Going to write this anonymously as someone who has went through a serious narcissistic collapse 5 months ago. All I can say is that the collapse is the only, and rare opportunity for a narcissistic to begin real change. It’s like reaching the bottom, same as when alcoholic ruins his life and only then begins to change. I felt like I reached my own bottom and there was nowhere to hide anymore. There are lower bottoms to reach but that was enough for me. I was going to therapy before the collapse but after that went even deeper. If a narcissist has enough self-awareness and a willingness to change, as painful as it is, it can be a gift in disguise. I’ll also add that narcissism is a spectrum and beyond a certain point, a full-on NPD is just incapable of change.
Also posting anonymously, for obvious reasons. They say narcissists can't change because either they're unaware of their plight or they "embrace" it. Yet I have many narcissistic personality traits, I'm aware of it, and I hate it. I try to correct myself but it's not working well.
Some examples. The minute someone "crosses" me (or I feel they have, even if they haven't) I completely remove myself from the relationship. That doesn't work too well for jobs, romance, or friendship. I can become extremely aggressive when someone who I feel should be paying attention to me, doesn't (typically, a bored bank teller). I have strong road rage. I never make myself vulnerable, never say what I really think or how I really feel.
In general I consider that I deserve everything, and should be on top of the world. Since I'm a nobody, the space between what is and what should be is incredibly hard to bear. I hate everyone but the person I hate the most is me.
It's easy to identify what needs to change, but very difficult to act upon a specific behavior in the heat of the action.
> I was going to therapy before the collapse but after that went even deeper.
A big problem is that most therapists have no experience with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as it's quite rare, but at the same time, conventional talk therapy actually exacerbates the disorder. So unless a person seeks out treatment for NPD specifically, they're unlikely to get better and in fact will likely get more stuck.
And it's a catch-22, because nobody will seek out an expert for a diagnosis they haven't received.
Thanks for being vulnerable. These are the classic stories of Ebenezer Scrooge, Captain Ahab, Frankenstein, and Jay Gatsby to name a few who either change their ways for good or die while refusing to after a collapse.
Pretty sure I lost my last startup due to my former co-founder having NPD. How did I cope? I had to walk away and lose everything I had at that time, deal with huge legal bills, and then watch him twiddle his thumbs while the startup folded. It also put an intense pressure on my marriage which ultimately also broke down.
Was a dreadful experience that I would never wish on anyone else and I am pretty certain I'll never trust anyone to co-found another startup with in the future.
Edit to add: advice for anyone in business with someone they suspect of NPD: tidy everything up, get legal advice, get away as quietly as possible, don't look back.
Same thing happened to me. I got to a point where I had to conclude that the issues with the CEO was not something I could fix and I had to walk away knowing that I'd likely lose everything I had invested in the company. And I eventually did. And like you, the trust issues linger on. Your edit is spot on - narcissism alone in a CEO is common and manageable, but if they have NPD, get out NOW.
> Narcissistic collapse isn’t an official psychiatric term, and it hasn’t been extensively researched.
The most important sentence in the whole post.
It is nice to have a common and simple language with which to talk about our emotions and mental health, and tempting (and probably sometimes useful) to try and diagnose others. Particularly given that many people are uncomfortable just talking about these topics without medical (or pseudo medical) labels. But this article seems to provide a shallow framework with which laymen can purportedly diagnose others, without citing any real scientific, medical, or really evidentiary basis of any kind. Fun to read but I am wary of it.
Rather than using psych labels that I am not qualified to identify I find it is usually better to describe real behavior patterns. I noticed even phD psychologists are reluctant to diagnose people with disorders whom they have not met.
I agree.
Narcissism is a just a term in pop-psychology for someone who is doing something we don't like.
This article is damaging because it provides people justification to use an overly-simplistic generalised theory to instead of doing the real work of understanding the other person.
Doing this amounts to gaslighting and degrades the ability of the two parties to have a meaningful discussion based on real events rather than bogus disconnected internet dogma.
