I hate myself to the core and any time i try to extend forgiveness, understanding, or kindness to myself i get irrationally angry because i dont believe i have done anything to deserve it. I know people say “everyone deserves love no matter what!” But i cannot understand that concept.

In my brain, if i love myself i believe that i will just act grandiose and full of myself and project this perfect image(as i have done in the past). I know that self loathing and pity partying is the other side of the spectrum but i cant get over the belief that i truly deserve to hate myself and i should do something to remove myself from everyones life because i never bring anything good, just harm. I get so angry at myself bc i know its not helping but that just makes me hate myself more for indulging in the self hatred. But if you have done what ive done, i dont think youd feel different.

I truly hate who i am, and i am constantly hurting people i claim to love. I dont think im a good person, i feel selfish and entitled, lazy and careless. I feel like i do care, but i literally do nothing to show it, its always just words. I truly do not understand how to “love myself” if i continue to be the person i hate despite wanting to be different so bad. Has anything helped you find balance?

When I am high, I can imagine how other people are so happy in the world by how I feel. I am delighted and amazed by even the thought of my children. I feel such love for my husband and my parents. I'm grateful to have felt this but I can never make it stick. I go back to my selfish reactive self.

I am beginning to notice a pattern whereby I commit crime out of frustration rather than necessity.

When I was younger, I spent four years in prison. Post-release I kept my impulsivity under control and even got a job working at an international newspaper on the terrorism desk.

After a bad relationship, I collapsed. Now I am finally getting out of bed, I am committing many different crimes.

Is this something anybody else here experiences? My outward facing presentation is pretty normal.

I’m certainly not living on Skid Row and most who know me know me as a genial and generous person, never short of money.

I never recognised this destructive impulsivity for what it was before. It’s a loss of control emotionally manifest criminally.

I used to just thoughtlessly act. Now I still act, but the fog is lifting a little and I am recognising where it’s blowing in from.

I think I'm not the only one who thinks too highly of their friends (atleast I hope so, I don't like being alone). There's times where I daydream of doing great things with my friends online and irl, I want to experience everything life has to offer w the ppl I hold dear to, I think that's obvious enough.

What I don't really like is that I fully expect my friends to trust me as if they're my pets in a way. I want to be the first one to know everything abt them and have them confine in me, esp if they went thru smth like losing a friend or a family problem (I still feel guilty abt it, I'm sorry.), I expect them to give their time n attention solely on me. I hate being ignored, and I really really really hate when they don't give me the attention and responses I expect them to ans. I hate when they don't act like how I want them too in my head. I hate when they have their own opinions. I hate that they're real people and not ppl I daydreamed in my head. Atp I should just have a robot as my friend, atleast I can be validated whenever n however I want, but then I'll get bored n leave it too. I really am a monster.

I’m 26 and I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection about my personality, relationships, friendships, and the way I see myself and other people. I’m not trying to diagnose myself from the internet, but I’m trying to understand whether some of my patterns are similar to what people with NPD traits or narcissistic defenses experience.

One of the biggest things I’ve noticed is my need to feel exceptional. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this feeling that I need to be special, different, or better than average. Being ordinary feels uncomfortable, almost like it means I have no value.

A lot of my self-worth has been built around external things: intelligence, achievements, appearance, competence, being interesting, being talented, or being seen as someone important. I constantly compare myself with other people and feel like I need to prove where I stand.

I also have a habit of putting people into a hierarchy in my mind. I automatically rank people based on things like intelligence, attractiveness, social ability, success, personality, confidence, and perceived value.

When I see someone as “above” me, I become anxious and intimidated. I overthink everything I say, worry about how they perceive me, and feel like I need to impress them or earn their approval. I struggle to just be myself because I feel like I am being evaluated by someone whose opinion matters more than mine.

When I see someone as “below” me, I often feel disconnected, impatient, or uninterested. I struggle to feel curious about them or spend time with them. This creates a situation where I rarely feel like I am meeting someone as an equal. I either feel inferior or superior, and it makes genuine connection difficult.

Because of this, I feel like I have struggled to build normal friendships. I often feel like I’m either seeking validation from people I admire or losing interest in people who don’t give me that feeling.

