Hello everyone, hope you're enjoying the Bank Holiday weekend as much as possible. Eid Mubarak to all our Muslim followers as well. Thank you very much for the kind comments on last Sunday's video. I'm loving the interaction as well in the comment section, so please keep that coming. I've got a list of a couple of the questions in there that will go through in this video as well. If you have any points or questions that you want to have addressed in next Sunday's video, get them in the comment section and I will address those in seven days time. Also, one thing I want to do in this video is talk about the amplified trading process. I'm sure many of you are aware now we have our Amplify Now online course where you can learn about the fundamentals of the way we look at the market, the technical side of things, the psychology. But what I'm going to focus here, and it's part of the skill set that you'll learn on Amplify Now, is the trading process. So obviously you can click start now and there's a free week trial for you to get stuck in. But one of the main things that we do in the week long intensive course and the five week professional trading program course is following this process. So we start with that fundamental analysis. So like I said last week, I'm looking out for Ants macro menu, building that picture and then doing the technical stuff, which is what we'll go through here, building a strategy, executing that strategy, obviously exiting the trade, reviewing and going again. So I actually haven't looked at the market since Friday's closed. I haven't done any preparation for the charts whatsoever. And the reason I wanted to do that was to go through it live as if, well, it is the first time that I've seen the market. So you can really see the process that I go through and our traders here at Amplify go through as well. So I've got rid of all the tabs that were here from last Sunday and obviously removed some of the analysis, well, all the analysis that was on the euro here. But let's have a little look through the way I'd be looking at this and obviously I'm involved in the markets all the time. So I can remember where trend lines were or when levels broke, but it's, you know, no harm whatsoever in just refreshing the charts, taking everything off, going back to those longer time frames. Also worth noting, you know, what is it this week? Well, you know, the last trading day of the month is next Friday. So how we got a bit of end of month fighters in the FX space or in the equity markets to consider. But yeah, let's move back on to the euro.  And I agree, absolutely. But we couldn't go lower unless that trend line broken. You can still see how well that held. And, you know, I was also saying it's long if we can get above here. We did came back, test it and then to the top of that range. A lot of FX pairs did the, did that sort of pattern where it pushed higher into the back end of the week and then had a couple of days just drifting off those lows. So for the euro here, interestingly, you know, where it finished is bang on the level we broke through on the 18 on Monday. We came back to test it importantly on the future as we finished above. So the way I'd be, you know, looking at this and obviously bear in mind tomorrow is, you know, a bank holiday in, well, in the UK, some parts of Europe and America as well. So volume is going to be low. Would I hold off trading tomorrow? Potentially. But having a look at the euro here, you can see, you know, the way I'm looking at this is, and I probably, because I'm probably not, I'm not going to trade tomorrow. I will look at the markets, but I'll, you know, be looking, you know, Monday night to see. And, you know, if we hold here, then, you know, I'd be bullish this market that we can have another go potentially pushing back up to this top of the range here. If we come back below, then we can get excited again about that trend line. I mean, there's obviously a quite important level here, which was the two Fridays ago high. What's that 108.55 on the futures that I would consider as a bit of support. But below the 109 handle, I'd say we are likely to drift down to the trend line. And then we've got to be aware of those levels below. Yes, you're marking up this low, which is also previous area support as well. There you're targets. If we hold and we go above the range, where could we go to? Well, how about the top end of, you know, the first of April above that looking at the handle and then suddenly you're up towards here. So it's a really interesting market for euro. Good opportunities last week on the break of, you know, this resistance, then this and the retest or the short from up there. For me, euro last week was a beautiful market to trade. Now going back to that process we're looking at here, the fundamentals. So I'm really looking forward to seeing what Anthony says in that macro menu. I'll post the link in the chat section once that is updated. But I want to see is there any developments? What data do we have out? And then I can build that in with the technical side. You know, if I feel the fundamentals are leading, you know, to a more bearish outlook. Okay, well, let's get a confirmation of the break below 109. And then I can target down to here the risk reward stop just above. You know, when is the right time of the day to take that on as well. One of the questions last week was talking about correlation. So what would I want to see for this market to move lower? Dollar strength across the board. I'll be looking at the dollar index. Is it breaking new highs? Is the pound also under pressure? What's Aussie dollar doing? What is gold doing? If it's a dollar related move, I'd expect all these markets to be pushing towards their lows when I'm looking for euro to also do the same perhaps as well. So that's just something to bear in mind. What are those correlated markets? Are there any key levels in? I mean, a great correlation has been there's the Nasdaq and its drag on other equity markets. So we'll come on to that a bit later as well. Another question was just about some extra analysis on the markets. Is, you know, is this how you leave it? And to be honest, a lot of the time it is, you know, here I've now got all my levels marked up. If we go above the range, I now know where I'll be looking to target. If we don't hold here, looking at trend line, I've got those targets in play.  Do I add anything else? Well, for example, I'm just going to bang on the S&P here. You know, what's probably the most common, you know, daily moving average, certainly in the equity space is the 200 days. So this is, you know, where I'd have that on because we're near. So if we go back to the Euro, I want to see, well, are there any fibs in play? Are we, you know, holding on any key moving averages? You know, one that a lot of people will look at on the daily as well as the 100 day moving average. So let's just have a quick look. Like I said, this is the first time I've looked at the markets since Friday evening, 100 day moving average. You know, look at that. Couldn't get above it. Resistance. Important. So therefore I'm going to have it on if we were to push up again just so I can be aware as well. So have a quick look over at the pound. We were talking last Sunday when we were so let's get Sunday was looking looking like this. And we were saying that we've got to be bearish and the sellers will be in control as long as our zone here holds. So just get that zone on. You know, the people will be looking for that retest. We came back into it couldn't close above it a couple of times. I know personally quite a few people that took that short on on the 19th on the Tuesday. Yeah, a bit hairy on there on the Wednesday, but good, good level really isn't it? You know, it's, you know, pushed higher on the Monday because there was risk on across the market and the pounds have been very sensitive to that. We also had some data out on would have been the Wednesday morning. So the Tuesday we pushed above and I was happy to almost get long. And then we had that the end of day trade conversation with our trade as an ampersand how the data was out at 7am and obviously had to backtrack off that. Can't take that trade on if the data comes out a lot better than fine. It's looked the longs if we close above we didn't and we've come back lower. So for the pound this week, I think you still got to be bearish. However, you've got the coming situation going on at the moment and I've seen a bit of chatter about if he is to go. It actually could be a bit of a pound positive due to his stance on Brexit. Let's see how that unfolds over the course of the of the day really. But yeah, at the moment, technically, I'm happy to be be short the pound.  So if I was short, I'd be happy to still be short bit of support here. Yes, it's been choppy, but it's worth keeping an eye on. We also closed below the low from the last week. Be looking for that to come in and then you've got some key support just below there and also the 120 handle as well. And then be looking down towards these lows. I do like the idea of a pound long. I'm only going to get in technically when that does arise. And it's it's about for me getting the getting the confirmation from the chart. So a close above here. Nice retest and looking for us to push on towards the double top that we can see here similar to maybe the move that we got in the euro. However, at the moment, charts telling me it's a short. If there is a change in that for me that comes in above 122 65 on the future. So that's how I would be be keeping an eye on that. Obviously a few places to the risk as we go above 100 day moving average on the euro. Good 100 day moving average on the pound. Not worth having on for me. Right. Remove that. And we move on correlations here. Obviously we've got the dollar side of things. We'll be looking at the pound on other pairs. Euro pound, for example, be looking at the FTSE as well. If we start seeing some pound weakness, is that going to help push FTSE higher? Or is it due to a risk of moving and both of those can move down together? So understanding the correlations is obviously key. And one thing we do focus a lot here at amplify moving on. Of course, just that we're over 10 minutes. So I will like last week's video. I'm going to put the timestamps in the comment section for you so you can go to the market of choice. If you don't want to listen to me rambling on for the whole thing. But yeah, let's go Aussie dollar. I quite like the Aussie to be honest. And I remember this time last week we were putting on the trend line from the lows saying a lot of people bearish. The Aussie can't understand why it's this higher. Fine, sell it under the trend line doesn't come up to it hit the top of the range bit choppy on that range. But you could argue we actually just hit the higher the 10th of March instead of those previous highs. So I'm now