This article finally explained what was going on with my former friend. He was extremely narcissist (and an alcoholic), then got rejected by a woman and started lashing out at all his friends because his image of being a self-proclaimed "dominant alpha male" was shattered. I told him to get therapy then he shifted his attacks towards me instead of her.
I no longer associate with people who have drinking as a core hobby, it just exacerbates whatever emotional issues they may already have.
Yes I have a former friend who is pretty far down the alcoholism spiral with seemingly “narcissistic” tendencies.
He’s extraordinarily aggressive and abusive when he’s drunk, and lashes out at everyone. The thing is, now he claims he can’t even remember that happening when he’s sober. I don’t know if this is the truth or he’s lying lol
Either way it’s tragic and sad. Probably the most self destructive cycle I’ve ever personally witnessed.
I wonder if you can predict when narcissists will lash outward versus lash inwards through self destructive behaviors. Would be helpful to know beforehand even if the predictive accuracy wasn’t very high.
NPD is probably rare, but narcissism-lite is endemic to humanity. What are the indicators that tell me I should start inducing a collapse in myself? How do I make it obvious that my ego has diverged from the world around me?
Yeah I read this article and think: isn't that a possible reaction for anyone who feels like their world is falling apart? It just happens at a different point for a "narcissistic" person, of which I definitely can recognize some in myself. Just like I can identify with a lot of other things on various spectrums. I don't have much advice on your specific question, other than I happen to have a wonderful woman in my life who taught me some things: laugh at myself, especially when others are teasing me; accept I'm human and don't expect otherwise of myself; things always change, so just be patient and don't do anything drastic in a moment to make things worse.
NPD is fairly uncommon, and people with it are generally completely immune to feedback. You could tell them they have harmed you in X way, and they will simply be unable to internalize it. 'Immune to negative feedback' is a good proxy. Where as people merely high in the narcissitic trait are more likely to behave that way, they would also eventually be able to understand that they harmed you. A narcissist would be very reluctant to go to therapy. Someone with NPD would believe at their inner most core that therapy is incompatible with their being.
You're probably right - actually medically diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder is likely very rare diagnosis... Because the people who have that would deign to admit they have a problem. "Its the world that has a problem and they're right."
Even my own mother is one such narcissist. She's tried to bait us siblings against each other. Fortunately, we'll just get on a call or zoom and actually talk. As of now, all siblings have blocked her. Thankfully, we (siblings) all met up for thangsiving, which was awesome. Mommy dearest can go tell herself how great she was, by herself.
I think that when somebody (almost anybody) today blows up out of proportion of the cause it is a "narcissistic collapse". That is, somebody flips from "I'm a good person" to "I'm a bad person" and to use a technical term, they lose their shit.
That is, it's a problem in my mind that "Narcissists" are othered as a category whereas narcissism (self-love) is a natural and essential part of the psyche the same way your heart is a part of your body. Everybody has it. You have to engage with (cathect) your own self image to remember to do self-care such as brushing your teeth, planning for retirement, etc. Many things can go wrong with your narcissism the same way that many things can go wrong with your heart (heart attack, heart disease, heart failure, arrhythmia, etc.)
There is a case that people have more trouble with narcissism today than in the recent past because of the need for self-invention that people have today: it used to be that you didn't move, you didn't have to think about who you would marry or what kind of work you would do or how you fit in with other people, it was all decided for you. Chris Lasch, on the other hand in the book
saw the culture in the US being corrupted by narcissism in the later half of the 19th century to today. Japanese people think that analysis applies to Japanese people in the Tokugawa period and if you believe that you might also find traces of it in Imperial Rome. (Lasch would see religion with an ecclesiastical structure separate from the state as a countervailing force.)
Myself I had two periods in my life of about six months in my life where I experienced NPD-like symptoms and behaviors. Once I found an article in Psychology Today with a title like "Are you the target of a Narcissist?" and I think I had exhibited 10 out of 12 of the behaviors on their- list. In both of those cases I was under stress, in a kind of transitional situation, and exposed to bad influences.
