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At times, a 22-year-old from Los Angeles feels he is “the most exceptional individual alive”. Having received an NPD diagnosis, his grandiose moments can become “really delusional”, he states. You feel invincible and you tell yourself, ‘Everyone’s going to know that I surpass everyone else … I’m destined for greatness for the world’.”

For Spring, these times of heightened ego are often succeeded by a “crash”, where he feels deeply emotional and ashamed about his conduct, leaving him highly sensitive to disapproval from those around him. He began to think he might have this personality condition after investigating his behaviors on the internet – and eventually diagnosed by a professional. Yet, he questions he would have agreed with the assessment if he hadn’t already reached that understanding personally. When someone suggests to 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 experience feelings of superiority. “They’re in a delusional world that they’ve constructed. And that world is like, I am superior and {nobody can question me|no one should doubt me|my authority is absolute.”

Understanding The Condition

While people have been labelled as narcissists for more than a century, definitions vary what the term implies the label. It’s common to label everybody a narcissist,” states a psychology professor, adding the word is “used more than it should be” – but when it comes to a professional assessment, he notes many people hide it, as there is widespread prejudice around the condition. An individual diagnosed will tend to have “an exaggerated self-image”, “impaired compassion”, and “a tendency to exploit relationships to seek admiration through things like pursuing power,” the expert explains. 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.

Emotional connections were never important about anyone really, so I’ve never taken relationships seriously

Gender Differences in NPD Presentation

Though three-quarters of people found to have NPD are men, studies indicates this statistic does not mean there are less female narcissism, but that female narcissism is frequently manifests in the less obvious variety, which is often overlooked. Male narcissism tends to be more socially permissible, just kind of like everything in society,” explains a 23-year-old who discusses her NPD and borderline personality disorder (BPD) on social media. Frequently, the two disorders appear together.

Individual Challenges

“I really struggle with handling criticism and being turned down,” she says, “because if I hear that the issue lies with me, I tend to switch to a defensive state or I become unresponsive.” Although experiencing this reaction – which is often called “ego wounding”, she has been working to manage it and listen to guidance from her close relationships, as she doesn’t want to slip into the harmful behaviour of her past. “I was very emotionally abusive to my partners as a teenager,” she admits. Through dialectical behavioural therapy, she has been able to mitigate her NPD symptoms, and she notes she and her current boyfriend “operate with an understanding where I’ve instructed him, ‘If I say something messed up, if I say something manipulative, call it out {right then and there|immediately|in the moment’.”

She grew up primarily in the care of her father and says she lacked positive role models in her youth. It’s been a process of understanding all this time what is and is not appropriate to say in conflicts because it wasn’t modeled for me as a kid,” she says. Every insult was fair game when my household were criticizing me in my early years.”

Root Causes of NPD

These mental health issues tend to be connected with childhood challenges. Genetics play a role,” says an expert in personality disorders. But, when someone develops narcissistic traits, it is often “linked to that person’s unique upbringing”. Those traits were “a coping mechanism in some ways to manage during childhood”, he adds, when they may have been neglected, or only shown love that was dependent on meeting particular demands. They then “persist in applying those same mechanisms as adults”.

Like several of the those diagnosed, a person from Leeds 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, stay out of our way.” When their focus was on him, it came in the form of “intense expectations to achieve good grades and professional advancement, he recalls, which made him feel that if he didn’t fulfill their expectations, he wasn’t “acceptable.

As he grew older, none of his relationships were successful. Emotional investment was lacking about anyone really,” he states. “So I’ve never taken relationships seriously.” He believed he wasn’t experiencing genuine affection, until he met his present significant other of three years, who is diagnosed with BPD, so, like him, finds it hard to manage mood stability. She is “highly empathetic of the internal struggles in my head”, he says – it was actually she who originally considered he might have NPD.

Pursuing Treatment

Subsequent to a consultation to his general practitioner, an assessment was arranged to a mental health professional for an assessment and was given the NPD label. He has been recommended for psychological counseling through national services (a long period of therapy is the main intervention that has been shown to help NPD patients, experts say), but has been on the treatment delay for 18 months: The estimate was it is expected around maybe February or March next year.”

Disclosure was limited to a handful of people about his mental health status, because “negative perceptions are widespread that all narcissists are abusers”, but, in his own mind, he has embraced the diagnosis. This understanding allows me to understand myself better, which is positive,” he says. All of the people have come to terms with NPD and are pursuing treatment for it – which is why they agree to talk about it – which is possibly not the norm of all people with the disorder. But the existence of NPD content creators and the expansion of virtual networks point to {more narcissists|a growing number