marking that up. I'd still have this trend line on. I'd also have this resistance from what was first Friday. We broke through that obviously on the Monday key level support. This whole area here circled up. Bulls are in control of that for me. Which means what an opportunity if that goes, if that breaks through. Okay, let's de-risk off some on these lows here. And then really down to where this whole trend line sort of begins. So good opportunity there on the break. If equities decide to have another positive week. I think we've finished up three in a bit percent. Certainly in the S&P anyway. Then this market could push on and then you start to really think about, you know, the next level here from the flash crash on the 9th. That would be a point to consider as well. And then obviously those previous highs here, which you could, you can mark up as well. So, you know, let's have a quick look over those currencies here. Euro pushed higher failure to break the trend line bit of a short squeeze. The pound still weighed on by some Brexit talks. Bit of risk in the market came back lower. But had to spend two free days pushing to the upside before we did actually come down. If I was quickly put this onto a week, it was an up week last week for the pound against the dollar. Aussie very correlates the S&P. So just bear that in mind at the moment. However, we had this hit a high. People take profit comes back lower. Trend line is something I want to want to have on here. Focusing on obviously a daily close below there for it to be bearish. I don't mind right now considering along from there. Because my view is that stocks are going to continue to go higher. So I think the Aussie could follow suit. Going to leave it there for the currencies. Obviously another question was, you know, do I look at other currency pairs? Absolutely. I know Aussie Yen has been a great one of focus for me for a couple of years really since the trade talks started going off. Came into focus. That's been one Euro pound I like having a look at as well. And one of the things I actually do in the morning as well is have a look at all the, I've got a list of about 20 different currency pairs and have a look at them and do the same process here to see if there is anything. Of interest for me and go about it that way. Let's move on to have a look at S&P considering we're talking about the Aussie. Finished on the high of Friday on Friday. So near the near near enough where it is highest trading point was it's still range ban. I tweeted. I think it was in the middle to back end of last week. It is range ban, but it's at the top of the range. While I'm confident that we push higher and I am currently long near the lower level here. I can't add to this unless we get above that area. Unless we get above our 200 day moving average. People still talking about the the 6.1 cent which gets 200 day moving average on people still talking about the fib level. Let me just get rid of that X. Now the 6.18 or the 0.618 I should say for me that's no interest now. Not having that. I think it's too choppy around that level side move it. So this is how I'd set it up. Range bound above with bullish. If that holds we get a little false break then the bearish. I would consider adding if we came back to test around 28.90 we'll lower the time frame down in a moment. This area here really nicely respected. Nicely broke through here came back. We haven't quite retested that level. Have I missed the opportunity on Friday AM? I don't think so. I would consider adding around here for a long. However I would just bear in mind and I've been saying this to the guys on the professional program. You can see when we hit the top of these ranges that hasn't been your straightaway pullback to get long. You can see it's hit that and come back down. So I just bear that in mind. I think for me it'd be prudent to wait to see how it reacts. Almost get a false break to then come back to look for those longs. I'm bearish below 28.90 so if we get a close below here on bearish and I think we would come back down to here which is where below here then I'm worried for the equity market that we can push lower. I don't see it happening personally. However what's been quite common in the markets over the last week was a lot of China and US trade rhetoric, Hoosies in and Trump going at it as usual. But it seems to be top headline at the moment. So bearing that in mind it'd be again interesting to see what Anthony says I could build that fundamental picture. I've got my technical view of where I want to get long or short and where those targets would be, what the risk reward would be and when would the right time of the day be or week, day of the week to take that. Is it going to be Monday looking for that big push, low volume? Unlikely, unlikely to be. Moving on, obviously focus up here on the NASDAQ but again talking about that correlation. One of the comments in the chat, I mean look how good this was. This is insane how fantastically well technical the NASDAQ was. Hits the gap field to the tip, hits the next level of importance to the tip. We come back and the failure to close back below our previous high here is pretty key. The failure here to close below that high is pretty key. Bullish finish for me on the Friday and could be all-time highs. This time next week we could be looking at all-time highs in the NASDAQ to be honest. When is that view wrong? I would say, well obviously it's wrong this time next Sunday if we don't but when would I be bearish on this market and for me it's below the 15th of May high. So this kind of area here is where I would say I'd be a bit worried for long for a while and we can drift lower. The NASDAQ for me has been following the same pattern since the beginning of April. Push, retrace, push, retrace, push, retrace, push. Now if that breaks and we do push lower and then you start getting people looking at trend lines and all of these kind of things then we get a break of that and suddenly you're below 9000, you're testing here the lower the 14th and things get ugly. If that doesn't happen I think we have to push up. And a break of the higher last week, I'd expect the 200-day moving average in the S&P to also go. I'd also expect to break out the range in the Dow, you can see range. How is that not a range-bound market right now? We're hitting quality support, impressive resistance. You've got a nice midpoint in here, so bullish above, bearish below. And then on our lines here, bears in control, bulls in control above, bulls in control below and bears that lovely trending market there. A range-bound market on the Dow to get a trend. Is it going to come on the Monday on the low volume? Probably not into the back end of the week. Can we get a push above? I'll be looking at the NASDAQ to maybe give us the cue there as well. Have a quick look over gold and oil, just to wrap things. I know I don't want to make this a massively long video for you guys. I appreciate you've probably got better things to do on a Sunday. In fact, this is have a quick look over at gold. For me, I actually am long gold. I got in Thursday evening as we came back down to test this area here. We've stopped just below. I took it on the spot market, so it looks slightly different. But basically stops below this trend line here and using this area support. I'm long. I'm excited if it gets above 17-43. We'd also de-risk as we maybe approach these highs up towards here. And then you're looking at the high of the years on the futures. Stop is below the trend line. If that goes, gold for me comes under a bit of pressure. 17 handle and then obviously these points on the trend line as well. We had a good push a couple of Thursdays ago. We came back lower. On the Monday, stocks are pushing higher. Gold for me a bit confused last week because you have some dollar strength when we came lower. We had some risk off and dollar strength and it went higher. I don't know, it's a bit confused. But we came back down to a nice area of support where the buyers have been in control previously taken over from the sellers. This coupled with a bit of the trend line, good enough area to get long. Below there, I'm not as interested and I think we pushed down. It seems a lot of people are bullish and medium term gold. It's the right scenario for me to be long gold. However, above that trend line, yes, below, not so much. Oil just to wrap things. As I say, whenever I look at oil, I'm not an oil master. I don't really trade it too often. For me, I think we get to that 40. I think it's a matter of time and we had a decent enough week last week. You can see we pushed higher. When would I feel if I was long that that is wrong? Below 30 bucks, below 29.11. Also, there's been gradual grind higher. No trend line as such of yet, but probably worth looking into that. Decent push through to last week. We also hit some resistance from the ninth. I think we go higher, but I'll leave really the oil to the pros. It's a great market. I know people trade it, but they really focus on it. It's one where you need to, in my opinion, if you're going to trade oil, know a lot about it and how it moves and whatnot. Another question here was the characteristics of each market. Something we go through, obviously, at Amplify. On the courses, what times are best to trade? When looking for momentum strategies, what candle close is good in what time frame? Which markets are more technical? Which zone sizes are bigger? All of these things we go through on the course. In summary for this video, the thing I want to teach you guys, or go through with you guys, is we start with the fundamentals. Ants macro menu, your own research, then where does this fit in with the technical view? Let's just go back to the Euro and say it's super bearish news over the weekend. Well, we can't sell straight away unless we get below this technical level. Because if we go back to last Sunday, super bearish, whatever, imagine you sell on the open Sunday evening, and it pushes that high on the Monday and goes through. So trade what you see, not what you think, have that fundamental view. But when are you technically right? When is the rest of the market agreeing with you? Then building that strategy, your risk reward, your levels you're choosing for your entry exit stop executing, but when is the right time to execute that? And obviously, exiting and reviewing that trade, which are all important to do. But yeah, guys, I'm going to wrap it there. But please, any questions, do put them in the chat. If you want me to cover something else in a bit more detail, I can do as well. So just please do let me know. But I hope you enjoy the rest of your Sunday. Hopefully you've all got a nice day off tomorrow as well, and the sun is shining where you are. I look forward to catching up with you in the chat and also this time next week. So take care, guys, and I'll speak to you all very soon.


