Guitar and Excel, C major, A minor, scale fret number nine, focusing on the E note. Get ready and some coffee. You know, I'm jealous of those that can use their body parts to pick the guitar. I'm not jealous. I'm envious. But for pick addicts like me, the old adage applies. It's an addiction. The physical and psychological need is very real. You can pick your guitar and you can pick your nose.  Well, you can do that last one. But for me, picking with my fingers feels like I might as well be picking with my nose. He's a terrible.  Which is also doable, I guess. But it doesn't seem very practical or safe. Um, it doesn't seem very safe. Like considering if a string breaks while you're picking with your nose, it could poke your eye out.  Merry Christmas. Howl, howl, howl. So if you do try picking nose style, you may want to wear glasses. Where's your glasses? Which I do wear, but not because I pick the guitar with my nose. I wear them because I can't see. Anyways, I feel like I'm rambling now. So let's just get into it. No fill. Not into our nose. I mean into the guitar. Using a pick. Or at least I'm going to use a pick. Use whatever you want. Just don't sue me if something goes horribly wrong. Okay? Here we are in Excel. If you don't have access to this workbook, that's okay. You could just follow along. But if you do have access, it's a great tool to run scenarios with. Quick recap of the project. Thus far, noting that you don't have to have watched all prior presentations to follow along with this one. But a general overview of the overall project can help to orientate us. So let's go to the first tab to get that overall overview. Noting we've been looking at the C major scale and its related modes. We started looking at them in open position, which we defined as frets 0 through 3. Noting that this E represents the low or heavy string, the one closest to the ceiling. Funnest way to map out the notes in open position is to create the chords from the scale we're working in starting with the one chord for us, that being the C major chord, mapping it out in open position, discussing it in detail. We then went to the 4 chord because it also has a major chord construction, mapped it out and discussed it in detail. 5 chord the same, then to the 2 chord because it has a minor chord construction, then the 3 chord the same, the 6 chord the same, and the 7 chord which has a diminished chord construction. If we were to map out all the chords we constructed and the notes within them in open position, we would be mapping out in essence the C major scale and the related modes which would look something like this, the blue notes in open position. We then moved to position 5, learning it not first with chord shapes but rather with scale shapes, pentatonic and major scale shapes that we can link to the chords that we learned in open position. We discussed this shape in relation to every note within our scale that we're focused on. We then moved up to the next shape which is going to be starting on fret number 7, did a similar process, discussed the pentatonic major scale and then focused on every note in the scale. And then we're now looking at the next shape up which is of course starting on the 9th fret which we could call, I would call the 3rd position or you might call it a D shaped position. We discussed the pentatonic, the major scale and now we're looking at each note in relation to these shapes. Quick recap of the color scheme that we have thus far because it looks chaotic, I know, but we note that this is the fret board. This E represents the low or heavy string, the one closest to the ceiling and we're imagining that the first thing we lay down underneath all of this is all 7 notes out of the 12 note musical alphabet that are in blue on the bottom. So everything that has a color in it has blue on the bottom and then we put on top of it the 5 note pentatonic noting that the pentatonic is in green so it lays on top of the blue but the pentatonic 5 note scale only fits perfectly into the modes of the C major or the major mode and it's relative minor or Aeolian mode and we're basically now looking at the 3 note which if we were to focus on that note as the focal point means we will basically be playing in Phrygian and that means that when we look at the 3 notes that we construct we do make a minor chord construction but it doesn't fit perfectly into the pentatonic scale because we have these 2 notes in our major scale that we're using to construct these chords and we can see that this B for example is going to be a fairly crucial note when we construct the chord from the 3 note of the C major scale so if you're thinking in terms of pentatonics we had to add the B in order to make that yellow so now we've mapped out the major notes we're focused on the green being the first, the third being the red and then the yellow being the fifth of the E minor that we're taking a look at then we have these brackets which are representing us breaking out the fretboard into chunks so that we can play everything hopefully in horizontal positions or in vertical positions as opposed to horizontally and we can name those shapes so let's go through those quickly here we have the first shape I'll pull out the trustee guitar where we said that we had we can name that shape the shape number 4 we can just number it, I typically will do that you can also call it a C shape now why would it be a C shape we're looking at the E minor chord that's constructed from the C major scale and you could call that a Phrygian mode that we're looking at but usually when we name the shapes we name them based on the related major so in this case we're looking at the C major and if I build a C chord you get a C shape that C shape will fit into multiple positions if we're talking about a 7 note major scale that's only one unique of those positions if we're talking about a 5 note pentatonic scale so that's why we can, if we keep our mind straight on what we're talking about we can use that shape of the chord to name the scale position but we're focused here on the E so with regards to the E then we'd have like an E minor shape which would look something like this blue brackets are doing so in this bracketed area we've got then the E minor shape which would be the open E here this B, this E and then these three I know that blue is a little bit hard to see but that's what we're looking at here now it's on the outside the overlap between this blue and the next blue is where we get on the inside leaning forward those will be on the inside so then with this purple shape then is what we can call I would call it shape number 5 we can also call it an A shape why is it an A shape? because if we look back at the C the related major and pivot around that note we get an A shape leaning forward which most people see like as the notes on this side of the A shape so it would be this C and then leaning forward to those three but we're not looking at the A right now we're trying to figure out E's right because we're on an E minor so here's the E minor here if I was to lean that forward we get this so here's the E up top here's the E right here so there's the octave here's the E and then we get basically a D shape that we get down here which looks like this now that so that's this shape so it's inside of the blue and then now it's on the outside as we pivot to this shape here and here you might recognize that shape more easily finger in it like this because that's how we play it it's a D you might call it a D shaped or D minor shaped E minor chord alright so that's going to be this position and then we move from that position to this position there's only five positions so we're going back to position one it's typical to call this one position one or you might call it a G shaped position and that's because if I go back to the C the C is right there in that position and I can build this chord from it that looks like that or if I looked at this shape it would be a G shaped C major if I looked at it from the perspective of a C but again we're looking at the E's here so the E if I go back to the purple shape you can see I'm kind of grabbing this E at the bottom with my pinky and so if I lean that forward then I've got my E right here and I can basically make this shape with it so that's going to be boom boom boom these three notes and then I can also basically lean up to this E right here so this shape so this boom boom boom is what you might call a like a C minor shaped E minor chord because it would be like a C would be right here and you drop the third if it was a major and then you drop the third a half step and there's the minor and then this is kind of like the bottom of that shape so you can see these two are kind of linked together this little triangle and then you can reach your pinky up this way instead grabbing it up there so there's that one and then we go from the red to the position one to position number two which again we could call an E shaped why would it be an E shape because if we looked at the related major scale and we built a chord shape from it it would be up here now we're pivoting around that C and it would look like that which would be our normal bar chord if we were pivoting around the C boom the fifth and so on it would look like this E major bar chord would be up here up there and so that would be that but again we're looking at not the C we're looking at the E and with the E we were pivoting around this shape so this E right here so if I pivot around that one we get one of our most common bar chords starting on that second from the top string which is an A minor you might call it an A minor shaped A minor shaped E minor because if it was an A minor it would look like this an open position that would be an A minor but if I move it up here and bar that off we have the E minor and so there's that shape and then we go from two to three and so the three you might call it a D shape this is where we are focused right now because if I go back to the C and I say there's the C right there I can grab this C and this dude or you can see this little triangle down here that's the D shaped C major but again we're looking at the E so with the E we could say we could see we're grabbing it up top so one way we can play it is basically this way this E boom boom boom and you'd call that possibly a G shaped or a G minor shape if you want to call it G minor shaped E minor chord and that one this one's a little bit tricky to see the minors often times are a little bit harder to see when you're trying to compare these shapes as you move them up to like open position because sometimes we don't play all of the same shapes like an open position but you can see like if I was to play this shape as a G like this and if it was a G like this then I would take that half part of that shape if it was a major which would look like this boom boom and then I'm going to drop the third so the third would be right there and I'm going to convert it from a major to a minor and that's one way you might say okay I get why it's called maybe a G shaped or G minor shaped E minor chord it's because it's the the one three and the five so that's the idea we're going to be focusing now on this shape which again I would call shape number three or D shaped position although we're not focused on the D shape because we're playing around that three chord so just to remember how we might do that if I was in open position here and I wanted to practice playing around the E then I could just throw the E in the mix playing in like a C major C major A minor and then throw in like the E minor back to the C major and then try to make the C the tonic but I'm playing but I'm throwing that minor in but if I want to practice in the E minor you could like switch of course to an E minor scale but what we're trying to do here is practice the chord while still using the same scale which that's a different which will help us kind of practice going into the mode of the Phrygian and it'll also get us an idea of a better idea of one shape that we can map out all the way across the fretboard so if I want to do that I want to make then this this the tonic so now I'm going to build