January 28, 2004

• More on NPD

  
  

  For months, at the suggestion of my therapist, I have been blogging about my NPD–Narcissistic Personality Disorder–both as part of my own therapy and to help others who have it and don’t know it. NPD runs rampant on the net, especially in forums and on blog sites.

  
  

  What I had been doing was going through a list of symptoms, writing  about each one in general  and in particular  what I was doing about it.  Some blogs were useful, others were merely an exercise in letting the NPD run wild.  One major symptom is inappropriate personal disclosure, and NPD folks are the last ones to know what is appropriate in that area.  This time, I came up with something different.

  
  

  There are no meds for NPD.  About the only thing I have to work with is my own power of attention.  This only works up to a point, since when my symptoms are at their most obnoxious, I am most oblivious to them.  Until it is pointed out to me, my insane behavior seems perfectly reasonable.  To me, anyway.

  
  

  I’m also addicted, haven’t done any dope or booze for some months now, go to NA regularly, etc.  One thing the program uses is acronyms, like HALT.  This stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, and serves to remind us to avoid those states as that is when we are most vulnerable to relapse.

  
  

  This morning as I was laying in bed thinking about NPD and what else I could do to transcend it, an acronym started forming in my mind.  It was ADDS UP.  I don’t know where that came from, since a lot of NPD symptoms are contradictory and illogical.  So much of the disorder is self-defeating and self-destructive, the thing itself doesn’t really add up, at least not to me.  Anyway, here is what I came up with: ADDS UP = Attention, Dishonesty, Deceit, Special, Uncaring and Power.

  
  

  A is for Attention.  This is easy and obvious, as one of the key symptoms is an insatiable need for attention.  Typically, we will do anything to get it–one time, I deliberately walked into a door.  It hurt, but it worked.  In 12-step meetings, I woild frequently chair.  When I wasn’t chairing, I was suggesting a topic (whch may fall under P fpr Power–but I digress.).  Anyway, my therapist (I have more than one actually, but I’m trying to keep this simple) suggested I go for a week without even saying anything, much less chairing.  I did so, and it was actually sort of enjoyable, I could pay attention to what others were saying without having to think about my response.  Even now , at least when I’m paying attention, I think before I open my mouth an ask myself–am I trying to help, or just showing off?  There is a darn fine line between sharing and showing off, I have discovered.  Sometimes I even manage to stay on the right side of it, not always, maybe not even often.

  
  

  At home, one of my big attention-getting ploys was reading aloud from the newspaper, never mind that no one in the room wanted to hear what I was reading.  I still do it, but I give some thought first, asking myself if I really think this is something that would be of interest to my captive audience, and if so, can it wait?  Besides, interrupting a video game addict at the wrong point in the game is a good way to get snarled at.

  
  

  The first D for Dishonesty.  As I implied earlier, I think there is a relation between addiction and NPD, judging by the number of folks I see with NPD who attend 12-step meetings.  This makes a lot of sense when you consider that 1, many addicts came from parents who were addicts,2, NPD is supposedly caused by a specific type of parental neglect or nonfeasance,and 3, parents who are also addicts  tend to be neglectful parents.  One of the classic symptoms or characteristics of ACOAs (adult children of alcoholics) is that we tend to lie even when there is no reason to, even when it would be in our best interests to tell the truth.

  
  

  What’s more, we are good at the sneakiest kind of dishonesty, telling a partial truth, or exaggerating a bit here and there.  Or “better” yet, telling just enough of the truth to maintain plausible deniability if we get called on our BS.  The second D, Deceit, goes hand in hand with the dishonesty.  We carefully build up a false persona, and god help anyone who threatens the lie that we live.  We spend our lives wearing a mask, and when we finally make an attempt to remove it, discover to our horror and chagrin that it has grown on.  It CAN be removed, but only with a kind of psychological surgery.  It can be done, but it is terribly painful.

  
  

  The S for Special ties in with the false persona.  Once we can convince ourselves that we are indeed special for some real or imagined reason, that gives us the excuse we need to justify our sense of entitlement, that the worfd and everyone in it somehow owes us SOMETHING–a living, success, fame, sex, attention, whatever.  This is a particularly tough issue for me because due to high high IQ, I was always treated in school like I was special, joined Mensa and was running the local chapter two years after I joined, got scholarships and scholarship offers and so on. What I told myself was just healthy self-esteem was really NPD-driven egomania.  Living wth two people who are significantly smarter than I am has helped me a lot, however.

  
  

  U for Uncaring refers to a key symptom of NPD, the total and complete lack of empathy.  I do not feel your pain.  I probably never will, according to my therapist.  I have accepted the fact that there will always be a chip of ice in me where many people have empathy and compassion.  Come to me for help, and I will help you if I can, simply because I know intellectually that it is the right thing to do, but my heart isn’t in it.  And if you help me, I DO feel a sense of moral obligation, a feeling that I have a sort of debt–I’m just an NPD guy, not a sociopath, but I can still be an evil monster.

  
  

  The P for Power refers to the fact that we tend to want to get power over people, to be manipulative, to have our own way, regardless of who else it hurts.  The progress I have made on this point is due more to laziness than to personal evolution–I have learned that it is simply easier to get what I want by coming out and asking for it, instead of trying to be cute and tricky and devious about it.  I have learned, too, that there are areas where I simply cannot get what I want, that other folks at times will be even lazier and more selfish that I am, and I just absolutely hate this. I am keenly aware of the mote in my brother’s eye, but as for my own eye–beam, what beam? 

  
  

  Maybe when I learn to forgive myself, I will be better at forgiving others.  Sure, I’m real good at simply overlooking my wrongs, of conveniently forgetting my past high criiiimes and misdemeanors, but for now, looking squarely at them is sometimes like trying to look at the sun–it just hurts too much.

  
  

  I know I have a lot more work to do.  Sometimes I get down on myself and wonder if I’m worth the trouble.  Then again, neither my wife nor my God have given up on me–maybe they know something I don’t.  I suspect it has something to do with love.

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