Narcissistic culture is breeding an epidemic of narcissism, yes, but, even more specifically here I am referring to the increasing epidemic of people with diagnosed or undiagnosed Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The reality of the exploding narcissistic culture that we all live in, in most areas of the world.
Narcissistic Personality Disordered people are for many, a family member(s), a boyfriend or a girlfriend, a husband, a wife, a parent(s), an adult-child. A narcissist could be a friend, a landlord, co-worker, or neighbour. Narcissists are in every walk of life, every profession in life People encountered what I call proximity narcissists in many various ways. At some point or other, most everyone, has, knowingly or unknowingly, encountered, experienced, and been effected by the toxicity if not abuse and supply sucking of a proximity narcissist.
Regardless of the type of relationship (or encountered proximity narcissist) that you may have or have had with a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), the reality for all on the other side of a narcissist is crazy-making.
Narcissists are abusive emotionally, psychologically, verbally, financially, spiritually and often physically. Narcissists believe you are treating them the very way that they are treating you as they describe how they “perceive” being treated. This is called projection on the part of the narcissist. Narcissists are not aware of the massive projection they are responsible for and you become the mirror image for them as an extension of them. Narcissists do not see you. Narcissists have no empathy. Narcissists are pathological liars. Narcissists have no capacity for healthy adult love or any mutuality or reciprocity at all.
It is a myth that most with NPD are male. There are many women with NPD as well. There has been a diagnostic stereotyping for lack of a better way to explain it that sees many with the same symptoms, meeting the criteria for NPD being diagnosed with it if male and often with BPD if female. Narcissists definitely come in both genders. (Not even limited to male/female could be transgender as well).
A main mission of the counselling and coaching I do with Narcissistic Abuse Survivors, is to help educate you about NPD, explain the things that you may well have been experiencing but that you feel so unsure and/or confused about. I want to help you make sense out of a relationship that can’t make healthy sense whether the narcissist is your parent, partner, sibling, friend, or co-worker. I can help you to find yourself again, and find, among other things, your own resolution on your healing and recovery journey.
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If you have had or are in a relationship with someone with NPD, work with or live near a proximity narcissist, there is so much to know. So much to learn. You may know a lot already, or this may be one of your first time reading about NPD on the web hoping against hope that you will not find your loved one, his/her “relational style” described here.
Narcissists don’t relate, they target & transact in a one-way, take-only toxic abusive relational “style”.
Chances are if you are searching, you have identified something in a loved one, family member or person at work or a neighbour, that more likely than not means you have been very negatively impacted by or abused by a narcissist. That can provide heartache, a tendency to deny your experience or that what you will read here fits. It can also mean that you may well be struggling thinking that you are the one with NPD because the person that has you so confused (to say the least) gaslighting, triangulating, smear campaigns, to name but a few tactics of their abuse, may well have accused you of having NPD, the very thing that he/she has.
It can be and often is that crazy-making. Narcissists, who have the common delusion of “knowing” they are always “right”, have a way of leaving you feeling, thinking, and believing that they are “always right”, that they “know it all”, that “they know you”, while you are “always wrong”, “never good enough”, “seem to know nothing”, and you just don’t understand in his/her view. The narcissist will have told you, if not directly, in so many ways, that the problem is you, not him or her.
So many people, who first purchase and book a session with me, who are close to a narcissist, are confused, feel broken, worn out, exhausted, worried that they’ve lost their minds. Feel like he or she doesn’t know who he/she is anymore with this one significant person in one’s life.
Many do not realize that their physical health is being impacted right along with the stressful to traumatizing emotional and psychological harm. This is now well established within neuroscience and the evidence of the mind/body connection.
Narcissists, among many other things, are masters at the art and manipulation, along with gaslighting, those who try to love or care about them. They are masters of making their problems appear to be all because of you. They take no personal responsibility.
>Many men are narcissists. This is a personality disorder that notwithstanding one’s gender, causes anyone close to him/her to experience a tremendous amount of abuse disguised as concern or love for you. If you find yourself often upset or even daily or a few times a week so hurt and confused you have no idea what to do. Or you sit and listen to the male or female narcissist in your life talk at you, on and on, and on. Claiming they are trying to just explain something you (in their grandiose and skewed perspective) couldn’t possibility understand. There isn’t anything as basic as a movie to watch, a present you gave, a child’s passing wind, that narcissist can’t and won’t make a federal case out of with you. So many, especially women, with male narcissists end up sitting for hours being verbally berated as to what she may have said (that has triggered the narcissist) and was “wrong”, or what she may not have said, (triggers narcissist), that is not “caring” about him or not being “good enough” for him. Hours and hours of tirades, loudly or quietly, male or female, in which the similarity, at core, is unrelenting verbal abuse and gaslighting control so that they are right and you have to be wrong. They will accuse you of the very things they say and do. That’s what confused so many loved ones. That is at the heart of all that is the crazy-making narcissist in desperate and driven controlling, belligerent, dominating ways extracting the narcissistic supply she/he will endlessly take from you.
