Narcissist's Outsourced Existence, Trauma-Bonded Fantasy with YOU

[@Silverforest899]

Watching your videos has truly guided me out of a dark place psychologically as a victim of narcissist abuse - thanks Sam. Learning to trust my own reality again. Enjoyed your book, and could not believe how spot-on almost entirely every point was, there was no chance of doubt in me after that. Especially with a humble covert person, I would have never known what was really happening. It is absolutely a trauma-response/form of cptsd

[@velmadenton4780]

Fascinating definition of trauma bonding as self mutilation. I’ve never heard it explained in this fashion. Gosh what an astonishing insightful examination on why people are never able to let go!

[@Sophie-uc8vp]

What a superb video, I saw so much of what you described with my ex narc. He used crack cocaine to keep the darkness at bay. When I met him he was just the most wonderful enigma of a man, I fell so much in love, we had such fun for a while. Then, the feelings of being in love abaited, as they alway do, and as that receded his false persona slipped and my absolute unquestioned adulation waned - there is only so long you can pour all the love respect and care from one person into the bottomless endless abyss of a narcissist. As time went by I began to perceive I had fallen in love with myself - he did not hold the same values as I! He was not who he purported himself to be! Cracks began to appear in him as a person and they were not, as Leonard Cohen told us, cracks were not where the light got in, they were where the light vanished. I had this sense of my life force and all my love being sucked into the endless chasm and I fell sick. As I weakened physically and my own light dimmed, his 30 year crack addiction raised its ugly mutilated spectre and stole the remnants of the man I loved with all my heart and soul, in the blank space where sex is mistaken for intimacy (yes Sam! You are so right!) leading to an utterly loveless space of nothingness, I felt my soul and very being shatter into a thousand pieces as he tried to turn me into a ghost by steadfastly ignoring me so absolutely I felt myself vanish as he interacted with everyone in the house but I, I had a metre square of space on the deep dark blue velvet bedspread, my voice a husk of what it once was, no embrace remaining in that cold bed. And crack smoke burnt his soul in hell - I went to find him one night as he feverishly burnt the foul substance, fingers and lips burnt, eyes two black pools, Come Back To Me I emplored him, he looked at me through those deadpools of black and said Help Me I'm In Hell and I glimpsed into the black hell of his narcissism and I realised he only felt alive when he was newly in love, the rest of his existence was the ennui of dysphoria and then the black overcame him and he smoked the crack to keep the narcissism and its endless howling blackness at bay.... he was lost to me forever...

[@philpenelle6471]

He was never there.

[@kimberlyclay612]

Absolutley breathtaking writing...that was never lost to you...he was never there

[@stevo988]

That was a beautifully written sad story. Narcissism is so destructive

[@FedUpWithFatigue]

OMG please start teaching us finance too! Maybe it’s time for a finance channel...🙏

[@mariewaters6120]

Thanks Sam ! I'm only partway through your videos and I love how you do what you do. A tango with Count Dracula, captivating, compelling, complex, invigorating, prickling anticipatory awareness of the fangs, intoxicated by the dance , breathless and flushed looking in the mirror there is only me. You tickle zee leettle grey cells ! Weird i just sent that description with your video yesterday to a relative and today you talk vampires and mirrors.

[@elizabethrosetm9868]

This is chilling. What the human mind will concoct and endure at others and their own expense just to feel like they exist. And it seems counterintuitive for the borderline to allow the narcissist to take so much she feels nonexistent. Lots to think about from this excellent information!

[@JuliaKruse]

Humanity is not one single species. There you go

[@Thurston1946]

Thank you Sam for helping me make sense of this bizarre person, a covert narcissist., once an interesting friend who began our friendship (now over) by directing and helping me clear out my house. Everything she learned about me while doing this , was weaponized later. You. talked about the CN taking snapshots of his friends, and intimate partners, This Covert Narcissist actually takes snapshots with her camera of the people in her life . She has a large bookcase filled with a life time collection of these photographs as she is now 70. She shared one of her earliest albums of herself as a young girl dressed in a fashionable outfit her mother, a talented immigrant seamstress , made and required her to wear. One of the first things shared about her mother was that she hate, hate, hate, hated her mother. She then paused and said, "Did I tell you I hated my mother?" Now this all makes sense.

[@ReturnOfTheJ.D.]

I knew a narcissist who attached strongly to the writings of Otto Weininger (1880-1903). Although Weininger was a very rare genius, this narcissist had very selective interest in his work. Essentially, he was interested in the bits that supported his (the narc's) existing personal philosophy. He allowed others to presume that he had deep interest in much more of Weininger's ideas than that, but he did not. Weininger, like everyone else he interacted with, was merely a prop for him - you take the bits you want and forget the rest. It was about what Weininger could do for him, not what Weininger was independent of him, which was many more things. Even the Nazis used Weininger highly selectively in this manner - and they were consummate narcissists.

[@franlewis1607]

Never-ending good stuff, Dr. Vaknin. Thank you.

[@judithfowler9150]

The narc I left in May 2020 who was sucking the life out of me crumbled during the pandemic without waitress, dinner dates, choosing life alone with no zooming of his groups. He developed dementia sxs, his sister and kids had to turn their attention to him. When I heard about it I offered help and in 14 days my life has been hijacked and annexed. I'm exhausted from the love bombing and requests for more, he seems to be recharging through me and his son.

[@dianewagner5454]

TU, Sam! Yes....gives a great will to survive! I learn such Good from you, Sir. Cheers. Di

[@mr.anindyabanerjee9905]

Dynamics of NPD is very well explained Sir. But how do you strike balance between Psychodynamic Studies & teaching management??

[@vela-rn2jz]

Sam, Will you please consider doing a video on high functioning Cluster B personality disorders? I could not find one. Thank you!

[@lesclark878]

thank you 😊

[@andrewking203]

Can you do a video on why narcissists behaviour changes for the worst when his spouse or girlfriend is pregnant? From the Caribbean.

[@xRaverxBabyx]

I remember Sam mentioning in another video that pregnancy triggers the narcissist’s fear of abandonment as is the case with any illness, disease, disability or malaise. Anything that has the potential to interfere with their partner’s full physical capability triggers this fear. This can lead to a worsening of abuse and/or preemptive abandonment.

[@chizzy2214]

It's why I call it, vis-a-vis Autogynaephilia,... Autogynaephilic cannibalism. You can use that, if it suits, just credit me please. A very cogent and sympathetic take on these types of peeps. Thank you.

[@kensalamander9060]

This is rich. Well done Sam, and I also mean it in the broadest, all humanity encapsulating way as you are putting on display. But it’s like as you said in your brilliant and serious teaching. There is nobody home. The audience is your personal brain dead mother and they have no way of probably ever seeing it. “Now Andy did you hear about this one!?” 😉

[@larab8930]

Sam, if a woman leaves the shared fantasy with a (male) narcissist, unexpectedly, early on in the relationship, without cheating on him, will he still be mortified? If she did it in a way that was assertive, autonomous, brutally honest, and was a total rejection of the shared fantasy? (i.e. she woke up to what he was doing and ditched him and told him what a disrespectful user he was). Will this likely cause narcissistic injury or not?

[@samvaknin]

Mortification requires humiliation in public, in front of meaningful others (like peers).

[@larab8930]

@@samvaknin thank you

[@arkadysoldatov6962]

+1 life saved))

[@ginamendez7758]

This is not a human it’s demonic it’s evil 👿