I think that it's really good to examine yourself, and to keep trying to understand and work out the truth of your particular situation. I don't know anything about you, so please take this with a grain of salt, but the fact that you are serious about inducing a narcissistic collapse tells me that you probably don't need one.
It might even be damaging for you. Maybe you're depressed, or have self-esteem issues, alcoholism, addiction, co-dependency, developmental issues, or any of a number of other things going on.
Re: Narcissism-lite -- it's been pretty well established that a small amount of narcissism can be a good thing, while too much is a bad thing. How to know the difference? Results. Does your life work for you? Do you have some friends that you can talk with about this? Or maybe a therapist?
Interestingly, though, the way you talked about inducing collapse reminds me of a Vajrayana Buddhism guru type thing where the guru sometimes punches you in the self-centered weak spot in the context of practices that help you realize self-clinging as the ultimate source of the pain.
one trick I used to have is to check your value regularly. try and fail and know where you sit. it avoids the overinflated aspect. reality check to put it simply.
another thing is to relate to others in very simple context: a charity, doing simple stuff for others, it helps reconnecting with people without an egotistic ladder in mind
ps: I don't know i'm NPD or a competitor, but I often need perfectionist context and comparisons. I have trouble not being able to rank myself on a ladder.
I think it's definitely a spectrum. You read the article and thing "yes I also get sad and somewhat defensive when I am laid off, broken up with or not hired." But just feeling those narcissist feelings for a moment is much different than it be out of control, or causing you to binge drink or yell at your partner etc etc.
What if you practice being wrong? Present your firmest-held opinions to those most prepared to challenge them.
I suspect non-narcissists don’t lose their minds over it because they practice it all the time, present more accurate and reasonable personas and don’t base their personality on a fiction.
Comparing oneself to others is usually the #1 indicator.
Once someone builds their identity around a job, title, group, app... they either continue to build and nurture that identity by focusing exclusively on their strengths... or play "not to lose" and get defensive at anything that threatens their image.
One thing many people don’t get is that narcissism isn’t confidence. It’s the extreme absence of confidence. The narcissist has a giant hole and is addicted to second hand validation to fill it. Like many addicts they become hostile and aggressive when the supply of the thing they're addicted to is interrupted.
Someone who is actually confident doesn't need a constant stream of validation from other people to feel good about themselves.
Absolutely. The abuse comes from desperation, to keep the charade alive. It's the polar opposite of a confident, content person. They are always on the lookout for the next dose of validation, and for enemies who try to take them down.
If you have or had to deal with people with NPD, this doctor is a very, very good source of lots of information / videos on the topic and how to deal with it and finally: move on.
I don't think there is any topic left, that wasn't discussed there and in a very human tone.
The space around NPD on Youtube is very saturated, but this one channel really stands out.
I never expected to see this topic on HN and now really had to share this to all interested parties.
Narcissism in the workplace among leaders is fairly common.
I recently was let go by a narcissistic boss.
Early on I was fairly heavily 'love bombed' and told how great I was. I was told how the team was being built up around me, how my leadership and inspiration was driving the team forward. This boss did a few things, staying up late nights, to help me out on a few things. I thought "Wow this person really has my back!". So I let my guard down.
Over time, like the frog in boiling water, I gradually experienced a lot of gaslighting about my performance. One day I would be told X behavior is good and expected. The next day I was told that same behavior was problematic.
This boss increasingly became very top-down and domineering, and had a fairly fragile sense of their self worth. I helped to setup the team this boss took over as a Director. I was well liked and respected as a leader on the team (I was a Staff+ IC). I think this boss felt challenged by the esteem I had with my peers. They would work to undercut my own leadership, exclude me from decision making, and increasingly chide me for having idea. Providing technical leadership, and other activities that were core to my role, were seen as negatives. All of these were activities I used to receive praise for.
