Asperger's and Narcissistic Personalith Disorder

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Actually I do know someone with NPD, and they were a nice person, never abusive or any of the sorts you all seem to be saying. They are vulnerable and sick of the stereotype, just as you guys are with AS.

You need to stop tarring one kind of people with the same brush. Stop thinking so damn black and white and open up your eyes. Just because one NPD person in your life was a pr*ck, doesn't mean the rest are. Some are actually sick of the way they are and are trying to get help, jumping off bridges because of people like you.

Sigh.

I'm guessing I have my answer. It doesn't matter how much I self examined and tried to correct my own behavior. No matter what, people with these types of personalities do not care and will not work on their own behaviors. If you have an issue and ask like an adult they will hate you for questioning their abusive behavior, they will hate you and degrade you if you are in pain or confused by them and they will turn the conversation back to all of their insecurities and you will be left with the strange feeling that they never really heard or saw you....

The blowing up if I addressed a situation calmly and objectively from those in my life since early on has created a pattern in me. I don't stand up for myself, I have always in the past figured it took two and would self examine and change behaviors and would come back with the same result....forever.

My sister comes over and treats her dog like a person and her son and mine like dogs. You aren't allowed to push the dog down if it's jumping and scratching you without her getting upset and yelling to not "be mean to her dog." She will never understand and I will never allow my son to be around her without me because of this.

The truth is MigjtyMorphin, you don't care what anyone here was saying. You ignored the content because in your mind it is all about you. There can never be a give and take or a mutually beneficial relationship with these particular people in my life and I've known that for some time now.

I will finish my boundary list and make sure neither I nor others are crossing those boundaries. I will stick up for myself and my son and if the other person wants to blow up and leave versus having an adult conversation than good riddance!! !

I have a friend that tells me straight up if he disagrees with a philosophical stance I have and tells me straight up if I am being a b***h, or wrong about something. I cherish our friendship and luckily even though I have stopped talking to him because my ex demanded it he is still cool and still just his regular truthful self. He is literally invaluable as a friend and barometer devoid of abusive control tactics.

You knew one person and are pretending "everyone" with NPD is like this person and then pretend that "people like us" are coercing them into jumping off bridges when we question behavior. Lolz. I'm sorry but that is so hypocritical and sounds insane!

In order to answer your original question, Algorithm, you would have to talk about your relationship with your ex, or anyone else with NPD for that matter. Your question was whether you contributed to the NPD and made it worse. The answer is yes is you were what the person wanted or needed. It's not a question of whether it was your fault, its a matter of what your role was in the game. People like that are not going to change. That's why they are so miserable, by the way, because they never change. Change is natural, inevitable, and one of the keys to happiness. People with Asperger's generally make good targets for those with NPD because they are easy to predict and easy to control.

Oh, and by the way, about your boundary list, it will only guarantee that the same thing will happen again. There is only one type of person who can penetrate a boundary list...can you guess the kind of person I'm talking about? The goal of 'trying to not get hurt again' is noble and all, but it will only hurt you in the long run. A better goal would be to find fulfillment instead of to avoid disappointment. Avoiding failure is easy. Courting success is not. If you want a rewarding relationship, it takes time, and it's not easy.

In my first post I asked if my obsession with my interests was possibly affecting both my relationship with my ex boyfriend and with my sister. If someone spends so much time thinking about philosophy, sociology, political philosophy, etc, can it exacerbate abuse in others? Maybe they feel unseen and unheard, neglected and this can help provoke abuse?

I explained my sister would pretend to be me throughout our lives and would then pretend i was her (her nasty behavior and attitude) was me to her friends, our family, and anyone she could to make sure they didn't like me. This was probably to ensure she could continue to use things I discussed with her as her own identity. She would tell people she thought what I thought, read what I read, etc because I would tell her what I was learning. I saw this and heard from others first hand so it was happening and if I said anything she wouldn't speak to me for long periods of time. So could my obsession and interest have provoked this need in her in some way?

My ex boyfriend was extremely emotionally, psychologically abusive, and was aggressively physical abusive but never straight out hit me. He would insist I do what he wanted or needed and if I said I wanted or needed anything he would deprive me of whatever it was. For instance, one Christmas I had worked all day went to his family's house after had dinner and we got home. I was feeling sad that day but I hid it and had a good time with his family. We got home and he played with his presents for an hour and I mentioned again I just wanted to cuddle and relax together and he ignored me. I gave him more time and he kept arranging presents and looking at them. I asked again he said he had to get in the shower. He got in the shower and took much longer than normal and when he got out he came in and by that point I was upset but I was just crying, not being abusive. He screamed at me that I was a b***h and slammed the door and slept on the couch while I fell asleep miserable.

