It's all "ableism is bad! Support people with mental disorders!"...
…until it is someone with narcissistic personality disorder, psychopathy and sociopathy, but mostly NPD.
EDIT: There seems to be some misunderstandings about this post. It is not an attack on this community or the users here, it’s just a general vent I have for the type of people that claim to be anti-ableist until it is something they don’t like.
The thing is there are negative aspects in NPD and ASPD, and those can be overcome, so support for these disorders does not mean celebrating but guiding toward remission.
I hope people struggling with Cluster B personality disorders get the help they need. However, I’m too traumatized by abuse from people with these disorders to engage with anyone who exhibits the associated toxic behaviors.
Hey y’all, since this is a sensitive topic and there’s been a lot of discussion which involved big emotions, I wanted to just drop by and assure the community that we’re aware this thread exists and that some of the discussion here can be uncomfortable. At least at this point in time, I don’t personally feel the need to step into any of these conversations to intervene, because I believe that the community has managed to have a meaningful discussion over a really difficult topic.
With that being said, there are some big emotions in this thread and some of the content may trigger you, especially if you’ve suffered abuse from people struggling with mental disorders or you have a mental disorder that is heavily stigmatized. There are strong statements on both sides of the field here, and I personally think leaving them up is healthier for a nuanced understanding of how much abuse can destroy someone’s life as well as how much assumptions about behavior can be deeply hurtful to experience as well.
However, if you do see behavior in here that is clearly not nice behavior and you believe that one party is instigating please still go ahead and report it. We’re not all seeing and all knowing and we don’t want this post to go off the rails either. Thanks! 💜
The problem is that people with those disorders are the ones most likely to be the abusers. They are also the least likely to seek out help. There’s a reason it’s called “The Dark Triad”.
OP you are awesome and you’ve gotta be fuming over all the people in this thread saying a mental disorder causes abuse and doing exactly the mean behaviour you complained about. I say let’s get them to say what they mean in direct terms and report them for it. The terrible behaviour in this thread doesn’t belong on Beehaw or anywhere else.
I mean, you are doing the exact same thing that my NPD parent would do, which is getting defensive instead of attempting to communicate your thoughts through arguments while attempting to understand other’s perspectives.
There are many neurodivergent people that have a number of issues because of untreated/undiagnosed NPDs that refuse to acknowledge they need assistance. Just the idea of being called narcissistic is offensive.
The most voted comments might not agree with OP but they are being very polite. I don’t see the terrible behavior you are seeing.
Just the idea of being called narcissistic is offensive.
Yes, I’ve been called a nart and it was deeply offensive. It reminds me of the times I got called a red, or a spg, or a fat, or a try. Half of those other slurs are also spins on the name of a mental disorder.
getting defensive instead of attempting to communicate your thoughts through arguments while attempting to understand other’s perspectives.
Marginalised, oppressed people are not responsible for empathising with our oppressors. While doing so can often be helpful to our causes, it should never be considered a requirement, and it should certainly never be called out by majorities demanding that we do it in order to earn respect. It’s impossible to dehumanise, attack, and villify someone for how they were born, and then reasonably expect them to be civil, polite, and empathetic. Some of us, like myself, are polite and empathetic, and we do take the time to understand how our oppressors feel. But we are the exception, and there’s a very compelling reason why that is.
My parents were abusive, and I never developed the part of my brain that feels inherent self love and worth. I got a personality disorder. And I had the right genetics and environment to get NPD out of that abuse instead of another personality disorder like BPD or ASPD. That means my fake self-esteem comes from grandiose self ideas instead of defining myself by another person or by rejecting society utterly like those other disorders.
This wasn’t a problem until I entered young adulthood. Over a period of about a year, I came to terms with my NPD. And then I proceeded to suffer many years of abuse for my disorder. It started before I ever knew the disorder, when society told me narc****sts were evil abusers. My exploration of my disorder started as a fear. I thought it was paranoia at first. But no, my worst fears were true, I had childhood trauma and genetic bad luck, and that combination made me what society considers the worst thing a person can be. According to someone in this thread, we’re basically the same as pedophiles.
I never abused anyone. Never manipulated anyone. I know it says exploitative behaviour is a criterion in the DSM, but first off the DSM is full of bad information on personality disorders, and second you don’t have to have any of the “bad” criteria to quality for the disorder. I’m haughty, pompous. I dream of greatness. I’m easily hurt when I fail or when I’m threatened. Quick to anger, but only in self defence. I can turn my empathy off at will. According to hundreds of people I have met, that makes me a born abuser. A monster.
