The Narcissist Hijacks Your Mind

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]If you've been narcissistically abused, you've been brainwashed by someone you loved.

[00:00:06]If you've been narcissistically abused, you've been entrained, which is the fancy word for brainwashed, by someone you cared about and by someone who when the two of you were closer or when things weren't so obviously terrible, someone who would have said that they cared about you.

[00:00:30]And even you're the one who doesn't know how to care about them.

[00:00:36]You've been brainwashed and entrained by this person. You've had your, in other words, you've had your psychology, your the functions of your mind.

[00:00:48]You've had those hijacked. It's not funny by someone else's mind because they're under pressure from a mental illness called pathological narcissism that does exactly that.

[00:01:06]Pathological narcissism hijacks the functions of the people's minds who get close to it. Trying to string that sentence together in a way that makes sense. That's the narcissist's world.

[00:01:22]Their true self, their sovereign beingness, their ability to truly be and become in this life is has been hijacked by the mental illness called pathological narcissism.

[00:01:42]That's what it did to them. and they're coming to a theater near you to do the same thing to you through, for example, the defense mechanism of projective identification.

[00:01:57]I'm going to explain this in order to make it clear what I mean by like hijacking you, in training you, brainwashing you, because I'm not pulling those terms out of thin air. The first time I heard them was from the psychologist Sam Vaknan, who knows a thing or two about what narcissists do because he's the psychologist who coined the term narcissistic abuse. He's also uh twotime uh diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder.

[00:02:25]So again, he has some insight into this stuff. Um, and intrainment and brainwashing are terms that are used in the context of the defense mechanism projective identification which I'm going to explain now in order to make it clear that you do get brainwashed and you do get entrained, you do get hijacked and every layer of inability or unwillingness to wrap your head around that, every resistance or whatever. Everything that gets in the way between you being able or willing to acknowledge that you've been entrained, you've been brainwashed. And to the extent that the narcissist is still in your life putting pressure on you, you're still under pressure of being entrained and brainwashed.

[00:03:16]Everything in between you and that acknowledgement is, "Well, maybe it wasn't that bad.

[00:03:23]Well, maybe they're not a narcissist.

[00:03:25]Well, maybe I was wrong. Well, maybe I could go back. Well, maybe I could fix it. Well, maybe I did something wrong to ruin. Maybe it's me.

[00:03:35]Everything, every layer of inability or unwillingness to acknowledge that you're a victim of brainwashing and entrainment. Say you're a survivor of it, but first and foremost, you were victimized by someone whose mental illness compels them to brainwash and entrain.

[00:03:53]Before you are a survivor of, let's say, the the regime in North Korea where everybody's brainwashed, before you're a survivor of that, you're a victim of it.

[00:04:03]And you have to realize you're being victimized by it in order to become a survivor. Every layer of inability or unwillingness to acknowledge that you've been ingrained in entrained or brainwashed gets filled up with, oh, maybe it wasn't that bad. Oh, maybe they're not the narcissist. Maybe I'm the narcissist.

[00:04:21]Well, maybe they didn't actually. Well, maybe I could go back. Well, I remember the good times. Not that you can't remember the good times, but also please don't just remember the uh good times or be able to remember them within the context of the abuse. Of course, you can have good times with this human being who's actually a victim to their own mental illness. There is a human being there. Good times can take place.

[00:04:48]At the end of the day, it just so happens to be that this person is lost to their mental illness. So, in retrospect, it's easy to say, "Well, then everything was fake, wasn't it?"

[00:04:58]But no, the fact that they fell back into their mental illness, which is what discard or reverse discard is.

[00:05:08]Discard or reverse discard is the narcissist falling back into narcissism.

[00:05:14]Because pathological narcissism is such a profound conflict that the narcissist him or herself can't doesn't know how to overcome it.

[00:05:24]Their relationship with you is an unconscious attempt by the narcissist to overcome the pathological narcissistic conflict. They're trying to become a real person which was denied to them a long time ago. They're looking for a substitute mother in you. Whether you're male or female, they're looking for a substitute mother in their intimate partner. They're looking to recreate symbiosis with a mother figure that they had when they were two years old. And this time, it's going to go right.

