Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > What Helps?
Recognizing certain narcissistic behaviors in myself
reallyME:
Now this sounded like a plan for me...I didn't find the N-test that Penny mentioned, but I am going to list the N-traits and let you all know how I compare
amoral/conscienceless - Yes n No. She wasn't really amoral, but very conscienceless at times, if it meant she got what she wanted.
authoritarian - She generally set her husband up to play the "authoritarian" role, so she could look "innocent"
care only about appearances - VERY MUCH SO! Anything you do is a REFLECTION on Jodi. You must "look the part" as she says.
contemptuous - Yes. If she knew you had blown the whistle on her or her family, calling them N's and warning others.
critical of others - Extremely. While I was with her, she would sit in the van and belittle an entire church full of people.
cruel - Yep. She saw nothing wrong with being really mean to me, by mocking my weight, my mental capacity at the time, anything that made her look BETTER than me, she'd say it "you really aren't called to be a preacher. When IIIIII do it, I don't need to look at a paper."
disappointing gift-givers - No. She is very strategic in this. Jodi once told me that she listens very carefully to see what a person is into, and when they come to her house, she is sure to make up a basket with all their favorite things in it.
don't recognize own feelings - Yes. She doesn't recognize a lot of her own feelings. She is great at imitating feelings though.
envious and competitive -Very competitive. She has to always be the best at everything, because "GOD" expects it of her.
feel entitled - Yep. She bragged to me about how, when an amusement park closed, her husband could go in there and get them to give her food, because they have a special "thing" goin with the owner of the park or something. ( I actually saw this played out, when her husband came back after the park had closed, and brought me some food, which, when I commented about how it smelled, Jodi had a FIT by using the silent treatment on me till later, when she told me "I can't believe you don't like that food. Bill went in there especially for YOU to get that food and all you can do is not appreciate it? Tami always would be soooooooo grateful to Bill when he'd get her stuff!" (Tami was her foster child)
flirtatious or seductive - Not really. Jodi said she wanted to rip into any guy who was looking at her. According to her, ALL the guys were gawking at her. I remember she said to me one day "Look at that guy over there! See how he's staring at my butt? I just wanna go over there and DECK HIM!" When I looked at that guy, his eyes were nowhere on her body!
grandiose - Very! She always has to tell me what famous person, band, group has taken special notice of her, given her front-row seats, and offered her some sort of grand position in their ministry.
hard to have a good time with - Well, I enjoyed Jodi and she seemed to enjoy me too, until later when she said to me "we have nothing in common!" I was SHOCKED!
hate to live alone - I imagine this is true of her. She needs someone to be NS to her. Soon after her divorce, she remarried.
hyper-sensitive to criticism - Oh yes! She couldn't stand when I begin asking her if she sees any narcissistic traits in herself. She responded with "No. I'm not receiving that!"
impulsive - Not sure on this one. When it came to shopping, yes. If she was depressed, she'd jump up and say, "Let's go shopping!"
lack sense of humor - She had a weird sense of humor. She liked to be teen-age like once in a while and act all silly, swinging her ponytail around.
naive - Very
passive -Pretended to be
pessimistic - Very
religious - Oh she had a SPECIAL relationship with God that nobody else had, but she insisted that they needed and could have, but she never would tell anyone HOW to. One always felt like Jodi had DIBS on God.
secretive - VERY. I was warned by her husband that I must NEVER tell anyone outside of their house, what went on there. I was told that if my journal got public at some point, that there would be TROUBLE, cause they are a ministry family and needed to maintain image.
self-contradictory - Yep
stingy - If you were her "friend" she fawned over ya, gave you gifts, spent money galore on you, especially buying tons of clothes, shoes, jewelry.
strange work habits - Jodi? Work? Well, she was rich, so there wasn't much to clean in a little trailer.
unusual eating habits -Yes, ate no meat and like a bird. Loved chicken gizzards breaded.
weird sense of time - She once lost a day...and her mother did at the same time.
Portia:
Hi PennyPlant, thanks for your help! :D
I remember this test. I took it at the time. I looked at the rest of the npa site and while it is an interesting idea (that Narcissism, Aggression and Perfectionism - I think? - are the three dominant traits) I found it had a limited appeal for me. Too focussed and narrowly–defined view of personality for my thinking. So you got 33 on the S score? Maybe it’s suppressed aggression according to his description? -
The S-score is a measure of anxiety, depression or submissiveness in social relations on a scale of 0-100. If the score is >20, then it becomes likely that either trait N or A, or both, is only partially expressed. This test does not explore the many possible reasons for a high S-score. The most common reason is suppressed aggression (submissive types) or suppressed narcissism (narcissistic borderline types).
I wouldn’t worry! Are you? :?
