Thanks for the reassurance that this topic isn’t trivial.
I was happy for your suggestions on how to respond. It’s definitely something I struggle with and found useful.
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Reading through common descriptions, I know some people that have some of the symptoms/characteristics, but I am no position to diagnose. Many of the criteria involve their internal thought process, which I can only guess at.
The bigger issue is why should I care how many of the NPD criteria they may or may not meet? If I don’t like being around someone, I minimize interactions with that person, regardless of whether they I suspect they qualify as NPD or not. I am not trying to cure them.
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I don’t think the topic is trivial, but I do think the use of AI on this topic is trivial.
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My brother has some narcissistic tendencies, but I would not label him as a complete narcissist. He does somehow manage to make everything about himself, though. Unfortunately this just leads to me keeping my distance from him.
I will say from my own experience, if I had been aware before of what typical narcissistic behavior was, I would have avoided getting too far into a situation that was ultimately quite damaging and difficult to extricate myself from.
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I agree that posting ChatGPT or other AI responses on discussion threads is antithetical to the purpose of the forum. We could all start putting dictionary or Wikipedia responses to any questions. I’ve seen some threads where people start quoting AI to each other.
In lieu of direct ChatGPT answers, go to the sources and if necessary, quote them. Add commentary on what you think of the information. We all know how to Google for ourselves.
Re narcissists, almost everyone thought my MIL was very caring and interested. I thought she listened just long enough to find a way to bring the conversation back to her own experiences. It was hard for her to envision outside her brain set. Is that narcissism? Husband thinks his opinion is as good as fact. Is that narcissism? I’m not very good at empathy - am I narcissistic (my sister-in-law likely thought so based on something brother once said, but really is was just me putting my preferences over theirs)?
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Hmm. So, I asked ChatGPT how the College Confidential user “ChoatieMom” might respond to the charge of using AI to add to a thread conversation, and it replied:
If you’re aiming for that dry, unruffled College Confidential ChoatieMom tone, the key is: don’t defend, don’t explain, and certainly don’t escalate. A light, dismissive civility—with just a trace of eyebrow-raise—does the work.
Something along these lines would fit her voice:
“Noted. Others seem to find it useful, so I’ll leave it to them to scroll or engage as they prefer.”
Or, a slightly sharper version:
“Understood. Fortunately, participation here isn’t compulsory—people can skip what doesn’t interest them.”
If you wanted just a touch more dryness:
“That’s the beauty of a forum—there’s room for a range of approaches and an easy way past the ones you’d rather not read.”
The underlying strategy is very “ChoatieMom”: She doesn’t argue about AI, doesn’t apologize, and doesn’t yield the ground. She simply reframes the interaction as optional and moves on, which quietly puts the burden of self-regulation back where it belongs—on the reader.
(AI can be hilarious. 
)
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Please move on from discussing if AI is appropriate on CC and get back on topic. Ya’ll are welcomed to start a new thread to discuss AI.
TIA
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There is an AI thread. lol, seems like a thread for everything here!
But thank you
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I used to think somebody I know is a narcissist . But… on further reading, I wonder if it’s really Borderline Personality Disorder.
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That’s the reason I asked this question
The lines are so blurry. Where does behavior go from self centered to narcissistic?
It’s so easy now to say that someone is narcissistic. I know a couple who divorced and call each other narcissistic. I think they are both self absorbed but not narcissistic.
I have met one person who most people who have met them says they are a textbook narcissist.
I started thinking about a person I have had recent conversations with and wondered where the line is? What makes someone a narcissist and not just unbelievably self absorbed?
No matter the outcome, the best I can do is avoid them
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I know the person I was dealing with had mental health issues. I guess it’s not up to me to put a diagnosis on it.
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There is a spectrum. Nearly everyone displays some NPD traits to some degree some of the time. Whether that qualifies as NPD being present is a matter of arbitrarily selected thresholds. For example, DSM 5 requires 5 of 9 criteria to be present for the threshold to be crossed. One such criteria is as follows.
Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
Nearly everyone has felt envious at some point. Whether it is “often” enough to qualify as one of the 5 required criteria for NPD present can be difficult to measure, with different evaluators coming to different conclusions. As touched in my earlier post, it’s relevant to consider if you would do anything differently if 4 criteria was met (not NPD) vs 5 criteria being met (is NPD)? If the answer is no, does whether the NPD label is present matter?
