Narcissism and self-worth

[lifestream]

Hey guys.

I saw an ex-friend of mine by chance yesterday. I cut this girl out of my life because her rampant narcissism was feeding and amplifying my own melancholia. Anyway, yesterday she was sucking up all the oxygen within a ten mile radius and I got to thinking about my long association with her.

We had a friendship for about a year, when we were in our mid-teens. She wasn't narcissistic back then, but she had self-esteem issues. Our friendship imploded, as teenage friendships sometimes do, but we kept in touch. It wasn't until a year after we stopped being friends that I noticed that she was becoming slightly self-involved. I'd see her once every few months and every time we met I noted that her self-involvement had gotten progressively worse. It was three years before I began to see the obvious signs of narcissism (grandiose sense of self-worth, lack of empathy, dreams of unlimited success, etc.). I tried several times to reach her emotionally but it was no use, her narcissistic tendencies had become too engrained. The only thing that had remained constant with her, besides the narcissism, was her low self-esteem.

Anyway, what I was thinking about while she was droning on was depression. My own experiences with it marked me. I'm introverted, I rarely communicate my feelings and I'm very much a student of human behaviour. My former friend has been marked by depression too. Her whole life is a film in which she's the lead, she communicates every trivial thought and feeling and seems completely oblivious to other human beings if they don't fulfill her need for narcissistic supply.

Thinking this made feel very sorry for her but it was an interesting thought all the same: Is narcissism the other fork in the road when it comes to depression?

 

[cumulus.james]

Hey guys.

I saw an ex-friend of mine by chance yesterday. I cut this girl out of my life because her rampant narcissism was feeding and amplifying my own melancholia. Anyway, yesterday she was sucking up all the oxygen within a ten mile radius and I got to thinking about my long association with her.

We had a friendship for about a year, when we were in our mid-teens. She wasn't narcissistic back then, but she had self-esteem issues. Our friendship imploded, as teenage friendships sometimes do, but we kept in touch. It wasn't until a year after we stopped being friends that I noticed that she was becoming slightly self-involved. I'd see her once every few months and every time we met I noted that her self-involvement had gotten progressively worse. It was three years before I began to see the obvious signs of narcissism (grandiose sense of self-worth, lack of empathy, dreams of unlimited success, etc.). I tried several times to reach her emotionally but it was no use, her narcissistic tendencies had become too engrained. The only thing that had remained constant with her, besides the narcissism, was her low self-esteem.

Anyway, what I was thinking about while she was droning on was depression. My own experiences with it marked me. I'm introverted, I rarely communicate my feelings and I'm very much a student of human behaviour. My former friend has been marked by depression too. Her whole life is a film in which she's the lead, she communicates every trivial thought and feeling and seems completely oblivious to other human beings if they don't fulfill her need for narcissistic supply.

Thinking this made feel very sorry for her but it was an interesting thought all the same: Is narcissism the other fork in the road when it comes to depression?

She sounds more like someone bipolar than someone narcissistic to me?

 

[Seeker_2.0]

Seems like this kind of behavior appears in many people nowadays (especially youngsters). Facebook, where everyone can advertise any dumb trivial honeysuckle in their lives in exchange for "likes" certainly doesn't help the situation either.

 

[Ioann]

I think narcissism is maybe lack of self worth differnetly expressed. I mean, becuase you don't feel you are worth much, you overcompensate by fantasy in which you are very important, have a grand future ahead of you, its all everyone elses fault because they can't see how brilliant you are, etc.

I don't know if that makes any sense.

 

[Ak5]

I feel exactly like Ioann said. She could be using narcissism as a way to "cover up" her lack of self-esteem, something that you noticed as you were a friend of hers for a while.

Everyone is different, some are like you, lifestream, and some are like your friend. In the end, we're all hurting a bit inside.

 

[lifestream]

Thanks for the interesting responses, guys.

cumulus.james, I've often wondered if there might be some underlying mental health issue with this girl. Some of the things she's done and said to myself and other people over the years have rung alarm bells with me. I'm aware of bipolar grandiosity, which I'm assuming is what you're referring to, and I believe it's a characteristic of mania but having helped her through several dark periods in her life, times when she may have been deeply depressed (I use the word 'may' because I'm always hyperaware with her that narcissists are fundamentally attention-seekers), I can tell you that her narcissism never abates, no matter how low she might be feeling. I always found it quite unsettling, to be honest.

Seeker_2.0, I wholeheartedly agree with you. The malignant narcissism of social media is my main motivation for avoiding it at all costs.

Ioann, that makes complete sense. Hiding our weaknesses is a huge part of human behaviour. To be vulnerable is to allow other people to see those weaknesses and possibly reject us because of them.

Ak5, you make a good point. We're all carrying around the damages and hurts of a lifetime. I'm just wondering if it's a conscious choice. Cultivating narcissism to avoid pain, I mean.