This happened alot in a lot of different ways. I started to notice he insisted on me doing things he wanted or needed immediately but if I ever asked for something he would pick a fight or find some way of abandoning me emotionally.

Honestly, at this point I'm not really questioning this much anymore. The boundary list isn't for others as it is for me. I spent my life being severely physically abused by my mother, abandoned by my father and abused by my sister and had no boundaries and didn't even really know what that meant. The boundary list is for me to rebuild my sense of personal identity. I took everything everyone did my whole life and internalized it thinking it was me that was causing the abuse and now I'm realizing I didn't cause it I've allowed it.

I had severe agoraphobia after the bulk of my mother's abuse and missed years in school but no one noticed then. Last year after extreme gaslighting from my ex I developed it again and spent that time learning about Asperger's. I'm not sure I have it but all I know is I can identify with every main point that would lead to a diagnosis. Now instead of going to work and working as hard as I can and not talking much to others I'm working less hard, making sure others can talk to me easily and this has eased a lot of the hate that seemed to be generated among coworkers. Silly me for thinking I was there to work and not be a mirror for those aroundme...

My issues are that I keep allowing others to abuse me and internalizing it instead of understanding and asserting boundaries. I also was isolated from others by my internalization and it made my sister and my ex my only recent relationships. This isolation was extremely unhealthy and kept me locked in to the pattern.

I went to my first Codependents Anonymous meeting last night and everything everyone was saying was triggering me past belief. I spent the whole time shaking and crying but I left feeling drained bit strengthened and much less isolated. Since I recognized that my ex was abusing me my agoraphobia has vanished, my anxiety is on the wane.

The truth is I have used my ex, as he wasn't what I wanted he was an extension of my earlier life. He and my sister fulfill a need in me to keep things as I've thought them to be, as I was used to. I'm so used to abuse I don't feel normal unless I'm being used and abused. Now that I'm starting to recognize that I can stop internalizing their behaviors and start to wake up to my own issues of codependence. I didn't just allow this, I needed it, so I've been using them too in my own dysfunctional way.

I recognize that I need help to get out of this, I recognize everyone's roles in this pattern, including my own. Boundaries aren't for others, they are for me, and a step toward freedom from my addiction to abuse.

Mindslave, I don't really understand what you mean by boundary lists don't work. I guess from my view it was easy to see my mother was abusing me because it was physical and obvious. I didn't know my sister and my ex's behavior was because it was gradual and covert. The boundary list for me is a way to recognize when abuse is occurring. I love what you said about avoiding failure being easy and courting success being difficult. It allows me to see where you are coming from a little I think. Do you mean if I split after someone pushed a boundary I establish I'd be splitting from everyone?

I'm not looking for perfection or for no boundary to be pushed I'm just trying to establish guidelines for patterns of abuse that sometimes aren't obvious when I first meet people but when one is pushed and then another and another I can more easily notice the pattern.

Um, am I on to what you are saying or will you explain it more?

I suppose when I say boundary lists don't work, I mean inflexible boundary lists. From what you just described, your boundary list is flexible and you leave room for growth, so it's fine. In order to beat a static list, all someone has to do is give the person what they actually need, and gaslight the list (for lack of a better way of saying it) and that person becomes unavoidable, because the weapon used to push offending people away (the boundary list) has been attacked from the inside out.

Your obsessive interests of philosophy and sociology make things much easier for a narcissist. In fact, if I was a narcissist, I would go out of my way to find people with special interests in things like that, which are cyclical in nature. Obviously, a narcissist lacks the ability for self-reflection to be able to think like that in the first place, but instinctively at least, I would know to go after people that have a hard time changing. Narcissists are horrible at adapting to what other people want or need, because they are even worse at changing than you are. At least you can admit it to yourself. Here's your scenario you described:

"For instance, one Christmas I had worked all day went to his family's house after had dinner and we got home. I was feeling sad that day but I hid it and had a good time with his family. We got home and he played with his presents for an hour and I mentioned again I just wanted to cuddle and relax together and he ignored me. I gave him more time and he kept arranging presents and looking at them. I asked again he said he had to get in the shower. He got in the shower and took much longer than normal and when he got out he came in and by that point I was upset but I was just crying, not being abusive. He screamed at me that I was a b***h and slammed the door and slept on the couch while I fell asleep miserable."

