Narcissistic personality disorder anyone?

• Tweet
• Email

In studying emotional and mental health I have recently been learning about NPD.

I was briefly involved in a business with someone on the extreme end of this disease so I have always been interested in it ever since. Because NPD is so destructive there has been much research undertaken on it and the results are scary and fascinating.

You’ll know it if you’ve interacted with a narcissist in business. They are charming and ruthless, totally without ethics or morals, using people like things, sexually preverted and usually collecting women and toys which they love to display to the world.

What is not so well known is that these people are totally oblivious to what they are doing.  It’s like their consciences and morals have been surgically removed.  This makes it very easy to identify them but very hard to understand or empathise with.  You see they have no idea they are using people, they are just doing what they do.  They genuinely believe that they are honest, trustworthy and doing the very best for others that they can, when in fact the opposite is true.

Narcissism has its roots in early childhood.  Generally at around 3 years old we are meant ot be discovering that we are both magnificent and limited.

Our mothers tell us how limited we are by protecting us and our fathers teach us to be magnificent by getting us to try new things and expand.  Bad parenting results in some of us learning how magnificent we are but never realising that we are limited. And this the roots of NPD are sown.

The sad thing about NPD is that it is so difficult to heal. Narcissists are basically stunted little children inside an adults body.  My trainer described them as “no one being home”, and subsequently reaching inside their magnificent fantasy to try and minister to the hurt child is very difficult.

The other thing he said was to issue a stern warning to any new counsellors to keep as far away as possible from NPD sufferers.  Their illnes creates havoc in a counselling relationship because they are so clever, manipulative and moral less that they will destroy any well meaning but ill equipped person trying to help them.  I could relate to this through my own experience with a classic NPD sufferer.  It took me years to unentangle myself and nearly cost me everything. And I had only entered into the relationship to try and help them.

We all are somewhere on a range between sane and crazy so I don’t ever judge people for being ill, however it is good to keep in the back of our minds that some people are dangerous even though they don’t appear so and if we see certain tell tale signs of severe illness, sometimes running is the best course of action.

Of course we can’t run from ourselves adn that’s why we are looking at how to deal with our own stuff. More on that tomorrow!!

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.tv