Can a narcissist truly heal?

Questions and Comments
#122

Yes.

You help them by demonstrating healthy boundaries and referring them to somebody else to get help.

You heal a narcissist by healing yourself. (That process does not involve continuing to be with that person.)

Then they get to experience the consequences that will eventually help them to learn how to treat people better (or not). More likely they’ll identify another likely enabler and swoop on in.

It’s like water pressing against a boat trying to find a crack. You don’t need to “train the water” in that case; you need to fix the leaks (a.k.a. boundaries).

This is just the truth. Am I good at it? Hell no. Is it the truth nonetheless? Yep.

You’re lonely. Want to feel needed. Seeking validation. Feel like you’re not enough as you are. Feel like you need to do more to ‘earn’ someone’s love. That’s how they get in. And get back in.

Stop the cycle.

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#123

This is what I want to prevent! I don’t want other woman or men to go through this experience.

So maybe my focus is more on helping those like you mention below. :point_down:

For me, I had reposted my wedding dress to sell and he saw my post. I left my fiancé in 2020. This guy was under the impression that I was going through a divorce or something, which I wasn’t. I was just trying to make some cash.

He was feeling lonely himself after his previous girlfriend ran for the hills. He said some very poetic and profoundly beautiful words to me. I decided to meet him for a walk that night. He brought me very thoughtful gifts (sage, sweet grass, cacao, blank canvas, camera tripod and light) based off our brief conversation prior. :flushed: I thought, wow that’s so sweet. We stayed up all night talking, well him mostly talking and me listening.

It seemed like he felt he had to do more to earn love.

He wanted validation and to feel needed throughout our relationship. Sometimes he had meltdowns almost like my 3 year old does sometimes.

I wasn’t feeling lonely at the time we met. LBFH was part of my stack at that time.

I did feel like enough in most ways, but was a bit worried about finances.

I didn’t feel like I had to earn his love as I was love bombed to the max.

I was on the brink of leaving my career while dealing with family law court. I had a mess to clean up that way. I didn’t know he was wealthy or so he said he was. He came in to save the day. I became codependent on him financially.

I started questioning several disorders, and found him to be very complex. He openly stated he had complex ptsd and had a history of drug abuse. He said he sometimes got manic if overworking with his trading work.

A lot of lies and confusion.

I still care and want the best for him.

He isn’t a malignant narcissist, but I sense his dad may have been or is that way from conversations shared by his mom.

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#124

Unfortunately this is not a decision you can make for others. For both the man you are talking about. And for the women he might date.

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#125

I mean I am thinking for me it may be good to market around some of what has been said here, for my business.

A target audience of those who may feel not enough, that they have to work hard to earn someones love, need external validation or feeling lonely, etc.

Maybe this will help indirectly for the “narcissist” to finally face himself.

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#126

For what it’s worth, I don’t like the idea that much. It sounds like you might be wanting to use a relationship (with you) to help people to not depend on relationships.

It’s better to work with clients who don’t quite so intensely activate your savior instinct.

that’s the red flag part.

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#127

Can you explain this a bit?

I’m trying to better understand your words.

I’ve been praying for clarity around the ideal clients to work with going forward.

There is healthy dependence and co dependence.

Secure attachment and the insecure attachment styles.

#128

I was allowing myself to speak spontaneously and intuitively. So you will need to check against your actual real experience to see whether it actually fits you or how well it fits you.

I got the impression that in the past you had had the experience of being in one or more relationships with a significantly narcissistic person. I’m not sure how extensive that pattern was for you.

The desire to heal people around one specific issue is a sign of some area that probably needs attention within the healer. That’s not some kind of indictment. Everyone has areas in need of attention. But it’s important to make sure that you’re not attempting to substitute healing others for addressing whatever specific issue needs attention in yourself. Also, I truly do not know whether this even applies to you. It’s just a phenomenon that occurs commonly with healers.

This is the kind of private thing to be taken into personal reflection and personal healing/therapy. Not so much to be worked through publicly. But anyway, that is what I was talking about.

:muscle:t5:

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#129

A better question to ask is “Is narcissim actually a bad thing?”

