Compensatory Narcissism Treatment

coloroftruthisgray wrote:Is there such a thing as mental illness hypochondria? Because if there is , bro , I'm sorry but you have it.

Very common of compensatorys, hun. compensatory also engulfs aspects of all of the diagnosis's people have believed me to have

Diagnosis i have been given on this forum include:

hypochondria
bipolar disorder
histrionic personality disorder
compensatory narcissistic personality disorder
schizophrenia
borderline personality disorder
depression
social anxiety
alter ego..PD?

Yeah , nobody here is giving you a diagnosis , what does your therapist say you have? And don't lie this time , you said you lied before , why would you bother lying is beyond me.

hypochondria
bipolar disorder
histrionic personality disorder
compensatory narcissistic personality disorder
schizophrenia
borderline personality disorder
depression
social anxiety
alter ego..PD?

You're kidding me right? Alter egos , schizophrenia? Honey , you don't have any of the above. You know what you are? Bored! Bored out of your mind. Bored with yourself , bored with your life and bored with your personality.

Get a hobby , you'll feel better. And no , I'm not being sarcastic or mocking , keep your mind busy and don't focus on yourself for a while , you'll feel better.

TiredOfRepression21 wrote:Very common of compensatorys, hun. compensatory also engulfs aspects of all of the diagnosis's people have believed me to have

Diagnosis i have been given on this forum include:

hypochondria
bipolar disorder
histrionic personality disorder
compensatory narcissistic personality disorder
schizophrenia
borderline personality disorder
depression
social anxiety
alter ego..PD?

Huh? The hypochondria comment was a joke, although does mental hypochondria exist?
No one has believed you are NPD, and I haven't seen anyone say you had any of the other things except depression and BPD, and that's because you said you had been diagnosed. Of course, I haven't read all of your posts or others comments on them, but I have to believe this is a very inflated list.

These are things you've TOLD people you had, but eventually, and quickly, you were called out on not having these things.

You're skewing reality quite a bit here.

Ok, let me specify, these are all things people considered i have on the forum. It wasn't meant to stir up controversy at all i just thought it was funny. I would say more than half were only mentioned one brief time

And my therapist says i have an unstable view of my identity and may have problems rooted in my family. I brang up compensatory narcissism with her, and she said it would make a good fit for me, but she did not have a chance to diagnose me as she sent me to a therapist with more expertise in disorders and psycho-dynamics that i will be seeing august 16th

Again , stop thinking about a diagnosis , in fact , stop thinking at all ! Go get a beer and watch something pointless , it'll be much better for you than hanging out at mental illness forums , hoping for a diagnosis.

And I was joking about the hypochondria thing , I'm sure others were kidding as well. You do not have a PD!

You , have no idea who you are supposed to be and that is a normal process everyone goes through sometimes , it is not a sign of mental illness , it just means chill out , go exercise , socialize and get laid , simple.

You'll be all better. Go see a therapist , talk about your problems , vent , that's good for you , however begging for a mental illness is not.

I have never known, though. I always try to be who i need to be to advance to the next stage. I do not really even care who i am supposed to be, i am fine adapting. But, recently it has taken a toll on me. I do not know if it is a PD or not, but i do know it has been here my whole entire life.

I feel like if you were to ask my parents who i am, they would not know, but anyone else would just describe themselves. I adapt.

The only people i feel 100% comfortable around, are those know that my emotions are full of $#%^ and that my true self is stoic and indifferent. These people include my ex who was madly in love and did not care even if i cheated on me, she still wanted me back. And my best friend from home who is a couch potato like me at heart. My parents know i am stoic, but i don't feel comfortable around them still because i know they over analize me, like most people do. Im relatively simple, I do not give a $#%^. About anything. Recently, even about myself

I have done so well adapting socially though, that i knew eventually i would not be able to maintain that standard. That is when i lost it

Tired , that is true for everyone else. We all adapt and keep changing , none of us really have "characters" or personalities , we all change everyday , little by little.

