Gambling With The Devil: Dealing With Narcissists

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Let's talk about something that is not talked about enough regarding relationships with narcissists, and that is the addiction component of these relationships.

Many people have stated that they feel like they are addicted to the relationship or even to the narcissist themselves.
While it is not the case that people are addicted to the narcissist, there is an addiction involved in these relationships.

It is an addiction to the drama cycle of the relationship. This is a component of what are known as trauma bonds, and is perhaps one of the most important yet most ignored aspects of the relationship as a whole.

People are continually frustrated and even judged for having such a difficult time exiting the relationship and a lot of it is related to the addiction aspect here not being understood.

The addiction aspect here works in the brain in a similar way to opiate addiction and appears to be almost identical in form and function to an addiction to gambling.
Gambling creates patterns of operant conditioning and schedules of intermittent reinforcement that can create an addiction, particularly when coupled with existing vulnerabilities of some kind, such as beliefs surrounding our ability or responsibility to cope with and manage toxic relationships, ego narratives regarding losing or failing, and more.

Operant conditioning is what it's called when you learn to do or not do things in order to attain something positive or avoid something negative.

It's the use of punishment or reward to reinforce behavior. For palsu example, when you were a kid maybe your mom always yelled at you to clean your room and so you cleaned it to avoid getting yelled at. Or if she said she would give you $10 to clean it, you cleaned it in order to attain the money.
People dealing with narcissists know that this kind of conditioning is omnipresent in these relationships; they are nothing but a cycle of punishment and reward.

This by itself is enough to create addiction, but there is another element here that works to create addiction as well, and that is the partial or intermittent reinforcement that we also see in gambling.

When you gamble, you aren't rewarded every time you play, but you are rewarded enough to convince you that if you keep playing, you will be rewarded again. This is the intermittent part of "intermittent reinforcement," which means that the reinforcement (the punishment or reward) does not come every time you engage in the behavior.

You don't know how may times you will have to pull the lever before you are rewarded. It could be 5, it could be 50, it could be 500.

The reward also doesn't follow any type of pattern and is not predictable. This is called a variable ratio schedule. A variable ratio schedule of intermittent reinforcement produces the highest, most steady response rates because of the uncertainty of when the reward will come.

Behavioral responses and patterns created using a variable ratio schedule of intermittent reinforcement are often stronger and can be much harder to break. The uncertainty of when the reward will come not only reinforces the operant conditioning, but for some it actually causes more dopamine to be released in the brain - especially when they feel they came close to winning.

A growing body of evidence regarding dopamine production in the brain suggests that losses may actually motivate gambling behavior more than wins for this reason.












This is the way a slot machine operates. People are excited by the reward of winning money of course, and that is what induces them to begin playing and to continue playing to a certain point, but they can become addicted due to to the uncertainty of the reward schedule.

A predictable game is dull, even if you win. An uncertain one is much more fun and attractive. One considered to have equal odds - meaning that you have a 50/50 of winning every time you play - is the most attractive game and most dopamine-inducing. With a slot machine, the occurance of the reward is not known, but every time you pull the lever there is an equal chance it could happen. This keeps people engaged in the game, and can result in what is called "loss-chasing," where instead of getting up from the machine or table after they've lost, compulsive gamblers "double down" and keep playing.

As an analogy, let's say you put $10,000 into the slot machine and then you "win" $2,000.

This feels really exciting, it feels like a win. It isn't. You didn't win anything. You lost $8,000. They just gave you a little bit of your own money back to reward you because if they don't give you something, you will not keep playing.

This is how a slot machine operates.
This is also exactly what happens in relationships with narcissists. There is an intial excitement and reward that induces people to begin engaging (lovebombing during the idealization stage), there is operant conditioning that creates behavioral responses (splitting and extreme black & white perception resulting in alternating between idealization and devaluation), and intermittent reinforcement of that behavior delivered on a variable ratio schedule (the narcissist's reaction to things is unpredictable).



As with gambling, there is the hope of a jackpot or other big reward, but also as with gambling, that is not what keeps people engaged after a certain point, because the promise of a reward that never comes is not enough by itself. Without any positive reinforcement, that will not keep people engaged.

It is the smaller rewards and the perceived near-misses that induce people to keep chasing. That's why the slot machine shows 7-7-lemon and why it reveals this slowly. This builds anticipation, cranks up dopamine production in the brain and gives people the feeling that they almost won. In relationships with narcissists, people experience the same thing and it induces them to keep engaging, keep trying, keep working for the reward.