I started to feel like a scapegoat for anything going on in the team, being told I was "disruptive" and a "distraction" for doing my job. My expectations became whittled down to things like editing X document, or having Y conversation. Very micro-managed low level things.
Sadly, it took a long time for me to see this pattern. I thought I was the problem, and so I internalized a lot of the behaviors. It created a tremendous amount of stress and sleepless nights.
At my wits end, I tried to get some coaching and outside perspectives. I realized after a long career I hadn't had a negative relationship with a boss. I started to be more assertive after I decided after a year plus I wasn't the problem. As I started to speak up for myself more and more, the boss let me go, to the surprise of many of my fellow teammates.
I feel like I went through a classic idealization -> devaluation -> discard cycle of narcissism[1].
Long story short, please educate yourself about narcissism. Most empathic, 'normal' people assume they're the problem, they will internalize it, and so this kind of subtle abuse can creep up on you.
One of my conjectures about the future world is that emotional abuse is likely to become as taboo as physical - and at some point companies will need to check their management for such behaviours - and not just the outrageous stuff. We will start to monitor all our interactions and ... well with enough data points (second by second capture of interactions over billions of humans) then coaching / therapy becomes a medical / epidemiology problem
It's going to be a weird world, but maybe we will be better adjusted ?
Or does that sound like the ending of Serenity the movie?
The same vicious "incentives" will be in play, but they'll be communicated in strange and plausibly-deniable ways. A man will no longer say that you have to do X or else you'll be fired; instead a woman will encourage you to be "mindful" of the company values, in particular this one over here, which is a double-entendre, one meaning of which is "be a nice person", and the other meaning of which is "make me a profit, bitch". And then, with your head in a vice of massive neoliberal pressure, if you ever fail to "perform", you'll be left on the street, with a complimentary yoga app to help you manage the stress.
If you continue to complain after that, it will be because you have an ego disorder -- those damned narcissists, always throwing tantrums -- and you'll be paired with a confessor and medicated to within an inch of your sanity. This will be called "care".
I have similar thoughts, but I actually think if our society continues in the way that it is going that narcissism will become more common, and the types of things that are labeled emotional abuse will go to encompass actions that make narcissists feel uncomfortable.
There's a general tendency among the broader population to label anyone and everyone that has slighted them as a narcissist. /r/raisedbynarcissists has 800k+ subscribers and thousands of posts by people who believe that because their parent doesn't see things the same way that they do, that their parent is definitely a narcissist and self-centered and feels no empathy and so-on and so-forth. It's especially dumb because, well, we only get one side of the story -- from the aggrieved -- so they are free to paint the motivations of other side as inaccurately as they would like. When the behavior or motivations of the other side crosses the point of believability, you don't have to justify or explain it because we're talking about a fundamentally-broken narcissist that by definition behaves in unbelievable sociopathic ways. In fact, the more unbelievable you make their behavior, the better case you make that you're dealing with a true narcissist.
It's a mechanism to rant online about your life without the risk of someone calling you on your bullshit. I'm not saying that all of the stories on there are bullshit, I'm just saying that it's (ironically) primarily a label that comes out to describe someone when you are looking to find a narrative that protects your own ego -- because you've experienced trauma and you are looking for a mechanism to not put an ounce of blame on yourself.
Are there narcissists in society? Sure. Is a large percentage of the population narcissistic? No.
When someone "collapses" in the way that the article indicates and/or slights you, does that probably make them a narcissist? Absolutely not.
Calling someone a narcissist lets you freely claim that the other side is incapable of sincere emotion and lets you get away with believing whatever the hell you want. It's popular because sometimes you need to do that to move on. But it's not a healthy way to look at the world.
A very important topic, one I'm glad to see here. I think personality disorders should be taught at school, since people are very likely to encounter people with them in their lives, and not understanding them can lead to big problems.
