u/littlegoldrose

For context, we are not estranged but we probably should be. I have thought about cutting contact with her many times because she physically, sexually, and emotionally abused me throughout my upbringing. She and my grandmother are the only family members I still talk to at all, because I've already cut off my father's side (he was abusive too). I moved halfway across the world to try to get away from her, but she is still so entwined with my life that we call every week, if not more often. They are not pleasant calls, but I keep doing it anyway because...I don't know. I'm attached, I feel indebted, I don't know how to stop, she's my only family, etc. I think that if I tell her I am a narcissist, it may finally push one or both of us to cut off the relationship.

She demonizes narcissism heavily, and when I was a kid she constantly told me I must not grow up to be a "malignant narcissist" "like my father." Maybe she would just cut me off completely if I told her. Honestly though, I think she would just be delighted to have another reason to think of me as flawed and easy to control. She would probably start taking advantage of it as a reason why she can say or do anything she wants with regard to me, and would coddle me about it, with the intention of regaining closeness. Even then, I think that might be the push that I need to cut her off, because I am not letting her invade my life over this.

But I don't know if that's really why I'm doing it, or if it's even a good reason if true. I think a part of me feels dishonest in keeping it from her, because I know that she would want to know. I feel so guilty and I'm avoiding calling with her because I just have this weight at the back of my mind the whole time, of knowing something she doesn't know. More than guilt, it's a matter of wishing I could tell her and that her reaction would be an unexpected acceptance. Not false acceptance for the sake of manipulating me, but genuine acceptance of who I am with a desire to know and to help me. That will never happen, but I don't know how to give up on it. She can be so nice at times, and I have so little family left. It's difficult to stop hoping. If I told her and saw her reaction, that would probably kill some of the hope. It would also contain some element of proving to her how badly she has hurt me, which she only ever half acknowledges, if she acknowledges it at all.

But, I could also just end the relationship without telling her anything about being narcissistic, which I have wanted to do for years and years (maybe, if I can convince myself to do it). Or, I could let things continue as they are and keep it to myself, which is what I do with most of my medical information these days.

What do you think I should do?

Kid, we need to talk about what’s happened in these past months, and about what I intend to do. I am going to live.

My friend says that we are all in relation with past generations. Their intentions and commitments are ours to fulfill. You, my past self, are in a relationship to me. I know you had instructions for what I should do to myself if we ever found out I'm a narcissist like dad. And I am not going to follow those instructions. So I need to apologize to you.

We’re not going to die, kid. I’m so sorry. I know you wanted to be absolutely sure that we won’t hurt anyone. I know you wanted to be good and to make sure we don’t disappoint mom, that we don’t live to be immoral. We’re already immoral in all the ways that don’t matter, and reasonably moral in most of the ways that do (as many as we’re gonna be, anyway). No one cares about our moral imperfection, except us. If you treat people well, they don’t care about the “monster” that lives inside. I know you care. But you only care about being immoral because you thought that being moral might make up for how much our existence affected mom and the things she suffered. She might love us permanently. And kid, she’s never going to love us. Not right, anyway. She loves us just exactly as much and in the way that she can. Not in the way that we had hoped. Not in a way that is predictable. There is no way to earn it. Her outbursts were always based on internal aspects of her own mind that we cannot control. She was wrong about what is required of us in life. Even when she told us what she wanted from us, she was confused. And beyond that, we can’t deliver. We can’t be perfect, kid. We aren’t and we can’t be. We can’t secure anyone’s love. We are alone and not alone. The people of the world are all around us, coming and going, none of them totally relevant to us. We are also not fully and wholly relevant to any of them. Ordinary relationships are not really secure either. We are walking in open country.

I’m sorry I didn’t keep my promise to you. I know you’re scared and you’re furious with me. But I’m not going to do anything to you, kid. I had one reason behind this decision at first. It was to be a self-sacrificial decision of forcing myself to just live on as a useful monster, wielded as a tool, hating myself and knowing I am bad within but living for the sake of others. For the sake of sparing someone similar to the people with NPD who I have loved, for the sake of not saying anyone deserves to die, and for the sake of not throwing away a warm body that might be of use to my friends. But that reasoning will not work. When we hate ourselves secretly, we get angry, and even when we only hurt ourselves, it still hurts others indirectly. The people who witness our thrashing around and our actions against ourselves and our vitriol are shocked and horrified. We are not perfect enough to restrain that thrashing with infinite patience. It is impossible. We have tried enough times. It’s not possible.

