These are the thoughts of a fellow support group member with some minor editing and formatting to help keep track of which is being addressed in the given paragraph. Used with permission, but they requested to remain anonymous.
It starts with this:
Need to get my thoughts in a row about what I've learned about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), so they're not just going in circles around my head with the potential to get lost and confused in it all. Doing that here.
This is just some of what I have come to learn so far. I am hoping it can be of help to others. It also helps me to get it down and I might as well do that on a platform others can benefit from and offer input to, rather than a personal journal, where there is no interaction. I am open to learning more and also aware that my self expression can be confused at times from my intent.
Thoughts begin here:
People with NPD get angry when they are called out for what they are. They do not have a sense of personal identity, only superiority. When this superiority is challenged, they become defensive. They will latch onto people with identities of status they approve of, to boost themselves.
Empaths [highly sensitive, empathetic people] get angry when they get labelled for what they are not.
They have a strong sense of self and try to express this. When they're called something they're not, they question themselves and how they can better express who they are.
But the person with NPD understands the initial response of anger as indication that's exactly what we are [also NPD], because that is what they experience. They think we are manipulative like them.
People with NPD do not experience complexity of emotion. Their minds are challenged developmentally. They continue to behave as a child throughout adulthood. Emotion for them is on a base level and is used as manipulation to get what they need.
A healthy mind grows out of this narcissistic stage and gains a level of independence, without relying on others to meet their needs, so they can grow.
In reality, people with narccasitic traits are far more complex and can be very interesting to unravel and study or even find humour in. But directly try to do this to someone with NPD, they will take it as an attack on all they've built to survive. But the surface level of all they express is very simple and even predictable. They expect others to be like that too, because they don't empathise. They get very angry when people with more developed minds don't act in the way the expect. Their need to need to control others and be seen as superior makes them masters of manipulation. They will draw others down, so they have control again and feel safe. Their ego is their fragile defense mechanism.
The empath's brain has developed to a greater potential. The mind has expanded to think and feel to infinite extents. We can imagine new ideas and choose to make an imprint of positivity on the world and learn to dismiss the judgement that inhibits us. We are capable of empathy. By feeling others' pain, we can alleviate suffering. We nurture and protect, knowing that it is better to do things for the good of the tribe and our environment, than become a soul-predator, destructive to everything in our path.
We can see someone vulnerable, learn what they need, and help them, rather than take advantage or impose ourselves in ways that only cause further distress. We can learn and make personal sacrifice to alleviate suffering of others. We can do things for ourselves, without harming others. We know that everyone is different and can celebrate that, rather than putting them into boxes and dragging them down to raise ourselves up (preventing progress as a society, rather than being the change).
A sensitive child in the care of a parent with NPD is dangerous. Automatically, from birth, the narcissistic parent (NP) sees their child as inferior. We are meant to improve their status, not diminish it. They get angry at anything we do that reflects badly on them. The goal for them is to harden our hearts and limit our minds. They'll try and turn us into something that is useful to them, rather than supporting us to flourish as individuals. They take advantage of a child's natural born instinct to unconditionally love whoever is presented before them and then bleed this dry.
Someone with NPD is not socially inept. Far from it. They take the world at surface value and mold themselves to fit among it. They know the difference between right and wrong. These rules simply do not apply to them and their superiority complex. So when they abuse us, they see themselves as justified. It is all to their own means [purposes/gain]. They enjoy breaking us and then showing a false persona to the rest of the world.
Healthy people who have not experienced this kind of abuse will believe the false persona, over the truth of our experience. They too often will not believe that anyone could act that way. Especially a parent, who in society is known to be a self-sacrificing, caring individual. NP will use this to their advantage and feed it into their manipulation, isolating their victim, while inflating their need for power and status.
People with NPD don't care about others over themselves, or feel others' pain. Why anyone would choose to feel another person's pain is backward to them, as it serves them no purpose. Nor do they understand why anyone would openly show vulnerability. They see it as a weakness, rather than a strength. Therefore, to them, the empath is inferior. They refuse to be associated with with anyone inferior and a threat to their status. They will try and stamp out the qualities they don't like about their sensitive children, using their own fear and shame to do this.
They tell us not be sensitive. They can try to make us an equal to them. They can respect an equal and self serving actions. They also thrive on competition. If we try to assert ourselves as individuals, they are jealous of our authenticity. They may like what we have and try to destroy it or claim it for themselves. They will create conflict of which the goal for them is winning, being right, and creating drama, so attention is diverted to them. Feeding off us in any way they can.
