Avoidant personality disorder vs (covert) narcissist accusations
Hey all,
Recently I've had a really dark period from (ab)using drugs to hide from the pain and feel good about myself. Friends noticed me becoming distant and needlessly shouting into the (social media) void.
One friend wrote me a long message about all these things and his conclusion was that he thought I might be a narcissist. I broke down entirely, the following days were a roller coaster ride of trying to deal with it with high and lows, talking to friends if they also noticed these things but ultimately I couldn't shake the feeling that I had to give in to my friend's accusation to mend our now wounded relationship. People pleasing is in my nature and putting others in front of my own needs is what I deal with and I cope with low self-esteem.
My therapists all said that the accusations is not something they can see myself in but regardless of this I ended up having a suicide attempt. I saw myself as a bad person and that feeling became over-encumbering.
I'm better now, and I feel closer to friends and family after some much needed talks and quitting drugs altogether.
That said, what are your takes on the overlapping diagnoses. It made myself very paranoid and made me spiral at a low point.
Hey, I hope you are continuing doing better but I think you should listen to your therapist.
Diagnosing people as a narcissist is an internet passtime and not only can none of us say whether that label might apply to you (by itself it's not a diagnosis) but we as a group also aren't going to be able to properly contextualize that from the pop culture understanding. Plus substance use disorder absolutely is going to confound analysis of your symptoms and I'm happy you're doing better there too.
Personality disorders are complicated and all but I'm going to challenge you why you're seeking random, non-expert advice when your expert who knows you doesn't see the concern. I don't do diagnostic or clinical work but I have my degree in counseling and I'm aware enough to say this is well out of the Tildes skill set.
If you're not trusting your therapist's opinion, I encourage you to think about why and go back to that therapist, or a new one if needed. But you know better than I will how your current dx affects you and if this is part of that internalized self-doubt. I don't think it would be healthy for us to potentially trigger another spiral for you.
No matter what the labels are, it can be incredibly hurtful to be judged by our friends. It sounds like you're not in a good place right now, and although you mentioned being better "now", it's probably too fresh to be diving into things like diagnoses with objectivity or proper self protection.
Mostly basically what others have said already, but wanted to also chime in with a bit of support.
Be gentle with yourself, which includes allowing time to heal and to accept that even if we're not all healed up yet and we're still banged up and covered in wounds, we are still lovely and loveable and it's okay to not yet be well for now. That even if we're not the best we could be yet, the love we have for ourselves is still worth taking in and holding on to. Approval from ourselves is okay: it gives us a basis to love others from, so that when we say "I love you" to another person, it's from one full and worthwhile person to another full and worthwhile person. Take care~
First, I'm so sorry to hear that you're going through this. Getting professional help and having the support of family and friends are great steps. I hope that you're able to continue on the path to healing and that you never feel that low again.
That said, I'm not sure how much good can come from this thread.
Most of us on Tildes are not mental health professionals, and while this place is safer than others from people falsely claiming to be, it's still not a good idea to put any stock or trust in the opinions of people whose credentials you can't verify.
Generally, I don't think it's too much of a problem for well meaning amateurs and graduates of Wikipedia university to speculate about mental health in the abstract. It can still help broaden our understanding of the topics and of one another. But this is not in the abstract. These are diagnoses that are directly pertaining to your current mental state (whether you have them or were only anxious about having them) and your mental state is vulnerable right now. Even if someone admits that they have no credentials, and speculates in a way that feels harmless to them, it could still hurt you. I'm a little nervous just about this comment.
I think this conversation could be dangerous for you, and now is not a good time to have it, if ever.
Hey friend,
Recovering drug addict here. Seven or so years clean from heroin and other opiates.
Before I used, I was a wounded animal who was usually in a kind of fight or flight mode. I acted pretty selfishly because I was hurting and scared a lot of the time. Learned plenty of manipulation tactics from my mom too.
