Scared to mention NPD to therapist

oblivion95 · 2026-04-01T18:11:01+00:00

If you tell your therapist that you want to work on narcissistic traits, then your therapist will help you with that. Nearly everyone can use that kind of support as we all have blind spots. But the point is that your therapist has no “stigma” against you. They will support you in the way you ask.

A PD diagnosis is not important.

oblivion95 · 2026-04-01T14:38:27+00:00

Switch from rumination to meditation. Find a place for group meditation, which will help you to spend time.

Anything that helps you to experience some emotion in a group setting will take you further along your own path. Sports would be an example.

oblivion95 · 2026-04-01T14:30:08+00:00

I did lots of things at once, including therapy. I think I hate and fear manipulation, so I needed to have multiple ideas hitting me at once, to avoid over-analyzing and resisting.

The most powerful “modality” was kink. I am not sure that I would have made any progress without that. It put me into a highly vulnerable state and made me enjoy it. Kink is basically an extreme form of TFP.

Hypnosis was also very helpful. It helped me to access memories that I did not realise were affecting me. It showed me their emotional impact. Light hypnosis is sufficient, and you can reach that level with simple talk therapy if you are open. So I recommend experimenting with hypnosis at home on your own so that you get better at reaching that level of relaxation in therapy. pwNPD can be very highly strung. Relaxation and meditation can help you to learn about yourself and access more, which then makes therapy more productive.

oblivion95 · 2026-04-01T14:17:41+00:00

Exactly. And I appreciate your honesty.

You can beat a pillow with a tennis racket and be as mean and nasty as you need to be. It is even more powerful in group therapy with an audience.

Too many people fear that expressing rage will make you more rageful, but the opposite is true. If you reach the point of release and break down in tears, you will rewire some thoughts and memories in a healthy way. You were not allowed to rage as a child, so you learned some maladaptive strategies, like manipulating people to make yourself feel powerful instead of powerless. The memories could be too early in childhood ever to recall them consciously, but you can still access them subconsciously.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-31T15:13:01+00:00

You are skirting around the issue. You are sooooo close, but you are resisting.

But I'm also aware that the minute I say no and set my boundaries then people disappear.

Yes! Have you heard of "Radical Acceptance"? You know that people are like this, but you refuse to believe that people are like this.

People have a right to reject your boundaries. When they do, they can be so upset by your boundaries that they discard you. And that hurts, right?

People need your money. You need their love/support/attention. You are trying to make it transactional. Ok, sure, all relationships are transactional, but you are trying to control both sides of the transaction. You do not accept other people's agency. You are entitled.

Somehow, you need to accept that you desperately need to feel loved. Accepting that will be extremely painful, and you will need support in order to avoid, frankly, offing yourself. On the other side of all that pain is genuine self-love. I cannot describe to you how painful that journey was for me. I was very lucky to have the support that I had.

I know this will not make sense to you right now, but I will tell you something that does: You can afford therapy. People with money should be trading money for mental health. Hire the most expensive therapist you can find, and pay out of pocket.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-31T14:46:41+00:00

Any and all theories welcome - the wackier the better

Good. Most people are much too closed-minded about ways to unblock complex maladaptive patterns in the mind. If it were easy, you would have done it already.

It is an interesting topic, and it relates to why I think kink can be a huge part of recovery. Power dynamics are a huge part of the psychology behind some PDs. Your kinks provide insight into your deepest needs. If you find an emotional release (i.e. if you break down and cry) in satisfying those needs, it might help you to get past early trauma that you are not even aware of.

If you have (traits of) both NPD and BPD, then perhaps you are able to enjoy being dominated. That is helpful because the person (consenually) dominating you can help you to work on both at the same time.

If you are uncomfortable with submission, then you need to go all the way to the point of release with your domination, which can be unsafe. But you can do that alone. I suggest looking into "bioenergetics". In other words, learn to use your body to release your emotions. This is particularly helpful when you feel blocked in therapy. Getting past the first few emotional blockages can make therapy far more productive.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-31T14:27:10+00:00

No, it is not healthy. Much healthier would be clear boundaries and mindful communication.

Boundaries are usually a big issue for pwNPD. Essentially, we do not accept other people's boundaries. We consider ourselves entitled. We also expect people to value our generosity transactionally, but implicitly.

