Exploring the Realities of Clinically Diagnosed Individuals with NPD: Beyond the Stigma.

On occasion, Jay Spring feels he is “the greatest person on planet Earth”. As a diagnosed narcissist, his periods of extreme self-importance often turn “detached from reality”, he explains. “You are on cloud nine and you think, ‘The world will recognize that I stand above others … I will achieve remarkable feats for the world’.”

For Spring, these phases of exaggerated self-worth are often coming after a “crash”, where he feels overwhelmed and self-conscious about his behavior, making him especially susceptible to disapproval from those around him. He began to think he might have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) after investigating his behaviors online – and eventually diagnosed by a professional. However, he doubts he would have agreed with the assessment without having independently formed that understanding personally. “If you try to tell somebody that they have NPD, {they’ll probably deny it|denial is a common response|they’re likely to reject it,” he notes – especially if they feel a sense of being better. “They’re in a delusional world that they’ve built up. And that world is like, I am superior and {nobody can question me|no one should doubt me|my authority is absolute.”

Defining The Condition

Although people have been called narcissists for over 100 years, the meaning can be ambiguous what people refer to as the diagnosis. It’s common to label everybody a narcissist,” explains a leading researcher, noting the word is “applied too broadly” – but when it comes to a professional assessment, he believes many people keep it private, due to so much stigma linked to the illness. A narcissist will tend to have “a heightened sense of self”, “difficulty understanding others’ feelings”, and “a tendency to exploit relationships to enhance their social status through actions such as seeking admiration,” the professor clarifies. Those with NPD may be “highly self-focused”, to the point that {“they’re not able to hold down stable relationships|“their jobs are damaged|“they have a distorted view of reality,” he emphasizes.

Emotional connections were never important about anyone really, so relationships weren’t a priority relationships seriously

Gender Differences in Narcissism

Though a significant majority of people identified as having the condition are males, findings suggests this statistic does not mean there are less female narcissism, but that female narcissism is typically appears in the covert form, which is under-identified. “Men’s narcissism tends to be more socially permissible, as with everything in society,” notes a 23-year-old who posts about her NPD and borderline personality disorder (BPD) on digital platforms. It is not uncommon, the two disorders co-occur.

Personal Struggles

“I really struggle with dealing with feedback and not being accepted,” she shares, whenever it’s suggested that the problem is me, I often enter a defensive state or I completely shut down.” Although experiencing this behavior – which is often called “self-esteem damage”, she has been working to manage it and listen to guidance from her close relationships, as she aims to avoid falling into the damaging patterns of her past. My past relationships were toxic to my partners during adolescence,” she states. With professional help, she has been able to manage her condition better, and she explains she and her partner “operate with an understanding where we’ve agreed, ‘If I say something messed up, if I say something manipulative, point it out {right then and there|immediately|in the moment’.”

She grew up mostly in the care of her father and notes she didn’t have healthy examples as a child. “I’ve been learning continuously the difference between acceptable versus unacceptable to say when arguing because it wasn’t modeled for me growing up,” she says. “Nothing was off-limits when my relatives were insulting me when I was growing up.”

Underlying Factors of Narcissistic Traits

Personality disorders tend to be associated with early life adversity. Heredity is a factor,” says a mental health specialist. But, when someone shows signs of narcissism, it is often “connected with that person’s unique upbringing”. Those traits were “a coping mechanism in some ways to manage during childhood”, he continues, when they may have been ignored, or only shown love that was conditional on meeting specific standards. They then “rely on those identical strategies as adults”.

Similar to other of the those diagnosed, one individual thinks his parents “could also have the disorder. The adult says when he was a child, “the focus was always on them and their work and their social life. So it was like, don’t bother us.” When their attention turned to him, it came in the form of “intense expectations to achieve high marks and professional advancement, he says, which made him feel that if he didn’t fulfill their expectations, he wasn’t “worthy.

As he grew older, none of his relationships ever worked out. Emotional investment was lacking about anyone really,” he says. As a result, relationships weren’t relationships seriously.” He felt incapable of experiencing genuine affection, until he met his present significant other of three years, who is diagnosed with BPD, so, in a comparable situation, has difficulty with mood stability. She is “very supportive of the internal struggles in my head”, he notes – it was in fact, her who initially thought he might have NPD.

Pursuing Treatment

Subsequent to a consultation to his GP, John was referred to a therapist for an diagnosis and was given the NPD label. He has been referred for talking therapy via government-funded care (a long period of therapy is the only treatment that has been demonstrated to benefit NPD patients, experts say), but has been on the waiting list for a year and a half: It was indicated it is likely to occur early next year.”

John has only told a small circle about his mental health status, because “there’s a big stigma that every person with NPD is harmful”, but, personally, he has embraced the diagnosis. “It helps me to understand myself better, which is always a good thing,” he explains. Those interviewed have come to terms with NPD and are seeking help for it – hence being willing to talk about it – which is probably not representative of all people with the diagnosis. But the growth of NPD content creators and the expansion of virtual networks suggest that {more narcissists|a growing number