Do narcissists provoke you to the point of hurting them so they can play the victim?

Yes, they do, Absolutely. A term that I've heard for this in the last year that seems useful is "Reactive Abuse". So, you will be provoked and poked at until you respond angrily, or you respond from a negative emotion, or possibly even an emotional flashback, and then you will be painted as the abuser.

If we say, "Oh, this person's neurotic" in layman's terms, that would be insulting, and dismissive, and personal that the person's neurotic. So, if I say to you, "Oh, you have a neurotic pattern of behavior." You'd be like, "Fuck you dude, that's rude as hell." Neurotic rooted in neurosis, rooted in pain, rooted in a non-functional response to reality that probably isn't really based on reality now. It's probably based on trauma from before. So, we are coming from a chaotic, brutal, tortured past, instead of just the present as it is now.

When an emotion shows up that is authentic, when we're emotionally literate, it has a different feeling somatically in the body and in the brain and it produces different patterns of thought, and it moves in the body differently than when it is neurotic, when it is rooted from pain. So, people will say to me, "What's the difference between emotional flashbacks and emotions?" And I would say, "Well, I know something about you. I know that you're..." I'll go, "So, you're emotionally illiterate. You're quite numb." And they'll go, "How did you know? It is like you are make of psychic man." And I'm like, "No, it's that if you can't tell the difference between a real feeling and the flashback, then you're probably quite numb. So, your emotional literacy is quite low."

Still struggling from the effects of a narcissistic or psychopathically abusive relationship?

Many people do and sadly there is very little information available to be found online or in the written research, or with counsellors and therapists that can help. Narcissistic Victim Syndrome is not officially recognised, nor is it widely even known.

Even when it is accepted, recognised and known not many people seem to know what to DO ABOUT IT to heal it.. The fact is being in a relationship with a narcissist over a long period of time has long lasting traumatic effects that can be extremely catastrophic to the person suffering them.

WHAT YOU NEED NOW:
Someone who has been through the same experiences you have and understands them from the inside.

Someone who has the knowledge, training, education and experience working on himself and others to lead you through the emotional sh*tstorm that breaking with a narcissist can create.

- Learn how you were “primed” for narcissistic abuse and where the gaps in your ego boundaries might be.
- How to deal with the anger and loss you currently feel.
- Understanding how narcissistic personalities are formed and how they function (and how we the “people pleaser/co-dependents” are REALLY viewed by them).
- Why and how “normal” psychotherapy can actually be worse than useless when recovering from narcissistic abuse and how to avoid “retraumatisation” at the hands of clumsy clinicians.
- How to work through the obsessive thoughts/desire for revenge/anger.
- Strategies to get you back your motivation and sense of self.
- How to improve your relationship with yourself, become more able to protect yourself emotionally and make sure you never enter a relationship with a narcissist again.

Learn these things here - https://www.spartanlifecoach.com/overcome-narcissistic-abuse-course

The Main Truth About Motivation

Sometimes the words we use to describe a thing have their own parameters, their own barriers, their own boundaries and their powerful, and they keep us locked into a certain reality tunnel.

And I don't think they're wrong. Self-sabotage describes an observable phenomenon. Laziness, procrastination, lack of motivation describes an observable phenomena, but many times these things, they either take us out of the driving seat, so they make it so that we're not the ones who are in control, or they can have a shame element to them like, "Oh, you just lack motivation." With motivation, I was always like, "What the hell is that? Is there a gene for motivation, and either it's activated or it isn't, or some people have it or they don't?"

And what I used to find when I was talking to the kids in the schools around the UK was I would always say, "When it comes to motivation, motivation isn't something you either have or don't have. Motivation is a symptom of doing something that you really want to do, that you have a lust to get done, that excites you, that you're passionate about. That's motivation."

Nobody who is doing what they love struggles with this vague concept called motivation. Motivation, if we wanted to go all conspiracy-theory on it, could be a whip word for the man to inflict upon wage slaves, to be like, "Well, where's your motivation? Why aren't you working harder?" And it's like, "Well, why aren't you paying me more? Why don't you give me a more interesting job?" It puts the responsibility back on you. "You're a poor student, you lack motivation." "Well, you're a shit teacher and this is a shit course. How about that? How about them fucking apples?"

"You're a bad worker, you lack motivation." "The pay is shit, the job is wank and everything is dull and meaningless. Why would I have motivation to do something that is repetitive and pointless?"

