<p>nice pun. thanks for the support. wish me luck for getting into the ivies.</p>
<p>I"m sure you will get into an excellent program.</p>
<p>Getting into the ivies, as one poster recently noted on this board, is so statistically difficult it might be looked at as more of an accident than anything else. But, I hope you have a wide range of schools and that you find a fantastic mentor wherever it is you end up.</p>
<p>(Also, good luck getting into the ivies. 
)</p>
<p>yeah i know the admission process in the ivies is a bit…erm, quirky? anyway i always have plan Bs and Cs and Ds. thanks for the support.</p>
<p>“I’m not saying it can’t happen. But, the likelihood that someone with NPD at even 50 would believe “they” had a problem is very small. At 16 or 17”</p>
<p>That’s just what I was thinking. People with NPD come to therapy, if they come at all, dragged in by a spouse or child for a joint session. To the person with NPD, it’s always someone else who has the problem. They might come in for an apparently unrelated problem, like panic attacks or insomnia, but not because they think their own behavior is causing trouble.</p>
<p>I am not a trained therapist or counselor, just a very educated mom and professional working woman. I have a close relationship with an individual with NPD and it’s ruined her marriage and relationships with her parents, siblings and children. Her behaviour escalated over the years to an unbearable level. I believe some type of early treatment would have helped her, but she refused/es to admit she’s got any type of problem. </p>
<p>Half the problem with most disorders or challenges is recoginizing the pattern of feelings & behaviour, no matter what age…and then working on self awareness & self improvement. So to the OP, I say “Wow - congratulations on your self reflection and depth of concern about this. It leads me to think you may just be young and pretty darn smart, since folks with this often refuse to see it.” I’d continue your self-education and consider conuseling only if you truly, truly think you’d benefit from it. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>No, I’m not happy, I used to think it was just my life (to be honest, my life really sucks; to further that, I was diagnosed with depression at a young age), but now I realize that it’s more than that… I just hate other people, unless they’re… Useful. For people saying that it’s normal for a teenager to have narcissistic traits… I realize that, but… Here: </p>
<p>"Do Narcissists have emotions? Of course they do. All humans have emotions. It is how we choose to relate to our emotions that matters. The narcissist tends to repress them so deeply that, for all practical purposes, they play no conscious role in his life and conduct, though they play an extraordinarily large unconscious role in determining both.</p>
<p>The narcissist’s positive emotions come bundled with very negative ones. This is the outcome of frustration and the consequent transformations of aggression. This frustration is connected to the Primary Objects of the narcissist’s childhood (parents and caregivers).</p>
<p>Instead of being provided with the unconditional love that he craved, the narcissist was subjected to totally unpredictable and inexplicable bouts of temper, rage, searing sentimentality, envy, prodding, infusion of guilt and other unhealthy parental emotions and behaviour patterns.</p>
<p>The narcissist reacted by retreating to his private world, where he is omnipotent and omniscient and, therefore, immune to such vicious vicissitudes. He stashed his vulnerable True Self in a deep mental cellar – and outwardly presented to the world a False Self.</p>
<p>But bundling is far easier than unbundling. The narcissist is unable to evoke positive feelings without provoking negative ones. Gradually, he becomes phobic: afraid to feel anything, lest it be accompanied by fearsome, guilt inducing, anxiety provoking, out of control emotional complements.</p>
<p>He is thus reduced to experiencing dull stirrings in his soul that he identifies to himself and to others as emotions. Even these are felt only in the presence of someone or something capable of providing the narcissist with his badly needed Narcissistic Supply.</p>
<p>Only when the narcissist is in the overvaluation (idealization) phase of his relationships, does he experience the convulsions that he calls “feelings”. These are so transient and fake that they are easily replaced by rage, envy and devaluation. The narcissist really recreates the behaviour patterns of his less than ideal Primary Objects.</p>
<p>Deep inside, the narcissist knows that something is amiss. He does not empathise with other people’s feelings. Actually, he holds them in contempt and ridicule. He cannot understand how people are so sentimental, so “irrational” (he identifies being rational with being cool headed and cold blooded).</p>
