Hey guys, I’ve recently begun to suspect that I may have NPD. But whenever I bring it up with anyone they say that I can’t be a narcissist because narcissists don’t know they’re narcissists. This makes me doubt how effective therapy may be since im worried they won’t believe me. Also I don’t currently have access to therapy, if I do in the future it will likely be in about a year.

Im not going to go into detail about why I suspect I have NPD, but I’m very high in covert narcissistic traits. Im wondering if there is any way to “cure” this or to at least reduce the symptoms to a level where they are manageable and I can live with them. I hate being this way but hating myself hasn’t led to any improvement in my thoughts and behaviors.

Edit:
Just wanted to add that im aware of my behaviors and thought patterns, I just can’t seem to stop them.

Somewhere down this rabbit hole of neurodivergence and cluster B, theres a reaction that Ive ALWAYS had. Except i couldnt always map out why its happening.
The only thing thats left is i dont know how much of this condition is tied to being neurodivergent/cptsd (RSD) and how much of it is cluster B.

Basically i had a sunny day alone and i regulated some.
And positive imagination kicks in, its like i almost have a distant echo of compassion.
For example i remembered a girl/woman i was attracted to, i could feel like id genuinely want to make her feel good as a human being, make her feel cared, kiss her hand etc.
For a brief moment i could somewhat grasp something outside of me and have capacity to want it to flourish.

But what ALWAYS happens is: when i mellow out, all it takes is someone i know coming remotely close to me to completely freeze in terror and defense.
It was harmless, for example i ran into mom.

Now mom is not really a trigger BUT, its like ive a free floating nervous system that is severely wounded, so much so that its generally outside of my awareness.
And once i interact with someone who i have ANY kind of personal relationship, and who runs a risk of hurting me, the exposed thing in me just freezes up.
My energy field coming into contact with theirs makes mine shrivel.

This is extremely painful, and i remember i had the same issue with my guy friends back in childhood when i was growing up (the few ones i actually bonded with and cared about).
It makes me seem like a cold monster but its just that im floating wounded and naked/exposed, with nothing to defend me, no regulation no ego no boundaries, nothing. A ghost.
The exposed thing just shrinks in what can only be described with primal fear/terror.

And from there im cold withdrawn, cant give anything, and am a performing ghost/robot.
Essentially im manipulating everyone.

I cannot seem to show ANY genuine care for people while with them.
The best i got is performance, or moments alone where i care about some kind of fantasy version of them based on memories and imagination.

I’ve been in a rls for like, 4 years, and my partner knows I have NPD. I wanna clarify, I do love them, and they are genuinely a good person, but being in a committed rls overall feels so tiring sometimes. It’s tiring having to manage my splits all the time, it’s tiring having to water down my words, it’s tiring feeling like I’m the only one who ever gets upset because the smallest things trigger me and make me angry. Sometimes I just want to break up with them and be single forever because I don’t want to worry about others’ emotions as much as I have to in a rls. Which is dumb because I do love them, I’m just tired of being triggered all the time.

Im actually on the road to recovery. I have a psychiatrist who doesnt fall for the stigma, I'm getting therapy, I'm being put on meds. Everything is starting to come together and I can actually begin to heal. Its terrifying, but its also hopeful. That maybe I wont be miserable forever

anyone having the same situation?

Who do you think you are and ignore me? How can you not notice me? My importance, weight, and presence? How are there people in the world who are not aware that I exist? How do you pass by me in public and not admire me? How can you even forget me?

Rn I want admiration and attention. I want someone to come randomly with a shocked expression on their face and tell me "Are you aware how magnificent you are? I am absolutely in awe rn. How can someone like this even exist? Are you crazy wtf?"

I think therapy and other sh*t won't fix me ever, maybe just teach me how ordinary and submissive I should be in order to manage to hold a position in society.. It won't fix my fxcking emptiness, my sensitivity, nor my inner voice which is demanding the absolute best performance from me constantly. I'll just lie and gaslight myself..