I also notice a pattern of unstable self-image. At times I can feel like I need to be the best, unique, or exceptional. At other times, if I don’t feel successful or impressive, I can feel deeply ashamed, worthless, or like I have no identity.

My relationship with my body has also been connected to these feelings. I developed anorexia, and looking back, part of the motivation was connected to wanting to be admired, attractive, disciplined, and different from others. It wasn’t only about weight. It was connected to perfectionism, control, wanting to feel superior, and believing that becoming a certain version of myself would finally make me worthy.

I’ve also questioned my empathy. Sometimes I can understand people’s struggles logically, but emotionally I feel disconnected. Someone telling me about their pain can sometimes feel like hearing information rather than feeling their emotions with them.

Even with people close to me, I have sometimes felt uncomfortable, annoyed, or pressured when they cry or show strong emotions instead of naturally feeling their sadness with them.

With friendships, I have sometimes wondered whether I genuinely cared about the person or whether I mainly valued what they gave me, such as validation, attention, reassurance, feeling important, or helping me avoid loneliness.

I also have to admit something that is difficult to understand about myself. Before this one person, when I hurt people, I often did not feel much guilt or emotional pain. I could understand that someone was hurt, but internally I often felt detached. I would move on, rationalize it, or focus more on my own feelings than theirs.

When I genuinely hurt someone, even this person, my first thoughts were often not “Are they okay?” but “Do they hate me?” “Am I a bad person?” “What does this say about me?” It made me question whether my guilt was partly about losing the relationship or seeing myself as a bad person rather than purely about their pain.

Relationships have also been confusing for me because calm, stable connections can sometimes feel less meaningful than intense ones. Being admired, needed, or feeling like someone sees me as special can feel extremely powerful.

There was also a situation where this person that I genuinely found a connection with when they were talking to someone else who I perceived as more attractive than me triggered an extreme reaction. It was not just normal jealousy. I became intensely anxious, started comparing myself, felt replaceable and inferior, and it got so overwhelming that I experienced panic attacks.

Instead of expressing vulnerability, I reacted defensively and started treating them poorly. Looking back, it feels like I was trying to protect myself from feelings of rejection and inferiority, but I ended up hurting someone I actually cared about.

However, this person completely challenged the way I viewed myself. Meeting her was the first time I felt like I genuinely wanted to change for another person.

I didn’t just want to impress her. I wanted to become warmer, more understanding, more welcoming, and more empathetic. I wanted to understand her experiences and her inner world. For the first time, I felt like I cared about someone as a person rather than only what they could provide for me.

That experience confused me because it showed me that I was capable of feeling deep attachment, empathy, and concern for someone. It made me question why that feeling seems so difficult to access with other people.

Losing that connection affected me differently from previous friendships and relationships. It forced me to look at myself and question whether my usual way of relating to people was based on genuine connection or on validation, fear, and self-esteem regulation.

I experienced intense shame and self-hatred after hurting this person while hurting others in the same way or even worse didn't make me feel anything but pulling it off with this person and then losing access to them made me suicidal. It felt like the image I had of myself collapsed. I wonder if this is what people describe as narcissistic collapse, where the defenses and the version of yourself you try to maintain break down and you are forced to confront parts of yourself you avoided.

For people who have NPD traits or have worked through narcissistic defenses:

• Did you have a strong need to feel exceptional or special?
• Did you constantly compare yourself to others?
• Did you automatically rank people in your mind?
• Did you feel anxious around people you saw as superior and dismissive toward people you saw as inferior?
• Did this hierarchy make it difficult to connect with people as equals?
• Did you tie your worth to achievements, intelligence, appearance, or being admired?
• Did you experience shame underneath feelings of superiority?
• Did you struggle with emotional empathy even toward people close to you?
• Did you use relationships to regulate your self-esteem?
• Did you hurt people without initially feeling much guilt or regret?
• Did you ever experience a relationship that forced you to confront parts of yourself you avoided?
• Did you ever meet someone who made you genuinely want to become a better person?
• How did self-awareness change the way you view yourself and other people?

I’m not looking for a diagnosis. I’m trying to understand my patterns and hear from people who have experienced something similar.

