Comment by epolanski
15 hours ago
Author's problem is that he tries too hard, which is off putting.
The way to connect with people is to genuinely care about them and listen. The world is full of the oddest people who have normal relations because they simply care.
The author seems to show very little empathy or care towards other human beings, in fact the entirety of the article sounds like connecting is all about himself. Me, me and me. How people perceive me, how do they like me.
He never ever shows genuine interest into connection, in the the end comes off as manipulative.
I'm glad it wasn't just me who noticed this. It seems like the author doesn't care at all about other people; only about how to manipulate people into liking them.
Gives real narcissist vibes.
Narcissism is a spectrum; everybody's a little narcissistic, and it changes over time. All kids are VERY narcissistic early on, most grow out of it as they experience unconditional love from their parents and are allowed to be their authentic selves in various social contexts.
For various reasons - some kids don't. Bullying can certainly contribute.
So they develop maladaptive strategies (which can look like the first few "stages" in this article) and have to undo the damage later in life (which can look like the later "stages" from the article) to have a chance to experience real human connection.
I think the article can be very beneficial for people who struggle with this, even if it doesn't explicitly mention what the technical name of the struggle is (and BTW it does not have to be NPD - there might be other reasons for people to have similar problems). Maybe even BECAUSE it doesn't mention narcissism (cause narcissism is currently villified on the social media as "they are actual demons that cannot be saved" - so people are very wary of identifying with it, which makes it less likely they will work on themselves).
BTW I'm very disappointed in the current fad on social media of villifying one mental health issue after another only to then come to realize "oh wait, they're actually people not monsters". I've seen it with BPD, now it's the NPD turn. It's usually done for ugly reasons, too (somebody hurt by a person with $mental_health_problem search for validation, so influencers jump in with feel-good validation that portrays the other side as demons).
I mean, it’s literally one of the dark triad. Dark. Not misunderstood.
The DSM basically took all those “traits we think of as evil” and said “we shall make some disorder categories”. People with NPD don’t go and get help, they just run around ruining other peoples lives.
If you’ve never had such a person in your life, good for you! The rest of us don’t care if they can be saved, we just don’t ever want to interact with another one. Ever.
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