None of us are the person we were a year ago , a week ago , a day ago , we just have the same face and the same name. We all adapt as we go , you are not alone in this , even though you are completely alone.Just like the rest of us.

Talking to a therapist and getting it all out will be good for you I think but in the meantime , open up a bottle of beer and just take a deep breath.

I do not enjoy any of my friends unless i can be my blunt, self centered, and morally indifferent self with them still accepting me, which i have only found with two people in my life. My best friend since 4th grade, and my ex who was so sweet and naive that she did not even care who i was, she just has never been treated so well in her life.

I would rather enjoy that beer while on this website, as the narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder sections have the most realistic and logical outlooks on life. I enjoy just reading your guys thoughts, because they reflect my own. But when ever i post, i am seen as a fraud. Maybe i will just stick to sitting back and observing, like i do best

Compensatory narcissism is basically using narcissism to compensate for your own weaknesses. What else you also have or don't have [AsPD BPD HPD whatever other PD] is not necessarily linked into it.

Here's my own screwed up perspective on narcissistic defenses:

I used to have big problems with compensatory narcissism. The truth is that I have had poor self discipline/ability to actually act on anything unless under the right sort of pressure, problems with depression and dissociation which would prevent me from functioning at an adequate level, overcompensating for [some forms of] poor self-control with both narcissistic self-image and extreme paranoia that helped me limit the damage from my own actions, a deep seated hatred of everything and everyone that got in the way and I needed to plaster over with fake socialisation combined with dissatisfaction at the mediocre existence society would offer me bearing those things in mind, and would overcompensate for that by trying to "live" my ambitions and perceptions without actually being able to achieve them... Which made me act pretty much exactly like a narcissist. (and yes I reckon that would count as a variety of narcissism.)

The cure was to face those things, and say, OK, this is what i want, [both conflicted ends of it] and this is where I am right now. As far as functionality goes, the attempt is to remove the disparity between those 2 things by finding a way to function not based around self-deluding.

To an extent I still use some of the same defences to try to interact with the world but to a lesser extent. I don't need to delude myself instead of getting on with my life "oh yeah, I'm working on a blah, its going to be great." is replaced with, "damn, I'm ######6 crazy, but here's where I'd like to be. A blah would get me there, but those mess with my issues. I wonder how i can improve my functionality/adapt my methods/ideas etc to help me get where I want in a way that I will be happier with and that will set off my issues less".

What I lost with dropping a lot of the narcissism was going round in circles thinking big but talking constant shite and getting nowhere, and replacing it with a more realistic perspective of how to get where I want to go - also a realistic realisation that I still have a lot of work to do on myself. lol.

Facing your insecurities is not the same as accepting them as "who you are". Chances are if there are things you hate or dislike about yourself that you have to use narcissistic defenses to escape, those things are not you, they are issues you have that cause you pain/discomfort/dissatisfaction/shame etc.

Facing them helps you actually be who you want to be, by working on the insecurities to change them, and be the person you really feel that you are - by being able to accept that while some things in life (e.g. money) might be able to arrive that way for "lucky" people, nothing about "being" anything lands in your lap and everyone who is anything they want to be has to work for it - and that not being there is not failure, its basically the beginning of a process.

- true for both physical and mental skills, and psychological attributes. But progress requires self-honesty, and honestly coming out the other side, endless circles of self-dishonesty and failure are far more miserable to deal with than accepting you're not who or where you want to be quite yet.

Get rid of that stuff and you won't need to be a narcissist, in my experience if you still want to be an egotistical arsehole there's plenty of chance to do that, just look at me I'm probably still a bit up myself lol. Just more realistic about life etc.

My experiences are that you can be more realistic about each given moment so you look like you're aiming lower in the short term, but getting on with what you really want to more, and from what I can tell while the crash is painful, you gain a lot of capacity to do better in the long term with whatever things you're trying at.

