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Experiences of healing a narcissist

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Experiences of healing a narcissist

Postby fennel » Mon Sep 11, 2023 10:14 am

After 15 years of living together and marriage, I have only now recognized that my wife has NPD. There were a few other conditions (anxiety disorder, HSP to name two) which in part blocked me from seeing the NPD. I have now somewhat extensively studied NPD, and even I am not licensed to diagonse, I do see too many strong signs that my wife is a covert narcissist. My wife's 10 year old diagnosis of anxiety disorder also has many sentences that match exactly with NPD, even though NPD was not spotted at that time.

The situation is difficult. We have a 3yo child and my wife is trying to get everything. That is not rational as my wife has also been violent towards me (the husband) and has had significant problems taking care of the child. My wife's mental health has not been well with the child. My wife has been extremely anxious and has problems handling normal situations with a child (for example when the child is crying). I know NPD is very difficult to cure and it is difficult to get the patient to start treatment. My wife has already gone through a 5 year therapy, but as far as I know it did not focus on NPD at all, as anxiety was the topic. My wife also has just started a new psychotherapy, but again I don't think NPD is the topic at all (rather she feels she needs to recover from things like postnatal depression).

I have two main questions:

1. Do you have experiences of a narcissist significantly healing? For me, I do not expect her to change completely, but I really would like to know if there are any confirmed cases where a covert narcissist would have changed their view of themselves, and changed NPD behavior after treatment.

2. If you recognized NPD in your spouse and eventually did get them to get diagnosed, and even got them to treat their NPD in therapy, how did all this happen? What was the process, how did they get motivated to get diagnosed?
Last edited by Snaga on Fri Sep 15, 2023 11:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: moved to Significant Others forum, no edits
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Re: Experiences of healing a narcissist

Postby barry h » Mon Oct 02, 2023 2:06 pm

Hello fennel.
You may or my not be aware that recovery is very difficult for people diagnosed with NPD due to their reluctance to accept blame for any of their behaviour.
For example, one of the first steps to recovery is to admit you have a problem.
Not every person is willing to do that.
Also, during therapy, some people can be very skilled into manipulating others that there is no problem at all with them. As you very likely know already, they can come across as caring, loving, all the traits of an empathetic person when the need arises. This makes treatment very problematic.
I'm no expert, I'm not married to a person diagnosed with the condition, but I do have a very justified suspicion that someone i know could be diagnosed with the condition due to their violent, manipulative behaviour imposed on myself.
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