This also offers a partial explanation of why people still feel so engaged and invested in the relationship after they are receiving much more punishment than reward, which eventually happens as the idealization time between devaluations becomes shorter and less intense over time and the narcissist begins to see the relationship and the other person as irredeemable.

Not only do "losses" also stimulate dopamine production which actually makes them into rewards in a manner of speaking, but punishment is still a reinforcement and therefore the relevant operant conditioning is still being actively reinforced.

Trying to avoid negative reinforcement such as punishment and the reward-seeking addiction component of these relationships keeps people performing according to this conditioning and still "in the game" even when they no longer want to play and even when their losses are too big to logically continue, just as we see in compulsive gambling.

Also as we see in compulsive gambling, people in relationships with narcissists and other unpredictable personalities attempt to reduce their losses.

They try to find patterns, come up with management strategies, and look for ways to "game the system" so that they can figure out a way to generate a more predictable response. This is very similar to compulsive gamblers believing there are skill-sets or strategies they can use to help them win. Because of the random schedule of reinforcement, there are times when these strategies can appear to be successful, which creates even stronger reinforcement.
The reality is that with both slot machines and with people, you are dealing with a mechanism that you have no control over and there is no way to game the system. For all intents and purposes, it is random and there is no way to predict it well enough to reduce the level of danger involved.






Among the many similarities here, there are also some differences. One of the biggest differences is that when you're gambling, you technically have a chance of winning a jackpot or some other big reward.
It isn't likely and though the odds appear to be 50/50, they really aren't, but still, technically you could win a jackpot. With narcissists, this is not the case. The odds are much, much longer than 50/50. They aren't 70/30. They aren't even 90/10. They are 0.

You will never hit the jackpot because there isn't one. You are playing in a bankrupt casino that cannot pay you even if it wanted to do so - which it doesn't.

All of the quarters you and anybody else have been feeding into this machine are not sitting in there, waiting for the right combination of numbers or the right pull on the lever.
They are just gone. They have been used up running the casino at a loss and you will never get them back. You won't recoup your losses, you won't break even and you damn sure ain't winning a jackpot. The best you can hope for is that you don't walk out of this bankrupt casino now bankrupt yourself, with everything you've put in to it gone to keep it functioning so other people can come lose their investments, too.

Another difference is that when you are gambling in a casino, you are gambling with money.

In a relationship with a narcissist, you are gambling with things much more valuable than money. You're gambling with your future, your happiness, your energy, your peace... you're gambling with your life. Get up from the table. It's hard, it's painful but get up from the table.

You don't have to play.

This is yet another reason why no contact is so important. As long as the operant conditioning is still active - and it is if you're interacting with the person - and as long as intermittent reinforcement is still offered on a variable ratio schedule - and it is if you're still interacting with the person, then this situation is very difficult to break out of.

We have to act against the conditioning in order to break it and when it's still being continually reinforced, this is extremely difficult.

When we have been dealing with narcissistic people, we are confused, bewildered, upset, gaslit... It's very important to learn what we are dealing with and to understand why narcissists behave the way that they do, but after a certain point that isn't enough.
We also need to understand what's going on with us, and why we are making the choices we are making, too. That is arguably more important to understand in the end because it is the thing we actually have power over. The reality is that once we can understand these things and once we are able to work on our own stuff, it eventually won't matter what narcissists are doing or why because it won't affect us in the same way anymore.

In other episodes of the show on this channel, the statement has been made that the biggest battle we face when dealing with narcissists is not with the narcissist; it's with ourselves.

Not only is that the reality of the situation, it's also the only battle that is actually worth fighting here. Attempting to fight narcissism in your life or in society by engaging in battles with toxic people is a gigantic waste of time in so, so many situations. Most of the time, it is not only totally pointless but often actually makes things worse for us; we end up engaging in behavior we would not have otherwise engaged in because these relationships generally bring out the absolute worst in everyone involved.

There's a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche that is very relevant here: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." This means that when we are engaging with someone or something that is horrible - even if we are in opposition to it - we run the risk of becoming horrible ourselves if we are not very careful and the longer we do it, the higher the risk becomes.

Even the most moral, ethical, kind-hearted person will eventually be corrupted by a toxic environment if they are in it long enough.

To use a spiritual metaphor, engaging with the devil on the devil's own turf is not a good idea and it is for this very reason. If we want to fight toxic narcissism on a spiritual and societal scale, then we each need to battle our own egos. That is where true change is really comes from, for us and for the wider world around us.