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At times, a 22-year-old from Los Angeles is convinced he is “unmatched in his abilities”. Living with narcissistic personality disorder, his grandiose moments frequently escalate into “highly unrealistic”, he explains. You’re riding high and you think, ‘People will see that I stand above others … I will achieve remarkable feats for the world’.”

For Spring, these times of heightened ego are often succeeded by a “crash”, during which he feels overwhelmed and self-conscious about his conduct, rendering him especially susceptible to criticism from external sources. He came to wonder he might have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) after looking up his traits on the internet – and was later diagnosed by a professional. Yet, he questions he would have agreed with the assessment if he hadn’t previously arrived at that conclusion by himself. “If you try to tell somebody that they have NPD, {they’ll probably deny it|denial is a common response|they’re likely to reject it,” he notes – most notably if they harbor a sense of being better. They operate in an altered state that they’ve built up. And that world is like, I’m the greatest and {nobody can question me|no one should doubt me|my authority is absolute.”

Defining Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Though people have been called narcissists for over 100 years, the meaning can be ambiguous what people refer to as the label. People frequently term everybody a narcissist,” explains a leading researcher, noting the word is “overused” – but when it comes to a clinical identification, he notes many people conceal it, because of widespread prejudice associated with the disorder. A narcissist will tend to have “a heightened sense of self”, “difficulty understanding others’ feelings”, and “a pattern of manipulating others to enhance their social status through behaviors including pursuing power,” the expert says. Those with NPD may be “deeply egotistical”, 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 states.

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

Variations by Gender in The Disorder

While a significant majority of people found to have narcissistic personality disorder are males, findings suggests this number does not mean there are fewer narcissistic women, but that narcissism in women is more often presented in the vulnerable narcissism type, which is often overlooked. Narcissistic traits in men tends to be more socially permissible, just kind of like everything in society,” says a young adult who discusses her dual diagnosis on social media. It is not uncommon, the two disorders are comorbid.

First-Hand Experiences

It’s hard for me with dealing with feedback and rejection,” she shares, whenever it’s suggested that I am at fault, I often enter a defensive state or I become unresponsive.” Despite having this behavior – which is often called “ego wounding”, she has been working to manage it and take advice from her close relationships, as she aims to avoid falling into the damaging patterns of her previous life. “I was very emotionally abusive to my partners as a teenager,” she reveals. Through dialectical behavioural therapy, she has been able to reduce her narcissistic traits, and she says she and her current boyfriend “have a dynamic where I’ve instructed him, ‘Should I make a harmful comment, if I say something manipulative, point it out {right then and there|immediately|in the moment’.”

Her upbringing mostly in the care of her father and explains there was an absence of positive role models as a child. It’s been a process of understanding continuously the difference between acceptable versus unacceptable to say in conflicts because it wasn’t modeled for me in my formative years,” she says. Every insult was fair game when my family members were belittling me in my early years.”

Root Causes of Narcissistic Traits

Personality disorders tend to be connected with difficulties as a child. Heredity is a factor,” says a mental health specialist. But, when someone develops narcissistic traits, it is often “linked to that specific childhood circumstances”. Those traits were “a survival tactic in some ways to cope in formative years”, he adds, when they may have been neglected, or only shown love that was conditional on meeting particular demands. They then “rely on those same mechanisms as adults”.

In common with many of the those diagnosed, John (a pseudonym) thinks his parents “might exhibit similar traits. The individual says when he was a child, “their needs came first and their work and their social life. So it was like, keep your distance.” When their focus was on him, it came in the form of “intense expectations to achieve high marks and life achievements, he says, which made him feel that if he didn’t meet their standards, he wasn’t “good enough”.

When he became an adult, none of his relationships were successful. I didn’t truly value about anyone really,” he admits. Therefore, I never treated relationships seriously.” He believed he wasn’t loving someone, until he met his current partner of three years, who is diagnosed with BPD, so, like him, has difficulty with feelings. She is “highly empathetic of the internal struggles in my head”, he explains – it was actually she who first suspected he might have NPD.

Accessing Support

Subsequent to a consultation to his general practitioner, an assessment was arranged to a mental health professional for an assessment and was told his diagnosis. He has been referred for psychological counseling on the public health system (ongoing counseling is the primary approach that has been proven effective NPD patients, experts say), but has been on the patient queue for 18 months: “They said it is probably going to be maybe February or March next year.”

John has only told a small circle about his condition, because “prejudice is common that every person with NPD is harmful”, but, privately, he has come to terms with it. This understanding allows me to comprehend my actions, which is beneficial,” he comments. Those interviewed have acknowledged their condition and are pursuing treatment for it – which is why they agree to talk about it – which is likely not typical of all people with the diagnosis. But the growth of NPD content creators and the development of online support communities indicate that {more narcissists|a growing number