I’ve never been formally diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, and frankly, I’m not sure I’d want that diagnosis on my record. But two psychologists, including my current therapist, have described me as narcissistic. I’m also a psychology student, and the more I learn about the subject, the harder it becomes to deny that they’re probably right.
The strange thing is that I don’t walk around feeling superior to everyone all the time.
My self-image is actually pretty unstable. Some days, I feel genuinely exceptional. Other days, I’m consumed by insecurity and self-doubt. But there’s something that seems to connect both extremes: an almost unbearable need to feel important.
I need to be respected. I need to be taken seriously. I need to feel that I have some kind of power over my circumstances and the people around me.
And when I don’t, something ugly happens inside me.
The best way I can explain narcissistic grandiosity is to compare it to depression.
I’ve experienced serious depression, and when you’re depressed, your mind has a way of collecting evidence against you. Every failure, every embarrassment, every mistake you’ve ever made suddenly feels like proof that you’re worthless. You conveniently forget everything good about yourself.
For me, grandiosity works in almost exactly the opposite direction.
My mind cherry-picks my accomplishments, my intelligence, my abilities, and every occasion when I’ve been better than someone else. I construct a version of myself that’s impressive, capable, and deserving of admiration.
It’s not necessarily all lies. Some of those qualities are real. The problem is that I exaggerate them and conveniently ignore everything that contradicts the picture.
And I become emotionally invested in making sure other people see that same picture.
If someone treats me with even slightly less respect than I believe I deserve, I can become absolutely furious.
Not necessarily outwardly. I might smile, remain polite, and carry on the conversation.
But inside, I’m boiling.
I’ll replay the interaction for hours, sometimes days. I’ll think about what I should have said, how I could have embarrassed them, how I could have demonstrated that I’m smarter or more capable than they are.
A casual criticism can feel like a personal attack. Being talked down to feels almost physically intolerable.
I know how ridiculous that sounds. I can recognize that my reaction is disproportionate.
But knowing that doesn’t automatically make the feeling disappear.
I think a lot of this started when I was a child.
I was intelligent, responsible, and generally did well in school. I was also argumentative, aggressive, and extremely sensitive to being corrected.
Like most children, I got into trouble. Teachers reprimanded me. My parents punished me. Adults told me to watch my attitude and respect my elders.
What made me furious wasn’t always the punishment itself. It was the hypocrisy.
My parents could shout, swear, lose their tempers, and say hurtful things. But if I behaved the same way, suddenly it was unacceptable.
When I pointed this out, the response was usually some variation of, “We’re the adults,” or “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
I hated those answers.
I hated that they could make mistakes without answering to me, while I had to answer to them for everything.
To be clear, my parents weren’t monsters. They were ordinary, flawed people doing what they thought was best. I can recognize that now.
But as a child, I didn’t experience it that way.
I experienced it as humiliation.
I felt powerless, and I absolutely despised feeling powerless.
I used to fantasize about becoming an adult, becoming successful, and finally reversing the situation. One day, I imagined, these people would need something from me. They would have to listen to me. I would be the one making the rules.
And then they’d see that I’d been better than them all along.
Looking back, that’s a pretty disturbing thing for a child to spend so much time thinking about.
But those fantasies were comforting. They gave me a sense of control when I felt I had none.
Eventually, I learned that controlling people was easier than convincing them.
As I got older, I began paying close attention to how people responded to different behaviors.
I noticed that honesty wasn’t always rewarded. Being agreeable sometimes just encouraged people to demand more from you. Logical arguments didn’t necessarily persuade anyone.
But emotions? Emotions could be useful.
I learned when to act sympathetic, when to appear hurt, when to flatter someone, and when to become angry.
Sometimes I deliberately softened my personality to get what I wanted. Other times, I exaggerated my distress to make someone feel guilty.
I became particularly good at switching from pleasant to furious in a matter of seconds.
That sudden change could catch people off guard. Sometimes they would back down simply because they didn’t want to deal with my reaction.
And when that happened, I felt powerful.
That’s the part I’m least proud of admitting.
There is a satisfaction I get from realizing I can influence someone’s behavior. Sometimes the satisfaction comes less from getting what I wanted than from knowing I was able to make them do it.
I understand that this is manipulative. I understand that it can hurt people.
But understanding something intellectually and changing your emotional response to it are two very different things.
I don’t believe I’m incapable of empathy.
I can care about people. I can recognize when someone is suffering, and I can genuinely want to help them.
I’m capable of kindness, affection, generosity, and concern for others.
But my empathy becomes much harder to access when I feel disrespected.
If someone treats me as an equal, I can be perfectly pleasant, even generous.
If someone acts condescending toward me, however, I can become obsessed with putting them in their place.
Suddenly, the most important thing isn’t understanding their perspective or resolving the disagreement.
It’s winning.
It’s making sure they never make me feel small again.
And sometimes that desire can completely override my better judgment.
Therapy has forced me to confront something uncomfortable: much of my behavior is driven by insecurity.
For a long time, I thought my anger came from having high standards. I believed I was simply someone who couldn’t tolerate stupidity, hypocrisy, or disrespect.
There’s probably some truth to that.
But I’ve started to recognize how much of my identity depends on feeling superior, or at least never feeling inferior.
If I’m genuinely secure in my intelligence, why does someone questioning it bother me so much?
If I know my own worth, why do I need other people to constantly acknowledge it?
If I’m as independent as I like to believe, why does another person’s opinion have so much power over my mood?
Those are questions I don’t particularly enjoy answering.
Because the answers aren’t flattering.
I’ve realized that a lot of what I call pride is actually defensiveness. A lot of what I call confidence is something I have to keep proving to myself.
And a lot of what I call righteous anger is simply the pain of having my self-image challenged.
The encouraging thing is that I don’t think these tendencies have to control my entire life.
One of the most important discoveries I made in group therapy was that helping people can give me a sense of satisfaction and importance that’s far more meaningful than manipulating them.
When I help someone solve a problem, understand themselves, or feel better about their situation, I still experience that sense of being valuable.
I still enjoy being appreciated.
I’m not going to pretend my motivations are entirely selfless. I like being admired. I like being seen as intelligent and useful.
But I’ve started to understand that there’s a difference between earning someone’s respect and forcing them to give you the appearance of it.
One creates something genuine. The other creates something fragile that you have to constantly defend.
That’s part of what drew me toward psychology.
I want to understand people. I want to help them. And yes, I also enjoy the feeling of being someone whose knowledge and abilities matter.
Maybe that’s not the purest motivation in the world.
But it’s a better direction for those impulses than where they used to take me.
I don’t know whether I’ll ever completely stop needing admiration or feeling threatened by criticism. I still catch myself mentally ranking people, imagining arguments, and getting angry over things that shouldn’t matter.
Sometimes I recognize what I’m doing and manage to stop. Other times, I only realize it afterward.
It’s a work in progress.
And I’m aware of the irony in writing all of this.
Part of me genuinely wants people to understand what goes on inside someone with narcissistic traits. I want to challenge the idea that we’re all emotionless monsters who spend every waking moment admiring ourselves.
But another part of me is already wondering whether readers will find this insightful.
Whether they’ll think I’m unusually self-aware.
Whether they’ll admire my honesty.
Even when I’m confessing how badly I crave validation, some part of me is still hoping to receive it.
I suppose that tells you more about my experience of narcissism than anything else I’ve written.