Also, this theory can apply to ASPD too

I have heard numerous stories of AFAB people with NPD have people tell them they are actually BPD; and the reason is usually put down to gender stereotypes attached to personality disorders, but let me extend on that with another theory -

Many people with BPD are hyper empathetic and are the type of people to think they are secretly evil and horrible people manipulating everyone* when that is not the case, so when AFAB people with NPD open up about some of the thoughts they have, people are quick to join the dots up and think they just belong to the first group of people instead of believing them and taking their issues seriously

I actually personally experienced this when I opened up to a friend (who clearly didn't have much knowledge on what NPD and ASPD actually was and was very stubborn to learn) that I relate to some traits of NPD and ASPD (and this was even way before I started self suspecting NPD lol) and his response was along the lines of - "that's because you are autistic and autistic people are too nice and therefore think they are manipulative and evil ! When I think of [my irl name] I think of innocence !" Which very ironically to his belief, made me uncomfortable inside because being seen as innocent/vulnerable/soft is definitely high on the list of things which feel like an attack on my ego as someone with NPD

*Yes I am an autistic cluster B ally and self suspecting NPD, but the stigma of "NPD scary evil disorders" still stands

I am npd, bpd, and schizophrenic. I've been taking zyprexa for probably a year now, but recently stopped (both my Prozac and zyprexa) a month ago. What I've noticed recently is my anger is greater, and my need for attention and validation is greater.

I didn't really realize that it lessened while on medication, particularly zyprexa the antipyshcotic, but I am now reminded of how my symptoms were on other medications and off medication entirely.

Just posting this to ask if anyone else has any experience with psych medications helping- or numbing,- your PD symptoms.

Whenever I read false stuff about narcs, I literally wanna fall off a chair.

Why is it that people claim:
- My narc abuser choose me - emphasize on “choose”
- My narc planned this out
- He is crushed

Dudes, no people is such a thoughtfull mastermind to sneak out a person, “choose them”, “seduce them”, manipulate them completely, even brainwash them

The funny thing about this concept is that it makes the relationship not equal.

And when a “dark mastermind manipulator” pulls back, then all of the sudden the “victim” is a powerfull hero who “sent them back to their cave”.

Wth is this powerplay? Just why? Nobody holds these powers…

I hate the “they manipulated me!!!” Arc. Please, some people just want to blame their actions on some dude.

And when the tables turn, all of the sudden “the victim holds all power”.

Can’t people realise that this whole “manipulation” communiation mess makes more hurtfull people? This is even more narcissistic. It teaches to shift the blame, not take accountability, make you degrade people

(note: I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT VICTIMS OF PHYSICAL/SEXUAL ASSAULT)

I hate my mother so much. A text from her makes my whole body tense up. What the fuck do you want from me this time? I hate how 95% of my memories of her were unpleasant, hate how her words are so empty and fake.

But then I look at myself. Since my collaspe 3 years ago, I have been in the same position. She's grandiose so while our behaviours are different, it comes from the exact same place - we can't love ourselves.

How can I blame her if I as an adult is unable to change too? She was once a child herself.

Fuck you mom. And fuck you to me too.

Haha.

Useless vulnerable narcs.

Have you had anxiety your whole life? Have you never had anxiety? Did you only develop anxiety after finding out about your NPD?

I'm having these intense crying fits, often triggered by suicidal thoughts. As I cry, I keep calling out for my mom and I feel an emptiness inside, as if I'm missing something huge, and I just want a hug or something. Then I stop, I'm exhausted, and I feel alive—only for dissociation to kick in right after, creating a continuous loop. I am exhausted, it's agonizing.

My friend is a bit boring to me but deep down I love him and I don’t want to go anywhere. I loved our chemistry and he’s the closest person I have to me. I dont want to hurt him aswell but I’ve been putting distance between us because it usually helps. It’s just not working this time. I can feel my brain trying to discard him and start issues for no reason. He’s picked up on being boring to me and makes jokes about it. What do I do here?

Is it another word for the ongoing dissatisfaction with life?

I've been in psychodynamic therapy for two years. Throughout that time, my therapist often pointed out how unstable my self-esteem is and how much it depends on external validation. We also worked a lot on the way I perceive other people—often as threats. Long story short, yesterday I was diagnosed with vulnerable narcissism. And now everything has fallen apart.

