The Narcissist Living Rent Free in Your Brain

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]There is a thin line between on the one hand thinking about the narcissist or consuming content about narcissism, learning about narcissistic abuse for the purpose of liberating yourself from the brainwashing, by the way, that the narcissist's shared fantasy imposes upon you. There's a thin line between that and on the other hand, thinking about the narcissist, looking into narcissism, narcissistic abuse content because you don't know what else to do with yourself or you don't know how to get back to being who you are. Just living the life that you're living, which by the way is the antidote to narcissistic abuse. The antidote to narcissistic abuse, the end goal, let's say, of escaping the narcissist's shared fantasy, the end result of having exfoliated the brainwashing. These are your brain waves following [snorts] the narcissist's brain waves, which is what the narcissist uh does to you through the shared fantasy matches your brain waves to his or her brain waves. The end goal of getting that out looks like, I'm just back to living my life. I'm just doing my own thing. I don't really think about them too much anymore or I don't really need to look into narcissism content because well because what is what I'm talking about today. Like how is that turn made? Part of it is learning about what the hell happened to you. For example, it's brainwashing.

[00:01:28]It's conditioning. It's entrainment, which is the fancy word for brainwashing. And this narcissist is some strange uncanny human experience masquerading as a successful or competent or charming or humble or whatever uh person that ropes you in through lovebombing and blah blah blah blah blah. Part of turning away is learning about what the hell happened to you.

[00:01:56]The part where this reaches a standill, the part where learning more about narcissism doesn't serve you, the part where thinking more about the narcissist doesn't serve you, is the part that it's the part that makes the narcissist the narcissist to begin with. It's the impossibility of meeting the narcissist in reality.

[00:02:22]It is the endless rabbit hole of self-sacrifice that the narcissist demands, but no matter how much you self-sacrifice, it's never enough.

[00:02:35]It is the impenetrable fortress that the narcissist exists behind such that they cannot receive your love for what it really is, nor can they receive accountability.

[00:02:49]It is the existential distance from reality. That's what makes a narcissist a narcissist. How they're here, but they're somehow not here.

[00:03:01]That's where thinking about them and looking more into it fails you because they're lost in such a strange and profound endless seeming way that no matter how much you think about the narcissist, you will not in the same way that no matter how much you self-sacrifice for the narcissist, try to empathize with the narcissist, try to meet the narcissist where he or she is, you will not find common ground. You will not finally grasp the thing that they are so as to be able to say there they are.

[00:03:44]That's the person who did it to me and this is what happened.

[00:03:49]There is no tangible, rational, you can grasp it with your mind thing that the narcissist either is or has that by thinking about them enough or researching about them enough, you'll finally be able to make sense of what the hell happened to you. Because what happened to you is this endless rabbit hole, this existential distance. here is a human being, but they're actually nowhere to be found. That's what happened to you. And in the same way again that no matter how much you try to meet them on common ground or whether you try to hold them accountable or love them, they're nowhere to be found at the end of the day. So too, you are thinking about them and you're researching narcissism content results in the same sort of thing. They're nowhere to be found.

[00:04:48]that might be helpful to learn. This is quite a difficult thing to contend with.

[00:04:54]Like what does that say about them and what does that say about me? And is it kind of can I get away with on a on a moral level on a on an ethical it presents an ethical dilemma. Can I get away with just like hating them? Except, okay, they're mentally ill and they're so far away that like the story never seems to end. You try to decide to hate them. They're nowhere to be found.

[00:05:21]Meaning, your hate can't finally land on something graspable such that the hate feels valid. The hate falls on itself. Just like the love to the narcissist fall, you try to give love to a narcissist, it falls on itself. You try to give yourself to a nar a narcissist, you fall on yourself.

[00:05:41]So then you try to say, [clears throat] for example, not that this is you, but for example, you try to say, "Okay, well, I'll just decide that they're sick and I feel bad for them."

[00:05:51]But there's nothing you can decide about how you feel about them besides this is someone who's dealing with a mental illness that you never knew existed and maybe you heard the word narcissism, but the way that it shows up close to you face to face, no one will ever know what it's like unless they're uh shown it face to face. And somehow they're here, but they're nowhere to be found. And I got roped in through the uh through the kind of tactics. I hesitate to use that word because it makes it sound so meticulous, like calculated. I got roped in through the kind of uncanny and inexplicable psychological forces in the narcissist's mind. Love bombing, the idealization, and the intermittent reinforcement. I got roped into a relationship with someone who I assumed did have something real about them because I assume that I have something real about me and other members of my species therefore must have something real about them. I got roped into a relationship with somebody who lacks this sort of real thing about them, a true self.

