Après L Orage wrote:PwNPD on the other hand, will tend to think they're just the best. In general.
So I don't know what category you belong to.
I don't think I belong to any category because:
1. I don't flaunt my above average abilities. I only talk about them when it is relevant, e.g., when asked by a psychiatrist about why I have such difficulty finding people to socialize with whom I am minimally compatible with, or when over the course of a conversation, people inquire about how the hell do I know all the things I know, and where do I get those original ideas from (I am a lateral thinker). It actually kind of makes me feel nervous when people compliment my abilities: I feel there is some kind of pressure to always be the smart one, and also that I get categorized as the intellectual, which draws attention away from my other qualities. Besides being a walking, talking dictionary and a thinking machine, I am also a kind, warm, open-minded person, and I would rather people concentrate on that, because that helps me to socialize much more than brilliance. I can also be good company for a game of pool, a trustworthy non-judgmental friend and a great workout buddy. I am not ALL ABOUT intellectual stuff - I don't take myself that seriously, I don't need to win every debate and I definitely don't need people complimenting me all the time. I believe I have average, healthy self-esteem.
I have a bit of an impostor complex: other people who have similar levels of knowledge and have similar abilities to use them got that from higher education, and I never got to go beyond high school. Often, when people remark on all the stuff I know and my ability to use that, it is closely followed by "what did you study in college?", and I hate to have to say I never went to college. I am not ashamed of not having been to college, it is not my fault - but most people who have been to college stop discussing college-level topics with me once they find out I have never been to college. I enjoy such discussions, it allows me to use my most developed positive quality, it gives me validation to be able to hold my own in such discussions and such discussions are a great opportunity to learn something new. My world doesn't revolve around such discussions, but I do need a fair amount of that on a regular basis. Not to mention I also get to socialize, which is my most pressing need and the thing lacking from my life the most. Then there are those people who have much higher education who cannot take it when someone who has much less education shows better mastery of specific aspects of a topic they have formally studied than their own level of mastery (I obviously never have better GENERAL mastery of a topic the other person studied formally - that would be genius and I am no genius). I get told fairly often I make people feel stupid. I don't want to make people feel stupid. So, I am always stuck between being true to myself and unintentionally antagonizing people with my abilities (it is often seen as arrogance) or pretending to be someone whose level of knowledge is on par with a high school diploma, which is tantamount to lying and keeps me from using my abilities. It makes me anxious to have to control that all the time, and I have a lot of trouble reading people in a way that will allow me to determine which is the better strategy. I don't believe I should have to pretend to be less able than I truly am, so I only look to develop relationships with those few people who are okay with someone who has no formal education yet dares to partake in intellectual discussions - people who don't judge, basically. Feels like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I find people like to believe that they have an open mind but they are mistaken about that most of the time. Although they might have an open mind, it is seldom as open as they think it is. Another thing people are systematically mistaken about is that being open-minded is an entirely positive personality trait. I am extremely open-minded and, trust me, past a certain level, it becomes a hindrance: you are seen as a person who lacks in morals, who lacks in judgment and people just cannot keep up with your ideas (e.g., when I say that pedophiles likely have just as much morals as the rest of us - hardly anyone can digest the idea that behaving immorally doesn't automatically make you an immoral person). Ultimately, you end up alone.
2. I don't consider myself to be better than most people, I don't consider myself superior, I don't consider most people stupid. I do have above average intellectual abilities, but I also have somewhat below average emotional abilities. I shine in certain situations but fail miserably in others. So, overall, if you ask me, I am no worse nor better than the average person. I don't look down upon people whose intellectual abilities are inferior to mine as I realize it is not they who are stupid, it is me who is exceptionally developed in that regard. I instead try to find their strengths and work with that. Even the most unschooled, inexperienced person from the "lowest" levels of society has something to teach me, always, and I can enjoy them in non-intellectual contexts. The only issue I have with people who have average or below average intellectual abilities is that they will judge and categorize too quickly and even when not warranted ("let's not discuss rampant sexism with women - they will get emotional about it", "you are so skinny - do you have an eating disorder?", "I will vote for this candidate because they seem more human than the other candidate, so their policies on welfare will surely be more satisfactory", "it is high time we have a black/female president", etc.), and then I either try to ignore it but never quite can and get frustrated, or I take it up with them and, as pacifically as I can, point out the fallacies in their ideas (indirectly, by merely mentioning other options, not head on), which always comes across as criticism even though it seldom is.
I am just amazed at how psychiatrists also tend to judge and categorize just as quickly, as if there were only about as many kinds of people as there are diseases in the DSM. As though we all clearly belonged to one of sixteen personalities. As though being high in neuroticism in the Big Five necessarily meant something is wrong with your head. I am amazed at the closed-mindedness and rigid thinking I have encountered in psychiatry, and am really crossing my fingers that I was just very unfortunate to come across crappy psychiatrists, because if they are all more or less this way, no wonder most of their patients get worse over time under and despite (or as a result of?) their care.
As I mentioned earlier, the problem with the DSM is that the criteria are based on behavior and they don't take into account the motivations behind the behaviors. To a psychiatrist, if you scratch yourself often, you must have OCD - your GP might have told your psychiatrist that you have eczema, or you might have told the psychiatrist that you tried a new body lotion and you are having an allergic reaction, but the psychiatrist will ask neither you nor your GP about it. Supposing that a person who says they have above average abilities in something means they are overly narcissistic is tantamount to saying that every mentally sane person should be average at everything - should we kiss the Olympic Games, beauty pageants and
magna cum laude goodbye?
The message I get from the psychiatrist who thinks my being aware of above average abilities in myself is unhealthy narcissism is this: it is wrong in society to be better at something than most others are. I could easily jump to conclusions from there. For example, I could tell myself that it is wrong to be smart, find fault with my being smart, develop a complex about my smarts, try to hide my being smart or even actually try to dumb myself down (e.g., by using drugs - which the psychiatrist would most definitely misdiagnose as mere drug addiction). Would it be mentally healthy to do that? I won't bother asking a psychiatrist to answer that...