YOU Through the Narcissist's Gaze (Skopje Seminar, Day 4, Lecture 3)

We have reached the the final round of this um multi-round boxing match between me and you. And of course I'm um I'm the winner by points. And we're going to discuss in this final round self-love. Then there will be a 10-minute break. And a prison break and then you can return those of you who wish and we will have a questions and a final questions and answers session. At the end of at the end of which we will all cry and hug each other and promise each other to see So self-love is a more compounded phenomenon as usual than we think. And people often confuse self-love with egotism or egoism. And definitely they confuse self-love with narcissism. Whereas narcissism is the exact opposite of self-love. When we say self-love, it assumes the existence of a self. >> [snorts] >> Otherwise there's nothing to love. That is precisely why in narcissism there's no self-love because there's no self. When we love the self, >> [snorts] >> what is it that we are loving? And in a minute we'll discuss love as a construct, as a word, as an idea. But start with the self. What is this object that we are loving? So I told you that the accepted definition of self nowadays, current psychology, is a sense of continuity. The self is a sense of continuity. You are the same person, basically, more or less, from one day to the next. I'm talking about the essence, not about memories, not about experiences, not about um relationships, not about but the feeling that there is something innate, something internal, something immutable, something cohesive, that never ever changes, no matter what happens to you and what who it happens to you with. So, this core, this nucleus, this kernel, that is inside you, that is the self. And it affords you with a delusional, may I add, sense that you are continuous. That you're the same person from one minute to another. And it is this that you love. You love this sense of continuity. Now, that's not how we usually how you usually and if how laymen usually or lay persons usually consider self-love, because they think that self-love is infatuation with the self, or falling in love with the self, or limerence with the self, or some kind of, you know, but it's not. It's actually the comfort, the comfort and the calm that are afforded by a sense of continuity. When you feel continuous, when you feel that you are you from one day to the next, when you feel that there is a stable a stable, unchangeable core, that gives you great inner peace, great sense of calm. And it is this inner peace and calm that you're attached to, that you're bonded with. It is this inner peace and calm that you love. Possibly because it is reminiscent of mother. [snorts] Mothers provide this sense of calm and inner peace to the child. It even has a clinical name. It's called secure base. The mother is a secure base. Overall, we are invested as human beings mostly in safety. We are absolutely obsessed with safety. Safety defines everything. Safety defines what we think and how we feel and how we interact with people and who we interact with and why we break up in relationships and why we establish relationships and so on and so forth. All the decisions we make, all the choices we make, all the cognitions we have, all the emotions we experience, everything basically revolves around a sense of safety. The sense of safety depends on multiple factors. >> [snorts] >> On multiple factors. The first factor is stability. So, we need stability, predictability, determinacy, the belief that things can be determined, especially if you take action. All these are components of a sense of safety. The mother provides the baby, I mean, a good enough mother provides the baby with a sense of safety by being there and not punishing the baby when the baby disengages or detaches or explores the world or so. The mother rewards separation and allows the baby to become an individual in an environment that is totally stable and safe. This is also self-love. We love ourselves. Self-love is definitely maternal love because we love ourselves in a way that allows us to develop and grow. Now, think about it. It's a contradiction in terms. I told you that self-love is the love of our sense of continuity. But if we love our sense of continuity, if we love being the same, that would mean that we hate change. That we hate growth. We hate transformation because we love being the same. Only a mother can balance this. Only a mother can gives you give you the feeling that you are the same. You are the beloved baby or the beloved toddler or the beloved infant and so on. And at the same time, the mother encourages you to grow and develop and transform. A bad mother a bad mother conveys the message, "I love you as you are, but if you dare to change, I will not love you." "I love you as you perform, but if you dare to not perform, I will not love you." Conditional love. A good mother conveys the message, "Never mind what." Well, to some extent. "Never mind what, I will love you as you are. Never mind what, you will always be you." So, a good mother affords, provides the balance between stability, security, safety, predictability, determinacy, and immutability, lack of change, continuity. And at the same time, the mother says, "Don't don't be afraid to experiment. Don't be afraid to try out things. Don't be afraid to discover. Don't be afraid to