Nearing the end of my rope

Not feeling guilt and shame brings problems of it's own. Just saying.

Squaredonutwheels wrote:Not feeling guilt and shame brings problems of it's own. Just saying.

True, and I suspect the OP knows this, and will never go down that path, but I do get why the OP sometimes wishes the pain could be put to rest via a clear cut "I don't care" belief system.

On the flip side, I find it possible to befriend others with NPD (with a lot of careful awareness about boundaries), but I cannot do the same with AsPD.

I am going to make some extreme generalizations, they aren't entirely true, but simplify why... With AsPD, just my own experience, everyone is at best a tool, to be used and tossed when another opportunity appears. With NPD, these people can sometimes be very successful, over-the-top, but still relatable, because they tend to have a code of ethics. Again, just an extreme simplification.

xdude wrote:

Squaredonutwheels wrote:Not feeling guilt and shame brings problems of it's own. Just saying.

True, and I suspect the OP knows this, and will never go down that path, but I do get why the OP sometimes wishes the pain could be put to rest via a clear cut "I don't care" belief system.

On the flip side, I find it possible to befriend others with NPD (with a lot of careful awareness about boundaries), but I cannot do the same with AsPD.

I am going to make some extreme generalizations, they aren't entirely true, but simplify why... With AsPD, just my own experience, everyone is at best a tool, to be used and tossed when another opportunity appears. With NPD, these people can sometimes be very successful, over-the-top, but still relatable, because they tend to have a code of ethics. Again, just an extreme simplification.

1) Basically am finding this out more and more since I truly feel little guild or shame (defences are up to my neck) nowadays. There are moments where I am just flat in conversations and am also quite dissociative so am not really there presently. Just underwhelmed by everything (in reality probably overwhelmed but have disconnected to that point)

2) I do find this to be true...an ASPD friend friend of mine is always down to meet up and do something but for the last few months or so I've had the incessant feeling that he just hangs around people for entertainment. This is extremely irritating for me, as it just hits the same nerve my dad's behavior has for all my life. This objectifying am now guilty of myself as well but it is extremely irritating. The weird thing is at first when we lived together, he was the person I thought I wanted to trust the most. That has faded with time though. I've noticed him taking glee in when I humiliate myself (in some situations I do this nowadays just for attention anyhow) or struggle with something so it's been mutual at times, where we just go back and forth. It feels like there is nowhere to hang on with them in a relationship.

Tbh, I feel as if I've hit the jackpot of all the negative traits from personality disorders and none of the positives. The desperate need for love and acceptance of BPD, the stuck-upness, grandiosity and invulnerability of NPD (not giving others the time of day) the carelessness and detachment and flat effect of ASPD, the lack of empathy of the two prior along with inability to make true connections. The shizoid lack of interest and effort in maintaining connections to others (along with the inability to actually take interest, but having to fake it). Plus paranoia from being self-aware of being essentially a psychopath but one who cries and the avoidance of old acquaintences and friends that comes along with. At least if I had true ASPD, it wouldn't be an alarm in my head but the whole BPD split (I feel am all bad and now I actually have proof! take that, myself!) is very difficult to silence.

I have the underlying traits of a codependent (as a child of a narcissist<counter-dependency actually, courtesy of NPD) yet when I get close am anything but.

@SelfSerf,

For whatever it's worth I find it easier to be someone here, anonymous, maybe who I wish to be, but in real life I flip into NPD or BPD mode. I've gotten better at not doing so, but understood about dissociating too. I get nasty when I am dissociating and others push me to stop. I even say, ENOUGH, but am still pushed by others to do more than I can, or be more than I can, and become hyper-aware of their own self absorbed motives.

I can write that even over in the SOFF and Relationship forums, it's good to see written conversion steered from a simple he/she is a narcissist (or pick your cluster B disorder), and I am perfect, to a more a realistic blur of what roles were played by both. Narcissism doesn't exist in a vacuum (or rather, that's what I believe). Likewise nobody is completely free of narcissistic, even AsPD traits at times.

You are introspective, that's cool.