The 3 Things Narcissists Fear The Most & Don't Want You To Know

Narcissists are by their very definition extremely concerned with their image, how other people perceive them. Them maintaining their vain idea of who they are in the eyes of you and in the eyes of the community is hugely important to them. That explains all of their behavior is down to narcissistic supply. So the number two thing that they fear is defiance, because defiance, if it's real, will eventually lead to detaching from them and leaving. You can only say no if you intend to detach, and you can only detach and leave them if the false image holds no sway over you anymore. This they are terrified of.

If they fail to convince you of their god-like status, of their specialness, their uniqueness, their amazingness, that they're the best thing that's every happened to you, that you'll never do better than them, that you can't live without them, if they fail to convince you of that, they become deeply anxious. In fact, they go into abandonment terror, why? Because this whole thing, this whole structure that they've created is about securing not love but attention, because in childhood they never received love.

So they attached to attention instead of love. And they didn't attach to a parent, who would then go on to become an intimate partner. They attached to an audience member. So they can really only do a dynamic where somebody is applauding them. So, they fear exposure. They fear damage to their narcissistic self-image. They fear defiance. And then they fear loss of supply.

The first thing was exposure, anything that defies the false self.

The second thing was defiance, hearing the word no and finding out that you don't hold them in the high esteem that you did before.

The third thing is loss. These people suffer terribly from abandonment terror. The only way that they can know anything approximating love is by capturing a victim and sinking their fangs into them and cocooning them in a web in which they slowly die.

If you break free of that and wiggle away, they're left all alone again, and you've shown them that they are not that special.

And the fourth hidden thing that they fear the absolute most is that you go on with your life happy, maybe with a few scars, but stronger and happier, in ways that they cannot possibly imagine, than you ever were before.

How to manage in this world of narcissism, trauma and anxiety. Why are things getting worse? Why it's healthy to embrace despair. How bad a catastrophe could be for the west if things continue to intensify and get worse.

https://youtu.be/q75yWbTPjik

Submit. Obey. Everything Will Be Ok - Said The Butcher To The Lamb

Wild times. Government guidelines, telling doctors telling medical Doctors how to write death certificates And altering death certificates, that's not a conspiracy theory. That's documented fact. Doctors are being encouraged to pump the numbers up by changing death certificates. Documented fact.

There's now, if you say anything on YouTube, even if you're quoting verbatim from the Lancet or some other published journal Your videos will be deleted. If you're a Doctor There was two doctors talking on YouTube Purely about scientific research, purely just stating the data of the scientific research The video was banned Anybody who mirrored the video, it got deleted from their Channel And they were threatened with total channel deletion If you upload this again you'll be deleted.

It's a post-fact era. We're now in a post-fact era. This kind of censorship is, it's mind boggling absolutely mind boggling what's going on. So, I really want people to get their shit together quickly. There's no time, we can't navel-gaze, we can't take our time with this. We have to be courageous, we have to get it together the people who are most capable of doing the most help usually are the ones who are the most traumatized. Because they're the most sensitive IF you're in your cave in introvert mode, you won't be able to get out there and do the good that you should be doing.

Now is the time. Deal with the flashbacks. Deal with the CPTSD. Deal wit the codependency. As best you can, it doesn't need to perfect and lets move forward, lets move forward. Because not only are we going to have to move forward. We're going to have to do something that people with CPTSD and co-dependence really don't want to do. We're going to have to not just ask for what we want. Which is scary. We're going to have to demand it. And we're going to have to demand Adult, Systemized, Structured, Action.

That is based on science, not hysteria. That is based on medical. The latest most accurate medical data. Not cherry picked from your favorite university your favorite mouth piece professor. None of that shit. But we can't ask politely. We must demand it. And we need to demand that the people in charge behave like adults and do their fucking jobs. It is not the job of a government to tell a doctor how to do their job. It's mind boggling I can't, I was complaining about the possibly moving into a soft style of communism.

This is now soft fascism. You can't tell doctors how to write death certificates It's not acceptable If we let this happen, we're moving into a very bad place. Where doctors are being told how to do their jobs by Politicians. And let me just remind you all of something when you say "Do as they say, Just do as they say and it will pass".