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I think that this article is important if people are trying to figure out what a Narcissist is. As usual, it’s best to ask professionals, or look through professional literature:
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I don’t think you were asking anyone to diagnosis. It’s just a discussion and because we can’t diagnose, we think in a broader sense like “characteristics”.
I will say this. I think most can agree when there is a casebook narcissist you can put a stamp on it/them.
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I don’t know if the couple I treated as narcissistic was diagnosable. But in reading things about narcissists the past 10+ years that it’s been popular, I see commonalities.
This couple was 100% only capable of viewing the world through their lens of how everything affected them. Their friends & family were tools to give them bragging rights.
They proved themselves unworthy of knowing the truth about family member’s real lives. Certainly, no one would turn to them for comfort, but also family was cautious not to give them anything that could later be used against them. So, don’t give too much detail about anything or you’ll later be punished via a twisted version of the TMI that was shared.
Maybe not textbook narcissism, but the same tools for NPD would be helpful to set mental boundaries.
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I worked for someone who ticked pretty much all the narcissist boxes. The ChatGPT list above is similar to something my co-workers and I found and tried to use for interactions with her. Especially remaining neutral, surface pleasant and trying not to engage. It was hard because her superiors saw the other face and she managed to convince them for a long time that we were the problem. It was extremely stressful and led me to retire earlier than planned even though the situation resolved eventually.
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Yes, I know several people who I suspect would receive a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
I am quoting from the article shared by @MWolf and providing some additional illustrations based on my experience with those individuals in case any of this rings a bell with the people you know in real life.
A few behavioral genetic studies have demonstrated that NPD (and other cluster B personality disorders) is highly heritable.
Yes, this definitely rings true in my experience. The individuals I’m aware of are directly related to one another. At one point I thought that maybe it was because the children learned the behaviors from the parent and that the children thought that was normal behavior being modeled, but over time I have realized that 1) the children have realized and recognize the narcissism of the parent, and 2) the parallels go far beyond just how they speak about themselves.
Negative developmental experiences such as being rejected as a child and ego fragility during early childhood may contribute to the development of NPD in adulthood.[15]
Yes. In one instance, I believe there was was a sense of abandonment as the parents had minimal contact with the children and left it to employees and schools to actually do the child rearing, plus the need/desire to impress the parents to gain any of their attention. In a subsequent generation, I think there was a similar need/desire for “perfection” to meet the perceived parental expectations as well as a competitive spirit between siblings as to who was able to garner more praise/attention from the parent(s). One of the children in this scenario has had several incidents of self-harm after feeling cut down by people who were emotionally significant to them.
In contrast, excessive praise in childhood, including the belief that a child may have extraordinary abilities, may also develop into a lifetime need for constant praise and admiration.[16]
I don’t think this is necessarily in contrast to…I think it can be in addition to, at least in the examples I can think of. The kids who always felt a need to perform well and for “perfection” often did do great things (and may have received significant praise for it from the general public as well as by a narcissistic parent who also felt that the children’s accomplishments were a reflection of their parenting/DNA). Then as these kids grow into adults and become more “ordinary” then they often have a focus on their glory days of whenever it was where they reached their pinnacle of impressiveness to others.
they may act in general disregard for the consequences of their actions or view the potential gain from risky behavior as far outweighing the gamble of any potential harm that may result.
Yes. These individuals may feel it’s perfectly fine to yell, name-call, threaten to leave the relationship, or do anything else if they think it will get others to back down and bow down to them. They will continue to do so as long as it’s successful, but the instant that somebody calls them on the behavior (as in, yes, maybe this relationship should end) then they will no longer do many of those actions because they believe the gamble may no longer pay off.
They tend to be hot-tempered and social
Oh, yes. They can schmooze with the best of them and outwardly can seem great to casual acquaintances or even friends…but for those who live with them, it’s an entirely different matter. Things as simple as changing the radio station in the car, or foiling their strategy in a game, or taking one minute to come rather than 10 seconds can result in irate tirades that can last incredibly long.
Individuals with NPD try to be social but for the sake of receiving praise or being seen in association with others of high status, which provides them with internal reward and validation.
Yes. These are people whose friends are always at a peer level or higher, never where they would think society would view the other as socially beneath them. I have known of instances where an individual warned their children not to be around a close relative because the relative had not achieved a sufficiently high level of outward success for the NPD parent.