No, I’m going to continue because the alternative just simply doesn’t help anything. It doesn’t harm people any less than our continued existence does, and just as importantly, it doesn’t give us the experience of being good. Even if it somehow makes us "good" to be gone, we won’t be around to enjoy it. So if it’s no good for us and no good for anybody else, there’s just no point. We can’t get out, kid. I’m sorry. I don’t see the escape from these hellish feelings yet. I’m thinking about it. I’m working on it. I want to try to do it by living well.

Okay so, I’ve been busy doing a lot of thinking and talking to people since realizing that I may have narcissism. It looks like I do not meet five of the DSM criteria, which is the number needed for a diagnosis, but I do have some traits. Pretty much everyone can agree on that. I tried to create sort of sequential map of the traits and thought patterns that I need to work on.

• Martyr/savior complex. This is basically the most significant feature of my life and is a part of everything I care about. I truly only feel good about myself when when helping people. I try to “help” even when they don’t need it, because when I am helping, I hate myself less for five seconds. This is caused by…
• ...feeling inherently evil. Like, not actually thinking that I do bad things, but rather thinking that I am bad in the way that spoiled milk is bad. It’s not any good. "Throw this one out." Etc. And that is probably caused by…
• ...feeling that my birth is responsible for ruining my mother’s life. My birth was the reason she dropped out of college, stopped working, and stayed in an abusive situation that led to her being assaulted for years. She actively blamed me for it, told me she wished she had aborted me, and abused me mentally, physically, sexually, and financially throughout my youth. Her life is still in shambles. She is homeless and has given up on doing anything to better her life. Yes, other people are responsible for hurting her, and she is also responsible for her own choices, but I am the object which was used to keep her in self-destructive places. She is still using me as the reason she can’t live a life of her own and move on, even though I live in a completely different country and barely talk to her. I don’t like the object that was used to ruin my mother. Therefore, I don’t like myself. And I feel that I have to atone for the fact that I exist. Which leads to…
• ...feeling like I have to be exceptionally, perfectly good in the moral sense, with very high stakes. That includes feeling guilty for having needs/not being fully independent. I have to bear all things on my own. I have to save the literal world and if I make a moral mistake, it’s the end of the world. I act like there will be huge consequences, when in fact, no one cares. I am not the spark of the revolution and I am not the reason other people live or die. Most of the time, there is nothing urgent to do. But I invent problems and insert myself into people’s business and overwork myself in the effort to make up for the radioactive chunk of uranium that I perceive to be the core of my inherent existence. I fail, inevitably. This leads to...
• ...repressed anger that comes out as rage towards myself in a last-ditch effort to atone for existing through self-destructive behavior. In this state, I do things that Reddit doesn’t like for me to talk about. (Got put on a three day ban for talking too explicitly about...things I would like to do to myself, so I will not do that anymore.) It does actually affect other people. It is probably pretty horrifying to witness even if it is all directed at myself.
• The whole system of thoughts listed above serves as a form of escape from real life. Instead of addressing my actual day-to-day existence, I fixate on the inherent “wrongness” that I was born with. I use it as a way to generate artificial meaning in my life and to make small things take on huge importance, so that I don’t have to focus on the real things that have actual meaning. As long as I am worried about atoning for my life by becoming perfect, I don’t have to actually live. I don’t have to focus on figuring out what I want, facing the possibility of being disappointed, forming relationships and communities with depth, and so on.

I will make a separate post about the way that I am tackling this. I just wanted to have a place to put these thoughts, and also thought it might be useful to see how I have mapped them out in case anyone wants to try doing the same thing. This has been hugely helpful for me.

Also, if anyone is curious, this is how it looked in the test that I did most recently (but I do so many of these tests over and over again that honestly, it changes every time so...take it with a grain of salt).

https://preview.redd.it/5jo8hbar4zzg1.png?width=2640&format=png&auto=webp&s=6afd3c4b5830dd953a9607c9f301c4e33d621e03

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Today I'm just feeling the loss. I've lost my future. I've lost the ability to walk with someone at my side. My life is stripped of the love I crave more than anything else, because I destroyed it. I am not crying, I am only resigned. I don't think I will dwell peacefully inside my skin again. I don't think I will deserve even the chance to express the love that I have expressed so clumsily and so harmfully in the past. It can be expressed only as grief.