No it won't. You don't have to do as they say. They're just the government, they're all temporary. They're here today, they're gone tomorrow. They're career politicians most of them highly traumatized. Most of the riddled with CPTSD. Most of them narcissistic psychopaths. They don't care about anything other than their own career and we're seeing it now, it's blatant, it's out in the open. We have to demand more.

How To Disarm The Narcissist

If the lie is that they're omnipotent, and all knowing, then the truth is, that they're not omnipotent, they're not all knowing. They're just a human being. They're the same as you. They want to trick you into thinking that they're something special, that they're something superior. But they're not. They're just a human being.

They have the same rights, the have the same software and hardware as you. They might've had a different life experience, they may have done different work, more work than you, whatever. They might be more intelligent, less intelligent. Whatever. But it's still a person. It's still a human being. They're not God. You don't have to do what they say, which is a useful thing to bear in mind. You can question it. You can just be, just ask the question, just say calmly and politely, "Okay, do I have to do what you say? "Is it the law, is it the law? "Do I actually have to do this?" And you can think for yourself.

If you're in a relationship with a narcissist, and they're asserting, I actually found this very useful in my last relationship. Particularly it really saved me towards the end. Where I felt very, I was under pressure, I was manipulated, and I was being obliged to do things. And I'd ask myself the question like, "Is it the law that I have to do that?" And then my brain would be like, "Well no." I was like, "Would I get in trouble with the police "if I didn't do what I'm being asked to do?" No.

You're not in any legally binding contract. You're not married. There's no crime here. You're just being pressured. And I was like, "Oh, okay." So then I'm morally obligated to do it? And it's like, well okay, if you're not legally obligated, are you morally obligated? I found this very useful. 'Cause you're so confused and gaslit. Am I legally obligated, no. Am I morally obligated? Well, it depends on the. No, not really. Not unless I accept their world view.

I'm only morally obligated if I accept that everything that they're saying is completely true. And I would only ever do that for another human if they had proven themselves to be completely trustworthy, well beyond the petty mistakes that everybody makes. And I would look and I would say, "Well, have they lied?" Okay. Have they lied about things that are quite big and quite important? Okay. Here's a good question. Have they ever lied in such a way that caused them to gain and me to be hurt or to lose? Oh they have? Ah, that's a problem. That's a problem. That's an indicator that there's something quite serious going on there.

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Milo Mccabe is an excellent standup comic who is taking the UK by storm at the moment with his character "Troy Hawke". He also has a degree in psychotherapy and has done some psychotherapeutic sessions with clients before choosing to become a stand up comic. Not as strange a decision as you might think as this interview reveals.

Cheers!

https://youtu.be/OafiZUtNjdM

Stop Fawning, Start Living!

If you're trying to be very friendly with people and you're trying to be friends with everyone, you'll end up being friends with nobody. It sounds like this person has targeted you and feels like they can just offload on you. So stop smiling. Stop doing this with your eyes. Don't do this, the no lip, white people smile, because if your lips are out, this is a sign of arrogance. It's too fucking bad then. You're just going to have to deal with it. You don't have to please people. You're not put on this planet to make other people feel secure and comfortable, as much as your parents may have tried to indoctrinate you otherwise. That's not necessary.

So you do you, let them do them. They're an adult, you're an adult, and I think the big picture of what we're seeing right now in society and human culture in general is this effort to try and keep the illusion together, the effort to try and keep our social contract together in the face of overwhelming evidence that the social contract is nonsense.

One element of that is our fear that anybody should die, but only when the eye of the media and the eye of the world is on them. I was listening to a nurse yesterday say, "Hey, it's like the world has forgotten that people die every day. All you're seeing is numbers. Huh, 443 more people have died." Yeah, they die all the time. Have you ever been to a hospice? Have you ever been to a hospital where you've watched a friend or a family member die? I have. Couple of times. COVID-19, eventually they die because the fluid fills up in their lungs and they can't pump it out. I'm like, "Yeah."

When you get palliative medicine, that's exactly what happens to you. They give you morphine at such high doses they know that your lungs won't pump the fluid out of them anymore and eventually they fill with water and you die. I've sat and watched people get pumped full of morphine until their lungs stop. I know exactly how it sounds. I know exactly how it looks. This is not new. This is standard operational procedure. It's normal.

