Summary
Key Background:
April is a musician with the band Violent Melody who uses pop-punk music to process feelings and NPD-related struggles
Diagnosed with NPD in January 2019, now considered in remission (has narcissistic traits but no longer meets full diagnostic criteria)
Is a trans woman whose experiences with gender dysphoria and childhood rejection significantly contributed to developing NPD
Core NPD Experiences:
Main struggles: Fear of vulnerability, extreme sensitivity to criticism and rejection, need for external validation and admiration
Self-states: April identifies multiple distinct self-states including: the “punk” boundary-setter, the depressed/vulnerable state, the social/confident performer, the sensitive one seeking reassurance, the sarcastic cynic, and the therapist/helper
Splitting: Tendency to see people in black-and-white terms; when hurt, would build resentment and eventually cut people off completely
Origin Story:
At age 3, realized she was trans; at age 8, tried to come out to her father who lied about a Pegasus plate being unavailable at McDonald’s (it was there)
That moment of betrayal led to the decision: “I don’t care anymore, I’ll just hide everything and lie if I have to”
Growing up trans in the 90s/2000s created profound shame about authentic self
Progress & Coping Strategies:
Music provided initial outlet for vulnerability without direct interpersonal risk
Writes lists of people’s good qualities to reference during splits
Takes breaks during criticism to avoid defensive reactions (STOP skill from DBT)
Can now access self-validation without external reassurance (major progress)
Therapeutic moment: bought the Pegasus plate for her younger self, visited the spot where she decided to hide her feelings
On Stigma:
Biggest misconception: NPD = abuser (not in diagnostic criteria; most people with NPD have experienced abuse)
Dilemma: telling people enables discussion of what’s happening internally, but risks being seen only as the label
Recommendation: describe specific traits first, mention diagnosis later as “fun fact”
Values having the diagnosis for finding community and having treatment roadmap
Current Sticky Traits:
Still extremely sensitive to criticism (people sometimes feel they must tiptoe around her)
Heavy dependence on social media validation (deletes posts without likes after an hour)
Empathy challenges remain
Recovery Wisdom:
Importance of forgiving younger self for developing these adaptations as survival mechanisms
Value of specific coping tools: compliment requests from friends/AI, reminders of good qualities, taking breaks during conflicts
Music and creative expression as bridge to interpersonal vulnerability
Time: ~2 hours of conversation covering diagnosis journey, relationships, self-states, trauma origins, and stigma reduction
Transcript
Dawn: Hello, flitterific listeners! I would like to dedicate this channel now to videos on mental health and raising awareness for all sorts of mental health problems and struggles, and in particular personality disorders. For this inaugural video, I have here April, and April can tell us more about narcissistic personality disorder. Hello, April!
April: Good to be here.
Dawn: One thing that I’d like to mention first about April is that April is in particular a musician and has a band called Violent Melody. Do you have some kind of Violent Melody pitch that you would like to give?
April: Yeah, well, okay. Violent Melody is the name of my band. You can check us out on Instagram or Spotify or whatever. I just kind of write about my feelings and it’s kind of pop punk music. If you guys enjoy this interview, you’ll probably like my music because I sing about a lot of this stuff, a lot of things I go through. So you’ll probably enjoy it.
Dawn: Yeah, cool. You mentioned punk. Is there some link there already to NPD? Because I have this impression that punk is sort of not very perfectionistic, so perhaps there is some aspect there where it helps you overcome some struggles of yours?
April: That might be why I got into it, because it looked so freeing to just not worry about making music that sounded so perfect and stuff. The whole idea with punk is that anyone can do it. Anyone can get their feelings out there. That’s probably what made it so appealing to me, I would say.
Dawn: Yeah, that’s empowering. I love it! Can you think of some other NPD-related struggles or problems or anything that comes to mind that you’ve processed in your music?
April: Yeah, I mean, the main thing is that I’ve always been somebody that struggled to express how I’m feeling, especially any really negative emotions like anger or sadness or fears or whatever. My music really helped me get all those things out there. It helped me be vulnerable. One of my biggest struggles is having a fear of really being vulnerable and expressing my emotions. And I think that my music gave me a place to get my emotions out there, to sing about what I’m feeling. And I think by putting that stuff out there through my music, I ended up feeling more comfortable sharing it in person with people. I remember putting out my first album and feeling so nervous because people were going to hear it and hear all my feelings and stuff. And then the feedback I got was a lot of people just feeling like, “I relate to your song so much and it made me feel better.”
Dawn: Yeah, exactly. Does it make a big difference whether you’re singing in a studio or singing towards an audience or talking to an individual person for you when it comes to relating your feelings?
April: So when I’m talking to a person, it feels a lot more, it just makes me a lot more nervous. Because with my music, it’s very personal. It’s just me. When I write the songs, I’m just making them for myself. When I write the lyrics, it’s almost like writing in a diary or journal or something. So then it’s not scary because I’m just getting them out for myself. And then I’ll record them. I don’t go to a recording studio or anything. I’ve learned how to record stuff on my own, so I just do it in my house. And then all that part is all personal. And then I go and I share it with the world and then it’s out there. I’ll just post it online and say my album’s out. And then people go and listen. At that point, up until I put an album out, I’m feeling very like, “Yeah, let’s do this.” But I know that once I put an album out, there’s always that moment of, “People are listening to it now.”