NPD may present with an increased amount of speech due to feelings of needing to prove oneself or brag about achievements and friendships
Heavens, yes. These are people where they will do the majority of the talking, sometimes 90-95% or more. The others are there to be impressed by them or to ask a question about their greatness or their famous friends. If anyone tries to bring up a different topic, then the narcissist quickly figures out a way to turn the conversation back to them and their greatness.
Having a grandiose sense of self-importance, such as exaggerating achievements and talents, expecting to be recognized as superior even without commensurate achievements
It doesn’t matter how great their actual accomplishments are, they still feel compelled to exaggerate more. They did some continuing ed in a facility at Harvard and then they subsequently talk about having studied at Harvard (and they don’t clarify if anyone misrepresents them as actually having been an enrolled student there). They’re a regional/metro rep near the Four Corners and choose a title indicating that they’re a Quad-State or Four-State rep. They’ve never played basketball but feel as though they can give a varsity player tips on how to shoot.
The clinical history is likely to reveal tumultuous relationships. Often, these individuals become increasingly isolated as they grow older due to others having difficulty maintaining their friendships with those who suffer from severe NPD.
All the (suspected) narcissists I know have been divorced, some multiple times. Most of them have strained relationships with their family, including parents, siblings, and adult children. Sometimes it has helped some of them to potentially seek professional help or to moderate some of their harmful behaviors as they realize that some of their short-term gambles paid off with their desired goals, but that in the long-run they ended up as losses, so they curb some of the negative impulses they used to indulge. But these are often people who are older but their closest friends are those they’ve made recently, as their friends and family from bygone times no longer are willing to put up with the behaviors that were so persistent.
The biggest thing I’ve done is to ignore any part of the grandiosity. So I don’t act impressed by anything they’re saying, and when I ask questions in a conversation, it’s about how they felt about something, or what they took away from the experience, or how they think someone else might like something. I never want the conversation to be about what it was that they were hoping would be the impressive part; I want them to understand that I’m interested in them, not their accomplishments.
Also, I think about how insecure they are that they feel the need to try and be impressive. The emotion that gets engendered the most is pity, and although I don’t let that come across to them, it helps my own self-talk.
Additionally, keeping space and boundaries is important, too. Limiting the amount of time that I am with the narcissist is key. If a phone conversation is going south, then I say I have to go and end the call. Or if my relationship with the person with NPD is strong enough, then I might have a stay of 2-3 days with them, but no longer. And if it’s not strong enough, then we’d stay in our own separate lodging if there’s not enough trust in the person not having a social explosion, assuming we even think it’s possible to have that length of stay in the same city without an unpleasant experience.
Regardless of whether the individual(s) you’re thinking of have NPD, good luck with the situation, as even if someone is only showing some of the characteristics, it can still be really hard to be around.
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True, but words have meaning, and the names of pathological conditions have much more specific meanings. The title of the thread was not “do you know people with narcissistic behaviors”, but a question explicitly asking whether people here know narcissists.
However, even talking about “narcissistic behaviors”, people should talk about behaviors that are used to diagnose, or are associated with, NPD, not any a-hole, inconsiderate behaviors.
I think that the “broader sense” of narcissism IS when a person demonstrates one of more of the behaviors that are used to diagnose narcissism, or behaviors that are commonly associated with narcissism. It’s a broader sense, because not everybody who engages in these sorts of behaviors is a narcissist, but they are engaged in narcissistic behavior.
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I know a narcissist. My dad.
I highly recommend watching some of Dr Ramani’s videos on Youtube on the subject. She’s an expert.
Narcissism is not the same as being self-centered. There’s different flavors of narcissism. My dad is, in my opinion, likely on the malignant narcissism end of the spectrum. A lot of it didn’t come to light until my mom died when my kids were 2 & 4 yr old. Sister & I realize now that she was probably covering a lot of it up + feeding his near constant need for attaboy’s and assurances that he’s a brilliant and amazing person.
He is not a nice person. He’s demonstrated schadenfreude many many times over the last 15 yr. Good friend of his & my mom’s developed a brain tumor from malignant melanoma. My dad said, “Good. Serves him right for sitting on that **** beach all of those years vacationing down in Mexico.”
