One thing I hit upon is that to me Narcissists kind of approach people like a candy machine. To get the candy you need to put in quarters, to get what you want from people they figure out what they have to give them.
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She is normally capable of, if anything, much more nuanced thinking than most people, but this collapses under significant stress/triggers
At those times the pendulum swings very far the other way, towards a far more black-and-white, simplistic interpretation than average.
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It's interesting to me how this clashes with narratives about narcissistic people, that 'they', monolithically, always think like that.
From my experiences, it's pretty clear that it's a conditioned, abnormal set of compensatory mechanisms (and absence of other common ones).
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In my experience, this self awareness never seems to reach a critical mass. To some degree most people are a bit narcissistic, but its not our default setting.
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Yes, that has been my ordinary experience too.
I strongly suspect this stems from both the peculiarities of the disorder (broad disregard for others and their perspectives), and the collective narcissism of therapists deeming it incurable simply because most therapies are bad.
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But its weird that they seem to see others perspectives. They know when you are believing a lie they told you, for example.
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It does, and it's very strange to experience from the outside.
She has very minute understanding of the flaws in her own personality, but still exists inside it.
Use it as a mirror, and it's pretty revealing about one's own pathologies, too. Everyone is messed up somewhere.
And her meta-level understanding that she is deeply messed up, psychologically, is something most 'normal' people dismiss in themselves.
But that just fossilizes their problems.
We are all messed up, but its amazing how nice it is to communicate and not be misunderstood. I mean nobody is perfect, but trust and good faith are really nice to experience on a daily basis.
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