Narcissist: How I Experience My Narcissism (Aware, Never Healed)

i know i know your day is not complete without a second video by sam wagner the author of malignant self-love and the author of narcissism revisited and a professor of psychology and never mind handsome we'll leave it aside now there's one big difference between me and adolf hitler i do not have a moustache he did but both of us use the same phrase the same sentence to describe ourselves you see adolf hitler used to say my mind is like a calculating machine and so do i i always think of myself as a machine i say to myself things like you have an amazing brain or you're not functioning today your efficiency is low i measure things i constantly compare performance i'm acutely aware of time and how i use time how it's utilized it's like there is a meter in my head and this meter ticks and talks ticks and talks metronome of self-reproach and grandiose assertions i talk to myself in the third person singular one step removed detached all very scientific and impressive it lends objectivity and credibility to what i think as though what i think is coming from an external source from someone else and my self-esteem is actually so low that in order to be trusted i have to disguise myself to hide myself from myself it is a pernicious and or pervasive art of unbeing not being i like to think of myself in terms of robots robotics or auto automata i mean automaton there is something so aesthetically compelling in the precision of machines in the impartiality of devices in their harmonious embodiment of the abstract machines are so powerful and yet so emotional emotionless they're so invulnerable they're not prone to be hurting weaklings like i am machines don't bleed like i constantly do deep inside often i find myself agonizing over the destruction of a laptop in a movie as its owner is blown to smithereens as well machines are my family my folk my kin they allow me the tranquil luxury of unbeing on the one hand and becoming through them i become through machines and then there is of course data my childhood dream of unlimited access to information has come true and i'm the happiest person on earth for it i have been blessed by the internet information was power and not only figuratively when i was growing up information took me out of the slum where i was born and into the big bright shining sparkling glittering glamorous world it was knowledge irreducion learning that extracted me from the hopelessness and dead-endedness of my childhood and the horrible life-threatening abuse that i've endured endured for 12 years information was a dream knowledge was the the dream reality was a surrealistic nightmare that i walk walk to every morning i was woke but i was i was woke to a nightmare i had taken my red pill long before anyone had dreamed of the matrix my knowledge was my flying info carpet it took me away from the slums of my childhood from the atavistic social media of my adolescence from the sweat from the stench of the army and into the perfumed existence of international finance and media exposure so i love knowledge i love books i love information even in the darkness of my deepest valleys i was not afraid i carried with me my mental constitution my robotic countenance my superhuman knowledge my inner timekeeper my theory of morality and my very own divinity i carried with me my false self when women left me and they all did i discovered the hollowness hollowness the emptiness the void of it all it was in those times that i experienced my true self consciously in a process of mortification it was a void i discovered i don't exist annulment a gaping abyss abyss almost audible abyss hellish iron fist gripping where my heart should have been tearing my chest apart and there's nothing there it was horror mortification was horror it was transubstantiation of my blood and flesh into something primordial and screaming it was then that i came to realize that my childhood had been horrible difficult threatened my life so i had declined to live threaten my inner peace so i externalized my inners threatened my growth so i stopped growing at the time it seemed to me to be as natural as sunrise as inevitable as pain my childhood but now i realize what i've been through the torture chambers the likes of which only the most extreme dictatorial regimes the nazis and extermination camps have enacted and i went through my own extermination camp for 12 years but in hindsight my childhood was devoid of any emotional expression it was abusive to the extreme mind you i was not sexually abused but i was physically verbally and psychologically tormented tortured actually for 16 years and there was not one minute of respite from the moment i woke up in the morning and i tried not to wake up as often as i could but from the moment i had i woke up finally to the very moment i went to sleep and usually even after i had been tortured including physically in the most horrendous ways you can imagine and in many many ways trust me that you can never imagine and so i grew up to be a narcissist i grew up to be a paranoid and a schizoid at least that's what i wanted to believe you see narcissists have alloplastic defenses they tend to blame other people for their troubles and in this case psychological theory itself was on my side you know psychologists kept telling me your horrible childhood did this to you and i wanted to adopt this message because it was clear this message was clear people who are abused in their formative years