explore. Don't be afraid to change. Don't be be afraid to transform yourself." This is the dual messaging or in motherhood, in good motherhood, and it appears contradictory, but it is this contradictory nature, this dual messaging, that allows you to develop a core that never changes even as everything in your life changes all the time. This is internalizing the dual mother. The mother's message I love you is the core and the mother's message feel free to change and feel free to grow is the rest of your life. The mother is always with you in this sense and self-love is critically conditioned on receiving this kind of signaling or messaging from the mother. If the mother does not give you these messages you know, on a consistent basis, reliably and believably if her actions, for example, contradict what she says then you will not be able to develop self-love because you will not have a self to love. The narcissist, of course regardless of whether narcissism is a genetic predisposition, if it has a hereditary component, if it's a brain abnormality, all these interesting questions, but to my mind irrelevant because no one disputes that the emergence of pathological narcissism depends critically on a specific dysfunctional family environment. No one denies this. There's no debate about this. So the narcissist is exposed to contradictory messaging from the mother or messaging that is very ominous, very threatening. It could be a contradictory message. Sometimes I love you, sometimes I don't. Now I love you, now I don't, and so forth and so forth. So it's a kind of intermittent reinforcement. There are mothers who are like that. And it could be a threatening message. I I love you only as long as you perform and behave the the way that I tell you to and the way I expect you to. And if you don't behave that way, I will not love you. Withhold in the love. In both these situations, in both these situations, the outcome is pathological narcissism because the real self is prevented from forming. There's no real self. This kind of child creates an imaginary friend who then becomes the false self. One of the roles of the false self is to love the child. The false self ostensibly provides the maternal love that is missing. The narcissist's relationship with the false self is the relationship to a parental figure. The false self parentify parents the the narcissist. The narcissist without the false self feels orphaned and bereft, threatened and dying and so on. The narcissist creates a mother where a mother is absent. Where the mother is dead metaphorically, the narcissist resurrects an totally artificial concocted and fictitious mother figure, which is the false self. But, bear in mind, this is being done by a two-year-old. It is the two-year-old that creates this alternative mother, and it is the kind of mother that two-year-olds imagine. It's a mother that is infallible, a mother that is omnipotent, a mother that is omniscient, a mother that is bigger than anything, a mother that This is the way two-year-old children see their mothers. And he creates a mother in his own or her own image as a child, as a two-year-old, and then as an adult, he remains stuck with this mother in his or her mind, and this is the closest that the narcissist comes to self-love. In many ways, the narcissist is cathected, is emotionally invested in the false self. >> [snorts] >> Definitely, because we know that the narcissist is very protective of the false self. The narcissist is very uh fragile and vulnerable when the false self is attacked. We know when there are threats to the false self, the narcissist becomes aggressive, and so on and so forth. So, there is cathexis there, and exactly like in intimate relationships, the relationship between the narcissist and his false self is a dual mothership. On the one hand, the false self is a mother figure, but on the other hand, it's the narcissist's child. That's why the narcissist is so protective, like a mother would, is so defensive, like a mother would. The narcissist is the false self's mother, and the false self is the narcissist's mother. And then the narcissist takes this model and applies it, this framework, this template, and applies it to intimate relationships. You, in many respects, become a false self, the substitute for the false self when you have an intimate relationship with the narcissist, you become a kind of false self. And the relationship with you reflects or mirrors the relationship with the false self. That's the closest the narcissist comes to self-love, and he imposes this on you. Whereas you may have entered the relationship with a with a narcissist possessed of self-love, maybe you had self-love, maybe you you were able to love yourself. In many cases, you were not, actually. In many cases, you were unable to experience self-love. Many victims of narcissistic abuse have ended up in in a narcissist in a relationship with a narcissist because they cannot experience could not experience self-love. And they misidentified what the narcissist had to offer as is kind of substitute for self-love. They thought they could love themselves through the narcissist. You're beginning to see the mirrors. There's so many mirrors in narcissistic in relationships with narcissists. It's a hall of mirrors. The narcissist wants to experience himself through you. The narcissist hands over segments and figments and fragments of his mind to