When people are very old, when they have comorbidities, or they're very, very, very fat, very, very fat, which is what we're finding as well. A lot of the people who are passing away from COVID-19 are very, very fat. Or they're smokers. Yeah. They'll die. Eventually they'll pass away. That's life. Some people are young. Yes, I know. I've watched mates of mine pass away in their 30s from cancer and bowel related issues. Yep. Yep. Because of certain lifestyle choices they were making and certain things that happened, people die.

There's an effort to sort of, "Huh, stop. No." No, you're not going to stop that. And if we accept it and just go, "Okay, that's the thing that's happening," we won't be caught in this trap, the narcist catches and traps of our desire to save the world and our desire to stop suffering, when they know perfectly well that you can't stop suffering, and at the same time they're ramping up the suffering as much as they can.

It's for us to accept. There is suffering in this world. There is disappointment in this world. We cannot save everybody. You have a narrow, narrow, narrow chance of saving yourself if you commit with a lot of discipline and a lot of effort. You might save yourself at the psychological, emotional, and ultimately spiritual level, but you won't save anybody else. That's a fantasy. That's a savior fantasy, which co-dependents and form responders must get past.

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Get Beyond Your Ego, It Makes Life Easier

One of the things that is on my mind a lot at the moment is different levels of consciousness. Don't get spooky on me. Don't get all weird. What I'm talking about can be understood purely psychologically. So you can have a very internalized, rigid, materialistic level of consciousness that we might call ego. We might say, for want of a better term, it's the ego. So that's you at your identity level.

What you have, what you want, what is yours, what is not yours. And if you wanted the developmental psychology element of that, you'd say it's who you are by the time you're age four. You need that. You have to have it. It's essential to function in the world. As Terrence McKenna said, you need to have an ego so that you put the food in your mouth, not in somebody else's mouth.

You need to know that you have a mouth, that you have needs. And yes, sometimes you will put food in other people's mouths, but if you never put food in your mouth, the end result is not a desirable outcome for successful living as a human being. What happens though, as we move past the age of four into adulthood, into life, and we're coming from this ego, what's in it for me? What do I want? What am I about?

And that lower level of consciousness that is power. That is dominance. That is sex, violence, survival, narcissism, the psychopathic dominance of other people. Again, necessary growth, part of development. But if we get stuck there, there is tremendous suffering. And if we operate from there, there is tremendous suffering. The more we stop seeing individuals and the more we see a collective, the more we see collective consciousness.

You should have an ego. You should have ego boundaries, but I don't think there's longevity in living from that place. I think it intrinsically causes suffering. And at some point you have to transcend that and pull out and go, "No, there's more than all this. Actually, these things are temporary."

It's hard to cope with that when you're coming from the level of ego. In fact, it's distressing. But if you can, you don't need to drop your ego and be egoless, but if you could just go, "Oh, no, maybe there's a little bit of something that's beyond that. Maybe I can come from another perspective." Just zoom out and take a higher perspective, it's not distressing.

It's actually really enlightening to the extent that it lightens the load. It lightens the burden of being. Being as a burden, existing as a burden and existing as egoic individual consciousness all the time is really heavy. Coming out of that, pulling focus makes life easier, makes connections with others easier, and I think it makes it easier to resolve trauma as well.

Rules To Save You From Love Traps

I think you've got to start saying, "Here's a hard boundary, you can't play games with me. If you're going to games with me, no matter how much it hurts me, I have to pull my arm out the bear trap here, no matter what it does. Because if I stay, I'm going to die. I'm going to waste my time, and I won't get it back, I'm going to die. So if you're going to play games with me, I've got to go. If your life is based on artifice, trickery, seediness, weirdness, fraudulent behavior, you've got to go. I've got to go. We have to have that. If you won't commit to authenticity, and telling the truth, and being open, hard boundary, you've got to go. If you won't or you can't offer love to who I am authentically, and you see my vulnerability as weakness, you've got to go, you've just got to go."

If the person you're with doesn't make you feel safe, doesn't make you feel like it's safe to love them, has you feeling paranoid and insecure because they hold back pieces of information, they polish the truth, they present narratives, they're inconsistent, you've caught them out in multiple white lies, whatever it is, if it's not safe, you've got to walk away. Don't waste your time. They hold us in hope, they chain us with hope. People are held in slavery, waiting for execution, they're being killed with their love. We have to watch for this. Having your love, your trust used against you, so that you are held in place and bound is no good.

