Suicidal Ideation and Vulnerable Narcissism

A recent study (link below):

METHOD:
A sample of 250 adult psychiatric outpatients (61% female; mean age 39.15 years) were assessed between January and May 2014. The participants filled out the Pathological Narcissism Inventory, the Experience of Shame Scale, and the Suicide Assessment Scale-self-rating.

RESULTS:
Narcissistic vulnerability was found to have unique positive associations with acute suicidal ideation, whereas narcissistic grandiosity exhibited substantially weaker relations with the same construct. Two dimensions of shame-characterological and bodily shame-mediated the relationship between narcissistic vulnerability and suicidal ideation. The mediating role of behavioral shame was not demonstrated.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28346685

For those of you who express more covertly (vulnerable), does this reflect your experience?

Do you feel shame thinking about your character and/or body, but not necessarily your behavior?

Behavioral shame?
*scratchhead*

I dont get it. So liek I drop somethign and then I go "omggzz Im all bad I will kill myself"?

Akuma wrote:Behavioral shame?
*scratchhead*

I dont get it. So liek I drop somethign and then I go "omggzz Im all bad I will kill myself"?

This is just my interpretation so feel free to tear it to pieces. When I read that my thought was:

Body and character are two things that people (generally) feel are a permanent part of who they are. I liken it to having a "fixed mindset" (a la Carol Dweck). So these areas may cripple a pwNPD's grandiosity because reality is always hitting them in the face when they look in the mirror or people reflect back a reputation that they feel undeserving of.

I can come up with a number of reasons a pwNPD might not see shame in their behaviors:

• Impaired awareness about how their behavior affects others (affective empathy)
• Grandiosity implying that others deserve whatever the pwNPD does
• An attention seeking victim-like role (not to negate that a pwNPD may actually be a victim - but viewing life through the lens of a victim makes it hard to see how you are hurting someone else while also conveniently warranting sympathy. Obviously not every pwNPD would do this but the vulnerable type, which the study covers, might more often.)

And for contrast, as a non, when I do something that I judge to be bad or hurtful to someone else I will pause and reflect on it. And sometimes I will feel bad about myself if I made a poor choice. I won't swing the other way though and fall into a pit of despair the way a pwBPD might (I used to).

Isnt this the same with a Non in any case? I mean shame itself is a pathological phenomenon because it generalizes badness from something specific to - well something general, ergo "me". Looks and character being more close to "I am" compared to stuff that I do seems the case for evreyone.
So without having read it it seems this study is saying that in this regard pwNPD are totally normal.

Akuma wrote:Isnt this the same with a Non in any case? I mean shame itself is a pathological phenomenon because it generalizes badness from something specific to - well something general, ergo "me". Looks and character being more close to "I am" compared to stuff that I do seems the case for evreyone.
So without having read it it seems this study is saying that in this regard pwNPD are totally normal.

How dare pwNPD be normal!!

Ah but wait a minute we're overlooking a crucial part of the study - pw vulnerable NPD are prone to suicidal ideation over this shame. (Which I would then personally also draw the conclusion that the shame is felt more intensely than nons normally feel it.)

It seems like the researchers were exploring a very specific hypothesis (meaning the relationship between narcissism, shame, and suicidal ideation). The shame scale that was used in this study has been positively correlated to depressive symptoms on other research, so there should be no big surprise at the relationship between shame and suicidal ideation.

The new news here is that grandiose narcissists are less likely to experience shame than vulnerable ones.

Is it just me or does that seem like a blinding flash of the obvious? It's kind of inherent in the definition of the subtypes, no?

I should add that when I take the PID-5 I consistently come out with severe dysfunction for attention seeking and moderate dysfunction for avoidance. I would think that this contradiction alone would make me prone to suicidal ideation. I'm not, but it's because my career satisfies the attention seeking without demanding me to be in the spotlight.

Shame is not a part of the equation, at least as far as I'm aware.

Again, I'd say it was mood related. I haven't noticed these thoughts just lately. I've always regarded them as a self indulgence in the past.

whichway wrote:

Akuma wrote:Isnt this the same with a Non in any case? I mean shame itself is a pathological phenomenon because it generalizes badness from something specific to - well something general, ergo "me". Looks and character being more close to "I am" compared to stuff that I do seems the case for evreyone.
So without having read it it seems this study is saying that in this regard pwNPD are totally normal.

How dare pwNPD be normal!!

Ah but wait a minute we're overlooking a crucial part of the study - pw vulnerable NPD are prone to suicidal ideation over this shame. (Which I would then personally also draw the conclusion that the shame is felt more intensely than nons normally feel it.)

I want to take a shower and I'm in a lazy mood so I'll just do some quick free-association notes.
On the one hand side the study doesnt show causation but connection. A BPD tho will fall into a pit of despair imo not because of shame but because of fear of abandonment. As to intensity, I dunno where you get it from, I would rather think that pNPD feel shame less as its more repressed.
The difference of behaviour and character/physiology might be a difference in the identification-process underlying depression and possibly shame; which aint limited to NPD tho, but to depression and shame generally. So basically "my penis is small" -> "my penis is bad" -> "i am my penis" -> "i am bad" -> "i will kill myself"... or ... -> "i am bad" -> "everything is bad" -> "i will destroy everything". The difference of this with behaviour seems to be aiming at what Freud wrote a hundred years ago in 1917, namely that the lost idealized object becomes identified with and then aspcts of the object so attached to teh ego will become attacked ergo "i dropped the milk" -> "I'm a klutz" -> "i cant do anything right" -> "i am bad" -> "i will to kill myself", so in behaviour the identification is not with a part of one's body but with the part of the mind of another person.
This is more complicated because is there grieving in there and loss? The first might be PS; but the second might be D.
And so on.

whichway wrote:For those of you who express more covertly (vulnerable), does this reflect your experience?

Do you feel shame thinking about your character and/or body, but not necessarily your behavior?

I cannot concentrate on all the theoretical stuff, just answering your question instead.

Yes, before I came aware I would feel shameful about stuff that wasn't behaviour: like body, status, education etc. Seldom felt shame about my bad behaviour.