[thrwwXZTYE]

Narcissism is a spectrum; everybody's a little narcissistic, and it changes over time. All kids are VERY narcissistic early on, most grow out of it as they experience unconditional love from their parents and are allowed to be their authentic selves in various social contexts.

For various reasons - some kids don't. Bullying can certainly contribute.

So they develop maladaptive strategies (which can look like the first few "stages" in this article) and have to undo the damage later in life (which can look like the later "stages" from the article) to have a chance to experience real human connection.

I think the article can be very beneficial for people who struggle with this, even if it doesn't explicitly mention what the technical name of the struggle is (and BTW it does not have to be NPD - there might be other reasons for people to have similar problems). Maybe even BECAUSE it doesn't mention narcissism (cause narcissism is currently villified on the social media as "they are actual demons that cannot be saved" - so people are very wary of identifying with it, which makes it less likely they will work on themselves).

BTW I'm very disappointed in the current fad on social media of villifying one mental health issue after another only to then come to realize "oh wait, they're actually people not monsters". I've seen it with BPD, now it's the NPD turn. It's usually done for ugly reasons, too (somebody hurt by a person with $mental_health_problem search for validation, so influencers jump in with feel-good validation that portrays the other side as demons).

[lll-o-lll]

I mean, it’s literally one of the dark triad. Dark. Not misunderstood.

The DSM basically took all those “traits we think of as evil” and said “we shall make some disorder categories”. People with NPD don’t go and get help, they just run around ruining other peoples lives.

If you’ve never had such a person in your life, good for you! The rest of us don’t care if they can be saved, we just don’t ever want to interact with another one. Ever.

[thrwwXZTYE]

I am a narcissist. I haven't been diagnosed (yet), but I certainly recognize the traits and patterns, and I'm in therapy for it.

> People with NPD don’t go and get help, they just run around ruining other peoples lives.

This is objectively false. There's lots of people in therapy for NPD. And there have been case studies with people who recovered.

Which brings another point

> The DSM basically took all those “traits we think of as evil” and said “we shall make some disorder categories”.

DSM criteria for narcissism are part of the problem. You can have the exact same mental struggle but stop yourself from hurting people (at least to a reasonable degree - "normal" people also hurt others sometimes after all). And you won't be diagnosed as NPD. But you'll still have all the other problems - lack of human connection, vastly higher chance of suicide, autoimmune diseases, relationship problems, etc.

Which is like saying you only have alcoholism if you beat people on the streets. If you define it that way - of course all alcoholics are violent.

But it's not a productive way to define mental health problems. It leaves out people who struggle with it but don't cause harm.

> The rest of us don’t care if they can be saved, we just don’t ever want to interact with another one. Ever.

That's unlikely given that estimated 0.5-5% of the general population have NPD and about 20% have strong narcissistic traits.

In IT it's probably much higher by the way, it's the perfect job (little human contact, high status, well paid).