like an E minor we'll do that in open position and then I can just start and stop on the E so I can practice more my E minor as opposed to just throwing it in with the major here's an E minor E minor E minor A minor minor okay so then it's usually not too difficult to make the E the tonic it's a pretty common it's a pretty common mode the Phrygian so in other words to resolve to kind of make it sound like the center not too difficult but we can always use our trick to say hey look what's the fifth of it the fifth is a B so here's a B right there and normally the B in our if I was to construct off a B it would be that funny diminished which is a chord shape that leads back possibly to the one fairly well we would like to have something that leads back to the back to the E so I can kind of cheat and say well why don't I take this B and I'll make a major out of it so that would be like an A shape you know bar chord in this position and that kind of leads back so then we can kind of we can kind of cheat by doing that so I can say hey look when I'm trying to go back to the E to make it resolve maybe I throw in a B major even though it's outside of our scale we're stepping in the lava we're hitting some of those toxic white notes we're getting some lava on us but once we resolve we'll go oh I see why we stepped in the lava okay so we're going to say here's an E minor here's a C A minor and then if I go back home see how that sounds maybe a little bit off but when we resolve it to the E minor then it should work so that's a little trick that we can basically pull in and try to make that the tonic which is common even if you were to skip by the way to an E minor scale we don't have that resolve back like we do with the majors so that's a common thing you can do with the minors just in general even if you went to the E minor scale instead of playing around the Phrygian then you'd have a similar technique possibly alright so now if we bring this up to this area this to our green area strategies could be that we play around again we're going to kind of play around the 3 which means we're going to make it the tonic meaning we're basically playing in like a Phrygian but instead of renumbering the system to call it the 1 which is what we would do modally which we'll talk more about later we're going to keep it as the 3 and just say hey look I'm just doing all the same stuff but I'm going to make that the tonic by starting and stopping on it we can then practice in this position by basically playing all the chords in this position so all chords all notes should be able to be played in any within the 1 to 5 fret kind of shape positions we have here that's the beauty of the guitar however we of course are only mapping out one chord at a time in a particular shape so although we've gone over the different shapes you might not be completely comfortable making all the switches in this shape we might practice that more later but we'll just touch on that now another technique that you might use is of course jumping to where you know so we probably know best the at least a few chord shapes better in open position so we could try to jump from open position up to this position so that we can practice noodling around and playing in this position while also surrounding it with things we know in open position realizing that as we jump we can also play open strings because we're in the key of C in the related mode or the Phrygian and all the open strings are in the chord that we're working on which is nice we can also then okay let's we can also practice blending from the prior shape to this shape so we can play more smoothly horizontally possibly focusing in on particular fingers that we can move from one shape to the other so we can see the lines as we're blending the shapes together so we can kind of blend them together in our mind and find ways that we can move horizontally and then of course we can keep going back to the previous shape and find lines that will move us from the prior shapes into the current shape so that we can kind of more seamlessly move horizontally up between our shapes which can give us different sounds in different lines as we move up so that's going to be the general idea let's first just play through the shape and I'll do this like we did before remember the shape kind of starts here on a D but we're not going to we don't want to start on the D right now because I want to sound it like I want to make it sound like we're playing around the E which means I want to make it sound Phrygian ish so we could make this the one which is what you would normally do playing modally but I'm going to keep it as the 3 it's a little bit wonky to kind of count up with the 3 but I think it's actually good practice even if you're going to switch to the mode so I'm going to go from 3 to 3 so I'm going to take this number I'm going to take this and I'll put it right here we're going to start on that E and then we're going to move up to this E and I'll just count starting on 3 so there's our E that is the octave of course which is another thing to point out here this heavy E is good right so it sounds a little funny because if I play it with something underneath it because we're pretty far up in terms of the distance of tonality of this low note versus the higher notes up here but that heavy E you can always put that in place and that should be okay too so something to keep in mind as we go alright so we're going to say this is going to be the 2 or the 3 so now I'm on this E down here and then I'm going to play up to this E starting on the 3 again so now I'm on this E I'm going to finish the shape by just saying 3 4 3 that brings me back to this 3 again then I can walk it back the other way so we can say 3 2 1 or 8 7 6 5 4 3 so that brings me to this E and then I'm going to walk that back to this E so I'm going to say this is going to be 3 2 1 or 8 7 6 5 4 3 and so now I'm on this 3 and I'm going to say 3 2 3 and so there we have so we can kind of practice the same scale notice it's different though right practicing the scale starting and stopping on the D is a different exercise than starting and stopping on the E you're going to really get that shape in your mind if you do if you start and stop on all the modalities but you'll also be able to kind of hopefully switch between the modes if you practice you know starting on stopping on different modes which I'm practicing too I'm not you know I'm an accountant here I'm John but but you know I'm practicing these things so here this is what I'm doing so the next thing we can look at is we can we can see the shapes that are in here so you'll recall that we had before a we called this a G minor shaped E minor right because this is the 1 3 5 so it's a little bit hard to grab that one because you got to use your pinky typically and it's a G shape because this would be the top part of a G shape if it was a G major and then you'd have these three in here that would be like this shape but then barring off this stuff and then you're flattening the third to get the minor that's why you might call it a G minor shaped E minor okay so you've got those three you can also play this way so this one is going to be it's inverted on the bottom now so you've got and that's kind of connected to this shape back here which is a little outside of our of our shapes but that's probably the most common that's like a really comfortable shape right there and then we but we can convert that to this that's in our shape so we have that the bottom of that shape is back here so we've got these three so we've got those three which is a high pitched and somewhat inverted again it is totally inverted because the E's on the bottom you could when I play this I've been experimenting with reaching up to the E like right there so that way you lose the third but you get like two E's in it and you get this heavier E basically on top so there's basically that one but I think the major ones in this shape for me is usually going back to this shape and then this shape which ties into this shape which is kind of crossing over the border of the two okay just to touch on the chords that we've learned in this position now again we've only mapped out one chord that's why I don't want to spend a lot of time doing this but just realize that if you look at the at the C we looked at all the majors right so what we can play together with this is we said the C's right there whenever I see the C I know that the one four five is going to be the one four five major's so and that's in an L shape so here's the C so the C the F and then the G so this C was this D shaped C that's what the shape is kind of named after that would be this C and then boom boom or you can play just these up top right but you're probably more likely to grab that there and then underneath it we've got the F and the F is the one that you can play you can reach up top this way so there's the F and then you've got the G which is an A shaped G so you can play that's our so you can play that one and then we also did the D minor so the D is up top so that's the full bar chord you can play like that it's kind of difficult to bar sometimes so you can play it like this so those are going to be the major shapes that we've looked at thus far well the major and minor shape that we looked at thus far we also noted that that B is something that we can use to play around the E which is basically like a Phrygian because the B is the fifth so even though it's a little bit outside of our scale shape when we're going back home in this position we can take that and build a major chord which would basically be a D shaped B major chord and you can use that possibly to go back home to the E minor use that as a resolve now again since we're only mapping out one chord at a time up top and we probably know the open positions better let's try to use our jumping strategy so that we can just kind of start to play around the E up top as it fits inside of what we already noted in terms of scale structure and we can use our open chords over here so let's jump up to like this E we're going to jump up to this E remembering that that E also I can play the open E and then that's the octave of the E up top so if I'm around here I know that I have my shape that I can play like this that's great but then I have to play this with my pinky which is kind of a pain so I know that the heart of that sound is the one and the three so I could basically get all I really need I don't really need the fifth to get the flavor of the E I can play it like this and that would be fine I can also play like this and I don't put my pinky down and I play that open E which is going to give you a kind of funky sound because this is a different octave but you still have everything you need because now you're playing this E back here with the third and the fifth also up top if I was to noodle around with this E I can see I have this basically box right here so I might be jumping to the E and then playing back and then I could slide forward to that F and then possibly reach down there now note one of the things that makes a sound Phrygian ish to me is the fact that the second note is a half step up so sometimes I might actually move up this way so I can really kind of hammer on that F right there that'll make it sound Phrygian to me sounds kind of heavier oftentimes possibly just because I'm playing on a guitar which has that heavy E string on it so if you're playing like rock and roll or metal or something like that the Phrygian might be something to kind of play around with so in any case let's try to say if I'm playing in open position here and I was just to play an E minor an E minor I might just say E sometimes but if I was playing an E minor then I can jump up here and then back up back so I'm jumping up see I'm hammering on to that back to an E minor major sounds a little out of place but resolving back to the E minor so we can noodle around that one and then I can say okay well what if I look at maybe this E right here and see what I can jump to from there so we had this E and so now I'm going to be down here on this E so within here we're going to say okay well above it