Can Someone With Vulnerable Narcissism...

@SatanBurger This gave me such hope for myself, my brother and my father. Thank you so much 💙💙💙

@InvictusIndigo Thanks for the best answer, I'm glad you didn't take it the wrong way, my intention was to only help. I'm not trying to be mean or anything but I wanted to add about your brother and father, it is possible to get help for narcissism though narcissism isn't curable. But don't be surprised if your brother and father don't want to or manipulate you if you try to get them help if they do have NPD. That's why if you go into therapy, you have to be prepared to only do it for yourself because you want to get better. Also, you want a therapist online or offline who specializes in personality disorders, there could be books to read too.

I only say you can control what YOU can control because other people are right, people who have NPD rarely get help and when they do, it is to manipulate or they'll get help but push you away after. You may be disappointed if you try to get your brother and father to get help and they really fight hard against you.

It's NOT you if that happens, just wanted to say that.. to have realistic expectations of your father/brother.

@Graylight Actually covert or inverse narcissists are a thing, there's two main subtypes of narcissism: grandiose and vulnerable. Both of those are used in therapy as a term.

@basilfawlty89 Yes, they are. But online, it's best to keep mental health and psychology discussions at their most basic, as things are typically much more involved that placing a label on someone.

[i]From a trait perspective, narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), the focus of this study, is assessed using 2 specific traits: grandiosity and attention seeking. Using a sample collected online from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk; N=306), we examined the relations among traits from a new measure of DSM-5's trait model--the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID5; Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, in press)--and grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. The 25 traits from PID5 captured a significant portion of the variance in grandiose and vulnerable factors, although the 2 specific facets designated for the assessment of NPD fared substantially better in the assessment of grandiose rather than vulnerable narcissism. These results are discussed in the context of improving the DSM-5's ability to capture both narcissism dimensions.[/i]
Grandiose and vulnerable narcissism and the DSM-5 pathological personality trait model: Joshua D Miller 1, Brittany Gentile, Lauren Wilson, W Keith Campbell;
PMID: 22594764 DOI: 10.1080/00223891.2012.685907

Not really sufficient to have Amy in the chat room offer up medical diagnoses.

@Graylight I'll offer up this video because it's perfect for this conversation. You can't diagnose someone true but if the person is constantly engaging in these toxic behaviors, it's that constant that sets them apart. It's up to the person individually if they love that person enough to put up with it or leave. If they are online, you don't have to diagnose someone to just not deal with them because you suspect them of having those toxic traits that indicates not a healthy person.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0OHXUb4vqM]

@Graylight It's a lot more complicated than that. There are actually 10 different personality disorders (antisocial, psychopathy, NPD, histrionic etc etc etc) and each of them, narcissism is a facet but with slight differences in how the narcissism shows itself. I am NOT an expert but there's slight differences between the disorders however, narcissism tends to be a symptom of a lot. Also, both addicts and bipolar have narcissism as well. Bipolar people during bouts of mania will exhibit a higher sense of self importance and can come across as narcissistic.

It kind of goes something like this, "narcissists can be addicts but not all narcissists are addicts," though professionals are beginning to wonder if narcissism isn't addictive in so much the fact the NPD sufferer gets emotionally addicted to both negative and super positive attention.

So there's this great blog post that figures out the numbers but all the disorders together make about [b]16 million people[/b], each with about two victims each typically and the victims may not know the person they are dealing with, so there's that. Antisocial people are about 1 in 30 so if your business is more than 30 people, the chances of at least 2 or 3 being around and secretly ruining your life if you unknowingly get on their radar is actually very good.

@SatanBurger There are narcissistic tendencies and there is the actual disorder, and that's where people get mixed up. To suffer from a disorder, it must be [i]clinically significant,[/i] meaning the person is unable to function in life in a normal manner. A trait or behavior may seem like a disorder, it could be a sign of another disorder, or it could be indication of either a disorder no one's thought about or simply a difficult week. That's why diagnosis online is akin to finding all your medical advice online - you might find new, proven strategies and you might find Ivermectin.

Yes, a lot of people have [i]tendencies[/i], but the personality disorders you mention are significantly rare and hardly ever seen in the general public.

16 million people - in the US alone - represents [b]5.3%[/b] of the population; if you used a worldwide statistic, you can imagine the relevance. Though simply "adding up" all the disorders is a wildly inaccurate method.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:
[quote]Antisocial people are about 1 in 30 [/quote]
No. The prevalence of this very rare and life-altering personality disorder is 4%. Further, it's not avoiding people; it's a serious disorder that typically leads to sociopathy and lifelong trouble with authority. To help diagnose, this is where we start: [i]The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5) classifies all ten personality disorders into three clusters (A, B, and C). Antisocial personality disorder falls into 1 of 4 cluster-B disorders, which also includes borderline, narcissistic, and histrionic. All of these disorders characteristically present with dramatic, emotional, and unpredictable interactions with others. Antisocial personality disorder is the only personality disorder that is not diagnosable in childhood. Before the age of 18, the patient must have been previously diagnosed with conduct disorder (CD) by the age of 15 years old to justify diagnostic criteria for ASPD.[/i] Not that simple.

[quote]Also, both addicts and bipolar have narcissism as well.[/quote]
Patently false. One disorder in no way indicates another, though we've traced oft-used roads of possibility.

[quote]professionals are beginning to wonder if narcissism isn't addictive [/quote]
Patently false. Right now in the psychological and medical community, behavioral problems like sex, online gaming etc. aren't even recognized as addictions, much less can another disorder's symptoms be addictive. Addiction is a highly specific, well-mapped and reasonable understood issue. Ever-evolving, but established.

I mention this stuff because you seem interested and do have insight on a lot. There are no easy answers and half of everything we know in the field is wrong...we just don't know which half yet. Science evolves, but it has to evolve on the good science that came before it to be legitimate.

@Graylight Well the only reason I bring up numbers is because people are always asking how there's so many victims of narcissists that seem to be a lot despite NPD being low. What I'm ultimately saying is that even if NPD was low, there's many disorders associates with low to no conscience and the person who was the victim, could have been the victim of any of these types of people. So in my opinion, it adds up.

[quote][b]One in 25 people will have the disorders associated with 'no conscience'[/b] which include antisocial personality disorder, sociopath, and psychopath.

304 million divided by 25 = 12.16 million have no conscience.

Each antisocial/psychopath will negatively affect approximately 5 partners with their pathology.
12.16 million x 5 = 60.8 million people.

[b]https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pathological-relationships/201008/60-million-people-in-the-us-negatively-affected-someone-elses[/b][/quote]

[quote]Patently false. One disorder in no way indicates another, though we've traced oft-used roads of possibility.[/quote]

Well I wasn't saying that at all. I was mainly saying that bipolar during manic episodes exhibits narcissism, this is why they can have similarities but only during episodes. Same thing with addicts, if people suspect an addict may have NPD, they have to treat the addiction first because some aspects of addiction can mirror narcissism. I didn't say that addiction or bipolar indicates narcissism.

[b]https://www.healthline.com/health/bipolar-and-narcissism

https://thedawnrehab.com/blog/narcissism-and-drug-addiction/[/b]

@basilfawlty89 Look at Trump. Not diagnosing him, but c'mon.

@Graylight and I wouldn't call his relationship with Melania healthy in the slightest, especially considering he cheated on her while she was having his baby.