Conflicts in understanding myself as a narcissist

Euler wrote:Just because the Croats were "a part" of the Venetian Republic doesn't mean they were Western, it just means they were colonized by Venice.

But being a stone's throw from Venice means something, you know? It's not like you draw a boundary on the map and anything 'yonder is Neanderthal. Besides, these type of arrangements (Venetian Rep. etc.) were purely mercantile at the time. In fact, what we know as Italy nowadays, didn't exist until late: it was a loose bunch of free city-states, co-existing but rather fighting one another for domination or just for the hell of it. (The same applies to Germany more-or-less).
Istria & co. was just one of the many, equal in status. In fact, they had/have their own Istrian language, a sort of mix of Glagolit and Italian (or so I think). They became called Croats much later. There was nothing remotely 'colonialized' about them, ever, until much later. It was a rich, thriving financial and cultural hub for much of its history, equal to any parts of Northern Italy.

Euler wrote:The major underlying dynamic within the West (and the one thing they're really good at it) is colonizing a region and absorbing/stealing anything of use only to define that useful technology or piece of culture as Western.

Okay. At one point, Hungary conquered ("colonized", however briefly) Vienna, which is as stately and respectable Western European institution as it gets. Hungary is considered Eastern Europe since the Soviet oppression.
(Mind you, Hungary also looted the best part of the West - oh good ol' times! - but it didn't pan out that well at the end, heh...)

Euler wrote:Only later in history did the West begin to really crank out some cultural and scientific stuff (Renaissance and later) but only with the "free resources" from Africa were they capable of doing so.

This is NOT TRUE. Sorry, Euler.

Euler wrote:So, you really can't even begin to lump several parts of the globe as Western at all unless you're specifically speaking of the Western part of Western Europe.

^ See my statement upthread about Ireland, my lovely green west-end home-country.

Euler wrote:Perhaps PD's are better known in America because the majority of psychologists came here to flee the Nazis. Freud, Adler, Horney, and some others didn't go to England they came to the US and setup up certain schools on the Eastcoast and the Midwest. Also America is really good at making something new only to move onto the next big breakthrough (the Japanese and Germans are much better at updates than we ever will be). Not to mention the media craze behind PD's in the US. So going with a value-ridden assumption that America lacks aesthetic quality is dubious at best.

Yup, psychology as we know it, is a typically Eastcoast Jewish endeavour. That's why I like it... ( - even though I'm a goj.)

BEWARE, I just got hold of a bottle of Catalonian red!
Shoot me.

Normal? wrote:Bertie:- "My Aunt Agatha, the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth and devours her own young."

^ Yup, that's what I meant... (Still big hugs)

It's official now: I've been diagnosed with NPD + SPD. The latter diagnosis is #######4 in the sense that it doesn't give me any new information to act on.

Daniel Birdick wrote:So it stands to reason that if these psychological insights are accurate and that, by your own testimony, you readily find yourself returning to an emotional state that you categorized as empty, then emptiness may be your emotional set point and all of your self help techniques won’t change that.

Sorry, my previous reply consisted of crudely applied Sleight of Mouth patterns. I won't write posts like that in the future. I'm vaguely aware of both the emotional set point concept and the concept of hedonic adaptation, but they don't apply to the experience I'm describing.

I'm talking about a massive perceptual shift -- a glitch in the matrix -- a MAJOR difference in how you view yourself and the external world. It's not just that the emptiness is replaced with genuine, real feelings. Everything changes. People go from being abstract symbols to being real, living human beings with their own feelings and their own agency. While walking besides a mirror, I see myself in a new way -- I'm aware of my existence as a unique being, separate from the rest of the world. There's the existence of a real Self that monitors my internal dialogue and my behavior. And with a Self, there's a bunch of "new" accompanying abilities:

Self-insight: I see my childhood and my situation in a new and more realistic light. I'm the idiot. I've been wrong all along. Everything I've believed in is false. Everything. My name on my passport is the same as before, but that's pretty much it.

Self-control: I can notice my internal dialogue... and make it stop. There's a quietness and calm there which is qualitatively different from anything I feel when I'm in false self mode. I can adjust my behavior and see how the things I do are completely unproductive, and don't really lead me anywhere. (When I'm trapped in my false self, I run around in circles -- repeating the same unproductive behavior patterns, over and over again.)

Decision-making: I can make decisions and follow through on them in true self mode. In false self mode, there isn't a real Self that can make "real" decisions. In false self mode, everything I'm doing is in some way done to maintain my false self-image. This makes it really hard to change because you don't really have access to a Self that can *make the decision* to change. When I'm in the false self mode it does feel like I am trapped. In true self mode, I'm free to do whatever I want -- there's no false self-image to be maintained and I'm free do to things "that I don't usually do" without caring about how that makes me look in other people's eyes. (There's the bizarre insight that I really don't know anybody -- not as human beings. And why would I care about what people that I don't know think about me? Nobody really cares what you do with your life. It's liberating and freeing to feel that.)