I've got my my B above it and then I've got this little shape of course which is my that B and then the G could give me give me my chord so that's going to be here so if I'm down on the shape I might end it with that I also know that behind that which is outside of my shape but it's a common structure to pick this one up because that gives me kind of like my A shape which is right here A shape if I moved it up this way and then I can also reach my pinky up to pick that one although that's uncomfortable so you're probably going to do either this or move to that and then once you're there you might move from here to that right so you're going here here those are three ways to kind of play this way right up this kind of angle the E minor from that shape so we have that and then if I'm down and if I'm in here I have double stops I've got double stop, double stop double stop up top so I know I can play this whole little box right there I can play that up so if I'm on and I also know that I also know I also know that this whole column column this column and this column in the 10th and the 12th that whole thing is good so I could bar off when I'm here and I'm here so I could say okay if I'm double stop to here but here I can play the whole thing here I can play the whole thing alright so let's say we work that into it see that note boom there's my hammer on again from the E to the F I'm going back up to this high one that we were playing before the G minor shaped E minor then maybe I go to a C double stop, double stop, double stop okay so then we can say okay what about this one we can say there's an E up top here now I messed up again we have an E that's up top there so if I jump to that one again I have my open E and there's the octave so that's kind of interesting because you can actually play this one so it's not usually when you play this position you're playing like these three which gives you your E minor inverted so one way you cannot have it inverted have the E be the lowest one or at least lower is to play these two which is kind of interesting I don't normally do that but I kind of like the idea and so I have that and then I've got this whole space down here which we can see we've seen multiple times in the prior ones that it's kind of the inverse of this one you've got the two shapes connected here the box and then the two outside here it's this way so when I'm playing up top I can go when I'm playing down here so we're playing it that way so if I start on that E I can play those together and then maybe that double stop, double stop, double stop and I know this whole bar is good so let's say we're in an E E minor and then I'm going to jump up to this E and then I can do my hammer on thing again with this E so I'm just going from this E to that F sounds kind of double stop, double stop ringing out that open E walked it up to this one E up top so anyways we can jump around between those so the next thing we could do is say okay well what if I was trying to blend the shapes together a more smooth transition so if I want to move to that E I could say okay let's try to connect that to the prior shape so here's the green shape if I go back to the prior shape then I can say well there's an E like right here and that's part of that's part of basically this this E shape right here so if I'm in this shape that's my A kind of shape meaning this is my A minor shape moved up here so this is an A minor shaped E minor chord so I can use that and then possibly noodle up this area maybe to go up to this E up top so I can say okay I'm going to look at my pointer so you don't always look at the pointer notice down here you could say here are my two fingers right there which naturally fit into these double stops so maybe that would be an interesting just a little bit different place to start you might say okay I've got these two fingers right here what if I move them up boom boom so that fits perfectly into this shape so you can play this shape so I'm going to double stop moving up into this shape and then pause and then I just walk down to basically that shape so that would make sense with something other than your pointer so you might do something first up top I might say first I'm going to reach from here to up top to here to this G and then maybe I'll go back to these two fingers and then move them up in some way right so I can go back and then maybe I just to try to find something okay and then I could go with my pointer in this position so okay it's like okay my pointer is right there so if I take that one then of course I could noodle around this box up top and then and then possibly finish off on that E so if I was to say okay if I'm here I've got my hammer on to that F and I can move around this box so there's the one and the three up here and we could take this shape here and try to find my way down to this bottom E instead and then see if we can get down to basically this E so I'm going to say there's my here's my shape there's the top E here's the octave that my pinky is on so I could try to get my ring my pointer to that pinky position so I just basically maneuvered my pinky up my ring finger up to where the pinky was and now I'm up in here okay so then I could say alright what if I move back from this position position one and we move back into position position two back into position one I should say so now that E is the pivot point if I lean back from that E I've got this shape which is basically a C shape we might also focus on this E down here so this would be like a C minor shaped E minor chord that's a little bit difficult to grab for a lot of people so I'm grabbing this this and this a lot of people might start with this shape here which is this little triangle boom boom boom but the E here is is now on the bottom so it's inverted so you can convert this triangle to up here so if we're there then I could say okay well now my ring finger whatever way I play it is right there so it's right there and I can move that into my most familiar shape which is this one and then turn this one around into my A shape and then basically maneuver that one from there so if my ring finger my pointer finger is here I'm playing this I know I can walk this B and up to that C there's my finger I can walk that up to there easy I might do something like this play a three note one which is basically an A minor but I'm not really thinking chords too much I'm trying to get my finger up to this one because that's where I'm going to pivot around on my pointer finger so now I'm on my pointer fingers here and I can reverse that forward so now I'm there and now I have my same problem where so then I just took the top route and brought it back up to this one so we could take that same that same thing and go the bottom route right I could say well instead of pivoting up to this E I'm going to come down to this area maybe and see if I can reach up to this E like this way with that A shaped E and then maybe go down to this one so I can say okay what if I'm if I'm on this shape right here here's my pointer again I could go into here and now I'm in this area so I can kind of noodle around this area where I have my hammer I have my hammer on so now I've brought my finger up to basically that C right there and so then within that position we might so now I've basically brought my finger up into this this position which is our like kind of minor shaped an A minor shape which is a nice position because that you can you can convert that hopefully I got that right let me let's bring it back to the next shape one time we're going to say there's this shape so that was that E right there that we focused on with position one if we lean back to the next shape then we have this E so we can say alright that E if I go back to this one this is an open position there's the E right there the octave is right there so there's my E if I was to build a minor chord it would look like that which is a D shaped so now we've got boom so this one to that purple to here and to here that's my D shape E minor but it might be a little bit hard to reach that one because of this finger right there so you might play it like this way just play these three just play those three notes and that can kind of help you to lead up your finger your lead finger then is on this one now so the two fingers I can use to move up might be this finger with this E which is now this finger and I can move that up in position playing around again this kind of position so I might lead with that one going and so now I'm in this position so now I've got this A again and now I've basically pivoted around this E up top so now I'm going around this E up top again and that puts us into our same position up top which I could take the high road on it something like that and then let's just do the whole thing so let's say that we are in open position so we have the E full E like this people play the E minor different ways you might play the E minor like this in which case your pointer finger is going to be on that B so or you might play it like this so if your pointer these two are on that position now so I could move these two up together and say could I do some double stops from here to here that I can go all the way up on that position so I might play the whole thing double stop these two and then there's that E right there so that's actually an E minor right there you don't have to play it in that order too I can go I can move just one of these fingers so there's an E minor leaning back this way and then I can lean forward going that way there we have that so you can find your lines obviously you can do the same thing going back and forward I'm kind of focusing on going forwards but clearly you want to go back the other way too which would be great let me just one other thing again with these minors I find enjoyable ringing out that open minor so and just letting that ring out as you move up the guitar which is something you can do and so if you put your finger or cursor too maybe on this B then I can alter between an open E so now I'm altering between an open E and that B and then I can also grab that G which means I'm basically playing the three notes but altering between them between the E and the G so I can do that shuffle pattern I can take my finger off too which reveals the A put it back on so shuffle pattern I can also grab the one behind it even though it's white because that's like the blue note if it was an E minor scale but I think it works in Phrygian too and then I can kind of play that up so I can play every note as I go up here that I'm going to go here playing the open E D and then the A and then I'm going to move to here play the open E the B and then go to here play the open E the F and the C and then go to here and play the open open play the open E the F and then the D and then I'll go to here and I'll play the open E the E here, and then basically finish it off, right? So I'm gonna say, all right, if I started back here, we could play like, I could just follow the string up and just play what I can play, reaching from that string, all right, so I can just go, and then I'm just moving from that B to the C and I can see from there, open E and the C. I'm reaching up to the A above it and then back and then I'm gonna move up to the D, reaching up to the E, to the B, open, and then back to the E right here, so now I'm on the E, so here it's fun to do, you've got that note and the third and then there's the double E, so that's kind of in the middle, you get the double E, which gives you that heavy sound and then I can go up to the F. And then I can go up to the G and then go up to the G and kind of close it up there and you can go back, right? So if I was to do that, we can continue going. You can also follow this top string kind of back as well and then alter between the open strings, so when you're going back this way, just messing with that open string and then you can let the A ring out as well sometimes, right? And that will always give you that bass line because, and so that is nice, because that gives you the ability to play other things and always return to that bass line to give you that bass to that bass E. So anyways.