Someone doesn’t even have to know I have NPD to sense it. For some reason, a lot of people take someone else’s big ego, even if it’s a private affair, as a personal attack. I’m not even allowed to think highly of myself, because according to some people that’s inequality and fascism. And yet if I don’t, then I don’t fundamentally feel that I’m worthy of love. I don’t think I deserve to live. It’s trauma. It’s a disorder.
I’m the only person I’ve ever hurt with my NPD. But the vilification by others has done far worse to me. They demand humility. If I’m not humble, they say I deserve to die. If I am humble, I think I deserve to die.
And here comes OP, saying my pain is right. That I do deserve to feel upset by how many people don’t believe in support for “monsters” like me. And yet with such an inoffensive, kind post, everyone has to change the subject to supposed abuses I am responsible for, just for having my brain the way it is.
I respond with the anger borne of the trauma of a lifetime of abuse from society. And that anger is justified. I do not speak with violence, I do not attack, but I am, privately, angry.
Disclaimer: English isn’t my first language + adhd so I apologize if I end up repeating myself or if the thoughts aren’t well organized
I am glad someone asked your story and I am glad that you took the time to write this. Like I stated previously, my experience with people from my family with NPD creates a certain bias. I don’t want to make this about myself but I want to give you some context: Like the other reply to you, I have an NPD parent and instead of also developing NPD, I am a very empathetic person that have a lot of difficulty being kind to myself, which isn’t the case to one of my siblings (all of us have some kind of disorder though).
My first contact with the concept of NPD was while attempting to understand said parent which got me to a few communities for people with toxic parents. These were not positive communities, people were suffering a lot with these toxic relationships so it was pretty much a lot of frustrated people attempting to find comfort and to understand why their parents had to be toxic like that. It is really rare to have someone opening up as NPD like you are so we really don’t have a lot of perspective from an NPD person.
I see you and I empathize with you and I don’t want you to think that everyone believes that NPD people were evil or anything like that. Unfortunately because it appears to be difficult to convince people with NPD that they are harming people around them, the ones that suffer harm are usually more vocal. I think everyone here agrees that just because you have NPD you aren’t evil or an abuser (and yes the pedophile example by the other user was out of touch).
You don’t need to be humble, you just need to understand that there are people that suffered with abusive parents like you did and some of them were NPD parents.
I love my NDP parent and I have a lot of empathy for them. I believe deeply that they deserve support, I don’t believe they are evil but they do act evil sometimes. I had to move to another country to have a better relationship with them, but I am glad I am now in a place where I understand everything that they went through and why they ended up the way they are. I think I might be one of the few people in our family that has patience to deal with them and that actually puts effort into trying to make them see different perspectives.
I think this thread would have developed better if it was a discussion on how NDPs are perceived and how NPDs can be better assisted to make things better for everyone instead of just a vent, but people get frustrated and that’s okay. I don’t want to marginalize anyone, I want you to feel understood but we all need to put a bit of effort when trying to understand each other. There’s no need to feel personally attacked with how people view/deal with NDPs.
I don’t know your story and I don’t know if your parent has a diagnosis. But those “victims of NPD” support groups? 90% of the people in them do not have a parent with a diagnosis. 90% of those people heard that narcst is a synonym for abuser, have judged correctly that their parents are abusive, and have concluded incorrectly that their parents have NPD. American pop psychology has a decades long tradition of publishing self help books that say we are all surrounded by narcsts, every abusive person in our lives is a narc*****st, and that the root of all evil is people with a mental disorder.
You know why that is? Because telling people their problems are caused by a vulnerable minority that can’t defend itself is a great way to get money and influence. That’s how Hitler took over Germany. He said “I know you’re all upset by our nation’s poverty, and you know whose fault it is? The Jews!” That’s the playbook modern politicians are using with the idea of abusive trans people. There is such a thing as abusive trans people, I’ve met plenty of them. But there’s no link between those two traits, there’s just abusers in every demographic. Same with NPD. The fact that Zuckerberg is evil and Jewish doesn’t mean Jews are evil. Same with NPD.
The issue here is propaganda. People have been propagandized, and those 90% who are clinging onto a myth because it makes their trauma make sense, are dangerous. We need to use the same tactics to defend pwNPD that we use to defend trans people and Jewish people.
Oh wow, I know you are venting here and I don’t want to take that from you. I get that you are frustrated. I have a similar story and am also mostly incapable of self-love or self-worth. But instead of turning out a pwNPD, I got to have all the empathy my mother is lacking.
But please, you are doing standard victim blaming here. It’s probably not worth going into detail here because you don’t seem self-aware enough to get why your actions may be perceived very differently by others than by you.
I get that society is in so far unfair to people with NPD or pedophiles because it does usually only portrait their worst qualities. But neither pwNPD nor pedophiles are monsters. That’s why I compared NPD to pedophilia in my other comment. You have the traits to abuse others, but the choice is still yours. People with pedophilia also deserve our empathy. The struggle must be really hard on you. In yet another comment I cited many studies I found on NPD and what they basically all talked about was not only the abusiveness and lack of empathy of pwNPD but also the strong interpersonal problems they face.
