When You Outsource Your Regulation

[00:00:02]It is a sweltering summer and I will not be torturing you further with long winded videos. The typical sort on my channel. [laughter] So today a short one.

[00:00:19]But before we go there, a few service announcements. It is July 19th and we are one day closer to November. What's happening in November, you ask me? A free seminar, of course.

[00:00:35]There's a free 4-day seminar in November, probably on the 12th and if not on the 19th. We will know shortly on Monday.

[00:00:45]Um, and it's in North Macedonia.

[00:00:51]The seminar will be focused on borderline personalities with a bonus lecture on the sexuality of clusterb personalities.

[00:01:01]And so reserve your seat by writing to me at sambakingmail.com.

[00:01:08]That's sambakingmail.com.

[00:01:11]I'll reserve a seat for you, add you to the mailing list, and you'll be receiving updates willy nearly.

[00:01:17][laughter] Another announcement, August 23rd, I'll be giving two lectures to the Association of Russian Therapists, and you're invited to join um go to the go to the description of the video, which is under the video normally, and find a link there.

[00:01:43]Next in September, I'll be giving a lecture sponsored by the African Insight Foundation, Africa Insight Foundation, Commonwealth Institute in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and our own our very own Vaknin Rangeloska Foundation. So that's in September. Again, dive into the description and you will find a link.

[00:02:09]follow it until you enter the Vaknin kingdom. So these are three events. The first one is timesensitive.

[00:02:20]I ask you to reserve your seat as soon as you can. It's midn mid November somewhere in North Macedonia. It's focused on borderline personality organization and borderline personality disorders, their psychological dynamics and their interpersonal relationships with other people. Lots of fun and roller coasters.

[00:02:44]Okay, today's uh video deals with um external regulation.

[00:02:54]External regulation is the use of other people to regulate to stabilize your own emotions and moods.

[00:03:07]So if you are overwhelmed by your emotions, if your emotions threaten to drown you, then you may opt to use other people to somehow regulate them. If your moods are labile up and down, you may resort to other people in order to stabilize your moods, induce in you some kind of inner peace and harmony. This is called external regulation. Now, what's so special about it?

[00:03:40]Most healthy normal people, actually all healthy, normal people regulate from the inside. They have internal regulatory mechanisms.

[00:03:51]They stabilize their own fluctuating moods and emotions.

[00:03:57]Most people therefore are self-sufficient in this sense. They do not need the presence or the contributions of other people in order to somehow somehow reach a state of equilibrium and homeostasis.

[00:04:14]Healthy, normal people are stable around the average. They don't have very high highs and very low lows. They're not intense.

[00:04:27]Their emotions are signals, not threats.

[00:04:33]But this is not the case of course with certain types of mental illnesses and mental disorders most notably borderline personality disorders where emotion dysregulation is a key clinical feature together with mood liability. Now, if you go to the description, there's a link to an exploration of external regulation, including Higgins theory.

[00:05:03]And so, I recommend that you watch that link, you watch that video before you watch this one. What I'm going to do in this one is I'm going to add a few insights and a few ideas and a few observations borrowed or based on studies that were missing from the previous video which is I think two years old maybe. Okay. And who am I to do all this to you on a hot summer day? My name is Samvakin. I'm the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited and a professor of psychology. Not a very regulated one, may I add.

[00:05:43]Okay, shimm and of course shaote.

[00:05:48]Let's delve right in.

[00:05:52]Why would people choose to regulate themselves from the outside?

[00:05:59]Why would anyone become dependent on another person for their emotions and moods?

[00:06:06]What in external regulation is so appealing, so addictive, so irresistible that vulnerable people choose external regulation over internal one even when it's available. For example, in the wake of therapy, psychotherapy, there is strong resistance to internal regulation in people with borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder.

[00:06:34]Why is that?

[00:06:38]The question is even more aggravated if we take into account that when you regulate yourself from the outside, you become dependent on your external regulator. You develop what is known as an external locus of control. You're controlled from the outside. Your life is determined externally, not internally. You're not in charge. You're a play thing. You're an object.

[00:07:06]It's a bad feeling. It's egodistonic.

[00:07:09]It's even to some extent menacing. Why would anyone want to experience this?

[00:07:16]Because there are tradeoffs.

[00:07:18]There are positive things that go with it. For example, aloplastic defenses.

[00:07:24]If you're regulated from the outside, then you can blame everything that happens to you on other people.

[00:07:32]If you fail, if you are [clears throat] defeated, if you make the wrong decisions and choices, if you harm other people, whatever the case may be, if you are inadequate in some way or less than knowledgeable in all these situations, when you are externally regulated, you can blame someone else for all this.

[00:07:56]you can shift the blame thereby avoiding the negative effects of shame and guilt.

[00:08:06]So that's one advantage of external regulation.

[00:08:10]Another advantage is that it tends to reduce or amilarate or mitigate anxiety.

[00:08:17]It's anxolytic.

[00:08:19]When you have an external form of regulation, when you're regulated from the outside, when someone else is in charge of your emotions and moods, then you are not responsible for anything.

[00:08:34]Again, you will not experience remorse or regret or shame or guilt because any adverse consequences, any outcomes of recklessness or or the wrong choices or the wrong decisions will be attributed to the external regulator. When you're not in charge, when you're not responsible, when you're controlled from the outside, you're also not accountable.

