When we were discussing the murder/suicide of a friend’s four year old son at the hands of his father, a woman piped up with “Well, nobody had it worse than me. I had to bury both my parents.”:eek:
About the one-upping and the insistence no one understands their problems…How many so-called narcissists really are just constantly misunderstood - whether by their own design or not? Is depression sometimes just narcissism?
Being a selfish, arrogant asshole is a “disorder” now?
Sorry, I just realized I contradicted myself by stating that people with PDs aren’t likely to change and then saying there is evidence that they do. I believe change is possible, but given the evidence we have it seems like it is environmental/contextual every bit as it is focused on the individual. So the optimal situation would be
- person with PD working on self
- loved ones working on how they relate to person with PD
Nava speaks the truth that many people with PDs do not acknowledge they have it. Most people who are diagnosed with a PD seek help for other symptoms like depression and anxiety. What that means is, at least for the untreated population, #1 is probably not happening right now and may not ever happen. The only real option then is #2. Maybe by changing the interaction the loved one can help the afflicted toward recovery, or maybe that person will persist in refusing treatment or help, but either way, the loved one has established some autonomy in the relationship and managed to break the cycle. Not saying it’s easy, or that there aren’t sometimes slip-ups, or that sometimes the best solution isn’t just leaving the relationship altogether, but in the same way that an addiction intervention makes a loved one’s concern and boundaries clear, the people involved all know where they stand.
Here is an exquisite example of a loved one establishing firm boundaries with someone afflicted with a PD. While Mom’s desire to kill herself may be real, it’s not appropriate for her to use it as a threat or source of harassment. She has been informed that the consequences for this action is going to change from now on, and the exact way in which they will change has been made clear–the threat will be taken seriously. Assuming this boundary is upheld, chances are the OP won’t be getting any more phone calls at work. And if he does, well, guess Mom probably does need suicide intervention and gets the help she really needs.
And good job, monstro, for taking charge of your life.
I worked with a person who was narcissistic. Totally sensitive to any sort of criticisim but dished it out frequently even if he had to hear because of our work, just showing him the proper procedure on something would have him fly off the handle. Lacked compassion towards other people. One of our other co-workers was off for a week when his grand mother died and criticized him for taking that long to get over a death. Made fun of another person for taking a day off work after her cat died.
Generally hated everyone in the office. I was his only friend for a short while until he turned the knives on me eventually for no reason than other to try and hurt me emotionally via vicious unfounded delusional criticism of my character and work ethics all because I had asked him the day before that I didn’t want to gossip about people we work with at work and asked him to stop.
100% asshole all the way around.
That’s somewhat correct. From the differential diagnosis section in the DSM IV-TR: “Individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder and Narcissitic Personality Disorder share a tendancy to be tough minded, glib, superficial, exploitative, and unempathetic. However, Narcissitic Personality Disorder does not include characteristics of impulsivity, aggression, and deceit. In addition, individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder may not be as needy of the admiration and envy of others, and persons with Narcissitic Personality Disorder usually lack the history of Conduct Disorder in childhood or criminal ehavior in adulthood.”
That’s not to say that the two are mutually exclusive - an individual can be highly antisocial, even psychopathic, and be comorbid for Narcissistic Personality Disorder as well. That’s always a fun person to spend time with, he said sarcastically.
Yeah. It;s not fair, is it? There are a lot of arrogant assholes who aren’t at all selfish. In fact I would argue they’re the bedrock of modern civilization.
Only when it’s really, really bad. Garden variety narcissism won’t reach the standard of NPD - the guy at the water cooler who’s a little too full of himself won’t qualify. It’s only when somebody’s narcisstic traits are rigid and maladaptive to the point that they cause functional impaitment or distress that they reach the point of a personality disorder.
Likely being the qualifying word.
I was somewhat BPD in my 20’s and early 30’s. It was never me, it was all the people around me. Hell, some of those people will probably say it’s still true because I still remember the nasty shit done to me by THEM. (Hey, even if someone sucks, it doesn’t justify being an ASS to them! That’s all about YOU, not them.) But as I got older and sick of being that way, I was able to gradually change myself and focus more on what it is about ME that needs work. You can only batter your head against the stone wall of The World so many times before one of the two breaks, and it isn’t likely to be the World. Then you can start to put your head back together - if you’re willing to deal with a buttload of personal honesty. If you’re not, then you retreat and continue to nurse the grudge, or you get more delusional and more ill, or you kill yourself and blame those around you.
When I worked armored and my 20 year old cat died, I had a lot of assholes at my place of work giving me dirty looks and making ASSHOLE comments about just shooting the thing (“you have a gun!”) or saying “big deal, it’s just a cat”. Doesn’t take a personality disorder to do that, it just takes insensitivity.
