Question from a clueless Narcissist

Hi! Interesting board. I’ve been reading it for almost a year, which is about the time I realized I have that NPD thing and been struggling since to do something about it.
I have a question for this forum and I would be very grateful for a meaningful feedback, either from fellow narcissists or from people who had to deal with narcissists.

Ok, I’m 26, I , without any doubt, fit ALL the criteria for NPD . From the moment I realized this, I’ve been trying to avoid all patterns of behavior that makes me a narcissists in an attempt to see if that would really make me a better person or enhance the quality of my life in any way. To be honest, I am doing this for myself because I still do not grasp the full meaning of doing things just for the sake of others. I see it like this: if I have NPD then I have a problem in dealing with other people, and because of this, people will be less inclined to help me or do things to me that make me happy. So, if I manage to be less selfish, more caring and more helpful to people and more considerate to and aware of their needs, then I will receive better treatment from them and hence will have a better life. I know this still sounds like narcissistic logic, but from what I read in the forum, some people tried this approach and it seemed to have worked for them, at least as a first step towards becoming normal(i.e. compatible with that operating system called Society .

So, I decided to start with an easy area of my social life : friends. It is easier to be nicer to friends than to family or work colleagues , because you do NOT have to see your friends everyday, and you do not have any daily commitments towards them, you do have not work with them in a team for money, and your responsibilities towards them are not as great as they are towards, say, a wife, or a child, or a boss, etc. Especially when they are new friends ( do not know much about you and your character flaws) and especially when they are girls ( sweet, nice and pretty creatures with whom a Narc can feel slightly less worn out by the effort needed to make them happy) .

So, I started being considerate. I completly stopped talking about myself and always focused the conversation on the girl and her problems and her interests. Even if she talks about me I try to shift the conversation gently to her side. I try to listen more and talk less and be patient with all the details and respond in a way that shows I care. I refrained from being judgmental in anyway when we talked. I always noticed and praised any change in the girl’s appearance, and I never got pushy in matters of sex . I bought chocolate and or flowers almost every time we met.
Although that had indeed let into a MUCH better quality in my relations, yet , somehow, and for a reason I could not comprehend, the girl would start telling me exactly the same phrase after 3 months or so: “Yes, I know you love me, but I feel you love me like a pet, or a new toy”!!!!

Of course, I tried to ask, patiently, about the reasons behind this “feeling” and I never get any good answer . They just say “it is just a feeling.”
Then a month or two latter I start getting the good old “I do not think you really love me. You only love yourself” phrase. I’ll be damned if I know why!!!
I am sure there is something I am missing, something that could not be healed or even covered with all the niceness and change in attitude which I’ve been training myself to stick to. I guess if I can identify that missing ingredient, locate that sign that says “watch out, selfish bastard inside” , then I would manage to eliminate that factor and do a better job at becoming a better person.

I need your opinion about this. If you had a narcissist in your life, have you ever felt that he “loves you as a pet” or “as a toy” ? If so, where did that feeling come from? Keeping in mind all the changes I introduced into my attitude.
And if you are a Narcissist who is seeking cure, or have been into therapy, have you ever heared such comments? How did you handle them?

I am a normal, I guess thats they call it. I'll answer you and say yes, I can relate to your story. There were always certain things that my X would say just in passing but I would always question in my mind, and never forget. We had a weekend ritual breakfast. Fun! He would say, "I really enjoy you" or "It's like a vacation here" This is after a year in a half of dating. Um, we were too intimate to be a vacation. I don't want to be enjoyed. And my son and I are not for his pleasure, yet we both starting feeling that way. I can't explain except I somehow felt used. I never complained about his comments because he meant to be complimentary and do no harm or insult. It just did not sit with me right. It did not feel right. In the end, it wasn't. I am pretty intuitive anyway, but if I'm in love, hyper-intuitive. You can't hide the real you.

So Stupidpig, I suggest you change your name because you're not one. You are here for a reason and I commend you and respect you for your post.

