Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with narcissism

How can I help my Mom during her marriage crisis?

Anonymous — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:53:22 -0800

My 60 year old mom, married 40 years to a husband with NPD, is drinking and crying in the evenings, angrily lashing out, taking sleeping pills in order to sleep at night, and anguishing over whether she can leave her marriage. How can I help her? I think my mom has some borderline leanings, which makes her marriage with someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder particularly tough. Last year I found her a therapist so she would have some moral support in the face of constant belittling and criticism, and so she would have someone to help her decide what she wants to do (ie, stay or go). But after several months she stopped going, and is resisting my suggestions (urgings) that she see someone else. She's horribly depressed and angry (and I can't blame her, living with her husband is a gigantic mind-fuck on an hourly basis; I'm still dealing with my childhood stuff from him) and tonight, while visiting, it was evident that she'd been drinking, they'd been fighting, and while I talked with her and she cried, her affect became more and more blunt and incoherent. She had, it turned out, taken her sleeping pills 20 minutes before and they had just kicked in. She's not suicidal (never has been), but the episode disturbed me enormously. I should add that she's been on and off SSRIs for the past several years; I don't know about now.

So, I'm very worried about her, I care about her a lot, and I'm at a loss as how to help. For reasons I don't understand, she refuses to see her previous therapist, get a new one, or allow me to find her another. Marriage therapy is a nonstarter, as is therapy for her husband. I don't care if she chooses to stay married or not (both are upper middle-class retired professionals, financially they'll be ok, though a divorce might be nasty), I just want to help her if I can. What can I do?

How can I help?

How do I get out from under an abusive father?

Submiqent — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:24:20 -0800

How do I get out from under an abusive father? Story in short (hope it doesn't get too detailed):
My parents moved out from England to Australia 23 years ago and my older brother was born. They moved around Australia, I was born 4 years later (I'm 19, male) and my younger sister 2 years later.

My father has been an abusive narcissist his whole life and his father is almost definitely the same, my father grew up achieving a whole lot for his dad and he didn't really know why, he is now an executive for a resource company. My dad treats my immediate family & me the same way his father probably treated him, right up until the divorce. Things get ugly, I get seriously depressed and drop out of school (I was about 14?). Whole bunch of factors contribute to the divorce, mum becomes a depressive alcoholic, dad leaves. Problem solvered right?? mmm. Mum's drinking seriously destroys the home-life, us 3 kids suffer, I go through a whole bunch of therapy and attempt to and fail to achieve normal everyday stuff (education, jobs, ect). Up to this point, where I'm not sure which way is forward.

- I can continue to attempt jobs and continue to deal with my own abuse-spawned narcissism and father hatred that holds me back atm. (yes I have a psych)

- Or I can attempt to escape my father's emotional & real world control somehow (he has the money and is one hell of a good emotional manipulator, narcissism aside)

- Some third option? I know I will have to deal with my own self-defences that my father provokes in me, because I will never be happy with them still in place, let alone functional, but I don't know how to exist happily with my father.

On preview I realize I haven't described my father at all, because 90% of his inflicted damage is still unconscious, I used to hang off his every word and that sponge-like attitude is something I'm only just beginning to shake. Isolating his affect on me is incredibly difficult and I'm sure will become the topic of many psych sessions to come.

I don't know what to expect from AskMefi, but any kind of affirmation for a method forward would be awesome.

is there hope for someone who is highly narcissistic yet falls short of actually having narcissistic personality disorder?

violetk — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:36:49 -0800

you're so vain, you probably think this post is about you… several years ago i was in therapy and have since become convinced that my father most likely has narcissistic personality disorder. unsurprisingly, i have a history of being attracted to and dating emotionally unavailable men and now i am beginning to believe my last boyfriend exhibited a lot narcissistic traits—just not to the extreme of a full-blown case of NPD: neglect in childhood and uneven parenting; highly intelligent, subtly arrogant and falsely modest but secretly thinks very highly of himself, and has a need to feel superior to others; incredibly charming and affectionate but then can switch it off and become completely devoid of emotion, almost inhuman and quite emotionally cruel; self-delusional, contradictory of the truth, a preposterous liar, and unable to recognize his own flaws and mistakes; needs relationships in which he is the hero or at least ones which make him feel superior; constantly searching for an idealized love, unable to sustain relationships for more than several months and yet always needing to be in one, etc. believe me, he's got the signs, so i won't go into all the details because they're only incidental to my questions. i ended up befriending his ex before me and in comparing notes, she told me that when i told her about my relationship with him, she felt that she was reliving everything she felt when he broke up with her. she was a psych major in college and also suspects the same thing of him.

anyway, i'd like to know if anyone else out there has dated, married, friends with, or been with any whatever capacity someone who exhibits a high level of narcissistic traits or narcissistic style but not full-blown NPD. what was your experience like? did you stay with that person, wanted to, or did you still have to leave them to keep yourself healthy? while i know that there is really the lowest rate of success in fixing people with NPD because of the very nature of the disorder and that the best one could hope for would be for the narcissist to learn systems of behaviours, is there more hope for those who fall below the clinical diagnosis of that personality disorder but (far) above what is considered a normal and healthy amount of narcissism? can they be helped through therapy should they ever recognize that they indeed need help? or are they just as hopeless as someone who actually has NPD?

Is depression contagious?

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:27:15 -0800

My partner shows all the classic signs of depression, yet vehemenently declares that they are not depressed. It's wearing me out, and I think it is infectious. Spouse scored off the charts on an optimism/pessimism test. Can you point me to resources that address how to protect myself from any more life-draining behavior, and how to get help for my spouse? My partner went to see a therapist once and was given a copy of "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." And we are trying to read "Learned Optimism" together.

I feel like nothing I do can make them happy, and now a lot of resentment is building. Thanks for links to any useful books or resources.