Well hello and welcome to Jonathan from the Heart. I'm Jonathan Asley at JonathanAsley.com and I'm so excited to be doing this short video for you today. Our topic 99% of men respect women who know this. All right really quickly if you're brand new to my YouTube channel please hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you can be notified of new videos and if any time during this video the content resonates with you please hit that like button so I can be seen in the YouTube algorithms. Lastly these are my weekend videos I shoot out on my balcony very similar to the videos I shoot in my private group called Midlife Love Mastery. This is a group where you can have direct access to me on a regular basis and based on the questions you write in the group I shoot personalized videos just for you. So check out the link below to my VIP group. All right let's talk about respect and let's face it I think respect is one of the fundamentals of a healthy happy relationship to feel respected because there's nothing worse than feeling disrespected and it seems today that in the dating realm a lot of disrespect is happening on both sides whether it's men and women alike. I think women can disrespect men and men can disrespect women and it's a shame that people aren't starting with a level of integrity in the early stages of dating and as if you've been watching my channel you know I'm your big brother I wish I could be there for you on a first date with my shotgun pointing it at the guy's head going what are your real intentions because wouldn't it be great to know someone is genuine and that they're serious and they want a fully committed relationship early in the process. Well we're gonna lean into that in a moment. Here's the thing earlier this morning I was watching a video from one of my contemporaries talking about how men love the chase they love the pursuit and that you're going to you know play games to keep him chasing you to keep him dating you to withhold sex and those sorts of things because that makes a man that hooks a man but does that really make a man respect you when you're playing games when you're using arousal techniques when you're using sex as a weapon I am not a big proponent of that whatsoever I'm a big proponent of showing up as your authentic self in the right from the beginning right from the first date showing up as your authentic self and yet sadly sadly most people don't they're more operated from this is true of men and women like they operate from what they can get instead of what they can give and here's the thing about respect emotionally unhealthy men people that are emotional train wrecks can't respect another human being because they can barely respect themselves they can barely respect themselves and I know this person firsthand because I've been there and I will tell you that dating triggers the number one emotion the number one emotional health issue that's facing almost everybody and that is I'm not good enough I'm not lovable and I'm not likable and as I said I know this from personal experience because after my divorce when I went back out on out out looking for a mate and I will never forget in my right when I you know got divorced and I joined one of the dating sites actually it was yahoo personals and AOL personals does anyone remember that actually they got bought up by match.com and my first year after my divorce I just thought it was easy you could simply plug in exactly what you want and someone magically would appear and I went on one date and another date and another date and another date and I think in a year I had over a hundred first dates and I'm I look back now and I'm like what the heck was going on with me and why I'm sharing this with you is because I was a train wreck after my divorce I was an emotional basket case not just because of the divorce but I also went through some major job issues in my life I was I had lost my quarter million dollar a year job the market crash of 2008 happened and I got wiped out in the market crash and I was using two things as my drug of choice I was using cocaine and alcohol quite frankly to numb the pain and the other numbing of the pain was online dating it was meeting new people and why I'm sharing this with you is met and by the way I met some beautiful wonderful women and I don't mean beautiful from the from a physical standpoint I mean a beautiful heart and I want to share something with you many of you women out there is that you're these beautiful human beings and you see men who are absolutely dysfunctional absolutely dysfunctional and you figure well I can heal him I can save him because you see the good qualities in him too and and not to suggest that I was a bad person during this time I was so numb to the pain of what was going on in my life that the drug of choice was dating now why am I sharing this with you because this is a significant percentage of the population who's in the dating realm especially in midlife and if you're in midlife it's after baby making years and before retirement and I was right at that cusp of it right at age 40 I was going through my midlife crisis and so many men and women are going through this midlife crisis that makes it very difficult for them to actually lean into a relationship and lean into respecting another human being and as I said before if someone can't respect themselves how can you ever respect them as well and how can they respect you now here's one of the challenges I see in the dating realm today is there's there's basically three types of women three types of women and please forgive me this sounds like a judgment yet I I witness this over and over and over again there's what I call the entitled woman this is the woman who thinks her shit doesn't stink and please forgive me for that one on my weekend videos I do not curse but she thinks her stuff doesn't stink you know she acts from princess energy it's all about what she can get instead of what she can give and um in fact let me give you an example of this I was I was reading a blog the other day about how one woman was saying if a man doesn't pay for my valet after a date I'd never see him again and I'm thinking to myself what an entitled attitude she was operating from a place of what she can get instead of operating from a place of what she can give now sadly there's another type of woman I call it the doormat type of woman and I please forgive me for that analogy and why I'm sharing this with you is that's a woman who's an over giver she's just giving giving over giving to the point of where it's a complete imbalance in the relationship because deep inside she wants to be loved now let me say this everybody deep down inside wants to be loved the sad part is many people aren't capable of actually loving another human being and if you're over giving in relationship oftentimes you have this martyr attitude is I gave I gave I gave or the doormat doesn't even have their own value within themselves but I mean their own self word self reliance self esteem self love and those of you know me I wrote a book what the heck is self love anyway what the heck is self love anyway it's a journey of personal development self open spiritual work so you actually can show up not as a doormat and not as entitled but and what I'm about to share with you next and by the way there's a link below to get my book what I'm about to share next is where I want everyone to aspire to be and that is in a place of being a secure human being a secure human being an empowered human being where it's not based on gender roles in the dating practice but it's actually coming from a heart centered place because this is where we're going to start leaning into how to generate true respect with another human being and if you're not familiar with this book I love love love this book it's called if the buddha dated if the buddha dated and why I love this book it throws out the gender narratives of expectation based way of dating and actually coming at it from a more heart centered space a more heart centered space now I know it's tough for many of you out there because you've subscribed to the oldest myth of all and that is chemistry equals relationship success I'm going to repeat that you've subscribed to the myth that chemistry equals relationship success and if you're not familiar with my relationship iceberg here it is okay and above the waterline it says the word attraction and you can see the tip of the iceberg is chemistry it's the first thing we see so we're hyper focused on the first thing we see and if you look below the waterline you can read the word compatibility and you can see it says shared values blendable lifestyles and emotional maturity these are the more significant pieces to be aware of when it comes to actually developing genuine respect for one another because you going back to what my my contemporary was sharing all about it was literally them about men chasing sex and I know that the men have this belief that through sex they will find love and yet deep down they don't find love that way they find an orgasm that way they don't find love that way and nor do you find love that way and what I'm here to say is we need I'd like to encourage everyone to stop hyper focusing on the chemistry piece and start looking at the bigger picture because that's what matters most and if you're not familiar with my emotional maturity relationship skills chart and by the way at the bottom you can say this is not a fact it's an opinion but I believe roughly 20 of the population has clinical issues they are borderline they're they're passive aggressive they're bipolar or they're narcissistic or worse sociopath now this is just my opinion and as you can see over here it says healthy it says 20% and I'm being ridiculously generous when I say healthy is 20% of the population emotional skills and relationship skills it's probably closer to 3% and everybody else is in the dysfunctional phase so why am I sharing all this with you why how does this relate to respect I said sex by the way my coffee mug says to choose joy today and my t-shirt says humankind being both and that's what we're going to lean into today is about being human and being kind because ultimately I gotta read my notes here what did I say here emotionally healthy men respect women who genuinely want to understand them I'm repeat that men respect emotionally healthy men respect women who want to understand them that come from a curious mind that come from a place of curiosity and understanding now I was gonna say that men feel respected when they're accepted for who they are and I'm a big believer I've accepting people for who they are and at the same time I do believe relationships are an opportunity for two people to grow together to go to grow together and co-create a relationship and at the same time what most couples truly neglect to do in the dating mating or relating process is actually truly get to know one another to actually really understand one another to really understand what makes them tick and there's a new book I want to introduce you all to and I'm just got this so I'm just starting to read it it's called I hear you I hear you the surprising simple skills behind extraordinary relationships this is all about understanding your partner this is all about being curious this is all about creating deeper intimacy with one another if you're not familiar with intimacy intimacy means into me you see into me you see and when couples reach a level of intimacy together they create a very strong bond with one another and through that bond they genuinely respect one another they come from a heart centered space of respecting one another now in a previous video I talked about the four questions to improve your relationship I want to share those with you today just to give you some examples of how to build that deeper connection with another person and let me just say this this isn't for those surface relationships this isn't for those relationships where all you do is talk talk talk on the phone or your text text text text text text it's not built for those relationships what I'm about to share with you this is for those relationships where they are actively engaged in with one another they through social activities hobbies mutual interest they spend time with family and friends they've already beginning the emotional intimacy along with the physical intimacy in the relationship