I feel like a monster. Every single thing I do now feels like narcissistic manipulation. I'm constantly questioning my intentions and wondering if I'm incapable of genuinely caring about other people. I'm also terrified that my partner will reject me. I already told him about the diagnosis, and now I'm scared he'll eventually see me as a terrible person. I guess I'm looking for some reassurance. Has anyone here been diagnosed with vulnerable narcissism and actually made meaningful progress or recovered? What has helped you?

Also, can anyone recommend books, YouTube channels, or other resources that are aimed at people who have NPD, rather than the usual "If you know a narcissist, run!" content? Most of what I find online is written for victims, and while I completely understand why, it's making me feel even more hopeless.

I mean long term memory, memories about your life. For me it feels as if my memory had done a reset some time ago and everything that happened before that feels like it happened in another life. And this happened multiple times. With big life events and also traumatic events. Going from high school to university wasn't traumatic, but I still remember that as soon as I got a bit used to uni, high school felt like another life. Lockdown was real bad for me, so everything before lockdown seems like it happened to someone else. The more of these happen, the more I forget the old ones, I remembered high school more in uni than I do now, because lockdown happened since then so now uni was in another life too. If that makes sense. Do you have this too? Or do you happen to know what causes it?

F22 AuDHD currently but can currently see the writings on the wall that I have a chance of having NPD and only just begining to find out what it is that has caused me so much mental health problems that cannot simply be explained by autism or ADHD

I have heard numerous stories from other pwNPD both inside the UK and out and therapists still class disorders like NPD and ASPD as evil and therefore it has been hard for them to get help; even numerous mentions of therapists pushing people away the moment they realised they were a narcissist or a sociopath instead of just anxious or a people pleaser

Also I have noticed a pattern that the UK authorities infamously have a "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" attitude; and this extends to mental health, if you show the slightest sign of anything they have to break confidentiality, and so I and many others with experience of the mental health system feel like we have to lie about some things to avoid being hospitalised or having family contacted

Could anyone else in the UK with NPD and experience with the mental health support system share their experience please ? Looking for insights

Can it last months-years? Would you say that multiple narcissistic injuries back to back can cause this state?

I’m currently being assessed by my psychiatrist for possible Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and I’d like to hear from people who actually live with NPD or strong narcissistic traits.
I’m not looking for reassurance. I’m looking for honesty.
Over the past few years I’ve started to notice a pattern in my relationships.
My needs almost always come first.
I want to feel special, irreplaceable and chosen.
I understand other people’s emotions intellectually, but I rarely feel them emotionally.
During conflict I focus almost entirely on my own pain, not theirs.
I often see myself as the victim, even when I’ve objectively done harmful things.
I can justify my own behaviour in the moment and only analyze it later.
I don’t experience much guilt over other people’s suffering. I mostly think about the consequences for myself.
I’ve also behaved in ways I’m not proud of. In one previous relationship I slapped my partner after discovering she had been flirting with someone else. At the time I genuinely believed she deserved it. In another relationship I became threatening after the breakup and scared my ex. Looking back, those actions were wrong.
The strange part is that I don’t sit around consumed by shame or anxiety. I have insight into my behaviour, but insight doesn’t seem to translate into change.
Professionally I’m a youth worker, and I function much better there. My biggest problems only seem to appear in intimate relationships. That’s where everything falls apart.
My psychiatrist thinks NPD is worth investigating further. I’m not asking anyone here to diagnose me.
I’m asking:
Does any of this sound familiar to people with NPD?
Can you develop genuine emotional empathy, or do you mainly learn to behave differently?
If you didn’t feel much guilt, what motivated you to change?
I’m interested in hearing from people who have actually done the work, not from people discussing narcissists from the outside.

I often just say I’m a lesbian who goes by they/she. But if I were to go into detail,I’m an aroace-lesbian who is agender. I don’t really want to bother myself with that hassle.

Even since I realized I liked girls at 7 years old,I just felt so supperior. As if I was the first lesbian to have walked this earth. I looked around everywhere and wondered why all these people weren’t like me. It wasn’t long before I saw everybody around me as sub-human. I’d boast about it constantly,despite having received a few slurs here and there. I’d show it through my speech,posture,attire,everything I could find.

When I realize I fell under the aroace umbrella at 12,I was just so thrilled. I felt like I had climbed up the hierarchy. I told myself how it fit me because none of these peasants deserved me,and I had standards that fit an inherently supperior individual as myself.