Obviously uncontrolled narcissim from individuals who think overly highly of themselves and don’t actually do or accomplish anything while acting in a toxic way is bad, but that subset of people is probably very low. I’ve met very few individuals like that and I interact with thousands of people a month EASILY.

And then that leads me to actual narcissim, most of the companies that exist, the dynasties that have been forged, every great leader who ever lived were complete narcissists who thought they were better than everybody… which is a pre-requisite for success.

Let’s not imply that behaviors are bad and require “healing” without identifying the significance of said behavior. Not being narcissistic as a man would be a devastating blow to your potential.

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#130

Thank you. :pray::heart:

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#131

You’re conflating ‘ego strength’ with ‘narcissism’.

They are not the same.

A car window that you have chosen to close (due to appropriate conditions) is not the same thing, functionally, as a car window that is unable to be opened and thus must remain closed (throughout any and all conditions).

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#132

You cannot have one without the other.

Narcissism is just a pathological state of over expressed ego.

I don’t really care enough to dig super deep into this (I already got my psychology degree :joy:) but I assure you my original comment is completely accurate.

You can dig into Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud, Heinz Kohut, and Robert D Hare.

They all dove extremely deep into egocentrism, narcissistic personality behavior, and psychopathy.

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#133

Read this again. Very helpful.

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#134

Exactly. We are referring to the same facts, but emphasizing them differently and reaching different conclusions.

Narcissism is indeed a pathological state of over-expressed ego. And that pathology is sufficient grounds to label narcissism as ‘significantly different’ from healthily and functionally expressed ego.

A pile of ash, a dead log, and a living tree exist on the same continuum.

We draw distinctions based on the degrees at which they exist along that continuum.

Technically, yes, they are ‘the same’.

But if we go by that metric, so are men and women. There is only an approximately 0.3% genetic difference on average between men and women. And then we might as well talk about the fact that between Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Pan Troglodytes, there is only a 2% genetic difference. So in the big picture, Humans and Chimps are basically “the same thing” too. (We certainly look pretty similar.) A fresh visitor to Earth from another planet might wonder what all the fuss is about.

And you and I are basically the same as Olympic medal-winning gymnasts Kohei Uchimura and Max Whitlock. We all can walk around. We all have some degree of balance and coordination.

But their degree of balance and coordination is somewhat different to my degree. (Mine is not getting me into the Olympics.)

Earth moves just 5% closer to the Sun and–same Earth, same Sun-- there’s no more life at all on this planet. (Granted that’s about 7 million kilometers :joy: but you get the point.)

In the context of lived experience, degree matters…a lot.

In some ways, it’s all that matters.

Apart from that though, yes, I see your point and agree with you.

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#135

@Malkuth, @Monarch - I think this is a very good point. Sometimes we give a label to something without it actually being the case.

For example, I hear the term ‘misogynist’ being thrown around a lot without the person saying the word not knowing what it means. And even looking into the behaviors of the said ‘misogynist’, we see that it was actually him setting boundaries rather than him being a misogynist.

So unless a full analysis is done, we can’t see the full picture.

Which is why it is even more important to work on ourselves rather than wanting to change others. Not only do we take a constructive view of our life, we also reduce the bias we have regarding others because improving ourselves makes our view about ourselves and others clearer.

EDIT: when we do self-improvement, we also get less triggered by other people’s behaviors.

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#136

Well freaking said.

Or, in other words, as I am interpreting it:

“That was fun, now back to work…”

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#137

Exactly, my biggest frustration lately has been leftist individuals throwing around the word fascist.

That boils my blood :joy: completely using the word incorrectly and creating a new definition for it.

Words exist with concise definitions for a reason.

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#138

Haha absolutely!

Lol! I agree.

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#139

Okay, okay. But let’s say, any individuals throwing around words without knowing their meanings.

A good baseball team puts talented athletes in the left-field and the right-field.

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#140

That is very, VERY deliberate. At least for the few with the brains to understand what they’re doing.

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#141

True! But it’s also true that the last few years, left-wing people have been busy trying to reengineer language itself in order to advance their ideology!

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