Narc personality disorder & abusive husbands

[wotevaaaa]

Narcissistic personality disorder at it's worst is untreatable as the person with it is incapable of seeing/accepting their behaviour and won't take part in therapy. This was my husband. I would call this a mental health issue as it affects all areas of his work/life/relationships. In a way it's like living with a disability. Does this then mean that their abusive controlling behaviour is excusable as they're unconscious of what they're doing?

I'm amazed too! As part of my recovery I've realised I was having panic attacks from about the age of ten. My mum is scary. As a baby my mum would put me in the garden shed as I cried too much! Just glad I don't have my parents in my life anymore. There isn't anything that will change them or their patterns of behaviour.

Don't lump NPD in with other disorders.
I am BPD/bipolar and very much not a narcissist.
And a previous poster beat me to explain that narcissits are usually very insecure underneath all the bravado and actually very self deprecating.

I don't claim to be an expert, eloquent, but from what I've seen, I agree with you. Someone with NPD treats others in an instrumental way - what can I get from them, eg. narcissistic supply? I don't see that as a feature of BPD at all.

It difficult because they can look the same, but both come from very different places.
Their needs are polar opposites.
I've been doing a lot of reading on this because someone I'm getting close to has narc written all over him and I'm not sure it's a great idea!

I agree, not all disorders are abusive to others.

It's never excusable. Since when did our personalities become biological?! Plenty of people with personality disorders work hard to overcome them. I'm not trying to minimise the suffering of the person with 1, but I'm in the camp of believing they aren't biological or inbuilt. Many would disagree with me but u believe we form our own personalities. I've never had a PD however I've overcome some very ugly, dysfunctional and anxious personality traits. I think a person has to have good self awareness to change, many people lack it!

There does seem to be a genetic component to some, moopy

My mum and her mum (my horrible grandma,) both have npd. My dad is high on the psychopath scale. But I don't have those disorders. I have depression, a kind of pts that abused dcs get and anxiety disorder. I wonder why I'm not like them... therapy, a loving dh? My other gps were normal.

Nope onceameer- no Genetic testing has ever concluded that personalities or mental illness is genetic. It's been suggested but yet to be proven. What has been proven however is we can change our genetic patterns :)

That's not what meer was saying.

There is plenty of evidence that personality (and personality disorders) has genetic components.

Certain genes predispose you to curtain disorders but your environment influences whether you develop said disorder or not.

It's not as simple as nature or nurture, it is a combination of both.

What offred said.

Thanks OnceAMeerNotAlwaysAMeer and Offred, I think you may be on the right track! My Mother was an alcoholic for many of my and my brother's formative years. My Dad tried his best to cope and stayed loyal to us all until he passed away 8 years ago. My elder brother and I joke about him being mum's 'golden boy'. I'm a recently recovering addict and yesterday my mum (who know's this) was snidey and quite the bitch to me. Maybe she is a Narc too?

Or just plain nasty.

a rather alarming proportion of the population does have a PD to a lesser or greater degree (some research indicated 10%) but it's a difficult area to measure.

But there's an awful lot of confusion between some PDs and some people being plain fuck-awful mean.