because here's the thing men are craving to be with partners that they can feel safe with just like you women are craving to be with men that you feel safe with both in the physical world and in the emotional world we men feel the same desire that desire to feel emotionally safe because the fact of the matter is most men are midlife are going through emotional chaos in their life because they're just starting to tap into their feelings because partly because their testosterone levels begin to decrease and their estrogen levels increase and what happens is it clashes right there and we're in absolute confusion this is why ladies I continually say you are the emotional leaders of the relationship not men and let me just also add you are in charge of your relationship destiny do not give that job to a guy you are in charge of your relationship destiny so how do we do this how do we gain deeper intimacy with another is is by leading by example leading by example so I'm about to share with you four great questions to ask and again this is tied to a video I just did the four questions to ask your relationship and I'm going to pull up my trusty notes and I love this because it comes from a curious place it comes from a desire to understand your partner and so number one in what way can I improve upon as a partner what way can I improve upon as a partner now let me just say this this isn't a one-sided conversation this is about both of you communicating with each other and how you can improve your relationship together it builds a dialogue with one another at a deeper level instead of this surface level how's your day going did you have a good day I hope you had a good day by the way I hope you have a blessed day I mean most people all they talk about is having a good day in their text messaging and they're not going any deeper and partly it's because most men and women don't understand the mechanics to a healthy happy relationship and if you're not familiar with the book Eight Dates by Doctors John and Julie Gottman I highly recommend getting this before you have sex with a guy and quite frankly I want to encourage each of you when two people like each other if two people genuinely like each other then go down the path of reading this book together they are eight separate conversations to determine if you're actually compatible with one another do you share the same values are your lifestyles blendable and it'll help you assess their emotional maturity because critically speaking emotional maturity is the most important piece it's not about chasing and capturing and creating tension the most important piece in a relationship are you with somebody else that's emotionally mature and has good relationship skills and by having these conversations to understand one another a man will genuinely respect you he might end the relationship he'll end the relationship because he respects you and you want that you don't want to be with someone who's not capable of going into deeper intimacy so I'll share with you those three other questions really quickly the second question is do you have any needs that you feel are being neglected because here's the thing ladies and gentlemen each person's needs might be different so ask what needs might need to be addressed sooner rather than later instead of this fantasy way of dating so many of you are suckling on and the third question is there's something I've done that you still feel hurt over what do you need from me to help you heal because oftentimes we don't know if someone has a bug up their butt over something that's happened so it's time to discuss these things and lastly what can I do to help you feel more loved and let me be clear about this I am saying that the both of you should be discussing this together and at the same time I invite you to lead by example because guys aren't thinking about this stuff it is listen I understand this stuff because I study it day in and day out very few men by these books very few men by these books they're purchased by you ladies so I'm here to suggest is what are you going to do with this wealth of knowledge you're just going to sit back in your feminine energy and just hope to be claimed by the guy like really how well does that work yeah it might work temporarily especially if you use the game playing techniques taught by the book the rules and other things and I'm big proponent of some of the fundamental principles of self-worth self-confidence self-esteem self-love you all know that I am all a big proponent of being in your empowered energy and at the same time don't play games because if you genuinely want a man an emotionally healthy man to respect you and let me be clear emotionally unhealthy men don't respect themselves just like when I was a train wreck I didn't respect myself so how can I respect another it requires that level of emotional maturity to actually lean into and men who have leaned into and improve their relationship skills and their emotional maturity want to open up at an intimate level and you can simply with this little key open the door and it's going to open up to a great opportunity for a healthy juicy delicious healthy happy relationship are you with me I hope you are all right I'd like to hear your thoughts on this please post a comment below if there's something you'd like to add or share I do my best to read all of the questions or the comments below all right I think this would be a great place oh by the way check out my link to my book below check out my link to a free discovery call with me check out my membership group called midlife love mastery all the links below and join me on Instagram as well all right I'm going to wrap up this video as I always do first off giving myself a big gigantic Jonathan bear hug of self-love I'm going to reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay I'm going to ask you to turn to a friend a pet a teddy bear or a pillow and give it or them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love and let's face it we could all use more love in our lives thanks a bunch bye bye now bye


The practical answer is guidance. You know, you have to come back to this inner sense of guidance that you intuitively know the answer already, but how willing am I to tap into that answer and to just follow that. And instead of trying to judge the forms and try to say, well, here's where I draw the line, like in our families when we grew up, you know, there's a certain amount of talk, but once it got into complaining and whining, it was shut up, and then a warning, and then, you know, I'll give you something to really cry about. If you keep crying, you know, there was almost like a system of threats, and then finally, okay, here's some consequences and actions. And the question was, how far did you go before you have to start to say, we need some real consequences to come in here, and it still comes back to guidance. And to me, that's the most practical thing that you can leave with. If you feel a sense of intuitive connection, that there's something within you, that's it. You just said exactly that, until you find that in yourself, until you actually realize that that is the only way. You can say that a million times, you can write books about it, you can make posters about it, you can mail it on postcards to every single person in the world, but until you find it in yourself, you're not going to get it. Yeah, that's it. And as long as it still seems to be personal in any way, that's not it. In other words, you were just using them, you say, well, you and the messengers, you live off the donations, and so you don't seem to be subject to a lot of the things, or when Gordon left London and went off and sailed to Mediterranean and is now living in harmony, you may not be dealing with governments and all those kind of things, but that's by choice. And for me, when people come sometimes and say, well, for you it's great. Great. Happy to hear. You're flowing around, living off the donations and that. That's just how it looks in the world. I don't consider that my life is supported by anybody. I really don't. I mean, I just see it as the Holy Spirit using the symbols. As long as I would see it kind of in a personal way, as if I was personally receiving donations and that my life was different or special in some way because I was getting it done, I tell everybody that actually everyone's living in Divine Providence, truly. We don't have to draw a line and say, who's not living in Divine Providence? You can believe that you're working for a living, you can believe if you want to that you're earning money and that you're getting paid and you've got a bank account in the Soura and you can believe in reciprocity if you choose but actually in the quantum field there is no such thing as reciprocity. You're not doing good or service in exchange for your livelihood. The quantum field is life and nothing of these organisms or these constructs called human beings going around, I don't care if it's democracy, capitalism, socialism, mysticism, any kind of ism you want to put with it. The quantum field is really all that's happening and so to me, I think it's great. I experienced that everyone is in Divine Providence and it's really beautiful and you can choose to join me. I hope someday we'll join and the world will live as one because the world does live as one, not will but it actually does live as one. So for me that's what's practical about this is to how willing am I to let go of my constructs. I think somebody like Jesus for example. Jesus went by the name of Jesus of Nazareth. He didn't change his name to Clyde or Fred. He didn't change his name five, six times. He just took the name that was given him by Joseph and Mary, Jesus. When he talked about parables, he said there was a man who had two sons. Let's take the prodigal son parable for example. The quantum field is the quantum field. If Jesus wanted to just stay metaphysically correct with words and symbols, he could have just come and just said God is. That would have been a pretty good parable. Sit down, everybody gather around me. Come on, you over under the vines, the olive vines there, come on out, come here. I've got a parable. God is. Did you get it? Okay, I hope you got it. If you got it, great. If not, don't go home and think about it. It's just the fact, God is. These are symbols. I don't have anything to do with the quantum field, but these are symbols and parables. The idea of David or messengers or this devotional... I was asked before I came here, what are you going to do to organize this devotional? I said I'm not going to organize it. I have no interest in organizing anything. There are logistics that seem to be part of the human condition and those things, really the desire is let those be taken care of in the simplest way possible so we can really focus on the God is so we can really get into the divine field, the quantum field. That's all my desire is, is to just express that. These things are parables. If people have done that with Jesus, they say, well, you know, why 12? What's the big deal with 12? And then they say, and why all men? It would have been a little more correct if you're supposed to be teaching the equality of symbols. Why not pick six women and have six men? And why Aramaic? Why not another language? You can nitpick. The ego can nitpick all at once, but the more you nitpick, the more you simply avoid the central question, why am I still trying to hold an identity apart from the quantum field? That's really the question. That's what's going on here. I don't mind the questions. I did a one with you and you wanted to ask all kinds of specific questions about David, but the David figure is really insignificant and so are all the other specifics about messengers and this and this. But these are stepping stone ideas. You know, the Course and all spiritualities that are helpful will say, you need a ladder to step back. You're too frightened of the quantum field. You're too frightened of love to just open to it instantaneously. You need symbols and steps. So when I talk about the parable of David, all I'm doing is I'm being disclosing and I'm just using parables much like Buddha, Jesus, Ramana Maharshi and on and on Gangaji. These are all parables. Last night I went into great detail. I don't think you were here, but actually I went into great detail about seeing everything in the world as just symbols.