_, may your life be an endless rhapsody of joy. May you experience all that this world has to give. May your will be fierce and wonderful and in harmony with all those around you. May you be freed from all unwanted bonds. Please, please.

I'm trying to figure out what my life will look like without this aspect, and how to motivate myself to continue living it. I can have friends, I can have acquaintances. But once I fall for someone, or even just become close enough with them in general, I become too controlling. I don't want to do it again. It would be simple enough if I could just settle on that, but I really, deeply crave intimacy. I can already feel myself making excuses in my head for why I should be allowed to date again.

My friend came over today and cuddled with me because I was feeling bad. He's a sexually free, friends-with-benefits type of person and he wanted to have sex but I told him no because I felt that if I continued with things, I would end up getting attached and hurting him. Or maybe that's not really why? On a deeper level, I felt too disgusted with myself. I don't want anyone to be my partner and I don't want anyone to give me pleasure. I don't like myself. I think I'm going to tell him we need to go back to being more professional too, no more physical touch.

I look ahead at my life and think about the prospect of never being touched again beyond a brief hug, and never having someone to share my life with, and frankly it devastates me. I know people live that way. Some just because they don't find a partner, others deliberately (monks and such). So I can do it. But it is one of the things I have wanted most in my entire life. Making art, and a life partner. That's what I want out of my existence.

Well, boo-hoo. I should've been kinder to my lovers, then. Other people's well being and boundaries matter more than my desires. If I think I feel bad, I should have some consideration for how they'd feel if they had to deal with dating me. I won't get a life partner. I'm not well enough to have one and can't foresee a future where I become well enough. So I guess I am going to focus on art. I hate that that makes me upset. My own feelings shouldn't be the point in this situation, yet here they are again and again.

Has anyone else come to this kind of conclusion, after really wanting romance? How do you cope?

Okay. I'm allowing myself one of these posts a day until the pain fucking stops.

This is genuinely so unbearable. If what's happening to me is truly related to abandonment fear, it would be nice if I didn't have to sort through it while I am actually, in reality, isolated. Yes there are people in my life and I am grateful for them, but I have no one I truly, deeply trust who is on the same continent as me. And on top of everything, the med side effects are so bad right now. So much nausea throughout the day. Splitting headache. My whole body feels like it's the wrong temperature but there is no clarity about what temperature is needed. What else is new honestly, when have I had clarity about anything that exists or doesn't exist?

I have never been so shitty, by the way. I have never been so awful to people because I'm giving up on acting like I'm good and am trying to be actually good instead, but guess what?? I'm BAD at that! So I'm doing a shit job of it! AND I CAN'T EVEN TELL WHAT'S ACTING AND WHAT'S REAL!! I'm not getting better. I'm getting worse. I have been so lost in my own spiral for months now that I don't do much good for anyone. So much for being a better person, a better friend. I take and take and take. I'd like to say I'm the worst person I know, but it's not even that, I'm just like...middlingly bad. Horrible to be around. Annoying. Complaining. Brings down a room. Asks for a lot of stuff and doesn't do a lot in return because I'm basically nonfunctional right now (<- excuses excuses).

Is any of this me being more authentic, or is it actually just me faking and giving myself an excuse to let myself act more selfish than I ever have before, all just for the sake of admitting that I don't always want to be nice? But I DO always want to be nice, by the way. Don't I? What is this?? Is this can of worms going to have a massively negative impact on my ideals?

Anyway, I want to light my skin on fire and it sort of feels like it's on fire already, so I guess I'm in luck???

Every muscle in my body is tense. This is a horrifying experience. Please, I just want to be unconscious, I can't do this, I can't figure this out. No, I have to. I have to. How does anyone know anything?? How do we know things??? WHAT IS KNOWING? What is it to know, please god, should I go read The Theaetetus...no I should go to sleep FUCK

I posted here a while ago, when I was in crisis about potentially getting diagnosed with NPD. I was going back and forth and all over the place about the possibility. Well, this is my latest update, now that I’m a bit calmer. I believe I have both moral OCD and some form of narcissistic traits, if not full NPD. I see no reason why these two diagnoses couldn’t be compatible. Yes, I respond to the idea that I might have done something shameful with intrusive thoughts and compulsions. But the shame is still there at the root of that behavior, and it also leads to a lot of other behaviors that OCD does not explain. Beyond that, there are also plenty of people in this subreddit with both, so clearly it’s possible.

