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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

#31

Post by fao_ »

jondubois wrote: post #26
fzeroracer wrote: post #23

It's interesting, considering my mother's side of the family tends to seemingly run a bit narcissistic. My grandmother especially, but I also see bits of it in my mother. The best way to describe it is that her world sort of exists around her. Things only really matter if they personally affect her, and when they do it revolves around her feelings, regardless of the feelings of those around her. She clearly deeply ca…

I think that the vast majority of people (narcissist or not) will never do something unless they personally benefit from it in some way. Everything that people do is for themselves. Even when people give money to charity; they do it because it makes them feel good. I think that maybe the difference between a narcissist and an altruist is that a narcissist doesn't derive any positive emotions from helping others.

> I think that the vast majority of people (narcissist or not) will never do something unless they personally benefit from it in some way.

I tend to disagree, and would recommend that you read https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

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

#32

Post by ouid »

dsabanin wrote: post #15
bellerose wrote: post #5

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 tha…

What are you trying to say? In order to understand which of your own behaviors are abusive and which behaviors are healthy, you must first be able to identify abuse in general. It is not an exercise in assigning blame.

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

#33

Post by DanBC »

drb91 wrote: post #29
da_chicken wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Well, if functioning and fluorishing is defined by conformity, this doesn’t seem very meaningful. Some personality disorders allow a high functioning career and social life. To be clear I am trying to illustrate the idea that a disorder seems inherently devilish to define.

> Some personality disorders allow a high functioning career and social life.

No, they don't, because built into the definition of disorder is the impact it has one someone's life.

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

#34

Post by DanBC »

zamalek wrote: 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…

> My therapist has explained the biggest issue about PDs: the disorders make a person extremely unlikely to seek out help

Sounds like a completely shit therapist, because the vast majority of people with BPD know full well they have a problem and are desperately seeking help for it.

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

#35

Post by DanBC »

philwelch wrote: post #18
toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where are you getting that definition from please, because it's not one I recognise.

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

#36

Post by philwelch »

Brakenshire wrote: post #30
philwelch wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have we just defined conscience as a mental disorder?

Excessive conscience probably constitutes an anxiety disorder.

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

#37

Post by gerbilly »

I had to disentangle myself from a friend who was a narcissist.

Looking back it feels like I was his 'sidekick'. I was one of his sources of narcissistic supply.

He thought he was improving me, helping me with my 'problems', like I was his project. This went on for years before his personality became sufficiently extreme that I couldn't ignore it any more.

It was a very difficult time, and it was surprisingly hard to disentangle myself, even though being around him made me feel bad.

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

#38

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

kofejnik wrote: post #27
da_chicken wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Homosexuality was considered a disorder until fairly recently

I always wonders who benefits from these treatments other then the doctors and scientist lining their pockets, along with academics circle-jerking their way to juicy funding.

Labels like narcissism are just a way to tell a whole group of people that they're ill. In fact it's a personality trait that according to "research" is rampant in management professions.

There are so many crappy online tests that measure your tendency to "narcissism" (and any extroverted high-achiever might fall into their trap) ... but if you look at the research it gets flimsy very quickly. They quickly talk about a "spectrum" indicating they have no fucking idea what they're doing.

A bit like the current tendency to over diagnose kids on the autistic spectrum. Flimsy jargon like "spectrum" is excellent precondition for whole industries to emerge that can line their pockets.

imvho psychology / psychiatry must be one of the most fraudulent sciences of our times (check out all the research that was done by these crooks to devise better methods of interrogation and soft torture) ... something, something "medical industrial complex".

EDIT: what @zamalek describes above "My therapist has explained the biggest issue about PDs: the disorders make a person extremely unlikely to seek out help," sounds like the perfect cover for a fraudulent practice. Such language IMO is outright dangerous to anyone who may be diagnosed without their consent (e.g. by SJW's or society in general).

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

#39

Post by WalterSear »

toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #8
zamalek wrote: 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 not. Anyone takes care of a person with a PD would tell you that.

And the high functioning people with PDs would explain to you the all the very specific deficits they have to overcome in order to function.

And the clinical researchers would explain to you as much as we know regarding regarding the developmental and environmental causes of specific PDs.

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

#40

Post by jondubois »

fao_ wrote: post #31
jondubois wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the vast majority of people (narcissist or not) will never do something unless they personally benefit from it in some way. Everything that people do is for themselves. Even when people give money to charity; they do it because it makes them feel good. I think that maybe the difference between a narcissist and an altruist is that a narcissist doesn't derive any positive emotions from helping others.

> I think that the vast majority of people (narcissist or not) will never do something unless they personally benefit from it in some way. I tend to disagree, and would recommend that you read https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

I think that the the evolutionary argument strengthens my point. The positive emotions that someone feels could be a chemical adaptation devised by certain genes precisely to help the survival of similar genes across specimen boundaries. So genes trick the individual into helping another individual who shares certain specific genes (genes related to altruism itself).

Narcissism could be a predatory evolutionary strategy which works by fooling altruistic genes within other specimens into thinking that they're the same. That would explain why narcissists are often described as 'charming' - It's all about giving an facade of altruism without incurring any costs for the specimen.

Even the most altruistic people don't usually want to help convicted criminals.

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