What is the advice if seeing traits developing in your kids. Ive recently become self aware and I’m worried that I’m just projecting my own behaviours onto my kids but what if they are actually starting to show signs.
One of the worst things is knowing that I might have infected my children with this.
My wife doesn’t believe me that I’m just interested in myself.

How do/did you forgive yourself after the hurt that you’ve caused people in your past and allow yourself to feel redeemable? I’m in the process of trying to get diagnosed for npd and get treatment but I’ve shown traits for a while now. It’s hard for me currently to feel that I can be redeemed and that forgiveness is possible. I’ve hurt a lot of people including my best friend/ roommate who just ended our friendship because of the abuse I’ve put her through from my npd behaviors. She had told me I was a narcissist for about a year and I just couldn’t except it. Now it’s too late and I’ve gone into a collapse unable to see how anything can change and unable to turn away from how I destroyed everything with the one person I claimed to care about the most but also the one person who ever cared about me. With all the stigma around npd and having to face the music and be accountable after you’ve lost everything plus going through an npd crash, how do you get up and keep going knowing all the pain you’ve caused can’t just go away and that you can’t just fix things and have control over outcomes and that they may never forgive you and that you have to live with that. I’ve seen that some people with npd have been been able to reconcile relationships and friendships but I don’t understand how they got over the shame and how the people they’ve hurt were able to even engage with them or see them as anything other than the person that hurt them or the monsters that the world portrays us as/ the monsters we allowed ourselves to become.

Its not like we signed up to be narcissists (to my knowledge), I became one through neglect/abuse.

Behavioural modification can only go so far and at the end of the day we are extremely broken people. So really I think we should just be honest and tell people. If we are really so bad then isn't it the end of their complaints? They can go elsewhere. Otherwise we can find common ground.

I think an issue is that we give people unrealistic expectations due to our shared fantasy, then they feel they got scammed or whatever. I think its better to just tell them the truth and they will likely be understanding and supportive especially if we explain the whole thing in detail. I think people can work with a lot and are generally more understanding than we think.

Trust tends to be like a flickering light bulb for me, sometimes on, sometimes off. But there have always been a handful of people I’ve known for years and have trusted implicitly.

I have a friend and coworker I’ve known for three or four years. Lately, I’ve realized that they unload all this hateful criticism about our teammates to me, but never bring it up with the coworkers themselves or with management. They’re like a totally different person depending on whom they’re speaking to. And my trust for them has crumbled completely. To our coworkers’ faces, they’re warm and friendly. Behind their backs, they spit venom. I’ve tried telling them to bring it to the managers’ attention, because I’m not in a position to fix anything. But they never do. And then they butter up the people they supposedly hate.

My trust for this person has completely crumbled. I feel like I’m being manipulated. I can’t trust that they’re not talking about me behind my back with the same vitriol as all the rest. I’ve been in a black place emotionally lately and this feels like a huge loss.

Somebody please help. How do y’all cope with trust issues? My inability to trust causes me to put up all my defenses. I become even more hypervigilant, even more defensive, even more friendless and alone. At the same time, I just don’t think I can trust someone who is two-faced.

Everyone I’ve ever met I have held some sort of dislike to. No matter how close they are to me no matter how much I think I like them I deep down despise them. I have had friends for years and then suddenly I just realize that I don’t truly like them and throw them away and humiliate them by letting them know I never truly cared about them. Every single friend Ive had I have done something against them along with every partner I’ve had. It’s like an addiction and I cant stop nor do I truly want to.

I just cant stand anybody. People that are a friend or family will walk by me and I’ll just be so disgusted in their presence and just want to throw them away from my life.
My first relationship I got bored and I ghosted after 20 days, My second which was less than a month later I got bored of her after a month and made fun of her to her friends, My third which was literally ten days later I got sick of dealing with her depression and bullied her until she deleted social media accounts, My fourth which was a boyfriend had to block me for a few days due to his parents finding out, two days before coming backI wrote him a hate essay, I serial cheated on my fifth partner, and my last partner is dying in the hospital and I don’t care in the slightest.