I have received several emails and comments informing me in no uncertain terms that borderlines are not psychopaths, borderlines are empathic, they have emotions and they are generally wonderful people, psychopaths are not. Well I never said that borderlines are psychopaths, actually. What I did say is that under conditions of extreme stress, for example anticipated rejection, anticipated abandonment or real rejection and abandonment, borderlines tend to become secondary psychopaths. There's a massive difference between secondary and primary psychopaths. Secondary psychopaths have empathy and they have emotions. Primary psychopaths have neither. So the psychopathic self-state of the borderline is intended to protect the borderline from dysregulated emotions and extreme modulability under conditions of stress. It comes forward, it protects the borderline by becoming defined and reckless and impulsive and aggressive and then it dissociates most of the events. The borderline tends to forget a big part of what had happened. Now the secondary psychopath is facto 2 psychopath. Facto 2 psychopath is a psychopath who is possessed of access to emotions and of empathy. I hope this settles the issue. More generally. Here are two rules for you. The fact that you know one mind, your own, doesn't mean that you know all minds. In other words, the fact that you have access to one mind, which is your own, doesn't make you a psychologist. All of you are armchair psychologists and couch psychologists. I doubt whether you will make the same claims about nuclear science, for example. And the second thing is, anecdotes are not science. That your neighbour or your sister-in-law or your mother-in-law or your children behave in certain ways doesn't mean that we can derive a general rule about humanity from these behaviours. There is a clear difference in distinction between anecdotal evidence and science. Let's get to the topic of today's video. Today's lecture is about pseudo-identities in class-to-be personality disorders. My name is Stil Samvaknin and I am still the author of Malignant Self-Love and Narcissism Revisited and your favourite Professor of Psychology. Narcissists exhibit both overt, grandiose, entitled traits, and vulnerable traits. There is no type of consistency.  So we see in the same person dissonances in action and dissonant behaviour. In my work I suggest that class-to-be patients transition between overt, collapsed and covert states of their personality disorders when they are mortified or extremely stressed. But this raises the question, how is it possible? After all, the traits of a covert are diametrically opposed to the traits of an overt. The traits of the covert narcissists are the total opposite of the traits of a grandiose narcissist. A covert narcissist, for example, is shy. The overt narcissist is extroverted and prosocial. So how can we reconcile these two? And how can people transition between these states doesn't such a transition require a total overthrow of previous traits and the adoption of traits which are ego-alien, which are ego-discrepant, which don't sit well with the core of the person, with the identity of the person? I will read to you a comment I had received on Instagram, from Lyon and Cobra. Professor Dachnim, I find that this organisational structure helps to explain very well co-mobility and apparent contradictions among self-states. However, I find very difficult to see the transition between classic and covert borderline. You have referred in several instances that classic borderlines are mainly female, while covert borderlines are mainly male, which seems in contradiction with the idea of transitioning from one state to the other. Also, the covert status is supposed to be unstable because not effective to satisfy the need of the self, but it is difficult to believe that a classical borderline does satisfy her needs, security from abandonment anxiety in particular. So I don't see that the classic borderline satisfies her needs better than a covert borderline. But the thing that leaves me particularly surprised is the transition to primary psychopathy in the covert borderline case, while the passage to secondary psychopathy is very easy to imagine. The passage from classic to covert borderline appears way more extreme than other cluster B disorders. There is a passage from a chaotic organisation to a structured organisation. It seems to change everything in the most extreme way, including the cognitive elements and the self-efficacy. Also, the covert state seems so much more effective and stable than the classic state that it is difficult to think of the covert state as unstable. More clarifications on this front would be helpful. I answered very briefly, good questions. I will deal with them in a future lecture, which is this one. One correction, though, both covert and overt borderlines are disorganised personality structures. Lion and cobra raises very important questions. The transition from one state to another is counter-intuitive. When you look at a covert narcissist, this seems to have nothing in common. How can one become the other? Same with covert borderline and overt borderline. Same with covert histrionic and overt histrionic. How do these people change the core, the identity? How do they become, in other words, another personality altogether? Well, a few initial comments. Even in healthy, normal people, traits are not constant over the lifespan and under conditions of extreme endogenous or exogenous duress, stress or trauma. Traits change. How many times did you surprise yourself by doing something which seemed to be totally out of character? How many times have you heard someone saying, it wasn't me. I don't know what came over me. So we do change dramatically. And this is especially true if the patient suffers from identity disturbance, which we are going to discuss a bit later. Each state, the covert, the collapse and the overt. Each state is a narrative. And this narrative provides the person, the patient, with a pseudo identity. A pseudo identity is an ego function. It's an ego resource. But at the same time, it's a simulation. It's acting. No wonder we say acting out or acting in. A lot of acting is involved, a lot of thespian skill. So the pseudo identity is like a new dress that you try on. Will it fit me? Will I feel comfortable in it? Will it change my personality? So pseudo identity is functional. It protects, for example, if the pseudo identity is psychopathic, or it helps you become more self-efficacious if the pseudo identity is, for example, narcissistic, or it guarantees object constancy if the pseudo identity is codependent or borderline. So it's a resource. It's a resource at the disposal of the inner structure, which is the self. But it's also an attempt to test a problem, to test the environment, to test other people, and above all, to test oneself. When they cluster B, personality disordered patient, transitions from one state to another, what is being conducted is a massive experiment in shape-shifting. But it is an experiment. The covert states are highly unstable precisely because they are experimental. And coverts, by definition, are self-defeating. Because for example, the covert narcissist is not sufficiently assertive, not sufficiently out there, not sufficiently extroverted, not sufficiently gregarious to obtain supply. So the covert narcissism is a self-defeating state, and therefore unstable. But it's also experimental. When the overt narcissist is mortified, the overt narcissist kind of says to himself, well, I failed as an overt, let's try the covert. The red shirt is not for me, let's try the black shirt.  And the bridge between these states is collapse and modification. Of course, the personality, the identity, the self, they need to be under tremendous pressure, torsion, and breakage to become something else. And when to start with, your personality is fragmented, your self is fragmented, not constellated. And you are fractured, the fault lines, and nothing sits well together, you're not cohesive, you're not coherent, you're not consistent.  What I'm trying to say is that the vacillation and the transitions from one state to another are very common. Here too, we used to believe that such transitions are rare. I actually say that switching, switching between the states, and I'm using the word switching because it is very common in multiple personality disorder, in dissociative identity disorder. Switching between self-states, switching between these pseudo identities happens possibly several times a day. This is rapid cycling reminiscent of some types of bipolar disorder, but it's not limited to mood. The whole thing, the whole edifice switches. In the overt state, you have certain types of cognitions, certain types of negative emotions, certain types of affect, certain types of behavior, certain values, and then you transition to covert, and all these change.  You literally become another person. The only difference between dissociative identity disorder and cluster B personality disorders. The only difference is that in dissociative identity disorder, the self-states are dissociated. They don't communicate with each other. There's no exchange of information except for the host personality. Of course, there are other types of, they're rare types of dissociative identity disorder where there is, where the dissociation is permeable and the dissociated states communicate with each other, but these are extremely rare. The vast majority of DID cases, there's no communication between the self-states. They are utterly separated, dissociated, firewalled from each other. While in cluster B, there is communication between the self-states. There is a connecting thread. There is some kind of core that maintains control over the entire theater production. And we will discuss it a bit later. We could say that in the case of dissociative identity disorder, there is what we call identity confusion. While in the case of cluster B personality disorders, there is identity disturbance and identity diffusion. Remember these three terms. Identity confusion, identity disturbance, identity diffusion. Identity confusion is when the self-states don't communicate with each other. They are separated, they're dissociated. Identity disturbance is when the identity is in flux, not fully formed, not cohesive, not coherent, very fragmented and very fractured. It's common in borderline personality disorder. And identity diffusion is common in adolescence. If it persists into adulthood, we have pseudo identities. So let's start with identity confusion. I'm quoting from the article, an empirical delineation of the domain of pathological dissociation offered by who else, Paul Dell and Douglas Lawson. And they write, self-confusion, the strongest factor of pathological dissociation, describes deep confusion about the self. 10 of the first 14 items on this factor come from the MID's 12-item identity confusion facet scale. The other items in this factor describe peculiar alterations of the person's experience that entail a profound and disorienting loss of groundedness in self and in the world. Such disruption of the expected functioning of self and world constitutes the experiential core of dissociative events. This is how it feels to undergo recurrent dissociative intrusions into one's conscious experience. Dissociative persons are chronically and deeply confused about themselves. So this is identity confusion. In cluster B personality disorders, there is no identity confusion. There is no identity confusion. There is identity disturbance and identity diffusion, which we are going to discuss later. So all the self states know about each other. They all transfer information. They all kind of hand the baton. They transfer, it's a torch relay. They transfer information to each other when they exit stage, exit left. So the psychopath exits left and the borderline comes back. The borderline exits left and the narcissist comes on stage. So, and they hand to each other information. It's not complete information. A lot of the information is forgotten and dissociated owing to negative affectivity, such as guilt or shame. And so this is the reason for the discontinuities. And that's why these people need a story. They need a narrative, a connective tissue. They need glue to hold everything together.  