They don't accept defeat. That would require letting go of their superiority complex and putting them in the last position they want to be in and goes against everything they believe essential to survival. The concept of letting go of the idea of winning and instead meeting a mutual understanding is alien to them and serves them no purpose, so they don't care. They don't understand supporting another being, without getting anything in return.
We can try and change someone with NPD. But it is to no avail, when the person with NPD does not see why they should change. The person with NPD may even try to change, out of desperate need to reclaim Nsupply. If you tell them you want them to listen you etc and they fear abandonment otherwise, they will do this. But it quickly becomes draining on them. They are getting a taste of what they have done to their children their whole lives and don't like it. They very quickly revert to their old ways. To them, they have done enough to serve their need and now they can continue to use you to their means, which they never really gave up in the first place. As everything they do is, its all a ploy.
The closest that people with NPD can have to healthy relationships is with people they see as equal. This involves them stroking their egos, deeming them worthy enough to be stroked back. This is their idea of love. The equal will engage in conflict, but let the person with NPD win. The equal provides a level of status and makes them look good in front of others. The equal will defend and enable the person with NPD's behavior and provide a network of protection. It is always a dependent relationship. There is always something they can offer the equal, in return for having their superiority catered to and accepted. Engaging in such a relationship means sacrificing a lot on your own part, to receive little sacrifice in return.
The person with NPD rejects anyone that might expose them. Turns them into the enemy and gets others to back them up. They only make themselves stronger, when met with threat, so it is tremendously difficult to expose them for their flaws. They are quick to point them out in other people, but their sense of superiority prevents them from choosing to acknowledge flaws in themselves.
They don't accept they have a disorder unless they think they can somehow use that to their advantage.They know that narcissism is frowned upon and deemed socially unacceptable and demonized, so for many of them, outing themselves would be social suicide and must be avoided at all costs.
Because of the nature of the disorder, they very rarely get help and even if they do, they find a way to sabotage that, in favor of denying their flaws. Accepting flaws rings danger bells to them and they are quick to back away from that and then cover their tracks.
They try to enforce society's rules on us too, so we're compliant and can't use the system to our advantage, rather than exposing corruption and challenging it for the harm it causes. That would be the same as exposing traits [flaws] and challenging them in oneself. They see anarchy as a threat and something to be done privately for the benefit of themselves, never others.
They don't do anything for others, unless they can see how it will help themselves. They need to feel like they're going to be backed up with a safety net and supported and will never put all they've built for themselves at risk. Anyone who does so is crazy in their mind.
When their children act out, they thrive on the drama. Completely compliant children don't create enough of this for them, so they try to create it. Negative Nsupply can make them feel much better and more powerful than positive Nsupply. They think acting out is for attention and play into that, as long as they have control. They can offer Nsupply when they receive it in return. When they think we're escaping their control, they will even 'love-bomb', which is extensive ego-stroking, but not actual unconditional love, which they are incapable of, because that requires empathy and openness of vulnerability.
Their 'parenting' has two main possible outcomes, abused sensitive children with PTSD, or children who also develop NPD, both are destructive. Children learn from example and even empathetic people can carry *Nfleas. But the empath understands how these can hurt others and see this is wrong and learn to get rid of such traits. The children with NPD don't learn this and carry on the same harmful cycles. We're all a bit narcissistic and that's normal and okay, but when it's to a degree that causes harm to others, that is not okay.
We're all capable of learning to be positive people and that is part of what life's journey is about and we surely must make mistakes to develop as a person. Its not learning from those mistakes that is damaging. The superiority complex of narcissism makes it so negatively acting people see no point in changing their ways. It is possible for people with narcissistic traits to behave positively, but they have to get Nsupply from it in return and see an outcome that is useful to them, or else it is wasted energy. If the outcome is simply to help others and express kindness, that is very unappealing and just draining to them, They will find a way to sabotage it, so attention can be diverted to them. They have no concern how their self-serving need is draining and harmful to others, as long their need is met.
*
Narcasistic flea. (Frightening Leftovers of Emotional Abuse) We can develop narcissistic traits from being in proximity with people with NPD. It doesn't mean we also have NPD, especially because we can hold ourselves accountable for our actions and change. The fleas often drop off after we no longer have contact with our abusers, as they can no longer feed and we learn to behave positively.