you so that he can experience these through you. But you also want to experience yourself through the narcissist. You want to love yourself through the narcissist. And the narcissist gives you the illusion that it is absolutely possible. What the narcissist does, he creates an idealized image of you and makes you fall in love with it. So, for the first time in your life, you believe erroneously, mistakenly, that you are you love yourself. You love yourself through the narcissist's gaze. You love the way the narcissist sees you. It is addictive. Through the narcissist's gaze, you see yourself as perfect, as blemishless, as flawless, as as you know, gorgeous, as intelligent, as everything. Everything maybe that you wanted to be and you couldn't. So, you fall in love with this idealized image. The narcissist keeps telling you, "This idealized image is you. That's the reality. You're wrong if you think it's not true. It is true. This idealized image that you are seeing in my eyes when I look at you, that is you. You know, it's a mirror, a faithful mirror. And as finally, you become convinced. It's very convincing. You say, "Well, maybe he sees something that I don't see. Maybe I have an inferiority complex. Maybe I myself. And now is my chance to see myself as I really am in the narcissist gaze. And what am I in the narcissist gaze? Wow, I'm wow in the narcissist gaze. And so for the first time you experience love for this image of you that seems to be you, that seems to resemble you. And you say, "Well, here it is. I have arrived. I am experiencing finally self-love." And it's a highly intoxicating and addictive experience. But of course, you're not in love with yourself. You're in love with a fallacy, a piece of fiction. This idealized image of you has very little to do with you. Well, you may be a bit intelligent or a lot intelligent, but you're not a genius. You may be, you know, relatively good-looking, but you're not drop-dead gorgeous. You're Everything there is exaggerated and has little to do with you. And yet, you want to believe that it is you. And then for the first time in your life on many on many okay many cases, first time in your life you experience self-love and you don't want to let go. You don't want to let go. It's not so much that you're in love with a narcissist. It's that you're in love with with the way the narcissist sees you. And And it's it's the kind of thing that you you cherish and you you feel you feel completed, you feel whole. You feel understood, you feel accepted, you feel embraced, you feel immersed. It's an immersive experience. It's an alternative reality. It's a virtual reality. And today we have immersive environments in virtual reality. Yes, anyone who plays virtual reality knows. And so it's a metaverse. It's a It's an imaginary universe. It's a parallel universe where you are perfect. and here is the men or the woman to real to have realized this. And he is or she is the first to give you the chance to finally love yourself. And so this experience which has absolutely nothing to do with the self and has absolutely nothing to do with love is not self-love. Of course. It's not self-love. It's a delusion and so on. And you need to discover self-love. Now, not all victims of narcissistic abuse have what W. Goldenberg calls self-love deficit. Not all of them. Many of them do. They've never experienced love. They come from dysfunctional households. They were never properly loved by mothers and fathers. They were, you know, many of them many victims of narcissistic abuse share the same background like the narcissist. They both come from same same type of families. Which is why they resonate so strongly. Which is why immediately the victim of narcissistic abuse feels recognized. She feel She feels some kind of recognition when she comes across a narcissist. It's like finding a piece of your soul that was lost somehow. It's like finding your twin or your And so And so some victims of narcissists are like that. But some victims of narcissists were actually healthy and normal and everything. Not broken, not damaged. Experienced self-love. They were maybe in a vulnerable moment in life or experienced a life crisis or something. This This kind of victims did experience self-love. And then when they go through the idealization by the narcissist, when they see themselves through the narcissist's gaze and so on and so forth, these kind of victims can tell the difference. They can tell the difference. They can compare this experience to real healthy self-love. So, the the chances of these kind of vic- victims are much higher. Victims who come to the relationship from a healthy background, they have a basis for comparison. They can compare. And pretty soon, very fast, they realize that something's wrong here, something's sick here. So, it takes them 6 months or 4 months or 1 year, whatever, and they're out. And they're out, and usually they heal on their own. It's just going back to a previous state. It's not such a big deal. The majority of victims, however, don't have this advantage. They have never actually been healthy or have never experienced healthy psychological processes or healthy upbringing or healthy parents or whatever. So, they are at a disadvantage. They don't know better. They don't know better. So, if they are idealized by the narcissist and they feel that the narcissist loves them unconditionally because