It’s probably because you call them ‘anxiety people’

People with at least certain types of NPD tend to use/manipulate/victimize people in ways that hurt, scare, and anger. People who have experience dealing with such NPD sufferers often have unresolved grudges which they project onto anyone with NPD. (Similarly, they tend to label NPD anyone who triggers their unresolved issues.)

In a perfect word, everyone would be emotionally mature enough not to be triggered or even injured in the first place by someone exhibiting manipulative/narcissistic behavior. But we don’t live in a perfect world. Victims of emotional abuse have valid reason to hurt and be scared and angry. It’s reasonable to say that they don’t have valid reason to demonize people with NPD. But whether demonizing people with NPD is “valid” or not, it’s understandable. At least as understandable as is any sort of projection.

So, this is a personal question, and definitely don’t feel obligated to answer it, but if you “haven’t abused or manipulated anyone ever”, can I ask if you’ve gotten any verification of this assertion from an impartial observer? For instance, has a therapist used a term like “covert NPD” to refer to you?

Also, being honest here and speaking personally, I have suffered abuse and manipulation of a distinctively narcissistic sort for a number of years. I don’t feel like I harbor hatred toward the individual in question today. (Though I’d really rather not ever interact with them again.) But it definitely was a long process to reach the point where I could say that. And it’s pretty certain that even if the individual to whom I refer had/has issues that lead them to abuse and manipulate me, I must admit that I similarly had preexisting issues on which they wouldn’t have been able to prey had I not had such issues. (And, full disclosure, if this individual ever had an NPD diagnosis from anyone with more authority than my own armchair, I’m unaware of it.)

I’ve since run into and worked closely with at least one other individual who habitually acted in very narcissistic ways toward me and others and I was able to mostly view them with empathy and avoid being triggered to an extent that wouldn’t have been possible had I not previously worked closely with the former individual I mentioned above. I can’t say I’m thankful to the first one per se, but at very least I can admit that having interacted with them, in some ways I’ve become a stronger person. (Even if in others I’ve become weaker.)

The Narcissist Scare by Sarah Z — This explains a lot, the term has been wildly misused and thus people don’t really understand what it actually means.

Plus there is a focus on punitive ‘justice’ very much in the systems we live under instead of either trying to understand people and trying to help them either directly or indirectly.

Allegedly, it is a difficult neurodivergence to live with in a healthy, non toxic way. However, I’ve never personally seen that from anyone I know officially diagnosed with it, in fact they are well aware that they have it and are trying to do better, a lot of people are armchair psychologists and love to diagnose with no proof, misattributing it to other things, either trauma or the systems we all live under which causes people to act in terrible ways.

For those who have genuinely been affected by the actions of those who genuinely have it though, I suspect they feel as if they have to see as everybody with it as exactly the same to try to defend themselves. However, in actuallity this likely just makes people worse because not having community or people to point out when you are doing harmful things or getting you help is likely going to make people act out or seek out others who will reinforce their beliefs instead of encouraging them to get help in ways that actually work instead of the vitriolic hating ways most do to them. Though yes, I get that people shouldn’t have to be around those that do them harm but by seeing anyone of any group as all the same it may be doing more harm than good instead of getting to know individuals.

Personally, I think a lot of the systems we live under don’t help with the behaviour of anyone with neurodiverse conditions nor those that need protection from actual toxicity because they are stagnating and do not allow those that need help to get it due to being alienating and often lacking the resources they need to get help.

People don’t understand that medicine is about helping the patient. They read the diagnostic criteria for NPD, and they don’t understand that those things are only medically significant if they harm the patient. They think the criteria is a list of bad behaviour that hurts others.

Teach people what medicine is, and the stigma disappears.