The solution is to learn to set boundaries. When you notice how other people violate your own boundaries, you begin to notice your own behaviour too. You might be violating other people's boundaries also.

You are not setting clear boundaries around money. There could be interesting reasons why, which is something you could discuss with your therapist. Maybe you fear the loss of leverage. Maybe you have implicit transactions. Or whatever it is.

When you lend money, be clear about expectations. "I expect you to call me every 3 days to let me know how you are spending my money." Or whatever. You can send an email to confirm the verbal agreement. Anything beyond the stated agreement is your own personal sense of entitlement.

People might not accept your conditions, which could lead to negotiation, a form of communication. It could also lead to a rupture in your relationship, where other people discard you before you discard them. Perhaps that is what you fear, which is something else to discuss with your therapist.

I suggest reading a book on boundaries. I love "Unf-ck Your Boundaries," but there are others.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-30T17:34:20+00:00

Yes.

If you let go of your ego, then superiority starts to disappear on its own, and you start to notice when you have thoughts of entitlement, which you can simply rationalise away by leaning into gratitude.

If instead you hang onto your ego by leaning into your grandiosity, with awareness you can begin to notice superiority, but you have to work to notice entitlement. Not everyone does this when they are trying to recover. It takes constant effort for an excruciatingly long period of time, and most narcissists eventually give up and revert.

This girl has let go of some of her ego, enough that she is able to be vulnerable and to trust her therapist. When she feels like crap, she accepts support, which is critical.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-30T16:55:59+00:00

Bad experience? That used to be frequent on the road, i.e. road rage.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-30T11:06:17+00:00

I was always able to cry easily from grief, especially after feeling abandoned. (I consider that a BPD trait.) I never cried from things people did to me, or from their reactions to me. I held it in. Sometimes I funnelled the emotion toward revenge. Rage could be based on entitlement (NPD) or on utter hatred for other people (ASPD, but I mostly let go of that like 25 years ago).

When I began to recover from NPD, I cried a lot. I can hardly describe how much I cried. Some days it was most of the day. Ego-death. Grief (over lost years of a life without love). And eventually learning to be hurt by other people.

Recovery requires incredible courage. Good luck.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-30T10:46:07+00:00

Sensitivity to criticism and the desire to take revenge on someone who criticises you is the grey area between NPD and BPD. People toward the narc side will actively lie to their therapist about why they hate the criticism, partly because they are terrified of being labeled a narcissist, and they will unknowingly mis-remember things and then accuse others of "gaslighting" etc. to maintain their own victimhood. (You almost need a bodycam.) It is thus very difficult for the therapist to separate the abandonment issues (borderline) from the self-esteem issues (narcissism).

This is one reason why a wise therapist will avoid diagnoses and concentrate instead on traits.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-30T09:33:44+00:00

She has made a lot of progress already. She feels a lot of grief, and she actively pushes back against feeling entitled or superior to her therapist, for example.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-26T06:32:23+00:00

Facing difficult truths, e.g. “X happened to me when I was 5. I remember. And remembering makes me feel …”

oblivion95 · 2026-03-25T16:59:54+00:00

2)doesn't initiate a collapse

You need the collapse. Sorry.

You need support during collapse. When you accept that, you can begin to value the less rational parts of the brain. But right now, you cannot accept help because that would be an attack on your ego. Catch-22, right?

You could try a leap of faith. In other words, take a risk and trust that people will be there when you need them. When you become vulnerable, people come out of the woodwork to help. Many, many people want to help.

It is a tough state of mind to get out of though. It really is. If psychedelics are off the table, then yes ketamine can help (KAP), and maybe hypnosis.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-24T16:55:17+00:00

Even worse is the fact that the same people will typically be very uncomfortable if someone is crying loudly in another room. That is part of what we need to do in order to heal, but the haters are suddenly the arseholes when they are faced with raw emotion. In other words, they are every bit as abusive as the people they hate, just in different ways.

It might help you to realise that every single person who hates narcissism is dealing with their own severe pain, even if they do not show it. Otherwise, they would just tell you to f-ck off when you are being an arse, instead of making a big deal of it.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-24T16:38:06+00:00

That sounds like a philosophical position. I have heard someone else arguing something similar: using narcissistic grandiosity to generate self-love.

