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On occasion, Jay Spring feels he is “the most exceptional individual alive”. As a diagnosed narcissist, his periods of extreme self-importance frequently escalate into “really delusional”, he states. You’re riding high and you think, ‘The world will recognize that I’m better than them … I’ll do great things for the world’.”

For Spring, these episodes of self-aggrandisement are usually coming after a “sudden low”, a period when he feels deeply emotional and ashamed about his behavior, rendering him especially susceptible to negative feedback from others. He began to think he might have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) after researching his symptoms online – and was later diagnosed by a professional. However, he is skeptical he would have accepted the diagnosis unless he had independently formed that understanding by himself. “If you try to tell somebody that they have NPD, {they’ll probably deny it|denial is a common response|they’re likely to reject it,” he notes – especially if they experience a sense of being better. “They’re in a delusional world that they’ve constructed. And that world is like, I’m the greatest and {nobody can question me|no one should doubt me|my authority is absolute.”

Clarifying NPD

Though people have been identified with narcissism for over 100 years, the meaning can be ambiguous what the term implies the label. It’s common to label everybody a narcissist,” explains a psychology professor, who believes the word is “applied too broadly” – but when it comes to a professional assessment, he suggests many people keep it private, due to so much stigma around the condition. An individual diagnosed will tend to have “a heightened sense of self”, “a lack of empathy”, and “a strategy of using people to enhance their social status through actions such as pursuing power,” the professor explains. Those with NPD may be “extremely narcissistic”, 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 adds.

I never truly valued about anyone really, so I’ve never taken relationships seriously

Variations by Gender in The Disorder

While a significant majority of people found to have NPD are males, studies indicates this number does not mean there are fewer narcissistic women, but that women with NPD is frequently manifests in the vulnerable narcissism type, which is under-identified. “Men’s narcissism tends to be somewhat tolerated, just kind of like everything in society,” notes a 23-year-old who posts about her dual diagnosis on social media. Frequently, the two disorders co-occur.

Individual Challenges

“I really struggle with receiving negative comments and being turned down,” she explains, “because if I hear that I am at fault, I either go into self-protection or I become unresponsive.” Even with this response – which is often called “ego wounding”, she has been trying to overcome it and accept input from her close relationships, as she aims to avoid falling into the harmful behaviour of her past. “I was very emotionally abusive to my partners during adolescence,” she reveals. With professional help, she has been able to reduce her narcissistic traits, and she notes she and her current boyfriend “have a dynamic where I told him, ‘Should I make a harmful comment, if my words are controlling, call it out {right then and there|immediately|in the moment’.”

She grew up primarily in the care of her father and explains there was an absence of supportive figures in her youth. I’ve had to teach myself all this time the difference between suitable or harmful to say during a fight because I lacked that guidance growing up,” she says. Every insult was fair game when my family members were criticizing me in my early years.”

Underlying Factors of The Condition

Conditions like NPD tend to be connected with early life adversity. Genetics play a role,” says a mental health specialist. But, when someone exhibits NPD characteristics, it is often “linked to that person’s unique upbringing”. Those traits were “a coping mechanism in some ways to cope in formative years”, he continues, when they may have been neglected, or only shown love that was conditional on meeting certain expectations. They then “continue to use those same mechanisms as adults”.

Similar to other of the individuals with NPD, John (a pseudonym) thinks his parents “may be narcissists themselves”. The individual says when he was a child, “their needs came first and their work and their social life. So it was like, keep your distance.” When their they engaged with him, it came in the form of “significant demands to achieve academic success and career success, he recalls, which made him feel that if he didn’t fulfill their expectations, he wasn’t “acceptable.

As he grew older, none of his relationships ever worked out. “I’ve never cared about anyone really,” he says. Therefore, I never treated relationships seriously.” He believed he wasn’t loving someone, until he met his present significant other of three years, who is diagnosed with BPD, so, like him, finds it hard to manage mood stability. She is “really understanding of the internal struggles in my head”, he says – it was surprisingly, she who initially thought he might have NPD.

Accessing Support

Following an appointment to his GP, he was directed to a therapist for an assessment and was told his diagnosis. He has been recommended for talking therapy through national services (ongoing counseling is the primary approach that has been proven effective NPD patients, experts say), but has been on the treatment delay for an extended period: “They said it is expected around early next year.”

Disclosure was limited to a small circle about his condition, because “prejudice is common that all narcissists are abusers”, but, in his own mind, he has accepted it. This understanding allows me to understand myself better, which is always a good thing,” he comments. Each individual have accepted their narcissism and are pursuing treatment for it – leading them to be open to talk about it – which is probably not representative of all people with the disorder. But the growth of online advocates and the rise of virtual networks point to {more narcissists|a growing number