When I was using, I was mentally ill. I acted like a true piece of shit. If I wasn't using drugs, I would have qualified for most mental illnesses and personality disorders you can name.
When it all came to a head and I stopped using drugs, I finally grew as a person because I had no choice. But really, it wasn't just growth. A lot of what I did was work on scraping the shit away and seeing what was underneath it all. There were these good qualities I had always possessed but hadn't been able to fully realize for various reasons, most of them not entirely my fault. I was a kid when the shit got shoveled on me. I didn't know any better and I developed maladaptive behaviors in order to protect myself.
My point is this: if drugs and trauma are involved, now isn't really a good time to make any sweeping statements about who you are. You can and should do some digging into who you've been and why. But more than that you should focus on who you can be and who you want to be.
I don't think I was able to accurately assess much until I had been clean and sober for at least two or three years. It was mostly a waste of my time to dwell on all that stuff back then. I look back now and realize I had a pretty decent and caring person underneath all those issues I had. And I realize a lot of my behavior wasn't exactly my fault (even though it was and is my responsibility).
My advice is to calm down. Put all of your energy into avoiding drama and high intensity situations. Get to a place in your life where your only focus is all of those corny simple things that you always heard people talking about when they talk about happiness. Focus on eating right, sleeping on a normal schedule, finding a job you love, having healthy and easy relationships that don't require work or drama, and participating in hobbies that make you happy.
From now on, every time you find yourself feeling overly emotional or involved in some kind of conflict, you're doing something wrong. It has to be that way for a while so you can sort yourself out and get to know yourself. You're going to need to become comfortable with drawing boundaries and only doing things you want to do.
Best of luck. When you come out the other side of this, it'll be the best thing that ever happened to you.
Almost all of the things you're worried about right now will seem silly when you get to a good place. It will feel like a distant memory and you'll know you've made it when you finally feel like a real adult who handles obstacles in a calm and logical manner.
Thank you for your personal story. It means a lot. I haven't had a lot of drama in life luckily but I do worry a lot and will be anxious about doing the wrong things which causes a lot of stress.
Abusing drugs, attempting suicide, having a friend call you a narcissist, and then agonizing over it - this is all drama.
That type of stuff used to happen in my life. I didn't realize how "not normal" all of it was until years into my normal, healthier life.
You will look back and see what I mean. I hope this doesn't come off as rude or insensitive. What you're going through is real and valid. But aim to get to a place where it doesn't seem normal to you anymore. I was a former crazy person, so I feel comfortable saying this: get the crazy out of your life and keep it simple.
Best wishes and internet hugs.
Ohh, yea. It's weird how I only focused on the person I usually am and want to be rather than looking at the past year.
Internet hugs <3
I’m speaking as someone who has dated a few people diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Invariably, in my experience, people with NPD are exceptionally self-aware. They understand their relationship to others, and continuously balance and rebalance varying possibilities against their actual behavior. They swallow a lot of themselves, by which I mean they have been taught by society, family, friends, educators, that they have a responsibility to put others first at their own expense. It can be extremely hard for people with NPD to open their needs to others, even when they absolutely need to. They generally have very low self worth, which they seek to ameliorate by being “better,” and therefore worthy of love and friendship.
I would really recommend you look at the criteria for NPD. My layman’s understanding is that it is currently thought to stem from early childhood trauma. It results in a personality of a person who has learned they cannot rely on others: they must be better than everyone else, they must be smarter, more capable than others because they can only rely on themselves. They must make themselves into someone worthwhile.
The thing I would emphasize here is to remember that whatever diagnosis you end up with or not, there isn’t a single diagnosis available to modern science that says “bad person.” No one would say someone with (C)PTSD is a bad person because they were traumatized: of course not. It’s offensive to even suggest. And yet NPD, BPD, so many others are just as much a result of trauma.
Additionally, in my experience, people who seek drugs are doing so because they have no other way of escaping the suffering of their lives. I would encourage you to examine why this happened, and see if you can’t find some other way out.
