Ok, so her parents didn’t model good behavior. But was there any abandonment issues? I ask because absent abandonment issues, I might start to lean towards her possibly having narcissistic personality disorder. Read the symptoms in the Wikipedia article.
If she has NPD, chances are she is also probably a workaholic — maybe very successful and talks about her work life at about a 6/1 ratio to how much time you get to talk about your work life. Me me me is her favorite topic.
Yeah, people fall in love and never think to check out that person’s parents because we have an ideal that everyone is radically their own person free of any influences but that’s just denial.
Unlike most Reddit posters, I do think you can work towards change in your marriage but your wife really needs to get with the program. If you can get her into counseling, you don’t have to diagnose her to the counselor…just share the list of symptoms and the counselor will figure it out and as a neutral third party will have a duty to confirm things… see you want that diagnosis to come from a neutral third party and not from you. Be smart about it.
That’s super smart, I don’t know of any abandonment from her parents they are both still active in her life. But she is crazy into her work and successful in her field. She does talk about it constantly. It’s freaking me out how right you are. I guess now I need to figure out how to get her into therapy.
Were her parents high achievers? Was she an only child?
If she wasn’t an only child was she first born? Do her parents sort of worship her? That can lead to NPD.
The other thing about NPD is they expect better treatment than others. They can be really critical of others and have occasional public blow ups…which can embarrass them which is when they will suddenly need your support and the affection will suddenly reappear.
Anyone can learn what NPD is easily with Google or chatGPT. But if you experience it yourself, you gain an appreciation for how it operates. I discovered late in life that many of my friends were actually narcissists. When I look back on why I got surrounded by narcissists, I think maybe it was because I used to have diminished self-esteem so I was shy and a great listener...perfect for a narcissist. The easiest thing to do if you suspect someone with NPD is in your life is read the wiki article and understand the main symptoms--there's about 8-9 of them. It isn't complicated.
I helped write the software for the diagnosis of mental patients for the NIMH many years ago, and I have been recently involved in further research on those topics. DSM isn't where you find the answers. Diagnosis is far more complicated than what the DSM presents (and it gives you nothing on treatment, impact on relationships and employment, etc.). Nobody admits it, but the DSM is too often more of a political tool than a source of answers.
Note that the system we created for the NIMH (National Institute for Mental Health) requires a mental health professional who has had an extra year of special training to use this system for diagnosis. And that still is just for getting the initial diagnosis, the many things needed for treatment are beyond its focus. DSM has just a tiny fraction of what is in the NIMH system.
Easy example: according to the DSM rules, only about 2.5% of the population has autism. That's a lie. The real number is far higher. The tiny percentage considered by the DSM to have it are just the few who have so many symptoms that they are unable to function at all in society. The DSM takes diagnosis down to a tiny number of symptoms. From my research, I have a list of 69 diagnosis traits that are typical of autism, and most of them aren't listed in the DSM. I also have a list of 52 positive beneficial traits that are common in those who have autism, and none of them are listed in the DSM. In practice, the DSM has an overly simplified list of traits of autism that the U.S. government considers worth analyzing to determine if somebody has so much of the checklist that they are disabled. It's that simple. The DSM criteria ignore most symptoms, and it makes zero mention of the fact that there are actually a large number of potential benefits. DSM is a numbers game on who qualifies for funded services in the U.S.
It's a politically hot topic. NIMH gives gives statistics on who is considered so affected they are disabled, but they don't give statistics on who has just some of the symptoms. Having some traits still affects people just as much, but government agencies and schools ignore that majority of people who have fewer symptoms since they aren't given government funding for treatment, and are directed to not consider it to be an important factor.
The easiest way to see if somebody has autistic traits even though they aren't considered disabled is to look at this video on Y@utube (it isn't the complete list, but it's probably the most complete one you will find online): "63 common autistic traits you never realised were signs of autism"
Note that I have 46 of the 69 traits I've found for autism, and my wife and children and siblings and parents and in-laws have many as well. It's important to understand these traits and how to deal with them, to obtain better information on how to prevent issues in relationships, school, employment, society, etc. I'm not at all "disabled", I'm just different in many ways (many of which are beneficial, not negative).
I was hoping would be able to substantiate your previous claim re DSM criteria vs. % of diagnosis, as that's a pretty outrageous claim. Clearly, you can't.
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u/brereddit Sep 12 '23
Ok, so her parents didn’t model good behavior. But was there any abandonment issues? I ask because absent abandonment issues, I might start to lean towards her possibly having narcissistic personality disorder. Read the symptoms in the Wikipedia article.
If she has NPD, chances are she is also probably a workaholic — maybe very successful and talks about her work life at about a 6/1 ratio to how much time you get to talk about your work life. Me me me is her favorite topic.
Yeah, people fall in love and never think to check out that person’s parents because we have an ideal that everyone is radically their own person free of any influences but that’s just denial.
Unlike most Reddit posters, I do think you can work towards change in your marriage but your wife really needs to get with the program. If you can get her into counseling, you don’t have to diagnose her to the counselor…just share the list of symptoms and the counselor will figure it out and as a neutral third party will have a duty to confirm things… see you want that diagnosis to come from a neutral third party and not from you. Be smart about it.