Daniel is the best, thanks so much for being here with us Scott.

This is it!! You were able to capture exactly what we were trying to convey, thank you SO much for being here. Truly hope you stay and participate in this journey.

Thank you so much for bringing principles into the comments! Love to see this and I’m so blessed to have you here on this journey, I hope you stick around.

Thanks so much brother for the kind words, and even more for being here! I hope you stay.

Thank you so much for investing the time, I know it’s a longer video. Welcome in and know that it means a lot to me to have you here.

Great comment. I don’t think you’re wrong, but it’s complicated. In my opinion those people DO care… about only themselves, because if they cared about others then they would be transparent so that the other party could make an informed decision based on truth. Love this!

Thank you so much Everett, I hope you stick around!

Of course it makes sense. I hope you’re able to get something out of my channel that might help in some way. You are not a bad person, we are good people who fall short and make bad decisions. Thanks so much for joining in.

Pathologically narcissistic personalities are very punitive and desire to punish others for the things they believe others have done to them. They are easily offended, easily insulted, easily angered and often feel rejected or attacked. They assign the blame for their feelings to other people and, if the feelings are negative, narcissists seek to punish these others for what they've supposedly done, which is considered by the narcissist to be incredibly, even unreasonably wrong and terrible. A crime of this magnitude cannot simply be allowed to stand. The other person absolutely must be punished for it. This is in part due to the size and constitution of the pathologically narcissistic ego, which is both enormous and almost absurdly fragile. This is a very bad combination, because that makes it easy to damage and impossible to avoid. Not only do they think virtually everything is to or for or because of or about them because their ego is disproportionately huge, but because it's so fragile, virtually everything insults, offends, hurts, or upsets them. It can be so severe that it comes across as what looks like paranoia or even delusion. This type of personality is so self-focused & egocentric, they generally cannot see any other interpretation of the facts - even when proof is right in front of them. It simply does not compute that they are not the reason for (or center of) the situation or event. If anyone claims otherwise, they're often accused of lying or being manipulative. When the ego has been damaged, it screams for vengeance. As we mature, we learn to address things in better, more productive, more prosocial ways. We may still be very angry, we may still feel someone should face consequences for what they've done, but healthy adults don't usually attempt to punish other adults themselves. Narcissists are, of course, not healthy adults. We often find that much of their headspace is taken up with seething about and trying to find ways to punish people they believe have wronged them somehow. This punishment can include things that are just kind of annoying or childish to things that are outright malicious and even dangerous. Not only do most people mature into dealing with things in a better way, but most people have a balanced idea of what consequences would fit a situation. For narcissists, this ability can be pretty affected. These are people who might believe it's perfectly fine to burn down someone's house over a bad review at work, or to kill someone for giving them a dirty look. They may not all act on these things, but we often find that most don't seem to recognize limits when it comes to punishing others or think anything is too excessive when it comes to misfortune befalling people they believe have wronged them. Most adults also realize that punishing others comes with its own drawbacks, and may end up hurting themselves as well. Pathologically narcissistic people either do not realize this or do not care. They are perfectly willing to cut off their own nose to spite their face - often repeatedly. They either don't realize this, or do but are not willing or able to stop themselves from doing it when they feel they've been wronged. The ego is just too big and too much of a force in their lives. Whether it is physically assaulting you, smearing you to others behind your back, freezing you out in cold silence, calling you names, throwing tantrums when they don't get their way, doing things on purpose to make you angry or jealous, disappearing to worry, upset or scare you, trying to make you feel guilty or otherwise bad, witholding things you want or need, destroying your things, cheating on you, or anything else, there has most likely been a large amount of punitive behavior on the part of the narcissistic person you're dealing with regardless of the type of relationship. it is a defining characteristic of these personalities. The drive to punish appears to be multi-faceted in narcissists. One we've already discussed, which is the involvment of the ego. This is sometimes known as a narcissistic injury, and it is the basis of most of the rage you see in these personalities even when you can't figure out what the injury is or how they got it. The ego of narcissists is extremely fragile, which means it is essentially perpetually injured. Even things