I’m sorry for you, but please at least try to be a bit self-aware and don’t gaslight us into thinking pwNPD are not commonly abusive and manipulative.
You were asked to attempt to better communicate by presumably another neurodivergent person in a neurodivergent community. Don’t use some bullshit analogy of oppression to justify your lack of empathy.
I support black rights, but any time somebody says black lives matter, I interrupt them and say that I don’t think we should let black people do violent crimes, and say shame on them for enabling black criminals. But I do support black rights.
This is literally the way conservatives talk about people with NPD. It’s all “I support equality”, but they think equality means a bunch of ableist stereotypes about us being allowed to happen, and they oppose that. Somehow they think they can support the idea of equality for people with disabilities, while complaining any time equality is mentioned.
This is the most NPD post ever trying to make this comparison. People with disabilities or mental disorders that hurt people when unmanaged SHOULD be treated differently. No it’s not the same thing as ensuring blind or people in wheel chairs can get around without assistance or making sure people with autism get job opportunities.
We’re literally too busy doing damage control. This is just the ‘but why don’t you tolerate intolerance’ argument. I’m sure there are people struggling with this stuff who manage to avoid hurting and manipulating the people around them, and that’s great for them.
But we also live in a world rife with abuse and exploitation, and we won’t get past it by just ignoring manipulation. We’ve got all these other people who’ve been victimized, so we kind of need to focus on them with this particular pattern.
You can’t just will someone else to stop abusing others and face their own shit, and frankly it’s incredibly hard to tell the difference between an abuser in the calm part of their cycle and someone who’s stopped repeating it.
For me the litmus test there is honesty. I’ve given people I’ve known were manipulative another chance, but if they show that their interactions are still based in fundamental dishonesty, what am I supposed to do with that? Sacrifice myself endlessly in the hopes that they decide to stop treating me like a punching bag?
I think not. I think I’ll be out here keeping an eye out for dishonesty at the root of people’s interactions with others and run like hell when I find it so I don’t waste another second of my life being controlled and tormented.
This was my exact thought. This seems like someone trying to excuse this shit. You can dress it up as just a personality disorder, but these personality types are toxic.
What kind of response are you expecting? Or is this just a rant/vent? I don’t agree with your statement entirely, many people would also want people with NPD, psychopathy or sociopathy to get support. The problem, however, is that it is really hard for most to give people with strong narcissistic or manipulative traits the support they need. Similarly, I also have compassion with pedophiles and wish them the support they need. But obviously I don’t want them to be enabled (or even allowed) to follow their sexuality. Same goes for people with narcissistic and manipulative traits. I want them to get support but not be enabled or allowed to hurt or manipulate others.
Recently I stumbled upon this podcast called “The Bright Sessions” where they basically envision neurodivergent people and/or people with mental disorders as having superhuman powers. There also is a character that might fall into your description of people who are not treated with compassion. The podcast really explores what that means and how compassion can look like with a person like that.
ETA: and this comes from a person who has been traumatized over decades by various people with strong narcissistic traits.
Recently I stumbled upon this podcast called “The Bright Sessions” where they basically envision neurodivergent people and/or people with mental disorders as having superhuman powers.
Unrelated to this thread, but Julia Morizawa (Dr. Bright) has a character which plays a big part in the later episodes of another great podcast called The Amelia Project, which is a lovely, darkly humourous, and oftentimes poignant little series. Actually, her voice is in every episode from the beginning, but her character doesn’t actually come into play until a little later.
Oooh, this sounds really nice! Thanks for the recommendation ♥
Since I’ve listened to Biotopia (in Spanish though) I haven’t been able to find any fictional podcast that is as great. But I’m enjoying the bright sessions quite a bit :)
One of my parents is a woman. And she was an abusive woman. But do I hate women? No. That’s because I understand that my personal experiences aren’t always indicative of the state of the larger world. Now, you probably think the idea of hating women because of an abusive woman parent is ridiculous, and you’re right. It’s ridiculous because you and I have met many women, and we know that most women aren’t abusive. I have also met many people living with NPD, and that’s why I know thinking people who suffer from NPD are abusive is ridiculous. But if you’ve never been to an NPD support group, you probably haven’t met a lot of pwNPD, and you probably don’t have the directly experienced perspective to instinctively understand what I do. Which is why it’s important for everyone to understand the limits of our own experience.
What makes you think that having NPD parents makes one hate NDPs? I understand where you are coming from but you also need to understand the limits of your own experience. We are all hurt here, if we want to understand and be understood we need to make an attempt. Don’t take things as an offence or direct attack to yourself.