Look, I don’t know you. I don’t know your situation. But please be gentle with yourself in your recovery from addiction, and in possibly perusing a diagnosis. Any diagnosis is meant to be descriptive of what you’ve gone through and the impact it’s had on your person, not prescriptive to say you are a bad person.
The wide gap between what the internet refers to as a "narcissist" and the actual presentation of NPD frustrates me to no end. But ig that's inevitable when places like reddit use "narcissist" as though it basically means "abusive".
That said, I do think OP should listen to their therapist(s) rather than reading the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder and seeing how it resonates. Personality disorders are very difficult to differentially diagnose even for professionals, and based on the title it seems like OP may already have been diagnosed with another personality disorder, which makes any assessment for another personality disorder that much harder.
Bingo. The clinical standards of personality disorders don't easily align with the commonly understood definitions. It is true that no diagnosis makes one a bad person. I don't even believe in "bad people" as a general rule (yeah ok sure there are outliers, I don't need Godwin's law invoked).
But especially a therapist already working with you, especially a therapist already experienced with personality disorder dx, that's who you should listen to, unless you're needing to change therapists anyway for any number of reasons and then you should listen to your new therapist.
I think wild speculation will just risk throwing OP out of their hard earned mental health. And I doubt anyone here is a licensed professional who's also a specialist in personality disorders, specifically these two who could speak to the probability of overlapping dx... And if they were it'd be unethical to do any actual diagnosing. So.... OP should go back to their IRL support network on this one. But, OP, I want to say, I'm happy for all the positive work you've done. That isn't easy and I want you to know that's seen.
This is very fair and a good point. I hadn’t considered the possibility of another personality disorder, and you’re right that they overlap significantly. Thank you for the realignment!
This is, at least in part, a lesson I had to learn in my own personal journey - hopefully it helps a bit.
No human is "a narcissist". It is a label that people apply when someone's narcissistic tendencies start to cause problems for others. Those tendencies exist in all people, and they're usually balanced by a mature understanding of how one's actions affect others - empathy.
Now, on the opposite end of the spectrum is the "empath" - lightworkers and starseeds that are here to raise the collective vibration of the planet. Likewise, this is not a person. Generally it is a label that people will self-apply when they cannot reckon with or integrate their own shadow - the part of our self that protects us from harm.
The reason why I'm explaining it in this way is that, after someone made a similar accusation to me, I couldn't bring myself to say "no I'm not a narcissist" because that is exactly what a narcissist would say. People love to hurl their own unresolved shit around, and they end up targeting the people who don't want to throw it back - 'empaths' are a great target for that.
So, maybe instead of bending over backwards to accommodate that "friend" of yours who decided to push you down when you were drowning, recognize that what you actually need is the capacity to defend yourself from people like that. So just in case nobody has ever told you this: you're allowed to be narcissistic. You're allowed to be manipulative, avoidant, confident, and selfish. If someone hits you, you're allowed to hit back.
Pacificism, non-violence, and empathy is a choice. It's a good choice, but a choice nonetheless. Nobody is a good person, nobody is a bad person. We're all human beings who are constantly making good and bad decisions. Strive to be the best person you can, obviously! But don't take shit from people unless they're worth it.
And if I haven't hinted at it enough, that person who saw you self-destructing and chose to condemn you as a 'narcissist'... that is not a safe person, and I would reconsider their place in your life. People who are pathologically narcissistic will often project unhealthy aspects of themselves onto others.
I think you missed the point. I'm not speaking as someone who is unaware of the DSM-V and its diagnostic criteria, I'm speaking as someone who is aware of those criteria and their limitations.
I didn't deny that NPD exists, I'm saying that there's a big difference between saying someone is "a narcissist" and saying someone " is acting narcissisticly" or "has narcissistic tendencies". One is a criticism of identity, the other ones are criticisms of behaviour.