Just look up “narcissism”, “NPD” or “narcissistic personality disorder” and the results are about how dangerous people with NPD are and how to spot somebody with NPD or if your ex boyfriend is a narcissist etc… etc…

Thats because these people ARE dangerous. My dad was a narcissist (my own assumption) and his new wife is a narcissist (both of her parents actually got proper diagnosis and testing, both were positive)

My new step mom actually tried to ruin my life. She tried to throw all of my belongings away, kicked out my cat and kicked my sister and I out. (right as I turned 16 and my sister turned 20). DCF got involved and they did jack shit cause my dad bought a separate house to put us in.

My mom is also a narcissist and she is the most exhausting person to deal with. She has hit and hurt me in the past and blamed me. Constant gaslighting, constant blaming, constant lying. Narcissists are the most damaging and dangerous people you can come across. Some are obviously less insane, and are tolerable, but if I knew someone have serious NPD I’d completely avoid them and hardly talk to them.

Also I’d like to clear up, if you think you are a little smarter, or better than everyone else, I wouldn’t call you a narcissist. However if you think you are more important than everyone, and think its OK to lie to or hurt people, even a little for personal gain, you are a narcissist.

Same with adults who have a sexual attraction to children. They didn’t choose to be like that, and if they make sure to not act on those impulses, they shouldn’t be demonized. Conversion therapy has been demonstrated not to work, but if there’s any way they can receive help with their impulses rather than condemnation and vitriol, that seems it would be more helpful.

As others have written it’s deconstructive towards other people plus NPD are hard to make understand their behaviour is problematic. In their view you are the problem if you have a problem with them. Depression, ADHD and other things do not have that trait. With them you can talk them into therapy and about potential problems they are causing.

How do you cope with NPD?

Also, what kind of things can other people do to support someone with NPD?

It’s stigmatised because the term has entered common (mis)usage to describe people who are just selfish

I dunno dude, it’s super weird. Sarah Z has a video about this, IIRC the explanation there was something like, people have latched on to “narcissist” as a thing one doesn’t need to worry that one is oneself but can be tacked on to anybody one dislikes. Also there are demons involved for some reason.

(Having killed ShortFatOtaku’s Twitter guy, and taken all his stuff, how would “the narcissist” go about extracting the validation??? Sounds made up.)

(Also it’s always “the narcissist” like there’s just one extremely busy person out there.)

NPD might make people struggle with empathy, but nobody, who is out there thinking everyone they meet could be “the narcissist” who is out to get them and not worthy of respect or consideration, is themselves killing it on the empathy front.

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I believe ignorance is a common reason even among professionals. They only think of the grandiose traits; they confuse the vulnerable traits with BPD or MDD; and they think it has to be close to ASPD to be diagnosable.

My loved one developed NPD by having a terrible childhood and early teenage years with undiagnosed AuDHD. Bullying, rejection, isolation, school failures, etc. The solution was to start lying, manipulating, trying to get something (anything) going their way, seeking validation… They received a depression diagnosis only at first 🫥.

Did you know people with ASD score higher in vulnerable narcissism traits? That means this story could be common. Traumatized neurodivergent children are already at higher risk of developing mental disorders.

But no, nobody talks about NPD this way. It’s always about grandiose traits being dangerous for others (which can be part of the experience, but there’s so much more). I hope it changes someday.

Self defense

I’m assuming to some degree diagnoses of this and similar disorders are affected by the replication crisis in psychology, and that many people just made bad choices or made the wrong enemies and got labelled with them at some point by our cursed medical system. Estimates on what percentage of the diagnosed are legitimately and undeniably ill with these disorders? Also I’d take a narcissist over a psychopath or sociopath any day.

I just wanted to say that I think it is probably difficult to have a disorder that is stigmatised so much. It makes it harder to acknowledge it and work on it. You do that anyway, which shows strength. I agree that disorders do not make someone a bad person. How you act and what is the effect on others is what is important for that. We all make mistakes. What is important is to acknowledge them and learn from them and to prioritise the needs of people we might have hurt so that they can heal. I think that defines whether someone is a good person, whether they have NPD or not.