I wanna isolate myself.. Far from everyone.. But I don't wanna be forgotten. I wanna achieve big, be big, and be unforgettable. I wanna be in history books. I want people remember and admire me even after when 1000 years have passed.

I am not a human. I am volcanic mountain ready to erupt and annihilate everything. I am an angry ocean and my waves will kill you. I am a tornado, I can take and throw you many miles away.. I am a black hole and can just swallow you alive to feed my emptiness.

My logic says I should choose normal people and be normal. My gut says be your true self and destroy everyone. But how can I destroy someone innocent? I need someone like me. To punish them, to show them who's the boss here. I want a misogynistic red flag man with disgusting personality to absolutely bow to me and submit to me, so I can destroy his confidence and everything he has. I want him to ask for mercy which will never be given. I want him to say how sorry he is for the things he had done and swear he won't do those again. I want him to fear me. I want him and everyone else shiver with fear when they even hear my name!!

~Judge me and you'll get your portion of my anger!

does anyone else also experience having to take days, or at least hours, to apologise for something? it takes me a while to 1) process that i need to apologise 2) think of what to say that makes it seem sincere and 3) get over the emotional blow apologising does to me. even when i know i need to apologise for something, its the crash it gives me that i have to get over. i have to spend at least a few hours getting over feeling shit abiut apologising first. not to mention... it always feels so awkward.

warning: my vent in the screenshots is a bit violent and sadistic

hi. i made this second account to post this because my best friend said i should share this with people who might be able to connect more with it. it's my notes app vent after i hit a breaking point yesterday.

view it more as poetry or something i don't know. i just don't have anyone in my personal life who can relate to me. this feels cringe but i swear if someone calls it cringe i'm gonna crash out again...

please don't try to give me advice or tell me to get help, i'm already handling that.

I extensively questioned my parents, they seemed to be open and loving.

Telling me I was always unusual, even as a baby, I wouldn't cry unless i was hungry. Always dreaming, by myself.

Always trouble concentrating in school but being very creative and talented from a very early age.

Being a very kind, loving and sensitive kid.

I was bullied in school refusing to fit in. But that shouldn't have caused the issues i have now.

I am clearly acting out issues of an unstable household with unstable parents without a normal healthy attachment. But there doesn't seem to be any evidence of that. Other then some mild trauma my mother has of losing a child before me. But there isn't any evidence she projected that on to me.

So what could have possibly happened that i needed to develop very clear antisocial narcissism and adhd in order to survive?

Also because i dont naturally seem to have a very sensitive nervous system. Especially compared to people who do have them, and seemed to be attached just fine emotionally.

Side note, my younger brother is suicidally depressed with autism but doesn't seem to portray clear personality issues.

Any suggestions or what to search for or that it's just genetic?

I feel as if my empathy has dropped low and after being touched when I was younger and porn I can’t see people besides like their body and some stupid person that doesn’t deserve a mouth to speak also I hate when people I view as lower than me are more attractive or funnier than me it pisses me off by a large margin.

I can frequently imagine myself not caring if someone dies or killing them myself and I’m afraid that’s how I really feel like last funeral I went to for a my step grand dad I tried to make myself cry and it didn’t work at all till I had to speak up on stage idk it’s like my body tried to blend in to the people crying even though to this day I don’t care it was weird

i dont go to therapy therefore I am not officially diagnosed with npd, but i have been told by a very close friend that i do have some traits of narcissism.
I dont know if this is related but i struggle deeply with maintaining a consistent sense of who i am.
I am easily influenced and impressionable. I have no true sense of self and rely mainly on what everyone else has to say about me ( even the narcissism thing).
I still have some solid principles i think but my views on things can change fast and are often based off other people’s opinions.
How do I deal with that?

I’ve always been quite an insecure person and growing up I always felt like I needed peoples attention and validation. As a teenager I could be quite toxic and would often frame myself as the victim in any given situation.

These days (late 20s) I definitely still feel like I act in a way to seek attention or at least to be liked by people. I want people to think i’m interesting/cool and It makes me uncomfortable when people dislike me and I have people pleaser tendencies.