Not saying it all becomes a bed of roses, it doesn't, but what does change is that whatever other PDs you may or may not have, dropping the narcissism give you a lot more control over where you want to direct your own life.

~I'm sure it wasn't their intent at the time, but genuine thanks to the total @@@@@@@ who did that one to me a few years back. < (good-humoured friendly both sarcasm and genuine comment, not nastiness. )

What I'm trying to say is that people tend to be wary of dropping it, but in the long run narcissism is actually more painful than the stuff its trying to protect you from.

Just in case the experiences of another nutter are interesting, lol.

katana wrote:I used to have big problems with compensatory narcissism. The truth is that I have had poor self discipline/ability to actually act on anything unless under the right sort of pressure, problems with depression and dissociation which would prevent me from functioning at an adequate level, overcompensating for [some forms of] poor self-control with both narcissistic self-image and extreme paranoia that helped me limit the damage from my own actions, a deep seated hatred of everything and everyone that got in the way and I needed to plaster over with fake socialisation combined with dissatisfaction at the mediocre existence society would offer me bearing those things in mind, and would overcompensate for that by trying to "live" my ambitions and perceptions without actually being able to achieve them... Which made me act pretty much exactly like a narcissist. (and yes I reckon that would count as a variety of narcissism.)

The cure was to face those things, and say, OK, this is what i want, [both conflicted ends of it] and this is where I am right now. As far as functionality goes, the attempt is to remove the disparity between those 2 things by finding a way to function not based around self-deluding.

Facing your insecurities is not the same as accepting them as "who you are". Chances are if there are things you hate or dislike about yourself that you have to use narcissistic defenses to escape, those things are not you, they are issues you have that cause you pain/discomfort/dissatisfaction/shame etc.

Get rid of that stuff and you won't need to be a narcissist, in my experience if you still want to be an egotistical arsehole there's plenty of chance to do that, just look at me I'm probably still a bit up myself lol. Just more realistic about life etc.

My experiences are that you can be more realistic about each given moment so you look like you're aiming lower in the short term, but getting on with what you really want to more, and from what I can tell while the crash is painful, you gain a lot of capacity to do better in the long term with whatever things you're trying at.

Not saying it all becomes a bed of roses, it doesn't, but what does change is that whatever other PDs you may or may not have, dropping the narcissism give you a lot more control over where you want to direct your own life.

What I'm trying to say is that people tend to be wary of dropping it, but in the long run narcissism is actually more painful than the stuff its trying to protect you from.

Just in case the experiences of another nutter are interesting, lol.

Wow. That post was one of the most helpful replies i have gotten on this forum. Thank you Katana

I can relate very well to your first paragraph. I also feel as though my socialization is very fake. I was always a shy kid, but i started with no friends, and ended up graduating high school one of the most popular kids in the school. Everyone knew me for my ability to relate to people, even though it was fake. I got joy out of knowing i could be anyone's "best friend", even though in reality i would find flaws in everyone, and my only friend was the most stoic individual in the grade. He was the only one who understood i had a deep hatred for people and for society. I think he liked me so much because i mastered being social, and i liked him because he did not even feel the need to try to act social. I feel as though he is me in my ideal and default state, but i wanted to milk people for what they were worth and get pride out of knowing i could do so. but now in college, where i am a no one and no one knows my full potential, i am lost in my own thoughts and depressed. Everyone is consumed in their false realities. It does give me an advantage to exploit them, though, but even that is not as fulfilling as it used to be. I have completely lost myself.

I will try to figure out what i want and find my insecurities, but i imagine this will take a while in therapy. As of know, i can not really find any insecurities about myself besides very subtle things i see wrong with my face or body. I also do not know what i want. I just want to be happy and to meet someone who can operate on the same level that i do, i guess. I want pussy money and recognition for my intelligence though in the short-term

I am very thankful for your post...it will make going to therapy a lot more comforting for me, knowing that, whatever is going on in my head can be worked out without more dissociation as a result. I realize it will take time, but again, i can not thank you enough for your insightful post.