What is the difference between someone who is a narcissist and someone who has narcissist tendencies? How do you tell the difference? In addition, do narcissists mellow as they get older, in other words, are they easier to get along with during the later years?
with most DSM “disorders” its a matter of degree. Once a “trait” has a significant negative impact on your career or personal life. Under the DSM-V, a person would have to have 5 out of nine assocated criteria. I suppose if you have four out of 9, you have “tendencies.”
Any parents out there would be happy to hear “Narcissistic traits may be particularly common in adolescents and do not necessarily indicate that the individual will go on to have narcissistic personalty disorder.”
Someone in my family was almost 100 when she died. Her narcissism seemed to get worse. It was to the point that I was embarrassed for her. She thought that everything was about her all of her life. She saw anything that she didn’t like as a personal affront.
Silly example: I was visiting her in her home when I was in my fifties and was preparing a bowl of cheerios for breakfast. It was a normal sized bowl and a regular amount of cereal. (I had been previously overweight, but was not at that time.) Mother came into the kitchen, saw what I was doing, and screamed at me that I was just doing that to spite her. Those were her words. My husband was present.
Someone who thinks like that can make your life difficult about larger things unless you set boundaries.
Some teenagers are more narcissistic than others, but many of us do go through that stage. If you become really concerned, taking her to a professional for evaluation is a good idea if handled carefully. You don’t want her to think that you think she is “crazy.”
Everyone in my family sought professional help except for my mom. I don’t think it would have done much good anyway. I was given specific instructions sometime in my fifties not to mention her to my psychiatrist. She knew something was different about her! I ignored her request, of course. I needed help in knowing how to deal with an aging narcissicist.
(I am not a therapist.)
I heard they that removed narcissism from the next DSM just to piss of the Narcissists
In my experience the answer is a resounding NO! They get far, far worse.
My maternal grandmother was a narcissist. She was 87 when she died and that personality disorder intensified as she aged.
I’ve been married 33 years. My father-in-law is a full blown narcissist and he exhibits every symptom to the Nth degree. He is now in his 80’s and every year that passes he get’s worse and worse. After spending any time with him I don’t know what disgusts me more, his behaving like a spoiled 6 year old, or my overwhelming lust to choke the life out of him.
There’s very much a difference. I have a friend who by his own admission has some narcissistic traits that he attributes to his mother. However, the fact that he is aware of these traits and does not like having them suggests that he is by no means a narcissist. In psychology, this is called a “negative introjection.”
If I live that long, I hope to be like that exactly. What else, after all, is the attraction of being a live nonagenarian?
people use a conventional definition of Narcissism. the DSM-IV(note: Narcisstic personality disorder is not in DSM-5) definition includes several discerning traits: pathological liar, non-emphathetic
Here is a site I’ve found very helpful in understanding what Narcissistic Personality Disorder is (vs. healthy narcissism) and what it looks like in real life.
Some places I have read say that NPD mellows with age, but that is not true of the elderly narcissists I know.