Is it Narcissism if your aware of it and looking for a way out?

[polymath]

Or are all obsessively selfish people aware of the fact inside their private world and just deal with their public world differently?

What we call narcissism (and shorten to 'N') is, IMO, simply what used to be called spoiled. Parents spoil or dismiss children because thats what happened to them. It's just a vicious cycle.

I would like to bring up a subject, only to get input, sincerely not to upset any women in the group. I googled 'maternal gatekeeping' and it was quite interesting. Basically the concept is, good mothers feel secure enough to share power with a man in raising children while not so good mothers (NM's) must hoard this power for themselves, believing they don't need a man to help in the raising of boys (and girls too but the damage done is greater in boys). Now this is the vicious cycle. A boy raised my a NM, won't learn how to be a good man with healthy respect for women, and if he has children, will perpetuate the problem.

My NM's NM (my grandmother) was very selfish and bitter. My grandfather (her second husband) was, and is a good man, but is very deferential to women and put up with her mean spirit like a whipped puppy, staying out of her line of fire. I never once saw him tell her to sit down and shut the hell up, or 'leave that boy alone, he's just having fun. He also talked incessantly, but still a good moral man.

Sorry about that really. I got off on a personal and bitter tangent. My real question is, for a man, is it true N if your aware of it publicly and attempting to fix it? I'm so damn self-absorbed because I had no where to go as a kid but inward. Can the bells that tolled at 3 yrs of age be unrung at 36. The late 30's seem to be the age where this anxiety and depression hits men and women, probably because our bodies, and I suppose minds since they are a part of the body, begin to slip a little and youth begins to pass.

Very much looking forward to responses.

RS

[Ami]

Or are all obsessively selfish people aware of the fact inside their private world and just deal with their public world differently?

What we call narcissism (and shorten to 'N') is, IMO, simply what used to be called spoiled. Parents spoil or dismiss children because thats what happened to them. It's just a vicious cycle.

I would like to bring up a subject, only to get input, sincerely not to upset any women in the group. I googled 'maternal gatekeeping' and it was quite interesting. Basically the concept is, good mothers feel secure enough to share power with a man in raising children while not so good mothers (NM's) must hoard this power for themselves, believing they don't need a man to help in the raising of boys (and girls too but the damage done is greater in boys). Now this is the vicious cycle. A boy raised my a NM, won't learn how to be a good man with healthy respect for women, and if he has children, will perpetuate the problem.

My NM's NM (my grandmother) was very selfish and bitter. My grandfather (her second husband) was, and is a good man, but is very deferential to women and put up with her mean spirit like a whipped puppy, staying out of her line of fire. I never once saw him tell her to sit down and shut the hell up, or 'leave that boy alone, he's just having fun. He also talked incessantly, but still a good moral man.

Sorry about that really. I got off on a personal and bitter tangent. My real question is, for a man, is it true N if your aware of it publicly and attempting to fix it? I'm so damn self-absorbed because I had no where to go as a kid but inward. Can the bells that tolled at 3 yrs of age be unrung at 36. The late 30's seem to be the age where this anxiety and depression hits men and women, probably because our bodies, and I suppose minds since they are a part of the body, begin to slip a little and youth begins to pass.

Very much looking forward to responses.

RS

Dear Polymath,
 Your question is JUST what I meant----Question your thinking? Reach out. ASK.Nothing is forbidden to ask if it is in your mind. If some people don't like it---it is their problem--you are trying to live  You are trying to get over N damage. This is not the  time to "look good" !
  I was trying to make the point of your question to you( and to me). YES--normal people (emotionally healthy)are  selfish --first. Then, when they have their needs taken care of, they give from the overflow, the filled place.
 I used to be healthy so I know what it feels like.
 I have healthy people in my life and they LOVE themselves ,don't betray themselves. This is natural for a healthy person. We are not selfish enough. That is why and how we are screwed up.

[Portia]

It can be so twisted.....
I used to say that I was too selfish - what I really meant was "I'm too depressed and screwed up", but I didn't know that then. Better to use my 'selfishness' as an excuse for the things I didn't do.

[Ami]

I wanted to discuss your questions about woman. I was  close friends with a guy  who had the type of M you describe. He saw woman as Hoover vacumn cleaners. He would be  obliterated.I think many men have some version of this to varying degrees. As you heal   and feel WORTHY  of a good life  you will not fall prey to this. Only men who are lost emotionally (and stay lost)  do.
      Ami
 
 

[Ami]

I wanted to add s/thing about your question. WHEN I was healthy---I was obsessively selfish BUT b/c I took care of my own needs I could be giving to others and intimate with others.
 I think it is the key to being healthy and having healthy relationships.
 That is my gut feeling and experience of life.
 When I got scared to death of "being selfish"I became emotionally ill. THAT is emotional illness., IME.           Ami

[polymath]

Damn I hate to sound so difficult. I hear what your saying about questioning my thoughts but thats just it. All I seem to be doing is questioning my thoughts and small decisions with my deep self-consciousness getting in the way.

Sorry to say but I'm beginning to feel the uselessness of the whole thing. If someone had a 'cure' for this, the male prison population would be much smaller. Im not in prison because I didn't have any men, violent or otherwise involved in my young life (booh hooh). This life is what it is, sad more some, happy for some, and somewhere in the middle for most. You either get the tools for success put into you in the first 3 years or spend a lifetime dealing with the fact that you didn't. Therapy and medication may help deal with the core issue but they don't get reversed.