Dawn: There is this trick that some friends of mine use to first chat with an AI about very vulnerable topics, and then take screenshots of that and share that with the therapist, because that’s easier than talking with the therapist directly. Can you empathize with that?
April: That’s not a bad idea actually. I think that could help, but at the same time I would still be scared that my therapist is reading it. I think that is a step towards becoming more open, for sure.
Dawn: You probably started your music before you got your diagnosis?
April: No, actually. It was right after. I got diagnosed with it in the beginning of 2019, literally January 2019. I started my music in 2021, so there’s a gap there. But that was still the time where when I first got diagnosed, I didn’t tell anyone about it. I only talked about it with my therapist, and I remember being very afraid to tell anyone that I had it. It was a very lonely period before I did my music. And I do think that my music was one of the things that helped me actually start sharing that with other people.
Dawn: Yeah, cool. I’m also curious. A lot of personality disorders in general are sort of based on self-deceptions to a large extent and projections and all sorts of what’s called borderline-level defenses. In my experience, when I was in states like that, I was really good at deceiving myself even when I was completely alone. So even if I were writing a diary entry or something of the sort, I would not have had introspective access to anything besides those same self-deceptions that I also upheld toward other people. And there were those brief moments for a few seconds here and there every other month or so where certain things became conscious that weren’t meant to become conscious. But for the most part, this was basically the same for me. Was there always a difference for you between private diary entries and Google searches versus the social interpersonal deceptions or personas?
April: Oh, 100%, yeah. I think that in my journals and Google searches—because sometimes I’ll be struggling with something and I’ll Google it—I have this, very... I think especially before I was diagnosed and stuff, before I was very self-aware, I was a different person when I was alone than I was when I was with friends. When I was alone, I was struggling with a lot of things, a lot of feelings and depression and all that stuff. And I never wanted to share that with other people. So when I was with my friends, I was just having fun. And then I remember a couple of times situations where my friends would be like, “We talk every day and you’re very funny and stuff, but I feel I don’t know you,” even though I talked to them every day. And it’s because I never was really vulnerable with them. I never let them in and they never knew about the stuff I was struggling with back then. I never let them know about it.
Dawn: So did you already have such things, diary entries and such, that you would have never shared with them because they would not have fit the social persona?
April: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And also, when I first told people that I had my diagnosis of NPD, I think it even still happens today. I’ll tell people that I have it and they won’t believe me. And they won’t believe me until they’re affected by it, until I do something that, if I start splitting on them and devaluing them and treating them mean because I’m so hurt by something. There’s such resentment built up. Sometimes I’ll be passive aggressive or certain behaviors will come out of me. And they’ll be like, “Oh, maybe you do have NPD.” Until that point, they don’t want to believe it. They don’t believe it. They’re like, “You’re just such a nice person, April. You’d never have that.”
Dawn: With a friend, the first time it happened, I was like, “I know what that is.” I didn’t quite know as much as I do now, but I was like, “Okay, this is interesting. A new facet. A new facet to this wonderful character of my friend.”
Dawn: I was also wondering to what extent performing – and maybe you can also distinguish between performing sort of in private when you’re recording versus performing when you’re on stage (I don’t know how often you have that opportunity) – how that influences your mood in the moment?
April: You mean the difference between how I act when I’m on stage versus how I act when I’m alone? Or do you even mean when I’m with people performing? Because there’s that aspect.
Dawn: Yeah, you could explore all three of those. They’re perhaps all interesting.
April: Yeah, because when I’m alone there’s no performance. When I’m with people, I think another thing that’s been hard for me in conversations with other people is… and I’m getting better at it. I’m getting better with listening skills and stuff. But growing up, I’ve always been told that I’m not a good listener. I mean, that’s tied to struggles with empathy too. But so people would say I’m not a good listener. But I think that for me, conversations weren’t about that. They were more about how I can make people laugh and how I can entertain them. So that was a performance because I would… there would be funny celebrities and I would copy traits from them and try to perform them with people, which is an interesting thing. And it was all about a way to put out this performing, entertaining persona that would get a bunch of admiration from people.
Dawn: Yeah, I think the celebrities that we copied were probably different ones. In my case it was Noam Chomsky.
April: Cool, I like him. Yeah, well because I always… My friend Becky used to call me April even before I came out, because I had a lot of the characteristics of this girl April from the show Parks and Recreation, because I would take some traits from her.
Dawn: I don’t know the show or the character. What’s she like?
April: So it’s kind of like, if you know the show The Office, it’s similar. But she’s this character that’s in the office. She’s sort of weird, but in a funny way. And she also has sort of this really dry sense of humor and sarcastic humor. And I kind of... I think part of it is that that’s kind of a part of me, but I also would regurgitate things that she’s said before and stuff when I’m with people.
Dawn: So that reminds me a bit of Daria?
