For members who are interested, here is a link to the book:

I don’t have any information about where you would go to sign up for experiments about what makes a Narcissist tick. I believe the Psychology pundits are delisting NPD as a mental disorder in 2013 and grouping those folks into the Borderline Personality Disorder category.

While turning to self-medicating solutions like alcohol and drugs may seem like a way to ease the pain, the outcome is that your mind is further muddied by the altered state of being. In fact, being high has a propensity to escalate discussions into outright battles.

When I was dealing with my Narcissistic-Ex, my head was always clear. The only background noise that confounded my ability to respond appropriately was the drug called Love. Our minds do not choose to love, our hearts do. To that end, Love is irrational.

Perhaps like you, there were many times that I flogged myself for staying in a no-win relationship. I’ve written about this before the first essential step forward to recovery that has to be taken is to FORGIVE YOURSELF so you can weed through the rest of the experience and learn the lessons therein.

You mention that your friends and family cannot help because you don’t believe they can relate. The latter is probably true. They cannot relate but that doesn’t mean that they will not be able to provide the emotional support you now need to rediscover your self-love and inner peace.

Once you’ve found a way to forgive yourself for staying, I am fairly certain that the criticisms this man hurled at you will have less emotional charge for you. You’ll be able to see him for who he really is, a frightened bully who can only feel good about himself by diminishing those who love him.

I wish you peace in the New Year.

My sister seems co-dependent and schizoid, I can’t begin to imagine what she went through during her depression and I apparently don’t even care fundamentally, I just wanted her to get better for my own advantage. It might be the best solution for both of us to be dead, but that’s besides the point…

I would sign up to under go experimental brain-surgery to advance human knowledge of how narcissism/schizoid personality disorder could be ‘cured’/dealt with. I can probably be ‘tricked’ into doing this for the narcissistic supply I would get for ‘being brave enough to do it’, it has the chance of making me less miserable and getting rid of thoughts of suicide, but may also benefit society by providing knowledge…

Get in contact if you know where I can volunteer

He was always right. He convinced me I had major finicial issues and used it to his advantage and held everything over my head telling me I would never have it better than I had it with him. He is very successful and drained me as a resource because he could never make decisions on his own. Every “friend” in his life he used as a resource to help him excel in business and personally. His contractor, his archetecht, his brother in law who owns a business, his personal trainer, me, his friends who owned businesses. He only wanted to be around other successful people.

He constantly was negative…spoke ill of almost everyone he met including my friends and family and then would use it against me in some bizzare way. His mother emotionally abused him as a child and put him down constantly and he still struggles with feeling accepted. He constantly would critisize everything I would do. Never compliment me. No support or compassion. No empathy from him.

I started to feel incredibly alone and experimented with drugs. I was so confused and my family intervened because of my weight loss. He convinced them and me that it was my own doing but my family saw through it and helped me recognize it wasn’t me – it was him. He was financially successful, generous, and charming. But that was a disguise to the truth that he only cared about himself and what other people thought of him. I was always on the backburner…him draining me for answers for everything in life and I was getting sucked dry.

I wanted to sleep all day and I cut off many relationships with my friends. I was so afraid to say something wrong or make a wrong decision and get critisized for it. Its amazing that, through therapy, I have discovered all of this but emotionally I am still heavily effected.

I have anger at myself for staying. I feel complelty inadequate. I have severe anxiety. I am on depression medications and xanax occassionally. I feel that sharing my story with friends or family doesn’t help because no one will be able to relate to me and think I am just being dramatic. He used to always tell me I was playing victim, I was inconsiderate, I couldn’t hold adult conversations. He never really showed interest ion my life or got to know me as a person.

The confusion and anxiety that a narcissist sows within those who they meet has to be lived with first-hand to know the true depthes of their evil and dark capabilities. The more you are around them, the more you will see and absorb. Turmoil will come your way whether you want it or not.

The mental blanks of these lessons only fill in slowly because these people are so manipulative and cunningly concealing. The more you have gone through with one, the more later you are able to perceive and understand, as to the true meaning of how and why they were a narcissist, (lest we forget to remind ourselves suffering with NPD).

Maybe that is what should be asked of our population (yeah, right!): “Have you got NPD? If so call….blank….for help!” I can see that on a t-shirt. Hah, not likely to happen is it? Anyway….!

This is why I try so hard to make people understand how bad it was. I do not think one could write a plot to match what I went through. It was so thoroughly abusive and insidious. I am sure you can say the same.

I can imagine in a supposed loving relationship, it must be even worse because your heart has been falsely drawn in and has become committed to the very indiividual who will end up hurting you and betray your trust. This must be the most extreme form of bewilderment one can go through. And then to realize you have been used, is even more soul-destroying. One bottoms out as a form of personal collapse.

In my lifetime I have not had to use the word evil that much, but with this man on many occasions I could feel it, see it and was the actual focus of it. In general, from almost the beginning, after a brief, awkward period in which he was charming and deferential, it had soon become apparent he was always capable of becoming the blow-top. This level of uncalled for, improper emotion that you eventually will be the target of; will take on the chin, is what defeats you unless you get out as we both did. A form of self-rescue is necessitated.

