Signs You are Being Idealized or Devalued
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2023-11-04

Idealization takes from a few hours to a few days from the moment of introjection (snapshotting).

Snapshotting occurs instantly when the narcissist decides that you could serve as an intimate partner in the shared fantasy or a source of narcissistic supply. 

Signs that you are being snapshotted (introjected) and idealized (lovebombing phase):

Probing (scanning for vulnerabilities) disguised (and experienced) as limerence or infatuation

Data mining

Accelerated intimacy and ostentatious trust

Impairing reality testing (for example, by constantly justifying your behaviors; casting you as a victim; comparing you favorably as superior to others, past and present; reframing your failures as unmitigated, unalloyed success)

Communicating idealized internal object and behavioral expectations (possessiveness, monopolizing your time, control freakery, intrusiveness, surprises, realization of fantasies)

Trophy parading you in public (ostentation)

Hypersexuality and competitive sexual praising (bait, trap, intended to cause addiction or form a bond)

Coercive snapshotting

When the idealization is complete, the narcissist stops talking mostly about you and starts to talk mostly about himself.

Signs of imminent devaluation and discard by the narcissist:

Emotional absence, indifference, and coldness

Affected “civility”

Constant criticism and denigration

Passive-aggression

Unfavorable comparisons

Setting you up for failure and misconduct

Paranoid ideation and pathological jealousy

Sudden secret actions (financial or romantic)

Public disparagement and humiliation, also with common children

Sex withholding or degradation

Cessation of all joint activities, especially of a social nature

Pervasive distrust and micromanagement
 
Discard reenacts unresolved separation phase. 

Individuation depends on devaluation (in order to preserve grandiosity and exit the shared fantasy) and externalization-projection (reversal of internalization-introjection). When either of these two processes fails, hoovering results.

So, emotionally, discard precedes devaluation. The narcissist hangs on to his partner only in order to complete the devaluation. 

Devaluation resembles also the separation phase in adolescence: reactance (defiance), contempt, distancing, negative identity formation, approach-avoidance.

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