I'm a child of two NPD sufferers. My mother had severe vulnerable narcissism, and my father had aggressive grandiose narcissism. They both had NPD proper, as it was clear that their narcissism was driven and accompanied by deep rooted psychological distress of some kind. My mother was such an emotional wreck that she could barely function, and my father dealt with his own demons by filling every waking hour with work to distract himself.
They both came from vicious childhoods.
The problem is that you presume, like everyone does, that your parents, or perhaps partners and coworkers, are just normal people. They look normal, they behave for the most part like normal people. But under the surface, they're really not.
And if you had them as parents, you don't come away unscathed, not by a long shot. I only realised this stuff in my thirties, after decades wondering why I wasn't like everyone else, and why my life was going such a bad way, full of suffering and desperation. So much pain could have been avoided if I'd known and understood. Now I know about NPD and the effect it has on children of its sufferers, so much about me makes sense now, and I've been able to start healing myself.
It is not right that this stuff is just being left under the radar, in the backdrop of our society. It needs to be brought out into the open, and challenged, and addressed.
It's a hard one though. The problem is that NPD overlaps so heavily with evil, it's hard for people to empathise with them at all, which results in hatred and vigilance towards them, them which they respond to by doubling down.
We need to do much more to get the word out about it and where it comes from. We need to get these people to think back to their younger selves and introspect about what happened to them, and find ways to repair it. A narcissist can only care about themselves -- but that includes their young self (the "younger self technique"). It might be the only way.
I can’t help but get the feeling that people seem to love throwing this word (narcissism) around so much because it helps them believe that they aren’t somewhere on the narcissism spectrum. I think most people are.
> Other times, they may threaten to estrange or cut off their children. In some cases, they will do that (although they will often spin it as if the child ended the relationship).
I was one of those cases. After years of repeatedly being told I was going to be sent to live at my mother’s house (not an appealing prospect at the time, I assure you), my father finally threw me out. Then he immediately started phoning anybody who would listen, crying to them that I “left him” just like my mother did.
I’m extremely skeptical of any non-academic discussion of narcissistic personality disorder, because in practice it gets used as a catch-all folk diagnosis for behavior we don’t like. (You can already see some sibling comments diagnosing famous CEOs with it!) The author acknowledges that “narcissistic collapse” is a term they made up with little evidence-based support, so how confident should we be that it’s a real thing at all?
Everyone will rage when fired/disrespected/betrayed/dumped, it's normal. There are too many people with expensive psychology degrees, so they must invent deceases to keep bread on the table (and to pay the student debt).
Thanks. This article confirms what I have long suspected of my mother-in-law. I knew she was a narcissist, but I didn’t associate the full-blown tantrums directed mostly at my partner as part of the disorder.
[+] [-] whynpd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw6286185|3 years ago|reply
Some examples. The minute someone "crosses" me (or I feel they have, even if they haven't) I completely remove myself from the relationship. That doesn't work too well for jobs, romance, or friendship. I can become extremely aggressive when someone who I feel should be paying attention to me, doesn't (typically, a bored bank teller). I have strong road rage. I never make myself vulnerable, never say what I really think or how I really feel.
In general I consider that I deserve everything, and should be on top of the world. Since I'm a nobody, the space between what is and what should be is incredibly hard to bear. I hate everyone but the person I hate the most is me.
It's easy to identify what needs to change, but very difficult to act upon a specific behavior in the heat of the action.
[+] [-] chimeracoder|3 years ago|reply
A big problem is that most therapists have no experience with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as it's quite rare, but at the same time, conventional talk therapy actually exacerbates the disorder. So unless a person seeks out treatment for NPD specifically, they're unlikely to get better and in fact will likely get more stuck.
And it's a catch-22, because nobody will seek out an expert for a diagnosis they haven't received.
[+] [-] thenerdhead|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enkid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tetrisfan|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jarym|3 years ago|reply
Was a dreadful experience that I would never wish on anyone else and I am pretty certain I'll never trust anyone to co-found another startup with in the future.