April: Yeah, exactly. Same kind of character, yeah. Oh, I love it. Yeah, I love Daria. I guess when I’m with people, even if part of that is a little bit of how I already am, it’s like when I’m with people, I never think about it in terms of having a conversation with listening and sharing my feelings or whatever. It’s like when I’m in a conversation with people, I’m thinking, “How do I make them laugh? How do I make them like me, admire me?” And that’s it. So I guess the struggle for me has been that it is good to be able to entertain people, but at the same time, then I’m never connecting with them. So the struggle has been, how do I remind myself to use good listening skills and stuff too?
Dawn: Yeah, I also know the other side, people for whom conversations are all about asking all the questions to get the other person to talk about all the things that they want to talk about. And then if the other person is me, for example, and I’m not good enough at asking questions, then after half an hour of conversation, I suddenly notice, “Wait, why did I not get to know anything about this other person? They didn’t share anything. I just asked questions the whole time.” So I think the balance between those two is good to maintain.
April: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have trouble asking questions because my brain with NPD wants... I don’t want to look like I don’t know something. Oh yeah. One of my struggles is I won’t ask people questions about themselves because I tell myself that I’m supposed to just know already.
Dawn: Yeah, I have this friend whose name I forgot and it’s a bit awkward. Maybe I’ll find out somehow.
April: Like when you forget someone’s name and then it’s like, “I’ve already known this person for three months. I can’t ask now.”
Dawn: Yeah, it’s kind of like that. I was just wondering… I don’t know, maybe this is actually related in some fashion. Rejection sensitivity is such a big topic… What do you think about the term “NPDorks”? A friend of mine likes to use that as an endearing term for people with NPD.
April: So are you asking about being sensitive to rejection?
Dawn: Oh, I’m getting sidetracked. What’s your opinion on the term “NPDorks”?
April: I don’t know. Well, I don’t know. I don’t know if I would like it if someone called me an NPDork, unless I knew that they were doing it in a funny way. But if I knew they were doing it in a fun, teasing way, then yeah, fine, that’s cool.
Dawn: If the other person also has NPD, then maybe…
April: If I felt like they were insulting me, I’d be like, “Hey.”
Dawn: Yeah, cool. I was wondering about rejection sensitivity, because for my “NPDork” friends, it’s kind of an important topic usually, and over time they sort of react to it differently. I don’t know, have you also gone through some kind of transition where the way in which you coped with rejection sensitivity evolved over time?
April: Okay, so yeah, well, I know that I’m very sensitive to rejection and criticism and stuff. But I used to not at all be self-aware. So I mean, I got very defensive. I used to, when I was a teenager, I used to think that it meant that they don’t like me when someone is criticizing me. And I used to think that I had to get back at them or... It was tied to this thing about being really punk and I’m going to rebel against you or something. I don’t know, it’s kind of cringe to bring it up. But so I would sometimes, I would get really mad at them. I guess over time, I guess I’ve just gotten less defensive and been able to manage my anger a lot more. But I definitely, I don’t know, I still struggle with it. I get very defensive a lot when people are critical of me and I have to remind myself. One thing that me and my best friend Sophie started doing was when she’s being critical of me and I’m getting overwhelmed, I say, “I need to take a breath for a minute and pause.” Because that’s the only way that I can bring myself back to reality. Because in the moment when I’m getting criticized and I get in defensive mode, I start, I definitely start splitting. I’m like, “You’re the enemy.” But then if I can get out of that mindset and I can think with clarity, I think, “Okay, she’s just expressing something, I’m expressing something, and we can talk about it without the anger and all that.”
Dawn: Yeah, this is a good moment for this intermission that I will probably not actually edit in where we explain dialectical behavioral therapy and the STOP skill, which apparently you’re using intuitively.
April: Oh wow, okay, yeah. I used to… the worst example of this was that when someone was being very critical of me or when I got into fights with people a lot, one of the things that happened to me a lot in my friendships that I’m trying my best to get over now and never have this happen again, but I’d have this thing where this resentment would build up more and more and more. And I wouldn’t talk it out with them, and eventually just the criticism and the fights and the resentment, it all builds up to a point where I just cut them off completely. So that was probably one of the worst symptoms I’ve had with NPD, where I would just… the resentment builds higher and higher and I cut them off and I block them and discard them, you know.
Dawn: Yeah, I think this can also happen with borderline. Do you know how it’s different between a borderline split and what you’re experiencing?
April: For me, one thing I’ve noticed between me and people that have BPD that’s different is people that I’ve known with BPD have been able to, they might get mad at someone and be super mad like that for a month and then they come back the next month or whatever. With NPD, it seems I just hold a grudge and that’s… I just hate them forever. Or if I ever will talk to them again, it’d be years down the road or something. Like I just… It’s like once I fully split on someone and then discard them, they’re just done.