[00:07:04]That's what happened to me. And it amounts to something like I got bullied when I was a kid and that's what happened to me.

[00:07:14]>> [snorts] >> You don't have to, and I I don't mean to make light of bullying or make some direct comparison with narcissistic abuse between like schoolyard bullying.

[00:07:23]Although the more you take distance from the narcissist, the more you're able to see that they're this idiotic coward who just tries to get away with bullying and you just don't have to play into that as much as you thought you did. But the shared fantasy made them seem like so much more than an idiotic bully. And you have to take your journey as it comes.

[00:07:41]Although I say that they're an idiotic bully, you might not be at that uh stage of, you know, realization or whatever.

[00:07:48]It might not be safe to treat them that way. So, you still have to do some more kind of backing off and finding yourself again. Um, my point was that you don't have to think about what the bully did.

[00:08:01]You don't have to research bullying until the end of time to make sense of the fact that you got bullied when you were a kid. And the reason I say I don't mean to make light of bullying is because maybe, you know, someone gets bullied in a way that they do spend a lot of the rest of their life wondering why and and and looking into why. And the same thing for them. No matter what the trauma is, at some point life demands, in order for you to get back to living, life demands a certain turning away from a preoccupation with the woe of your life, the plight, the suffering, the pain, the stress, the conflict.

[00:08:44]Again, no, not again. Just like with narcissistic abuse, the real profound traumas in our life don't very easily offer up some tangible answer for why they happened and what even happened in the to begin with. Why something happened includes like features what is it that happened? If I knew if I knew why it happened, then I'd be able to tell what happened. Like what is it? Is it a learning experience or is it because of just my fate or is it because my bad parenting or their bad parenting or I'm trying to know what happened.

[00:09:25]Um there is a lack of this in the narcissist that they're nowhere uh to be found.

[00:09:34]And I'm not going to say that's the extent of what you need to know about the narcissist because your experience of narcissistic abuse demands that you answer therefore like given that this is the case, you need to connect the dots about, oh, that explains why this happened. And what about like if they did that, well, can that be explained by what I'm learning about narcissism? And here again, we're on the side of learning about this stuff and thinking about this stuff for the point of liberation versus thinking about this stuff. Learning about this stuff because you don't know what else to do, which is the moment where the narcissist is happy that you're thinking about him. The narcissist is happy that you're uh looking into narcissism content. Think of it like if you live in North Korea.

[00:10:25]There's this very narcissistic shared fant narcissistic shared fantasy from the leader of North Korea that is imposed upon all of its what do you say civilians or um all the people that live in all the North Koreans. There you go.

[00:10:45]Does Kim Jong-un want his people to think about him? And I'm relating this to does the narcissist want you to think about him or her? Does that indicate that you're still under the spell and oh, you can't get rid of me. I'm still in your thoughts. Is that really the case? Is someone who indoctrinates you, which is what happens in the shared fantasy and what happens in North Korea?

[00:11:07]Does the leader of that indoctrination, the figurehead of that indoctrination, want you to think about him or her? Yes and no. in terms of calling, let's say, Kim Jong-un, the narciss the narcissist from your life, aka Kim Jong-un, into in terms of calling him into your mind to make sure that you're not disobeying him, to make sure that you're not thinking any taboo thoughts, to make sure that you're not being too much of yourself, then the narcissist does want you to think about him or her in that way. But as it relates to if you're thinking about Kim Jong-un in a way where you're figuring out that he indoctrinated you, then no, the narcissist certainly doesn't want you to be realizing that you've been indoctrinated. The narcissist doesn't want you to do the kind of investigatory work that actually results in putting the pieces together for liberation. The narcissist doesn't want you to be able to grieve what happened to move forward and integrate what went on in you through the relationship with the narcissist to learn from the experience and to move on. If that's the sort of thinking you're engaged in, if your research into narcissism results in that, then no, the narcissist doesn't want you to think about uh him or her. It's it's the most disobedient thing you could do. And what that looks like is if being yourself is the antidote to nar narcissistic abuse, it's precisely when you're being yourself that the narcissistic abuse is going to remind you. The narcissist in your brain is going to remind you not to do that. Don't be in the present moment.