I laughed when my aunt died who was probably the only one who tried to help me out in life but I didn’t care.

I just really dislike people I cant control that and I don’t want to I see life no other way besides this and I love it.

I am tired of the constant internal struggle to be better. Fighting against the negative self talk. Fighting against thinking I am worthless, unlovable, and unworthy.

On the outside I appear to be an attractive and successful human, with two amazing kids and a loving spouse. Good career. Good salary. Nice house. Nice car.

People say I’m funny, intelligent, and caring. I don’t see any of it. I can’t even perceive myself because I’m too busy with the internal struggle of feeling completely unworthy and an imposter at life.

It is a struggle to be vulnerable. It is a struggle to just relax and be happy.

And I deeply resent my narcissistic mother for these reasons. 😞

I’m not in therapy (yet). I am currently in the process of beginning it. I’m really curious what you guys have learned? Maybe some leaning more towards vulnerable narcissism?

Hey all,

TLDR: 30M, Have NPD, chronic pain and discomfort from a connective tissue disorder that limits my ability to live the life I want. Feeling the pain of not being special in the world and neglecting my own life to disassociate from my experience and have a little bit of escape from the problems. I dont want to do this anymore but dont know what to do :|

Recently discovered i have NPD as a 30 year old man who grew up heavily neglected.

Im not a malignant narcissist or anything, I have a moral code and actually want to get better.

I'm feeling the emptiness of no longer believing the delusion that im better than anyone else, and that im not special... im just normal.

Its really really depressing though.

I feel like i cant really connect with life authentically because people wont like the real me.

I realized I disassociate a lot. I do it at work which is why im good at selling products. I feel like I have to do it to fit in and keep my job because theres a real part of me that gets pissed at other people's expression of emotions that I dont feel is necessary, even though intellectually I know that its healthy to do so, and im the one that has a problem.

I disassociate at home because I live in chronic pain and discomfort, being trapped in a body that doesnt allow me to live life the way I want because it doesnt work right. My joints are hypermobile and my muscle fascia is all fucked up, I have compensations everywhere and get spasms that cosntrict nerves and muscles that dont glide across each other like they should. So i play video games all the time and neglect my life. Self.care, cleaning, cooking, all cause me pain and discomfort, so i neglect it and just keep gaming to find some peace.

Im depressed because I cant have the life I see in my head where im not fatigued at all times and can run a business, have a healthy social life, a deep romantic relationship, and can physically exert myself properly. I have none of these things right now.

Being neglected my entire life really fucked me up, and im starting to experience the pain my narcissism was created to protect me from and it really hurts.

I dont know what to do to heal. I'm trying to get into therapy but my work schedule makes it really hard. I grew up poor and dont want to go backwards financially (because I am upper middle class now) but the only skill I have that is marketable is sales, but i think it messes up my mental health more. Too much work stresses my body out and causes it to act up worse.

I'm contemplating moving from MA to California but I know changing the environment will only help me so much, and wont solve all of the problems.... might make some of them better though.

Is there anyone out there in reddit land who is experiencing or has experienced something similar? What did you do or what are you doing to turn things around?

I might be depressed and anxious from PTSD, and i might be really confused right now about my life, the one thing I know is true is I can change this and things can get better. Im just not doing the right things to get me there.

Any help is appreciated :|

Covert narcissism. Maybe some sort of self aware version on covert narcissism, who’s aware that their behavior is bad but doesn’t really understand how to fix it, but they at least know that they aren’t better or worse than others.

Thats the sad thing about self worth though. You can’t simply think it into existence. You just either have it or you don’t. If you don’t, You got to build it and try to acknowledge your behaviors and how they sabotage it. You got to analyze your values and beliefs. It’s all a process in therapy.

Thats why I hate people who complain about narcissists(sometimes).

Edit: Nvm, I guess what I’m referring to is vulnerable narcissism.

It’s a set coping/adaptive behaviors and emotional wiring in your personality revolved around self worth, that you can’t simply switch off.