Dawn: Is that a fully conscious sort of feeling that feels completely real to you? Or is it more that there is this feeling of, I don’t know, hating them, disgust or something, but you don’t really… does it feel ego-syntonic or ego-dystonic is basically what I’m asking. Like when it usually starts out in a state which is called ego-syntonic, it’s probably also good to explain that for the listeners. It feels just completely logical to the person that someone has hurt me and so I’m now angry at this person, or I hate this person, or I feel some kind of disgust toward the person because the person is so evil and I want to distance myself from that evil or something of the sort. And then usually as the person becomes more self-aware and transitions from this borderline level of personality organization to what’s called the neurotic level of personality organization, which is basically a healthy level despite the term, then that feeling becomes more ego-dystonic or ego-alien. The feeling is still there, but the person is like, “What the fuck? Why do I have this feeling? Doesn’t make sense.” It’s more like social anxiety. Usually people who have social anxiety or agoraphobia or something, they’re like, “Why am I afraid of this crowd of people? Why am I afraid of going outside? It doesn’t make sense.” But they’re still afraid. So there’s sort of this ego-dystonic or ego-alien framing, whereas when the person thinks that it makes total sense, then that’s the ego-syntonic one. Yeah, so I’m wondering, did it feel like it makes total sense to you? Or was there this anxiety or disgust or something or hate or anger that you just couldn’t overcome?
April: I think, especially when I wasn’t self-aware, it felt like it made sense. I think it’s still, to some extent, I feel like, “Oh, it’s real. This person’s just evil. I hate them and all that.” But if I can, when I can make myself aware of what’s going on, it’s like, especially if I can wake myself up to, “God, I’m splitting or something,” then I can recognize that it’s not a real thing, that it’s a symptom of flooding or whatever. And then I can also recognize... I guess talking to a therapist has in a lot of moments helped me wake up to what’s really going on. But I guess automatically it’s the first one, ego-syntonic, I think. And then occasionally my therapist would be like, “Oh, you realize what’s going on here, right?” And then it’s like, “Whoa, okay.”
Dawn: Yeah, that’s very helpful. Have you also tried using AI for that?
April: No. I think I still got some work...
Dawn: I mean, there is Google’s Gemini, for example, which I’m using. I want to develop this therapy AI, artificial intelligence that can do mentalization-based treatment. And so I’m hoping that an AI could also provide the service to a person that it’s like, “Dude, I don’t know, have you considered that you might be splitting?”
April: I do like to talk to ChatGPT for advice. You know, some people say I shouldn’t do that, but I don’t know. It’s been helpful for me at times. I think when I’m talking to it, I guess sometimes it can help me recognize what’s going on. And the only issue is that sometimes ChatGPT will just agree with you about your altered reality.
Dawn: Have you tried it recently, though? Like, I think there’s a huge jump between GPT-4 and GPT-4o when it comes to that.
April: They are trying to change it more. And yeah, I think as it gets better, I definitely believe it’ll get even better and better at recognizing that. And I think it probably will, especially in the future. It will be even better at recognizing when I’m splitting and helping me be more aware of it. What might help though is... so I’m kind of going off topic, but one thing that’s helped me with splitting is writing down a list of people’s good qualities. And this is really especially easy to do when I’m in the white part of the black and white thinking, when I’m idealizing someone. I can write hundreds of good things. But then when I’m devaluing them and I’m thinking of them in a really negative light because they’ve hurt me or something, if I look at the list of the good things that I wrote about them, it can remind me and it can get me out of it. So maybe if I told ChatGPT to remind me of the good qualities of people, then it can help me get out of splitting, which might help a lot, which would be kind of cool.
Dawn: That’s also something I’m trying to do with friends of mine. My hope was that when they are in a negative self-split, that I ask them to remember all sorts of things that they’ve enjoyed just in the previous week or so in order to, I don’t know, connect these self-states a bit more. I don’t know whether they’re actually able to remember those things without having written them down.
April: Actually, that’s a good thing to mention too, the self-splitting, because I have… I made and I wrote down and I made a painting of pictures of all my good qualities. And I wrote down what they were on there. And I can always look at it whenever I want to remind myself. Because when I’m splitting on myself, thinking of myself in a really negative light, it helps. That helps too, to remember my good qualities. Like, “April, you’re so creative. And you’re funny. And you’re cool. And you’re resilient and stuff.” So I remind myself of those things. And then I feel good again.
Dawn: Yeah, cool. Do you have systematic ways of tapping into that? I was wondering, it could be just really useful if you want to do a job interview or you want to be creative or want to be productive and put out a ton of something, music probably, that you could intentionally tap into that positive or grandiose self-state in order to make that happen. Sort of like some people are really productive in their mania or hypomania states. Can you do that intentionally?
April: I’m definitely more productive when I’m in the grandiose state versus the really sad, vulnerable state. Yeah, I have used it to energize myself to get things done. I could have ChatGPT remind me… If I have ChatGPT just praise me a bunch, that helps a lot. Or friends. I’ll just reach out to friends sometimes and be like, “Hey, just need a little boost.”
Dawn: Yeah, like, “Compliment, please!”
April: It makes a world of difference. So yeah, that definitely helps.
Dawn: Yeah, cool. It’s interesting that you can control it so much. I would have thought that you’re relatively helplessly exposed to these changes in mood states, but that’s much better.
