Where does self-confidence end, and narcissism begin?

ZeroZ wrote:Do you feel like participating in everyday life having to face situations where you are disappointed, things didn’t go as good as you thought they would. Do you think that has helped curb your grandiosity?

I don't think I meet any criteria for NPD, but I'm flattered you thought I did. Does it mean I am starting to blend in?

I still think your question is relevant.

I've been raised by a narcissist who had grandiose ideas about the things I was meant to accomplish but no serious strategy about how to get there. As a result I did break my teeth a few times against society's wall trying to accomplish what she had set out for me but I was unsuited for. It's very painful. You come to think even more lowly of yourself.

But since I did not have much self esteem (even of the compensatory type), I did not fall from very high either. So I'd say that the more painful was the inability to strategize and set my goals in motion, not the realization that I'm not great.

After that I started to participate in everyday life as you wrote, trying to face the disappointment in myself and learn to handle it. Starting from scratch really. I'm still in that phase but I have also started to challenge myself again with realistic strategies in my tool belt.

Maybe you got more than what you bargained for? Does this address your question in any way?

Akuma wrote:

I don't have much confidence in your ability to give straight answers on this topic, at this point, but taking the question as a hypothetical where it's accepted the self-dissolution procedure works, if only partially, would that development not have a proportionate improvement on a person's narcissism?

Clearly define what you mean by self-dissolution and by narcissism in the context of your question and you'll get as straight an answer as possible. Because I still have no clue what you mean by those terms

Side-note: this paragraph, similar to the expounding of my rehab experience, is verbose and indulgent - hardly vague, though, if we're including your own writing in the context - just as much of this reply and the last have been, because I feel like it. The absurdity of this exchange, at this point, is hilarious.

Youre explaining that you want to reduce "narcissistic thinking" in your "rehab" and that there it was kind of better while out there its kind of worse. You are expecting a lot of background knowledge to fill gaps there. For me at least your story does not give me any clar picture of either what happened or what you consider as your problem.

Been pondering this the past couple of days, and I'm not sure there's any better way to ask you these things, in terms of their relevance to my personal situation. It's kind of obvious: the issue of confusion seems to depend on explaining to you what I mean by the self, but it's also clear that even Sam Harris's explanation isn't sufficient for aligning you with the angle I'm coming from; we would probably have to discuss the self at length first, as the two schools of thought are clearly very different to each other. That just doesn't interest me very much.

I guess what interests me the most in terms of your insight on the matter, is if there are any logical blockers to reducing a self-fixation of which narcissism has become a prominent component.

There's no need to know how that applies to my personal situation in order to think it through, and at any rate, my issues with these things are way more complex and thought-out than I can be stuffed sharing so specifically. It was never meant to be a difficult question; your weird requirements as a contributor are what's making it difficult.

Like I said, your input is appreciated. But if you're unable to deal with the question removed from my own dealings with its implications, I can't help you as much as you seem to think I can. Unless, that is, you can be more specific in asking for the information you need.

Been pondering this the past couple of days, and I'm not sure there's any better way to ask you these things, in terms of their relevance to my personal situation. It's kind of obvious: the issue of confusion seems to depend on explaining to you what I mean by the self, but it's also clear that even Sam Harris's explanation isn't sufficient for aligning you with the angle I'm coming from; we would probably have to discuss the self at length first, as the two schools of thought are clearly very different to each other. That just doesn't interest me very much.

Maybe youre overinterpreting what I asked. I mean I've been studying Buddhism myself for several years and since I've been suffering from depersonalization "no-self-experiences" are not a theoretical thing for me either. But I cant fathom what you mean by "self dissolution" - because if its just the self-feeling, or perceiving yourself as a person or as an I vanishing, then I've already answered that to you with my reference to dharmaoverground and Ingram etc. Theres also no reason why a temporary or even permanent vanishing of such perception would lead to increased mental health.