Oh yeah the questions – it’s very easy to misinterpret this type of personality quiz. I’ve taken lots of tests and tend to compare across a range. Lots at http://www.healthyplace.com/site/tests/psychological.asp if you’re interested.
pennyplant:
The problem I have with these types of tests is that I actually don't always know the answers! I'm not kidding. I can't decide anymore how I respond to situations. When I was younger it was much easier to express what type of person I was. Now I react according to each situation and mix it in with how I feel at any given time. They always ask what you do at parties--greet people loudly, hide in a corner, surround yourself with friends, blah, blah. Well, I have never gone to many parties and usually I know everybody there if I do. I try to talk to everybody but I'm not dancing on the tables. There's just so many variables to each situation that I don't really know what I do all the time.
It was useful to me, though. I kind of suspected some narcissism in there somewhere. When I think of the questions I was sure of and compared what I knew the answers would be for people that are probably N, I could see a huge difference between me and them. So, I'm not worried about having N traits. Whatever I've got in me is pretty mild compared to them. I'm wondering if I have some of the traits because my childhood didn't give me enough opportunity to outgrow them naturally or even to express them properly in the time when I should have been doing that. You know, maybe I just need to finish growing up. But the questions did give me more ideas of how to look at N in the people I know.
One trait that I've seen is the fascination with violence. On one list it mentioned that maybe the person isn't really violent but is fascinated with pretending or acting out violence or weaponry. That was a trait that stood out for me with someone at work. He will act out deadly karate moves on me (yes, I let him do that :shock: ). It was so fascinating to me that someone would want to do that with me. It's a first. In fact, I see him rarely now, but each time I see him, he will start making an absent-minded karate kicking motion while he is talking to me about something else. It's like it is instinctive or something. Or some kind of "skip" in his brain like a stuck record. Sort of a peek at his brain circuitry. I've never seen him act that way with the other sources of supply, not to say he wouldn't. But he acts less normal with me it seems. Or the others don't notice the strange little quirks.
I suppose since I let him "karate chop" me, that could go on my short list of N traits. Now why would I do that? It doesn't scare me that he does that and I let him. It seems like some unusual form of play. When I was a kid we played army and war. It seems like that to me. Except I'm in my 40s and doing this at work. Or maybe I just have a weird sense of humor.
PP
reallyME:
Moonlight,
I hear what you are saying, however, personally I believe that the first step to healing in ourselves, is to identify the problem. You can't correct what you don't acknowledge. These tests are quite accurate.
I took the test and I came out as straight NARCISSISTIC, no aggression, no perfectionism.
I don't hide things so there was nothing repressed nor suppressed. I'm a "whistle blower"
~ReallyME
pennyplant:
--- Quote from: moonlight52 on April 14, 2006, 03:01:03 PM ---I know we can not be in denial but "beating" ourselves up for what our parents did seems to me not a helpful thing to do.I am strong enough to look at my mistakes and not wallow in them then correct them and go on.This seems to me be a good choice.
Moonlight
--- End quote ---
Hi Moon,
I have noticed in just the few weeks I've been reading and posting here that I am starting to be more forgiving to myself and the people from the past. There have been times in my life where I've made myself almost sick from thinking that I had done the wrong things. And I have been deathly afraid of people who hurt me in the past and then if something reminded me of those times in the present, then that "fight or flight" feeling would come over me. That seems to be going away now. It seems like I'm starting to take things in stride and be able to move on faster from my mistakes.
If I slip into depression, well that bogs me down again. But now that I can recognize that depression might have descended on me for a few hours or few days, it is less mysterious why I am feeling or acting a certain way. So, I guess I'm learning to not wallow and it feels a lot better that way. Wallowing has been exhausting me all my life.
The tests do give me a starting point, though. Sometimes I know something is going on with me but I don't have the words for it. These tests give me the words and examples.
--- Quote from: reallyME on April 14, 2006, 05:41:03 PM ---the first step to healing in ourselves, is to identify the problem. You can't correct what you don't acknowledge. These tests are quite accurate.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, ReallyME, I do need to have the tests for a frame of reference. There were some questions on this recent one that I might not have thought of as related to N. Don't recall now exactly which ones. But it gave me kind of an "ah ha!" to read them. I don't get too locked into the results. As I said in an earlier post, I can often think of so many variables that it is hard for me to decide on an answer. But it is helpful. If I recognize other people in the questions that helps me understand why I might have trouble with certain people, too.
I really did wonder how I would score and it was a relief not to score too awfully high. :D
I'm not even so sure I'm going to try to get rid of the N-spots. I sort of want to explore them without getting on other people too much. I mean, I don't want to squash people the way I got squashed all my life. But I want to see what can stay a part of me, what might make me stronger and not such a pushover.
Pennyplant
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version