April: Yeah, I do try to manage it to the best of my ability. But yeah, it’s crazy how much my entire personality changes based on the grandiose or the vulnerable state. Like I guess I’ll share some illustration I made or something, and people… I’m studying art, so I’ll share some design I made or whatever. And if the class is just totally dragging it down, they’re like, “Oh, it’s so bad,” I’ll feel so bad about myself. But then if they’re all complimenting it, they’re like, “It’s amazing,” and I’m like, “Yes, I’m so amazing.” It’s like I’m a whole different person.
Dawn: Yeah, cool. Do you have these two self-states or do you have even more of those?
April: Yeah, I’ve tried to identify them all. I don’t know, did you see this? I made this picture one time of all of them. I don’t know if I showed you it.
Dawn: No, I don’t think so, but please share it.
April: Yeah, maybe I’ll send it to you or something. I can’t really show it on the screen, but I made a list of all the different states I’ve noticed about myself. So the first one is the really punk one, which is if I feel like I’m being controlled in some way. I have a need for independence, so if I feel like somebody is just nagging me too much, just all over me, then that side of me comes out that’s like, “Okay, listen, I need a little bit of space here. I need to have some autonomy here.” That side helps me set boundaries with people and stuff. There’s a side of me that’s more just super social and confident. It’s also sort of a flirty kind of side to me, which is just when I’m meeting people. There’s another side that’s… that’s the depressed side that I specifically drew a picture of. It’s just… yeah, when I’m… that’s very much the vulnerable narcissist state. When I’m just totally out of it. There’s one side of me that’s just very sensitive but more also really sweet. I think a little bit different from... The depressed side just has no energy. This other side of me is just very sensitive and wants to get reassurance from people and stuff. Then there was one that’s the more sarcastic, cynical one that I was talking about before, the Daria kind of. And I think there was one more. The last one on there was... there’s this side of me that just wants to give people advice and help them. There’s this definite therapist kind of side to me.
Dawn: That’s cool. Which side is this one right now?
April: This one… I feel like I’m a little bit of the therapist side, but then there’s a little bit of the kind of sensitive kind of side to me as well.
Dawn: Yeah, sweet. That’s interesting. There is this scale, the Pathological Narcissism Inventory, and it has stuff that you would expect, like grandiose fantasy, for example, but it also has this self-sacrificing self-enhancement. And those are some that I score really high on. And I would imagine that’s this side of wanting to find purpose in helping people, which is something that’s also quite central for a lot of people with NPD.
April: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it definitely… well because then I feel like if I’ve helped people then I, I guess it makes me feel worth in some way, maybe.
Dawn: Yeah, exactly. I can empathize with you.
April: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Dawn: Yeah, we were talking about the rejection sensitivity earlier. I was also thinking, there were these situations where I wanted to do something with a friend and then I heard after an hour or so that this friend had already gone ahead to do this thing without me and without asking me to join or anything. And so I felt, first of all, of course, rejected by that. But then my reaction wasn’t that I… I’m just really not defended against these things. They hurt like hell, but I don’t have any… at this point I have trained a bit of anger in order to defend myself. I guess I’m really bad at this. But I don’t have the kind of dismissiveness of “I don’t need this friend anyway. I can listen to my podcast. It’s so much better.” Instead I just sort of feel humiliated by that. And yeah. It sucks as well.
April: For me, that situation would mostly just make me feel sad and make me feel like they don’t like me or something. That’s the more sensitive kind of side of me versus... I think that there’s a difference between that reaction and the more... when I was talking about the different states of me, I think about the more punk one. That’s the one that would be like, “Well screw them anyway, I don’t need them.” I think my mind also goes to, “What things can I do right now in order so that I can create a narrative for myself that I had been meaning to do these things anyway, and meeting the friend was just sort of an extra that’s unimportant?”
Dawn: Come up with the reasons in your head kind of.
April: Yeah, it’s not really fooling me. I can’t really fool myself anymore. But I don’t know. Sometimes I remember there’s this girl in my college and I wanted to… and I liked her. I wanted to sit next to her, but the next day she sat on the other side of the room. I was like, “So you have to tell yourself something.”
Dawn: What did you come up with?
April: Yeah, I was like, “Well, she has a friend over there. That’s why she didn’t want to sit next to me.”
Dawn: I’ve come up with really elaborate schemes where if I wanted to do something but I was afraid of making mistakes, then I would get someone to persuade me to do the thing so that I could at least mentally, internally sort of blame my mistakes on this person, because this person convinced me to do this thing and they convinced me that I wouldn’t have made the mistake.
April: Funny story. When I was in school, there was this... So my friend Todd that I was in school with, he’s like, “We could get sodas from the vending machine right now.” There’s a vending machine out in the hallway. And I was like, “Oh, but we’re not allowed,” because we were in gym class. And I was like, “We’re not allowed to leave class, right?” And he’s like, “No, it’s totally fine. Nothing’s gonna happen.” And I was like, “Well, I guess I could use a soda or whatever. So I’ll come with you.” Even though I knew we’re going to probably get in trouble if we get caught or something. But so we get out there. We got sodas. And we came walking back in. And then the teacher’s like, “Where were you guys?” And I go, “Oh, it was all Todd’s fault. Oh, my God. It was all Todd. He’s the one that did this.” So I just totally threw him under the bus.