So each state is a narrative. And there is an overriding narrative called personality disorder. Each state, as I said, is an ego function. It's also an experiment. Will it work? Will it not? But in the absence of a unitary stable core, the patient shape shifts between self states, replete with their own unique traits, affect, cognitions and behaviors. In extremis, these self states, as I said, are utterly dissociated in most forms of dissociative identity disorder. Now, this has a lot to do with the perception of time. Many, many years ago, 21 years ago, to be precise, I've written an article titled The Narcissist Time. I will place a link to the article in the description of this video. So you can click on it and read it. In 2008, many years later, Otto Kertberg published an article in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, volume 89. And this article was titled, is titled The Destruction of Time in Pathological Narcissism. Read the two together. I think his article is available online as well. Try to read the two together, because they provide a perfect, I think, overview of how cluster B personality disorder people, especially narcissists, perceive time, or more precisely, how they don't perceive time, how they actually live in an eternal, eternal present state owing to the dissociation. You see, dissociation affects memory. The narcissists and all other cluster B personality disorders, they are timeless. The narcissists would love this. I'm timeless. They are timeless. They have no time.  And because they have no memory, they have no continuity.  Because they have no self, they have, of course, no stable identity, which we are about to discuss, identity disturbance. I also refer you to Harry Gantrip's Gantrip, G-U-N-T-R-I-P. Harry Gantrip's books, all three of them, on schizoid phenomena. He wrote in the 60s, late 60s, early 60s and late 60s. He wrote a series of books on schizoid phenomena, brilliant books, still very valid. And they go into the issue, into the core issue of a lack of core. They go into what he calls disruptions in ego formation. So if you want a really deep overview of, you know, to delve deep into the topic, then Harry Gantrip's books are a good start. Cluster B personality disorders, I said, have identity disturbance. Consequently, they have several states because they don't have a single identity. They can be any of three states. And they have pseudo identities. Whenever they transition from one state to the other, they adopt another fake identity, a pseudo identity. Now, of course, the most famous pseudo identity is the false self, in the case of the narcissist. But the false self, for example, has totally different functions in covert narcissism than in overt narcissism. We could say that there are several pseudo identities, several false selves, not only one, and they reflect the underlying hues and coloring of the state. So in a covert state, of course, the false self will behave completely differently. In a overt state, completely differently, and in a collapse, completely differently. And in modification, the false self is disabled, inactivated. So the problem in modification is that there's no identity left, not even a pseudo identity, a veneer of identity, a simulation of identity, an experiment with identity. Modification disables the identity mechanism, disables any possibility to either experience a core truly or to experience a simulated core, like, let's say, virtual reality. So the modified person with cluster B personality disorders feels annulled, annihilated. Why? Because he's annulled and annihilated. He's left without an identity. Now, let's talk about identity disturbance. It's a deficiency. It's an inability to maintain one or more of the major components of identity. The first, the number one component, which I have just mentioned, is continuity over time. You need to feel that you are the same person when you wake up in the morning. And yet, people with cluster B personality disorders don't have this extremely rudimentary mechanism of holding yourself together, where they go in a single day through multiple phases where they feel discontinuous. They feel that they have nothing to do with the previous hour or day or week, that they are an entirely new person. This is why it's very difficult for narcissists to accept responsibility for their actions, because they feel alienated from themselves. Estrangement, it's called estrangement. They feel estranged. They feel that they shouldn't be held responsible or accountable for things they had done last year, because they were another person last year. It's not fair to punish this year's narcissists for last year's actions they feel. This discontinuity is epistemological in the sense that it pervades and invades thinking, emotions affect psychodynamic processes and the entire internal landscape. This identity disturbance, the discontinuity, is a gap. It's not only a memory gap, but it's a gap in everything. Even, for example, internal objects. If you don't have continuity, you don't remember properly what kind of dialogue you had with your internal objects. You definitely don't remember which of these internal objects used to be external. You don't remember which external objects were internalized, which internal objects were externalized, and who is external and who is internal. It creates a normal confusion. One of the main reasons for this internal, external object confusion is this exactly, that there is no single rememberer, no single entity that remembers, no institutional repository of memory. This is the first component of identity that is disrupted in identity disturbance. Another thing is emotional commitment to the representations of the self. The self is represented. I refer you to my video on the inner dialogue. The self is one of the voices, the privileged voice, the privileged introject, the privileged inner object. And you need to love the self. You need to invest in the self emotionally. You need to cathect the self. There needs to be a process of catechesis with the self. Otherwise, you can't own the self. You can't identify with the self.  You can't be someone you hate. You can't be something you loathe. You can't be something you self-holding contempt. So there needs to be a positive emotional investment in the representations of the self. Representation, inner representations in the inner object that is the self. And if you don't have this emotional investment over time, it's a component of identity that's missing and creates identity disturbance. Role relationships, what roles to play. If you are discontinuous, if your identity is fractured and fragmented not only spatially, but in time, you don't remember what is your role. What is it that you should do, how you should act? Spouses and mates and intimate partners of patients with cluster B personality disorders will tell you that they are dumbfounded. I mean, the patients are dumbfounded. They're very confused. It's like, what do you expect of me? What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say? And they keep asking these questions because they can't remember what is their role. They don't have core values, for example. Their values change. Today they support, I don't know, something, support abortion. Tomorrow they're against abortion. Today they are God fearing. Tomorrow they're atheists. There's no value axiological constancy. There's no value of constancy. And they shift between values, like, you know, you change socks. They're not self-standards, consequently. And so this prohibits the development of a meaningful view of the world. And in my view, also, of an internal working model, I think the internal working models of these people, of cluster B personality disorder patients, they're highly disrupted. They don't have a workable, workable, mental theory of mind. They don't have a workable theory of the world. They don't have organized shamans. The shamans are shattered as if, you know, they were subject to an explosive device. If you were to enter the mind of a cluster B personality disorder person, everything is in charge. Everything is in fragments and smithereens. It's like a giant nuclear bomb had detonated in the middle. That's how it looks. They can't put anything together with anything. Huge bits are missing, huge parts are missing. And so you can't develop really an internal working model. You can't have a worldview. You can't have a theory of the world and a theory of mind.  And you can't recognize your place vis-à-vis other objects, other people.  Now, of course, without a core identity, a functional, cohesive, coherent framework, there's no regulation. Regulation emanates from such a framework. There's a feedback loop. When you regulate, for example, the motions, you regulate them up to a point that is egocintonic with the core, with the identity. It's like the identity of the core provides you with numerical values of regulation and you have to conform to this range. In the absence of a core or an identity, there's emotional dysregulation. Emotional dysregulation is highly, hugely correlated with identity disturbance. Actually, when we see someone with emotional dysregulation, we know immediately it's a great predictor, prognosticator of identity disturbance. And this is common in borderline personality disorder, but not only. People with major depression, people with anxiety disorder, they also have this. They have identity disturbance and coupled with emotional dysregulation, apropos which meaning. So these people are not consistent.  In this sense, they resemble very closely bipolar patients. But bipolar patients have two phases and these two phases are relatively predictable. And within the phase, they are, they have a very clear core. So they have a manic core and they have an impressive core, right? But and they may have a hypomanic core, but they are course, they are clear. It's not the case with a borderline or with a narcissist or with a psychopath. It's like you're dealing with a new person every, every day if you're lucky. Sometimes several times a day they, they shape shift so dramatically. It's like, it's not a, it's not a single human being. It's a, it's a group of human beings. It's very reminiscent of multiple personality. The only difference being that they have full recollection and, and there is a connectivity between all these self states. It's not entirely clear how emotional dysregulation and identity disturbance are connected to, for example, negative effect. It's not a, it's not very clear whether there is perhaps a third variable. Some third process that is overriding process that produces emotional dysregulation and identity disturbance. I will discuss confounding in, in a future video. Confounding is proposed as suggested as such an overriding third process. But what we do know is that borderline personality disorder people have identity disturbance. I think the same apply I and of course in the footsteps of much, much greater scholars like Otto Kernberg. I think that borderline and, and narcissists have the same thing. They have identity disturbance. Relations with, with borderline personality disorder. Ironically, as a reaction to dysregulated emotions, they inhibit emotions. They fight back. The dysregulated emotions threaten to overwhelm them. They feel like drowning or suffocating. They feel they can't breathe. The emotions overtake them. The emotions stifle, stifle them, garret them. And they, to fight this, what most patients with borderline do, they impose on themselves strict internal inhibitions. They inhibit their emotions. And they describe this as numbness or emptiness in the words of, in the word of Kernberg. But this is actually a desperate attempt to inhibit. The problem is the emotions are dysregulated because there's no calibration mechanism. There's no internal gauge. There's no range. There's no thermometer to keep, to keep things in check. So both the dysregulation and the inhibitions get out of hand. One could even say that emotional inhibition in borderlines is a form of dysregulation. It's dysregulation in the other direction. So borderlines are like that. You have, sometimes they are overly emotional, almost like histrionics. They are all over the place. They are aggressive. They're violent. They're insane. They are demanding. They're clinging. They're loving. They're too much loving. They keep you with their love. And then suddenly, they are cold, detached, avoidant, withdrawing, numb, and empty. And it's one of the most harrowing experiences of the intimate partners of borderlines. Patients with borderline seem to identify with the effective state of the moment. They kind of leap from one moment to another with no continuity, no narrative identity. And the reason they do this is because they don't have an identity. So remember what I told you, the pseudo identity? Pseudo identity is an experiment. It's like, I don't have an identity. Now let me be loving. Let's see if this could become my identity. So now I will be loving. OK, he's about to abandon me. He's about to reject me. He's about to humiliate me. Let me be a psychopath. Let me be aggressive. Let me be defined. Let me be contumacious. Let me be impulsive. Let me be reckless. Another self state emerges. Let me try to be this self state. It's an experiment. It's a probe. The