Welcome back to Special Report. So the world is in economic turmoil. I don't need to tell you that, but this, of course, says central banks and countries like China, India, and Australia began transitioning to digital currency. The Federal Reserve has been contemplating doing the same here for the US. And with digital currency, the government could track every single purchase that we make. I mean, officials could even prohibit us from purchasing certain products or even easily freeze or seize part or all of our money. It's kind of a scary thought. So these are some of the reasons that concerned Americans have reached out to Burj Gold Group. They want to have a physical asset that's independent of the US dollar. Gold tax sheltered and a retirement account. You can learn more if gold is right for you too. Again, that word to text is America. And here's the number. It is 989898 and they're gonna send you a free information kit about gold. Great company, they have an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau. They have thousands of happy customers. Countless five star reviews. Burj Gold has been helping many listeners from the very beginning. Again, just text that word America to the number on your screen, 989898 and claim your free info kit on gold because if a central bank digital currency becomes reality, it would sure be nice to have some gold to depend on. All right, as you know, we have been warning you of the BRICS conference that just happened that of course was Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa working to replace the US dollar on the world market with its own currency that would destroy the US dollar. And the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, says that the BRICS nations could dethrone Europe. So if Macron is worried, shouldn't we be kind of panicking right now? Let's ask our very own Melissa Armao. She is the founder and owner of Stock Swoosh and Melissa joins us now. Good to see you. You know, I think some Americans don't really pay any attention to this, but maybe we should. What do you think? Well, I think the problem is we're carrying so much debt in the United States right now as a country that we've actually devalued the dollar. So that is a problem. And then when you have China, which of course wants to come in as a world power and be number one, they want that currency to be at the top. So when you see alliances like this with particularly Russia and China, yes, it's problematic. Do I think that they're close to overtaking Europe, for example, or the United States know, but I do think it's a problem for the future. Well, the other thing I want to ask you, and again, it's just concerning a lot of people.  They see that they're making less and they're spending more. And this is everything when it comes to groceries, to gasoline, you name it. I've talked to people that have said their home insurance has gone up, people having to sell their homes because they can't afford it. We're not talking just a little bit. I mean, in some cases, double, triple, quadruple. And I don't want people to panic, but we're all feeling, again, the effects of so-called by-denomics. And here's the sad news.  I mean, we have Thanksgiving just around the corner. Biden isn't going anywhere anytime soon. What can we do to help ease the pain that we're all feeling? Well, I would say the best thing you could do as a shopper, particularly if you shop here, a family, if you're a grocery shopper, is make a list before you go to the store. You know, sometimes when I don't make a list, I tend to overbuy. So, I mean, if you make a list, make a list of the things that you need that you absolutely, absolutely need the essentials. And also you can buy in quantity, particularly for meats. You know, you can buy those big family packs, chickens and things, and then freeze them. Chicken, I think, is good in the freezer for at least six months. So that's another way. And, you know, shop around, see where you can get the cheaper prices for things or when things are on sale. So I think, and stock up now, you know, before the holidays, because prices will go up over the holidays because people do a lot of cooking between now and the holidays at Christmas. But I think the biggest issue is that people feel rich when they're not scraping every single week with their paycheck, and also when they see their 401k going up. People feel poor, you know, when every day things that they need all the time, like gas and food and paying rent, and in mortgage payment, for example, because mortgage rates have gone up, when those things have gone up a lot. So it's the everyday things that people have to pay for that have gone up so much. And of course, food is one of them. So, and of course, if you have a 401k, it's been up, it's been down, it's been up, it's been down. It's been a roller coaster all over the place. If you've been watching how the market has been this year, 2022 was a bearish year for the market. We've been doing good so far this year, but we had a big sell-off in the month of August. And I really don't know what that means between now and the rest of the year. We could continue to sell off or we could rally. It's gonna depend on the fed. Yeah, I love it how you said, make a list, I don't, I love to shop. Do as I say, not as I do. But we joke around here with the Rad family and stuff and one of our producers, he's like, what I do every time is I go to the grocery circular and I look to see what's buy one, get one free. Or if you've noticed now, it's buy one, get one half off. But make your list that way and freeze it. I mean, it's what you could do. It's what's in your control until you can make some voting changes, right? So Joe Biden and the Democrats passed an inflation reduction act, if you wanna call it that. And they said that all the extra taxes and fees included in the bill would rake in more cases for the federal government. But cash, I meant to say for the federal government, but federal revenue fell, are you ready for this? $416 billion from this time last year despite the passage of the IRA bill. But we now know from history that anytime the government increases regulations and taxes, people spin less and the government takes in less revenue. Why do we keep doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result, Melissa? Well, first of all, that term Bidenomics is so problematic. And if Biden decides to run using that term, which is exactly what I think they're gonna end up doing into 2024, if in fact it is gonna be Biden that's running for reelection, it's just so problematic because all it did was add on to our debt. It was a spending bill, essentially. It did not really help everyday Americans. It didn't help businesses either because they raised the corporate tax rate, which of course, President Trump lowered. So lower taxes is better. And I know this doesn't make any sense, but the fact is we have to lower spending and then lower taxes. When the government is constantly, constantly spending on things, and again, many of these programs sometimes which really don't end up amounting to anything at all. Sometimes some of these programs end up going belly up and then it's a waste of the money. So I mean, part of the problem is that people are watching their wallets right now and so when you have a situation where taxes are going up, it's another thing that makes people nervous besides the cost of regular everyday things that we talked about. Well, the bottom line is we all know one thing. Bidenomics, it ain't working. He can keep touring from one city to the next, trying to convince people of that, but even mainstream media outlets are having to say, you know, why aren't the American people, why isn't that resonating? Because it's not, it's not. You can keep telling him that, but they know what's in their bank account. Melissa Armo, thank you so much for joining us. Good to see you. All right, the world and let's be honest, our nation's economy is in turmoil and it's easy, right, to let us get to us. But earlier today on American Sunrise, we had a chance to speak with Penny Maxwell from the Freedom House Church. And I thought it was so important to do this because we get it, we're stressed, you're stressed, we're all stressed and we like to think that we're always in control. But there are moments.