Dawn: Oh, no. What was Todd’s reaction to that?
April: He’s like, “Really?”
Dawn: Ouch.
Dawn: Yeah, I tried to do these… my stuff was always things like no one cared about. I didn’t know that no one cared about these things, whether I make some random mistake or whatever. And so I never ended up in a situation like that. I always did the stuff internally. Very kind of convenient, but it still happens sometimes automatically. And I’m like, “Brain, seriously, no one cares about that.”
April: Most people always thought of me as the good kid, but I was the good kid because I never would get in trouble. But then I would do things sneakily. So when I would be at my first job that I had, when you’re on your break you can only take one break and it’s 15 minutes. So I took a 15-minute break and then later on one of my managers would be like, “Hey, did you go on your break yet? You can take one right now if you want.” I’m like, “Oh sweet, yeah.”
Dawn: I mean, 15-minute break is pretty short. I’d take at least four per day because an hour break is normal, right?
April: And then a different manager comes in. I’m like, “Yeah, I didn’t go on my break yet today. I’ll take one now.”
Dawn: It’s just like with cats when several people are in a shared apartment and they have one cat. And the cat goes up to one person, meows very heart-wrenchingly to get food, gets fed. And then it’s the next person, meows again. The person is like, “Oh, my God, the cat hasn’t been fed.” And then the cat gets fed four times in the day and they don’t know that of each other.
Recognition and Diagnosis
Dawn: Yeah, so the next section is on recognition and diagnosis. And the first question that I’ve prepared here is what traits you initially discovered that led to the insight and the diagnosis, or first the realization that you have NPD?
April: Oh, I know exactly what it was too. At the time I had a crush on this friend of mine and I didn’t know how to tell her. So I was kind of… but it would come out through these things that I was saying that were kind of passive-aggressive and stuff. And just hinting a lot all the time. But then it was me basically trying to admit it, but not being able to admit it. So eventually my therapist was like, “Do you realize what you’re doing is kind of passive-aggressive though? Because you’re not really giving her a chance to say yes or no to it. You’re just saying it…” It was kind of shocking to me to recognize that. And also, there had been a couple of other moments. My therapist was like, “If you want, what you really should do is have a conversation with her and let her know that you like her, because dancing around it, making jokes about it and stuff without saying it, is not really helping you move past it and have a good real conversation with her about it.” So but then I came into the session the next week saying that I did it, that I talked to her. And my therapist was like, “Oh, I’m so happy for you. You did it.” And then I drove home that day and was like, “I just lied to my therapist.” And then I came in the next week and I apologized for it. And I was like, “Well…” She’s like, “Why did you do that?” And I was like, “Well, I wanted you to be happy for me and I wanted you to admire me.” And at that point was when she said that I had that diagnosis. And at that point I was pretty aware that I had it. I was kind of upset when I found out that I had that, but I was definitely, I understood it.
Dawn: How do you hint at having a crush on someone in a way that can come off as passive-aggressive? Do you have an example?
April: Trying to remember what I would do back then. Like I would act in... I don’t know, we went to a concert together and she must have known that in my mind it was kind of, if you want it to be a date, then it can be a date or whatever. I never directly said that to her. And then during it, she goes, “We’re not on a date right now, right?” And I was like, “You know, I don’t know. I’d be like, oh, you know, whatever you want or something.” I don’t know. I guess it’s hard to explain it. There’s a moment where we were standing together at the concert and I was kind of holding her hand and then not because then she didn’t want to and then… I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it, I think. Sometimes I would just joke about things. But… Oh, so one thing… Here’s an example. One time I made a joke that was like… Imagine if someone had a crush on you and they couldn’t tell you, so they just made jokes. So I just… I made it a completely meta thing. I was talking about what was happening.
Dawn: Now that’s all very relatable already.
April: I was trying to make it very obvious that I liked her, but I couldn’t tell her. So I just tried to make it as obvious as possible.
Dawn: Yeah, I’m trying the same. I think my solution at the moment is to just get to know the person for long enough that I feel safe enough with them to talk about it directly. Just sort of off the bat it’s too scary for me.
April: At some point, you have to tell them. Otherwise, I guess what the problem was is that because I wasn’t telling her, it just created this atmosphere or this energy that something’s going on. In her mind, she’s like, “Something’s going on with April, but I can’t really quite tell because she’s not saying it or something.” I guess that’s what the therapist was kind of commenting on, that it was a little bit passive-aggressive.
Dawn: How did this turn out between the two of you?