[00:05:55]Meaning, the narcissist is going to be able to separate from their mother and become a real person because that's what went wrong. That's what got them stuck with pathological narcissism. They couldn't separate and become their own person. That's why no one's there. They didn't get the chance to form their own beingness. Their own true self didn't come together. A lot of trauma took place during the symbiotic period with mother. So the process of becoming themselves, separating from mother got so disrupted.

[00:06:22]And that's what the narcissist is.

[00:06:23]That's what they're trying to recreate with you. That's why they're trying to recreate it with you. They need to ensh you because you're their substitute mother. And this time they're going to overcome this symbiosis. But they can't they can't step forth into reality.

[00:06:40]Pathological narcissism proves too much an obstacle. And so what ends up happening is they have to step back into narcissism. That's what the discard and reverse discard is.

[00:06:52]Deep down. You can imagine the narcissist saying, "I'm sorry I couldn't escape. I'm sorry I couldn't become real. I'm sorry you have to suffer because I couldn't be real." and I can't overcome that. I brainwashed you and trained you so you'd get close to me and be my substitute mother so that I could break free. I'm sorry. I can't break free. Of course, the narcissist isn't going to speak in these terms. The narcissist is going to say, "You changed. It's your fault. You failed me." Because the fall back into narcissism necessitates that the narcissist uh upholds their grandiose sense of self, that false self. They can't have been wrong about you. You were this right substitute mother, but then you changed. The narcissist can't say to themselves, "Well, I'm so emotionally stunted that I try to get close close with people in order to separate from my mother. But since they're not my mother, and I don't know what's happening, it's not working, and this conflict is too much to overcome.

[00:07:52]So, I don't know what to do. I'm just this helpless, shameful individual that I was when I was two, that's how I felt, and I'm still that now." Instead, the narcissist says, "No, it's you.

[00:08:02]And this is part of projective identification, which is what I was getting to. One of the things that hijacks the other person, one of the things that entrains, brainwashes the other person is a defense mechanism that the narcissist makes use of, that the narcissist's personality makes use of in order to defend against reality. It's a defense mechanism.

[00:08:24]Projective identification means I project something into you. So the narcissist and projection means I have basically it means I have a poor relationship with something in myself.

[00:08:37]I'm in denial of that.

[00:08:40]I don't have it. You do. So if I have shame about something, one way of defending myself against that shame is actually saying no, you have the thing that makes you shameful. I don't have that thing.

[00:08:54]A really good example is people who are homophobic, who actually might, you know, have some homosexuality about them that they're unwilling to acknowledge.

[00:09:05]They have a really hostile relationship with that part of themselves and they defend against their own hostility by projecting the part that they don't like or don't want about them. They project it into you and then they attack it.

[00:09:18]It can also be projection can also be something good. And this is usually how relationships begin. We think that someone else has something that we don't, which if it's negative, then we attack them for having it. We say, "I don't have that. You have that. Shame, shame, shame." But if it's something good, then we say, "Oh, they have that and I don't have that. Hey, how can I get that?" And we grow through reclaiming our projections. The psychologist Carl Jung referred to the reclaiming of projected material as like the driving force. The the the way that you practice becoming your own human being individuation is by reclaiming the stuff that you project onto other people. You can work with your own projections, whether it's negative or positive. In fact, you're kind of morally obligated to identify what you might be projecting onto other people. And how can you actually get that back?

[00:10:17]By interacting with them or by contemplating what it means or by reflecting on your history so on and so forth. Projective identification. One of the defenses that the narcissist's personality is using and one that entrains the other person is the narcissist projects something on to you.

[00:10:35]That's the projective part. Projection, projective identification. And the identification part is then the narcissist treats you as if it's true about you.

[00:10:50]You become the narcissist's mind through the narcissist projecting onto you what is in his or her mind. And then the narcissist compelling you, interacting with you, signaling to you, mirroring to you with the utmost emotional conviction because this defense mechanism is in such strong operation because it is so necessary for the narcissist.

[00:11:17]The narcissist's defenses have to be in such strong operation in order to keep the trauma away, in order to keep reality from breaching through their defense mechanisms. Of course, the defense mechanisms have to be very strong. So, the projection is very strong and the identification, they try to get you to identify with what they're projecting into you. Meanwhile, you're becoming the contents of their mind.

[00:11:44]That's what projective identification means. Can you become the contents of my mind? In other words, I don't have these contents. They're yours and I'm going to treat you as such.

