Just like a narcissist to write a post about himself.
There were about 200 instances of "I" in that post.
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What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist
41–50 of 101 posts
Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist
#42There'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…
>> The author of this piece is an extreme anomaly, not for having a PD (it is surprisingly common), but for having received effective treatment.
Last I checked, the only accepted treatment for any PD is DBT, and then only for borderline PD. I think real change is quite possible but it's LOT of internal mental work. Work you can only begin once you can see the problems. Half the stuff therapists do is really superficial and possibly harmful. The other half can be useful to varying degrees. And I'm gonna guess the line that divides these two varies a bit depending on both the person and the therapist.
Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist
#43It'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 disagree, I personally believe it's possible for people to be altruistic entirely for the sake of altruism. Making themselves feel good is secondary to the altruistic action.
And I think that's what differs between a narcissistic action and an altruistic one. Narcissists absolutely can and do derive positive emotions from helping others, but it's either entirely to help their own self-worth and/or achieve a certain goal, like the example in the article of helping an old lady accross the street.
An altruistic action is done for the sake of helping someone first, with the positive reinforcement as a potential bonus. A narcissistic one is done for the sake of positive reinforcement with helping others as a side effect.
Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist
#44Earlier 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.
Years ago I dated a woman with a “high functioning” career and from outside apparently normal social life who in retrospect was clearly BPD.
She was very good at hiding her feelings during most casual interactions, and was clever and generous and fun to talk to when calm, but had almost a second personality which would come out when she became even slightly stressed which was bitter and entirely self-centered and extremely manipulative. She was at that stage of her life completely incapable of maintaining a close personal relationship, and she was frequently (on a daily basis) under extreme stress about perceived grievous slights from everyone around her that were to an outside observer inconsequential mistakes or misunderstandings, and she was harboring numerous long-term grudges.
It seemed like she knew she had a problem, and during times where she wasn’t stressed out would regret her outbursts and seemed to wish she generally had better emotional control. She seemed generally pretty miserable about it, but maybe I was projecting based on the way her problems made me feel.
Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist
#45Earlier 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?
that wouldn't be profitable to the current industries so I guess not. There was talk of "An Ancient Virus May Be Responsible for Human Consciousness" not long ago so that at least is some acknowledgement in that direction: https://www.livescience.com/61627-ancient-virus-brain.html
Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist
#46Its 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.
Can you tell me more about this? I think I'm facing this situation - it increasingly feels some kind of half-ASD, half-NPD that makes my domestic life less than ideal.
Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist
#47There'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.
What do you base this statement on? Are you confusing BPD (borderline personality disorder) with bipolar disorder? BPD and NPD, based on several psychology books I've read, including the very good book Schema Therapy, are very unlikely to seek treatment.
Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were about 200 instances of "I" in that post.
Most of the article is the author asking the person questions about himself; I'm not sure how anyone could give proper answers to those questions without using first person pronouns.
Brewdad could refer to myself in the third person.
Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist
#49The 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?
Yes - or they would explain all of the good things about their worldview.
Source: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/280718.php
"People who are narcissists are almost proud of the fact. You can ask them directly because they don't see narcissism as a negative quality - they believe they are superior to other people and are fine with saying that publicly."
Re: What It’s Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist
#50There'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…
>> especially in Cluster B just train people how to better fake “normalcy” and to speak the language of therapy.
Really effective, non-superficial therapy is very hard. You may have to dig deep. Really deep. And when you do reach the roots there's still the issue of how to deal with what you find. It's not like surgery where you take out an infected appendix and say "you're cured".
>> 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?
That's exactly why it's hard. The fundamental drivers are often hidden and can be scattered (my term). You don't really change until you change the core. Most therapy seems to try to work from the outside in - probably because it's easier to do but less effective.