Hope is a good thing, optimism is a good thing, but passively hoping that things will get better with no evidence, instead of just rising up, and rebelling, or taking action, is not a good thing. That kind of hope Nietzsche spoke of, and Nietzsche said, "Hope is in effect the worst of all things, because it prolongs the suffering of man." Think about that. Statements like that, that cause people to say that, actually, Nietzsche probably wasn't really a philosopher as much as he was a psychologist.

That's a statement for a psychologist.You don't want a client that you're working with to blindly hope that their partner is going to one day wake up and not be abusive, that's not helpful, and all it will do is prolong the suffering of that human, just prolongs the suffering, you're just waiting for a day that's never coming. And your time is non-refundable. Your time is the most precious resource you have. You can lose millions and make it again if you're smart and hardworking. Time, you can't get time back, when it's gone, it's gone. So we have to protect that.

Why Some People's Words Have So Much Power Over Us

Let's say if you watched a hundred hours of a Richard Grannon YouTube channel, and then you speak to me over the phone, you speak to me over Skype. And I'm like, "You're a terrible human being," that would have more impact on you than if some random came up to you at a bus stop and went, "You're a terrible human being." You would ignore that, but for me, because there's a level of intimacy and you've put me at a level of hierarchy inside your head, it would be more powerful. Make sense?

In any intimate relationship, not necessarily with somebody with NPD, this is what happens. The closer they are, the more powerful the introject is. Once that introject that's powerful has come through, it goes into the other people part, the recording device, and then it gets uploaded to the Cloud. And then it's stupidly, non intelligently replayed again and again as a recording, which is called, what's it called class? An injunction. It's a super ego injunction.

And if it is negative, it's just going to play again and again and again, because the dumb other people part, the server that feeds the data to the super ego assumes that anything that comes from an intimate partner, because they are now a high authority because I'm infantalized and my boundaries are down what they said has value.

So in a relationship with somebody with NPD you will over time, develop what we call, it's a toxified super ego, also known as an inner critic. But we're up-scaling a little bit by saying a toxic super ego. We're actually going back to the psychoanalytic theory and we're approaching it with just a shade more nuance, not much but I feel it's a shade more nuance that might give you that extra foothold to just make a bit more progress in your healing.

You've probably had, possibly in childhood, some super ego injunctions, some introjects that you received that became internalized, the super ego injunctions that are now playing out stupidly as recordings. I say stupidly, it's stupid, remember I said it's a dummy, it just plays recordings. That's all it can do. You're not arguing with an intelligence entity when it says, "You're a worthless piece of shit."

Which people with c-PTSD, a borderline personality disorder, they hear super ego injunctions like that all the time. It's not because it's actually made an assessment of your latest piece of work and then gone, "Oh, this is about something you've done currently." I want you to remember that whenever you hear a negative super ego injunction, the voice of the inner critic, it's only a dumb recording from the past.

It's never about now. It's incapable of being about now. It doesn't know what now is. It's not intelligent. It's not even artificially intelligent and halfway sort of taking on data. Not at all. It's a dummy, it's a server. It plays recordings. So you don't have to listen to it. In fact, you must battle it. It's going to be your biggest battle in recovering from narcissistic abuse. And if you're recovering from childhood trauma and c-PTSD, the biggest battle will not be the emotional flashbacks. It will be between you and the super ego.

When You Were A Child You Obeyed EVERYONE

When you're a child, people tell you stuff. The members of your tribe will say to you, "Don't eat that berry, you'll die. You can eat this fish, it's tasty. This is how we attract a member of the opposite sex. There is the shaman. He's going to tell you that we came from the stars, and what our purpose on life is", so on and so forth. So you're receiving information, and it goes into the recording device that I'm calling the other people part.

So, here we pretend we have a part of our brain that's very active and open when we're children that is called the other people part. It's a series of recordings that came from... Class? Other people. That's right. When you were a child, the other people part is very on, very open, and it's just sucking up data.

So if you're ever around small children, if you've ever had that experience of looking after very small children, like I do sometimes with my nephews in America, I notice when they're playing, moving in the world, things happen. They find a thing, they see a thing. They fall down and hurt their knee. And they frequently turn and look at me. They turn and they look at me. No matter what it is, they're having a pleasurable experience, a new experience, or a painful experience, and they turn and look at me. Why are they turning and looking at me? They need me to tell them what that means because they can't assign meaning to anything yet. They will be able to in time. But for now they're riding the bicycle with the stabilizers on, and they turn and look at the adults to ascertain what is good and bad.