borderline keeps experimenting with possible identities, which is what I call pseudo identities. And she keeps discarding them like so many old clothes. There's a garage sale in the borderline psyche, in the borderline's mind, every single day. She discards her old self states and acquires new ones and tries them on. Will they fit me? Do I look nice in them? And so on and so forth. So it's kind of jerky. I would say the borderline is of a jerky personality. And so this is especially true when there is comorbidity, for example, with depression. Identity disturbance is extreme when the borderline is depressed, when she abuses substances, or when she's very anxious, when she has anxiety disorder, especially true in adolescence. But all cluster B personality types. And many scholars say that all personality disorders have, at the core, identity disturbance. And I want to link identity disturbance to two concepts invented by who else? The French. The French are coming. The first concept is simulacrum. I'm going to quote from Baudrillard. Baudrillard wrote, the simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth. It is the truth which conceals that there is no truth. The simulacrum in itself is true, but there is nothing behind it. So simulacrum is a facade. It's the equivalent of my suggested pseudo-identities. The simulacrum is a facade that implies that there is something behind it, but actually there's nothing behind it. There is emptiness, numbness, absence. We could say that personality disorders are simulacrum, especially, for example, narcissistic personality disorder. These are simulacrum. Each one of them is a simulacrum. It's a signal. It's simple. It's an act. And you tend to believe that there is something behind it. There is some depth. There are some dimensions which are concealed, but actually there's nothing behind it. Baudrillard divided the simulacrum and the simulation of simulacrum into four stages. He said, the first stage is a faithful image copy where we believe, and it may even be correct, that a sign, a signal, is a reflection of some profound reality. It's appearances. And Baudrillard called it the sacramental order. It's an appearance that gives you the distinct impression that there is something behind the sign, or the signal, or the symbol, or the act, or the behavior, or the statement, or the belief, or the value. You say, well, there must be something behind it. It can be fake. It looks too real. So this is order one in four, according to Baudrillard. The second stage, according to Baudrillard, is a perversion of reality. It's when we come to believe the sign, or the signal, the sign, to be an unfaithful copy.  And we say, this is a signal. This is a sign. But I feel it's fake. I feel it's an unfaithful copy, which, as Baudrillard put it, masks and denatures reality as an evil appearance. It is of the order of Maleficence. It's malicious. So signs and images, behaviors, traits, statements, speech acts, they don't faithfully reveal reality to us, but they can hint at the existence of an obscure reality, which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating. So you're beginning to see the relevance of Baudrillard's work to personality disorders. Personality disorders are exactly this kind of exhibitionistic, externalized narratives. What is a narrative? It's an assemblage of signs, a combination of symbols. That's a narrative. And when we see this narrative, we have one of four possible reactions. Reaction number one, the narrative is real. It represents reality. It represents something deep, profound. Something is happening. I can trust the narrative. That is the sacramental order.  I don't fully believe the narrative. Maybe there's something behind it, but it's definitely not in the narrative. The narrative fails to represent it or encapsulate it properly. Now, there's a third stage. The third stage is absence of a profound reality where the sign pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place. And arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard called it the order of sorcery. It's a kind of meaning that is conjured artificially but and appears to refer to something, but that something is not reality fully. It's something magical, maybe. So these are the stages, by the way, when you date someone with personality disorders, especially narcissists, psychopaths, borderlines, you go through these phases. You start with phase one, you go to phase two, you go to phase three, and you end up in phase four, which I'm about to describe. But we are unintentionally inadvertently succeeded to encapsulate the interpersonal dynamics of cluster B personality disorder people with other people. They're, in other words, their object relations. The fourth stage, according to Baudrillard, is pure simulacrum, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. That would be, for example, gaslighting. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images of signs is only of the order of other such claims. So signs refer to signs, which refer to signs, which refer to signs, there's no end to it. You never get to the point. You never get to reality. You can't get a grasp on it. It's slimy. It's like trying to capture a goldfish. You can't do this. And so in what is erroneously called word salad, word salad, by the way, is the disorganized speech of schizophrenics. It should not be applied to cluster B. But in the speech patterns of people with cluster B personality disorders are like this. You can't catch them. There's no, the speech is intended to obscure.  So this is simulacrum. The speech is self-referential. The speech refers to the speech. Very often people, narcissists, for example, or borderlines or psychopaths, they would say something and then a bit later, they would refer to what they had said earlier as reality and the truth. Why? Because they had said it. It must be true or real. So this is self-referential simulacrum. And so this is a regime of total equivalency where cultural products don't even pretend to be real in any sense in life. It's totally artificial, hyper real. And it's a pretension to reality, but there's no self-awareness in it and so on so forth. Another concept I would like to introduce to you, this is simulacrum. And the next concept, again, a French concept, is the spectacle. Jonathan Carey, in 2005, defined the spectacle as appearances that are purported to be simultaneously enticing, deceptive, distracting, and superficial. Isn't this a great description of dating and narcissists? It is. So I'll repeat it. A spectacle, the narcissists, is appearances that are purported to be simultaneously enticing, deceptive, distracting, and superficial. And Jonathan Carey is referring to work by Guy Debord, D-E-B-O-R-D, in the 60s. He wrote two, he wrote several books, but the two most influential works are The Society of the Spectacle and Comments of the Society of the Spectacle. Society of the Spectacle is written in a very strange form and is extremely difficult to weigh through, but one of the most rewarding efforts you will ever make. It's a stunningly insightful book, amazing book. I would compare it to the best work by Emil Duhheim and Baudrillard himself. So it's kind of interesting prose. Debord said that the spectacle is false representation in real life. It's a materialized worldview. It subjects human beings to itself. So spectacle is not concerned with reality.  Isn't this a great definition of shared fantasy or shared psychosis? Spectacle, in other words, is a mini cult. A mini cult with confirmation bias. It's an echo chamber of like-minded people and they fend off the rest of reality. They fend off the rest of reality because they are focused on the spectacle. The Trump presidency and the Trump phenomenon is the epitome and ratification of Debord's spectacle. Trump was not abashed in claiming that he was a spectacle. It's a reality TV star who had transformed politics and reality itself into reality TV. It's mind boggling in this sense. Debord said that alienation, this causes alienation. He says that the spectacle causes alienation. It destroys social relation between people because social relation between people should not be mediated. When you interact with people, you should interact with people. But he said the spectacle stands between you and the other. So when you try to interact with people nowadays, you interact with them via spectacle. Anyone who's been on Tinder knows what I'm talking about. I mean, these dating profiles, they're spectacles. You don't interact with people anymore. You interact with spectacles, your Facebook friends. Everything is a spectacle. He predicted all this. And he said that he foresaw the internet and what the internet would do to us. It's an amazing, amazing mind. And so this is identity disturbance and its connection to a simulacrum and spectacle. There is another syndrome. It's called identity diffusion. I refer you to the American Journal of Psychiatry, November, 1984, where Akhtar, grandfather of a lot of these studies, Akhtar published a small article, a short article, but a seminal one titled the syndrome of identity diffusion. Akhtar said, Akhtar delineated the syndrome of identity diffusion as consisting of six clinical features. Number one, contradictory character traits. Contradictory coexisting character traits, a proper trait consistency. Number two, temporal discontinuity in the self. Number three, lack of authenticity. The person feels that he is faking it, impostor syndrome. I am not really myself. I'm putting on a show. People are reacting to my show. People are reacting to my force self, not to me. But wait a minute, who is me? There's no me. There's only the show. So lack of authenticity. What Jean-Paul Sartre called bed faith. Kierkegaard himself had discussed authenticity. Number four, feelings of emptiness. So remember, we are discussing identity diffusion syndrome and these are the clinical sides. Number four, feelings of emptiness. But I don't, emptiness lab, not boredom. Don't confuse emptiness with boredom. Emptiness is boredom, by the way, is self directed aggression, like depression. Emptiness is when you feel that you don't exist. When you feel that you're being dematerialized. It's a form of the extreme dissociation because in dissociation we have depersonalization and derealization. And coupled with dissociative amnesia, you can reach a point where you feel that you don't exist. Number five, gender dysphoria. Which proves that gender is a learned, acquired heart of identity. And number six, inordinate moral relativism. Which is what I said earlier, no values.  The shifting axiological ground. The syndrome says Akhtar implies severe character pathology and is distinct from adolescent identity crisis. The conceptualization is significant bearing on the differential diagnosis and psychotherapy of personality disorders. Ray Wooden summarized identity diffusion, summarized well, Wooden, W-O-O-T-E-N. And he said definition, phase or status of individual who has not resolved identity issues. Description, identity diffusion is a phase or status defined by James Mancia, we'll discuss it a bit later, describing the avoidance apathy and overwhelm often associated with identity development. The adolescent is avoiding or lacks the volition to explore alternatives of self in the world. Example of high school senior experiencing identity diffusion is, I haven't really thought much about what I want to do when I get out of high school. Notice the word experimentation. So, lacks the volition to explore alternatives of self in the world. This is the experimentation I was talking about. We all tweak and tinker with our identity and ourselves, subject to environmental circumstances, stressors, events, expectations, other people. We play with our, our identity is not, you know, if there's a core, but it's a very plastic core, perhaps reflecting brain neuroplasticity. And we all experiment with the selves until at some point we are egosyntonic, we feel comfortable, we feel good, we are within kind of internal comfort zone, and then we stop. But we stop only for a while and we try again. And Wooden says, relevance to childhood development. This is a part of the identity development process that is characterized as avoiding uncomfortable feelings and exploration in the world. The result retards identity development and psychological adjustment. I refer you to Ericsson, by the way, those of you who want to delve deeper, I refer you to Ericsson's incomparable work, incomparable work about the stages of human development, human psychological development. Erick Ericsson, 1968, Identity, Youth and Crisis, published by Norton in New York. And of course I refer you to Maxia, which I'm about to discuss at length. 