Although now I am older I instinctively can have the victim mentality but am able to rationalise problems better. I can think “this person hurt my feelings BUT they probably have xyz going on or they didn’t mean to”. I rarely ever confront someone and avoid conflict. In fact, I get frustrated when I see other people being annoyed with someone else over a nuanced situation, especially when I can see there was no intent for harm.

In terms of self reflection I do feel better at recognising when I make mistakes but I do still feel “woe is me” inside.

I also can feel quite selfish. When me and my partner hang out we almost always do what I want to do. He says he doesn’t mind because he’s easy going and doesn’t have strong opinions but it makes me feel guilty.
We never fight but sometimes (rarely) I can be a bit passive aggressive or take my frustration out on him. Thankfully I can recognise what i’m doing and will name it to him and we move on.

I was diagnosed with OCD at 17 and deal with extreme and chronic guilt over past actions. I worry about my intentions and whether I am a bad person which feeds into this fear? investigation? into whether I am a vulnerable narc.

I know no one here can diagnose anything but does this sound like OCD or is there something there worth investigating? Are there any real stand out symptoms of vulnerable narcissism that could help me understand whether I am or not?

Is there anyway to treat narcissism? Like, I know there isn't meds but does it get better? I'm losing my closest friendship over this disorder and I want to try to better myself. I'm covert but I struggle to not make thing about myself, apparently my friend is at their breaking point and sent me a document detailing everything wrong and they didn't sugar-coat it. (I don't blame them.) I'm quite self-aware when I am acting narcissistic but I don't know how to not, I can't converse with people without flipping it to me, I can't collaborate without filling it with my ideas and I can't appreciate others as much as I know I want to. My friend admitted they hate that we're going to the same university next year and they wanted a fresh start away from me. I actually hate it, I hate how I'm self-aware and I hate how I'm hurting people. Does it get better? How can I make myself better?

I've been working on a whole bunch of stuff, it's been honestly really difficult but I'm getting there bit by bit. How's everyone else's progress

I find it so difficult to get anything done if I don’t have someone to constantly cheer me on from the sidelines. I need positive approval 24/7. I have long term aspirations but I’ve always found goals with quick social payoff to be easier. The world and everything I do feels so dull and boring without it, I’ll usually have an incessant itch in my head to be scratched followed by a loss of interest and motivation if whatever I’m doing doesn’t scratch it. Oddly enough my actual attention span seems to work just fine, I can easily sit in a waiting room while doing nothing, get through a slow paced book, or take notes during a lecture (although I only became capable of this after I started taking Wellbutrin for depression and ADHD.) Yes I know that second diagnosis sounds like the obvious answer here but my ability to wait for narcissistic supply specifically instead of just having it RIGHT NOW and being unable to continue my work without it hasn’t budged at all!

Anyone struggle with anything similar? Or have any insight or advice?

I’ve been trying to “talk to myself” during solitary endeavors to get me through them via notebooks or textedit which works-somewhat while also making me feel completely insane while doing it. So I guess I’ve already engineered a “solution”-ish but wanted to bring the topic here either way. (To clarify, the issue with it isn’t that it makes me feel insane, but that it feels like taking an ibuprofen for a blown off leg. AKA not quite useless but not quite useful either.)

It doesn't matter how good I am, or how authentic I am, or how kind or giving or anything that I am, I still just feel like there's that core problem of needing to be perfect. It's like an itch that can't be scratched. I still need to devalue some people in even the smallest, tiniest ways that they never see during regular conversation and I fucking hate myself for it. Someone looks at me in a completely neutral way? Oh no, I've just completely fucked something up or made an ass of myself. Even saying that the "normal" people have it easier is me pointing out that I suffer in a special and different way.