This is a logical fallacy. Your example doesn’t work. Your mother wasn’t abusive because she was a woman, so why would you associate her abusiveness with her womanhood? NPD on the other hand directly leads to abusive, manipulative and exploitative behaviour. So in this case NPD is directly associated with abusiveness. And yes, I have met my fair share with pwNPD (or other personality disorders). I have also some experience with being in psychiatric clinics, so I have met many people with various mental problems/disorders.
But all this is not to say that pwNPD are not human beings with their own struggles and needs, too. Obviously pwNPD suffer greatly from their condition and it pains me a lot how hard it is to actually provide support for them. It is a really messed up situation that pwNPD are mostly incapable of self-awareness and (affective) empathy that it is nearly impossible to help them :(
Do you have any references to back up this claim? From personal experience I most strongly disagree with your statement. I have suffered all my life from narcissistic people and even many years of therapy were not sufficient to surpass my childhood trauma.
Also, if you don’t want to take a subjective perspective there is really a looot of research that shows how abusive people with NPD are.
Lack of empathy isn’t abuse. Empathy is a private, personal feeling. Other people’s feelings are not abuse. Neurotypical society encourages a toxic dynamic where you must feel certain ways about other people in your own head, or you are a so-called abuser. A person who is not feeling affective empathy is perfectly capable of cognitive empathy and of practicing ethics and morality. Affective empathy is a feeling. Cognitive empathy is knowledge. Ethics and morality are theories and behaviours. And I can report from my own experiences and those of other people living with NPD, that the reason we have lower empathy on average is that we can choose whether to have empathy. We are perfectly capable of feeling the feelings of others, but we can also block that feeling when it’s irrelevant. We can feel and understand others’ feelings in order to develop our sense of ethics, but we can turn it off when it’s a hindrance. If a man is drunk and shouting at me for being trans, I don’t want to feel empathy for his hatred of me. I turn my empathy off. If I’m talking to a woman who had a miscarriage, I can turn my empathy off while still showing sympathy. I know miscarriages are bad, I know how horrible they feel, I just don’t want to also feel that way. The neurotypical demand that everyone feel empathy at all is unreasonable. Neurotypicals say “People with NPD don’t choose to suffer when I feel bad. That’s abuse”. I disagree. And I don’t believe neurotypicals feel empathy at all times either. Their empathy shuts off when it’s important. pwNPD just have more control, do it more often. There’s nothing wrong with that. Hyperempathy is a symptom associated with disorders like BPD and sometimes even NPD, and it’s a lot worse than selective empathy. People with hyperempathy can’t function when someone is upset. They sometimes end up covering over and ignoring conflicts and being unable to resolve them because it hurts too much to think about a problem. That’s toxic. Yes, selective empathy can be used to inflict harm with fewer consequences, but so can a kitchen knife, and people who cook are not evil abusers. Nor are people living with NPD. And if lack of empathy made us abusers, then people with autism would be as well. They are not, and we are not.
That’s my response to the first link you showed. As you can see, I’ve thought a whole lot about this topic and have very strong feelings. From my point of view, this is someone saying “Your private thoughts are different from other people’s. That’s abuse!” You can see why this triggers me. I think it’s best now if I calm down, rather than discussing all the links you posted. You are free to discuss what I’ve said, and if I’m calm enough I’ll try to answer. I’d like to convince you of my point of view, at least with empathy. I am not sure I have the wherewithal to discuss everything you’ve linked.
You did not read any further then the very first link and already claim that I’m wrong? Also, most of what you wrote is probably aligned with your own emotions but logically doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I don’t want to trigger you and please take care of yourself. But please also refrain from spamming this thread with made up claims because you feel threatened by them. Because in doing so you actually really prove your lack of empathy and how you don’t care about others.
You are not the only one triggered by this topic. Surviving parents with NPD and multiple similar longterm romantic relationships mean I get triggered as well if someone wants to tell me that people like these are not abusive. And yes, the abuse was directly linked to narcissistic traits in each case. So don’t tell me otherwise unless you can prove it.
If you really want to convince me, you would need to link to actual research or anything that can show how NPD and abusiveness are not linked. Just by telling personal anecdotes you are not convincing anyone, the opposite actually.
I mean, there’s support and then there’s enabling. Not all things that ND people do are good, either for them or those around them. We as a community don’t act like it’s ok for Autistic people to go around grabbing women’s tits “cause they don’t understand social conventions” (though I’ve absolutely come across this argument before, which infuriated me), why would we act like it’s ok for NPD people to manipulate and emotionally abuse those around them “cause it’s just the way they are”? The goal is to support them in a way that limits harm: both the harm that comes to them from outside, and the harm they can do to others.
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