"Other than the volume of your voice, do you have any reason to be sure of what you think?"
Ugh. I need to stop ready psych blogs. No existential crises on my lunch break, please.
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ETA:
Wait. This one thing. I know it's full of words, whine, but stay with me. This guy is usually kind of a self-righteous asshole, but he occasionally says something worth thinking about, and I think this is one of them
II.
You can run the list of "defense mechanisms" and try to link each one to specific personality disorders, which will help you understand the spouse who left you or the spouse you're never going to leave; but the point for now is that what makes them defenses is not that they protect you from pain-- they don't, clearly. They suck at doing this, look around.
The purpose of defense mechanisms is to stop you from changing. So that after the trauma or the break-up or the loss you are still you. More sad/ashamed/impotent/enraged/depressed is fine as long as you're the same guy.
This is what makes treating narcissism particularly difficult: the pathology's Number 1 characteristic is identity preservation. "I want to change." Nope. You want to be happier, sure, more successful, feel love, drink less, but you want to remain you. But that won't work. The identity you've chosen blows, ask anyone. Change is only possible when you say, "I want to stop making everyone cry."
The first step isn't admitting you have a problem but identifying precisely how you are a problem for other people. But I'll save you the trouble, you'll fail at this, too, because of the Number 2 characteristic of narcissism: inability to see things from the other's perspective. "This isn't really therapeutic, jerk. You call yourself a psychiatrist?" Mother's Day is Sunday, get her anything? I know, I know, she's a jerk, too.
There is more to it, some involving the phrase "cauterizing your own genitals," which you should read. But I thought that bit was interesting enough for a repost.
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