Narcissist: People are Silhouettes, Tools (Yesterday's Video Challenged)
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- Yesterday's video challenged. Watch it here: • Narcissist: How I Expe...
Q: Many say that your video yesterday about how you perceive and experience people is overly dramatic.
Sam: It underestimates the situation.
Q: In the video confession you posted yesterday, you said, and I quote: “I experience people as dim apparitions, inert characters in a boring novel or a tedious, overlong film - lifeless, except when they provide me with narcissistic or sadistic supply at which point they spring to life (like so many nutcrackers or gingerbread men) and become radiant, kinetic, idealized beings. Stuttering, then freezing frames in obsolete films or in burning celluloid photographs.” Could you elaborate on that? Do you see people like that from the first minute you meet them?
Sam: It is a form of aphantasia, an inability to visualize. Narcissists have an empathy deficit, what I call an empathy aphantasia.
When I meet someone for the first time, I see them through a glass darkly, like ectoplasm, a fuzzy emanation: faded, fuzzy, and forlorn. They are mute, as if their mouths are sewn shut. They fade into and out of them frame, there and not there simultaneously. The way healthy people regard objects through their peripheral vision.
Only when I consider people as sources of supply or partners to be inducted in the shared fantasy, do they come alive in my mind.
I then transition to the opposite pole: an intensive interest in them, an obsession with the details of their lives, a fascination with their personality.
But even then, they interest me as actors for my scripts or props for the production of my shared fantasy. I cathect them, true - but I decathect them with alarming alacrity, literally overnight. I lose all interest and I move on, not giving a second thought to them.
I experience my life and my past as a novel or a movie. I am more of an observer than a true participant. So, everyone in the book or on the set are characters, like in a video game. When the film is over and the novel had been read, the characters are sealed forever among the covers or the frames, trapped like ants in amber, a vague memory perhaps.
Q: Is it because “They cease to exist when they cease to give and I expect to be treated as transactionally”?
Sam: Yes. They are no longer of use, so why invest any scarce resources in recalling them? I do miss what I got from them: sex, supply, services, and safety. I do miss the period, their adulation at my accomplishments. But why would I miss them? Service providers are interchangeable.
Q: In the same video, you said: “People pass through my perimeter, devoid of all significance, their limbs askew, their mouths gaping. They invariably exit stage left, never to be brought to mind.” Care to explain that?
Sam: People are fleeting intrusions into my inner world. Regrettably, as a narcissist, I depend on their output. Unlike the psychopath, I am not self-sufficient or self-contained. So, I grant people temporary access to my life and mind and when they are expended and have become of no utility, I discard them the way one discards an old battery. My life is the smartphone, they are the batteries.
Q: So, this is true: “I have nostalgia for the period, for memories of abundant, high-quality supply - never for people. I don’t miss anyone ever: they are mere sepia memories trapped in the amber of my mind.”
Sam: It is true and it is a form of self-supply via secondary supply involving recall. When I recall moments of triumph and self-imputed, self-aggrandising glory, I become my own source of secondary narcissistic supply. It is then that I come as close as possible to self-sufficiency. So, I have a vested interest in erasing people from my mind: it renders me my own source of supply, it removes my ego dystonic dependency on others.
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Holy Crap! This is exactly how anonymous people view each other on social media.
This is astonishing but explains so much about my ex narc. Just 3 months of no contact post break up after 2 years together, he spoke to me as if I was a stranger it was so bizarre! He told me things about him as if he just met me even explaining his personality quirks as if I didn't know? The way he spoke about us was as if we broke up over a year ago. He saw my picture and was surprised I wore eye make up while I wore that look almost always while together? WILD. It makes so much sense now and all I can say is WOW. I really wish we as victims could have just a modicum of this ability to erase people from memory so we too can move on from them. They even have that, so unfair lol.
It must be a living hell being a narcissist. Its not a life to admire or envy. I had a relationship with one unfortunately for a long time. They are so messed up, devoid of normal conversation, arrogant, deeply insecure. I wonder in 10 years, hes now 63 when he looks back at his life of discarding and hoovering...there is no quality of life with him.. its a long life of deceit and pretence. No good career built up, no looking back and being proud of what he has acheived. Hes wasted all of it. Being a parent has failed..he doesnt know how to relate in a healthy way with them. He has no boundaries as in parent/friend.
Its all round been bad for family, partners and friends. Friends are discarded, usually when they have had enough of the charade.
Your needs are never ever met. You know they dont feel love, It is indeed just words. This one has no remorse, he lies constantly but, not in a clever way. The lie is born without thought which brings deep embarrassment. He makes me glad for who i am. I wouldnt want to be wrestling with all that narc crap in my head. Imagine that...having to remember all those lies you've told to so many people. Its tragic.
