I have not posted for a while to this board because I was afraid that I had narcissism and was just scared. My therpapist told me that I do have some narcissistic traits from growing up around narcissistic people, and that sent me to a tailspin and felt very sad. I am just writing to this board because even though I know from what I ihave read and also from personal experience that narcissistic people are very hurtful, also I think that if anyone is a really caring person they would realize that no one is narcissistic because they want to be. I think that it is very sick and horrible the way it is written all over the internet that a person can never recover from this. It is very horrible and terrrible because everyone is a person just as equal as anyone else and it is horrible and terrrible to read on the computer that this is something that you can never recover from and it also means that you are evil and whatever. I do not understand at all anymore. I just want to say that I for one am going to recover from any narcissism in me and that no one has a right to label me as evil or anything else and that is not acceptable one human being to another. People can do evil things but that does not make them evil and I have never intentionally hur someone else in my life and think that it is very awful that so many people would judge me as evil just because the conditions of my childhood led me to develop some narcissistic traits. This I am writing and posting for my own sake I just need to have said this in some way.
Hi Bloopsy, We have to have narcissism, which includes a sense of self, in order to survive and make sensible decisions. There is nothing wrong with that. A healthy person tries to balance her needs and desires with the needs and desires of others. I have a real question about whether NPD really exists, but I will get to that later.
I totally agree with Miss Piggy and October here.
If you are worried about being a narcissist, in the sense of having a personality disorder, I would tend to say that you are not and you don't.
I am on this board because I was taught in my family that it was selfish and evil of me to have needs and desires. You could say it was pounded into me.
I was taught to subsume my self, which didn't get a chance to totally form until I healed, into whatever anyone else wanted. That set me up to be a victim, the very co-dependent kind. I was pretty much voiceless because I didn't know who I was; I let myself be pretty much whatever anyone needed at the time. A humourous definition of a co-dependent is that when a co-dependent dies, someone else's life flashes before her eyes.
There is some truth in that joke. However, even in my worst co-dependent moments, there was an element of narcissism because I could feel good about myself when playing out the roles I took on in my co-dependence. I was also very concerned about how I looked to others and what other people thought of me, which sounds pretty Nish, doesn't it? I was a people-pleaser. Healing has meant replacing unhealthy narcissism with healthy narcissism, and learning to how to live a balanced life.
So narcissism exists in everyone. In both extreme co-dependency and extreme narcissism, there is the distinct inability to balance the needs and desires of the self with the needs and desires of others. There is a continuum of behavior and attitude from healthy to full-blown personality disorder. I know that borderlines, which are probably the most extreme form of co-dependence, if you use the abandonment theory, can heal. The reason BPDs can heal is that they are capable of compassion and empathy, distorted as it is, and can eventually transfer that to themselves. I think that I was about as close to BPD can get in my extreme co-dependency and abandonment issues, but I wasn't a rager, that's the only difference.
Some people state that NPDs see others as objects or sources of supply and have no empathy or compassion. The supposed reason, which is theoretical, that full-blown NPDs can't heal is because, if they have no empathy or compassion, they cannot apply what they don't have to their own woundedness, the way a co-dependent or a borderline can. If it is true that a full-blown NPD has no awareness or concern about how their behavior impacts others, I would think that it would make it tremendously difficult to change. However, keep in mind, that the personality disorders are a construct, an idea, and nothing is written in stone. There is no blood test for NPD, OCD, or BPD...or any of it. As I said before, behavior exists on a continuum as do attitudes. I know that it is possible for someone with very heavy N characteristics to change....I see it in AA all the time. I know many people who are self-admitted former N's who enough of a chink in their armor to realize how much they were hurting others and have the desire to change. Before they could really heal, they had to get compassionate and empathetic with their own wounded selves.
That may be why it is stated that full-blown NPD is very rare...and I wonder if the condition really exists, or if it is just a nicer way of saying the person has anti-social personality disorder? What is the difference between someone that hurts others because they have full-blown NPD and somebody with anti-social personality disorder? APDs cannot be helped because they really do not have compassion and empathy. There are many functioning APD's who are very aware of the rules and expectations of society, but they haven't introjected those rules and will get away with what they can when nobody is looking...and don't care if they hurt others. (Not every APD is a sexual predator or serial killer.) Somebody with APD may say they feel remorse, but they feel remorse because of being caught and the consequences to them...which sounds like what we think of as NPD. So I am very confused about the difference.
