30 Reasons to STAY in Abusive Relationship? NOT!
Professor Sam Vaknin explains why people stay in abusive relationships, including fear, laziness, nostalgia, emotional blackmail, aversion to failure, and a belief that they cannot find anyone better. However, he emphasizes that these reasons are not good enough to stay in an abusive relationship and that people should prioritize their own well-being and happiness. Apologies and promises are not enough to sustain a healthy relationship, and may even be a form of gaslighting if they are intended to skew your perception of reality. Ultimately, the only question to ask is, “Am I happy?” If the answer is no, walk away and don’t look back.
Avoid Mentally Ill: No Families, Relationships
Mentally ill people want to be normal, but it is a lie that therapists and psychologists tell them that they can be cured and lead a normal life. Mental illness is a lifelong condition that is part of a person’s identity and cannot be cured or healed. Mentally ill people should be managed, regulated, and isolated to prevent them from causing harm to themselves and others. Instead of seeking normalcy and intimacy, mentally ill people should focus on their areas of high functioning and accept their limitations.
Daddy Issues: Daddy’s Girl, Mama’s Boy, Father Complex
Daddy issues, a term often used to demean women, are actually more common in men and can be traced back to Sigmund Freud’s father complex. These issues can arise from unhealthy close bonds or distant relationships with fathers, leading to a compulsive pursuit of male attention and gratification later in life. Men and women with daddy issues often display codependent and borderline behaviors, such as possessiveness, jealousy, and emotional blackmail. These issues can lead to drama and self-harming behaviors, as individuals seek to feel alive by teaming up with older men who represent impending death.
Narcissist Needy as Codependent, Crazymaking as Borderline (with Daria Zukowska)
Narcissists and codependents are both externally regulated and bond positively due to their mutual need for external validation. Narcissists and borderlines are both drama generators and consumers, with the borderline controlling the dynamic of the relationship. Narcissists enter a shared fantasy space with their intimate partner, where they have no autonomy, independence, agency, or self-efficacy, and the bond is difficult to break due to the satisfaction of psychological needs and regression to early childhood. Moving on from such a relationship is a process, and the trauma and residual effects may take time to fade away.
Narcissist’s Relationship Cycle Decoded and What To Do About It – Part 2 of 3
Narcissists create a space in their mind and invite their partners into it, expecting them to fulfill maternal functions. They use extreme abuse to convert their partner from an idealized image to a persecutory object, allowing them to devalue and discard them. Narcissists use entraining to synchronize their brainwaves with their victim’s brainwaves, taking over their victim’s ego boundary functions. They repeat cycles of abuse and hoovering because they fail to accomplish separation and individuation from their intimate partners.
Breaking News on CPTSD, BPD, NPD and Self (with Daria Zukowska)
Professor Sam Vaknin discusses the differences and connections between various personality disorders, including covert and overt narcissism, primary and secondary psychopathy, borderline personality disorder (BPD), and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). He argues that all of these disorders are post-traumatic conditions caused by abuse in early childhood. Vaknin proposes a theory of self-states, where people have reactive potentials that are activated by situations, and emotional dysregulation is subject to cognitive distortions, deficits, and biases. He also suggests that the foundational concepts of personality psychology are wrong.
How To Love the Narcissist AND Keep Him?
In this video, Professor Sam Vaknin discusses two contradictory solutions to the question of how to love and keep a narcissist. The first solution is to emulate the narcissist’s dead mother, which creates a reverse trauma bonding that keeps the narcissist coming back. The second solution is to conform to the snapshot of the narcissist’s ideal partner and never deviate from it. However, Vaknin warns that being in a relationship with a narcissist is a form of self-harm and that the narcissist is an absence, chaos, and unadulterated anguish.
EXPOSED: Why Narcissist Hoovers, Replaces YOU
Narcissists devalue and discard their intimate partners in order to separate and individuate, reenacting early childhood conflicts with their biological mother. However, the narcissist never separates or individuates from the internal object, the idealized snapshot or introject of their partner in their mind. The shared fantasy is a part of the religion of narcissism, which is a missionary religion that involves regression to an infantile phase prior to separation and individuation from the mother figure. The narcissist is a captive of their internal world and cannot separate individually from the representation of their partner inside their mind.
Dystopia: This Horrible Time We Live In
Professor Sam Vaknin argues that modern society is experiencing the worst period in human history due to the breakdown of institutions and the rise of negative trends such as splitting, magical thinking, entitlement, and distrust. He highlights the unprecedented nature of these trends and their impact on relationships, mental health, and societal stability. Vaknin warns that if humanity does not address these issues, it may face dire consequences and suffering.
From Narcissistic Cities to Psychopathic Metaverse (EXCERPT)
Professor Sam Vaknin discusses the historical process of the transition from nature to the metaverse, and how it has led to the rise of narcissism and other mental health disorders. He explains that the move from agriculture to cities led to the loss of non-narcissistic traits and behaviors, and the rise of competitiveness, ambition, and lack of empathy. The transition from cities to the metaverse will have much worse outcomes, as cyberspace is solipsistic, self-centered, and aggressive, leading to a transition from narcissism to psychopathy. Ultimately, Vaknin argues that cities and the metaverse have been and will be unmitigated disasters for human psychology and the environment.