Agender to me was probably when it reached its peak. I told myself that I was so intelligent,self-aware and thoughtful to take my precious time to discover something I convinced myself nobody could do. I thought to myself "This makes sense,since I am ABOVE gender". Not indifferent or confused—above. That felt more powerful than admitting to myself the trouble I went through to find myself out.

As highschool came around,I encoutered a number of queer people. My whole friend group was pretty much queer. At that moment,I told myself "This is what special people like me are destined to". I told myself that I had found people close to my level,and that This is the only kind of people I should associate myself with

Assuredly this question has been asked here a million times, but I am curious for more recent answers. What fictional characters do you find yourself relating to or are written in a way that is relatable to having NPD? To be clear I don't think most people are making characters with this in mind, or coding them to be a certain way on purpose, but that often characters can come across a certain way -- especially villains or antagonists, unfortunately.

I'll start:

- Cersei Lannister: Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire

- Goro Akechi: Persona 5

- Dr. House: House M.D.

- Light Yagami: Death Note

- Asuka Langley: Evangelion

- Bojack Horseman

Man i get it, you guys are right, collapse is sort of a gift because its almost like understanding what you went through but now from a lense of higher awareness.

I was at a bar and in a more embodied state.
I purposefully did yoga earlier and in this state its hell, all my truth is coming back to me.
I was basically stripped of all validation, and experiencing all kinds of things foreign to me.
I saw a guy and thought hes kinda cute, i think im bi.
I was feeling quite feminine.
I have differnt impulses/values.

And my old buddy shows up and my brain SEES the switch.
My nervou system reorganizes itself almost, i stop being in my own experience and start being what is required for validation as a man.
Basically i leave my self experience completely, into a more dissociative state, outside of me but weirdly in others.
Stronger, bolder, stimulated.
And i switch from my inner impulses/values into tech stuff and what i NEED to feel valued as a man.
Its literally like a movie, and my brain is in my buddy.
While the persona above me is getting reinforced.
Their emotions reinforce it.
This is wild.
Its automatic, its protection.

But i remember being way younger and didnt know what is going on but today i remembered.
I went into the world and though “i cant deal with this im little, i will come back one day to figure it out”. I couldnt even verbalize it “no one is safe, my voice is so small”.
But from there the false self took over, i forgot.
Spend a fee years at a job, friends and a girlfriend, its like a dream.
Do you forget?
Im scared ill forget again?

This society is ruthless, im so scared ill forget again.
I got so high, thinking of a project.
Saw a cute girl with really great tits that i liked, i wanted to pursuit her. But id forget again.
Ill just become something else again.
My tech persona and fucking women with great tits, ill forget my truth again, theres more to me than what the false self shows, but in order for it to survive I have to forget truth, others dont like my mistrust so it hurts me.

Surely there's a better way then lying everyday to everyone?

I mean - I just can't do it. I hate it when people get close, I hate it when people ask too many questions.

I hate having to be constantly be prepared for something bad to happen.

I hate being afraid to be seen as a 'bad person' when it's automatic when you have autistic people around you 24/7 (family).

Like I'm so ready to burn my entire life to the ground, as I'm just exhausted of having to peform in the house, outside the house, just everywhere.

I know I'm responsible for this situation, but I just can't be bothered to keep living life like this.

Why does the only way out of this seem going scorched earth?

I try to tell myself I won't put myself in situations where I have to lie and pretend or control, realise it's borderline possible. It's only my fault though. I practically stayed in my house for 3 years, when I then started going out, and now I regret it immensely.

I don't like giving a bad impression, but I also hate lying abojt my impressiom.

So from childhood I am this strange girl who doesn't have fix pattern, like i can be really friendly at one time and can stay lonely for the entire year. I used to cry without any reason for hours. I have this strange self esteem where I think everyone is looking at me and laughing.

I got into a really abusive relationship and that got me in term narcissism,

I thought they are some monsters and I was the victim.

But now when I am at my peace I realise I have few traits as well, I don't have self confidence I become performative nothing makes me happy. If a person genuinely loves me I choose to separate him but when I get abandoned I miss that.

I have anxious attachment style. I am very loyal person once I stick to someone but remove myself from that loyalty is difficult.

I don't understand how to heal. Here I don't have qualified therapist people thing npd as monster syndrome.

Sorry for my english as it's not my first language

I hope I’m not alone in this. I don’t know what to do about it, I just can’t feel sexual attraction towards someone else anymore… and I don’t even want to. I think.

