always, but usually, and this is called switching. Same happens to borderline. You can see distinctly when she switches from borderline to secondary psychopath. Psychopath. Ask any disgruntled husband, children, lovers, or whatever hopeful borderline. They will tell you, you know immediately when she switched to a psychopath. It's the same way to convert narcissist. You know immediately when he switched to a primary, primary psychopath.

What about modification? Can the covert narcissist experience modification like the classic narcissist? Yes, of course. He's a narcissist. Covered narcissism master sees only a failed one, collapse one. But they still the masses is certified. So he can experience modification. But in his case, there is an added condition to experiencing modification. Modification in the covert narcissist occurs when the doormat wakes up, is provoked within a shared fantasy, which is micromanaged by the subtle. So when the covert narcissist is in a phase of a psychopath and, for example, has a shared fantasy with a with an intimate partner, and then she does something, she externally modifies him. The doormat wakes up, and then there's a conflict. The dormant is modified, and there's a conflict between the dormant and the cycle. It is this conflict that the covert narcissist experiences as modification.

So the covert narcissist cannot, cannot reconcile two dissonant cell states: doormat and psychopath. When he's a doormat, he's never a psychopath. And that's why I keep saying covert narcissists are not evil. They are not psychopathic when they are doormats. So when is the doormat? Is of the psychopath? When is a psychopath? Is never a doormat. On rare occasions, owing to external mortification, the doormat can wake up even as the psychopath is in charge, and this creates a conflict because they are both, especially in the dormant, they're genuine self states. They are real. They are authentic. It creates a conflict.

By the way, exactly the same happens with multiple personality disorder. When, for example, therapy is mismanaged, or sometimes it happens that two dissociative alters, to remind you, someone with multiple personality has a core personality. It's called the host or the moderator or whatever, and many, many other personalities which are called alters, alternative personalities. So usually the alternative, usually there are rare diagnoses where this is not true, rare dissociative diagnoses where this is not true. But in the bulk of the vast majority of dissociative diagnoses, the alters don't know about each other. When alter one is in control, all the other alters are dormant and inactive. When alter six is in control, alter one is dormant and inactive. They don't know about it or communicate with each other. They don't inform each other except through the mediation in the agency of the host personality.

Sometimes therapy is mismanaged, and two dissociative alters are forced to meet each other, forced to communicate with each other, and this creates enormous breakdown, enormous dissonance, leading sometimes to psychosis, psychotic disorder. In a way, this is the equivalent of mortification in someone with multiple personality. Same with the covert narcissist. He can be mortified when this happens, when the doormat is forced to control the psychopath, to realize that there's a psychopath, to look at what he does to people. The insult was doormat. The qualities of the torment, the characteristics, the traits, behaves. Unlocked. Absolutely not. Ly exact a metrical opposite of the primary psychopath. The doormat abhors the primary psychopath. And of course, the primary psychopath abhors the doormat because he thinks that all that is weak and is to die. So there is a lot of self-destruction in the process. The psychopath wants to kill the dormant, as he regards the doormat as a vulnerability, a weak, despicable wretch who needs to be eliminated. And the doormat regards the psychopath as an abomination, as the beast. So they both, they both eat each other's throats, fighting in the internal space. And it approximates very much dissociative identity disorder, multiple personality.

Even as the doormat continues to process the mortification, the psychopathic own it continues apace with his exploits. And so he forcefully dissociates the doormat in order to function. So there is another process here where the psychopath is trying to push the doormat back in, to bury him, to to deactivate him. Kind of when the covert narcissist experiences external modification, for example, he's been horribly, horribly publicly humiliated, his defenses crumble. The doormat exists, but the psychopath is in control. Sacrifices bloody hell. Here he is again. I have to marry this. I have to eliminate him because weak is vulnerable, it's a danger. Same dynamic, exactly exists in multiple personality disorder, identity disorder. The host personality activates protector personalities, personalities that protect the fragmented hyper structure or super structure of multiple personality. And if the core personality is at risk, the protector personality will emerge and protect. In most protector personalities, most protector personalities in MPD, in multiple personality, most of them are psychopaths, primary segments.

People sometimes say the covert narcissist is gifted, but he's high-maintenance and difficult. It's very typical for the covert narcissist to lose jobs because of this. Women say he's interesting, he's fun to be with, his great sex, maybe even his lovable, but there's something very wrong about him, and we cannot put the finger on something is wrong or right. They, someone puts the parts together wrongly. Does this uncanny valley feeling, feeling of failure, of key, of note, something is not okay, and you can't really verbalize it, can't identify it accurately. And this is a feeling that overclasses, it provokes even more than the classic narcissist. Classic narcissist is a bumbling, clownish, grandiose, pompous, verbose fool, a fool of himself, fool. You know, man, I mean, you say it immediately. Covert narcissist is different. You very often do perfect narcissist passes is totally normal for very long periods of time. But every time you meet him, there is in you this alert, constant background alert that you want to shut off because there's no reason or rhyme or indication why it should be activated, but your intuition knows better. Anytime this alert is on, walk away.

In 1995, I invented invented the no contact strategy. I have been criticized for for well over a decade by therapists, and so today it's the mainstream. No contact. Red alert warning sign. Walk away. Do not speculate and do not be grandiose and assume that you can diagnose the person or that you can fix the person. Don't. You can't. Both.