as small as saying "hello" in what they perceive as a wrong tone of voice offends and hurts and insults and injures these personalities on a level that non-narcissistic people probably cannot even begin to understand. They are constantly scanning situations for things that are intended to upset, insult, offend or hurt them, and of course, they find these things because when you think the only person anyone is ever talking or thinking about is you, then everything they say and do is about you somehow. This is sometimes how narcissists end up telling on themselves, because they take an innocuous or unrelated comment to be about something they are hiding or refusing to admit and inadvertantly reveal it through their anger or by trying to defend themselves. This happens because it is what the comment means to them, it's what they were thinking about and they just assume this is also what you meant and what you were thinking about. Of course they assume that; no one else exists except for them. Another component of the drive to punish in narcissistic personalities appears to be the idea that punishing others is associated with power and control. If you are in the position of meting out punishment, you have all the power. Similar to being the parent, the person who is doling out punishment is the boss. They have all the power and control in the situation. This is adjacent to the idea that if you are the punisher, you are righteous and best of all, justified. You are not bad, the other person is. You are not wrong, the other person is. You have done nothing to deserve punishment, the other person has. These concepts are all very, very important to the narcissistic personality structure. They must be powerful, they must be in control, they must be righteous and justified, above all they must not be bad, not be wrong and not be the villain in any situation. Being in the position to punish others meets every single one of these criteria. And the reality is, many of them enjoy causing pain to others. It makes them feel powerful, something they don't feel in general and which they desire very much but often lack the fortitude or ability to demonstrate. Narcissists are very much like children in this way; they feel powerless and unable to effect change in any real way on things. So they play their little punishment power games and feel like they might actually be somebody for a while. Another component of the drive to punish others is the reality that narcissistic personalities are unhappy, miserable, raging, infantile people who can do nothing with all of that misery and rage except dump it out onto others. They cannot hold it or process it or do anything with it at all except dump it. And it isn't enough just to release it. Someone has to receive it; someone has to take it, someone has to be to blame for it, someone has to answer for it or it can't be dumped. It's kind of like trying to deliver a package that needs to be signed for: if nobody answers the door to take it, back into the truck it will go. And it will stay there until somebody takes delivery of it. This is one of the main functions of relationships for narcissists: they require others to take delivery of their packages. Their pain, their anger, their shame, their frustration, their failure, their inability. Someone has to answer for all of those things and it can't be the narcissist themselves; they cannot tolerate it. It is possible that many are not even capable of it by now. They must simply offload these things onto others, and the things must be received or they cannot be gone. That's where you come in. You are the person who is required to take all of these things. If you don't, you're considered to be a bad person who doesn't care - or whatever else will make you feel bad enough to do it. There is also the reality that part of the reason narcissists punish others is because they believe others are punishing them. This is a very common theme with pathologically narcissistic personalities: that they are being excessively punished, persecuted or otherwise unfairly treated. It is likely that in many situations, they really believe this. Realistically, they seem to have no real belief that they've ever done anything wrong, and even if they will agree that they have, any level of consequence is deemed unfairly punitive and even persecutory. This seems to happen in part because they themselves are so punitive, and in part because they have so much self-loathing and shame that they assume punishment is not only warranted but inevitable. Bad people deserve punishment. This is a recurring theme in the vocabulary or mindset of the narcissists, regarding how they treat others and/or regarding how they believe they are being treated by others. Whoever hands out the punishment has all the power, and in the all-consuming power dynamics in the world of narcissistic people, you are either one or the other. Narcissists tend not to see consequences as naturally-occurring or understandable, predictable things that result from one's own choices and behavior, but as things that are being done to them by somebody else. As punishments, in other words. And they resent that very much. So they punish you back, esssentially, and the relationship becomes one long power struggle where the narcissist becomes more and more resentful, more and more angry, more and more offended, and feels more and more controlled, oppressed or smothered and encroached upon by the other person.