I've been having a lot of the same feelings and self doubt recently. My mom was probably borderline and/or narcissistic. I'm so afraid of becoming her. I don't want to be a mean and manipulative person like she was. But I also recognized I was raised by her and I always wonder/ am afraid that I'm going to be here.
Like you, all my therapists have said they don't see it in me.
The fact that you are so worried about being an unsafe person shows how much you care about your friends, family, and just people in general. I don't think a narcissist has those kinds of thoughts. You're a good person.
The silly thing with this very kind comment is that my brain has trouble accepting it as truth. So naturally my brain is inclined to believe I make everyone else out to be believe that I'm a good person while covering up the narcissistic traits. Though I really have a hard time believing I put myself over others, since my personality disorder says the complete opposite. I want to accommodate to make others feel great, and through that I might feel a sense of acceptance. This probably stems from a lack of being proud of myself and during my upbringing not having the acknowledgement of my achievements.
I don't believe I'm narcissistic. I just want my friend to be happy. Being vain is what people tend to be from time to time. Being selfish is what people do from time to time. These are normal states of being. And hurling around these fairly heavy labels can be harmful. So in this case I do believe my friend made a mistake, maybe through his willingness to help me out but not knowing how to.
I ended up doing a suicide attempt but I made it through and called for help.
I'm really glad you survived your attempt and you're still with us.
It sounds like you've worked through a lot of the guilt and that can be the hardest part. Therapy helped me a lot. I'm still quite the people pleaser, but I'm learning to take myself into consideration. I'm 40 so it's weird, but it's good.
Good luck on your journey, friend! I'm here if you ever need an understanding stranger to talk to.
Let me ask you something. Does it really matter whether or not you fit someone's description of "a narcissist" (however vague or unprofessional)? If yes, then what are you more precisely concerned about? Is it the fact that narcissists are known/said to be unable to change? I can see how that prospect could feel demoralising and intimidating, but I'm also quite confident when I say that you do not fit that bill. Yes, even without knowing you at all.
An irredeemably narcissistic person is someone who does not understand why their behaviour is hurtful for others. This lack of understanding + an inability to develop understanding is what makes someone unable to change. You seem acutely aware of your shortcomings and extremely keen to change for the better.
Let's face it: you probably do have some traits that pose a challenge to you and/or others around you. Again, I don't know anything about you, but for example: You might be overly impatient wrt your self development, feeling that you should be perfect already, which makes it hard to give yourself a chance to grow at a realistic rate. You might try to appear better or more accommodating than you are actually, which is emotionally very hard for you and disappointing for others whenever you fall short of the unrealistic image of yourself that results from this. You might not have full awareness of what you want, what makes you happy, and as a result you may be acting against your own best interest at times. This too can affect the people around you when they can't trust that you are on your own side and protecting your own well being.
We all have personality traits that are unbecoming and difficult, to a lesser or greater degree. I have them, you have them and every single friend of yours has them. All that really matters in the end is if we are willing to recognise ours, accept them and work on them.
In conclusion, would it help to reframe the "Am I a narcissist?" and rather ask "Am I irredeemable?" How would you evaluate this? Does one person's opinion make you irredeemable? No. If you have demonstrated any amount of growth in your life and you are motivated to grow further, you are not irredeemable. Ask yourself what things you will need, going forward, to enable your personal growth. Also, think of what things are hindering your growth at the moment. Perhaps a friend who thinks overly negatively of your potential isn't the best company for you right now?
You are allowed to put your needs first before others - in fact this is your obligation as a human being. I hope that you find a functional way to structure your everyday life and enough simple pleasures that you no longer feel the need to abuse substances or engage in other addictive behaviours like social media. If in that process you end up losing a friend or two, then you will gain better ones after you've reached a healthy balance. Or form better friendships with the same people. Whatever you do, do not pay too much attention or give too much of your time to someone who would armchair diagnose others rather than focus on his own personal growth.