Self dissolution has already been explained in the context of the question. If you're wondering whether I mean 'bhaṅga' - the meditation-specific experience of gross bodily sensations dissolving into a vibratory tingling throughout the whole body - then no; but bhaṅga does (happen to) involve a disentanglement with the self and the sense of absolute presence with whatever one is meditating on. It's the straightforward meaning of the terms - 'self' to refer to the self illusion/delusion, 'dissolution' to mean disentanglement, disintegration, de-partnership (i.e. the removal of an abstract sense of Me between the body and its experience, becoming 'one with each moment') - that have been the subject here; unsure what the sophistry is being motivated by. It was already explained in those terms; and Harris elucidates the concept beautifully.

The question was, would attempting to move towards that goal, help improve a narcissistic style of thinking. Total self dissolution isn't the point; the path towards it is.

The referral to dhammaoverground and Daniel Ingram enlightens nothing from a psychodynamic perspective on the possibility of improvement through attempting greater selflessness (perhaps selflessness is a better way of articulating it, in the sense that I mean - but selflessness also denotes un-selfish helpfulness, which is only a by-product of self-dissolution, not the primary goal), rather it tells me what I already know: Goenka himself was incredibly narcissistic, in my opinion; as no doubt the Buddha was. But they're probably prime examples of healthy/positive narcissism - which, the more I think about it, could really be termed differently altogether; it's a common feature of effective and egalitarian leaders everywhere. Realistic self-importance becomes far more salient than the quibbles of over self-indulgence, in these types of figures; so the narcissist term could benefit from less lazy conflation, and a more detailed divarication, if you ask me.

The sources you deferred to only demonstrate how human complexity makes it an imperfect science where one should marginalise expectations from a potential cure to a potential benefit.

For example: I reached bhaṅga on the first Vipassana course I did (which also involves full immersion in the state overnight, without sleeping) and then, thanks to my addictive nature running deeper than the first course was able to penetrate, the next 3 courses were unconsciously spent chasing the same experience, and never going anywhere near as deep until I had more pain to work with. In addition to that, my PD in combination with my substance affliction sort of overwhelmed my discipline of practice (in my everyday life) entirely; the key secular component is equanimity or the capacity to remain free of capriciousness from unwanted stimuli, which is the veritable opposite of what allows a deep addiction to manifest itself, so it's been helpful conceptualising addiction as an abstract entity unto itself, for which meditation is the ultimate nemesis, of which it unconsciously works to overwhelm.

There are no guarantees with any of this stuff, but there are very clearly, very logically, many potential benefits to be had. That is my question to you: from a psychodynamic perspective, would extreme mindfulness and the reduction of self-focus; the heading towards less I thinking with greater presence of external moment, be helpful for narcissism?

It's unclear at this stage whether you're the best case study as a narcissist, but your education of these concepts might provide some insight as to the validity of the suggestion that improvement can be accomplished in such a way. Reason being, in the past you have demonstrated an uncommonly technical / near mathematical comprehension of PDs (i.e. the insurmountability of a personality data-structure, etc.) and how they can be improved.

Self dissolution has already been explained in the context of the question. If you're wondering whether I mean 'bhaṅga' - the meditation-specific experience of gross bodily sensations dissolving into a vibratory tingling throughout the whole body - then no; but bhaṅga does (happen to) involve a disentanglement with the self and the sense of absolute presence with whatever one is meditating on. It's the straightforward meaning of the terms - 'self' to refer to the self illusion/delusion, 'dissolution' to mean disentanglement, disintegration, de-partnership (i.e. the removal of an abstract sense of Me between the body and its experience, becoming 'one with each moment') - that have been the subject here; unsure what the sophistry is being motivated by. It was already explained in those terms; and Harris elucidates the concept beautifully.

I asked, cause I saw no such explanation. It crossed my mind you could mean the side-effect of concentration, but that is just that, theres no absence or "dissolution" of self, youre just concentrating. And that mental factor is the same when youre trying to solve a math problem, or programming, or masturbating, or watching a movie.