There’s a bunch of gems of behavior we’ve witnessed over the years:
- pouts when he’s not the center of attention in a conversation
- when he IS the center of attention, talks on and on and on about himself. If it’s in a larger group, he will usually glom onto the new(er) person and talk their ear off for hours at the get together, blabbering about himself.
- has tried volunteering at a few places over the years, but it never lasts because he expects people to fawn all over him when he shows up. He expects people to make a big deal about him. And when that doesn’t happen, he decides that they’re all jerks and then quits.
- in the year after my mom died, he decided that he was suddenly an expert on the grieving process, so signed up to be a grief volunteer at a church he was attending. Then later got mad and quit when the person he was assigned to mentor wasn’t giving him enough praise & adoration.
- attended the funeral of 1 of his friends in his neighborhood, who’d died from prostate cancer that had painfully spread to the man’s bones. When he told us about going to the funeral, his tale wasn’t about the friend who’d died…he bragged about how his friend’s wife allegedly made a big deal about my dad and insisted that my dad sit in this special spot in the church for the service. Then went on to talk on and on about how dead friend’s wife told him about what an amazing friend he was to her husband.
- makes up flat out lies (aka revisionist history) when it suits him. Even convinces himself so much that he believes the lies himself. Then gets furiously angry when caught in a blatant lie.
- Has 1 set of rules for him and a different set of rules for everybody else.
- actually told 2 of his friends once that they were not “allowed” to talk to my sister & I. Why? Because the friends discovered some of the lies he was telling about stuff and they called him on it AND they filled my sister & I in because they were concerned that maybe he wasn’t feeling well or something. You see…all that time up until that point in the friendship, those 2 friends were in the love bombing phase with him. The friendship ended.
He is quick to anger, emotionally erratic, angry, has a huge martyr/victim complex, and takes pleasure in seeing people he knows suffer. Like relishes in it.
After my mom died, the tall tale he went around telling everybody (including me & my sister) is that our mom was SO terribly abusive to him because while she was going through 6 months of daily radiation treatments & weekly chemo infusions for pancreatic cancer, she wouldn’t have marital relations of the bedroom nature with him.
Go and re-read that last paragraph again. It’s really really messed up. It’s hard to believe, but it’s 100% true. He told me that not once, but twice during 1 horrible visit of his to my home after my mom had died months earlier. We were all still grieving quite a bit. It had only been a few months after she passed away when he blurted out that made up sob story. The 2nd time he did it during the same weekend he was here, I full on yelled at him like I’ve never yelled at somebody before. Told him that if he EVER spoke of those lies to me again in my own home, I was going to kick him out on the curb and he’d never be welcome in my home ever again and I’d never talk to him again. He wisely decided not to bring it up again.
My children are not close with him. He is too toxic. Too weird. My children have grown up, thankfully, without a toxic narcissistic psychiatric case of a grandparent. My children have grown up NOT thinking that everybody having to tip toe and dance around the narcissistic grandparent was normal. My children are emotionally well-grounded people because he has not been a big figure in their lives.
How do I deal with him?
- gray rock conversations
- I only tell him stuff that I’d be willing to tell a casual acquaintance or neighbor
- we never go to visit him. Helps that he’s on the other side of the country, so geography is on our side there. Also helps that now he really can’t travel by air anymore AND he won’t do long road trips either.
- I talk to him on the phone about once a month. We end up having the same conversation every time. He asks the same questions. I tell him the same types of things. It’s very polite & surface level. But his narcissistic passive-aggressive rage is just under the surface, itching to get out.
- When he starts to get squirrelly on the phone (passive aggressive), I purposely only respond to the actual WORDS that he says, NOT THE TONE.
- If/when he rambles on and on about himself, I stop listening and make grocery lists in my head and I throw out a “uh huh” once in awhile. Sometimes I’ve even put the phone down and walked away for a minute and he’s still talking and has no idea I haven’t been listening.
- We never visit him. I never go there in person. Even when he is on his death bed, I am not going to go visit him. After all, why in the world would I go spend time with somebody who told everybody he knew that the reason he was removing my sister & I as power of attorney 15 yr ago for his estate was because we would “pull the plug too early”? That would be sheer stupidity to chase after somebody who literally told people that he thinks you would kill him.
He is not a close member of my family anymore. He is on the periphery. I do not wish him ill will at all. It is only out of respect for my mom that my sister & I talk to him at all still.
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