Narcissist is an overused term to describe inconsiderate people..

There is a difference between having a personality disorder and having faults. Anyone can display signs of being a narcissist as most people crave attention and admiration... a lot of people put their own needs before the needs of others.

You ever read those Facebook posts saying "he's a narcissist if he doesn't buy you flowers and criticises you"? Something along those lines...

The truth is most people are on the spectrum to varying degrees and behaviours displayed by narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths etc are to much more of an extreme than say an asshole or a thoughtless person.

There's also this notion that these people hide behind masks, probably I mean we all hide behind masks to some degree we do it to preserve ourselves it is rare that anyone is completely honest.

So how do you find out who is a narcissist, a sociopath, a psychopath? Get close to them is your best bet because like most people they often reveal more about themselves to people they know however this isn't guaraunteed.

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Graylight · 51-55, F

This is true not only of narcissism but many other things floating around these days. Anxiety, PTSD, depression, ADHD...

People these days are UBER-interested in carrying labels on their back. A label without a cure is worthless. And yes, many people share many different traits and in that way, emotional and behaviors live on a spectrum.

However, you're absolutely right that in order to be an actual "thing," a condition of note, one must have clinically significant difficulty resulting in life issue along a whole spectrum of dimension. It's not opinion-based, it's science based. There are assessments, screening tools, testing; it's very evidentiary based.

And when you come down to it, diagnosis is as much about coding for billing as anything else. It's the symptoms of unrest a person wants to look for and treat initially.