Understanding Narcissism – Melanie Tonia Evans explains the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde personality disorder that destroys relationships, families, and lives, as an unhealthy focus on self that affects others in unhealthy ways. Everyone to some extent is narcissistic. Most people ‘want the good stuff’ and from a psychological point of view: everything we do is for some emotional ‘payoff’ – in order to feel better about ourselves and life. The definitive quality of healthy narcissism is obtaining self-gratifying results in ways that don’t damage other people, whereas unhealthy narcissism works from the mindset: “I win, and I don’t care if you lose,” or, “Your loss is my win.” Narcissism is self-absorption coupled with destructive behavior.

NPD is a Cluster B mental disorder, and is categorized in this cluster alongside others such as Histrionic Disorder and Borderline Disorder (just to name a couple.)

Narcissism is known to be a construction of a false self, and therefore the individual will exhibit behavior that is pathological (not real) in nature. Any individual who is not comfortable within their own skin – therefore disconnected from their ‘inner peace’ – can develop narcissistic characteristics.

Understanding Narcissism

How Do Individuals Deal With Inner Pain and Emotional Insecurity?

External factors such as race, class, income, status, or religion place no importance as to whether or not an individual will be narcissistic. It is an ‘inner-self’ issue.

There are three broad types of people living with inner pain and emotional insecurity:

• The ones that wear a mask, ‘suffer in silence’ and don’t want to burden others,
• The ones that wear a mask, and steal energy from the world to feel better, and
• The ones that take off the mask, take responsibility for their emotions, work on themselves and improve life ‘from the inside out.’

No-one is perfect and this is totally understandable! However the damage of narcissism (point two) is extremely evident. It is astonishing how many women are in (or have had) relationships with men who are atypically narcissistic. There are also many females who are insecure, ‘creating a mask’ and manipulating people (to their detriment) for their own self-benefit. However, two essential facts stand out:

• Genetically, men tend to act out jealousy, insecurities and vengeance more violently than most women, and women will tend to act more co-dependently and hang onto their dysfunctional partners (regardless of the damage) longer than most
• Statistically, women are at greater risk than men for narcissistic

Essentially women, who are more inclined to be the caretakers and empaths of society, will tolerate and hang on to narcissistic relationships more than men will. Women tend to be ‘fixers’, and can feel compelled to ‘sort out’ issues, whereas the average man is not particularly compelled to ‘fix’ a woman who constantly demands attentions and acts in childish, aggressive and immature ways.

Women are also biologically and genetically engineered to have a focus on ‘the one’, and will try to make painful relationships work, whereas men have a greater capacity to think in terms of ‘there are plenty more opportunities available’.

Understanding Narcissism – see also: Narcissism understood