tend to adapt by developing personality disorders among them narcissistic personality disorder i was absorbed there was unmitigated relief i'm not guilty i'm sick i want to tell you how much i'm afraid of pain to me pain is a pebble in indra's net you lift one bead one pebble of pain and the whole net revives my agony does not come isolated my pains are not alone never they keep company they commiserate they collaborate they collude they conspire normally against me my family is living my pains living families of anguish in tribes of hurt whole races [ __ ] races i i cannot experience my pain insulated from their kin and kith they come in they gank stalk me they come in gangs my pains rush in to drown me through the demolished floodgates of my childhood these floodgates which should have kept me safe this dam my inner dams this is my narcissism it is there to contain the ominous onslaught of stale emotions by now decomposing and rotten and corrupt my repressed rage at my helplessness a child's injuries physical and otherwise but the logical narcissism i discovered throughout my life is useful because i had been abandoned and hurt time and again dozens of times and against and this is why my narcissism is so resilient and so resistant to change never mind how much i know about narcissism and trust you me what i don't know about narcissism is not worth knowing and yet i'm helpless in the face of my infirmity my disability when i invented my narcissism i the tormented individual my narcissism enhanced my functionality made life bearable for me my narcissism was successful it was adaptive it allowed me to survive sometimes in the face of a broken skull or a torn vein and so my narcissism became my religion it became rigid doctrinaire automatic ritualistic compulsive obsessive it becomes a pattern in which i found myself trapped and part of which i constituted i'm a narcissist and i can feel this rigidity as though it were an outer shell an exoskeleton my narcissism constrains me it limits me it is often prohibitive and inhibitive i'm afraid to do certain things i'm injured and humiliated when i'm forced to engage in certain activities i react with rage when the mental edifice supporting my disorder is subjected to scrutiny or criticism no matter how benign how well-meaning how constructive and i'm afraid of women because women time and again and again and again hurt me badly starting with the most important woman in my life my mother and then all other women and they did it sadistically and cruelly because i had been sadistic and cruel to them to start with narcissism is ridiculous look at me i'm 60 years old i'm pompous i'm infantile and grandiose i'm revolting and i'm contradictory there's a serious mismatch between who i really am and what i had really accomplished and i had accomplished and how i experience myself how i feel myself it is not that i think that i'm far superior to other humans intellectually although in large part i am objectively but that's not the motivating thought that's not the recurring thought that's not the obsession thought thinking cognition implies volition implies direction creates motivation and ends in action but there's no willpower here i have no self so i have no will i have no will so i am powerless that's the true predicament of the narcissist ultimately he is utterly dependent he's a weakling and a loser my superiority is ingrained in me it is part of my every mental cell it's an all-pervasive sensation an instinct to drive i feel that i'm entitled to special treatment and to outstanding consideration because i'm such a unique specimen i know that objectively i am by the way and that's that's the core of my problem my grandiosity to some extent is justified the same way you know that you're surrounded by air or breathe you're breathing oxygen so my grandiosity is an integral part of my identity more integral to me than my body which i keep rejecting i haven't had sex for 15 years that's there's no i mean that's the ultimate rejection of one's body and this opens a gap an abyss a chasm between me and all other humans because i consider myself so special i have no way of knowing how it is to be other people if i'm sui generous if i'm a unique sample then i have nothing in common with anyone then there's no bridge i can't reach out an infinite amount of empathy won't help me because i'm not you it never will be you so i can never understand how it is to be you and you can never understand how it is to be me i cannot empathize even if i were capable to can you empathize with an ant or a raccoon empathy implies identity empathy implies equality and both identity and equality are abhorrent to me and missing being so inferior in my eyes other people are reduced to cartoonish two-dimensional representations of functions other people become instrumental they can be useful they can be functional they can even be entertaining although that's extremely rare can't remember the last time maybe richard granham but they can't be loving i can't interact with them emotionally because i have no emotions and if i accept my negative emotions i have no access to positive emotions there's no bridge between us i can't walk over to you on thin air like in the cartoons and i share nothing with you in the absence of empathy in the absence of emotions and the absence of a self what is it that make us members of the same species nothing whatsoever and it leads to callousness and ruthlessness and exploitativeness and sadism i'm not a bad person actually