Body and voice: In true self mode, my body feels like my body. I feel more united. When I speak, I speak with a different sense of... certainty and intentionality? I don't know how to describe it. It's like... I'm finally communicating with other human beings.

Time: In true self mode, I'm aware of my biological age -- I'm in my midtwenties -- and I can feel time passing. In false self mode, there's almost no difference between a Friday evening and a Monday morning, no difference between New Year's Eve, a regular day and my birthday. It's all the same. Nothing changes.

Humans: as I said, in false self mode I'm representing people as one-dimensional symbols rather than real human beings. In true self mode I see people in a way that is new for me: I see people's eyes, I see the emotions conveyed in them. I can hear the emotional tone in their voices and I actually do care, at least a bit, about how they feel.

Going from the infantile state where people are represented as symbols to the state where you see them as they are is a trippy experience when you notice it happening in real time: one moment it's like my siblings don't really exist -- the other moment they are REAL as human beings. This stuff messes with your mind -- but I'm sort of starting to get used to it.

In true self mode, porn is both really awesome and terrible: awesome in the sense that I see women as... women. (And I *get* the point of sex. It feels so natural to want to ###$ women. In false self mode, I'm more into the idea of ######6 and to be seen as a player, as someone's who's been with a lot of women.) Terrible in the sense a lot of the stuff out there is poorly produced and it's obvious that the women aren't really enjoying themselves. Some clips are so poorly done that I start laughing out -- loud.

Music sounds a lot better when you hear the emotions conveyed by the singer's voice. Movies are awesome when you can feel the emotions that the director "wants" you to feel. And I can notice when actor's are doing a poor job and tell you whether *I* liked the movie or not. In false self mode, I'm always visiting IMDB after having watched a movie so that I can read what other people thought of it and what opinion I'm "supposed" to have about the movie. I also understand humor and comedy, I *get* a lot more jokes than I usually do.

Daniel Birdick wrote:Besides which, why should feeling “normal”, whatever that means, be considered your “true self”? Where on earth did you the idea that normality equates with authenticity?

I don't think it's something you can understand before you've experienced it. And once you've felt what it feels like to truly be alive -- you'll want to go back. Because it is more real. It is a superior state. Sure, you do feel regular and unimportant, but that doesn't matter since you suddenly don't care about fame, status or achievement in the way that you used to do.

Daniel Birdick wrote:I would however, suggest that you cannot transcend your biology.

It's not about transcending your biology. It's about going through what most people go through when they are small children. It's a completely natural process. It does require a lot of rewiring to be made, and it does require you to build up a new structure, a new way of seeing the world -- but I think it'll definitely be worth it. Neuroplasticity is a wonderful thing.

medusa wrote:There is the danger that self-realization might act as a treacherous ouroboros. Suddenly we "know" what's up, thus feeding back into the grandiosity loop, into our "baseline". Could this perhaps have something to do with fact that you keep slipping back into you False Self, narcovery?

I have no idea. I was just recently diagnosed. When I wrote my first posts in this thread, I had just been to two preliminary interviews. It took a while to be referred to a psychologist specialized in personality disorders. Since my first meeting with him about two months ago, I've been oscillating between different "modes" on a regular basis. But I'm not sure how useful the binary distinction between "true" and "false" self is -- there are more than two distinct states, more than two modes of perceiving the world.

Nowadays I seem to switch over to a really childish mode very easily: I'm aware of my own existence, but I feel like a one or two year old. My fine motor skills are messed up -- I lack accuracy. I don't really get that my body is my body -- if I swing my arm behind my back, it's like my arm stops existing. Once I bring it forward... it's there again. I can do that repeatedly and everytime my arm "appears" again I start laughing. Peekaboo! It's hilarious.

(Intellectually, I realize how messed up it is but hey -- it's some form of progress.)

Common, but not as common as the childish mode: I've got access to an internal voice that is mature. Concepts such as responsibility and hard-work feel self-evident. I feel more like man than a child. Sitting in front of the computer all day long seems pointless and stupid. Why would you want to do that? There's so much you can do and experience. And I'm so far behind my peers.

Still rather uncommon: true self mode, where I have real self-insight (ie seeing my childhood clearly) and having a pretty stable sense of identity. Truly seeing myself as I am. These episodes are still rare, but I've had two or three of them during the past two months so I'm making progress. The pain can be almost unbearable, but while I'm in that state, there's the Self that feels the pain... and everything I've read about mindfulness comes in pretty handy. It's just pain, shame, humiliation and embarrassement. Those things are within the human realm... and it's something that you can learn to manage.