I guess the Narcs would want to keep these secrets to themselves bc if targets know how they are viewed, they would avoid the Narc and try to protect themselves by not not engaging or participating in conversations, etc. The honest reveal is insightful. TY, Dr. Sam.
Narcissists of any kind are not good for humanity 👍💯
@@mrsqueakthecat.8061 It's hardly "profitable" in any way, even if you can hold them back, they moan, deflect, evade or end up running away. Keep in mind you are breaking their inner narrative, belief, perception (it's curious because here one could say who is gaslighting who..) so you become a real problem.
Sam Vaknin has been good for my education about narcissism. Madonna, Steve Jobs, Oprah, Jesus Christ and many leaders and successful people were and are narcissists with roles in humanity. It is up to us to see them for who they are and what boundaries are to be drawn with them.
“Like for example in this interview” 🤜 😂😂 GENIUS!!!! 🏆🏆🏆
Can u explain that line?
Communicating with him was the worst. I could always tell he wasn’t paying attention or listening. It was the blank stare. He would start every conversation with “Listen to me very carefully.” It drove me up a wall.
Projecting his inability to listen on to you. It's tough to accept that this is who we are dealing with. "I cannot listen, therefore no one can listen."
May I ask? In what capacity did you interact with Sam? And for how long a period? Fascinating and insightful.
Thank you Dr. Sam for your extended application. I grew up with narcissistic parents, especially Mother , and spent 13 years with a very narcissistic partner. I used to ask him “you know what it is to be abused yourself ( his family life was very
dysfunctional), so why do you perpetuate the behaviour? Haven’t you learned anything?? I appreciate that over your own history, you have lived, studied, and shared your knowledge with us. The compilation of pictures nice too.
Extended explanation
Thank you, Prof. Vaknin, for making this video. I've watched many of your videos over the past 6 months, and I find this video especially useful in understanding Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Before watching this video and yesterday's video, I felt I only understood NPD in an abstract sense and without a way to relate it to my own experience. Even though you echo many of the concepts in your previous videos, I find this video makes those concepts come to life and really allows one to imagine what living with NPD is like. Thank you for sharing. I don't know if there are many people who could articulate the NPD experience as well as you have.
Thank you for this no holds barred, genuine and forthright description of how the narcissist perceives other people. Fascinating.
I cant help myself but to feel bad for narciststs. I feel that deep down they never intended to be this cruel. Its not even intended to be cruel. It's just all coming from insecurity, and in the process of being insecure, severely hurting others alongside themselves. Growing up with a family full of narcicists, I've always felt that deep down inside these are good people. Much like professor Vankin is. I am fascinated by the topic and planning to study psychology next year.
@@dcj991 Absolutely will keep my boundaries. Empathy does not equal lack of boundaries. Although for a lot of people that's exactly what it means.
I agree, it definitely is more leaning towards an understatement in yesterday's video. One big reason why I felt so bad leaving.
I totally get it, Sam…very well articulated. 😊
Excellent information
Thank you for this dr Sam.
I was trying to understand the narcissist man i was with but now i see this is making me understand that im no angel either...
Truth! great show ❤
Great explanation and thank you for sharing your great expertise. You are a genius and have helped so many people to understand narcissism ❤
Sam, thanks for these videos where we can get an idea from first hand of this situation.
One question: Do you know how much that applies to a sadic, perverse, machiavelic psychopath?
I would be very interested in getting more inside about this "in the mind of a psychopath".
Many thanks
If a narcissist developmentally arrests at age two, or around that, and if we could remember what it was like when we were two, I have a feeling it would make sense. I can't remember being that young. I feel like it would be disorienting and I think this is what he is describing. I think it is very interesting.
I guess, it's more like the toddler's age but good point.
I´m a bit puzzled - how can you make so objective descriptions of the narcissistic mind/functioning from your own inner self; the "inside" as a narcissist, and then compare it with the more "normal" way of relating when all you know is your own narcissistic limited perception of the world ?
Because he can only reflect about it, with cognitive empathy, by reflecting about our words and actions, but he can't actually feel that way.
I can imagine with logic how a narcissist feels, but I can't emote like them, I believe that is similar to what narcissists experience but the other way around.
@@oscarreygadas Well - this makes sense; by "cognitive empathy".
Though maybe there after all is a difference between the way "empaths" understand the narcissists? All normal people are sometimes egotistical, childish and self-absorbed and thus able to understand a narcissist.
But the reverse is hardly possible - like explaining "red" to a color-blind person?