Your post is very important and I think shows a lot of capacity to love. Therapy is a really good step. If your resistant or its a situation does not lend itself, please be open to my thread: N, Interrupted. The resources have been given some great reviews by moderators and therapists alike. They are self help websites which means discipline and doing the work. Its better to have support. A professional that you like is really important. Sometimes, just having someone to listen to you, a friend, a stranger, a forum member, without the intent of getting advise, just to be able to listen and to be there is good enough. Be yourself whoever you are.

Some of the things you said made it sound as if you're overdoing it - as if you're trying to buy her, by bribing her with gifts, and as if you're trying to seduce her by being excessively attentive to her, at the expense of yourself. If she wants to talk about you, don't terminate her interest in you prematurely, because it might appear as if you're not willing to let her get to know you.

Some people just don't accept their place as objects in your universe... so you can move on to someone more accepting of such a role, or you can try to adjust your approach to the "difficult" girl by treating her more like you treat yourself - like someone worthy of your admiration... as a person and not just as a pretty thing. It's difficult to do without empathy. Indeed, even to just manipulate people successfully is difficult without empathy. I know these things because I usually have trouble with empathy myself, but I've also experienced it, and therefore I know what it's like and I recognise it as a useful tool if employed in moderation.

My own experience of empathy came as a result of drugs and as a result of hypomania. Of course, there are no known ways to reliably induce spontaneous hypomanic episodes, and to the extent that such methods exist at all they're likely to involve drugs too. However, there's no guarantee of success in inducing either empathy or hypomania by means of drugs, and my own experience is also inconsistent. However, the possibility deserves mention, and I'll expand upon it if you''re interested.

One interesting thing that I've also noticed is that if you have feelings for yourself, then it is easier to sympathise with others. You can use this by playing that someone else told you the things you told the girl, or that someone treated you the way you treated her, and then try to recognise any feelings that the comments and treatments in question elicit in yourself. However, do not take it so far that you make the mistake of assuming others are like yourself, because there are significant differences.

You're not connecting with her... you're pretending with her.
Most healthy girls can recognize this, or sense this, over time.
Maybe you need to practice your technique on girls who are not quite as healthy, or who are much more needy and won't recognize as easily that you are only giving them an act.

LifeSong wrote:You're not connecting with her... you're pretending with her.
.

That is right of course. But please keep in mind that I am "pretending" because I do not know how to "connect". That is the curse of NPD, you don't feel what other people feel, and you can't solve that by treating them the way i treat myself because the sort of treatment I enjoy would not be enjoyed by a healthy person. I do not even know what "connect" means and I can't begin to imagine it.
The problem of empathy is quite an issue here for a narc. It is not that you know how to feel yet refrain from feeling. No, it is that you do not know anything at all about how people feel. You can only read about it, listen to someone who explains it to you, and hope the "data" you gathered is detailed enough so you can "imitate" an emotional response correctly.

You see, I am like someone born with a weird disease: he can't taste food. If you put the sweetest or the most bitter thing in his mouth, he will never feel anything. Such person will be very frustrating for anyone who cooks for him, because, naturaly, he would never make any comments whatsoever on food, let alone the right comments. He would never complain about too much salt, and would never praise a perfectly made dessert, etc.
When such person oneday realises the nature of his problem he has one of two routes to go through:
(1) Act and pretend . Moan with pleasure when he takes a bite from what his wife or mother or girlfriend had spent asuch a long time to cook, and pretend it is really yummy, or try from time to time to make a small complaint about the salt or the sugar or the spices so that you would "seem" normal , else you'd freak people out, or...
(2) Be Yourself, do it the the "natural" way for someone with your disease, and never comment on the taste of anything because you simply can't feel the taste of anything.

This is the dilemma of a narcissist.
Any suggestions?
For instance: what do people do to "connect" to other people? And please keep in mind when you explain this that you are explaining it to someone who does not have any common ground with normal people as regards to "connections" and "feelings" , some robot from mars or something.
I am sorry, but I really need more data. Talking about such things as "connection" to someone like me would, unfortunately, sound as ambigious as if you are talking about ghosts or the paranormal! I would simply have no clue as to what you mean and would need detailed explanation, an illustrated catalogue , and maybe even the last edition from "Connection for dummies" ...or the closest thing to that.

try apologizing for the ones you hurt <if any> , you may start to have the attribute of feeling after then ... try it .