<p>Often the narcissist believes that other people are “faking it”, merely aiming to achieve a goal. He is convinced that their “feelings” are grounded in ulterior, non-emotional, motives. He becomes suspicious, embarrassed, feels compelled to avoid emotion-tinged situations, or, worse, experiences surges of almost uncontrollable aggression in the presence of genuinely expressed sentiments. They remind him how imperfect and poorly equipped he is.</p>
<p>The weaker variety of narcissist tries to emulate and simulate “emotions” – or, at least their expression, the external facet (affect). They mimic and replicate the intricate pantomime that they learn to associate with the existence of feelings. But there are no real emotions there, no emotional correlate.</p>
<p>This is empty affect, devoid of emotion. This being so, the narcissist quickly tires of it, becomes impassive and begins to produce inappropriate affect (e.g., he remains indifferent when grief is the normal reaction). The narcissist subjects his feigned emotions to his cognition. He “decides” that it is appropriate to feel so and so. His “emotions” are invariably the result of analysis, goal setting and planning.</p>
<p>He substitutes “remembering” for “sensing”. He relegates his bodily sensations, feelings and emotions to a kind of a memory vault. The short and medium-term memory is exclusively used to store his reactions to his (actual and potential) Narcissistic Supply Sources.</p>
<p>He reacts only to such sources. The narcissist finds it hard to remember or recreate what he ostensibly - though ostentatiously - “felt” (even a short while back) towards a Narcissistic Supply Source once it has ceased to be one. In his attempts to recall his feelings, he draws a mental blank.</p>
<p>It is not that narcissists are incapable of expressing what we would tend to classify as “extreme emotional reactions”. They mourn and grieve, rage and smile, excessively “love” and “care”. But this is precisely what sets them apart: this rapid movement from one emotional extreme to another and the fact that they never occupy the emotional middle ground.</p>
<p>The narcissist is especially “emotional” when weaned off his drug of Narcissistic Supply. Breaking a habit is always difficult – especially one that defines (and generates) oneself. Getting rid of an addiction is doubly taxing. The narcissist misidentifies these crises with an emotional depth and his self-conviction is so immense, that he mostly succeeds to delude his environment, as well. But a narcissistic crisis (losing a Source of Narcissistic Supply, obtaining an alternative one, moving from one Narcissistic Pathological Space to another) – must never be confused with the real thing, which the narcissist never experiences: emotions.</p>
<p>Many narcissists have “emotional resonance tables”. They use words as others use algebraic signs: with meticulousness, with caution, with the precision of the artisan. They sculpt in words the fine tuned reverberations of pain and love and fear. It is the mathematics of emotional grammar, the geometry of the syntax of passions. Devoid of all emotions, narcissists closely monitor people’s reactions and adjust their verbal choices accordingly, until their vocabulary resembles that of their listeners. This is as close as narcissists get to empathy.</p>
<p>To summarise, the emotional life of the narcissist is colourless and eventless, as rigidly blind as his disorder, as dead as he. He does feel rage and hurt and inordinate humiliation, envy and fear. These are very dominant, prevalent and recurrent hues in the canvass of his emotional existence. But there is nothing there except these atavistic gut reactions.</p>
<p>(continued below)</p>
<p>This article appears in my book, “Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited”</p>
<p>Click HERE to buy the print edition from Barnes and Noble or HERE to buy it from Amazon or HERE to buy it from The Book Source</p>
<p>Click HERE to buy the print edition from the publisher and receive a BONUS PACK</p>
<p>Click HERE to buy various electronic books (e-books) about narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships</p>
<p>Click HERE to buy the ENTIRE SERIES of eight electronic books (e-books) about narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships</p>
<p>Whatever it is that the narcissist experiences as emotions – he experiences in reaction to slights and injuries, real or imagined. His emotions are all reactive, not active. He feels insulted – he sulks. He feels devalued – he rages. He feels ignored – he pouts. He feels humiliated – he lashes out. He feels threatened – he fears. He feels adored – he basks in glory. He is virulently envious of one and all.</p>
<p>The narcissist can appreciate beauty but in a cerebral, cold and “mathematical” way. Many have no mature, adult sex drive to speak of. Their emotional landscape is dim and grey, as though through a glass darkly.</p>