My therapist has said I don’t have NPD, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have traits of it that are negatively impacting my life, and anyway, I frankly think she’s wrong. She just used a very simple checklist that was mostly centered on grandiosity. I think she is being swayed by the classic “you’re too nice to be a narcissist” stereotyping.

Symptoms that NPD (or possibly BPD??) would explain better than OCD:

• Persistently low self-esteem to the point of total self hatred.
• Presenting myself as a perfect caretaker/rescuer/fixer with 100% pure intentions (I know this does not align with my posting history, but that’s because I come to reddit to vent when I fear that it is not true. In everyday life, I act like a problem solver.)
• The need to be or feel useful to maintain relationships, rather than showing up as my authentic self.
• Shame for needing anything or anyone myself. Desire to be totally independent.
• Taking it as rejection when someone does not want my help or comfort.
• Having fantasies of a perfect love relationship wherein my partner needs me desperately, can’t live without me, submits to my guidance, etc. This imaginary ideal is an awful person compared to me, lacks confidence, and look to me for guidance about how to be “good.”
• Seeking out the above in real relationships. I do try to explore this through consensual BDSM relationships, but still, I often feel that I want to go farther with the fantasy or make it more real. So I end up leaving these interactions feeling underwhelmed and disconnected.
• Idealizing specific people in a limerent, romantic context that looks a lot like having a favorite person.
• Bouts of rage against myself when my usefulness is questioned. Includes self harm. I have described it as looking like a toddler having a fit.
• Feeling a total loss of identity and worth when I think I might not be good enough at helping others. Has happened a few times in my life. Months of suicidality and/or numbness. Looks pretty much identical with what people are describing when they talk about collapse. This is what I am going through now.

Potential overlap/symptoms that are explained by both:

• Repeatedly seeking reassurance and validation.
• Repeatedly seeking proof that I am good (taking quizzes, taking on challenging situations to prove something, etc.)
• Need to “outweigh” shameful actions with some other, compulsive action, or else I can’t get over the failure.
• Fixating on whether I have done something wrong and ruminating about it.
• Fear of worst-case social scenarios, like being ostracized from my community or doing something that I can never forgive myself for.
• Perfectionistic need to be 100% good, all the time.

There are also symptoms unrelated to shame that are explained solely by OCD, like excessive hand washing and fear of illness, so I know I definitely have that. But I really think it’s both.

At this point, I want to try to treat the narcissism. What’s the worst that could happen? I don’t respond to treatment, and it turns out it was solely OCD all along? Well then, no harm done. But treating just the OCD is not fixing me, I’ve been doing that for years and I still hate myself. I still have trouble with my relationships. Something needs to change. I’m medicated right now, so it’s the best possible time to start trying to tackle this. At least I hopefully won’t have as much of an impulse towards self harm when confronting these ideas. I’ve only been on meds for a couple weeks but emotions already feel pretty dulled, so it seems safe. I do exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy on my own outside of sessions with a therapist, and it seems like modifying the ERP sessions might be a good place to start? I have started adding shame and abandonment related thoughts into my exposures. It’s too early to tell if it’s working and I don’t know if that would be a clinically approved practice anyway. It’s just the first thing I thought to try.

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to a good therapist for NPD. My current therapist doesn’t believe I have it, isn’t very good, and is very unavailable. She’s been on holiday for a while and I won’t see her again for another few weeks. I’m trying to get referred a different one, but that’s a long process. It took about six months to get assigned to this person and I will need to do that again. Just a big mess. So, I am interested in posting here and potentially being a part of support groups. What I want to know is: would this be allowed since I was officially not diagnosed? I truly want mods to use their best judgement. All I can say is that I will be posting in good faith and will do my best to be respectful to everybody here.

It's not that I don't like life. But life is too good for me. I should be destroyed. I'm beyond worthless. I don't understand why I am allowed to exist, other than the fact that the world just doesn't work that way. People of all kinds get to exist. So, fine. But that doesn't mean I deserve it.

My candle snapped in half, though the top half was still resting on the bottom. So I burned the upper half as soon as I saw. Now there is no remaining break in it, but it is half of what it was. I feel this way.