I’ve known two people who were diagnosed with NPD.
One was a woman I worked with who was diagnosed as bipolar & NPD. We worked in a small sales office and it we were all submerged in constant drama surrounding this one person. There were daily tears and yelling, either from her - when she thought someone had done her wrong, or from other people on the sales team - who had been royally screwed by her. She’d go behind people’s backs to their clients and lie, steal clients from other people by any means necessary, call our boss’ boss and lie about him. It was a nightmare. Thankfully, we were all laid off and I never had to see her again. (She died shortly after that, from an unrelated illness.)
The other was a boy I grew up with (our moms are lifelong best friends), who has been diagnosed as a sociopath with NPD. He’s actually going to be receiving his sentence today for armed robbery of a bank. When we were kids, I had a pet turtle. He called me over to the back of his house one morning to show me that he’d taken my turtle and smashed its shell in with a hammer. He’s in his early 40s now and has been in and out of rehab many times, and protected from some of his worst actions because his family is very wealthy and they “fix” things for him. For instance, when he embezzled $100k from the family business and his parents found out, he complained it was because they weren’t paying him enough. Their response was to give him a raise. Since this latest escapade (bank robbery), he’s shown zero regret or remorse. He thinks he’ll get off with time served because he wasn’t really serious when he pointed the gun at the teller and told her he’d kill her. I think it might be better for everyone if he gets put away for 10 years, except I worry about what he’ll be like when he gets out.
I could tell a million stories about both of these people. Both of them have/had a lot more going on than NPD, though.
Over the top flattery bordering on sarcasm does not exist. They hear the words and believe it.
Mine did see a psychiatrist for awhile. Until said psych told her she had an issue other than just depression. She then stopped going to him and referred to him as a quack.
And, regarding my sister-in-law, yeah, I wasn’t very clear on that. I don’t think my mom directly or perhaps even indirectly caused the s-i-l eating disorder. It’s just I remember the incident out of so many similar incidents because of what later happened.
Most of us are a-holes, either sometimes or perhaps even often. People with NPD however are professional a-holes, while the rest of us are just amateurs. It is a new level with them.
So, yes; hate the disease and its symptoms; not the person. Just too bad where the one is, so is the other.
And the real OP asked for examples of how it affected our lives. Not sure how else to explain that without sounding like a whiner and recalling a few of the more ‘amusing’ incidents. I take a deep breath. Talk as calmly as I can. Guard what I do say, as anything can be used against you later in dealing with them. I try not to talk about her to co-workers etc., so I do not appear to be an ungrateful monster myself. She is a human being. A sick human being, but a human being nonetheless, and as such she is entitled to a certain level of care and compassion. If that means that I must deal with her, then that’s the way it is.
My mentioning talking calmly above does remind me of something I do laugh out loud to, in front of her. I will be talking to her… she says “Speak up, I can’t hear you.”. So I talk louder. She follows that nearly immediately with “Why are you always yelling at me?” That’s comedy gold there. 
Exactly. Very very hard to do, though.
It takes an exceptionally committed, hardworking, well-educated-about-mental-diseases person to do this, especially if they grew up with that person as a parent/caretaker.
I drink a lot. 
j/k really. j/k
She must have meant with a shovel, while they were still alive. (Did I read this on another thread and subconsciously plagiarize somebody else’s response, or did I just think this response and save it for now?)
How could you read the preceding posts and ask this question? Do any of these people sound within the limits of normal, selfish, arrogant, asshole behavior?
Don’t call them assholes! They can’t help it! They’re suffering from a disease!
Lorac, my mom probably has NPD or something very close to it. It’s not like she’s ever been diagnosed. I am the Bad Daughter, while she can do no wrong. Anyway, when I was first coming to terms with the fact that things were very much not OK, I ran into this sitewhich is not written by professionals but nonetheless helped me very much. It gave me a lot of much-needed perspective.
You’re asking because you know someone like this, aren’t you? When I first signed onto the Dope, after lurking for years, one of the first things I did was start a thread much like this one, asking for people’s stories of family estrangement. This was - surprise! - around the time I finally got it through my head that I was not going to have a happy relationship with my mother, and that I was better off with her out of my life then in it.
Serial killers are assholes, too.
I think if you read about personality disorders a little more, you’ll find that nobody is using these labels to let people off the hook for their behaviour. Quite the reverse.
There’s a wonderful book called Her Last Death, by Susanna Sonnenberg, about being raised by a mother who was apparently a narcissist, or something close to it. I recommend the audio version, which is read by Sonnenberg.