Narcissism Part Four (Random Notes)

 I found that, in studying many Narcissist videos and in reading books, a few notes are worth mentioning here.  One is that the term "Narcissist Personality Disorder" (NPD) is worth not using.  This is for a number of reasons that is worth mentioning here.  The term is a clinical term and technically requires a diagnosis from a psychiatrist to establish.  The term has some issues worth mentioning.  The NT, Narcissist type, is a person with a certain kind of profile and cluster of behavioral strategies that are interlocking and tend to work together.  Looking at it this way, whether or not it is a pathology or a disorder does not arise.  One problem with labeling the NT as an NPD is that there is some issue with calling it a disorder.  In a usual pathology, there is a sense that the person is handicapped by having this disorder.  Yet an NT is highly functional and therefore does not fit this understanding of what it is.

In a strictly legal sense, the requirement of a doctor diagnosis to label someone NPD is curious, because the NT, being invested in forming a "public mask" has no wish to undergo a diagnosis that will expose them in this regard.  It is also clear that the number of NTs who have been diagnosed as NPD is very few compared to those who have never submitted to such a process.  Rather than get into a legal mess and confusion about this, it is better to side step this issue completely.

The term "Narcissist Type" is more general and is unlikely to cause the same issues.  It is also not clear if NPD and NT mean the same thing.

My reason for writing notes here is because this NT is a type that has the potential to cause people harm.  If it were not so, I would not bother to compile these notes.  The writing I am doing here is just to "future proof" the reader and also for a person who is suffering in a relationship with an NT to recognize what is happening and learn to break free from what is a toxic relationship, or, if not able to do this, to understand what is going on so that one can more successfully adapt to the situation.  With awareness and understanding of what is going on, one can form more realistic expectations of what is possible and take more clear steps to claiming one's own life and fully living it.

One issue with the NPD term is that the psychiatric community and the clinical counselling community seem to believe that this NPD person is not curable and that the NPD person is not "redeemable".  Because of my spiritual understanding of the Uttara Buddhist Tantra, everyone has "buddha nature" and therefore everyone will eventually get enlightened, everyone will get "redeemed".  It may take many lifetimes, but it will happen to everyone.  Part of the reason why NPD people are considered not redeemable is practical.  The covert narcissist type will insincerely plead for help and keep hooking in a person who is trying to leave them.  As humans, we have the tendency to be helpful and especially want to help those that we love get cured.  This helpful love can keep us trapped in such toxic relationships.  So councilors will say that they are not redeemable or not curable to help people to break free of them and leave them, to save those under their psychic grip.

The councilors are probably right in this regard that they are not really redeemable, but not for the reasons that I would regard as true.  In order to walk a path of spiritual healing and spiritual liberation, a person has to sincerely want to be healed and allow themselves to be healed.  NTs do not want to do this, because their strategies are perceived as working for them and they do not want to give up what works for them.  Unless some crisis happens, where they realize what they have lost by living their strategies, they are not yet ready to be helped and healed.  Part of their strategy is to plead for help to hook people in, to play helpless to suck people into their drama vortex to emotionally manipulate them, and to wear a mask to hide their real agenda to control people to make them give them what they want.

In my notes here, I do not care if an NT and an NPD are the same.  My wish is not to do anything clinical or to pathologize any one through a label.  I am also not interesting in trying to cure anyone who is not open to, ready to, and willing to be healed and helped by another.  I believe that free will is sacred and that every step on the spiritual path requires willing choice.

I am writing down these notes because the NT exploits several natural human tendencies which are essentially good.  One is to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that, even when bad traits show up, people are essentially good.  This means that, even when an NT is "unmasked", people will assume that it was a temporary lapse into bad behavior in a good person.  An NT, because they, like all sentient beings, have "buddha nature", they are "good people".  But this goodness is, in a sense "buried twice", once behind their public mask and then again behind their angry hidden self that they believe that they are.  People need to be aware of their commitment to live from this "angry hidden self" and stay away from them until they are ready to confront and come to terms who they have made themselves to be.

In Tibetan Buddhist, the NT is called an "Asura".  It is sometimes called the realm of the "jealous gods".  Karmically, they have worst karma and more suffering than most human beings.  In one Buddhist system, the Human realm is placed above them, and in another Buddhist system, the Human realm is placed below the Asura realm.  They are both right.  This is because they seem to get the upper hand over humans.  They can generally outwit, manipulate, dominate, and subjugate humans through a kind of psychological control and push pull emotional dynamic that keeps humans confused, reactive, tormented, and submissive.  They use a kind of jealous competition, paranoid psychic scanning, subliminal undermining, push pull emotional victim drama, and predatory seduction to work on humans.

To merely get sensitized to the Asura type (AT) is not enough.  Unlike many other types, this NT or AT is predatory.  They want to hook in others and exploit them for their own purposes.  They realize that this usually requires them to be covert, to hide and lie about their real motives, to work from behind a positive social mask and act like an expert, a helper, and a good person.  They "love bomb" and make you feel that they are great and can even make people fall in love with them before they undermine the person and exploit the person.  In order to be immune to their predation and their strategies, one needs to deeply understand one's own self.  The AT will study the people around them behind the pleasant chit chat that they do in the love bombing phase.  They will find weaknesses to exploit, desires that they can hook into and manipulate through pulling these strings, and guilt levers they can activate.

Some ATs are not so skillful in their manipulations, but as the AT evolves, they will get better and better at it.  Some are very good at what they do.  Hence, these notes.