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On occasion, a 22-year-old from Los Angeles believes he is “unmatched in his abilities”. Living with narcissistic personality disorder, his periods of extreme self-importance frequently escalate into “really delusional”, he explains. “You are on cloud nine and you think, ‘Everyone’s going to know that I’m better than them … I’ll do great things for the world’.”

Regarding his experience, these phases of exaggerated self-worth are usually followed by a “sudden low”, where he feels deeply emotional and ashamed about his actions, making him especially susceptible to disapproval from those around him. He came to wonder he might have NPD after researching his symptoms through digital sources – and was later evaluated by a clinician. However, he doubts he would have taken the label without having previously arrived at that understanding on his own. When someone suggests to somebody that they have the condition, {they’ll probably deny it|denial is a common response|they’re likely to reject it,” he notes – particularly if they harbor beliefs of dominance. They operate in an altered state that they made for themselves. And in that mindset, No one compares to me and {nobody can question me|no one should doubt me|my authority is absolute.”

Understanding The Condition

Though people have been labelled as narcissists for over 100 years, the meaning can be ambiguous what is meant by the label. “Everyone calls everybody a narcissist,” explains a psychology professor, who believes the word is “applied too broadly” – but when it comes to a professional assessment, he believes many people keep it private, because of so much stigma around the condition. An individual diagnosed will tend to have “an inflated view of oneself”, “impaired compassion”, and “a strategy of using people to bolster one’s self-esteem through behaviors including pursuing power,” the expert 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 adds.

I’ve never cared about anyone really, so relationships weren’t a priority relationships seriously

Variations by Gender in The Disorder

Although three-quarters of people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder are males, research points out this statistic does not mean there are fewer narcissistic women, but that female narcissism is frequently manifests in the vulnerable narcissism type, which is often overlooked. Narcissistic traits in men tends to be more socially permissible, as with everything in society,” says a 23-year-old who shares content on her NPD and borderline personality disorder (BPD) on social media. It is not uncommon, the two disorders are comorbid.

Individual Challenges

“I really struggle with dealing with feedback and rejection,” she shares, since when I’m told that I am at fault, I tend to switch to a defensive state or I completely shut down.” Even with this response – which is often called “self-esteem damage”, she has been attempting to address it and accept input from her support system, as she aims to avoid falling into the negative conduct of her past. My past relationships were toxic to my partners as a teenager,” she states. With professional help, she has been able to reduce her narcissistic traits, and she says she and her significant other “operate with an understanding where I told him, ‘Should I make a harmful comment, when I use toxic language, address it {right then and there|immediately|in the moment’.”

Her childhood primarily in the care of her father and says she lacked healthy examples as a child. It’s been a process of understanding continuously the difference between and is not appropriate to say in conflicts because I never had that growing up,” she comments. There were no boundaries when my relatives were insulting me in my early years.”

Origins of Narcissistic Traits

These mental health issues tend to be associated with childhood challenges. “There is a genetic component,” notes an expert in personality disorders. But, when someone exhibits NPD characteristics, it is often “linked to that specific childhood circumstances”. Those traits were “their strategy in some ways to cope in formative years”, he adds, when they may have been overlooked, 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, a person from Leeds thinks his parents “may be narcissists themselves”. The 38-year-old shares when he was a child, “everything was all about them and their work and their social life. So it was like, stay out of our way.” When their focus was on him, it came in the form of “intense expectations to achieve high marks and career success, he recalls, which made him feel that if he didn’t achieve their goals, he wasn’t “worthy.

As he grew older, none of his relationships lasted. “I’ve never cared about anyone really,” he states. Therefore, I never treated relationships seriously.” He believed he wasn’t experiencing genuine affection, until he met his current partner of three years, who is also dealing with a personality disorder, so, like him, struggles with mood stability. She is “very supportive of the stuff that goes on in my head”, he says – it was in fact, her who initially thought he might have NPD.

Accessing Support

Following an appointment to his general practitioner, John was referred to a clinical psychologist for an assessment and was given the NPD label. He has been referred for psychological counseling on the public health system (ongoing counseling is the main intervention that has been demonstrated to benefit NPD patients, specialists note), but has been on the treatment delay for a year and a half: “They said it is probably going to be early next year.”

John has only told a small circle about his NPD diagnosis, because “there’s a big stigma that every person with NPD is harmful”, but, personally, he has embraced the diagnosis. “It helps me to comprehend my actions, which is always a good thing,” he comments. Each individual have accepted their narcissism and are seeking help for it – which is why they agree to talk about it – which is possibly not the norm of all people with the condition. But the growth of online advocates and the development of virtual networks indicate that {more narcissists|a growing number