[00:09:06]It's not your fault.

[00:09:08]That's a very addictive sensation.

[00:09:13]This is something many people gravitate towards because they find it irresistible. This is exactly how people choose or vote for dictators. Dictators and authoritarian leaders. They strike a Fustian deal with the voters or with the populace.

[00:09:36]The authoritarian leader says it's all my responsibility. If anything goes wrong, it's my fault. It's never ever your guilt. It's you're never ever implicated. All you have to do is give me your power.

[00:09:55]Dismpower yourself, empower me and forget about anxiety, guilt and shame.

[00:10:03]So this is an integral part one could say a side effect of external regulation which many people find very positive.

[00:10:13]Now of course external regulation is very very common in collective settings in groups.

[00:10:22]We know of the concept of inroup. So there's ingroup and outgroup.

[00:10:28]In the inroup regulation is carried out by the group itself.

[00:10:35]When you belong to a group, when you join a group, when you become assimilated in a collective, when you commodify yourself, when you become an atom in the mob, at that point you develop a cult mind or a mob mind. At that point, the group controls your behaviors, your cognitions, your emotions, your choices, your decisions.

[00:11:04]It is the group that regulates you because it is the group that controls you because it is the group where the locus of control resides.

[00:11:15]A similar process happens in peer interactions. You know, you've all heard of peer pressure. Peer pressure is a form of external regulation. You're surrounded by peers and these peers exert influence over you. They control you somehow. They regulate you. They convey to you and communicate to you expectations and they punish you if you do not [clears throat] conform.

[00:11:46]Groups, peers always involve external regulation.

[00:11:51]External regulation is mediated via narratives.

[00:11:56]External regulation is a form of storytelling.

[00:12:01]There there are symbols involved. So for example in morality plays when people split when they say I'm all good and they're all bad when they develop conspiracy theories or when they adhere to religion. In all these narratives there's a form of external control. In religion, for example, you're controlled by God.

[00:12:27]In a morality play, you're controlled by the force of good against the force of evil. Your soldier, your crusader.

[00:12:37]When we manipulate symbols, we very often relinquish control and relegate it into the symbolic realm.

[00:12:47]Jacqu Lakan has done a lot of work on this. He called it the imaginary, the symbolic.

[00:12:55]These narratives carry out the function of external regulation and by reducing anxiety and by absolving the individual from [snorts] any responsibility and accountability, they allow for integration into a group.

[00:13:18]One could even say that external regulation is a precondition for intimacy because intimacy involves two processes.

[00:13:31]the admission of vulnerability or the exposure of vulnerability or the communication of vulnerability on the one hand and on the other hand handing over [snorts] some kind of power or some kind of control to another individual.

[00:13:51]So intimacy exists in groups in diads in collectives and goes hand in hand with a modicum of external regulation.

[00:14:03]We could generalize and say that intimacy is a form of regulatory outsourcing.

[00:14:11]It is therefore very ironic that people with narcissistic personality disorder are actually incapable of intimacy.

[00:14:21]at least not the kind of intimacy that we acknowledge as such. Instead, narcissists replace true intimacy with fantastic intimacy, an intimacy that is all in their minds, that is all a fantasy.

[00:14:39]And yet the minute the narcissist gets embedded in a shared fantasy, the minute the narcissist becomes a figment, an element in the fantastic narrative and the fantastic space, the paracosm, at that point there is intimacy and the narcissist becomes regulated from the outside via sources of narcissistic supply and via the shared fantasy itself. So intimacy and regulatory outsourcing go hand in hand. When they are taken to extreme when they become too intense and too all pervasive we have a pathology.

[00:15:19]For example in borderline personality disorder and independent personality disorder colloquially known as codependence.

[00:15:29]External regulation is carried out by another person or a group of people.

[00:15:36]In interpersonal relationships, external regulation is the realm of the intimate partner. It is the intimate partner who is in charge of your happiness, of your well-being, of your moods, of your affections, of your emotions. It's the intimate partner who becomes your outsourced and externalized ego.

[00:16:02]It's as if you have handed out you've handed over yourself to another person expecting that that other person to take good care of yourself to keep it harmonious, peaceful, tranquil and above all functional. The intimate partner is expected to regulate emotions and moods.

[00:16:30]In the case of the borderline, the intimate partner is expected to regulate needs and expectations.

[00:16:37]In the case of the codependent, and the intimate partner is expected to regulate the self-concept of the narcissist via self-enhancement or narcissistic supply.

[00:16:50]So external regulation is is multifaceted and multifarious.

[00:16:56]It expresses itself or manifests differently in different pathologies.

[00:17:02]And even in healthy people, within healthy relationships where there is intimacy, there is some amount of external regulation.

[00:17:13]There is some exchange or some trade of agency between the parties involved.

[00:17:19]There is some dependency that emerges.

[00:17:23]When it doesn't go too far, when when it enhances well-being, when it allows the individuals involved to continue to have separate lives and explore themselves, we call it intimacy.

[00:17:36]In all other situations, it is dependence.

[00:17:40]And this dependence can fast devolve or degenerate or deteriorate into very ugly forms of coercion, fantasy, and worse.