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SPD comorbid NPD in love

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SPD comorbid NPD in love

Postby greatpretender » Wed May 31, 2017 2:07 pm

I'm sorry if this kind of a thread already exists somewhere. If so, please post a link here.
There is a lot written here about this unique combination of npd and spd, which is also very rare.
There is a lot written about npd in love and spd in love.
But what about comorbid npd and spd in love?
Npd can't truly love as far as I got it, I might be wrong though, but that's a general rule, right?
But spd can love. So what is puzzling me is, how does a love relationship look like with npd and spd in the same person? Can they really love?

I thought my ex had npd, a covert npd. But hoovering and many other things were missing. I couldn't hate him or blame him, because he didn't discard me to enjoy it. He needed time for himself. I didn't understand or knew he was spd too so I ruined our relationship by pushing for more. Until I went no contact because I thought he was playing with me. But he wasn't fully because spd wouldn't do it?

Is it possible someone with npd and spd comes back but in a genuine way? I'm ok with spd, but I want nothing to do with npd if you see what I mean. It's confusing to me to understand love in his eyes.
Any experiences or opinions would be great. Thanks!
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Re: SPD comorbid NPD in love

Postby Holodeck » Wed May 31, 2017 4:05 pm

I think it's impossible to really know what he had going on if he's not around. I think it's pretty common for SPD's to be arrogant sounding. Not sure if he could be described that way. I've personally feigned narcissism before when someone annoyed me and I knew if I agreed I'd have to likely deal with them longer ex. "No trust me I know, cuz I'm obviously better than you in every way" I don't actually have NPD symptoms though, I simply find it an easy way to get people to leave me alone. It's even more amusing when they have NPD. They get this weird sorta existential crisis thing going which oddly enough amuses me.

I think the arrogance of SPD's often is us having less emotion and showing lack of empathy/caring when people come at us with problems or whatever. When you don't typically feel emotion, it's hard to relate in a moment with someone without eventually sounding bored. We spend a lot of the time by ourselves too, so that doesn't exactly make it easy to talk about things outside our lil inner world so to speak.

I'm sure you could combine the two I imagine if he had both going on you'd likely have the NPD outlook on love, but no clue if that's what was going on with him specifically.
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Re: SPD comorbid NPD in love

Postby zeno » Wed May 31, 2017 4:54 pm

To be honest I don't think the question even makes sense. Does a cat ever love a human? Does even a dog ever "really love" a human? Who knows. All that's certain is that pets want food and shelter and relief from boredom. Other than that, whether they "love" you or not is entirely a matter of your choice of interpretation. And pet lovers seem to be okay with that. They say "a pet loves you unconditionally", even though they know they can't know that. And I think that's exactly the key: there's nothing that the pet can do that the owner won't be prepared to rationalize as "their way of showing their love".

The way I see it, that's the actual definition of "love". If you can maintain the feeling and the idea that you're loved, then you are. On a personal level, I think that measuring someone by that kind of yardstick ("will they make it easy or hard for you to feel loved by them?", if "love" is what you're after) is as close as you can get to knowing them. Pseudo-diagnostic labels only help to validate one of the competing (but equally valid) feelings that a person already has. It can be helpful sometimes for closure, but not so much for anything else. Because relationships depend on the persistence of uncertainties that are made irrelevant by other things.
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Re: SPD comorbid NPD in love

Postby Ashlar » Thu Jun 01, 2017 3:25 pm

Holodeck wrote:I think the arrogance of SPD's often is us having less emotion and showing lack of empathy/caring when people come at us with problems or whatever.


Yeah.

Holodeck wrote:It's even more amusing when they have NPD. They get this weird sorta existential crisis thing going which oddly enough amuses me.


Yep. Certain kinds of npd people don't deal well with someone who is indifferent to them.

It also sometimes results in bpd people becoming somewhat distracted with an spd person out of the novelty of being ignored or whatever.
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Re: SPD comorbid NPD in love

Postby ElephantEyes » Sat Jun 03, 2017 8:55 pm

@OP is this your diagnosis of him or has he been diagnosed?

greatpretender wrote:There is a lot written here about this unique combination of npd and spd, which is also very rare.
There is a lot written about npd in love and spd in love.
But what about comorbid npd and spd in love?
Npd can't truly love as far as I got it, I might be wrong though, but that's a general rule, right?


NPD's lack empathy and view other people are objects simply to be manipulated and used for their own ends. They have a pathological need for other people in order to meet their own psychological needs. I agree, a person with that psychology will have a very hard time loving another person.

But spd can love.


Schizoids are very sensitive and empathic to the point of needing to retreat from the external world (including relationships) in order to maintain a sense of safety and equilibrium.

So what is puzzling me is, how does a love relationship look like with npd and spd in the same person?


I have trouble seeing how NPD and SPD can co-exist in the same person. If they do, in perhaps a 1 in 1000000 person, that person is likely to be pretty pathological and dysfunctional to the point that a relationship will be close to impossible.

Can they really love?


A person with both NPD and SPD at the same time? It doesn't seem likely.

I thought my ex had npd, a covert npd. But hoovering and many other things were missing. I couldn't hate him or blame him, because he didn't discard me to enjoy it. He needed time for himself. I didn't understand or knew he was spd too so I ruined our relationship by pushing for more. Until I went no contact because I thought he was playing with me. But he wasn't fully because spd wouldn't do it?