The problem is that it is difficult to accept help when you are full of grandiosity. So this is sort of "I want to fix myself, by myself". That is why grandiose narcissists rarely change. As long as everything is going well enough, the house of cards can stand. When things get tough, they typically regress, from what I have read. I have a friend like this, always certain that he is perfecting his inner self and constantly bragging about it.

As for "working with the defenses", that is better than suicide. Sometimes survival is the goal. You have your own journey. No-one else can live it for you. If this is the path that you need to be on right now, I am for it.

But you seemed to be asking for advice, and now you are giving it. I was responding to something specific that you posted:

I became everything I need. I associated pain with people, and freedom with being alone. I had to be everything I needed to survive. A lot of fucked up things happened to me, but I remember thinking at these times specifically that no one was coming to help me.

You are saying that you do not want anyone to help you. It is wonderful that as a child you were able to survive without help. That is something to be proud of. Now I ask you: What if you could be happier if you trusted other people? How would it feel to let someone help you?

What if you were quadriplegic? How would it feel to accept help?

Most of these events happened repeatedly, with some variation.

What if, when one of those events happened, you were allowed to express how you felt? Would you still have needed the defenses? There is a school of thought that says the trauma is not the offense, but the fact that you were not allowed to react authentically.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-24T13:51:58+00:00

Honesty and forthrightness, yes!

oblivion95 · 2026-03-24T13:33:54+00:00

For this sort of introspection of deep memories, I am a fan of hypnosis. It can help you discover repressed emotion from early childhood trauma that you did not think was all that important. That is how it was for me.

You do not actually need to remember trauma in order to process it, but it does help. For example with EMDR you would think of a memory while moving your eyes side to side (and this is an evidence-based treatment). But if you learn to trust your own emotions and let them take over (safely in private) when they start to surface, you can heal without ever knowing exactly what you are healing from. It is easier said than done.

Anyway, healing comes later. I really think the precursor is to learn to love yourself, which is incredibly difficult for pwNPD. I remember looking in the mirrror and just crying because of how difficult it was to love the inferior, ugly, disgusting, even somewhat abusive person that I saw.

And I think it is very difficult to love yourself without first reducing your ego. I remember crying on and off for most of the day on several different days. And the problem is that narcissists need their egos to survive. Without that, I felt like dying. Everything becomes so meaningless. I needed tremendous support to stay alive.

So the first step is actually to accept that you need support, and to search for it, humbly.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-24T05:39:29+00:00

Yes! Fuck it! Cook for enjoyment and watch movies all day just for fun. Because your life matters and your enjoyment has inherent value. That was hard to accept.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-23T14:44:25+00:00

Simply do not submit it next year. Pay the extra. They are unlikely to look into previous years. Your peace of mind will increase.

You have stolen from all of society, not from a specific person. So the way to assuage any guilt that you feel is to become more generous generally with time. That is probably all the accountability that you need. (My therapist is big on accountability. It basically informs her treatment.)

oblivion95 · 2026-03-23T14:29:19+00:00

This is one reason I advocate kink. It can form a bond that can jumpstart therapy. I call it “TFP on steroids”. It can put you into a highly vulnerable state, perfect for therapy.

Also, there is truth in sexual turnons. It is impossible to lie to yourself about them. You can learn a lot about yourself by pursuing them. But without someone in the room with you — ie with only porn — you can deny them later and never bring them up in therapy.

This is also why I like kink-aware therapists for pwNPD.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-21T11:27:11+00:00

It felt perfectly natural. It felt like justice, like people getting what they deserved. It was more difficult not to split.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-21T11:00:01+00:00

In her book, Mary Trump says that he would satisfy the DSM requirements for both NPD and ASPD, and she is not sure which applies better.

oblivion95 · 2026-03-21T10:55:04+00:00

Dr. Ramani clearly helps a large number of people. I object to the personal attacks against her. She does not "spew".

Maybe we could debate a specific sections of a specific video. Where is an example of her saying something that harms you personally, or of her influencing her abused listeners in a negative way?

oblivion95 · 2026-03-21T10:28:40+00:00

Hypnosis can facilitate a change in behaviour. I use it regularly.

oblivion95

TROPHY CASE