It only took a few days of my miserable employment to sense he was capable of very strong anger. He had a hair-trigger to boot and what might set it off was always an unknown beforehand. It made you mentally keep your head down, your mouth shut. You could not speak up as an equal for fear of being shot down or attacked. He invited it, but it was dangerous to show your true thoughts.

He wanted agreement not opposing thinking. He wanted your understanding so he knew he would get what he wanted through your work performance. Often, the only question of the day was about what you were doing and why. This was him directing his slave, the micro-managing they cannot help doing. His civility, although prominently displayed and profferred, was a thinly guised veil over his real underlying surly, moody, anger. His voice could and would rise quickly if he was getting pissed off, the niceness tossed out the window. I was always glad to see the back of him.

I did not see his yelling as abuse at first, because we had been trained by Coaches in sports to respond to being yelled at, with instruction in the form of strong vocal commands. We were also used to being humiliated to some degree by intense competition. So some prior level of conditioning to rough situations allowed me to ignore it as an attack, but to mistakenly see it initially only as him being a strong, competent leader in the business. I was seriously wrong in my thinking. His business success was later to unfold as being quite chancey, almost dicey.

Screaming robustly, willfully, at others did not fit in with what I saw as normal business or human interaction. It occurred with him. The most severe times were more infrequent but left a definite memory, a residual of ugliness. (He never let go totally on me as he did with others.) It took a long time to see he was a wacko and really his yelling was out of line and not called for in the given situation.

When these attacks did not seem credible, had no validity, became demeaning, more intense, were too personal, that is when you start to wonder what is going on. I had to see them many times, to see there was a pattern to their focus and purpose and that was they were meant to achieve something for him.

You had to watch out for yourself, because he could just lose it. That was the invisble elephant in the room. It was like he had become desperate and was unable to contain himself. He was showing his power; exerting power. It was like he became another person for a short time. He wanted his way. Like a child. Spouting! It gave you chills to be around him when this happened because it was unstoppable. He wanted action and by George he was going to get it!

You did not count, that became clear, it was about him. The level of charm was totally dropped and the demands became more openly agressive, demanding and imperious. His mind stated very clearly the logic he was operating under and presenting to support his case. He always blamed you or threatened you in the the tone of these attacks. You were the cause of his failings. You were holding him back, preventing his success. Negative action against you was implied. Or else, the tone! His eyes took on that look, like he was inspecting you, weighing your response, going side to side, like you were going into battle.

Greed was represented by this search for success. This was his fixation. You were going to give it to him, that was made clear and that was being demanded.

Yet on these occasions of his anger, of his lack of satisfaction, he would show no follow-up remorse or display an immediate carrying-on of this anger, (if you did not present any counter to keep him going). This is why, with his anger flashed and gone, I thought I could carry on, somehow make it to the end of the day – to still keep the job. I had got through that bad series of moments. My heart rate would be up, my mind a little confused and searching but because I was always busy, I would just go back to what I was doing. I would bury myself back in my work. Work was my refuge, where I could retreat.

Once or twice I had to get up and leave to cool off myself as I had become so upset by the injustice of what he was saying to me.

If this anger thrown at you does not subside, is not put aside, then you would fret and worry, feel the pressure and need to get away….escape. However, after this type of episode, his mind seemed free of what he had said, his point made, the victory won, he moved on and left you to get on.

Since my daily pain level was kept below a certain threshold of intensity until more near the end of my employment, (when it became higher and more sustained), he was able to keep me on the line working, so-to-speak like a fish being played.

So my Boss was both a charmer and an angry type all in one. The anger rose when he did not get what he wanted. The charm rose when he was trying to get what he wanted. You never knew what might walk in the door when he arrived or met you for a discussion. You never knew what response was in the offing…at any time.

Flattery, admiration, understanding, they are not good at, because they do not see your point of view. They will keep coming back to their needs. This is one way to recognize them. They are very good at knowing how you will react to what they present. This skill they have learned by trial and error by their years of constant intrigue and practice on those around them. Apologies are given for their form but do not come from the heart. They are for show to allow the impasse to end and to move on.

Cajoling, persuasion, drawing you in, could disappear in an instant and the anger erupt. I think in this way, my Boss was the lowest form of this type of being….trying to work those around him by any means possible. The rose or the bludgeon were his choices of weapon.

It sounds brutal because it was.

I am at a loss to understand how a narcissist could be one way or the other. It must relate to what they have discovered works for them. They stick with a good thing and it becomes them.

In my experience, what is good for them is not good for you!

Strictly speaking, Narcissists are composed of greed. They are greedy for admiration first and foremost. This is the basis of their mental dysfunction.

In my research on the topic, I also found that not all things are applicable across the board other than their goal of being admired or noticed. Psychologists cannot summarize a succinct list of what is a narcissist because narcissists rarely seek professional help. After all, the problem is never with them, right?

I’ve dealt with the nasty narcissist and the charming narcissist. Of the two, I prefer the nasty narcissist because they are much easier to identify. The charming narcissist has subtle ways of drawing you in and you do not realize how much danger you are exposed to until it is too late to easily extract yourself from that relationship.

Honing your … for lack of a better term … Narcissist Radar can only begin after you realize that you have been affected by one. Sad but true.