honestly i'm one of the i'm a good person i'm one of the most good person i've ever met but i'm helping people all the time you know i've helped people all my life i give everything free everything until very recently i gave free including seminars and lectures and everything until very recently when i had no choice i had to begin to charge but you know so i'm not evil but what i am is indifferent and many scholars and philosophers say that indifference is another word for evil it's the core of evil i couldn't care less i have helped people because it is a way to secure attention gratitude adulation admiration whatever because it is the fastest and surest way to get rid of them and they're incessant incessant nagging and begging okay here i'm gonna help you f off don't bother me again and i realize these unpleasant truths i realize them cognitively because i'm really really endowed intellectually i'm a highly a super intelligent person so you know i can't deceive myself i can't deceive myself because i'm i'm too intelligent to be deceived so i realize all these unpleasant truths about myself and there is no there's nothing and i also realize there's very little if anything i can do about but having realized this there is no corresponding emotional reaction there's no as we say in clinical psychology there's no emotional correlate to this realization there's no resonance it is like reading a boring user's menu pertaining to some computer that you don't even own it's like watching a movie about yourself some some point you get bored there is no insight as freud called it freud said that insight is thinking plus emotions combined which creates a psychodynamic and motivation to change i have no emotions i can never have insight there's no simulation of these truths when i'm writing this now when i'm reading this to you i feel like i'm writing the script of a mildly interesting docudrama about a mildly interesting person maybe even boring person dal whichever the case may be it doesn't capture me whatever is left of my essence it doesn't capture my non-identity it cannot capture my absence who can capture the wind it is not i because there is no i ironically narcissists have no ego and no i and still to further insulate myself from the improbable possibility of confronting these facts the gulf between reality and grandiose fantasy the grandiosity gap so to insulate myself from the grandiose the painful realization of the grandiosity gap i come up with the most elaborate mental structures replete with mechanisms and levers and switches and flickering alarm lights i look like you know the very old telephone switchboards inside my narcissism does two things for me it always did number one it isolates me from the pain of facing reality and facing my non-existent self in it allows me to inhabit the fantasy land of ideal perfection and brilliance and above all and that's the third thing of two above all it is a wall a thick impenetrable wall which goes all the way to heaven all the way to god it's a wall separating me from the horrors the horrors of my childhood and the pain and the hurt and the fear the terror that accompanied these horrors this if i were to tap into this reservoir i would die by my one hand or otherwise these ones vital functions are bundled into what is known to psychologists as the false self for self is my best friend my only friend and my only protection it is this soul guarantee for my continued existence am i likely to give this up would you have given this up the narcissist balances a sadistic superego sadistic inner critic and a demanding and fantastic for self is between a rock and a hard place both these con constructs keep demanding keep criticizing keep pushing keep motivating it's depleting narcissists describe themselves as machine or automata because no human being could survive this when narcissists do gain self-awareness when rarely the narcissist engages in roles in soul-searching like after mortification it is in order to enhance their skills at attracting and maintaining their sources of narcissistic supply narcissist goes to therapy to restore himself as a narcissist to become again self-efficacious to he wants to learn from the therapist how to garner even more narcissistic supply that's why narcissists populate the the the dating coach websites you know the pickup artists dating coaches business coaches all the clientele analysis but the nazis is able capable of introspection can they look inside in any way shape or form can they redirect their gaze internally can they distinguish the false self from who they really are or are not can this help them in the therapeutic process i want to read you a passage by nathan sallant schwartz he wrote a book called narcissism and character transformation published by inner city books in 1985 and he wrote psychologically the shadow or reflection carries the image of the self not the ego it is interesting and even psychotherapeutically useful to have persons suffering from narcissistic personality disorder studied their face in the mirror by the way richard nixon used to say richard nixon went to see a psychiatrist he got himself to treatment believe it or not and the first thing he told the psychiatrist the first meeting in the first minute of the first session nixon said when i look in the mirror there's nobody there so silent sullen schwartz says you should force people with narcissistic personality disorder to look to look to to study their face in the mirror i continue to quote often