[00:11:59]And you don't know this is taking place because you think this is someone who cares about you. You think you love them. You do love them. And they may even think that they care about you. The psychologist Sam Vton has said the narcissist would say, "Yes, I love very deeply." It's it's profound because the narcissist idealizes people and thinks that that's love. The narcissist in meshes with people and thinks that that's love. The narcissist doesn't know any better.

[00:12:25]Anyway, this is one of the ways that you get hijacked by the narcissist. The narcissist projects things into your mind and behaves as if you are such. And the defense mechanisms are so strong, they're so strongly operating that the emotional conviction on the narcissist's side. The thing that's buttressing the projective identification is so strong, you can't help but question your own reality. Because you've never seen someone be so emotionally convicted about something. And what I mean is the narcissist really believes what he or she has going on. The narcissist really believes that you do have that thing.

[00:13:05]They're not projecting it onto you.

[00:13:07]They're not identifying you with it.

[00:13:09]They're not abusing you. They're not the grandiose and entitled ones. They're not struggling with shame and guilt. That's you. And you've never seen someone be so emotionally convicted, be so passionate or whatever about what they're experiencing, but also be so profoundly wrong. It's traumatic cognitive dissonance to quote the title of Dr. Peter Serno's book, who I don't really agree with his take on narcissism, but it's a very important term. traumatic uh cognitive dissonance. You've never met someone like this. And part of the problem with the narcissist is he or she actually does believe what's going on, which makes gaslighting, a bit of a by the way, a little side note, which makes gaslighting a psychopathic thing, not a narcissistic thing. The psychopath knows what actually happened, but is manipulating you by telling you, "No, that's not actually what happened." But they know what actually happened. The narcissist actually doesn't know. The narcissist actually believes when they confabulate, meaning repaint the past in order to make them look better or you worse or something like that, they actually think that that's what happened because that's what has to take place. They have to believe that that's what's happened. In order to maintain the false self, which is a series of defense mechanisms, in order to uphold the defense mechanisms, they have to be emotionally convicted about it. The personality has to defend against this. How do you say miasma?

[00:14:38]This this volcanic magma undercurrent of shame and rage. This hollow abyss. It's not a magma current of lava. It's an emptiness. It's an utter wind tunnel.

[00:14:49]There's nothing there in the narcissist.

[00:14:51]And in order to defend against this, they have to rewrite the past. They have to projectively identify.

[00:14:59]This is how you become the contents of the narcissist's mind. This is how you get entrained. This is how you get inshed. This is how you get brainwashed.

[00:15:06]This is how you get conditioned so that the narcissist's mind makes your brain waves function at the same. That's the opposite. I don't know how to do that.

[00:15:17]These are your brain waves. These are the narcissist brain waves. Now you're one and the same. And now you've got to get this person out of your brain, out of your body, out of your life, or at least you've got to create distance from it. And every layer between you and the realization that you have been entrained and brainwashed is again I'll just say doubt about what's taken place.

[00:15:42]Uh before I go any further, my name is David Adess. I'm a certified professional life coach. Um and I offer coaching, but there are limited spots and you can check my availability using the first link in the uh description below. The psychologist Sam Vton has also referred to uh victims of narcissistic abuse as victims of torture. He's compared victims of kind of systematic torture. You know, there's a torturer and a tortured.

[00:16:10]Compared that victim to the victim of narcissistic abuse. And I want to reference that as well because you need to get to the point where you acknowledge what's actually happened at you happened to you. So you can say this is what happened to me. This is what I'm not going to let destroy me. This is what I'm tasked with redeeming. This debt to myself is now what I'm working to pay off. I was this abused. I abandoned myself this much. I was this brainwashed. I was tortured. This is what I have to work with in this life.

[00:16:48]Accepting that loss is the beginning of getting yourself out of the loss. And accepting that loss has to do with humility. It has to do with compassion to yourself. It has to do with empathy to yourself. And it also has to do with uh this is a little bit more difficult.

[00:17:07]It's like understanding that the narcissist that narcissism pathological narcissism is a torturer and it is a brainwasher.

[00:17:18]I hesitate at that point because then it makes it sound like, okay, well, they're the big bad wolf and I'm poor little Red Riding Hood. But it's not that simple.