they're perfect, they don't have a something to compare this to. They don't have another experience which could tell them this is not the real deal. This is not the real thing, not the real McCoy, yeah? This is something This is fake. This is not true. This is pathological. They don't have this. They don't have this. So, they fall for it. And they believe that they are being loved unconditionally as a mother would there and that the idealization is a mere reflection of reality. Many of Many of these victims have a low self-esteem. Their self-esteem is low. So, they doubt themselves all the time. They doubt. So, if the narcissist tells you, "Do you realize how clever you are?" And secretly you think that you're seriously stupid. But you say, you know, I think I'm seriously stupid, but I can't trust myself, mainly because I'm seriously stupid. I can't trust myself. So, I doubt myself. And I don't know if it's true. And he, the narcissist, is so clever. He's so smart. He's so intelligent. So, if he tells me, if he tells me that I'm intelligent, I'd rather believe him. It makes sense to believe him, not myself. Because I cannot trust myself. My judgments, my opinions, my There is an inferiority complex. There is a low self-esteem. And the narcissist exudes confidence, exudes authority, exudes erudition and knowledge and so on. And it's very difficult to resist this, like a guru. And so, when he tells you that you're perfect, who are you to dispute this? He is the authority on perfection. And you, you know, you doubt yourself all the time. You So, you don't trust yourself. And then it's easy to believe the idealized version, believe in the idealized version. It's easy to believe that the idealized version is actually a realistic assessment of who you are. A real The first time someone sees you as you really are. And then then you experience this as self-love because you don't know better. That's why many victims of narcissistic abuse, when they go to therapy, having gone through the pre- previous phases. So, there's a sequence here. You can't skip. You can't skip. You can't interchange. You can't There is absolute sequence which you must follow. It's linear. And then the last stage is discovering self-love. Developing self-love. And then adopting self-love and then experiencing it and then getting comfortable with it and then making it a an integral part of your equipment, mental equipment or arsenal or whatever. So, there are four conditions for um for self-love. And I will go through them a bit. Self-love, of course, depends crucially on a few things. Before you start to develop self-love, and by the way, it's completely possible to develop self-love. That is something that you can acquire. Not empathy. Empathy develops in the early years of life and the process terminates at age five or six years old. After age five or six years old, you cannot acquire affective empathy. No one can teach you to empathize effectively. You can empathize cognitively, you can empathize reflexively, but you cannot develop affective empathy, like feel to feel for people. However, you can absolutely develop self-love and it is integral part of quite a a few treatment modalities. So, but before before you can a key question is, do you want do you want to love yourself? This We need motivation. In all types of therapy, in the absence of motivation, the therapy will not work. The patient needs to want. Patient needs to want to improve, the patient needs to want to change, the the patient needs to define goals that the patient is invested in emotionally, goals that are affected, goals that the the the patient wants to pursue. And so, the key question is, do you want to love yourself? For example, do you want yourself to be happy? Do you want to be happy? Do you wish for yourself to be happy? Now, instinctively the answer is or reflexively the answer is, yes, of course I want to be happy. Really? I advise you to take a step back and ask yourself, do you really and truly want to be happy? Or perhaps you are threatened. Perhaps you are threatened by the notion of happiness. Have you been self-sabotaging and self-defeating all your life? And if you have been undermining yourself all your life, is this not a strong indicator that you do not want to be happy? Maybe you don't know how to manage happiness. Happiness is not your comfort zone. You don't know how to be happy. You know everything about being unhappy. You're experts at being unhappy. You're experts at failure. You're experts at defeat. You know the ropes. You know the rules. You know how to get there. You know how to make sure that you fail. You know You know how to make sure that you're unhappy. And so you feel comfortable. You feel comfortable with being unhappy. Unhappiness is your comfort zone. It's a possibility. I'm not saying that's the case. But do not take for granted the answer to the question, do you want to be Do you truly want to be happy? Because you may be surprised to discover that actually you do not want to be happy. We have studies of women who grew up in in households with domestic violence. Um these women later on grew up as women do and they went to look for intimate partners for, you know, companions, husbands, boyfriends, whatever. And we found in studies, >> [snorts] >> Bancroft, others, we found in studies that these women feel highly uncomfortable when the partner is not abusive. They feel bad when