High School basketball teams from across the state are traveling to Bemidji this weekend for the Bemidji Invitational. Hibbing, St. Paul Johnson, and Arono High Schools have made the trip north for the two-day event. The Invitational tipped off tonight with Bemidji taken on St. Paul Johnson. Lumberjack's looking for a 4-0 start. First half, Beeberg with a nice entry pass for the easy Colton Jensen lay-in. Jack's down 9-7. Ryan Beberdorf on the next possession finds Jacob Beeberg in the corner for the tray. It was silent night in Bemidji so the fans go nuts after the 10-point and scored there. They are going crazy. Next possession, Nick Snell with the drive gives it to Beeberg down low who finishes strong to tie the game at 12. Bemidji ran away with this one late. It's still going on but looks like the Lumberjacks have in control up 69-45. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


The American stand-up comedian and writer, Hawi Kondabulu once wrote The last place the colonizer leaves is your mind Those of you brave enough or self-hating enough Are about to watch a talk or an excerpt an extended excerpt from a talk I've had with Azam Ali Azam Ali is a very famous Iranian singer from Iran and in this talk I Suggested to her a new way of looking at narcissistic abuse The narcissist enters a shared fantasy with a maternal figure is intimate partner You know this by now and he does this only in order to separate from the intimate partner which represents the mother He failed to separate from his biological mother. He failed to accomplish separation Individuation from his mother of origin So now he tries it again a second chance a second time with his substitute mother his intimate partner so far So well-known nothing new The new thing in this conversation Is when I explained that the intimate partner is expected to help the narcissist By acting the part of a rejecting betraying mother The narcissist Coerces her to behave this way and if she refuses He tries to punish her and if this doesn't help he devalues and discards her So either way whether you collaborate or you resist You will end up in exactly the same spot devalued and discarded but During the talk I described dynamics that have been neglected Online by scholars and even by myself in my previous videos. Now, you don't have to watch the entire video You can skip from one question to another because the first half of the video more or less I Deal with things that you've been exposed to those of you who are loyal viewers Those of you who have watched my previous videos Those of you who have watched the videos or in my shared fantasy playlist You know these things. There's nothing new there The second half of the of the conversation is new and so just skip the questions at your leisure and focus on the Exchanges between me and Azam Ali Which? Present a new angle on narcissistic abuse. It was a long interview and I went very deep into the shared fantasy concept coercion Coercive snapshotting the narcissists need The narcissist needs you to fail him To let him go and so ironically if you're a good partner You're the wrong partner for the narcissist. I wish you an interesting hour with me and as I'm Ali and Feel free to comment and ask questions and so on so forth. I will of course ignore them as I always do Okay Okay, so we can dive in now So what what brought me really to narcissism just to give context in case in the event that I Mention anything in this interview is It's the first time I'm even speaking about this publicly, but my father left when I was four years old and my mother was Very much like your mother. She was a dead mother and And I never thought that my father had that kind of influence on my life because he left and it took many many years For me to to realize that those four years were enough for him to have an impact on my interpersonal Relationship with relationships with men. So I chose my father over and over again Until of course I married my husband and he's wonderful So that's sort of the context of why I came to you and I can tell you single-handedly your work has helped me to Realize and fully understand and comprehend What kind of personality I was really dealing with so I thank you for that And that's one of my that was really what the reason I wanted to interview you and also I I Realized as soon as I read your book that the word narcissist is one of the most misused words in the English language And that it really is a clinical identity narcissism a serious mental health disorder So I in and in this interview I think one of my goals is besides having you enlighten everybody on the topic is I think in this age of social media, we need to be extremely vigilant because Because you know narcissism Narcissists are everywhere on the internet now and because of anonymity. It's it's an ideal place for them to target Victims so we'll start with like the most basic So there's so many confusing typologies and I myself sometimes get confused, you know over covert sadistic Cerebral and even after listening to many of your lectures I I can't say I even understand the difference between let's say a sadistic narcissist and a psychopathic narcissist So can you in your own words tell us what is narcissism? What are the various forms and how is a narcissist form? I try to introduce some structure and order into the mess The situation nowadays the situation nowadays reminds me of the 19th century where there was when there was a proliferation of elements chemical elements But there was no periodic table So there were all over the place these elements and no one knew how they were interconnected same with elementary particles until the 60s we had an accumulation an inventory of elementary particles in physics and There was not table.  There's no control over the external So what the child does?  He doesn't recognize the separateness and externality of other people So this precludes Relationships with other people this precludes what we call object relations This is one of the core elements of narcissism now I'm not defining narcissism right now as it is defined as being defined in the diagnostic and statistical manual In the diagnostic and statistical manual there's a list of symptoms And a list of a descriptive list a dimensional list of behaviors And if someone meets these symptoms and behaviors, then he's a narcissist. He's for example incapable of empathy envious exploitative Etc. Etc. If someone is like this then he's a narcissist But these are the symptoms. That's what the disease I'm now describing The etiology of the disease So the first issue is separation individuation the second issue Because the child never becomes an individual The child fails to develop a self Or an ego So ironically narcissists are selfless They don't have a self or an ego Narcissism therefore In existential terms Is the opposite of existence its absence Narcissism is absence where all people healthy and even mentally ill are present They have a core core identity. They have a self however deformed and thwarted. They still have a self They have an ego if you use Freudian Freudian model. They have something The narcissist Is an absence It is what we call the empty schizoid core and this applies also to people with borderline personalities So these are diseases of absence Because the narcissist cannot exist in principle The narcissist needs to borrow his existence From the outside He needs to import An existence from other people So what he does he latches on to other people And he coerces them To provide him with a sense of existence To help him to regulate His internal environment for example his sense of self-worth The borderline coerces her intimate partners to regulate her moods and her emotions So these people use something called external regulation People around the narcissist Becomes subcontractors And their job is to keep the narcissist alive or at least To allow the narcissist to experience existence however vicariously Now this is life and death And that's why narcissists Are essentially very aggressive About obtaining narcissistic supply About maintaining the shared fantasy. They create fantasies And they introduce you into the fantasy where you have to play a role And any defiance And any divergence and deviance From these allocated screens Results in aggression devaluation and discard So this is the second element in narcissism And the third element in narcissism Is what I would call alien artificial intelligence By no definition that I'm aware of what it is to be human Is the narcissist human These are not even partial humans And I'm not saying this in order to be pejorative or derogatory or You know, this is not hate speech. This is simply the fact If you have no empathy If you have no access to negative to positive emotions If you are exploitative If you are unable to accept other people as external objects separate from you If you treat all people as instruments Instrumentalize them and objectify them Treat them as objects if you Compel people to participate in a fantasy which is divorced from reality and then penalize them if they insist on Remaining grounded in reality These are not human behaviors The narcissist is more like an agency of some kind or an artificial intelligence program Narcissists emulate and mimic empathy Positive emotions because they are manipulative. They're Machiavellian But there's no inner resonance. That's why narcissists have called empathy cognitive empathy reflexive empathy, but no emotional empathy So they are users and takers But and they do all this pretty automatically All this demonizing online of narcissists is this malevolent scheming That's that's confusing narcissists with psychopaths Psychopaths are malevolent malicious scheming goal oriented and ruthless and callous That's psychopaths Narcissists are the same But automatically unconsciously Essentially, this is their essence They can't help it They don't sit around making plans on how to subjugate you. They just subjugate Because that's what they do And so I've The way I describe narcissism now you won't find it in any textbook and in any In any diagnostic manual, but this is the core and essence of narcissism These are empty shells who suck your essence in order to feel alive And coerce you into specific roles in order to maintain a fantasy within which They are godlike omnipotent omniscient and so one last comment Narcissism is the exact equivalent of a primitive religion It is a primitive religion When the child is exposed to trauma and abuse by a parental figure And abuse can also mean smothering pampering idolizing the child Any denial of boundaries any breach of boundaries Any any isolation of the child From reality for example Developing a sense of entitlement in the child all these are forms of abuse When the child is exposed to trauma and abuse The way The ancient israelites were exposed to god's wrath god's trauma and abuse god The god of the old testament is a parental figure But it's a very abusive parental figure. It's a violent aggressive I would almost say malevolent parental figure Controlling manipulative threatening So when a child is exposed to this kind of parental figure The child reacts The way moses did The child develops a religion Because the parental figures are godlike. They're divinities