they will see someone of great power and effectiveness precisely the qualities they feel a lack of for even though they may overwhelm others with their energy and personal qualities they themselves feel ineffective narcissus must possess his idealized image he cannot allow its otherness for that would be too threatening to his basic design to be mirrored himself hence the sudden switch shall i be would or shall i wu libido quickly changes from from an idealization into a mirror form showing how his unredeemed inflation in psycho analytic terms his grandiose exhibitionistic self gains control this was a bit younger mind you but what the author is trying to say rather poetically is a basic relationship between the true self and the false self no theoretician has ignored this dichotomy most basic to narcissism pathological narcissism the true self is synonymous what freud had described as the ego that's why narcissus is not that narcissist is no ego the true self is shriveled dilapidated atrophied stifled marginalized by the fourth self the false self kills the ego because the the ego is reality based the ego is truth based the ego is never a simulator the ego maintains veracity and is grounded firmly in reality false self is false so there's an enmity and a war to death unto death between the false self and the ego the narcissist draws no distinction between his ego and his self he's incapable of doing so he relegates his ego functions to the outside world his fourth self is an invention the reflection of an invention narcissists therefore do not exist the narcissist is a loose coalition based on a balance of terror between a sadistic idealized superego and a grandiose and manipulative false ego these two these two obnoxious creatures interact only mechanically narcissists are narcissistic supply seeking androids no robot is capable of introspection not even with the help of mirroring there's nothing there what is that to introspect what is that to inspect what can the narcissist learn about himself when he has no self narcissists often think of themselves as machines automata metaphor they say things like i have an amazing brain um and this and that and so the narcissist likes to think of himself in terms of of being an automaton or a robot or a device or a machine because he finds machines to be aesthetically compelling in their precision in their impartiality in their harmonious embodiment of the abstract machines are so powerful machines are so emotionless they're not prone to hurting so this is the narcissist ideal the narcissist is the only human type of human whose ego ideal is non-human ego ideal is what we aspire to become everyone healthy people and unhealthy people have an ego ideal it's how we would like to be to see ourselves in the future what we would like to become when we grow up the narcissist aspiration anticipation hope dream wish is to pick is to not become is to not become is to stop being human and to be rendered unto metal and plastic the narcissist often talks of himself as i said in the third person singular and so he carries with him these burdens these burdens of aspiring to not be even as because he's still an entity a biological organic entity he has somehow to be it's a it's dissonance it's an enormous contradiction sometimes the narcissist does gain self-awareness and knowledge of his predicament typically in the wake of a life crisis divorce bankruptcy incarceration accident serious illness the death of a loved one mortification sets it but in the absence of an emotional correlate the feelings that are not there this is merely cognitive awakening and cognitive awakening is useless it does not gel or congeal into an insight the dry facts alone cannot bring about any transformation let alone let alone healing let me tell you this there is very little i don't know about narcissism if anything and yet have i changed yes i have changed a lot for the worse narcissists often go through soul-searching but they go through soul-searching as i said to optimize their performance to maximize the number of sources of narcissistic supply to better manipulate their environment and other people they regard introspection is an inevitable and intellectually enjoyable maintenance chore and upgrade they introspect in order to upgrade to the next version the introspection of analysis is emotionless it's like taking an inventory of good and bad sides without committing to any meaningful change or rebalancing then it doesn't the introspection does not enhance the narcissist's ability to empathize it does not inhibit his propensity to exploit other people and to discard them when their usefulness is over it never mind how self-aware the narcissist becomes how introspective it doesn't tamper he's overpowering and raging sense of entitlement he doesn't deflate his grandiose fantasies the narcissist introspection is yet another futile exercise arid arid exercise of bookkeeping he's an accountant of his own lacking soul a soulless bureaucracy of the psyche and in a way it's even more chilling than the alternative the narcissists who are blissfully unaware of their own disorder they are more palatable they are more acceptable we can say poor guy he doesn't know what he's doing he's not self-aware but what can you say about analysis is like me who is 100 million self-aware and yet keep on doing keep on behaving or misbehaving in the same ways time and again and again and again and again yes mechanically approach avoidance what freud called repetition