(I’m ‘agnostic’ by the way, but I started using my real name!)
I would second everything Stefan said.
There is no clear line demarcating narcissists from non-narcissists. Many people have some narcissistic traits and it’s a question of degree and circumstances – whether it affects your ability to live, love and work healthily. That having been said, if you’ve read Vaknin’s book and recognize some of those patterns in yourself, then you probably have stronger than average narcissistic traits.
Vaknin’s book is brilliant on the symptomology of narcissism, but he’s very categorical (typical narcissist!) and his prognosis is pessimistic. Also he doesn’t explore the way narcissism develops in any detail. For more sympathetic and constructive treatments I would recommend the subsequent books I read which were much more helpful – The Drama of The Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller and Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw.
I agree that internalizing a label of NPD isn’t helpful, but if you suspect that you have narcissistic traits then you should take it seriously and learn as much about it as possible. What made the biggest difference for me was understanding how narcissism develops from emotional neglect/abuse/trauma in childhood and narcissistic parenting. I don’t think you can necessarily change the underlying personality structure much, but being aware of it makes a world of difference. I’m much more aware of my narcissistic thought patterns and can usually avoid speaking or acting out on them like I used to.
Spirituality is a very attractive arena for the narcissist, offering as it does visions of omnipotence, omniscience and the possibility to attract the adulation of others. When I started out on the path I was harboring narcissistic fantasies of what it would be like to be enlightened. I would say that a large part of the awakening process was about systematically dismantling those fantasies lol (and I’m by no means fully awakened).
The narcissistic “false self” is the image which the narcissist tries to present to the outside world to compensate for their deep inner feelings of inferiority, guilt/shame, anger, sadness, self-loathing etc. The “true self” is the inner world of sensations and emotions (how you feel about yourself when you’re alone focusing on your body and not thinking about anyone else). The problem that the narcissist has is twofold. First, an excessive amount of anger and sadness due to the early traumatic experiences. Second, an inability to recognize their own emotions because they were systematically invalidated by caregivers. Anger and sadness were totally normal emotional reactions to early mistreatment, but because they couldn’t be felt and expressed healthily, they got repressed and turned in on themselves, which led to chronic guilt/shame, self-hatred and inevitable acting out which just intensified and “legitimized” them (‘I’m a terrible person therefore I do terrible things, which makes me a terrible person’).
It sounds strange, but the route out of this vicious circle is to really allow yourself to feel those original “unpleasant” feelings of anger, shame and sadness. Actually what is unpleasant is the repression and resistance. Feeling the feelings is actually cathartic and liberating! The two books I mentioned above explain how to do this. Of course therapy is a good idea too to help you understand the particulars of your own development and situation.
To answer your other questions specifically, I would say that deflating the narcissistic false self is relatively easy. Narcissists know only too well what a fragile construction it is, constantly crumbling and needing to be shored up and extended. The hard part is getting in touch with the true self – learning to feel your own feelings without being re-traumatized and engaging the habitual patterns of judgement, guilt, blame etc. You have to go through a sort of limbo phase where you recognize that the false self is unsustainable and you start to abandon parts of the old external identity, but it takes time to put in place elements of a new identity based on your real feelings and experience. You also have to be careful that you are not just constructing a new spiritual false self! The eighth fetter is variously translated as conceit, pride or arrogance – the sense of being superior, better, special or even just different from other people – and this is clearly related to narcissism, so it’s something that is a recognized part of the path.
It’s also tricky to do this in the context of insight meditation and the 3Cs, because even your “real feelings” and “true self” are impermanent, not-self and ultimately unsatisfying (even although the true self is much more stable, authentic and satisfying than the false self!) I have a suspicion that narcissists might sometimes find it easy to make progress initially in insight meditation, because it’s so obvious to them that their false self is a fabrication and they don’t have a solid sense of their own feelings! This can lead to bypassing and dissociation/DPDR (happened to me).
It’s definitely possible to identify the feeling of getting narcissist supply. For me it’s a feeling of nervous excitement that I get when an opportunity presents itself to do or say something shocking, surprising or reactive (anything which will get attention basically). I try to treat it as a warning sign to pause and reconsider. If I miss the warning then it’s much more obvious to me what I’ve done and I’m more likely to back down or apologize instead of defending or doubling down.
I hope this is helpful but please feel free to ask more questions.