So the child develops a religion and in this religion the child comes up with a private god A private deity known as the false self And then the child Human sacrifices The child sacrifices himself his true self To the false self So this is human sacrifice And then the child merges with the false self And becomes empowered By his or her Exclusive privileged relationship with this newfound deity Narcissism is therefore a primitive religion And this is the force and power of narcissism That's why it is so Such a phenomenon that captures the imagination invokes fears And is Almost inexplicable because we are using the wrong tools We are using the tools of science We are using the tools of psychology In an attempt to explain Narcissism When actually it's a theological phenomenon It's a private religion developed by a terrified child With a deity That's so fascinating. I mean it is even if you've been fortunate enough never to be in a relationship With a narcissist. It's such a fascinating subject and I think one of the main reasons I love your lectures and you know You know when you look at your statistics on youtube and there are those people who watch and listen all the way to the end That's me So, you know what what I love about yours is you don't vilify the narcissist You know, it's such a if you're someone like me that you don't adapt you don't subscribe to binary thinking You don't think in terms of this is good. That's evil And that's why self-help groups just don't work because they are really cesspools of vitriol and hate So I really appreciate your approach to it, which makes it incredibly. It's really better Your book is better than any sci-fi book I have ever read in my life And I really appreciate also that you touched on the subject of abuse because I think that's another word that is Quite misunderstood that there are so many various kinds of abuse. So I appreciate that you touched on that I quickly want to just touch on something else Before I do that, I just want to say because there is a war on vocabulary and pronouns these days that Even though you're using he and she they're all interchangeable I quickly want you to just if you can touch on what healthy primary narcissism is and when does it become pathological because you Have said it's very essential in healthy development Um, so if you can just quickly just touch up I'll be brief on this one Okay in the first 18 months of life The child as I said Cannot tell the difference between itself and the world.  It's like the famous song, you know We are the world So highly highly narcissistic song. So we are the world And then because the child cannot tell the difference between itself and the world the child invests It's emotional energy in itself As far as as far as it is aware. He's investing it in the world because he is the world So he redirects his emotional energy at itself Sexual energy as well. So there's auto erotism. The child is sexually attracted to itself And the child falls in love with itself All the emotional energy goes goes into the self This is known as primary narcissism And it for example facilitates the formation Of a coherent self across this known as constellation or integration And so on so forth later on in life The child takes the same mental energy the same emotional energy known as cathesis So the child takes this mental energy and redirects it Rather than invest invest it in itself The child redirects it to the outside And this is the primordial foundation of object relations So rather than falling in love with himself if only love if was in love with another person Rather than being sexually attracted to itself he becomes sexually attracted to another person So there's a redirection of this energy Now if the child gets stuck At a developmental phase for example if the child cannot complete separation individuation Then the child remains enmeshed Remains engulfed and consumed by the maternal figure usually And so the child cannot The child having become an adult Cannot really tell the difference between itself And the rest of the world and so he remains stuck in a narcissistic phase Healthy narcissism aware in healthy people Is a remnant of the original self directed emotional energy That allows you to maintain or stabilize or regulate a sense of self-worth And especially self-confidence and self-esteem The difference between primary narcissism Which is healthy And secondary narcissism, which is pathological Is that primary narcissism Operates on the reality principle It recognizes your limitations for example And your strengths It adheres to boundaries Primary narcissism realizes where you stop and other people begin So primary narcissism is grounded in reality. It has something called reality testing While secondary pathological narcissism is grounded in fantasy It's an extended fantasy defense gun or eye So secondary narcissism Impairs the reality testing Narcissists cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy That's why narcissists actually never gaslight They never lie That's not true. Psychopaths do this Narcissists believe their own nonsense They believe their own confabulation Confabulations and stories and promises.  They're very self-destructive Because not because not necessarily because they're malicious or malevolent But because they can't read reality properly. They can't read social cues sexual cues other people. They have no empathy They're devotion reality It's a delusional disorder But there are also psychopathic narcissists, right? Yes, about three percent of narcissists are what we call malignant narcissists They are psychopathic narcissists and these are narcissists who Obtain narcissistic supply By deploying psychopathic methods psychopathic techniques psychopathic strategies So they are likely to be for example reckless and defined and conchumacious opposed to authority and impulsive When in the pursuit of narcissistic supply And they are going to trample over people. They're going to abuse people exploit people ruin people hurt people You name it just in order to obtain supply The psychopath is going to do exactly the same thing But in order to obtain sex or money or power or access or luxury life So psychopaths are goal oriented The narcissist is also goal oriented, but he's he has only one goal and that is not narcissistic supply So it would be good actually at this point I was going to get into the Have you go into the phases but since you ended there Can you tell us what is narcissistic supply? The narcissist inhabits a fantasy as I said And his fantasy is founded on a cognitive distortion. The cognitive distortion is known as grandiosity It is an inflated fantastic self-image The self-perception that is counterfactual defies reality and is extremely difficult to uphold Because reality keeps challenging the grandeur of self-image obviously So the narcissist needs you to tell him That his self-image is accurate That his false self is not false That if he considers himself to be a genius he is a genius Or handsome. He is handsome. He needs external. He needs input from the outside to regulate and to stabilize his belief In the fiction that undermines his life the fiction known as grandiosity In clinical terms, we say that the narcissist regulates his sense of self-worth via input from the outside And this input is known as narcissistic supply Well, if you could just describe what you call the three s's and also the difference between narcissistic supply and sadistic supply Actually, there are four s's the narcissist First of all, there's this myth That the narcissist is attracted to specific kinds of partners. That is not true The narcissist couldn't care less if you're empathic Because he doesn't do empathy.  In other words, they go with anyone If you give the narcissist, if you provide the narcissist with two out of four s's The narcissist would willingly team up with you and become your intimate partner And the four s's are sex services Personal assistant chauffeur cook cleaning lady Sex services Supply sadistic and narcissistic and safety to to allay to reduce to mitigate the abandonment anxiety If you provide the narcissist with two out of these four You could be a psychopath. The narcissist would be with you You could be another narcissist and the narcissist would end up having a couple with you It's it's a myth. It's nonsense that there is type constancy Sadistic supply is the narcissist realization That he is about to experience pain and punishment By inflicting hurt And abusing another person So it's not it's not What people think people think that sadistic supply means that the narcissist enjoys inflicting pain on other people That is sadism the sadist the classical sadist derives gratification From humiliating other people from inflicting pain on other people from torturing other people.  I can never remember it feels like more But it's so it's so Fantasmic the whole experience when you have a relationship with a narcissist that you don't realize how how Surreal it is until you try to explain it to someone else And then you realize there's no language to really explain what it is But you have created that language So if you could just kindly take us through the different stages You mean of the shirt of the shirt fantasy to the discard No, the whole thing is a shirt The whole thing is known as a shirt. It has seven. It has seven stages I will not go right now to each and every one of the stages. I'm describing in broad brushstrokes What's happening when the narcissist?  He exposes you to your own idealization So you begin to see yourself through the narcissist gaze And it's very intoxicating and it's very addictive Because you see yourself through the narcissist as an ideal figure Super intelligent drop dead gorgeous amazing amazing unprecedented and it's you know, no one can resist this.     You have your own family.  You have your own job. I mean you deviate from this natural. This frustrates the narcissist The way He used to be frustrated as a baby with mother so it frustrates the narcissist and so He begins to be to get angry. He begins to be aggressive And then he converts you in his mind to a frustrating bad object You are he transitions you from all good mother to all bad mother A frustrating mother a hateful mother And in other words an enemy a persecutory object So then he needs to separate from you the whole The whole exercise the shared fantasy Is about reenacting the narcissist childhood And allowing him to separate this time successfully So he has converted you into a persecutory object an enemy and now He can safely separate from you because you're bad You're a bad object So he devalues you And then he discards you And this is a symbolic reenactment of the separation from the original mother Now there's nothing you can do about this This is an inexorable process that unfolds and unfolds inside the narcissist mind Nothing you could say Nothing you could do no behavior you could adopt Would have had would have secured any different outcome This is going to happen regardless of you Because it's all happening inside the narcissist mind and his interactions are with the internal object And this is the end of the shared fantasy the discard phase where the narcissist experiences separation from the maternal figure And for a brief moment He believes that he's on the verge of individuation of healing and completing The original unresolved conflict with his mother with his real mother biological Of course, it doesn't work It doesn't work And then the narcissist needs to go through the same cycle again sometimes with you So he re-idealizes you and starts from zero and this is known as Hooverie and sometimes with others Narcissus is doomed specifically Is doomed To repeat the original conflict with his mother the mother who did not allow him To become himself did not allow him to separate an individual.  