Non-narcissist here, apparently. I do find the premise somewhat troubling. If you’re supremely confident and never doubt yourself, even in situations where you should, you could be described as a narcissist. And if you’re lacking in self-confidence, and constantly think you’ll be found out, you’re also a narcissist. And there’s probably narcissists who experience a moderate level of self-doubt in between.<p>It’s more likely narcissism and self doubt are just independent variables.
TIL I'm a narcissist. Not how I expected this morning to go.<p>I think these kind of categories that come from psychology are useful and also dangerous. Our innate tendency towards heuristics makes it difficult to talk about this stuff, especially with words like "narcissist" that have strongly negative connotations. The brain is a complicated mess. Maybe the most complicated mess in the universe. We try to impose some order on it without understanding it. It's true that "everyone in this room loves me" and "everyone in this room hates me" could be manifestations of a similar neurological configuration, and we could put the label "narcissist" on it. But the label is somewhat arbitrary and the behavioral results are often very different.
This is my point of view: Everyone is a narcissist maximally. It's not a spectrum, just a maximum state that is always on, always self preserving, but personality differs quite a bit. Personality causes others to perceive others as being more or less narcissistic. In other words we started using the word narcissistic to start describing personality types.
Maybe they're more likely to <i>report</i> imposter syndrome? How exactly can we distinguish between a self-aware narcissist who knows they have imposter-like tendencies and someone who gets satisfaction over having a pathology that others will be sympathetic towards? Nothing I've read here suggests an answer to this, I think.
It's notable that over the last couple decades, we've moved to where we refer to diabetics as people with diabetes, schizophrenics as people exhibiting symptoms of a variety of mental disorders, disabled as people with disabilities, the obese as people coping with obesity - but narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths are still othered, and yet still within the domain of detatched clinical assessment.<p>These are moral assessments of character, and ones that aren't wrong to make. But it's disingenuous to say that we have a medical definition of what is essentially an evil tendency that we can treat (and presumably, eradicate) as a disease.<p>The more literary theme among the obvious narcissists and psycho's I've met was they lacked self acceptance, and were pathologically actuated by the approval of others, particularly imagined others. They filtered their experiences to only ones that reflected a deep seated idea of a perfect and adorable self, and they had adapted to ferociously attack anything that threatened this perfect and vulnerable self image.<p>That's not a disease, it's poor parenting exacerbated by a culture that enables it.<p>People can learn and change, and they do it every day. The popular pseudo scientific discourse around narcissists and sociopaths is politically dangerous and in many cases, I suspect motivated by a purifying urge that is a much deeper evil.
This seems to share the same sentiment I have been hearing from a lot of places recently, the only person you should be comparing yourself to is the past version of yourself.
If you are interested in this topic and want to discover more about yourself and maladaptive behaviors and coping mechanisms, a great resource for personality disorders is the “Out of the Fog” website[1].
I also find Sam Vaknin has written a lot of interesting stuff on covert narcissism and the concept of narcissistic supply. (he also has a youtube channel) [2]<p>I feel that covert NPD shares a lot of traits with BPD.<p>[1] <a href="https://outofthefog.website" rel="nofollow">https://outofthefog.website</a>
[2] <a href="http://samvak.tripod.com" rel="nofollow">http://samvak.tripod.com</a>
Yikes. I’m thinking about how labels and identifications like these might harm us. As naive as it may sound, I think when you identify with something, you are constrained within that indentification, not aware you are really not that and therefore limited. I know we live in a society but yikes.
This just smells like using the same word for two different concept, and then conflating them. Thinking that the world only exists for your own benefit, and thinking that you don't fit in the world, both have an aspect of separating yourself from the world, but it's more harm than help to lump them together. If "narcissism" means having <i>any</i> sense of self identity, then the word means very little as a pathology.
While there's much to debate when it comes to generally how useful, harmful, or dangerous labels are (I think they are all 3 in different ways personally), I think there's a highly uderrated takeaway in the last paragraph:<p>> "To be clear: these results do not invalidate the fact that most of us experience feelings of impostorism or doubt our ability to make desired impressions on others at various points in our life. Instead, they suggest that no matter where any of us are on the impostor syndrome curve, one potential route to realizing your best self is through dialing down your excessive preoccupation with how you are being perceived by others. Don't worry about being an impostor; worry about being authentic."
Psycopaths are an example of covert narssicists, not exclusively but it’s an example.<p>This article gets it wrong. Vulnerable narcissists are still needy, egotistical and vain people. It’s just that they are introvert. Instead of presuming that any higher being can go back to sleep when they wake up, the introvert N will wonder if it would be possible for other people to recognize that they have everything under control and should just be trusted.<p>I’ve be raised by a N:bro and N:mom, not the introvert types, and I sure hope this article is a joke or written by a N looking for excuses!<p>Edit: few typos. I probably missed a few more. I am fuming!
I never understood the difference between narcisms and self confidence. The same way this article makes it unclear what the difference between being insecure and no self confidence and narcism. Is insecurity a disorder?
Some pretty engrossing material on narcissism: <a href="https://thelastpsychiatrist.com" rel="nofollow">https://thelastpsychiatrist.com</a><p>The blog is long defunct, but the archives are definitely worth a read.
From my experience with "grandiose" narcissists, they share most of the traits of "vulnerable" narcissists, but they try very hard not to show them. If you want to understand their behavior, you have to realize that beneath their self-confident facade, these are extremely vulnerable people as well.
I've always <i>wanted</i> to be a Narcissist, for years have strived to become one, but I never quite feel like I <i>am</i> one. I always feel like a wannabe-Narcissist, like an impost....