compulsion with severe emotional deficits the narcissists may become self-aware and knowledgeable about narcissistic personality disorder but this knowledge doesn't lead to healing in extreme cases it might lead to behavior modification some abrasive counterproductive behaviors may be modified you see jeremiah knew everything there is to know about narcissus he he he said can the ethiopian change his skin can the low part change his spots jeremiah 13 23 but if the narcissist becomes self-aware if he accepts that he's a narcissist isn't this the first important step towards healing here's the thing narcissism defines the narcissist waking moments narcissism defines the narcissist nocturnal dreams it's all pervasive everything the narcissist does and everything the narcissist is [Music] is narcissism narcissism is a personality not someone some not a behavior not a trait not something that can be tackled with psychedelics or or medicines that's why narcissists are never prescribed medication narcissism is the the entire personality everything the narcissist does is motivated by narcissism everything the narcissist avoids is the outcome of narcissism everything in the narcissist feels dimly is narcissism every utterance every decision every body language every element of body language everything everything everything everything this lecture everything is a manifestation of pathological narcissism it's rather like being abducted by an alien the false self it's rather it's like being ruthlessly indoctrinated by this alien ever since the alien is the narcissist false self it's a defense mechanism constructed in order to shield the true self from hurt from inevitable abandonment and then and then the defense mechanism goes awry and takes over it's like the computer hull in in odyssey in space 2001 stanley kubrick's masterpiece cognitive understanding of the disorder does not constitute a transforming insight in other words it has knowing everything there is to know about who you are as a narcissist has no emotional correlate has no effect resistance is futile the narcissist does not internalize what he understands and what he learns about his disorder this new gained knowledge does not become a motivating part of who the narcissist is it remains an inert an indifferent piece of knowledge with minor influence on the narcissist's psyche the narcissist knows everything there is to know about orchids he knows everything there is to know about the visigoths napoleon he knows everything there is to know about political history and he knows everything to know about narcissism and all these pieces of knowledge have the same impact the same weight the narcissist may grow aware of certain behaviors he may realize that certain behaviors are pathological dysfunctional defeating and productive he may even label these behaviors as wrong bad but he never grasps the psychodynamic significance of his own conduct the deeper layers of motivation the relentless inexorable engine at the convoluted tormented core of his being so the narcissist may say i really like attention i'm an attention [ __ ] or even disparagingly or self-deprecatingly he may say you know i'm really sometimes too much i'm abusive i'm i'm hogging the conversation and monopolizing everything he may criticize be self-critical but it leads nowhere it's like an intellectual exercise that analysis and dissection the narcissist won't be able to fully account for why he is what he is and why it is that he is addicted for example to narcissistic supply what role the supply plays in his psychology interpersonal relationships life he may know the answer but he does not feel or experience the answer the narcissist may realize belatedly that he is ticking but never what makes him tick sometimes i have witnessed this when narcissists first learn about narcissistic personality disorder the narcissist really believes that he could change there is this if you've seen the movie awakenings stunning movie or robert de niro so the narcissist when he's introduced to narcissistic personality disorder is an organizing principle as a disease that con makes sense of his life imbues it with meaning suddenly understands everything that had happened to him he understands his behaviors his cognitions his interpersonal personal interactions suddenly narcissistic personality disorder is the spell is the key word is the password so for a moment or for a day over three months he thinks he got it that's it that's the key to transformation that's the hermeneutic text he's been seeking and usually it follows a period of violent rejection of the charges against him but once he accepts his own narcissism he fervently wants to change i have seen it with my own eyes masses it really wants to change especially when his entire world is in shambles when not only did he hit rock bottom he became rock bottom time in prison a divorce a bankruptcy the death of a major source of narcissistic supply dislocation all this is a life-transforming crisis the narcissist admits that he has a problem but he does so only when he's abandoned when he's destitute when he's despondent when he's devastated the narcissist feels he doesn't want any more of this he doesn't want this to happen again modification is terrible because motivation takes away your false self and leaves you at the mercy of a two-year-old self the true self the true self knows nothing about the world and knows even less about you and you're at the mercy of this thing it's even more horrifying than being