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What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist

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Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist

#13
I think a lot of what this person describes about their thinking process and life patterns is actually going on in everyone's brain, but with less awareness of it.

The irony is, I guess, that the narcissist part is only the part that actually making him think that these patterns are somehow special or unique to him.

Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist

#14
post #7

There's a good chance my brother suffers from borderline personality disorder. My therapist has explained the biggest issue about PDs: the disorders make a person extremely unlikely to seek out help, as (to put it poorly) they believe the problem exists with the people around them and not themselves. This means that very little is understood, medically, about the disorders and how to treat them effectively. The autho…

There is also a healthy debate over the degree to which personality disorders represent a true disorder, or just an extreme personality on the edges of normal distribution. If you consider it in those terms, then “treatment” amounts to having someone voluntarily attempt to change their personality at a fundamental level. Even if they wanted to, how likely is that to succeed? All too often treatment for personality di…

> There is also a healthy debate over the degree to which personality disorders represent a true disorder, or just an extreme personality on the edges of normal distribution.

I'm not sure that's a meaningful distinction. That is to say, a "disorder" should be something that interferes with your ability to function and flourish in a normal environment. I'm not sure it's meaningful to draw a distinction between people who absolutely cannot function and people who merely effectively cannot function. Just because your ankle is sprained and not broken doesn't mean you don't need medical care or that you should be walking.

Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist

#15

I think children get really harmed by parents who happen to be narcissists. I’ve seen a lot of hurt on Reddit about being raised by narcissists and It’s almost as if children of these parents should have been warned growing up and so they could have avoided the pain of realizing the love is different than normal. I think healcare needs to focus on the family development with a narcastic parental figure and similar to…

Isn't blaming their parents' character flaws for the adult children's character flaws just a way to avoid responsibility by those adult children?

If a grown up child thinks parent should've fixed their flaw before it affected the child, then they presume that the flaw could have been fixed or mitigated.

In that case, why the child spends time blaming the parent on reddit now, instead of working on fixing the flaw that was, in many cases unknowingly, created by the parent?

Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist

#16
Its worth noting that the line between Aspergers (which I probably misspelled) and NPD can be blurred, particularly in women. Similarly, egocentrism, generalized anxiety disorder, NPD share features. This matters because empathy and patience is an effective strategy for engaging with those suffering from most of these disorders... but not NPD unless you're trained to do so.

Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist

#17

I think children get really harmed by parents who happen to be narcissists. I’ve seen a lot of hurt on Reddit about being raised by narcissists and It’s almost as if children of these parents should have been warned growing up and so they could have avoided the pain of realizing the love is different than normal. I think healcare needs to focus on the family development with a narcastic parental figure and similar to…

If you're interested in this, read: https://www.amazon.com/Trapped-Mirror-Children-Narcissists-S...

Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist

#18
post #7

There's a good chance my brother suffers from borderline personality disorder. My therapist has explained the biggest issue about PDs: the disorders make a person extremely unlikely to seek out help, as (to put it poorly) they believe the problem exists with the people around them and not themselves. This means that very little is understood, medically, about the disorders and how to treat them effectively. The autho…

There is also a healthy debate over the degree to which personality disorders represent a true disorder, or just an extreme personality on the edges of normal distribution. If you consider it in those terms, then “treatment” amounts to having someone voluntarily attempt to change their personality at a fundamental level. Even if they wanted to, how likely is that to succeed? All too often treatment for personality di…

There's a more nuanced debate about the degree to which many personality disorders (particularly Cluster B disorders) don't qualify as a mental illness for another reason. You are considered mentally ill if you have cognitive and behavioral patterns that harm yourself. If your cognitive and behavioral patterns harm other people but leave you relatively unscathed, that's arguably not mental illness.

Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist

#19

Thanks. This was a disturbing read as each paragraph further convinced me I suffer from the same thing. Time to go see a shrink. EDIT: and clearly only a narcissist would comment on how relevant the article is to them specifically... sigh

Even if you don't have a PD, going to a shrink is always a good thing. It's great that we spend so much time looking after our physical health in the modern world, but we should also be taking more care of our mental health.

Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist

#20
post #9

The author's comments about the "positive vs negative aspects of narcissism" are interesting. I remember reading[0] about how one of the most effective ways to determine if someone is a narcissistic is to ask them... "are you a narcissistic?". That surprised me at first because self-diagnosis is almost always a bad idea, but on second glance it makes sense that people who think about themselves all day could be more…

> I remember reading[0] about how one of the most effective ways to determine if someone is a narcissistic is to ask them... "are you a narcissistic?"

So what would a narcissistic person answer to this? Yes?

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