Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter
I hear frequently from readers who fear they are the narcissist and the one with the personality disorder.
My answer?
“Absolutely not!”
This distorted thinking is a consequence of prolonged abuse that started in childhood and its traumatic impacts on your beliefs, self-worth, self-assurance, gauges of reasoning, and your abilities to trust and regulate your emotions. It also is a consequence of not clearly understanding the differences between being narcissistic which is a normal and adaptive characteristic and being pathologically narcissistic that is personality disorder that has no cure.
The fact that you would even be concerned about this, demonstrates that your emotional capabilities although skewed, are intact.
Prolonged narcissistic abuse is slick invalidation from emotional vampires – carefully planned and premeditated efforts to stealthily through covert aggressive combat maneuvers, take everything valuable that you have to offer (your love, trust, compassion, beauty, generosity, child-bearing abilities, finances, or whatever) that they can manipulate from you to provide an illusion of grandeur and greatness to the world without any of the work.
When we do, we give up our power and energy that per our divine design at conception, were intended to be used by and for us to nurture our souls and become the best versions of ourselves as we search for internal truth – truth that we choose to share with others in relationships of mutual respect.
So, “no” you are not a narcissist. You, however, are a wounded victim of one or more who steal energy from you they cannot generate on their own. And perhaps you picked up some of their bad behaviors that will pass once you are away from them.
The good news is that you can fix your skewed thinking and heal and as you do, so will your children and you will thrive. You will make memories and people will love you just for being you. You will release the pain that made you vulnerable to them in the first place and become a stronger more self-assured version of yourself.
You will take your power back and thrive. I explore these topics in much more depth in my book, Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips, and Tools for Abuse Survivors.
Narcissists will be forever evil and when they are done and gone, the only person anyone will miss is the one they will never be.
Read more below on the topic from one of my favorite Facebook Pages of “Truth,” “Sanctuary for Awareness and Recovery:”
Sanctuary For Awareness And Recovery
Paradox with several Personality Disorders and mental illnesses: since the ego and perception are both affected, it is common for those with some personality disorders and mental illnesses with narcissistic traits to actually perceive those they are treating poorly as the ones who are narcissistic, because of their reactions to their behavior, or because they have healthy confidence and boundaries. The root cause is usually a lack of boundaries, and a lack of respect or awareness for other people’s boundaries.
So the person who insults your teeth might call you “narcissistic” if you don’t just let them insult your teeth. Apparently you were supposed to agree with them or hang your head in shame, not stand up for yourself against a blatant insult. So therefore in their mind the insult was perfectly fine, it was your reaction to the insult that was “narcissistic.”
Another example of this may be when someone enters your home or room without knocking or without waiting for an answer when this has not been established as the “norm” for them in your home or room, in other words you have not told them to “don’t knock, just come in.” They’re already showing a lack of boundaries with this behavior, so one shouldn’t be surprised that they react very defensively and emotionally when asked not to do that.
Saying and doing things that display hostility, arrogance, coldness, aggression, superiority or hatred are blatant displays of poor or absent boundaries, so when such a person’s behavior is confronted, disagreed with, or disapproved of, (speaking in a respectful manner that is), they are most likely going to react defensively and perceive it as arrogance, control, or an attack, and if they have some level of narcissism they may rage.
Yourlifelifter 
Wow. I wrote this 4 years ago. How I’ve changed! I saw my narc for the last time in person about the time I wrote this. My narc was a LIAR from day one. All the nice things she did was to ensure she ‘won’ friends. Narcs are often hoarders and she hoarded MY friends. They are broken. They also CHOOSE to lie. Choose to cheat. Choose a lot. We are all broken in a sense. They can not heal. They can not change themselves. They will continue to wreck everyone around them, especially their relationships until the die. To do it over again, I’d not wasted a minute trying to understand or wait, fix or hope (of course I was in the dark, but I stayed far, far, far too long after the truth was revealed. Waste of my life to do so. Run away from these types. You can’t save or fix em. Life is too damn short for that crap.
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Reblogged this on Life, Health, Career Coaching.
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Appreciate your candor. We all wonder the same I believe. We all are narcissistic. We need to be and we cannot and should not be anything else than authentic and own it. The issue with being in unhealthy relationships with a narc or not is that they are triggering both party’s repressed pain rather than facilitating our healing and not supporting our authenticity and growth. When we are not emotionally nourished, we starve and become unhappy, unfulfilled, fatigued. So the challenge in healing is to become our authentic selves so the core to our being is joy-based, not pain based and to break the cycle of intergenerational abuse and yes, narcs can be codependents to narc..is called inverted narcissism. Then we can at least stand a chance of meeting someone whose truth aligns with ours. That is when the magic starts.
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I do wonder if a person can be Co-dependent and a Narc? I have heard the term “Co-dependent Narcissist”, I am not sure that is what I am speaking of. I am more wondering of the connections/ overlaps between being a CD vs a NP. Please forgive my musings. I am in “Narc Withdraw” right now. My NP wasn’t ‘textbook’, not cruel, but more passively, cowardly damaging (by withholding truth, etc). If they are broken, low-esteem covered by their braggardly deeds and hollow inside-doesn’t that make their actions (to keep us hooked) a bit co-dependent themselves? It can not just be that if we are asking the question we are not Narcs. Although, funny, my ex simply got mad when I posted NP articles on FB, but never, ever a “why would you think that of me?”.
I have seen some NP stuff and think of things I have done in my past and wonder if I am too. I think my Dad is/was a “Failed” NP”, as he was far too clingy to play “games”. My Dad was the middle child of a super controlling, highly intelligent & charming personality disordered person and a super co-dependent mom, (God rest her soul) and my Mom is the child of a abusive maleficent NP. Maybe some of my own shallow traits were simply “taught/learned/trickled down and not part of me? My overly critical nature, which I still turn inward as well, used to be so shallow-then I grew up and got over myself :).
I DO know that I was in a relationship for 13 years with someone I really didn’t respect OR love enough and when my NP..you know “The One I had been waiting for my whole life” came along, I left my marriage like a hot potato-and ultimately a world of hurt stuck everyone around it. It was wrong of me to be with my poor ex so many years and feel like that (we are repairing our friendship). In my defense, we had a child together and my ex loved me so, so, so very much that it made it kinda easy to stay. Still, it was not fair at all-I was a coward at the start when I should not have been.
I digress..I feel my NPs feeling were/are real, the love was real, but at the same time there was something I never could be (could anyone??) so the relationship, despite the connection and my sheer joy and happiness at my luck of finally finding my person-was and is functionally unsustainable in the end. And I guess that is the trick. Intrinsically broken people break lives including their own.
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