at the mercy of the false self and the narcissist wants to change and they're often signs that he is changing hopeful signs signs of spring but it's never eternal spring the narcissist fades the changes are reversed he reverts to old form the so-called progress that he had made evaporates virtually overnight many narcissists report the same process of progression followed by recidivism by remission by relapse and many therapists refuse to treat narcissists because it's sizzifian it's frustrating all your accomplishments as a therapist a gun and you have to start from square one from zero i never said that narcissists cannot change i only said that they cannot heal and yes i was among the first to say if not the first to say in 1995 that they cannot heal so whenever you will narcissist cannot be healed nonsense cannot be cured it's my words because i was the first to say them there is a huge difference between behavior modification and a permanent alteration of the psychodynamic landscape narcissistic behavior can be modified using a cocktail of talk therapy conditioning sometimes medication but i've never ever encountered a healed narcissist what's called recovered narcissist it's fake it's fiction it's called artistry the people who are telling you that narcissists can be healed or cured or recovered are con artists end of story and i don't care if they have a doctor in front of the name they are called artists the emphasis in therapy is more on accommodating the needs of the nearest and dearest to the narcissist his spouse long-suffering spouse his devastated children his out of their minds colleagues he's is is worried in in a treated and eroded and corroded friends the therapist ends up treating everyone around the narcissist and and the nasty is gone if the narcissist's abrasiveness rage mood swings reckless and impulsive behaviors are modified those around the narcissists benefit most and this as far as i'm concerned is a form of not therapy but social engineering there's one last hope though narcissism although rarely does tend to ameliorate with age especially if it's anti-social narcissism psychopathic or malignant narcissism ironically the worst type of narcissist psychopathic narcissist malignant narcissist get much better with age it is the garden variety narcissist the common narcissist of all stripes overt covert you naming that who doesn't change but the psychopathic ones do change with age and there are many forms of pathological narcissism that are essentially reactive and transient and i refer you to work by roningstam gundesson in 1996 by millman acquired situational narcissism and of course judith hermann when she when she conflates victims of complex posttrauma complex post trauma victims of cptsd with borderline personality disorders and of course borderline is a narcissistic disturbance so how does it feel to be a narcissist having said all this how does a narcissist experience his own life i can tell you i experienced my life as a very very very long prolonged incomprehensible unpredictable and very frequently terrifying surrealistic deeply deeply saddening nightmare if i had to choose one emotion which character characterizes me and my existence overwhelmingly sadness i'm very sad so i look at my life and look at people around me it's a wasteland it's a wasteland i would call it a life desert you know there's a news desert a medical it's a life desert it's a result of the functional dichotomy fostered by myself between my full self and my true self my true self is the fossilized ashes of the original immature personality the child that i used to be crying traumatized wounded bleeding almost dying child in the corner in the dark in the cupboard his skull wide open all over the body scratches and and worse and cuts and he's dying slowly is bleeding to death it is this child that does all the experiencing the false self is trying desperately to protect this child to isolating from the world the child had enough had enough the false self is nothing but a concoction i am best positioned to know this it's a figment of the narcissist disorder it's a reflection in the narcissist hall of mirrors it is incapable of feeling even incapable of experiencing and yet the false self is fully the master of the psychodynamic processes which rage within my psyche in this inner battle because i want to live and fall self is the principle of death it's for self requires me to suspend myself to disappear so that the false self can appear it's either him or me it's a battle joined life and death battle and drawing between us the inner battle is so fierce that the true self experiences experiences it as a diffuse imminent eminently ominous thing i constantly feel that something really really bad is going to happen and what i don't understand but i don't realize this something really really bad that's going to happen this anticipatory anxiety has nothing to do with the outside it's inside me something really really bad is going to happen inside me anxiety ensues and and i find myself constantly ready for the next blow it didn't help and it doesn't help that everyone in my life had abandoned me and betrayed me and cheated on me women and and basically added to my wounds and injuries and so on and it didn't help of course that i had provoked them into doing this i do things and i don't know why i'm doing where from for what purpose i say things i act i behave in certain ways which i know endanger me put me in line for punishment and risk but who am i punishing