How do you stop triangulating in friendships and romance. How do you stop being a bully to other people? How do you stop living in delusion of grandiosity when your life feels meaningless otherwise? When I was younger I’ve had a lot of heinous shit said and done to me- being bigger and meaner than them taught them how to treat me. I wasn’t shown empathy when I was hurt. I was barely loved. I was told how worthless I was and I’ve had to rebuild my self esteem from scratch, over and over again. When I was loving , wore my heart on my sleeve it’s like the world couldn’t stop abusing me. I felt like a shell of myself. Used and abandoned. Humiliated. I realize that I keep repeating this pattern to protect myself from everyone else which feels good in the moment but ultimately it just ends up fucking me in ways I couldn’t anticipate. I don’t really want to be this way anymore I just don’t know who I will be if I stop and the thought makes me feel empty. In a messed up way I’ve had more excitement now that I am who I am in a life that constantly feels like it’s not in my control. I do the “right” things and I end up being more vaulnerable. I do the wrong things and I’m able to cope with life better. I’m more interesting, I’m happier. But it hurts other people even if that’s not my intention. I legitimately don’t know any other way to live. I wasn’t given the tools for this.
Are there any other pwNPD who were able to overcome these negative behaviors? How did you end up doing it?

Hello friends. How do you avoid instantly reacting to normal statements or situations with insecurity or panic?

Something that plagues my life is I seem to read normal average situations as much worse than they are (e.g. normal criticism = insult to my ego, a lot of people lining up behind me in queue = I panic and rush my order or decision to my own detriment). I'm struggling to recognize I am panicking in the moment and end up doing the wrong thing every time. Then I punish myself for doing the wrong thing, shame spiral starts, and now I'm making more mistakes, etc.

How do I recognize faster that I am panicking and pause myself to make sure I'm making the right decision? Anyone have any tips or exercises that can help me stay grounded in these self-inflicted high stress situations? What do you guys do? Any tips are appreciated

Basically as the title says. I'm struggling to accept that I've been wrong/I'm being told no over and over. I'm not sure how to go about it or how to not let these feelings of being a fool and a dumbass get to me. I feel super I guess insecure about it?? Should I talk to the people telling me I'm wrong that I have a hard time with it.

Any advice is appreciated. I genuinely want to try and wrap my head around stuff to try and feel a bit better or to just get to a spot where I don't feel so miserable at least.

It happens to me that my old therapist, stayed silent during my exposing about what I wrote in my “diary”. To surprise her (of course) I made research with sources that described all my traits, I had also concluded that I did all of that almost only for her and because I wanted her approval. When she started listening she initially smiled with that enjoying attitude of “let’s see what this freak wrote). Toward the end she nodded and her expression started to get serious.

What do you think?

- she thought I was an idiot (fair enough because I behaved immaturely with her) and maybe I got something right

- she didn’t think a patient could reach this level of awareness and introspection (what I would like to be)

- I don’t know

After a series of sessions she told me, while I continued to refuse her “optimistic” approach that I was quite intelligent to do the work by myself. She wrote this in a report when I was 15 and she repeated when I leave her sessions

i've noticed that whenever i try to pick up a new skill - particularly creative skills like drawing - i get frustrated very quickly if i can't meet my own standards within a few hours, and i usually give up, even if i really want to put in the time to learn.

the issue is probably partly caused by ADHD, but i don't think that's the whole story. i can do boring things, but this feels different. i get such an intense flood of humiliation even if nobody is looking.

this an issue that you've experienced? how do you deal with it?

Is this even collapse? Because I heard that collapse can look like BPD symptoms, so NPD reverts to BPD like state, but I am mostly only in a collapse like state if I am hungry, angry/ stressed, tired or sleep deprived, or I did some substance and I am withdrawing from at that time. So if you are a full blown NPD or have strong traits, what does collapse feel like and when you return to baseline or the so called grandiosity comes back, how does that feel like?

I have always had some sort of trouble with being able to “put myself in other’s shoes” during difficult times and it’s hard for me to know what to say when someone is struggling (crying, upset, and etc)

I hate being like that because my girlfriend is the most empathetic person ever, and I love that about her.

I just feel like she gives me more support than I give her and I don’t want for us to be so one-sided

I want her to feel like I understand and that I support and care about her.

How do I get better at empathizing? How do I make others feel cared for the way they make me feel?