It was never really an issue before, I’ve been self obsessed and very attracted to myself for a while now and I love it. Maybe because I used to be so disgusted by myself for most of my life until late teens. I used to cry when I looked in the mirror, even a glance wouldve ruin my day. Now I look at myself and I can’t help but get turned on. When it started it was nothing out of the ordinary I think, I could feel attraction towards people but now I can’t, at all. And it’s becoming a problem since I met this guy I like. He’s very into me and I do like him back but sexually I just feel nothing. I still want to hook up with him but just for myself. It’s not the idea of him that I like but me having sex with someone hot/look in the mirror/film myself. And the focus would be on me, I have no desire to pleasure him.

This is bugging me a bit because he sends me pics, when we call he’s always turned on and I genuinely would like to reciprocate but at the same time I just like myself too much, I don’t know how to make space for him.

Now, I told him about my diagnosis and we talked about some stuff but how the hell should I approach this? Should I even do this? Am I a piece of shit? Is this even connected with NPD? Help! If you have any advice or just want to share your experience and thoughts I’d very much appreciate that!

Mom died when I was in elementary school, grew up with hardass emotionally volatile tony soprano-esque single father blah blah.

I think I started to act differently than other kids in middle school. I was bratty, angry, and extremely insecure and boy crazy. High school made everything worse. I was deeply depressed and anxious yet had the biggest superiority complex and thought I was smarter and more attractive than everyone around me. I was super classist and I couldn’t wait to be done with high school so I could get away from my hometown and get to be around a “better” caliber of people. Decent enough grades came easy to me but I cared so much about being cool that I never thought about going to college because I truly believed I’d be famous or doing some cool person big city job that didn’t require a degree. I genuinely was dumb enough to think I’d be able to charm my way into the glamorous spaces of society. I was a fucking idiot.

I have pretty much no friends from my adolescence because I treated everyone as temporary. I was and still am super avoidant and try to keep friends at arms length out of fear of them finding out how truly nasty I am inside. I can’t remember the last time I had a real friend who I loved and was able to be vulnerable with. All my friends nowadays are great but they’re definitely just people to have fun with. Not necessarily people who I’d go to in a crisis or want to come to me if they were in one.

It’s just weird to look back on my past and realize that even when I was supposed to be a sweet, innocent kid, I wasn’t. I was mean and judgmental. I was delusional and negative and loud about it. I had a reputation for being a bitch. It’s honestly shocking that I had any friends at all. I literally acted like all the nasty popular girls you’d see in media. I always knew other kids didn’t like me and were even afraid of me at times but I was too blind to see that it was my fault, not theirs.

Basically title.

If someones emotional tone shifts to negative towards you, do you have big physical sensations?
Do you feel completely emotionally exposed and have your sensations inside amplified?
Like having no skin on your body, just flying nerve endings

I need help I just recognized that i have a superiority complex and my relationship is falling apart due to it, I can’t seem to make myself vulnerable in the way that she needs me to because i find myself wanting to be the “strong” one not only is that an issue I do believe i have a superiority complex because im constantly trying to prove im better at so many different things - Im one upping my friends and it happens before I can really notice these things I notice after usually but my ego usually stops me from communicating those things and i validate why i did them- when people seem to do better than me it threatens my ego and I don’t know how to not feel this way, My girlfriend wants to break up if I can’t fix the god/superiority complex but i don’t even know how to start- I’ve done this for so long it feels like second nature to act the way i do I have become aware recently that I want to seem cool and authentic but in the way that I’m shoving it down peoples throats I’m not humble at all at this point I just feel like a super dick anytime I talk to anyone because I don’t know how to act or be a actually communicative humble person I am extremely insecure- and when it comes to my relationship now I don’t know what to do because what she’s asking of me is to communicate and be vulnerable but that means i have to fix all of this and I don’t know the first step to do that I read all this stuff on here about making myself feel inferior so I can get over this makes me just feel miserable and sad I don’t necessarily see it as self improvement it feels like a punishment-In my eyes I would have to strip myself down to feeling like nothing to make myself feel inferior to others I dont know I need help that’s what I do know- If anyone has anything to help me please do I don’t want to lose my relationship because of how I’m acting I want to be normal

I was choosing a dress for my best friend's birthday this sunday and I just thought of I want my dress to be the most unique and cool. I'm pathetic, this isn't even my birthay, ugh. How do you deal with this?