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On occasion, Jay Spring is convinced he is “the most exceptional individual alive”. Living with narcissistic personality disorder, his grandiose moments can become “highly unrealistic”, he admits. You’re riding high and you think, ‘Everyone’s going to know that I’m better than them … I’ll do great things for the world’.”

For Spring, these phases of exaggerated self-worth are usually coming after a “emotional downturn”, during which he feels sensitive and self-conscious about his actions, rendering him especially susceptible to disapproval from others. He began to think he might have NPD after looking up his traits on the internet – and was later evaluated by a clinician. However, he questions he would have agreed with the assessment unless he had previously arrived at that conclusion on his own. “If you try to tell somebody that they have this disorder, {they’ll probably deny it|denial is a common response|they’re likely to reject it,” he notes – most notably if they harbor feelings of superiority. They operate in an altered state that they’ve constructed. And within that framework, No one compares to me and {nobody can question me|no one should doubt me|my authority is absolute.”

Clarifying The Condition

Though people have been labelled as narcissists for over 100 years, the meaning can be ambiguous what the term implies the label. It’s common to label everybody a narcissist,” says a psychology professor, noting the word is “applied too broadly” – but when it comes to a formal diagnosis, he believes many people conceal it, due to significant negative perception around the condition. An individual diagnosed will tend to have “an inflated view of oneself”, “a lack of empathy”, and “a pattern of manipulating others to enhance their social status through things like displaying material goods,” the expert clarifies. 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 emphasizes.

Emotional connections were never important about anyone really, so relationships weren’t a priority relationships seriously

Gender Differences in The Disorder

Though a significant majority of people identified as having NPD are men, findings points out this number does not mean there are fewer narcissistic women, but that women with NPD is frequently manifests in the less obvious variety, which is often overlooked. Male narcissism tends to be more socially permissible, as with everything in society,” notes a 23-year-old who shares content on her co-occurring conditions on digital platforms. It’s fairly common, the two disorders appear together.

First-Hand Experiences

It’s hard for me with dealing with feedback and rejection,” she shares, “because if I hear that the problem is me, I either go into self-protection or I withdraw entirely.” Although experiencing this reaction – which is often called “narcissistic injury”, she has been trying to overcome it and accept input from her support system, as she doesn’t want to slip into the harmful behaviour of her previous life. My past relationships were toxic to my partners in my youth,” she reveals. Via therapeutic interventions, she has been able to manage her condition better, and she notes she and her significant other “have a dynamic where I’ve instructed him, ‘When I speak manipulatively, if I say something manipulative, point it out {right then and there|immediately|in the moment’.”

Her childhood primarily in the care of her father and notes she didn’t have positive role models as a child. “I’ve been learning continuously which behaviors are suitable or harmful to say when arguing because I never had that growing up,” she shares. “Nothing was off-limits when my relatives were belittling me when I was growing up.”

Root Causes of NPD

These mental health issues tend to be connected with childhood challenges. “There is a genetic component,” explains a mental health specialist. But, when someone exhibits NPD characteristics, it is often “linked to that specific childhood circumstances”. Those traits were “a coping mechanism 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 particular demands. They then “continue to use those familiar tactics as adults”.

In common with many of the individuals with NPD, one individual thinks his parents “might exhibit similar traits. The individual explains when he was a child, “their needs came first and their work and their social life. So it was like, don’t bother us.” When their focus was on him, it came in the form of “significant demands to achieve high marks and career success, he recalls, which made him feel that if he didn’t meet their standards, he wasn’t “worthy.

As he grew older, none of his relationships were successful. I didn’t truly value about anyone really,” he states. Therefore, I never treated relationships seriously.” He didn’t think experiencing genuine affection, until he met his present significant other of three years, who is diagnosed with BPD, so, similar to his experience, struggles with emotional regulation. She is “highly empathetic of the thoughts that occur in my head”, he explains – it was actually she who first suspected he might have NPD.

Seeking Help

After a visit to his GP, an assessment was arranged to a mental health professional for an evaluation and was informed of his condition. He has been recommended for therapeutic sessions through national services (a long period of therapy is the only treatment that has been demonstrated to benefit NPD patients, experts say), but has been on the patient queue for 18 months: The estimate was it is likely to occur in a few months.”

Disclosure was limited to a small circle about his NPD diagnosis, because “negative perceptions are widespread that every person with NPD is harmful”, but, personally, he has come to terms with it. The awareness assists me to understand myself better, which is always a good thing,” he says. All of the people have come to terms with NPD and are looking for support for it – which is why they agree to talk about it – which is possibly not the norm of all people with the diagnosis. But the growth of NPD content creators and the development of digital groups suggest that {more narcissists|a growing number