Narcissists are not called emotional vampires for nothing. They take and take, and criticize and give you negativity and then they try to tell you that they show you the love you show them that they don’t even accept or take in.
If you aren’t sure, but you feel like someone you love and care about or are close to or a is a family member is likely someone with NPD and you feel like you need to understand what is going on, I hope you will find this website helpful. There are many websites designed for the loved ones of NPD on the internet. Not all of the increasingly repetitive information on Youtube should be taken as all that you need to know or think about. You need to make sure you also get many points of view, the most accurate information possible. Along with information that focuses on helping you and that does not vilify or demonize Narcissists. That’s not going to help you.
What I have to offer, as I will in my posts here, as well as Ebooks and Audios, and in counselling or coaching if you’d like to talk to me about your situation/relationship, is a multifaceted understanding of those with NPD and how they effect and abuse loved ones. I have personal experience having been abused by two NPD/BPD co-morbid parents, and one ex-partner who was also co-morbid NPD/BPD.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the abuse of those with it are each very formidable to realize, believe, and face. It is more prevalent and pervasive and increasing in multitudes of people in society. NPD is difficult enough. For those dealing with co-morbidity (more than one personality disorder in a loved one) – for example someone with NPD/BPD it makes life much more complicated, painful, and relating much more difficult. When someone has both NPD and BPD (and often substance abuse) the percentage chance for successful treatment and change drops drastically. Most won’t even go to therapy simply because as far as they are aware (they lack insight) you are the “problem” – the one that should go to therapy. Then nothing can change. What does that leave you with? What does that mean for you?
There are also people, maybe your loved one, who meet the criteria and exhibit the traits and relational abuse of all 3 (as of the DSM 5) cluster B personality disorders (known as the Dark Triad though I don’t think it is actually in the DSM 5) Check back here to this blog soon for more on Cluster B co-morbidity and The Dark Triad as well.
NPD is a sort of spectrum. Not everyone diagnosed or (showing the patterned behaviour and Narcissistic abuse) is the same. Some can be helped. Others cannot be. The line isn’t drawn clearly between who would fit in to which group, if a Narcissist, it varies from individual to individual but generally, does not apply to Malignant Narcissists. Most Narcissists, however, are so grandiose (overt) that they don’t think there is anything wrong with them so rarely would they have any need (in their own minds) to seek help.
Covert Narcissists (deflated ego primarily so less grandiose) are the typical martyr-victim and in their cognitive distorted way of thinking still entitled like the overt Narcissist they believe everybody owes them. They often “act as if” they are codependent. Trying to look like the perceived “giving do-gooder” when really this is their way, often, of image control and seeking supply in what not such a grandiose way in contrast to the overt Narcissist.
Not everything you read on the internet may apply to the person(s) in your life you believe or know have NPD. This being said, it is important to get to know the pattern and presentation that your loved one(s) manifests and that you are or have been trying to cope with.
Narcissistic Personality Disordered individuals do not know what healthy adult love is. They are not in love with themselves. Quite the opposite. The Narcissist is really just a fragment of ego, a false self. This false self needs supply. It targets for and takes supply. It needs to be right and agreed with or it will rage. Narcissists, the false self in each one of them are so grandiose and arrogant about is his or her way of overcompensating for a painful dark abyss inside of (deeply subconscious and protected from – primal pain from his or her past. “Pain” not ever known or felt but that resides in a fragmented aspect of “self” under an elaborate labyrinth of primitive and unending defenses.
In this regard, with the reality that those with NPD, whether they know it or not, feel or not, are people suffering a great deal of pain and insecurity, jealousy and a tremendous need to be the center of attention and will do almost anything to make sure that they keep you engaged (to a crazy-making point for you) so that they can derive the narcissistic supply they most want/need from you. You may believe you love them. You may well love him or her. The problem is, they can’t love you back.
I hope I can help you answer that question and many more you no doubt have as you read this site and/or purchase and arrange a session(s) with me. No one loves or cares about a narcissist without experiencing so much abuse that you need your own recovery process.
© A.J. Mahari, September 17, 2017 – All rights reserved.
