NPD Recovery: Rock Bottom, Trial & Error (My Story Part 1)
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- Опубликовано: 24 апр 2023
- While I was able to see a theory for Cluster B disorders after I got better (& had a chance to look back on it), my actual recovery did not come from any theory - but rather from hitting rock bottom & having no choice but to search for some way to be, honestly, a better person.
Absolutely correct regarding Jordan Peterson. After shipwrecking myself by betraying my wife several times, losing my professional licence (Pharmacy), being diagnosed with ADHD as a teenager, NPD in my twenties and BPD in my early 30s, I managed to game the system and cover up, and shockingly got into the Army. I qualified as an infantry officer. I went through basic training, basic officer qualification, dismounted infantry platoon commander and mechanized platoon commander courses (with much fuckery, mind you, but I did it). Then I was promoted to 2 I/C of an Infantry Company, and passed jump school.
Sick as I’ve ever been the whole time through. If that isn’t witchcraft ambition and “cleaning your room”, I don’t know what is.
I had to fake Lyme disease to get a voluntary release because I could see myself unravelling. I didn’t want a dishonourable discharge. That was the beginning of becoming aware of my real predicament. I hit bottom while I was releasing from my unit, and for a few years afterwards.
that's a real story... maybe at some point you could put it into writing, because it's a real and fascinating human experience...
You know what? I had to ask my long-suffering wife whether that was a real story, or not.
I mean, thank you for the compliment. My overall situation, however, is one of questioning the things I tell people about myself. My wife confirmed that particular comment. It’s true without confabulation. I know that. I was in the Army. I did those things. They seem like a dream, now, though.
Crazy as that sounds, that’s where I am.
Plus, honestly : everything I do is shallow. Even when I earn things like a Pharm.D. or Jump-Wings. I always cheat and manipulate and wind-up with worldly accolades which are later debunked. I do not deserve them. I cheat my way through everything, and whatever story I tell you is usually (not always, however) skin-deep : that’s why I collapse . . . I can’t ever maintain the lie of me.
I have done a lot of confabulating over the years. I’m sure you understand.
Anyway, my psychiatrist recently stopped me and said something like, “ Don’t go so far into self-deprecating narratives. You are, in fact, a warrior-scholar. You actually have a Pharm.D. degree hanging on the wall, you do have a first-kyu in Judo, you DID IN FACT pass the course in the Army.”
My problem is that I see myself as a phoney, and perhaps this is a delusion but in everything all I did was cheat and scam and make it look-like I did something. Or is that a skewed cluster-B perception?
I always think and feel that I’m lying, that I’m fake, no matter what. Even if - maybe - I am telling the truth.
The guy on the channel, Nameless Narcissist, hinted at this type-of-shite, once : he said he didn’t need to necessarily be grandiose about his life’s experiences because they were in fact varied and intrepid and cool.
That’s how I feel : my off-center and dysfunctional being has led me to do and experience life in an intense and off-putting, perhaps disassociated manner but, FFS, can I say it’s a disorder? Or that it’s all been “bad”?
I have been all-over-the-world and done tons of cool shit, met loads of interesting crazy-cool people, and what-not.
Potentially great stories. Are they great, or not? Or am I a self-preoccupied cluster-b asshole?
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
@@janmcsween7079 but even the feelings of impostor syndrome, dreamlike unreality, shallowness... and even the parts where we lie and fictionalize... all of it... all of it is a real human experience. And some people's lives are richer and more exemplary in those weird facets of the whole human experience.
I've often thought that NPD is not an indictment of the whole person, but more an observation of what happens when the pieces of our self aren't well integrated. But that doesn't mean the pieces themselves aren't extraordinary and/or interesting. I don't say that in the grandiose way, but in a matter of fact way.
You seem like you have an instinct to tell... to relate... to share a real experience, and it is what it is... a retrospective, a story, more than a life maybe, lol
Man, you confirm an intuition I’ve had since I started to tune into some cluster-b’s on social media a few months ago. We’re actually NOT monsters, we’re NOT the bastards.
I woke up really early this morning and bugged my wife. As usual. Lol. She indulged me and watched a short video in which Dr. Lineman spoke about how she began to develop DBT. My wife (Jan) said something like, “ That sounds like you, the year you quit Pharmacy school. You took off to a Buddhist monastery and then started a class at the chancery with the Catholic bishop and the Franciscan brothers.”
I did. I was going crazy, and searching. I dumped Jan and shacked up with a gorgeous (crazy) ballerina, screwed my best buddy’s girl and was basically the biggest cad criminal in my little city but I also learned how to sit Zazen and think about God like the ancient Greeks, Catholics and Jews did. Of course none of that wisdom sank-in at the time : I was an unbridled narcissist, totally in-love with being young, tall, handsome, affable and “a GOD”.
Maybe some of that wisdom did sink-in. I see now that perhaps God/the-Tao is leveling me. I want to be grateful for what I have seen, including the mess of “me”. I’m beginning to want-to-want to help others avoid the traps that wounded me. I see a similar sentiment in other cluster-b’s online. Maybe when we start to come-to we are actually human.
This morning Jan said she agreed with you. Meaning that she doesn’t think we’re sick, and that narcissism is on a continuum of human-being, that everyone is more-or-less insane, manipulative and deluded; it’s just that some of us go to extremes, and tragically many can’t return from the far reaches of extremity. She cited the. Buddha as an example : totally spoiled, gorgeous, athletic, a father, a husband, a king with a harem . . . yet, he saw that he really wasn’t a “king” of anything, so he set out on a search.
The fact that a man like you does not want to hurt others - or himself - anymore (and I’m in that boat along with guys like Nameless Narcissist) shows that “feelings” aren’t the gold-standard regarding compassion/empathy. The will is important: a man can WILL to be good regardless of his feelings, or lack of feelings.
I heard someone say, once, “Feelings are creepy.” I agree. Who cares if I feel like being good? What about actually trying (willing) to NOT be an arsehole? That’s the battlefield so far as I am concerned. For me, it’s been a losing battle but I am not dead yet.
@@janmcsween7079 someone, somewhere inserted the PREJUDICE that emotionality is the barometer of virtue... I think it comes from something like a Bohemian subculture... the same subculture that brought us psychology itself. That said, being emotionally blunted isn't nothing... but I'm talking about emotionality. I assume that if people first wake uo to just CARING about things, and APPRECIATING things.. then it's almost indecent to think about our emotions. Our emotions will be what they are 🙂