Athena_Lion wrote:try apologizing for the ones you hurt <if any> , you may start to have the attribute of feeling after then ... try it .

I really wish It was that simple Athena, but NPD is not exactly a crime you commit at a moment of anger, it is a "disease", a psyhcological disorder, that means you lose the ability to empathise with others or feel the way other people feel sometime before the age of five. You can find a lot of information on the genesis of NPD on his forum. You do not develop the same "sensors" other people develop to detect and process emotional signals. This results ina creature who is completly uinable to relate emoptionaly to anybody or anything other than himself. Feeling guilty for the hurt one caused to others because of that disorder does not create those sensors out of nothing, same way as how feeling guilty for all the people you have bumped into or stepped on their toes because you are blind does not fix your optic nerve.

Having said that, I do feel guilty for almost everybody I got close to, because I managed to be very selfish with them one way or the others. Realising how stupid my attitude was is one of the motivations that makes me try to change . But change involves trying to "understand" t6he nature of emotions and emotional contact between people, and that seems to be a hell of task ahead of me. It is like avery weird language with no rules and no alphabet, and everyone knows how to speak it fluently and expect you to do so naturaly and thus have no clue as to how to teach it to you!
But I need to learn it, in the very literal meaning of the word learn, because having NPD simply means I can't speak it naturaly.
I still need to know what connecting to people means, and I'm seeking a mental explanation for this concept because i do not have the equimpent to understand it emotionaly ( or "feel" it).

Thank you for the advice though, ill be trying to follow it anyway. Who knows.

Perhaps you should consider that the difficulty you have connecting with people is firstly bourne out of a desire to connect, or at least an awareness of your inability to do so being experieneded as a problem. You clearly are struggling with it on some level and it doesn't make you happy and I think for you to come on here and try to address it, even in the way you are currently trying to (which has already proved to be self-defeating and will get you nowhere, as other posters have pointed out) is really good in and of itself, especially at a relatively young age.

However, I get the impression that you are actually asking for tips on how to cheat and I think theres a possibility that you could take a longer view and ultimately do better than that.

Your problem with 'connecting' stems only from a problem connecting to and within yourself, and I'm in no doubt that there are reasons for that and conditions that contributed to it which go way back and it is only by addressing your childhood and it's effect on you that you would be able to make any changes in your life that don't end up leading you back to the same place. The problem with that is that sometimes what has happened to us can be hard to determine in that it is often quite insidious, not always but often. Consequently we can go through life thinking that nothing was ever wrong.

Which brings me to your comment in which you state that you were born with your condition. Trust me on this, you were not! It is this piece of self-misinformation that is leaving you with an 'I have to work with what I've got' attitude.

Don't get me wrong, there aren't enough years in our lives to completely heal or recover from what has happened in those formative years and the likelyhood is that we will never become completely normal. But we can affect change if we work hard enough at it and bring about a better emotional self.

StupidPig wrote:

LifeSong wrote:You're not connecting with her... you're pretending with her. .

That is right of course. But please keep in mind that I am "pretending" because I do not know how to "connect". That is the curse of NPD, you don't feel what other people feel, and you can't solve that by treating them the way i treat myself because the sort of treatment I enjoy would not be enjoyed by a healthy person. I do not even know what "connect" means and I can't begin to imagine it.
The problem of empathy is quite an issue here for a narc. It is not that you know how to feel yet refrain from feeling. No, it is that you do not know anything at all about how people feel. You can only read about it, listen to someone who explains it to you, and hope the "data" you gathered is detailed enough so you can "imitate" an emotional response correctly.
This is the dilemma of a narcissist.
For instance: what do people do to "connect" to other people? And please keep in mind when you explain this that you are explaining it to someone who does not have any common ground with normal people as regards to "connections" and "feelings" , some robot from mars or something.

I understand that empathy and connection with others is foreign to a person with NPD. One of the ways I describe it to their partners is like this, "Imagine that you were asking him to speak Swahili to you. You are tender and caring and patient yet still you need him to speak Swahili. Could he? Even if he wanted to (and most narcissists don't)?"