The punishment from these people never ends. They never forget anything they believe you've done to them, and they will never let you live it down. There is no forgiveness, no good faith, no benefit of the doubt. Just endless punishment for the failure to match up to the perfect image they erroneously created of you in the beginning. In normal relationships between people, there is a period of idealization. It is usually not as intense or as unrealistic as the idealization in a relationship with a narcissist, but it does still happen. People end up seeing each other more realistically, and then they adjust to the realistic idea of the other person. With narcissists, this does not happen. There is no way to come back from this original loss of esteem in the narcissist's eyes. Due to their psychological rigidity and their lack of understanding regarding whole object relations, they have no ability to reconcile the real you with the image of you that they created, and they may see your failure to live up to this as incredibly upsetting and shocking. It is not uncommon for narcissists to accuse people of tricking them or lying to them for not being what the narcissist thought they were. There is no way to make them understand that you didn't pretend to be anything, they just had the wrong idea about who and what you were. Their assumptions are seen as knowledge, and a contradiction to these assumptions is viewed as lying or manipulation. You have fooled them in a very vicious and cruel way; you pretended to be caring and kind and perfect and you're not. You lied to them. You made them look stupid. You tricked them. You embarrassed them. That needs to be answered for. Somebody is going to have to pay for that, and it isn't going to be them. Some narcissists leave or cut off relationships when this happens, but many others do not. Indeed, they will resist ending the relationship very strenuously and pursue reattachment continuously, while at the same time attacking and punishing the other person relentlessly, talking about how horrible both the relationship and the other person are. People often become totally frustrated and end up asking, "If I'm so terrible, if it's all so bad then why don't we just end the relationship? Why are you still here?" The narcissist often responds to this with more abuse and/or begins accusing the other person of trying to abandon or discard them instead of answering what is actually a very valid and reasonable question. The answer appears to be that narcissists literally need other people for survival. They need other people to take delivery of their nasty little packages. They are dependent and not able to cope with very much at all if they don't have someone to do that. They also don't appear able to experience themselves except through the reactions and input of others. In a very sad irony, the worse they can believe a relationship is, the better it makes them feel. Many of them are trying to recreate some old power dynamic they can now achieve the upper hand in, thereby finally "winning" over a caregiver or some other perceived enemy from their past. Other people are dragged into this conflict unwillingly and installed into roles they did not agree to or even know about, unwittingly playing out parts that were created way before they ever came along and receiving punishment that really belongs to someone else. Narcissistic personalities do not see other people for who they are, and they don't see why it's necessary so they have no desire to learn how to do so. These are very simple, almost primitive personalities that are guided by very complex forces that they do not appear to understand in the least or even care at all about trying to understand. They just react to what they perceive to be happening, without appearing to ask themselves why or even explore things to see if they make any sense. They appear to believe that their conclusion is always correct and therefore their reaction is always appropriate. Trying to tell them that there are some things that are never appropriate no matter what you believe the other person has done to you is useless as well. They simply do not recognize limits in any form, either for their own behavior or pertaining to other people. They are like children in this way, reacting to big feelings with no brakes or controls at all, and no understanding of why they should have any. You hurt me, and now I will hurt you. You made me feel bad, now I will make you feel bad. There's no understanding or even acknowledgment that their feelings are coming from inside them and may not even be related to the other person or external events at all. They seem to believe their feelings are solely generated by things outside of themselves. This is dangerous, because these are unhappy, mean-spirited, envious, frightened people who are almost always in the grip of some negative feeling that they need somebody to answer for. That is why in these relationships, the punishment never ends: they are always unhappy and it is always someone else's fault. You're not being punished for your behavior. That's a justification because they cannot understand their own emotional reactions and immediately assume that someone else must have done something to cause their emotional reaction, so they look around for what that something was. They will always find it because you can always make something sound or look bad when you try. Many narcissists appear to be... almost afraid of their emotions and reactions or ashamed of them, as if they believe only bad people have bad feelings. So this has to be blamed on someone else. "I don't have bad feelings. I am not a bad person. You are MAKING me have bad feelings, therefore YOU are the bad person." They reality is though you're being punished for their feelings, and there's nothing you can do about their feelings. Narcissists hate everybody, including themselves. They hate themselves for not being good enough and they hate you for proving that to them every day -- simply by existing. All of the narcissist's hate for others is really hate for themselves. Not only do they not have genuine positive feelings for other people, such as love or respect or acceptance, they don't even have genuine negative feelings for other people like hatred. It's all about them. The sadistic hurtful games the narcissist is playing with others are actually games the narcissist is playing with themselves. Others are just a tool to do this with. They only matter as far as the narcissist can use you, either to hurt themselves or to make themselves feel better. It's all projection. Narcissists hate people who aren't narcissists, and they hate them for not being narcissists. They hate people who are not mentally ill, who are not broken or flawed or weak, the way they perceive themselves to be. So they project those insecurities onto other people. A person they initially admired becomes hated for having or being everything the narcissist wishes they themselves could have or be, and the narcissist becomes envious and hateful because the person is, in the narcissist's opinion, an undeserving recipient of such wonderful qualities and therefore, they are a walking reminder of how much of a failure the narcissist really is. The narcissist imagines that they are being compared to this person by others and coming out a distant second. They cannot abide by this, and they will do anything they can to destroy the perception they think other people have of the hated person being perfect or not flawed. They are consumed with pathological jealousy, envy and self-hatred. This creates a toxic cocktail which results in a personality that is bent on destroying the people around them in the misguided belief that knocking other people down makes them appear taller. They seek to soothe their own insecurities not by building themselves up with healthy self-esteem as normal people would do, but by destroying anything that threatens them. Because they hate themselves so much and feel like such failures, narcissists look for a certain type of partner. They want people who are special in some way. Maybe the partner is talented or gifted in some way, maybe they have a very strong family and support system... they target people who have things they want. They hope to absorb these qualities from their partner, or to "wear" their partner's talents and personality as a skin, like Invasion of The Body-Snatchers. They seek to dominate and control the partner so that they can siphon their good qualities and use it to fortify their own withering armor. We see behavior this very clearly in the cloning behavior that many narcissists employ. Narcissists have a very unstable identity and so they will often try to adopt the skills, talents or hobbies of their partners. They will horn in on every aspect of your life in an attempt to take it over and make it about them. They hate you because they can't. No matter how hard they try to steal another person's identity or personality, underneath it all, they are still themselves. Your existence reminds them of that and they hate you like fire for it. Narcissists expect to be acknowledged as outstanding, amazing and special, even when they've done nothing to warrant that. The narcissist is the star in this movie, and no one is permitted to outshine them.

Personally I am more protective of my son knowing what people are capable of, and I am always trying my best to be a better parent. The second question is a hard one for me to answer, but I can say as far as relationships with women I have been very good at putting on masks in the past.

@@jackdoherty1412 thanks Jack

Happy to have you here Carlo, thank you for speaking on recovery. I hope you stick around on this journey!

Not the first time I’ve heard this! Thank you for joining in and watching Robert.

Well....ahem.....the love between straight men is sweet precisely because it is devoid of carnal desire. Making it purely of the heart.

Welcome in Terry!!

@@jackdoherty1412 No! Thank YOU!!! Looking forward to many more topics and discussions! Glad you're here on KZfaq!