the partner is not abusive. They feel good when they feel bad. Only when they feel bad do they feel good. Because they know how to cope with a physical abuser. They know the rules, they know the ropes, they know what provokes and what doesn't provoke. They know how to avoid, they know how to They know. They know the the ambience, the environment and they they It's home. It's familiar. And And they're there. And that is the concept of of comfort zone. We even discovered that when the partner refused to abuse, when the partner refused to physically abuse the the woman. In this case, it was a woman. The studies were focused on women. Um the the woman pushed the partner to abuse them, provoked and on purpose and prodded the part the partner to abuse. And this is known as projective identification. This behavior is projective identification when we try to force people to conform to a specific scenario that reflects part of parts of us that we reject. So, comfort zones are very, very powerful internal constructs and we always try to default default to the comfort zone. Always. And your comfort zone may not necessarily be the zone of self-love. Maybe your comfort zone is self-hatred, self-destructiveness, self-defeat, self-loathing. That could comfort zone. It stands to reason that people who abuse substances, junkies and alcoholics and so on, their comfort zone is self-destructiveness. When they're self-destructive, they're happy. You could be content. You could be happy by destroying yourself. Absolutely. Masochism, for example. So, this is the first question. Do I really want to be happy? If you don't want to be happy, then no way you can you can love yourself. And then the second question is, um do you value Do you value favorable outcomes? Do you value what we call a sense of self-efficacy? Do you want to be efficacious? Do you want to accomplish things or to extract beneficial outcomes from the environment? In other words, let me put it simply, do you want to succeed? Now, there's a mountain range of studies that show that many people are afraid of success. Absolutely afraid of success. They sabotage success. They undermine success, and they regard success as a kind of threat. So, these people are not self-efficacious. They undermine themselves. They sabotage. They They So, if if there's a special a very important job interview, they're late. Of the Of there's a an exam, they don't study. Or they get drunk the day before. It's They always sabotage somehow. They Not because they're stupid, but because they're afraid of success. They It It's It's a threat. You need to satisfy these two conditions. You need to want happiness for yourself. You want We need to want to be happy. And you want And you need to want to be self-efficacious. You need to want to succeed. If you don't fulfill these two cumulative conditions, then you are incapable, at this stage at least, of self-love. And you need to work on these issues first, your self-destructiveness. Your self-defeat. Your self-sabotage. You need to work on these first before you can work on your self-love. If, however, you're okay, you want You want to be happy, and you you know you want to succeed, and everything is okay. You can move on to the next stage, and the next stage is the development of self-love. Self-love has four components. Four components, and I will go through them. And you need to work with a therapist to develop each and every one of these four components. The first component is self-awareness. There's no self-love without awareness of the self, of course. Because when you love something, you need to know what it is that you're loving. So, self-awareness intimate, detailed, and compassionate knowledge of oneself. You need to analyze. There's something called SWOT analysis. You need to analyze strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats. You need to know yourself well, not only the positive sides, also the negative sides. Not only the advantages, but also the shortcomings. You need to completely know yourself. Completely recognize yourself. Create a map that is very detailed, topographic, in other words, so that you capture yourself totally. You need not idealize yourself, and you need not devalue yourself. Self-awareness means a realistic assessment and gauging of who you are. Realism is is a key is a key requirement for self-awareness. Then, having having met yourself having introduced yourself to yourself now you know who you are, for better or for worse, you need to accept this. Many people are self-aware but because they're self-aware, they are also self-rejecting. They reject who they are. So, it's not true that if you're self-aware you're healthy. That's completely untrue. Many people are completely self-aware and definitely mentally unhealthy. Second condition is self-acceptance. Do you accept yourself unconditionally? Do you embrace your core identity, personality, character, temperament, relationships, experiences, life circumstances, everything? This is a precondition. So, once once you have accepted yourself, you're aware of yourself, you get to know yourself, you accepted yourself, the next stage is self-trust. Each of these stages is independent in the sense that for example, you can be aware of yourself, you can then accept yourself, but having become aware of who you are and even accepted it, you know that you cannot trust yourself. So, I say, I know who