I do not know how to instruct you how to connect with someone personally, let alone intimately. I do not know how to teach you Swahili unless you were willing to come into therapy for an extended period - and even then the goal would be to help you gain a repertoire of conversational Swahili, with a limited understanding of the language but no fluency or real dexterity. Even therapy cannot correct or remove a personality deficit that is at the disordered level.

Here’s a simple little article on connecting with others quickly. It’s written to the general audience of ‘normals’ and it’s with a dating focus, but still it might give you a tip or two. Seems that authenticity is pretty important. Can you be authentic with another person? With yourself?

Adapted from Attracting Genuine Love, by Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks (Sounds True, 2004).
The first ten seconds of connecting with someone may well be the most important ten seconds of the entire relationship. They may determine whether there will be any relationship at all. And you will learn quite a bit about the other person in those ten seconds, often enough to know whether they are someone you are interested in getting to know better.
Here is some vital advice on how to make a genuine connection with someone in the first ten seconds.

If you begin with something false and artificial, that is often the way the relationship goes. However, if you begin on a footing of authenticity, you create a template for the future that is based on truth and clarity. Here are some pointers:

1. Say something simple that is unarguably true. Even better, say something simple that is unarguably true and that you are experiencing in the moment. Example: you’re in the grocery store trying to choose a melon and an attractive person makes eye contact with you. Here is something you could say that meets both criteria: “I’m having a hard time deciding which cantaloupe to buy.”

This statement may sound ridiculously simple to you, but it instantly establishes trust, because it shares something personal and non-threatening about you, and it can’t be interpreted as any kind of lie, con, or attempted manipulation.
Here’s an example of what NOT to say: “Do you know a good way to tell which cantaloupes are good?” The authors’ research has shown time after time that a statement like this will turn people off, while the first statement will work. Statement Two reveals nothing about the speaker, yet asks the other person to reveal information. (Even simple information is asking the person to step forward to a degree of intimacy that the speaker has not volunteered.) If you say “I’m having a hard time choosing a cantaloupe,” you create an opening that the other person can enter if he or she chooses. At the same time, you reveal something of yourself, while speaking the absolute, unarguable truth. The other person will feel at ease, because you have not conned, lied, or manipulated them.

Speaking unarguable truths is the ideal way to begin a relationship. There are two good reasons why: First, the first ten seconds of a relationship is a template for how the rest of the relationship will go. The second reason is equally important: speaking the truth will often flush out people who do not have a capacity or an interest in honest relationships. It is better to learn that in the first ten seconds that to take ten years of pain and suffering to learn the same lesson.
For instance, imagine saying “I’m trying to decide which cantaloupe to choose,” and the other person says, “Here, I will do it for you.” Beware! This person is a Controller. They make bad partners. Or imagine that the other person responds by saying in a mocking tone, “Geez, everybody knows that! What’s wrong with you?” Beware! This person is a Critic. They make bad partners, too. But if the person responds in an authentic way that comes from their heart in the present moment, you will know that you have met someone who will make for a good partner.

2. Stay in the present moment. Don’t attempt to repeat anything you have ever done before, and don’t say anything you’ve ever said before. Say only simple and unarguably true things, such as “I am feeling warm in here” or “I feel nervous about being here.” If you can establish the relationship on the firm ground of authenticity–even ten seconds of it–you have a foundation on which you can build a mansion.[i]

LifeSong wrote: you’re in the grocery store trying to choose a melon and an attractive person makes eye contact with you. Here is something you could say that meets both criteria: “I’m having a hard time deciding which cantaloupe to buy.”

Hey, thanks for the advice about hot chicks and cantaloupes. I'm always reminded of one when I see the other

It's a great advice, really. Yet the problem is not in the first 10 seconds of a relation as much as it is in what happens 4 or 5 months latter, when the girl realises that there's something really weird going on in my mind regardless of what I do to keep my NPD away from the picture.

And the thing that freaks me out is that i almost always end up hearing the almnost the same phrase about pets and toys!!!
I thought that by doing the things I've mentioned in my post I would be a nicer person and I would not be acting selfish, but there's seems to be some essential factor I'm missing and I have absolutly no clue what it is.