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You are wrong about your narcissist

 

You Are Wrong About Your Narcissist

Photo by Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash

Psychologists will often not believe you if you tell them that your spouse is a narcissist for a couple reasons. The first is that people often don’t truly understand what a narcissist is, and the second is because people are often incorrect with their assessment despite knowing what narcissism is.

People can’t diagnose their loved ones.

The argument that people can’t diagnose family members roots from a couple of different places.

  1. Spouses have a conflict of interest and are too close to the situation to be able to objectively assess and diagnose.
  2. Comorbidity confuses people, so they make mistakes within their assessment due to their own lack of training.

I actually used to get upset at the notion that significant others have no right to be assessing and diagnosing. I would say that I’m quite capable of identifying abuse and that I’m intelligent enough to be able to assess. However, after really putting in the work to understand the disorder I had eventually altered my position to be in alignment with what professionals say.

I have landed hybrid position I guess, where I agree that significant others who haven’t done the time researching the topic are unable to accurately determine the diagnosis. I think that spouses can certainly tell that a disorder is present at very least, but the truth is they are likely to make a mistake on which disorder it is that they have.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter per se though because if a person is being abused from their significant other, it really doesn’t matter if its ASPD or narcissism; what matters is that they are being abused and as such their efforts should be in getting out of there as fast as possible not playing ‘guess the disorder.’

If you're being abused it doesn’t matter which disorder it is — just get out.

I believe anyone who has done the research can start to pinpoint with some accuracy which disorder it most likely but you have to understand the person very well in order to be accurate.

The reason why you must know them and know your stuff so well is because of the comorbidity of symptoms. For instance, below is a list of adaptations that are employed by Borderline, ASPD, Histrionic and Narcissism.

  • Manipulation — Gaslighting and Triangulation
  • Emotional Abuse — Mood swings and blame shifting
  • Control and Domination — Isolation and closely monitoring their spouse
  • Verbal Abuse — Insults and Degradation as well as Rage attacks
  • Withholding — Use of Silent Treatment and conditional love
  • Playing Victim — Victimhood and Guilt tripping
  • Intense Idealization and Devaluation — love bombing and devaluation
  • Jealousy and Possessiveness — Intense Jealousy and Possessive Behavior
  • Fear of Rejection/Abandonment — Threats of suicide or self harm — Abandonment issues as both have a deep fear of it.
  • Intermittent Reinforcement — Both are unpredictable and alternate between hot and cold cycles which are addictive

So, with so many disorders sharing these same abusive traits how does a person know which disorder it is? That is part of the overall problem is that many doctors get the diagnosis wrong so regular people certainly have an extremely high chance of making a mistake.

In the end, people can take a stab at what they think their significant other might have but, there is a very high probability that they could be mistaken on their assessment. Where the mistake is made is in assessing the abusive behavior itself rather than the origin of the cause of the symptom.

For instance: If someone gives you the silent treatment people often assume narcissism but the fact is Borderlines and ASPD can have the person use silent treatment as well.

It’s the cause of the symptom you have to look at and for narcissism it will be centered around their ego, attaining power, or attention.

So, if they had a bad day on the job because they had a project taken away from them then you might get the silent treatment as they seethe silently and you’re wondering what you did wrong to deserve it.

The person is trying to get power over someone in order to feel superior again. By you begging for them to stop they feel empowered.

However, if they perceived you threatening to leave or something then you could be getting the silent treatment from a Borderline because one of their biggest fears is often abandonment. So you can see the driving forces for the behavior are what has to be assessed in order to determine if those traits are a narcissistic adaptation or a Borderline etc.

In the end, it’s best to leave the diagnosing to the professionals.

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