So if I'm him, I had a good time with my family too (I guess) but regardless, I get home with you, and I'm playing with my presents. You ask me to cuddle and relax together. You are asking me to stop what I'm doing and conform to your wishes. This triggers implicit memories of my own abuse that made me a narcissist in the first place. I know better than to willingly give in to the demands of such a wily b***h who just wants to abuse me. You won't take advantage of me! I'm smart enough by now to know not to indicate that I heard you or that I care. I keep playing with my presents because you asked me to stop. In fact, I've decided to keep playing with my presents for another hour, just to show you that I don't have to listen to you. Then you have the nerve to ask again?? Did I hear that right? The gall! Obviously sitting here playing with my presents will leave me vulnerable to your constant attacks. Maybe if I leave the room, you will calm down. You don't want to cuddle; you want to f**k with me, don't you? Aha! I have to get a shower. I really don't need a shower, I just need an excuse to leave the room, and privacy, and by this point in my life I'm good enough at avoiding people that figuring out what to say and when is like second nature...because it is second nature. I take longer than usual, because of course I don't need a shower, it's you that needs to calm down. I come back, hoping that you are back to normal. Your facial expression is one of anger, not of concern or confusion. I don't know what concern looks like in others. Compassion? You must be joking. And now you are crying like the b***h that you are. You're just trying to manipulate me! No worries, I'll call you out on your bluff. You're a b***h! And I slam the door to show you that I mean business, in case you think I'm joking.

That's how he is thinking to some extent. I'll admit I'm a little rusty, but it's still very close to how he is thinking. He doesn't understand reciprocity. In order to be benevolent, it requires the ability to leave oneself vulnerable, if only for a brief period of time. In order to be vulnerable, not only must someone be able to trust others, it requires self-control, which narcissists do not have. I'm quite sure he didn't have much self-discipline either. He is just as afraid of you as you are of him, in fact more so. If you were ever to stand up to him, he would probably smack you across the face, which is a fear reaction. To someone like that, you standing up for yourself is you threatening him. It threatens him not because you are standing up for yourself, but because he does not understand the difference between confrontation and compromise. He doesn't know how to compromise. The word is not in his vocabulary. That requires empathy and compassion, which was probably beaten out of him a long time ago.

Oh, and by the way, it's not abuse you are addicted to. If that was the case, then you would seek out the abuse itself, which it sounds like you don't enjoy. It's the pattern that you are accustomed to, which fits with everything having to be a certain way. At least a guy like that is predictable. Some patterns are easier than others. Comparing different behavior patterns objectively, this is one of the most difficult patterns to learn, but that's also why it's so hard to break out of, because how are you going to re-learn it if necessary? I know you want to break out of it forever, but that's not how the brain itself works. There is comfort in the familiar, ignoring the emotions associated with it. When things go haywire, people with addictions go back to familiar routines. If you unlearn this routine, you will have nothing to go back to if disaster strikes. This is better than nothing. Anything is better than nothing.

Yeah I stood up to him a few times. He was giving me a ride to work one morning and I was explaining I get myself a coffee and go to the lake and was reading H.G. Wells The Outline of History and not cheating on him and he threw my backpack out the window and acted like he was going to run me over everytime I tried to pick it up. In the same period he came home drunk grabbed my cereal bowl threw it and demanded sex. I ran to the phone and spent hours typing in 911 when the phone would clear so I could call right away and the threat to call the cops kept him away from me until he passed out. I moved out after that because I thought he was trying to poison me or kill me....I still thought it was all my fault and was so close to checking into a mental hospital for paranoia and agoraphobia. It's only been about a month since I broke up last time (I never lived with him again but started seeing him after I semi put myself back together) and I'm already amazed at what I put up with and internalized...

I was called a cheater so much I became one the last few months. I slept with a man once and our friendship of intellectual and emotional conversation I thinkis what helped me realize it wasn't all me. I've pulled away from that guy though...he started to say he loved me and blah blah sitting me on a pedestal and I know some of his past and I think he is a womanizer lmao. Last weekend I was getting drunk and I haven't done that in a long time and was with my nephew's father (no longer with my sister) and after I was pretty drunk he started to grab me and pull at my clothes and I said to stop over and over and he wouldn't but I didn't leave. I blacked out and we had sex and I think that was my rock bottom. Now I'm two meetings into Codependents Anonymous and realizing I'm recreating relationship addiction and trying to substitute with alcohol and sex addiction.