i'm not there i think i'm trying to punish the false self in other words i'm trying to mortify myself i hurt people around me i break the law i violate accepted morality i am very abrasive and humiliate i'm humiliating including you i'm sadistic i know that i'm in the wrong i feel ill at ease on the rare moments that i do feel i want to stop but i don't know how to gradually i'm estranged for myself i kind of observe myself from the outside there's a split depersonalization derealization i i'm trying to forget so amnesia is my defining state of mind i don't remember anything i had not lived at all gantry describes schizoid patients who had complained that they had never lived under the same situation i don't remember 99 of my life when i say i don't remember i mean i don't remember 99 of my life i dissociate massively gradually i'm i'm no longer me it's a process called estrangement it's part of derealization and deep personalization it's a dissociative state and possessed by some kind of of demon-like entity i'm like a puppet on invisible mental strings i resent this feeling i want to rebel but i'm repelled by this part of me which is which i'm not acquainted with um it's a little like i'm trying to exercise some kind of devil from from inside me from my soul and my form of exorcism is dissociation and don't start i don't believe there are demons there's not devils these are metaphors okay and so very often like 90 of the time i have this eerie sensation this creepy sensation it sets in like so much mist it pervades my psyche at times of crisis times of danger of risk of depression or failure narcissistic injury let alone modification i feel that i'm watching myself from the outside this is not an out-of-body experience i don't really exit my body it's just that i assume involuntarily the position of a spectator an observer a polite observer i'm mildly interested in the whereabouts of one sambucni it's like i'm a scientist the eternal scientist it's like watching a movie the illusion is not complete you know you're watching a movie it's not precise also but it's detached and that's the merit of watching your life unfold and roll by as so much reals so much so many movie reels and this detachment continues for as long as my ego dystonic behavior persists for as long as a crisis goes is going on it goes on for as long as i cannot face who i am what i'm doing and the consequences of my actions and since this is the case most of the time i get used to seeing myself in the role of a protagonist a character usually a hero of course i'm like a character in a motion picture or a novel and this sits well with my grandiosity and fantasies of course sometimes i talk about myself in the third person singular sometimes i call um this other narcissistic self by a different name it gets very it gets heavily close to multiple personality professional and coldly analytical voice as though i were describing the with the modicum of involvement the life of some exotic insect i dissect myself as i would dissect a frog or an insect and of course this is kafka's metamorphosis the metaphor of life as a movie gaining control by writing a scenario a movie script or by inventing a narrative it's not a modern invention cavemen narcissists have probably done the same but this is the this is only the external superficial facet of the disorder the crux of the problem is that i really feel this way it's not just cognitive it's not okay now i'm going to pretend that i'm in a movie no i feel i am in a movie i feel i'm a character in a novel i actually experience my life is belonging to someone else i experience my body as dead weight and totally useless container an instrument in the service of some entity no wonder i don't have sex i experience my actions and my deeds is amoral not immoral i cannot be judged for something that i didn't do now can i dissociation means that i don't accept responsibility for past actions because i dissociate they don't belong to me these actions someone else did them the previous samvuckney somewhat inversion two million i am some [ __ ] version three million i can't be responsible for what this chap this guy did this guy who happens to share my name we are discontinuous i keep reinventing myself every morning and undoing myself every evening before i go to sleep if i succeed to sleep which is extremely rare as time passes i accumulate a mountain of mishaps conflicts unresolved pains well hidden abrupt separations bitter disappointments i'm subjected to a constant barrage of social criticism and condemnation i'm hurt people hurt me on purpose badly cruelly one could say sadistically especially women i'm ashamed i'm fearful i know that something is wrong not necessarily with me of course but there is no correlation between my cognition and my emotions something is out of whack there's no synchronicity i prefer to run away and hide as i did when i was a child only this time i hide behind another serve a false one people reflect to me this mask of my own creation until even i believe that it is real people are so used to interacting with my full self that i'm beginning to believe that it does exist i acknowledge its dominance i forget the truth i know no better i deny the existence of any other self in me the true self i deny the child and in this sense i'm abusing my inner child once again every time every morning every day as often as my mother did and my father i'm only dimly aware of some kind of decisive battle a magadon which rages inside me i feel