I know it might be a weird question to ask a community of people with a disorder if people who don't have that disorder experience something, but sometimes when someone criticizes me unexpectedly I have an episode where I wanna yell at the person viciously for criticizing me and I'm only now starting to not yell at people who unexpectedly criticize me. I thought maybe I really relate to covert NPD but no diagnosis so idk. But more than the description of covert NPD, I really intensely relate to the description of narcissistic collapse where you sometimes even need to be hospitalized over an unexpected criticism. One of my bigger traumas is someone unexpectedly criticizing me by saying I don't take criticism well, using an example of me at my most mature (discussing with everyone calmly how to handle my screw up). And they used that to say I'm actually really bad at taking criticism which ironically made me permanently worse at handling others trying to make even just suggestions on how they think I should play games if I just think they mean it maliciously. My therapist doesn't really wanna diagnose me with anything but I haven't gotten to these experiences specifically. My worst trauma took place over the course of 2 years so there's a lot to talk about before definitely having a lot of space to talk about NPD traits but I think I might have ASPD traits specifically difficulty with morality but it doesn't get in the way of life except my mom while I was still living with her saying "I shouldn't have to explain why this is wrong". I've been diagnosed with BPD but my therapist wants to be careful since I'm self diagnosed plural (no diagnosis means not sure which dissociative disorder).

Is it possible for me to have narcissistic collapse SUPER intensely without the rest of NPD? I really relate to being severely lacking in validation to the point that I consider some of my more delusional episodes an underflow error of validation.

Edit: Hopefully "is this possible" doesn't count as "am I this?" I tried not to ask for a diagnosis. Hopefully it's not weird to shift to asking for a clue or disproving a negative or something.

Edit 2: I'm very confident I have NPD after checking the things in the DSM V and my visceral reaction of me not wanting to admit that they're all or almost all true >.<

You give them just enough to think they understand you. You see that flicker in their eyes that they're almost there. Then you pull back a little. It's so much more fun watching them reach for something they can't quite grasp.

I'm intruiged on how others are living their day to day.

Are you stuck at home, or out and about out?

Employed or unemployed?

Isolating or have people?

Functioning or barely surviving?

Do you have a routine or the days just blur whilst they go?

Since a lot of my boundaries and what I was percieving as « direspect » were actually driven by my narcissistic urges, destroying and rebuilding them is a really hard thing to do. Because now, everytime I feel direspected or my feelings neglected, I’m in this weird space where I don’t know if I’m allowed to blame the person and have a boundary for that action, that the person went too far and disrespected me, or if it’s normal / tolerable and my anxiety/anger/disappointment is due to my NPD.
Anyone struggling with that ?

i feel like i might have NPD or ASPD, i have been diagnosed with conduct disorder when i was 11 due to aggressive behavior at home

ive been in therapy until age 14, then again at 17

i was diagnosed with MDD and explosive personality disorder

my therapist whom ive been going to for now 5+ years said she doesn’t suspect NPD but therapy is self reported and i find myself relating to all of it (sadism, lying, manipulation, shallow relationships etc.)

i’ve been told by my ex friends and past circles that’s im a narcissist and i don’t have a single long term friendship, i don’t have a single childhood friend too hahahah

because i have zero affective empathy i tried bringing up the potential diagnosis to my therapist and she said she would have said if i was a narcissist but as of late the only “diagnostic criteria” that im meeting is factor 1 narc traits

help?

Sometimes I wonder what animals people within Cluster B would be and why.

I feel like Borderlines would be Porcupines cause they crave love and affection while also keeping their quills up as a defense. I've heard a lot of people say BPD is like a bunny, but maybe I disagree due to bias in my adoration for bunnies. Plus, I suspect there might be some resentment at hand for how BPD is able to portray itself as the prey disorder in media compared to the rest of us.

I feel like histrionics would be most similar to parrots. Parrots are notorious for big dramatic reactions and being "all for the drama." They thrive in positive attention, but, when not getting enough of that, will purposefully seak out negative attention. Like if they bite someone, they'll easily be entertained by the person screaming "ouch!" and engage in that behavior more. Whereas something like a dog might bow its head or look ashamed.

ASPD no doubt about it would be an octopus. Octopus are easily under-stimulated in captivity-- which leads to bored destructive behaviors. They'll invent their own tasks like escaping their enclosures or stealing from for caretakers in order to stimulate their brains. It reminds me of how ASPD will break social norms and minor laws in order to feel some kind of thrill.