Edit to add: advice for anyone in business with someone they suspect of NPD: tidy everything up, get legal advice, get away as quietly as possible, don't look back.
[+] [-] texasbigdata|3 years ago|reply
Source for the curious, many more online and on YouTube (including often helpful role play videos, strongly recommend for practical purposes): https://www.talkspace.com/blog/grey-rock-method/
[+] [-] jennasys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eduction|3 years ago|reply
The most important sentence in the whole post.
It is nice to have a common and simple language with which to talk about our emotions and mental health, and tempting (and probably sometimes useful) to try and diagnose others. Particularly given that many people are uncomfortable just talking about these topics without medical (or pseudo medical) labels. But this article seems to provide a shallow framework with which laymen can purportedly diagnose others, without citing any real scientific, medical, or really evidentiary basis of any kind. Fun to read but I am wary of it.
[+] [-] porknubbins|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjtheblunt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __jambo|3 years ago|reply
This article is damaging because it provides people justification to use an overly-simplistic generalised theory to instead of doing the real work of understanding the other person.
Doing this amounts to gaslighting and degrades the ability of the two parties to have a meaningful discussion based on real events rather than bogus disconnected internet dogma.
[+] [-] bmarquez|3 years ago|reply
I no longer associate with people who have drinking as a core hobby, it just exacerbates whatever emotional issues they may already have.
[+] [-] pram|3 years ago|reply
He’s extraordinarily aggressive and abusive when he’s drunk, and lashes out at everyone. The thing is, now he claims he can’t even remember that happening when he’s sober. I don’t know if this is the truth or he’s lying lol
Either way it’s tragic and sad. Probably the most self destructive cycle I’ve ever personally witnessed.
[+] [-] texasbigdata|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mabbo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] surprisetalk|3 years ago|reply
NPD is probably rare, but narcissism-lite is endemic to humanity. What are the indicators that tell me I should start inducing a collapse in myself? How do I make it obvious that my ego has diverged from the world around me?
[+] [-] papandada|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rogerkirkness|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noasaservice|3 years ago|reply
And if reading https://old.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/ is any signifier, yeah it's likely rampant. It gets bad there quickly and stays bad.
Even my own mother is one such narcissist. She's tried to bait us siblings against each other. Fortunately, we'll just get on a call or zoom and actually talk. As of now, all siblings have blocked her. Thankfully, we (siblings) all met up for thangsiving, which was awesome. Mommy dearest can go tell herself how great she was, by herself.
[+] [-] PaulHoule|3 years ago|reply
That is, it's a problem in my mind that "Narcissists" are othered as a category whereas narcissism (self-love) is a natural and essential part of the psyche the same way your heart is a part of your body. Everybody has it. You have to engage with (cathect) your own self image to remember to do self-care such as brushing your teeth, planning for retirement, etc. Many things can go wrong with your narcissism the same way that many things can go wrong with your heart (heart attack, heart disease, heart failure, arrhythmia, etc.)
There is a case that people have more trouble with narcissism today than in the recent past because of the need for self-invention that people have today: it used to be that you didn't move, you didn't have to think about who you would marry or what kind of work you would do or how you fit in with other people, it was all decided for you. Chris Lasch, on the other hand in the book
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_of_Narcissism
saw the culture in the US being corrupted by narcissism in the later half of the 19th century to today. Japanese people think that analysis applies to Japanese people in the Tokugawa period and if you believe that you might also find traces of it in Imperial Rome. (Lasch would see religion with an ecclesiastical structure separate from the state as a countervailing force.)
Myself I had two periods in my life of about six months in my life where I experienced NPD-like symptoms and behaviors. Once I found an article in Psychology Today with a title like "Are you the target of a Narcissist?" and I think I had exhibited 10 out of 12 of the behaviors on their- list. In both of those cases I was under stress, in a kind of transitional situation, and exposed to bad influences.
