There are trends in mental health just as there are in most other sectors. I have been noticing in the last couple of years that many people are talking about narcissism.
I hear things like: “My mother is a narcissist, my partner is a narcissist, my sister-in-law is a narcissist, my Uber driver is a narcissist.”
Well maybe not the Uber driver, but you get the idea.
Most of these people state that they have looked this up on the internet and “everything fits.” Ah, that fountain of knowledge, the internet. It must be so.
In reality, narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a serious mental health condition that most experts believe is not generally treatable. The characteristics of NPD are a pervasive pattern of grandiosity and sense of importance, preoccupied fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love. The individual believes they are special and this can only be recognized by other “special and high status people.”
They require excessive admiration and have a sense of entitlement with unreasonable expectations of special treatment and compliance. They also lack empathy and are unwilling to recognize the feelings and needs of others. They are commonly perceived as arrogant.
Greek mythology is the origin of the disorder, in the story of Narcissus, a beautiful young person who fell obsessively in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water, not recognizing that it was his own reflection. Contrast this with what most people are referring to when they are describing the narcissist in their life.
Most often they are experiencing that person as self-centred and not attentive. Many use the word “entitled” meaning “they want me to do everything for them.”
There are narcissistic personality traits that are unpleasant to be around but it can be possible to have a conversation with the individual with some success. In other words, awareness of how they are behaving can trigger changes in their behaviour.
These individuals are not likely to have the key characteristics of a narcissistic personality disorder that are essential for a diagnosis under the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of recognized psychiatric disorders.
Living with or being exposed to someone with NPD is often extremely painful and at times destructive. Children raised by a parent with NPD can be traumatized by the constant abandonment, the lack of empathy, the unachievable expectations and the emotional withholding.
Partners of persons with NPD suffer a similar fate. A loss of self, self-confidence and wellness are often the cost when a significant person in one’s life has a narcissistic personality disorder.
Ironically, given the description of the characteristics of NPD, it is a fact that these individuals, at their core, are insecure. But I will save that for another column.
Deborah Joyce is a registered psychotherapist with a practice in Powell River and Comox Valley. For more information, go to beaufortcounselling.ca.
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