I am almost getting the sense that you really don't want the relationship to end so you are trying to rediagnose him as SPD because you believe if he has SPD he maybe loves you, but if he has NPD he can't love you. That sort of thinking is denial.

I'm sorry to be harsh but I am just saying it like I am reading it.

If your initial impression of him was a covert NPD I would stick with that one instead of trying to change the script now with a new diagnosis. If you noticed things about him like grandiosity, sensitive to criticism, occasional acts of cruelty or cold-heartedness, etc., sounds more like a covert NPD imo.
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Re: SPD comorbid NPD in love

Postby sabotage3 » Wed Jun 28, 2017 10:53 pm

i would be ok with the npd but the schizoid would drive me crazy.lol i dont do well with indifference at all.


i see npd/schizoid quite a bit. i dont think its all that rare. maybe they just get their "supply" from afar or something.
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Re: SPD comorbid NPD in love

Postby psychosquirrel » Tue Jul 04, 2017 8:43 pm

The 9 criteria for "schizoid personality disorder" as described by Harry Guntrip :
introversion,
withdrawnness,
narcissism,
self-sufficiency,
a sense of superiority,
loss of affect,
loneliness,
depersonalization,
and regression.

From Wikipedia, which quotes " Disorders of the Self - New Therapeutic Horizons, The Masterson Approach" by Klein and Masterson:
Guntrip defines narcissism as "a characteristic that arises out of the predominantly interior life the schizoid lives. His love objects are all inside him and moreover he is greatly identified with them so that his libidinal attachments appear to be in himself. The question, however, is whether the intense inner life of the schizoid is due to a desire for hungry incorporation of external objects or due to withdrawal from the outer to a presumed safer inner world."The need for attachment as a primary motivational force is as strong in the schizoid person as in any other human being. Because the schizoid's love objects are internal, they find safety without connecting and attaching to objects in the real world (see Narcissistic defences).

I think what this psychobabble means is, schizoids are pre-occupied with their own inner world that they value greatly, and do not have the need to connect intimately to people in the outside world.
In other words, they love themselves, meaning, their own fantasy life and inner world, rather than people outside. In that sense, they are narcissistic. But the narcissistic traits may vary from schizoid to schizoid.

Some of the books I have read (don't remember which) described patients that seemed to have narcissistic personality disorder, but that appeared, after further analysis, fit better into the category "schizoid".
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Re: SPD comorbid NPD in love

Postby Holodeck » Wed Jul 05, 2017 3:16 am

psychosquirrel wrote:The 9 criteria for "schizoid personality disorder" as described by Harry Guntrip :
introversion,
withdrawnness,
narcissism,
self-sufficiency,
a sense of superiority,
loss of affect,
loneliness,
depersonalization,
and regression.

From Wikipedia, which quotes " Disorders of the Self - New Therapeutic Horizons, The Masterson Approach" by Klein and Masterson:
Guntrip defines narcissism as "a characteristic that arises out of the predominantly interior life the schizoid lives. His love objects are all inside him and moreover he is greatly identified with them so that his libidinal attachments appear to be in himself. The question, however, is whether the intense inner life of the schizoid is due to a desire for hungry incorporation of external objects or due to withdrawal from the outer to a presumed safer inner world."The need for attachment as a primary motivational force is as strong in the schizoid person as in any other human being. Because the schizoid's love objects are internal, they find safety without connecting and attaching to objects in the real world (see Narcissistic defences).

I think what this psychobabble means is, schizoids are pre-occupied with their own inner world that they value greatly, and do not have the need to connect intimately to people in the outside world.
In other words, they love themselves, meaning, their own fantasy life and inner world, rather than people outside. In that sense, they are narcissistic. But the narcissistic traits may vary from schizoid to schizoid.

Some of the books I have read (don't remember which) described patients that seemed to have narcissistic personality disorder, but that appeared, after further analysis, fit better into the category "schizoid".


There may be something to this, but something that strikes me confused is what then is the schizoid narc's "source"?

If schizoids are indeed narcissistic, can they get all the praise and adoration from their inner world? I don't believe I do anything too if at all narcissistic in my inner or outer world, but I'd assume a narc (PD or not) would need real people giving them attention. Maybe that could be a form of a covert schizoid. I can kinda understand that since my bipolar makes me want to do risk-taking behavior a lot. I figure most times schizoids are reasonably (considering the PD) self-centered. We, like narcs, don't display empathy. Most topics we bring up will be egocentric and likely cynical due to social inexperience. My ego is pretty non-existent though, so maybe I can't tap into the narc side due to that.
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Re: SPD comorbid NPD in love

Postby zeno » Wed Jul 05, 2017 3:24 am

I think that's just one of those words that have been used with very different meanings or scopes by people from different times and schools of thought. In psychoanalysis, I think the term "narcissism" just means very broadly "a concern with the maintenance of the ego, to the detriment of other things outside of it".
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Re: SPD comorbid NPD in love

Postby Holodeck » Wed Jul 05, 2017 2:03 pm

@zeno Ah yeah that makes sense. Thanks.
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