<p>Many narcissists can intelligently discuss those emotions never experienced by them – like empathy, or love – because they make it a point to read a lot and to communicate with people who claim to be experiencing them. Thus, they gradually construct working hypotheses as to what people feel. As far as the narcissist is concerned, it is pointless to try to really understand emotions – but at least these models he does form allow him to better predict people’s behaviours and adjust to them.</p>
<p>Narcissists are not envious of others for having emotions. They disdain feelings and sentimental people because they find them to be weak and vulnerable and they deride human frailties and vulnerabilities. Such derision makes the narcissist feel superior and is probably the ossified remains of a defence mechanism gone awry.</p>
<p>Narcissists are afraid of pain. It is the pebble in their Indra’s Net – lift it and the whole net moves. Their pains do not come isolated – they constitute families of anguish, tribes of hurt, whole races of agony. The narcissist cannot experience them separately – only collectively.</p>
<p>Narcissism is an effort to contain the ominous onslaught of stale negative emotions, repressed rage, a child’s injuries.</p>
<p>Pathological narcissism is useful – this is why it is so resilient and resistant to change. When it is “invented” by the tormented individual, it enhances his functionality and makes life bearable for him. Because it is so successful, it attains religious dimensions – it become rigid, doctrinaire, automatic and ritualistic." -From: <a href=“http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistemotions.html[/url]”>http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistemotions.html</a></p>
<p>Ahah… Me in a nutshell, emotionally. This can’t be normal of teenagers… I don’t think. I’ve read almost everything on this website (~400+ pages total, I’m sure) and I conform to ALL of it… Especially the part about being an emotional manipulator. I’m without a doubt, the best emotional manipulator I’ve ever met… Just being accurate. I just really don’t think that it’s normal for a teenager to conform to ALL ~400+ pages of this description perfectly… If you think so, maybe you should explore the links. </p>
<p>By the way, let me explain how I came to the conclusion that I have NPD… Actually, I’ll get to this. My emotions, love, care, etc., per se, are directly related to how much attention I received… I realized this a few months ago, but rationalized it away… The point is that after 3 days of subordinating absence, I’ve been able to hate someone who I… I’d say loved, but obviously if this isn’t the case, I didn’t love him or her, before. I feel only rage, generally… Rage at being ignored or downgrade, is all I can feel anymore… </p>
<p>How I stumbled upon this… Somebody err, downgraded me, it probably wasn’t a big deal, but to me, it was earth shattering, anyway, I was talking to another friend who’d said something… Secretive, but flattering, and I asked her if it was about me, or was I just being an arrogant narcissist? She said it was about me, but she doesn’t speek genius, and wanted me to define those things. So I did looked up the definitions, and quoted them; and when I searched for “Narcissist,” NPD-related results came up, and I couldn’t help but read them… I was instantly captivated but frightened, as I was reading about myself, and looking at how I’ve acted in past events only confirms what I’d rather ignore (and probably will). </p>
<p>Anyway… I hope this has given you all more information on my situation, and convinced you all I have NPD – I’m almost certain I do. My parents always ask me what’s wrong with me, how can I be so logical, cold, and care so little, overreact to being beliddled, told I was wrong, that someone else knows better than me, or even interrupted… and just general things that knock me off my rocker, well… I guess this is why. If I do see a shrink for this, though, I fear everyone will abandon me – rightfully so (according to all websites, and common sense), but still, being abandoned…</p>
<p>icognito–</p>
<p>I’m sorry you are in so much pain, and you are searching for answers.</p>
<p>Nobody on a website can diagnose you. You need to go to a therapist and get some help, whatever the issue might be. You deserve to find some coping skills to be able to learn how to connect better with other people, and I am confident, given your willingness to take a look at yourself, that you can do this with some professional assistance.</p>
<p>If you can involve your parents, or your doctor? You can ask for a referral from your pediatrician. This works best, since most therapists take on referred cllients more quickly.</p>
<p>If you can’t involve your parents? Going to the school social worker to get some advice on how to proceed would be useful. I know at our area high school, we offer groups for this kind of thing you are describing.</p>
<p>In the meantime, hang in there. The high school years are challenging for most of us.</p>
<p>Good Luck</p>