Children are the ultimate moral relativists. They really have no sense of good or bad. That's what they need us for. In looking to me, they're actually waiting for data. It's like the computer goes, waiting for data. I just found this pink flower. Can I eat it? Can I screw it up and shove it inside of my snotty nose? What do I do with this pink flower? Can I touch it? I'm going to try and touch it. What's the adult... "No, don't touch. No, don't touch that." So I'm a child. There's a flower.

So you look at the flower, you look at the bee, you look at the thing, the soil on the floor, because you're close to the floor, and you have to look up. And you say, "What does it mean?" And you do this over and over again. This is you building the super ego. This is you filling the other people part with data. The other people part is getting filled with data. This is good. This is bad. That is right. That is wrong. Don't do that. Do do this.

These become values. These become morals. This is your moral or value system imposed down from on high. It's the internal judgmental micromanaging, singular God, just your own personal one that's just talking to you. Or goddess, mother and father combined.

The other people part soaks up information and replays it. This is not intelligence. This is not intelligence. This is not even artificial intelligence. It's just a recording device. You can talk to it, but it's slightly dumber than Siri. It's slightly dumber than Alexa. It's a part of the computer that is just a server. It is just a slave. It just holds data and recordings. But it will play those recordings automatically because that's what we're evolved to do. When the super ego is functioning, it will play recordings for you that are pertinent to your survival in the more primitive, evolutionary sense. It should play a recording. It should play an injunction.

Codependent Brainwashed Slave To Raging Rebellion

There are multiple breaks with co-dependency, and such as the nature of being raised in cult-like circumstances and of being brainwashed. What a great way to brainwash somebody. Get them in childhood, where they have no ego boundaries. They can't say no. Their brain is at its most plastic. Your neuroplasticity is at its highest. All authority figures are listened to because of this. The notion of the super ego as a recording device, as a part that listens to older superior members of the tribe so that you understand what it is you can do and cannot do in order to increase your survival and your breedability, your reproductivity.

You want as a virus, as a human virus, we want our R rate nice and high. Two kids would be good, 20 would be better. This is men and women. A lot of our core key behaviors are informed by that. That's why the super ego is there, and that's why the recording device, the other people part, functions in the way that it does.

When you're inside of a cult, whether it's an actual cult or a narcissistic family unit that simply functions like a cult, any ego boundaries that you try to form will be smashed down at first sight, and you will be told that obedience is a virtue. So, your super ego, which is there, as I said, as a GPS system, allow us to live in accordance with our values and to move towards that which is good for us and away from danger. It creates a new value system. In this new value system, it says, "Obedience is the most virtuous thing. To annihilate yourself and to be the best servant or the best slave you can possibly be is the best thing."

Governments do this. It was literally done in Soviet Russia. They released propaganda saying about some young gentleman who apparently worked extremely hard as a farmer and put 18 bales of hay together in a day, where everybody else was only doing three or something like that. So, a standard is set very, very high. The super ego will do this if you are raised in a narcissistic culture, a narcissistic family environment. The narcissistic family environment is the microcosmic level, the narcissistic culture is the macrocosmic level.

So, you'll always be given a higher standard to aspire to. These higher standards are usually completely inhumane and totally unrealistic, but that's the cleverness of them. Get you when you're young, get you when you have no ego boundaries, and make you aspire to almost impossible to achieve high standards to keep you working, because that's what codependents do. We work. We work. We work.

We find things to do. We fix things. We are fixers. We are pleasers. So, you are set with a coordinate from an early age that obedience is a virtue and service is a virtue. Slavery is a virtue. Another thing that occurs in this brainwashing process is that we are burdened with enormous feelings of guilt, because if you want to get a child to do something, you can terrify the child, and it will work, far more powerful, far more long lasting, to guilt and shame the child into submission.

That goes straight to the super ego. If you just terrify child and bully the child, you may be designated as a bad, threatening, undesirable, dangerous object, foreign object separate from me. But if the parent uses guilt and shame, the child is far more likely to internalize that guilt and shame and to operate from guilt and shame.