I am and I can definitely not trust myself. So, the third condition is self-trust. You need to have the conviction that you have your best interests in mind. You need to be kind of like you're watching your own back. You're your own protector. You're your own your own defender. Um you need to have agency and independence so that you feel in control. You feel mastery over your life. And that creates a sense of of trust. In a way, you need to be your best friend in effect. Now, would you like to be your best friend? Again, the reflexive answer, yes, of course I would like to be my best friend. I don't know. I wouldn't like to be my best friend. For example, definitely wouldn't. I can't think of a fate worse than being my best friend. So, am I aware of myself? Well, there's a 732-page book >> [laughter] >> uh about me. Malignant Self Love. Yeah, it seems that I'm aware of of myself. Do I accept myself? Evidently, I'm here. I'm lecturing. I'm not crying, falling in a heap, and so on. Definitely accept myself. Do I trust myself? Not at all. I don't trust myself at all. I have a seriously impaired reality testing. I cannot trust my judgments and opinions. I regulate from the outside. I have zero self-trust. So, you see that each stage is independent. Cumulatively, it yields self-love, but you could be stuck at any of these stages. Definitely. Having trust Having come to trust yourself, having become your own best friend, someone you can consult, someone you can rely on, someone who would protect you, someone who would would guarantee you, vouchsafe for your well-being, and so on and so forth, you move to the last stage, and the last stage or the last element is self-efficacy. The belief that you are capable of accomplishing things. You're capable of guaranteeing results. You're capable of setting rational, realistic goals, and you possess the wherewithal to realize these goals. These are the four core elements of self-love that you should work on with a therapist. Once you have accomplished this, once you have realized these four stages, you're essentially, clinically speaking, healthy. Your healing Your healing journey has ended. There's nothing much more to be done, except that while becoming self-aware, you also realize how vulnerable you are. You have accepted some things. You've So, now you are more in a way vigilant in a good way. So, more aware, let's say, not only of yourself, but also of the environment. The ancient Greeks knew that. The ancient Greeks had five words for love, not one. And each word for love designated another form of love. And they They combined these five, like so many LEGO bricks. They combined these five to yield highly specific derivatives of love. So, they the Greeks knew everything there is to know about love. Strangely, um they didn't have a word for self-love. But, they had a word which meant loving others because you love yourself. They philautia. Love philautia it was called. Loving others because you love yourself. In other words, as the Greeks said, you cannot love other people unless you love yourself. And then they had other words. They had the word for loving family members. They had the word for loving warriors in battle. They have all kinds of love. And all of them emanated essentially from what we would call today self-love, and it is the final lesson in your healing process. If you love yourself as a self-contained, self-sufficient system, then you don't love yourself, or at the very least you're not healed. Self-love, like any love, is directional. Once you love yourself, you have the full capacity to love others. Perhaps you failed you have failed with a narcissist because you did not love yourself and did not have the capacity to love others. And then you found someone whom you could not love. Someone who gave you the option to not love them. Because what you have had with a narcissist was not love. He didn't love you. And I have shocking news for you. You did not love him. There's no love there at all, of any kind. Not a hint. What you had with a narcissist was self-reinforcing, delusional, fantastic space within which you fell in love with yourself. And with a narcissist capacity to make you fell fall in love with yourself. And he fell in love with his maternal figure, which is not you. You were both floating and drifting apart in a fantastic space like two atoms. You had nothing in common. You had nothing with each other. Nothing. Nothing. It was all a soap bubble. It was all a delusion. So, don't say that you loved the narcissist. That you experienced love. He loved you. You loved him. That's complete nonsense. And many many people gravitate to relationships with emotionally unavailable people like narcissists because they are emotionally unavailable. And they are emotionally unavailable in the majority of cases because they don't know how to love themselves. Only when you love this yourself you have surplus that you can give to others. If you have a deficit there's nothing you can give others. If you're hungry, you don't share your food. If you're hungry, you eat it. So, if you're hungry for for love because you've never experienced self-love, how will you be able to give love to others? Any love that you may get around to you will use. You will consume. You will never give it to others. But then you need a partner who doesn't care about love, who doesn't do love. You need a partner who is emotionally