threatened i feel very sad i'm rarely swishing but i'm really really really profoundly and deeply and inconsolably um sad no depressed depression is a clinical term i'm simply sad but there seems to be no outside cause for all these emotions it makes me it makes me even more more sad and it's all so mysteriously menacing like some pieces of puzzle that you cannot put together but your life depends on putting them together the dissonance these negative emotions these nagging anxieties they transform my motion picture solution into a permanent one my motion picture become became a feature of my life whenever i'm confronted by an emotional threat by an existential threat i retreat into this haven into this mode of copying coping i become a character i become two one dimensional or two dimensional i lose one dimension i become a cartoon figure a cardboard cutout i relegate responsibility submissively assuming a passive role i uh by passing as responsibility and accountability to my false self at that moment i cannot be punished i'm not responsible this is the sub subtext of this capitulation to the falsehood you can't blame me you can't punish me you can be angry can't be angry at me mommy i didn't do this the false self did the narcissist is conditioned to annihilate himself and i'm no different i annihilate myself in order to avoid emotional pain and to bask in the glow of my impossibly grandiose fantasies my grandiose fantasies cannot be attached to who i really am so i need to not be and my pain is attached to who i really am so i need to not be that's my strategy to not be i does i engage in it i i apply it with fantastic zeal and because i'm very intelligent and very self-efficacious i'm a great success at not being prospectively i assign my very life decisions i have to make judgments i have to pass agreements to be rich i assign everything to the false self it's not me it's not me it's the motto of my life it's not me and i am not you know in the bible god says i am others i say i'm not retroactively i reinterpret my past life in a manner that is consistent with the current needs of the false self i rewrite all the time i reframe all the time i falsify all the time so obviously i don't and these emotions later on they're hopelessly contaminated adulterated corrupted by the need to reframe and rewrite history i may describe certain occurrences or certain phrases certain phases in my life as tedious or painful or sad or burdening or something but i experienced them actually entirely differently at the time you can't trust me to tell you anything about myself not because i'm a liar not because not only because i'm confabulating this i really don't know what to tell you under pressure from you to tell you about myself i improvise i falsify i become creative but that's art that's not biography the same retroactive coloring occurs with regards to people i completely distort the way i had regarded certain people in the past the way i had felt about them hate becomes love love becomes obsession obsessions become obsession becomes pain this rewriting of my personal history is aimed to directly and fully accommodate the requirements of the false self and frankly your demands i don't occupy my own soul maybe because i don't have one i don't inhabit my own body maybe because i don't have one i'm the servant of an apparition of a reflection of an ego function a gun berserk i'm a ghost and to please and appease my master i sacrifice to it my very life my inner child and my pain is an offering and from that moment onward i live vicariously through the good offices of my false self and throughout i feel detached i feel alienated i feel strange for my for self i constantly harbor the sensation that i'm watching a movie with a plot over which i have no control it is with certain interest of course because of the unpredictability there's a little fascination because my particular movie in my own personal case my movie was really stunning but so there's a little fascination um i watched this movie because it's interesting but it's a passive observation i'm not involved i'm not involved in my own life in my own movie i have never been and i'm 60 years old i want to be but i think it's too late of course my health is failing and i don't have long so not only do i relinquish control of my future life this movie i gradually lose ground to the false self in the battle to preserve the integrity and genuineness genuineness of past experiences a false self is metastasizing it's controlling my present and my future but it metastasizes and colonizes my past and monopolizes it eroded by these two processes i gradually disappear and i'm replaced by my disorder to the fullest extent i am and have become only and solely and exclusively my narcissism what i used to be is a shell gun blown away by the wind by the wind in the maze that is my psyche this hall of mirrors in which i'm never reflected never mind how hard i try

Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin

Views: 263,985

Keywords: sam vaknin, narcissism, life, biography, emotions, false self, true self, pain, sadness, relationships, intimacy, women, hurt, childhood, wounded, mortification, narcissistic injury, therapy, introspection, self-awareness, knowledge, npd, narcissistic personality disorder, healing, cure, treatment, recovered, insight, transformation, behavior, modification, antisocial, psychopathic, malignant

Id: pIOKzEM1ijI

Length: 60min 27sec (3627 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021