[+] [-] joemazerino|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webnrrd2k|3 years ago|reply
It might even be damaging for you. Maybe you're depressed, or have self-esteem issues, alcoholism, addiction, co-dependency, developmental issues, or any of a number of other things going on.
Re: Narcissism-lite -- it's been pretty well established that a small amount of narcissism can be a good thing, while too much is a bad thing. How to know the difference? Results. Does your life work for you? Do you have some friends that you can talk with about this? Or maybe a therapist?
[+] [-] theonemind|3 years ago|reply
Maybe try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonglen
Interestingly, though, the way you talked about inducing collapse reminds me of a Vajrayana Buddhism guru type thing where the guru sometimes punches you in the self-centered weak spot in the context of practices that help you realize self-clinging as the ultimate source of the pain.
[+] [-] agumonkey|3 years ago|reply
another thing is to relate to others in very simple context: a charity, doing simple stuff for others, it helps reconnecting with people without an egotistic ladder in mind
ps: I don't know i'm NPD or a competitor, but I often need perfectionist context and comparisons. I have trouble not being able to rank myself on a ladder.
[+] [-] nathanvanfleet|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] more_corn|3 years ago|reply
What if you practice being wrong? Present your firmest-held opinions to those most prepared to challenge them.
I suspect non-narcissists don’t lose their minds over it because they practice it all the time, present more accurate and reasonable personas and don’t base their personality on a fiction.
[+] [-] digitalsushi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matchagaucho|3 years ago|reply
Once someone builds their identity around a job, title, group, app... they either continue to build and nurture that identity by focusing exclusively on their strengths... or play "not to lose" and get defensive at anything that threatens their image.
[+] [-] starkd|3 years ago|reply
But I think that might be over-medicalizing things.
[+] [-] theGnuMe|3 years ago|reply
So basically meta questioning yourself and your personality probably means you do not have NPD.
[+] [-] dsego|3 years ago|reply
Also specifically for narcissism, there is a yt channel and website by Sam Vaknin, I think he possibly coined the term "narcissistic supply".
[+] [-] api|3 years ago|reply
Someone who is actually confident doesn't need a constant stream of validation from other people to feel good about themselves.
[+] [-] npteljes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reneberlin|3 years ago|reply
If you have or had to deal with people with NPD, this doctor is a very, very good source of lots of information / videos on the topic and how to deal with it and finally: move on.
I don't think there is any topic left, that wasn't discussed there and in a very human tone.
The space around NPD on Youtube is very saturated, but this one channel really stands out.
I never expected to see this topic on HN and now really had to share this to all interested parties.
[+] [-] throwarayes|3 years ago|reply
I recently was let go by a narcissistic boss.
Early on I was fairly heavily 'love bombed' and told how great I was. I was told how the team was being built up around me, how my leadership and inspiration was driving the team forward. This boss did a few things, staying up late nights, to help me out on a few things. I thought "Wow this person really has my back!". So I let my guard down.
Over time, like the frog in boiling water, I gradually experienced a lot of gaslighting about my performance. One day I would be told X behavior is good and expected. The next day I was told that same behavior was problematic.
This boss increasingly became very top-down and domineering, and had a fairly fragile sense of their self worth. I helped to setup the team this boss took over as a Director. I was well liked and respected as a leader on the team (I was a Staff+ IC). I think this boss felt challenged by the esteem I had with my peers. They would work to undercut my own leadership, exclude me from decision making, and increasingly chide me for having idea. Providing technical leadership, and other activities that were core to my role, were seen as negatives. All of these were activities I used to receive praise for.
I started to feel like a scapegoat for anything going on in the team, being told I was "disruptive" and a "distraction" for doing my job. My expectations became whittled down to things like editing X document, or having Y conversation. Very micro-managed low level things.
Sadly, it took a long time for me to see this pattern. I thought I was the problem, and so I internalized a lot of the behaviors. It created a tremendous amount of stress and sleepless nights.