absent. You need a partner who is not there. You need a partner who who isn't. You need absence as your partner. You need the void. You need the black hole as your partner. So, you choose someone with with whom you can both pretend and self-deceive as if you are in a love affair, as if you are having love, as if you are experiencing love. But it's all a show a charade. It's all charade. It's all It's all not true. It's not true. It's a phantasmagoria. It's a It's a mirage. It's a It's a fata morgana in the desert. You know, there's an oasis. It's not there. It's not real. It's So, Finally, to experience and develop self-love will allow you to find another person with whom you can love, and that person will be able to love you back. As long as you do not develop self-love, your healing might be complete in the sense that you will no longer have an introject and no longer be traumatized. You'll no longer be traumatized. You will no longer have all kinds of negative effects and so. Some of the healing, big part of the healing can be completed, but as long as you do not develop self-love, you will never ever have a life. Self-love is a precondition for having a life, not a simulation. As long as you don't have self-love, what you think you have, the life you think you're having, is not a life. It's a simulation of a life. And that's it. Simulations are pre-programmed and they come to an end. That's not the way to live. If you do not experience yourself, and the only way to experience yourself is via self-love. If you do not experience yourself, you will never ever experience anything and anyone ever. It's a precondition. That's why the maternal role is super crucial. It is the mother It is the mother that teaches you self-love. And she teaches you self-love via this mixed messaging that I that I mentioned. She teaches you to stay the same even as you evolve, even as you grow, even as you transform, and that way to internalize her love for you. Her love for you becomes cathected, becomes attached to your core and to the process of change itself. Everything you do and everything you are, you love. You love through her. You always love through your mother, always. All the loves that you have and all the loves that you will ever know to the very last day of life are essentially just transformations and transmutations of your mother's love. And if you've never experienced a mother's love, then it's a serious problem. A therapist may be able to help you with it. May be able able to teach you to parent yourself. So, we have techniques of re-parenting. So, may be able to teach you to be your own mother. So, that's in some vicarious remote way, you may enjoy the glow of what could have been a sun, the sun that never rose in your universe, but at least the glow, at least the the warmth, you may experience this at least. And you should go for it. You should go for it definitely. But, those of us who have had mothers who did not love us or incapable of loving us, there's no maybe no intent, but they are deprived for life. And they are damaged for life. And it's not a small damage. And when our mothers not only did not love us, but wanted us dead, then we end up being narcissists or psychopaths. Narcissists especially because we internalize the mother's wish. If the mother wanted you dead, then mother is always right. And you internalize her wish for you to be dead. You internalize her deadness. And you become nothing but the extension of this wish for you to be dead. You become dead. So, narcissists are dead. They're dead inside. And they're dead inside because it was essentially the wish of the mother to to kill them in effect. Metaphorically, of course. And sometimes not metaphorically. In my case, at least not metaphorically. So, this is This is the picture. You need ultimately therefore in the final stage of the healing to become your own mother if you never had one. Or never had a functioning one. You need to become your own mother. And if you skip this stage, and you don't want to become your your own mother because the experience you've had with your mother was horrible and you don't want to replay it and you don't want to You don't want mothers. No mothers, thank you. No mothers, we're British, yeah? So, if you if you skip this stage, again I say, you will have accomplished functional healing. Like you will have accomplished the ability to function again and to But something subs- something important, something some quiddity, some essence will be missing. And one day this will erupt again and consume you. This will happen again, simply. If you don't take care of this, if you don't develop self-love, you will again end up with a narcissist. You will again end up with a toxic in a toxic relationship. You will again end up sabotaging yourself, harming yourself, damaging yourself, and so on. You need to learn to love yourself. And if you necessary, and if you didn't have the right mother, you need to become your own mother for a while, at least for a while. And see yourself through a mother's eyes because through a mother's eyes every single one of you is always eminently lovable. Mothers love. That's what mothers do. Thank you. >> [applause] [applause] >> Okay. >> [applause] >> Now, we take we take a 10-minute break. It's 3:00. Uh do you want more? Do you want like 3:15? Okay, 3:15. We will be back here. Questions and answers. And then we will say goodbye.