[00:17:27]And you may have fluctuate. You may still fluctuate or you may have fluctuated between like, I feel bad for myself, or how could this happen to me?

[00:17:37]I'm so mad. I don't know if I could ever do it. In other words, I'm the victim.

[00:17:42]Fluctuate between that and they're the worst thing ever. and now I'm big and bad and I don't even need to think about them and I don't even need to care about them. Both of these both of these solutions are a grasping for certainty that actually amounts to succumbing to the narcissist's shared fantasy. It's like the narcissist's shared fantasy is trying to make you into the biggest victim ever, which is uh like the two-year-old that the narcissist is trapped in. What a what a victim they actually were. And of course, you are a victim of narcissistic abuse, but I'm I'm making a point to not get trapped in victimhood, not identify with being a victim. make make the way to survivor, which just means have some space between you and the victimhood that you've legitimately suffered.

[00:18:37]It's like the narcissist shared fantasy is either trying to make you identify as that victimized toddler that the narcissist deep down is, or the narcissist's shared fantasy is trying to make you into the grandiose false self, defensive. No, I wasn't so affected by it and that didn't happen to me and I don't want to say that I was abused and I don't even need to think about them and I don't even need to care about them. And I don't mean to make a mockery out of either side because you need to honor wherever you're at as maybe you do fluctuate between these two. You just have to be able to take a step back from the identification with it because this is a part of the pressure of the narcissist's shared fantasy.

[00:19:26]part of the distance between you and acknowledging that you've been like tortured by this other human being's mind.

[00:19:36]That you've been tortured, sorry, by this other person's mind, that you've been brainwashed, that you've been entrained. Part of the distance between you and that realization looks like, okay, well, I'll just settle and I'll call myself the victim. Okay, I'll just settle and I never have to think about them again. It's big, tough, defensive posture.

[00:19:54]The reality is you've been so undermined that your mind is scrambling for certainty in something that isn't certain, something that might be the least certain interpersonal experience you'll ever have. I I want to make sure that I say I'm going to link in the description below the video where Sam Vakn is comparing uh torture, the victim of torture to the victim of narcissistic abuse or where he said that. I'm going to link that video. Now the it's a long video where he seems to be talking about domestic abuse or chronic physical abuse, but he mentions in the beginning of the video like this is also about narcissistic abuse. I'm also going to link uh an article by a psychoanalyst that he mentioned in that video. It's called Ethics of the Unspeakable: Victims of Torture in the Psychoanalytic Setting.

[00:20:47]Um, and you can read that and you can see how it uh narcissistic abuse might have some overlap with what victims of torture experience for example or most notably the individual the personality is supposed to have a protective membrane and that's what gets undermined by torture which is of course what the torturer is trying to undermine because the torture the torture is trying to penetrate your being meaning there can't be anything between you and the torturer.

[00:21:17]So the torture has to undermine this this protective membrane that we take for granted that creates distance between us and other people so that we're not overwhelmed by external reality. Things aren't supposed to seem like they're happening like so close to you and you can't get back from them.

[00:21:34]They're supposed to be a protective membrane. This is what the torturer disables in you, undermines, peels away because they're trying to get in. And there's supposed to be that protective membrane also functioning in relation to your internal world. Your own internal world, thoughts, feelings, dreams, memories aren't supposed to be like so close that you can't function. But without the functioning protective membrane, that's what happens. You're just in this sea of um reality is too close. You you just can't. It's not supposed to be that close. You're supposed to have some distance from external reality from uh internal reality. So, I'll link that article in the in the thing uh below. Now, I started talking about um I started talking about the comparison between victims of torture and uh um victims of narcissistic abuse. And it was in the context of I needed a moment to collect my thoughts. So, that's why the camera cut.

[00:22:33]Um, I'm talking about how as a result of narcissistic abuse, as a result of torture, as a result of brainwashing, and then, you know, getting away from this person, realizing what's taken place, you're left with an amount of uncertainty that's very difficult to tolerate, which means your mind is going to try to manage it by getting certainty. And that looks like, okay, I've decided that I'm I'm just a big victim. Okay, I've decided that they're the worst person ever. And you may have fluctuated between these two. As I uh have pointed out earlier, I'm saying in this video, you have to stick with the uncertainty, the exact uncertainty that your mind is trying to get rid of because it's ugly. It was ugly to have been abused so much. The narcissist is an ugly person internally and they got their creeping hand onto you and it got you know onto you to some extent. It is embarrassing to have been brainwashed by someone that you trusted.