At my wits end, I tried to get some coaching and outside perspectives. I realized after a long career I hadn't had a negative relationship with a boss. I started to be more assertive after I decided after a year plus I wasn't the problem. As I started to speak up for myself more and more, the boss let me go, to the surprise of many of my fellow teammates.
I feel like I went through a classic idealization -> devaluation -> discard cycle of narcissism[1].
Long story short, please educate yourself about narcissism. Most empathic, 'normal' people assume they're the problem, they will internalize it, and so this kind of subtle abuse can creep up on you.
1 - https://pathwaysfamilycoaching.com/4-phases-of-a-narcissisti...
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|3 years ago|reply
It's going to be a weird world, but maybe we will be better adjusted ?
Or does that sound like the ending of Serenity the movie?
[+] [-] jandrese|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FooBarBizBazz|3 years ago|reply
If you continue to complain after that, it will be because you have an ego disorder -- those damned narcissists, always throwing tantrums -- and you'll be paired with a confessor and medicated to within an inch of your sanity. This will be called "care".
[+] [-] zwkrt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickysielicki|3 years ago|reply
It's a mechanism to rant online about your life without the risk of someone calling you on your bullshit. I'm not saying that all of the stories on there are bullshit, I'm just saying that it's (ironically) primarily a label that comes out to describe someone when you are looking to find a narrative that protects your own ego -- because you've experienced trauma and you are looking for a mechanism to not put an ounce of blame on yourself.
Are there narcissists in society? Sure. Is a large percentage of the population narcissistic? No.
When someone "collapses" in the way that the article indicates and/or slights you, does that probably make them a narcissist? Absolutely not.
Calling someone a narcissist lets you freely claim that the other side is incapable of sincere emotion and lets you get away with believing whatever the hell you want. It's popular because sometimes you need to do that to move on. But it's not a healthy way to look at the world.
/rant
[+] [-] fnordpiglet|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway245890|3 years ago|reply
I'm a child of two NPD sufferers. My mother had severe vulnerable narcissism, and my father had aggressive grandiose narcissism. They both had NPD proper, as it was clear that their narcissism was driven and accompanied by deep rooted psychological distress of some kind. My mother was such an emotional wreck that she could barely function, and my father dealt with his own demons by filling every waking hour with work to distract himself.
They both came from vicious childhoods.
The problem is that you presume, like everyone does, that your parents, or perhaps partners and coworkers, are just normal people. They look normal, they behave for the most part like normal people. But under the surface, they're really not.
And if you had them as parents, you don't come away unscathed, not by a long shot. I only realised this stuff in my thirties, after decades wondering why I wasn't like everyone else, and why my life was going such a bad way, full of suffering and desperation. So much pain could have been avoided if I'd known and understood. Now I know about NPD and the effect it has on children of its sufferers, so much about me makes sense now, and I've been able to start healing myself.
It is not right that this stuff is just being left under the radar, in the backdrop of our society. It needs to be brought out into the open, and challenged, and addressed.
It's a hard one though. The problem is that NPD overlaps so heavily with evil, it's hard for people to empathise with them at all, which results in hatred and vigilance towards them, them which they respond to by doubling down.
We need to do much more to get the word out about it and where it comes from. We need to get these people to think back to their younger selves and introspect about what happened to them, and find ways to repair it. A narcissist can only care about themselves -- but that includes their young self (the "younger self technique"). It might be the only way.
[+] [-] IAmGraydon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dblohm7|3 years ago|reply
I was one of those cases. After years of repeatedly being told I was going to be sent to live at my mother’s house (not an appealing prospect at the time, I assure you), my father finally threw me out. Then he immediately started phoning anybody who would listen, crying to them that I “left him” just like my mother did.
[+] [-] SpicyLemonZest|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dudul|3 years ago|reply
Maybe the collapse is defined a bit too generically. It looks like it could just be someone going through a rough patch.
[+] [-] EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zahma|3 years ago|reply