N supply from here?

Do you find you get "supply" from here? from commenting and such?

dabading wrote:Do you find you get "supply" from here? from commenting and such?

I think so. But, it's hard to know whether posting here is a normal level of "supply." Sharing genuinely, transparently. Normals get something from ordinary "stroking"[1]. I see the forum being in that category. We just have something odd in common which becomes the opportunity to stroke and be stroked. (Validate and be validated). And, serves as "group therapy."

I don't participate in PMs because I don't want to function that way (private audience, proxy for a victim's expression to their N abuser; a mirror for the resistant recovering N; "leading" a newly aware to something they wouldn't find on their own.).

I think "supply" has to do with how genuine it is, how symmetric to others. I think in public it's less risk of being the wrong kind of supply.

[1] Eric Berne’s well known colloquialism “If you are not stroked your spinal cord will shrivel up,” was first put in writing in 1961, in Games People Play. He was referring to the "hospitalism" studies (1954) by Renee Spitz. Spitz found that in an orphanage where the children were raised in a sterile environment with minimal nurturing or handling, motor and intellectual development were markedly depressed, mortality was high and physical growth was retarded. -- http://www.claudesteiner.com/stroking.htm

Yeah "stroked" seems the more accurate word to describe it.
I've always been after admiring attention, you know the sort that sets me apart from others, but when i get nurturing attention or stroking attention, normally by accident, it always feels more genuine like you said, like this is what i've missed out on.
But idno how to consciously seek nurturing attention from other people (apart from a therapist), without making myself seem weak or setting myself up for humiliation

Yes!

From N point of view, am I here for supply or need for normal, developmental human interaction?

Example: A "non" or someone who has N traits but is not NPD might come here and try to provide information in the hopes of learning (fast). Maybe his/her experience with other blogs and forums has led her -O.K., me - to believe that if I give a little, I get a lot because there is one of me, but a whole lot of you. Like a covered dish supper for ideas. These sites for me are like mini-college degrees. I seem to learn in turbo mode and more deeply, anyway. The examples are always more vivid and the case studies are easier to relate to. Plus this site has the whole added benefit of the accents and the reading between the lines thing. I get this twinge of success when I can understand after a while what a person with a strong accent in their writing - or particular method of communication style- is actually trying to say.

At the least, I’m using other people for my own benefit, right?

Now, when I give something and somebody emails me that I helped them, I feel great and useful and think I’ve earned the air I breathe for another day. I smile inside and at the cat. Supply, stroking or side benefit?

It's a different feeling of satisfaction than the excitement upon learning something that generates in me the "Ah-Hah!" and I run off for a few days to try out a new behavior either to develop my own self or to help with the N in my life. Or when I can go back with a new perspective to my log books and reflect on whether or not my thinking and feelings about past situations and negative encounters has changed. In HR, depending on how we were trained, we often keep a "captain's log." For me, the log’s more for self-awareness, communication formulation and memory-jogging than for legal documentation.

So is the supply I’m getting narcissistic supply?

HR_p wrote:From N point of view, am I here for supply or need for normal, developmental human interaction?

At the least, I’m using other people for my own benefit, right?

I ask myself that all the time. I may not answer correctly, but I always ask. It's the kind of reflex I have to touching a hot stove. It's obsessive. If I don't, it seems like "I may not answer correctly" will turn into "I forgot to ask" and that turns into something much, much bigger. You'd think there's no risk of getting back into that tidal force. But, I moved away from the beach and I need to make sure I'm not moving back.

HR_p wrote:For me, the log’s more for self-awareness, communication formulation and memory-jogging than for legal documentation.

So is the supply I’m getting narcissistic supply?

I think so. But, everyone needs "supply." They just don't call it that. Everyone gets some satisfaction from helping another. Just because you're walking away from the mirror, you're getting more of that genuine supply instead of the mirror supply. Documenting it, talking about it. That's part of validating who you are. Just because you're discovering it doesn't matter. As long as it's not obsessive and becoming "you" too much, where you would benefit more from actually being engaged with people, more social activities.

There's a lot to make up for. The false self which produces the injury of self-awareness and rolling away the defenses, admitting imperfection and harming others. That existed for a reason. It's not just letting some air out of the false esteem, but developing a proper amount of esteem to fill what the gas-bag existed for.

And that's just basic self-worth. If you were developing a web site, selling a book, starting a religion... maybe.... you were swinging too far to the other pole. But, otherwise, you're like a 5-year-old learning things everyone else takes for granted. Just because it's personal doesn't mean you wouldn't have felt good about it when everyone else did it in normal interactions.