1966, Development and Validation of Ego Identity Status in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 3. Before we get to Maxia and his very important work, I would like to dwell on something mentioned by Akhtar, Identity Crisis. Identity Crisis is when during adolescence, you fail to settle on an ego identity, on an identity.  There's no end to it, you're the eternal student. So you can't settle on a single identity. And this was coined by Erick Ericsson, the German psychologist. The stage of psychological development to which Identity Crisis occurs is called the Identity Cohesion versus Role Confusion in Ericsson's work. Adolescents in this phase, they are faced with physical growth, sexual maturity, integrating ideas of themselves and others, what others think about them, peer pressure, peer, so there's a lot to process, a lot to, and each and every one of these inputs alters the self dramatically during adolescence. Adolescence is like second infancy. So they form, adolescents form self-image and they try to resolve the crisis of basic ego identity or basic identity. And so they resolve and then it falls apart and then they resolve again and they experiment and they try and they see reactions from the environment and reactions from peers and reactions from role models, parental figures and they progress their developmental phases and gradually with a feeling that they're loved is crucial to feel that you're loved, trust, autonomy, initiative, gradually they settle more and more on a single core identity which will remain with them for the rest of their lives and is who they are. Your core identity is who you are. But as Winnicott said, this process is disrupted if you don't trust in the love of other humans. If you were exposed to a childhood where you were not loved or conditionally loved or abused or parentified or whatever, you will have trouble. You'll have a problem settling on a single identity because you can't trust. For example, you can't trust the feedback from the environment, which is a major regulator. The friction with reality, the friction with others is a major regulator, major molding force that creates your identity. And so, James Marcia suggested that there are four identity statuses. He developed something called the identity status interview and it's kind of structured interview or semi-structured interview. And the interview is intended to explore or investigate how an individual explored different possibilities in different life areas, how committed the individual is to the outcomes of these explorations and how these outcomes are integrated into what might be called an identity or a self. So, he started in the sixties to administer these semi-structured interviews and he came up with the following conclusions. He says, there are four identity statuses. Foreclosure, identity diffusion, moratorium and identity achievement. And his work is sufficiently important for me to reiterate, to describe each one in every one of them.  Often, these commitments are based on parental ideas and beliefs that are accepted without questions. The individual about to become a Methodist, a Republican farmer, like his Methodist Republican farmer father, with little or no thought in the matter certainly cannot be said to have achieved an identity in spite of his commitment. Adolescence, he says, foreclose on handed down identity, sometimes willingly, sometimes at the pressure. And negative identity occurs when adolescents adopt an identity in opposition to the foreclosure. So father expects me to be Methodist, Republican farmer, I'm going to be a progressive professor of psychology. So opposition, negative and positive, identity both determined by the process of foreclosure. He's Marcia, so evidence for the endorsement of authoritarian values by foreclosures as fully commensurate with views of these foreclosures as alter egos of parents. He says that when identity crisis has been experienced, returning to foreclosure status was no longer a possibility. So foreclosure, foreclosure is when your identity is handed to you and you have to adopt it for some reason and you don't have the time or the possibility or the resources to explore other possible identities. Either you accept the identity handed to you or you reject it. In both cases, you are defined by the identity handed to you. The second identity status according to Marcia is identity diffusion. Adolescents unable to face the necessity of identity development, avoid exploring or making commitments by remaining in an amorphous state of identity diffusion, something which can produce social isolation. Identity diffusion is characterizes people who have neither explored or made commitments across life defining areas. You remember where Eternus, the eternal adolescent, the Peter Pan syndrome, that's a manifestation of identity diffusion. These kind of people may or may not have experienced an identity crisis. Some of them report having little interest in such matters. Others report repeated indecision because there's no core. There's no strict set of values. There's no guidelines. There's nothing there. It's an emptiness. So they're very indecisive. They many of them become perfectionists, they procrastinate. Many of them avoid challenges, avoid acting in the world, avoid performing because they're terrified of failure and defeat. Marcia suggests that people with identity diffusion do not experience much anxiety because there is little in which they are invested. As they begin to care more, they move to the moratorium status or they become so disturbed that they are diagnosed as schizophrenia or may end up adopting a negative and self-destructive identity role where personality disorders come in. Identity moratorium is the next status. It's individuals who are in the midst of a crisis whose commitments are either absent or only vaguely defined but who are actively exploring alternatives. Marcia said about moratorium. Moratoriums report experiencing more anxiety than do students in any other status. The world for people undergoing moratorium is not currently a highly predictable place. They are vitally engaged in a struggle to make it more predictable. And so despite this anxiety, in today's world I think most people spend time in either identity diffusion or moratorium. Gail Sheehy in her book S-H-E-E-H-Y. In her book, Passages and there was a continuation, I think a sequel. So indeed in her books, she called it provisional adulthood. Provisional adulthood.  Gail Sheehy. Identity achievement. Once a crisis is experienced, so we are moving the stages. It's once a crisis is experienced, once a crisis is worked through, Marcia considered a likely progression would be from diffusion through moratorium to achievement. And so this is the status of individuals who have typically experienced a crisis, undergone identity explorations and made commitments. Marcia says that theoretical description of students who have achieved an identity as implied that they have developed an internal as opposed to external locus of self definition and of course control. But Marcia himself said already in the 60s that there are identity status shifts very similar to my pseudo identities. Throughout the life cycle, identity status shifts occur. People can move suddenly from an achieved identity to a moratorium and even to identity diffusion. When identity status changes occur, the change is usually positive. They move from diffusion to moratorium. So this is a shift. It's a change, but they move progressively. They progress, it's improved. And it's often the most common shift is from moratorium to identity achievement. The transitions reflect a disequilibrium in identity. Status changes are related to this disequilibrium. Crisis and identity comes in the form of life cycle stages and life events that unsettle this orderly progression. Depending on the individual, particular life events like death of a loved one, job loss, moving, hitting rock bottom can cause this disequilibrium. But this is only true when the individual has constructed some form of identity. And this is the irony. Because the narcissist, for example, has no identity, it takes a lot to modify him. It takes a lot to change the narcissist. Heck, it takes a lot to bring the narcissist to therapy. People with an accomplished, achieved identity react much more powerfully to adverse life circumstances, to life crisis. They try to fix themselves, to modify, to consider other options, to consult people, to go to seek professional help or not professional help, sacor. Narcissist doesn't do any of this because he has no identity. So I repeat what Marcia writes. Depending on the individual, particular life events such as death of a loved one, job loss, moving, may cause disequilibrium. However, says Marcia, this is only true when an individual had constructed already some form of identity. People with diffusion, identity diffusion, he says, are stagnant. They have not made an effort to construct an identity and therefore have no identity to reform. In the case of foreclosures, many will choose to live in an environment that is similar to their childhood experiences so that they may remain unchanged. When disequilibrium occurs in the life of foreclosures, the effects may be especially devastating. Now, the narcissist, for example, tries, the narcissist is in a stage between foreclosure and identity diffusion. And the narcissist tries to recreate his childhood in the shared fantasy.  And when things don't work out, the mortification is indeed particularly devastating. When I say don't work out, I mean, he can't have a shared fantasy with you but he cannot find anyone else to have a shared fantasy with. When he had reached the end of the road, when his reputation precedes him and no one will ever collaborate with him again. When disequilibrium occurs, there's a period of reconstruction and these periods of reconstruction are the moratorium achievement, moratorium achievement cycles, mama cycles, he calls them. In each person's life, there's a minimum of three mama cycles corresponding with three psychological stages. And during the reconstruction, person regresses to an earlier identity status only to charge forward and to move to a more progressive, more evolved identity status. It is crucial that old constructs fall away so that new ones that are more encompassing of the person's identity may be constructed. In the reconstruction process, there is still continuity with the previous identity. However, the newer construction though is broadened to include new life experiences and new commitments. It's a little like an onion. The old identity doesn't vanish. It just gets encapsulated and encased in a new identity. Now, what do you do when you don't have an onion? When you don't have an identity, it's not possible then to cope in any meaningful way with your life, with your environment and with other people. What you do instead is you regress. You try to recreate because the only thing you know, you don't have an identity, but you have some kind of vague memory, nostalgic memory at least. So you try to recreate constantly an environment in which identity was not required. For example, childhood in a shared fantasy. In the Journal of Adolescence, in the Journal of Adolescence, volume 47, February, 2016, there's an article, Life on Hold, Life on Hold, Staying in Identity Diffusion in the late 20s. It's authored by Johanna Carlson and Eta Elias. They say, this study adds to the understanding of the dark side of identity development by investigating what it means to experience long-term identity diffusion during the late 20s. In a study of change and stability in identity status between ages 25 and 29, participants were assigned to identity diffusion at both ages. Longitudinal analysis of interviews with these participants showed that long-term experiences of identity diffusion may be described through individual's approach to changing life conditions, the extent to which they engage in meaningful making and how they develop their personal life direction. So I repeat this very important conclusion. Long-term experiences of identity diffusion may be described through individual's approach to changing life conditions, the extent to which they engage in meaningful making and how they develop their personal life direction. In questionnaires, participants reported few signs of psychological distress. You see, people with identity diffusion, they're not distressed by it, they're happy with it. They're happy, they're lucky, they're egosyntonic. Even so, qualitative analysis showed a general trend among participants to keep life on hold through decreased activity or increased appazard activity in relation to changing life conditions, to make little new meaning and in some cases, to dissolve their personal life direction altogether. And on this somber note, I wish you all well and I will sign off identity still missing.