April: It was… That was a big moment for me too, because that was when I kind of… I mean, I kind of realized that that was what my struggle was, was being emotionally vulnerable. And when I finally did it, we went to a breakfast place together, and I just told her, “There’s something I needed to tell you about.” And I finally told her, and it went really well. She was so nice about it. She’s like, “Well, I’m not gonna be with you because, you know, I was out as a trans woman and stuff at the time too, so she’s like, ‘No, I’m just… I’m straight. I’m not into women. It’s just not gonna work out because of that.’” And then I was like, “That’s fine.” And also I think because of that I was totally fine with it. I’m like, “It’s fine. You’re just straight. That’s fine. It’s all good.” And we were able to move on. And I remember afterwards I texted her and I was like, “I’m so glad you were so nice about that too. You didn’t... it didn’t get awkward, you didn’t feel weird, there wasn’t any weirdness.” And she’s like, “Yeah, no, I’m glad your first time being vulnerable about something like that was with somebody that was safe.” And so that… yeah, I loved that.
Dawn: Yeah. When I hear that, it also feels so gender-affirming.
April: Yeah, totally.
Dawn: To balance that out, I had my own struggles with rejection sensitivity, so my solution to that was to come up with a cipher that allowed me to encrypt a suitably written message in a way that was sort of possible for someone else to decipher, but definitely not easy. Then write a message in that cipher on a piece of paper and fold this piece of paper really small, sort of a couple of millimeters times a couple of millimeters, then to wrap a lot of tape around it and finally hide it somewhere in the school building where it was very difficult for anyone to find it. It was also probably, I think it was kind of off-limits. I kind of threw it into an area where you’re not allowed to go as a student usually. And so yeah, so this was my attempt at flirting. It did not work.
April: Like the most private way possible. I like that.
Dawn: Yeah, life hacks!
April: I guess the bottom line was just that because I was repeatedly joking about it, obviously something was going on, but I wasn’t being direct about it. And so once I was, it cleared up a lot of things. And then it also showed me that I don’t have to be indirect like that, because then the friendship was... it went so well, it went so smoothly that then the friendship was good after that. So we didn’t have any of that going on in the background.
Dawn: Sweet. How long did you know each other beforehand?
April: I knew her… I actually met her in college years before that, my friend Becky. But then the summer that we got close, that was when I first… we started hanging out every day starting in that summer in 2018, and I started to have a crush on her then. I think I was… oh, I actually remember what was happening too. I was in a relationship with this girl Erin at the time, and I broke up with her because I can’t be in a relationship with somebody and then I’m having crushes on everybody else, because I was not happy in that relationship. I felt I was settling. That could be a whole other conversation. But basically, I started having a crush on my friend Becky then in that summer, and then it was not until that winter that we finally talked about it and addressed it, at the beginning of the year in January of 2019. And then we figured it all out and I felt a lot better after that.
Dawn: Yeah, wonderful. Would you like to go down this tangent that you mentioned about the other relationship?
April: I guess so. It’s just I was with this girl Erin, and I think that I... I think it might have been a bit of a self-esteem struggle that I was having at the time. I don’t know if this is totally related to NPD or whatever, but I just felt I wasn’t meeting anyone, and then I just dated the first person that liked me back. And I was with Erin for a while, and I think what I realized during the relationship was just that I was not being true to myself about my feelings. I just started to get very annoyed with her and not wanting to be around her. And I just started realizing I was with her just because I wanted a girlfriend, not because I was happy. And then it just caused a lot of problems like that, that I wasn’t invested in it. I would be late for dates and stuff, and I would just... my whole heart wasn’t in it. So then it just made the relationship bad. And that’s when I realized that you have to really love the person you’re with, I guess, and not to settle. Because that was one of the things… I was 28 at the time, and I remember at that point in time I was like, “Well, I’m gonna be 30 soon. I gotta get somebody going on, meeting someone and then marrying them and whatever.”
Dawn: Did it feel like a hierarchical thing or did it feel like a mismatch thing between the two of you?
April: I guess, I mean, maybe there was a bit of a hierarchy. I did feel I was better than her to some extent because I was the only… I guess she only had one ex in the past. She’d only dated this guy. And then, meanwhile, I’ve had a lot of people that I’ve been with in the past. So I think there was some hierarchy in that sense that I’m like, “I’ve been in more relationships. I know what I’m doing more, I guess.” But I think the main thing was just the mismatch and the thing of feeling like I just really wanted a girlfriend, and then I just picked the first person that liked me back because I was having trouble finding somebody. And I thought at first I could just make it work. I’m just… I’ll just… I don’t have to be fully attracted to this person or whatever. I can just make it work anyway. I could just pretend to be happy. And then at first it worked, because I was like, “Well, I have a girlfriend, I’m happy now.” But then as time went on, I’m like, “I’m not happy.” It also started getting really serious, because then she wanted to have us move in together. We were planning to live together after... I think it was we’d only been together three months, but we were… she’s like, “We should both live here.” And I was… and at first I was kind of excited about it, but then it dawned on me how real it was that we’re… And then I was talking to my therapist about it. My therapist was like, “Okay, so if you actually move in with her, you realize it’s going to be way harder to end the relationship too.” And I was like, “That’s true.” Because yeah, because then you get… you’re living with somebody, you’ve moved in with them, your stuff is all at their house and stuff. And I think that’s when it became more real for me. And at first I was like, “Maybe I’m just afraid of commitment or something. Maybe that’s what the problem is.” But then I was like, “No, this is... if you would live with somebody, you’re really choosing to be with them.” And it’s… I don’t know. I think there’s a difference between a fear of commitment and you’re just not happy with somebody.