It's this dynamic is universal It's just The members of the couple If if one of the members of the couple is a narcissist He forces The other one to become a mother And he himself becomes a mother and this is the dual mothership And this is how it goes time and again prepare to omit mobility What you always say Freud calls repetition compulsion. Yes.  It's not the father No, not the father. The father is not relevant to this Okay, actually one very important thing that I want to touch on here. Thank you for taking us through the stages So if the ultimate goal of the narcissist is To keep repeating the cycle in order to separate and individuate And he's doing this over the course of an entire lifetime Unsuccessfully, I mean it's going to take a tremendous amount of energy You know because he needs other people to collaborate with them and eventually No one is going to collaborate because people want to To express, you know, express their own autonomy and agency So what happens once they are able to if they if the process is interjection and they they snapshot you in order to Only deal with your interject Because they need you to remain stable across time So even if they get rid of the external object, the internal objects are still there So they never really go away. So what happens? You have said that these They accumulate a library of idealized objects or interjects As you say and these remain psychodynamically active To the extent that sometimes even if they're having sex they could Feel as if they're having sex with multiple partners So what happens to all these interjects that he's Accumulated over the time over time and how does this affect future relationships? And how does it not even lead to a complete psychotic state? It does But before I go there, uh, I it's clear that I I That I haven't been clear The narcissists The only reason the narcissist has intimate relationships Is not love Is not children is not family Is is not intimacy None of these things The only reason the narcissist enters a dyad a couple Has intimate relations is in order to separate and individuate. It's a compulsion It's a compulsive thing. It's a repetition compulsion. So The narcissist if you are the narcissist intimate partner He wants you to make it easier for him to separate from you He wants you to deviate from the from the snapshot He wants you to undermine the shared fantasy.  He wants you to become a secretary of it This is the source of sadistic supply.  So then you abuse him reactively and that's great. That's precisely what you want He wanted you to justify The transition from an idealized mother figure To a total devalued enemy And so the more autonomous you are The more independent The more agentic The more insistent the more The more you disagree with him or criticize him the more you abuse him reactively The more conflictive you are the more aggressive you are the better That's exactly what he's looking for He's looking for someone to make the separation easier If you are kind and nice and compliant and codependent and submissive That makes it a hell of a lot more difficult to get rid of you And getting rid of you is the point of the shared fantasy So this is very important to understand most victims don't understand that So this is projective identification then that's what you just Yes, it forces you to behave in a way that that recreates his comfort zone And conforms to his expectations Exactly Now what happens if you're kind and nice and empathic and submissive and compliant what then Well that makes the narcissist very unhappy And then he says she's doing it on purpose She is passive aggressive She is being nice in order to frustrate me She's being kind kind because she hates me There's no winning there's no way for you to win If you are the narcissist's enemy if you abuse the narcissist great Then he can get rid of you in with the clean conscience If you don't Then you must be passive aggressively undermining It also means you're his enemy you're his enemy in any case He's going to convert you into a secretary object in any case There is no winning strategy with analysis period Victims can't can't digest this and they don't understand that they are totally interchangeable. They are fungible The identity of the victim is totally irrelevant. The victim is a placeholder from a terminal figure That's all That's all You also coined Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought you were finished. I'm finished. Yes. Um, so one of the most As I mentioned at the beginning you've created so much of the terminology and one of them is narcissistic abuse which everybody Utilizes that now But I would really like for you to just quickly tell us what is what are the various Forms of narcissistic abuse overt and also ambient emotional and mental torture tactics that narcissists employ to Also, as you say impair your reality testing as a victim so that they can because at the end You say it's just about power and being able to manipulate you To control you So if you can just talk about the various kinds of narcissistic abuse so that people who Maybe have experienced it and don't know that they have can relate to it Narcissistic abuse has two distinguishing features The first distinguishing feature the narcissist wants to kill you Kill you in the sense that he wants to take away your independence your personal autonomy your agency He wants to disable you deactivate you and render you inanimate The closest I can come to illustrating this Is the scene in psycho the first the famous movie by hitchcock?  They've never experienced separateness Separateness threatens them You they need to annex you then you need to become an extension You need to become an internal object So your externality Your extraneous features are threats The narcissist needs to eliminate them So this is the first the second distinguishing feature Is that narcissists narcissistic abuse? Is the entire repertory of abuse known to mankind? Entire So in narcissistic abuse you would find sexual coercion You would find verbal abuse You would find Very often physical abuse however, however attenuated but some forms of physical abuse You you would find financial abuse. You would find legal abuse I mean you name it It's in narcissistic abuse typically typical abusers Have um an mo A modus operandi method of operation.   So just as an example Yeah, every every abuser has a preferred method of operation The narcissist makes use of every kind of abuse known to mankind It's total coercion and mitigated There's no risk respite There's no way out. It's it's everything is abusive.  But what about the more ambient forms of abuse that You're not sure if they are abusing you but they are over a period of time I mean, I know you said gas lighting is not unique to narcissists I mean, it's not something narcissists do perhaps psychopathic narcissists But there's so many other forms of ambient abuse if you can just talk about that I think the the only form of ambient abuse that narcissists use Is the fantasy itself the shared fantasy because they coerce you to renounce reality It's a little like the Inquisition in Spain, you know, they coerce you to renounce your religion so the the narcissists forces you on pain on pain of penalty and humiliation and you know A silent treatment or he forces you to say you're right This is not real. This is real. Your fantasy is real reality is not free My family hate me Because you said so The narcissist becomes the reality test of the victim So that the victim Would accept and endorse and embrace and adopt Everything the narcissists say never mind how outlandish and counterfactual Narcissist therefore create an immersive Total environment, which is the shared fantasy Where they develop a shared psychosis They they become Answering your previous question. They do become psychotic When you renounce reality to that extent It acquires psychotic Jews or elements And then they force you to become psychotic as well and this is known as shared psychosis or shared psychotic disorder So this is the ambient abuse. It's not like the psychopath the psychopath Would make you doubt your own real perception of reality He would make you doubt your own judgment and opinions. This is gaslighting Then a psychopath would falsify things for example falsify the future or falsify the past The psychopath would coerce you openly would you know would be violent or aggressive Psychopaths are far more direct Narcissists don't actually say okay now. I'm going to create an an ambience Of terror intimidation and abuse This is coercive control That's a behavior typical of psychopaths What this narcissist does He tells you This is reality from now on You don't want to be in my reality. Do you hate me? Are you not my friend? Do you want me to walk away? Do you want me to not talk to you? Do you want me to punish you? Do you want me to abuse you? so Gradually you you become a slave It's a process of enslavement So if it's for the narcissist relationship is as you say a state of mind that is not based on reality It's a fantasy world and and therefore they will never recognize your individuality or your separateness and In order to do that they have to subsume you and in order to internalize you So they're not really interested in any sort of intimacy because You know as you you just described right now The fact that you are based in reality you are an agent of reality and therefore you are I love in one of your lectures you say you are a trojan horse You know you are you have invaded their reality and if you don't collaborate um They it's the biggest challenge to their grandiosity And they will have to discard you But the question I have then is this this whole process must be so excruciating So why is it hard for the Narcissist Why is why are they unable to abandon the fantasy world and inhabit reality if they keep repeating the cycle and Each time I mean we didn't even get into you've given me so much of your time already We didn't even get into mortification and and all of that, but um It must be so devastating for them. So why are they unable to abandon the fantasy world? With what tools the narcissist never separated from his mother he never became an individual He doesn't have a self he doesn't have the interface with reality known as the ego What are the tools at the disposal of a narcissist to cope with reality or to integrate in it? Zero none Would you expect an infant An 18 months old infant to embrace reality and operate in it and on it Effectively you wouldn't Narcissists are stuck In the mental age Of two to nine years old nine years old is a highly developed most Almost I would say high functioning losses the vast majority of losses Are stuck at the age of two years old And the same expectations you have From a two-year-old you should adopt And then you would have flourishing relationships with narcissists The great mistake of therapies for example Is that they Interact with the narcissist as if he were an adult They have adult expectations from the narcissist They try to strike an alliance with the narcissist They try to develop a treatment plan with the narcissist. Are you kidding me? That's an 18 months old They should deal with I mean if if you want to be successful with narcissists in therapy you should apply Child psychology That's an infant sitting in the chair You know and so They have no capacity to cope with reality or to operate in it and on it zero none No tools no instruments nothing. They have never grown beyond this age And Fantasy is a defense That starts around age six months according to melanin client Starts around a it's a very primitive defense. It's very much like splitting And projection is one of the family of primitive defenses So this is a primitive defense and it's understandable to an infant And indeed indeed narcissists Use all these defenses for example. They split Splitting or dichotomous thinking is black and white thinking Today you are the narcissist's best friend tomorrow.  