Still hangin in there.

RS

[Ami]

Damn I hate to sound so difficult. I hear what your saying about questioning my thoughts but thats just it. All I seem to be doing is questioning my thoughts and small decisions with my deep self-consciousness getting in the way.

Sorry to say but I'm beginning to feel the uselessness of the whole thing. If someone had a 'cure' for this, the male prison population would be much smaller. Im not in prison because I didn't have any men, violent or otherwise involved in my young life (booh hooh). This life is what it is, sad more some, happy for some, and somewhere in the middle for most. You either get the tools for success put into you in the first 3 years or spend a lifetime dealing with the fact that you didn't. Therapy and medication may help deal with the core issue but they don't get reversed.

Still hangin in there.

RS

I can hear your hopelessness. My son, a 21 year old 4.0 premed student,handsome  popular, on the football team committed suicide cuz he thought his life was hopeless.
 Hopelessness is a symptom of our having an NM. I have had great hopelessness cuz I thought I could NEVER get better cuz my NM molested me.
 It is part of it, RS. It really,really is. It feels so,so real , I know that.You are hanging in for now. If that is all you can do--you are doing GREAT!       xxxooo    Ami

[Portia]

I feel successful now.

I felt like a basket-case a few years back.

Nothing has changed on the outside. Everything has changed inside my head.

Success is what I feel, not what anyone else defines it as.

And everyone is screwed up in some way......even if they're 'normal'. They get to live in an insane world! How bad can that be? I'm being slightly flippant. I can get too serious sometimes.

[Ami]

Dear Portia
You are so right, Portia.   Something with the NM messages shifts at some point and doors to new ways of thinking open up but it takes time to unravel the mess of distortions. It takes time and at least one person who understands,IME.         Ami       
 

[mudpuppy]

What we call narcissism (and shorten to 'N') is, IMO, simply what used to be called spoiled.

Depends on if you mean N as in tendencies or N as in a personality disorder.
A PD is definitely far more than merely acting spoiled. They intentionally destroy other's lives, lie pathologically and are completely devoid of empathy and conscience.
Spoiled people are annoying brats.
NPDs are whirling dervishes of broken families and destroyed lives.

My real question is, for a man, is it true N if your aware of it publicly and attempting to fix it?

Probably not a PD, at least not a severe one, if it's acknowledged publicly and you're really trying to fix it. Except for short periods such as a psychotic break real NPDs will neither acknowledge nor fix anything. And I imagine that holds true for men or women.

mud

[bearwithme]

What we call narcissism (and shorten to 'N') is, IMO, simply what used to be called spoiled.

Depends on if you mean N as in tendencies or N as in a personality disorder.
A PD is definitely far more than merely acting spoiled. They intentionally destroy other's lives, lie pathologically and are completely devoid of empathy and conscience.
Spoiled people are annoying brats.
NPDs are whirling dervishes of broken families and destroyed lives.

My real question is, for a man, is it true N if your aware of it publicly and attempting to fix it?

Probably not a PD, at least not a severe one, if it's acknowledged publicly and you're really trying to fix it. Except for short periods such as a psychotic break real NPDs will neither acknowledge nor fix anything. And I imagine that holds true for men or women.

mud

I have to agree here with mud.  A true N has a "disorder."  IMO, if someone acknowledges they are ill in any way and/or trying to fix it, then they are not true N's.  With men it may lie somewhere with an overbearing mother that different problems arise when it comes to them having relationships.  Don't know if that was the actual point or not here...sorry for going off subject.

I do know some men that were raised with an overbearing mother and told they could do no wrong and their mother made the blanket statement "oh, boys will be boys" when they mistreated girls and even boys, those men are not very nice to be around for women.  They are usually obnoxious and have unattractive personalilites.  Most end up divorced or still acting sophmoric in their 40's and 50's. That's just MO.

[Ami]

In my experience with N's, a true N is the LAST to know they have a problem. In fact, you can bang them over the head with the fact they ARE an N and they will still deny it. That is just a laymans definition.           Ami

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Just a thought: If you were raised by one or more narcisissts, it would be natural for you to think and therefore behave like them in some ways. For example, having rigid ideas of how to act, and thinking that different ways of doing things are wrong. Children of narcissists generally have been brainwashed into thinking that they are not allowed to question their parent's reality, and are taught to question their own experience. I think most of us begin to wake up from this nightmare in our thirties or later, because it takes us that long to experience enough of the world to figure out that there are millions of "right" ways to do almost everything. And then we begin to question our brainwashing. And then we begin to recover.

[polymath]

yeah, my mother and grandparents would be N's. I would watch them all talk to other people and they just blathered on and on. They didn't positively acknowledge anyone's statements. They would talk and talk and talk, biting at the bit to bring it back to themselves, or a stupid TV show or the Bible, it was insanity. My grandmother never, and I mean never, visited any of the 5 neighbors within a stones throw of their house. She just talked bad about them at dinner. My poor grandfather would stick his neck out ever so often and say something relatively nice about the guy next door just to be cut down. I saw glimpses of his good heart over the years but they got more infrequent as that evil $*%&# changed him.

I just hope and pray that your right and I'm in a healing process I just don't see it, realizing the insanity of those people and being aware enough to try to shed it.

[Ami]

Dear Polymath
 I think you are like your GF with his good heart.  You were stuck with the same woman pulling and pushing you until you almost dissolved. That is where you are now, a little part of yourself still in there, crying for help. I hear it.           Ami