Sometimes love is not enough

@WhateverWorks Trying to cure them is exhausting

@Notladylike I don’t know if I believe there is a cure for NPD other than possibly for entirely self-benefit and entirely of their own accord they decide to develop self disciplines that tempers the destructive propensities. I do think a lot of the time when people refer to someone as a narcissist, they might actually have BPD, just be a run of the mill, very selfish abuser, or in a hyper self-serving, destructive pattern as a trauma response. (or a cocktail of things). Either way, it’s not something someone else can fix by investing themselves into the destructive person.

@WhateverWorks It’s hard to comment on because they present so rarely to therapy. I have seen people with NPD no longer meet the criteria after therapy. It’s usually after some type of mandated therapy process. I would say they develop strategies or ways of interacting that are less harmful. However yes at their core they don’t have that kind of emotional intelligence and when under stress will revert back.
BPD is in the same cluster of PDs so you’re right lots of overlap and misdiagnosis. Bpd is much more common even in men.

@Notladylike mandated therapy makes sense. Like you mentioned, I’ve read they so rarely go to therapy since part of the symptoms is believing they’re perfect, justified, and everyone else is the problem 😅🤔 As I was replying above earlier, I was trying to imagine how someone with NPD would even go into therapy, except if for some reason they’d been so sloppily destructive that their public image was at stake.🤔 Even though it won’t come up much I should really read more about strategies when working with NPD.

@WhateverWorks It’s very typical to see them in domestic & violence family courts here. There will usually be a motivating factor to attend therapy like the dvo will cease.
I’ve also worked with those that are incarcerated which is a complete waste of time and you may as well bang your head on the wall because all they do is lie when in prison to protect the ego.

@Notladylike I can definitely see how working with the incarcerated would feel like one dead end after the other. They’re not even a position to be honest really even if they wanted to because whatever they have to share falls under the category of things that null their client rights to privacy. 😬