Narcissists Have To Break You To Slave You

Somebody asked me this question the other day in reference to a discard phase and the particularly savage way in which the narcissist, when the relationship is not working out for them or you split with them or they're not getting what they want from you, they can't just say, "Oh well, that didn't work out. Toodle pip, see you later," and off they toddle. They can't leave you unless you are absolutely destroyed and broken. You have to be completely broken by the leaving, and if they do leave you and you are not destroyed and broken, they'll fucking come back until you are.

They'll make sure of that, and the purpose of that game is nothing more than a four-year-old tyrant trying to prove to you how important he or she is, and that's all it is. They need you to suffer when they leave, and the more you suffer, the more important and powerful they are. The more you are sad and angry and low and depressed, they feed from that.

It's a horrible thing to say to a client in coaching. It's really hurtful, but I need them to have that very graphic impact of like, "This is what you are dealing with." It's a monstrous entity in some ways, but it's also a very pathetic entity. It's extremely fragile. It's extremely small and petty, and nobody would act in this incredibly emotionally violent way, in a boundaryless violent way, unless they experience themselves as insignificant.

It's like every time the narcissist does something, they... You know the expression "punching up?" They clearly feel like they're always punching up. Is it that they're jealous of the fact that you can feel feelings and they can't? Is it that you are a human where they're just a replicant?

Maybe all of these things, but certainly here's something to note if you've been in a narcissistic abusive relationship. In the three to six months after it ends, you should consider the possibility that whatever you are thinking and whatever you are feeling is what they want you to think and feel, so if you think and feel like you're isolated and alone and everybody hates you and you have no friends and the world is a dark and dangerous place, you guess who fucking put that message right in there. That guarantees a lack of recovery. If you're struggling to recover, it's because they want to know, "I want my ego needs to know that I have women in other places, in other cities, in other countries that are completely devastated just by the mere lack of my wonderful presence."

You Can't Afford To Make This Mistake If You Want To Heal

I've been saying for a couple of years, the way that we love ourselves seems to be a direct reflection of the way in which our parents loved us. So if our parents were temperamental with their love, conditional with their love, harsh, judgmental, torturous, punitive with their love, then that's the way we love ourselves. Love, in the context of psychology, when we're using that word, it means literally the way you care for yourself on a day-to-day basis. Day-to-day, second by second, how are you talking to you? Are you speaking to yourself nicely?

When a child approaches you and has done a piece of work that isn't perfect, like they say, "This is a picture of a turtle," and it's a squiggle, you probably, I hope, don't hit them across the head and say, "That's a piece of shit, you fucking rat," right? You probably don't. You probably say, "That's good. Well done," knowing that the child is growing, learning, adapting, and that the child needs validation, to have that safe space in which to grow, in which to learn, in which to develop. Right?

Similarly, we can't have a disparity that is huge between the way we would talk and do talk to a child, and the way we talk to ourselves. We can't be cursing, swearing, bullying, shouting, impatient, judgmental, harsh, hitting ourselves. If that's not how we would deal with a child, that's just not an acceptable way of functioning. So, that, I think, is the next step. We've talked about silencing the inner critic, which is the toxified superego, did a course on that. We've talked about healing the superego. We really need to move to the next phase, which is integrating a strong superego, very deliberately, very thoroughly, and very fully, so that we can thrive. If we really want to move from surviving to thriving, this is our job, this is our role. Nothing less than this is going to be enough.

If you want to move from surviving to thriving, you absolutely can live with less flashbacks, an easier life, less trouble, more pleasure, by going somewhere along the scale of progress and dropping it, but to truly thrive and to truly live the life you were born to live, and to come close to fulfilling your actual potential, we really have to integrate a strong, healthy, loving, nurturing superego, which means we have an internal governor who is kind, and strong, and assertive, and fair, so that the way we are with a child is the way we are with ourselves, is not a million miles away from the way we are with the other adults in our world, and the way we deal with reality. This is called integration.

The opposite of that is splitting. A strategy here, a strategy here, another strategy here, a strategy for him, a different one for her, one for work, another one for my surfing friends, and another one for sexual or romantic relationships. That's no good. It's too stressful. Typically, codependents become exhausted and resentful because of overgiving, but if you think about what a codependent is doing, they're overgiving, not just through one paradigm, they're trying to overgive through multiple reality tunnels at the same time. There's no chance that a human being has for living a healthy, long, happy, joyous, productive life like that, no chance, and we have to give ourselves a chance.

https://youtu.be/a4hT3-S4NTs Interview about the state of the world today and how we got here