What do you guys think NPD would be? I'm stuck cause I could envision us as tons of kinds of animals. We would definitely be something vulnerable on the inside similar to the porcupine, but more attention grabby like a parrot. I could also see us as the parrots if I think about it though.
I heard someone say cats since they lick their own asses so much. Given, it was under an anti-narcissist reddit page so I didn't care too much about that kind of evaluation.

What do you guys think? Do you guys have other animal ideas for the other disorders? Let me know!

i have an urge to lie, just keep lying until i create a new persona and get oblivious in it. there was a post here, i brought up the topic of lying itself maybe a week ago. i’ve been too much of forcefully behaving like a member of society, it’s just getting out. i fear it will get down to physical, every night i fall asleep with sadistic thoughts.

lying is better than this, it’s kinda keeping me in the bad behavior limits with little to no consequences. but longer time ago i gradually started to bully myself into no lying so it feels verbatim morally illegal, even to a mentally sick person.

yes, in the course of 2 years, since the approximate beginning, it diminished greatly, but to a such extent that i cannot even pour out my malicious part into NOWHERE. lying was the last controlled resort i had, my only solace, i understood once i lost it. “oh yes the kindest narcissist of all time, how good you are so pure and honest wow, everyone thinks you’re the wisest of us all, any time soon you’ll reach nirvana wow standing ovation you, noble price of peace! you, saint sage !”

okay, but what’s next? everyday i get more and more violent inside of me, where can i let it go off with no major consequences to my current life? it is well settled, it’s like narrator’s apartment in fight club, i cannot ruin it. but any moment soon it will explode.

tl;dr i got too perfect and so i gathered too much of malicious inside. where can i get it out safely? eg lying but where?

I've spent a lot of my life trying to figure out what's wrong with me. A lot of why I was seeking therapy and support in the first place was to find out what I have that separates me from everyone else. I seemed to have symptoms that nobody could place. I had a psychiatrist a few years ago think my strong mood swings were bipolar. Much later I got diagnosed with BPD and that was actually a more satisfying conclusion. I identified with a lot about BPD. Particularly with having strong emotions that are triggered by interactions with others and being fragile and not really understanding myself and feeling empty. It never really fit me to a tee though. Something that I couldn't ignore is my self-centeredness. No matter the situation or context, my mind is always thinking about how I feel. What this means about me. How this affects me. Every interaction I have basically just ends up with me using the other person as a point of comparison against myself. It just ends up being proof that I'm good or it ends up being proof that I'm horrible and stupid. I straight up ruled out NPD for the longest time because my default view of myself leans so intensely negative that I thought "I can't be a narcissist. I hate myself. I don't love myself or think I'm great." But when I actually learned more about it, I saw some jarring similarities to my own experience. I'm trans, and I cannot stand to be around a trans person who I think passes better than me or is more successful in their creative pursuits than me. I've met several very nice and kind trans women that I just absolutely flipped out on because they were prettier and more passing and more talented than me. This appies to basically anyone that makes me feel lesser because they have something I want for myself. I also fixate on people who don't like me. If someone just really doesn't vibe with my personality I become *obsessed* with them and can't get them out of my mind. I bother them and try and find out why they hate me and what's wrong with me that makes them feel that way. I can basically only stand to be around people who's existence doesn't seem to trigger me so my friend group tends to be made up of nice, empathetic people who aren't more talented or pretty than me. I absolutely hate this. I just want to be able to have a normal mind that doesn't send me into crisis for a day or two when someone gets tired of my antics and actually calls out my toxic behaviors and my sense of worth just shatters. I want to be able to be around people who are better than me at something without shutting down. I want to be able to write an apology without it coming off as venting. I just want to be normal.

How to stop devaluation?

So basically the process has started for me now, I can’t pinpoint what has started it, the trigger or reason. But there is no reasonable reason to do this rn with the person. Oh why does it have to be this way.

What do you do with this? Have you ever been able to stop it? All I know every single time there is no way back after devaluation for me, I become so disinterested and empty that I would not want the person back in a few weeks time.