@@barbarasterner7863 It's not that narcissists are incapable of understanding. They simply do not care, because it's not them, and the labor outweighs any benefit. Like a computer that is only designed to approximate human behavior and extract resources.
IN my case, after four years of a relationship, she broke up for reasons completely opposite to what we have experienced. She liked red, now hated it, or liked one thing, and now complaining about having that same thing wanting something she had never seemed to like. After a few days, she addressed me as a "hey friend" or "hey you", not even using my name. Anyway, it's been a year now and it's been tough. This way of explaining it was mind blowing. Thank you Dr!
Interesting.
If you found out that someone pretended to love you only for the purpose of using and exploiting you, how valuable would that love be?
@@Songbirds321 Munchhausen's by proxy
Sam do you have any explanations for when narcissists sometimes warn you about themselves? (If warning you does not benefit them)
All such “warnings” are self-aggrandising. Search the channel for “communal” and for “prosocial” as well as for “masoch”.
Amazing. I wonder if your experience as a narcissist who knows he’s a narcissist is the same for those narcissists who are unaware of their narcissism? To different types of narcissists, covert, overt, somatic, cerebral etc?
Since 1997, I have interviewed and tested 2000 people diagnosed with NPD. Everything I say applies to all narcissists, not only to me.
@@samvakninthank you. I suppose I was assuming those unaware of their narcissism know their actions are experienced by others as disconcerting but they don’t really know why. You can articulate the inner workings of your narcissism, whereas those who do not possess awareness of who they are could not say, I perceive people this way because I am a narcissist. A covert narcissist may just believe their own confabulations and think, this is just who I am, and does not attribute their actions to them being a narcissist. I am always grateful for your willingness to share your experiences.
Empathy for narcissist versus the total life stolen by them? My life.
What to do?
Does understanding the travails of my narcissistic abuser help my abused self?
Yes, it helps to protect you in the future. But also it helps you understand truly how little all of the narcissistic abuse had to do with the actual you.
Thank you.
You are correct.
The rejection having nothing to do with you was a revelation.
Sam has been a lifeline
Sam's IQ is a gift for all
That is an excellent analogy.
Thank you
@samvaknin I am reading “Toxic Relationships Abuse and its Aftermath”. Can you explain the following passage under “Surviving The Narcissist?”
“Significant others in the narcissists life have very clear roles: the accumulation and dispensation of past primary narcissistic supply in order to regulate current narcissistic supply.”
I have some difficulty understanding the difference between primary or secondary supply and how past primary supply might “regulate” current supply.
Will you explain? It’s driving me nuts, trying to envision it.
samvak.tripod.com/faq76.html
@@samvaknin Thank you good sir.
Sam, to what extent does all that apply to a borderline??
Search the BPD playlist.
Hey Vaknin, the way you describe people is how i do but only in my dreams. Zombies, ghostly, only have a spark of life briefly and move on. I wonder if narcissists go through life in a dream state?
Watch my recent video on the shared fantasy as a hypnotic state.
Question for Dr or other readers. Is it possible for a narcissist to just be mildly passive aggressive/abusive? And is it possible for a narcissist to get supply through sympathy manipulation or lying only, and not by sheer dominance/abuse? Thanks. Any feedback from experience or expertise would be appreciated.
In one way it is interesting to look behind the curtain of a narcissists mind on the other hand what you say is just very disturbing. I think that's your point, but I doubt whether the message will be understood. People in this age have lost themselves. A narcissist just pales in comparison to what so-called healthy people do to themselves. Let's see how long that lasts.
so how about when the "random person" suddenly offends you, do you perceive that person more clearly? What about an opponent of some kind, do you have like "random opponent 1", "random opponent 2" concept, too (like wifes?) What about the people hierarchically higher than you (your boss), the same concept applies even when your fury doesn't allow you to simply "forget them"?
The first few minutes answered the main question that I had about yesterday's video: Is this this the typical narcissistic experience, or yours specifically?
Professor Vaknin, are individuals with high IQ, especially while growing up, more at risk of narcissistic style or tendencies? What happens if it goes the opposite way, when a high IQ individual tries to overcompensate for their "difference" to try to fit in?
Search the channel for IQ, gifted, and for intelligence.
I used to tell my ex to leave so I could "think about him", I just needed time to work on my snapshot of him 😅 and the real him was messing with my "artistic proces" 😂
It's more sad than funny tbh.
Prof Vaknin, I feel like I relate to much of this strongly, yet I’m definitely not a narcissist. I really struggle with object constancy unless other people interact with me, promoting me to “remember” them. Even family and good friends. I usually need a trigger to put them in my head. Can trauma or other things cause this also?
To some degree and only temporarily. Search the channel for "schizoid".
@@samvaknin I will. Thank you sir.