There's no gray. No midi graph. This is this is splitting narcissists also project a lot They project on to you states of minds moods Emotions and characteristics and traits that they find unacceptable in themselves All these are defense mechanisms Typical to age two and the vast majority of them disappear after age two Not with the narcissists So we know that the narcissists is stuck at a very early age And so the fantasy is the only place the narcissists can survive in and the reason the narcissists can survive in the fantasy is the control Is utterly in control. He can rewrite the fantasy Rewire the fantasy reinvent the fantasy demolish the fantasy The problem is you're in the fantasy with him So if he were to alter the fantasy or Transform it you would need to adapt And if you don't adapt the narcissists would need to separate from you And this is precisely why the narcissist introduces you into the fantasy. He knows it's going to end badly He wants it to end badly Because he wants to separate from you That is what victims don't understand Victims say But why did he push me? Why did he destroy everything? Why did he because that's what he wanted? The aim of the shared fantasy Is to lead to a catastrophe Which would allow the narcissists then to devalue and discard you as the enemy That's the that's the entire game. That's the only purpose of this whole exercise Well, uh My goodness, it's so it's so fascinating. I wish I could talk to you forever. I want to um Just bring it to so you have said there's absolutely no cure for narcissism So what would your advice be to survivors of narcissistic abuse or anyone who might be in a relationship with a narcissist And is having a hard time leaving Number one is not your fault There is nothing you could have done period period period Don't analyze Don't study don't read Don't think what could have been Don't blame yourself. Don't say if I only had behaved differently. Forget all this This is an inexorable process that is independent on you. You have nothing to do with it.  It's you. It's not your fault Second thing It's never been real It has never been real It's been a dream. It's a dream state Or a dreamscape It's a fantasy.  It's a bad movie.   Why did you do any of these things? Look deep into yourself Do not exempt yourself from your contribution to what had happened If you say I'm an angel And I'm a magnet And things just happened to me And it's none of my responsibility And I had zero contribution to this And it's a force of nature or a natural disaster In which I've never been involved and never asked for You are setting yourself up for failure And I repeat Because you are also You're also subject to repetition compulsion You found yourself with the narcissist Because both of you are into repetition compulsions So accept your personal responsibility and your contribution to your predicament Look deep into yourself and reform yourself So that it never happens again That's all I have to say to victims of narcissistic abuse Maybe one more thing You have been victimized But you're not a victim A victim is an identity Your victimhood is not your identity Your victimhood is an event that happened to you If you were mugged tomorrow You would not become a mug victim for the rest of your life A mugging victim for the rest of your life Even if you were raped tomorrow You would not define your identity as a rape victim Rape is a horrible thing But it's an event It's not a dimension of your identity The victimhood and victimhood stunts are debilitating Paralyzing, disabling And they are exactly This is exactly how the narcissist wants you to feel The narcissist wants you to experience his own indispensability Like now that he's gone I will never be whole again His voice is inside my mind I've been compromised forever I'm a victim from now on I've been stabbed and I've been branded You're not the narcissist's property And this incident in your life, however long it may have been Is just a part of your life Not the totality And it's not who you are Thank you so much for that Because I think I relate to it And it's one of the reasons I have never done well In talk therapy or even self-help environments Because in order to function there You have to have a victim mentality And I'm sure you get a lot of grief for asking people to Seek and search for their own role in why they ended up there I'm sure people call you a victim-blamer Quite more than you like to know for that But I think it's such an important component Of this conversation I want to end with I want to come back to your philosophical side And end here And I'm going to embarrass you Maybe you don't get embarrassed But I want to read two very beautiful ideas As a lover of language The way you describe insight and empathy Are so beautiful that I really want to end On this positive note After traveling through the horror house Of narcissistic personality disorder Actually I'll read three quotes One is a quote that you said Which for me encapsulates the utter sadness and grief That you yourself as a narcissist would feel You said in one of your interviews That the conflict between the absence that I am And the presence that I wish I were Is a conflict that is ongoing I was denied as a child I was not allowed to become So I never became and I remained An unfulfilled promise or a dream That brings so much tears to my eyes And I think that Having empathy and being able to understand That actually even you as a narcissist suffer Is also a very critical component Now I'm going to end on these two And if you want to add anything to it I just want to end on your poetic side On your poetic side On insight I love this Human life is a process of becoming The environment acts upon our genes And helps us to become We are being formed as we go along So we are never the same from moment to moment Which is why psychology can never be a science Life is a process of becoming via insight Insight into who you are And insight into others Because it is insight that creates empathy And empathy crucially depends on Having insight into yourself Because who else is empathizing If you don't know yourself You cannot empathize Empathy depends on an eye who empathizes And such a self cannot constolate or come together Without an immeasurable amount of cumulative insights Which gradually form into your identity Having an insight to yourself Allows you to have insight into others And this is called theory of mind On empathy you said Learning is a derivative of comparison We learn by comparing Social media is founded on this concept Knowing is not enough You need to emote to induce dynamics and change At the base of all this is empathy It is the bridge and the crossing to other people It is only by comparing yourself with other people That you calibrate yourself That you gain realistic insight about the world Because other people are your reality testing They are your viewfinder who help you to focus And empathy is another word for directed insight When you have insight into yourself When we have insight into ourselves We call it insight When we have insight into others We call it empathy If that's not literature I don't know what is I'm forgiving or paraphrasing some of it But I never heard anybody describe Insight because often when I talk about psychology And my interest in it people say Well I'm not interested in any of that stuff But I think developing insight is also critical If you have been victimized Because I don't think of myself as a victim Even though I've lived a traumatic childhood I have this beautiful We every individual human being has this gift The biggest gift is that we can create ourselves every day Every day we can create ourselves anew And to do that we need insight and empathy And I really thank you for that I thank you for your immense contribution To the field of psychology I think your book personally should be a textbook in schools I thank you for helping me even if that was not your Even if you didn't set out to help people You do know how many people you have helped And I'm so grateful I want to perhaps interject with one last sentence I'm a bit as you've indicated before I'm embarrassed But I'm also effusive things Perhaps because I haven't meant to him So I feel a discrepancy between my motivation and the way I'm perceived People keep telling me you can't be a narcissist That's not true You're so empathic, you're smiling, you're cute You're this, you're that And that's embarrassing because I am committed to truth And I'm committed to reality My roots are as a physicist, I'm a scientist So I feel it's a wrong theory Like it's a wrong theory And okay But what I wanted to say is something else The meeting between the narcissist and his victim Is a meeting of two hungers The victim is hungry for love And intimacy and acceptance And the narcissist is hungry for existence The narcissist tries to become through the victim The narcissist tries to exist through the victim But the said irony is that the only way for the narcissist to exist through the victim Is to abscond with her existence And the only way for the narcissist to become through the victim Is to deny the victim her own becoming And on the other end of the equation The only way for the victim to obtain love from the narcissist Is to stop being, to not be And the only way for her to maintain intimacy with the narcissist Is to become as much of an absence as he is And this is the predicament and the conundrum Of the shared fantasy This is a meeting of two irreconcilable incompatible hungers Thank you so much, Sam I cannot thank you enough for your time You've been so generous and for this conversation I hope one day when I'm somewhere where you are I don't, I know you're in Europe right now, yes? Or do you have, you're originally from Israel So hopefully I travel a lot to Europe So hopefully sometime I'll be in your area And would love to invite you to one of my concerts It would be an honor to meet you in person Thank you, kind of Thank you so much, thank you, Sam Bye-bye