[00:12:41]Don't focus on yourself. Don't enjoy life or don't enjoy yourself or don't feel anything real to you, whether it's enjoyable or not. Get back to thinking about the narcissist. Get back to researching narcissism.

[00:12:53]You might view the moments where the narcissist calls upon you in your mind as this is where the success in recovering from narcissistic abuse hinges.

[00:13:05]You're being yourself when Kim Jong-un has to remind you not to. Does that make sense?

[00:13:12]And so you have to stomach you have to stomach the emotions and thoughts that threaten to pull you back into the shared fantasy. You have to exercise your discernment about what does that look like? When am I being pulled into the shared fantasy? You know, being called by the narcissist to think about him and her versus when I'm doing it on my own accord in order to liberate myself. There's a lot of discernment here. A lot of useful conversations. um to be had. It's very difficult to navigate not only narcissistic abuse, but anything as profoundly traumatic as narcissistic abuse. It's very difficult to navigate it on one's own, left to one's own devices, you know, faced with all of the processes of of one's own mind. Um, especially when brainwashing is involved and a narcissistic abuse conditioning, brainwashing, entrainment is involved, you're up against some someone who's uh co-opted your own brain waves for their for their purposes, the narcissist, the Kim Jong-un.

[00:14:19]The situation is actually much worse than a lot of uh online content proposes. Um, a lot of the vitriol that spit at the narcissist online, they're the worst thing ever and they're a demon and they suck and f them and they should die. Like this sort of content, it's actually very useful to frame this sort of content as a defense. It's a defense mechanism. It's a coping strategy that's meant to defend against the reality that the victim of narcissistic abuse gets brainwashed.

[00:14:57]It's worse than the narcissist is bad and they're a demon and we hate them and they should die. It's worse than that.

[00:15:06]The narcissist is a purveyor. I don't know if that's a word or or if it's the right one. The narcissist is a messenger for a mental illness that brainwashes people to not be themselves, to unravel at the seams, to unbecome.

[00:15:26]Narcissism through the narcissist hates what is real, including you. In order to get close to the narcissist, you have to let go of the reality that you are.

[00:15:39]This can be very confusing because the self-sacrifice that the narcissist demands from you can feel like or resemble the kind of self-sacrifice that the pursuit of enlightenment demands of you. In order to pursue enlightenment, give yourself to God if you prefer psychological liberation, you have to shed layer upon layer upon layer upon layer. And that's what the narcissist comes into your life to to help you with.

[00:16:09]The narcissist demands that you should layer and layer and give yourself more and give yourself more. The difference between the pursuit of enlightenment and the narcissist is the pursuit of enlightenment is not another human being who is appropriating your self-sacrifice for his or her own purposes. That's what the narcissist is doing. appropriating your shedding and shedding and shedding for his or her own her own purposes.

[00:16:36]And there is no enlightenment at the end of the tunnel of a relationship with a narcissist. It's uh it's uh not the right sort of emptiness, you know, speaking of uh liberation, I mean enlightenment, some sort of nirvana, emptiness and nothingness. The relationship with the narcissist is the wrong sort of uh emptiness. It's a dead end. um you stop here. You become nothing here. Not in the way that you're hoping for.

[00:17:06]So the kind of semiworkable because I'm not too stuck on trying to give you workable tips through YouTube videos. I don't really believe in that. But there is use for it and in fact I hope to get better at at it um explore that territory more. The kind of semiworkable tip is start paying attention to whether your thoughts about the narcissist, whether the content you consume about the narcissist or the research you do or whatever, is it conducive to your liberation or are you doing that because you kind of don't know what else to do, which constitutes you remaining in the shared fantasy because the the message of the narcissist shared fantasy is I'll give you something to do and you don't need somebody else to give you something to do you need to become that uh for yourself? And if you're watching this video, then uh you're on your way uh to that sort of thing. And it's not just a journey outside of narcissistic abuse. It's a lifelong journey, the pursuit of enlightenment, um taking more accountability for who you are, um so on and so forth. Realizing the gravity of life and all these wonderful, wonderful things. Uh, my name is David Adess. I'm a certified professional life coach specializing in the uh uh recovery from narcissistic abuse. I laugh uh because the introduction is at the end of the video. Like this video.

[00:18:37]Not much of an introduction, huh? Like this video if you do like it. Comment your thoughts down below. Subscribe if you want to see more. And I will talk to you soon.