Increase motivation/decrease enthusiasm

I have adhd like qualities too. Not as pronounced as what you are describing. Having unfinished projects causes me to have anxiety though. I know they are there and they aren’t going away so I either stop doing them or obsess over finishing it. I have been working on just doing things casually and accepting I’ll get more done just by keeping moving even if it’s slowly than if I go 100 miles an hour and then lay on the couch watching Family Guy episodes. Taking pleasure in the activity itself enjoying the journey is what I’m trying to focus on rather than only seeing the end result and everything in the middle as a hassle.

I was recently telling someone on Teamspeak that I dont feel most emotions and he was like "You cant tell me you dont feel good when we have won a round".
And well I dont. All that is changed is that a certain pressure is gone. He seemed rather depressed when I told him that lol.
Now admittably this kind of secondary alexythimia is not a typical symptom of NPD, but I wonder if thats a problem for you guys, too. I assume most Nons somehow feel good when theyve achieved or finished something. For me it rarely has value and I've actually often lost stuff I've worked on for a long time because when its finished its like it has become irrelevant. So in all the attempts that one makes to keep the stuff as one thing, inside the block, when its done, the whole block just disappears, still being disconnected from everything else.

ive noticed that anything im excited about as an idea itself only, doesn't last long because the actual thing isn't what the idea of it is.

activities and peoples that have stayed with me long enough to develop a lifelong romance ahve been activities and people whose momements themselves are enjoyable, not the idea of them as a goal or end

if it doesn't last, I personally don't give it a second more thought as it was not ment to be.

Personally I don't ascribe to the "grueling out what one doesn't enjoy" as a virtue to aspire to. I am not some slave who is here to only suffer and my worth determined by that.

Akuma wrote:I was recently telling someone on Teamspeak that I dont feel most emotions and he was like "You cant tell me you dont feel good when we have won a round".
And well I dont. All that is changed is that a certain pressure is gone. He seemed rather depressed when I told him that lol.
Now admittably this kind of secondary alexythimia is not a typical symptom of NPD, but I wonder if thats a problem for you guys, too. I assume most Nons somehow feel good when theyve achieved or finished something. For me it rarely has value and I've actually often lost stuff I've worked on for a long time because when its finished its like it has become irrelevant. So in all the attempts that one makes to keep the stuff as one thing, inside the block, when its done, the whole block just disappears, still being disconnected from everything else.

There really isn’t a finished from my perspective usually, I just move the goal and try to figure out how to get to that point. It’s something that sort of builds in momentum and I don’t feel necessarily good more like disappointment because it wasn’t what I expected it to be. Also if I’m not able to reach the new goal and I often try to chew off more than is recommended I beat myself up about it. It gets to a point where no one could possibly be expected to hold those standards but that doesn’t really matter in my mind because if I can’t move forward than what is the point in even doing it? I feel emotions though, some very intensely like anger which I suspect is a cover for a more sinister emotion my mind is attempting to mask and doesn’t want to process. Anger, sadness, anxiety all perfectly able to feel these

For me the worst kind of obsessional behaviour has always been anxiety, or more accurately uncertainty, based. Very much consistent with classic compulsive traits.

When I'm attempting to do something where I doubt or don't feel secure in my own ability to get the job done I tend to work at it until such time that I feel satisfied it is resolved. My time in the physical sciences was particularly bad for this as I was often working very hard at something which I had no metric to determine how well I was doing or even if I was going in the right direction or learning something which needed to be learned. Not a problem for a few weeks, but trying to deal with that for years at a time was more challenging.

If I resorted to fantasy at all it was when I was having to drive myself to do something I had significant internal resistance/depression. Like a kind of positive self talk, reminding myself why I was doing it in the first place.

I do set quite lofty goals, but they have not historically been unreachable. My major failing has always been that I drive to hard and give to little regard to human frailty, the frailty in question being my own.

When it comes to hobbies and stuff though I don't really see any issue with my more involved approach. Over the years what I've done is establish a number of other interests which I use to compete against my workaholic tendencies to prevent me becoming too one dimensional. Secondary obsessions to offset the primary one. I've found that since I've been doing that I don't have much need for the positive self talk, as when I'm feeling snowed under I just think about the activity that I'm going to be doing in evening at the weekend.

The trick was to find the activities which work for me as they aren't the same as those most people seem to want to spend their time doing.

I have a similar issue and for PwNPD I think it boils down to a lack of solid self identity. You look for a thing to latch onto and to 'be', and when you find something it's like "This is it!" and you go all in. But soon you realise you liked the idea of it more than the thing itself, so you discard it and repeat. During the in-between periods you have no motivation because there's nothing to 'be'. This is a cycle that I've been caught in for a long time.

That's more borderline than it is classically narcissistic, in the NPD sense of the word.

Spaced wrote:I have a similar issue and for PwNPD I think it boils down to a lack of solid self identity. You look for a thing to latch onto and to 'be', and when you find something it's like "This is it!" and you go all in. But soon you realise you liked the idea of it more than the thing itself, so you discard it and repeat. During the in-between periods you have no motivation because there's nothing to 'be'. This is a cycle that I've been caught in for a long time.

This pretty much describes it to a T for me. You get your self worth from what you are obsessed with and have none when it’s not there anymore. Have you found anything that helps to be more consistent and instead of going too hard just sort of do things in moderation without getting too carried away?