[00:23:38]It is agonizing. It is uh desparing. It is it's so I'm going to say the mix between humiliating and humbling because it's humiliating but you have to make it into it's humbling.

[00:23:53]And that's what the practice of staying with the uncertainty is. It's saying I'm going to humble myself to this layer of uncertainty. I don't just have to get rid of it and try to cling to an answer for this enormous question. I have to stay with the uncertainty until I have until I can work my way out of it.

[00:24:16]Because the uncertain place is the place that you're tasked with working out of authentically, not move into a certain place and work from there. Move into a certain place and move from there.

[00:24:28]Again, victim or I don't need them because they're the worst person ever.

[00:24:32]You may fluctuate but you need to keep some distance because the uncertainty has to remain so that you can work out of it because that's how reality functions. You get in touch with with what's really there and you work out of it. Not you try to get away from it and then you work from there.

[00:24:48]Not that you can't distract yourself sometimes, not that you can't do something to cope uh sometimes, but the recovery process in general means addressing the core of uncertainty and working from there. On that note, I'm also going to uh link in the description a book from Mark Bear that I recommend you skip to uh page 90 91 on and start reading from there. It's an incredibly helpful book uh on the recovery from narcissistic abuse. Speaking of the uncertainty, uh, kind of at the core of all of this, the inability to stay with the uncertainty is why people stay with narcissists for the rest of their lives.

[00:25:30]They actually aren't willing to follow the rabbit hole down to, "Oh my god, I'm being entrained and brainwashed."

[00:25:37]They're saying, "No, when the person is abusive, I'm a victim." And then sometimes I'm the better person. It's not as bad as I don't have to follow the uncertainty. I don't have to hold space for that.

[00:25:47]trying to get rid of the uncertainty is what initially gets someone into a relationship with a narcissist. That's ignoring the red flags, ignoring the uncertainty.

[00:25:57]Uh and um trying to get rid of the uncertainty is what keeps you from acknowledging how bad this actually was so that you can actually work from that place.

[00:26:11]This might be again in the words of the psychologist Sam Vaknan, this might be the worst thing that can take place between two human beings. Being narcissistically abused might just be the worst thing. It is one of the worst forms of interpersonal abuse that take place. It is one of the worst forms of abuse that one human being can do to another. And you have to get to that point. That happened to me. I acknowledge it. I accept it. It's okay.

[00:26:44]Of course, you know, it's not so okay.

[00:26:48]But you have to get to a point where you say, "Okay, self. Like, this is what you're dealing with. That's okay. That's where we're going to work from." And you have to fight. You have to fight with yourself to stay at that point. And you have to fight your way out of that. You have to fight your way back into reality. It isn't going to come on its own. The narcissist isn't going to resolve everything. The past doesn't explain everything.

[00:27:13]Here now with the uncertainty is is where the work gets done.

[00:27:19]If and to the extent that there is work to be done, it gets done from the uncertainty. And that's so much easier said than done. You might need to reach out for support and you need to view that as a success. You need to view every single tiny step you take, every attempt you make to distance yourself from the narcissist externally or internally, every acceptance of how you're of what's happened to you, every acknowledgement of when you're ruminating and now you need to come back to the present moment. You need to view all of those as a as a success. This one of the worst things that can take place between a human being and yourself and in within the context of a interpersonal relationship. This has to not defeat you. Meaning you have to somehow win over it. And I'm going to reference a quote from uh I think it's a Buddhist priest who says, "In order to win over life, you must first be defeated by it." This might be the biggest defeat you ever come to face in this life and you have to take it in order to make it. I just came up with that rhyme right now. It's a bit bit cliche but remember I'm just a life coach.

[00:28:40]So that's the territory I function on.

[00:28:42]Quirky cliche rhymes. You have to take the defeat in order to make it concrete. Okay. Uh going to stop the video here. That's enough for now. Just don't give up. And uh like this video if you do. Actually, I'm going to stop saying that because I don't not that I don't care if you don't like the video, but I'm not here just to get likes and and stuff like that. So, thanks for uh watching. Take care.