The referral to dhammaoverground and Daniel Ingram enlightens nothing from a psychodynamic perspective on the possibility of improvement through attempting greater selflessness (perhaps selflessness is a better way of articulating it, in the sense that I mean - but selflessness also denotes un-selfish helpfulness, which is only a by-product of self-dissolution, not the primary goal), rather it tells me what I already know: Goenka himself was incredibly narcissistic, in my opinion; as no doubt the Buddha was. But they're probably prime examples of healthy/positive narcissism - which, the more I think about it, could really be termed differently altogether; it's a common feature of effective and egalitarian leaders everywhere. Realistic self-importance becomes far more salient than the quibbles of over self-indulgence, in these types of figures; so the narcissist term could benefit from less lazy conflation, and a more detailed divarication, if you ask me.

Well Ingram and the people in the forum I was thinking of, were explicitly talking about disorders, but I feel were going in circles here. If there is no self there can be no narcissism. That there still is narcissism where there supposedly is no self shows that either the concept is wrong, or the self-absence is itself a delusion.
From my pov youre basically answering your own question with what you are writing really.

I refer you to my answer to Greebo here, which summarizes my opinion on this from a bit different angle.

vcrpamphlet wrote:Dissolution just means disintegration, and, in the case of the self - after accepting it as a delusion - the undoing of the attachment bond; that it relates to psychosis and death in this context, is sort of absurd.

It was already explained, only, not with big colourful pictures. It's needless over-sophistication of a fairly basic question, that was already sort of answered, at least enough to figure out the rest - the insistance on continuing, going around in circles, was your own.

Of course a reduction in a self-fixation would improve a person's narcissistic thinking. What you may have been able to illuminate, is the nature of the self (the illusion) and the deeper self (the psychodynamic model) and how those two concepts might overlap - how focusing on reducing the former might be impeded by characteristics of the latter - given I've explained (and provided a neuroscientist's definition) of the simple nature of the self as I understand it, to which you've consistently alluded to a deeper, less alterable self.

The depth of your psychodynamic understanding either doesn't cover this stuff in enough detail, or you've simply been drawing me back into this discussion to tie things up more suitably. For someone who's apparently been studying Buddhism for several years, your grasp of these concepts - from dismissing the angle as spiritual, to being unable to comprehend the question until it was spelled out in contrast to something entirely unrelated - has me wondering whether I might've simply overestimated your insights on these things.

I have a tendency of answering my own questions when the other party takes a different route, so it's still been good to bounce this off you; will look into Ingram over the next week, too.

My suspicion is, the techniques for becoming less 'me' orientated, can't be left to self-reliance alone when there's a disorder in the mix - the buttress of the meditation technique (and the moment-to-moment mindfulness it helps promote) requires a buttress itself.

Anyway, circles and needless explanations there may have been, but this has been more than helpful. Have to kind of combine all these posts together (including the replies to xdude and Greebo) to get the full picture, but, basically, the odds are heavily stacked against me - the self is indeed a much bigger beast than I appreciated 5-10 years ago, and will require some fairly radical steps before I can even use meditation in a constructive way.

Should add one last thing, in that a long-term addiction, at least in my case, is the far bigger obstacle to making progress, than narcissism is.

Should add one last thing, in that a long-term addiction, at least in my case, is the far bigger obstacle to making progress, than narcissism is.

How long have you been clean / dry?

Over 4 weeks.

^ edited out the ego comment, as it seemed unnecessary, gave the wrong idea of where it was coming from.

Why do you ask?

vcrpamphlet wrote:Over 4 weeks.

^ edited out the ego comment, as it seemed unnecessary, gave the wrong idea of where it was coming from.

Why do you ask?

I dunno I had goosebumpbs for some reason and was curious. Addiction is a huge thing to fight. It also puts some stuff here into a bettr perspective for me. In any event though, 4 weeks is still danger zone. I should probably apologize then, you should do whatever is necessary to stay clean. I wish you all the best for that.

Why the apology? Have you had your guard up, for some reason?

Goosebumps because you relate to having substance issues?