Well f**k that. I'm already working the steps but when I'm feeling low at night I still want the guy I cheated with to come over. I can't pretend it's anyone but me pitting myself in these ridiculous positions anymore. I may have set backs but I'm going to my twice weekly CoDo meetings forever and want to start AA as well. I started a new job last week and trying so hard to stay strong. It's so hot and my ex gave me a family junker but wouldn't leave me alone until I gave it back and I'm walking miles and miles and getting exhausted and still trying to be there for my son and I'm so alone....but I don't care. I'm not left with nothing I'm working on a new beginning. A real life and my anxiety is totally gone and I do feel so strong and aware. I won't let myself slip for the whole world.

Damn, I'm not used to spilling my guts as much as I have the past week. It feels so good. The truth is I'm pretty awesome. I'm super intelligent, a total horndog, empathetic, and require very little attention and need time alone for my interests. I'm not clingy or bitchy, I don't nag and am the least materialistic person I know. In my core I'm a great person and I deserve someone who will really appreciate me and love me the way I appreciate and love. Everything will be okay. Keep listening to my gut, trust myself, learn learn learn and us the twelve step program to help me rewrite my codependency issues and I will be doing amazing.

Um...kind of rambling. Damn I feel good!

I have 7.
I also have the feeling that a lot of those also occour in other diagnosis, like the impulsivity.
I allways get it in an hypomanic episode for example! ^^

Editted because I realized it just isn't worth it.

Last edited by Kindertotenlieder79 on 13 Aug 2012, 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The manipulations never end with folks like them. Guilt trips, threats, the "innocent routine", the "don't judge us because we can't help what we are because we're mentally ill" claptrap. I feel bad for people with feelings, my fellow innocents - Autists, Schizoids, Schizophrenics etc. If you have no conscience, you don't deserve sympathy. Why should anyone feel sorry for someone who doesn't care about anyone but themselves?

Thank you for this comment. Thank you Mindslave for your insight. There's a subtly there I hadn't noticed that can help me with my anger. I feel no sympathy for the willingness to abuse....but my god, to not feel empathy, to be unable to love, to be cut off from the very core of what it means to be a social, conscious human, must be hell. To not be able to penetrate oneself, to evolve an understanding of oneself and another and the interrelations created must be hell on earth. I do find I can pity and have sympathy when I understand some people in my life this way.

It doesn't mean I have to try to fix them and it will never mean I must suffer abuse, or stick around hoping for change again, but it makes more sense than evil for evil's sake. Mindslave, I totally get what you mean by him being more afraid of me than I was of him. He hurt me not for some sick, sadistic pleasure, but because of his all encompassing fear. All those rages, all that anger I see looking back, was just a shroud for the fear I can now see in my mind's eye.

Any beatings from my mother, any abandonment from my father, the abuse from my sister...all of it is unbridled fear. I've never feared in that way; in a way that made abusing others some needed outlet. How disgusting they must feel and how lost... I have a deep love for life, for my own and for their's, for our lives together and to not have that central impetus of love, but to have a central impetus of fear...that's the ultimate abuse. I think I'm starting to really grasp this. To understand that is heartbreaking, and yet, in accepting it, liberating.

So Socrates was truly right, there is no evil only ignorance. Ignorance is evil in as much as it causes the destruction. Ultimately it destroys only the ignorant. That's heartbreaking...

I was thinking about a person who behaves ignorant and that helped me a bit better to understand it.

I also have the feeling that a lot of ppl think that they can treat others bad because they think: "you are bad and that gives me the right to treat you bad." So it's this putting themselfs above another person what let's them behave that way.

I actually don't think this mode of thinking creates a hellish existance for these people. It appears there having a hell of a good time not caring about anyone. Think about it; If you think you're the greatest person alive why would you need anyone? Their lack of conscience and self-aggrandizing allows them to treat others like playthings and they enjoy every minute of it.

Oh sure, they enjoy it to an extent, but all joy isn't created equal. It's no different than when someone you don't like steps in dog crap. Does that make you feel good? Of course, to some degree, and anyone who says different is either lying or very strange. But this is of a much higher degree and a higher level of consistency (i.e. all the time) What if you spent your entire life hoping that bad things happened to someone? Is that joy? What if that person stepped in dog crap every day? Is that daily joy?