Dawn: Yeah, I think I’ve been on the other side of that. My ex and I were already living together, but we wanted to move somewhere else together with a bunch of friends, and I would have had to give up my apartment for that. The breakup came rather suddenly for me because she didn’t want me to give up my apartment if I didn’t want to move in with them, even though we weren’t together anymore. And it was good that she precipitated that decision, that breakup, because I was actually kind of happy that I didn’t give up my apartment after that. Like, I like my apartment. It was a really cool apartment, yeah. Not this one. I stayed there for another year or so after that.
Core Shame and Self-States
Dawn: So there is this notion that I find very relatable personally that at the core of NPD in particular, and probably also a bunch of other personality disorders, there is what is called core shame, thus shame that always masquerades as something else that personality disorders are designed to defend against so that you don’t perceive it so directly. Yes, I was wondering, for one, how well defended were you against feeling that shame? And two, what did it even feel like for you? How would you describe it when you encounter that?
April: I think the shame comes… I think the defense against it is when I’m in the more grandiose kind of state and I’m able to think I’m the best or whatever. But then as soon as it cracks, something really bad happens to me, like someone breaks up with me or even just someone being very, very mean or critical or judgmental of me or whatever, something like that happens, and then the shame opens up again. And then I think it’s a lot of where I’ve just beat up myself a lot, and it feels really… I don’t know, it’s the worst feeling. I hate it. I’ll just be very, very down on myself.
Dawn: I have two sentences here. I was wondering which of them you would describe, which of them you think matches that feeling more closely. One of them is, “I’m not good enough, I’m flawed, I’m evil.” And the second one is, “I’m empty, I’m hungry, I’m lonely, I need a connection.”
April: I think it’s the first one. I think I’ll say to myself, one thing I’ll say is, “I’m a monster.” A lot of times when I’m in that state, I’ll say, “I’m not good enough. Everyone else can handle life, but I can’t.” I’ll compare myself to other people that are doing well a lot.
Dawn: Do you feel like that’s the difference between you and Jacob Skidmore? I get the impression that he’s much more likely to feel some kind of emptiness.
April: I think he’s more of… Because I think it’s true that everybody kind of moves between the two states of the grandiose and vulnerable, but I think some people are more toward one than the other on a regular basis. I think I tend to be towards… I tend to be more of a vulnerable one, and I think Jacob’s more of a grandiose narcissist, you know. There’s also this distinction between thick-skinned and thin-skinned. I’m definitely more of a thin-skinned person.
Dawn: Yeah, that’s fine. I kind of get the impression that thick-skinned and thin-skinned refers to actually different people, whereas grandiose versus vulnerable refers to different states that virtually everyone cycles through.
April: Yeah. Thin-skinned is, I’m extremely sensitive, and people my whole life have told me that, that I’m a very sensitive person.
Dawn: Yeah, that’s a very relatable trait.
Dawn: What do you think caused, sort of etiologically, in your childhood or whatever you can identify, maybe also therapy has helped you identify, whatever might have caused this shame in the first place, this core shame to be implanted in you in some fashion, and what might have caused these particular adaptations that you’ve found to defend against it?
April: Yeah, well, so there’s… I think growing up as a trans person, you just naturally feel a lot of shame. Because the whole culture is making fun of trans people, especially growing up in the 90s and the 2000s. They were not very kind. You know, there’s all the movies where trans people were the butt of the joke. And so you just kind of know that if you tell anyone, you’re gonna get made fun of and stuff. And I think that I had a very private second life where I would sort of dress the way I want or play with makeup or whatever in private, but I would never feel comfortable doing that out in the world. So in those moments where I’m alone, I’m feeling good because I’m feeling like myself, but I’m feeling shame about it. So it taught me, I think, that who I am is painful in general. And there were specific experiences too. There was a time when I was eight years old where I tried to come out to my parents, and basically I got really badly rejected for it. And so I guess it just taught me, “Okay, I need to hide who I am. It’s not safe to share that.” The fact that I’m trans, it’s also in my mind, the way I saw it was it’s just not safe to share my feelings in general with people. And I think that was the big thing. I was like, “I don’t care anymore.” I remember an actual moment where I said to myself, “I don’t care anymore. I’m going to… even if I have to lie to people or if I just have to hide everything, I don’t care. I’m just going to do that. I’ll be happier that way.” And to me, that’s when the NPD began, you know.
Dawn: I think I was never brave enough to try it in the first place, or else I didn’t have the skill to share emotions. I never learned how to do that. I was experiencing these emotions, but then I was like, “Okay, this is potentially evil. Maybe I’ll get rejected for this. Let’s pretend I’m not experiencing this.” Build this internal dissociation to try to pretend I’m not experiencing it in the first place so that no one will notice and I will not accidentally expose myself in some fashion. And also I’m not… I can sort of pretend to myself I’m not lying when I’m pretending not to have these emotions if I fool myself into thinking I don’t have them. And yeah, that’s how it formed for me.
Dawn: At what age just did you realize that you were trans?
April: My earliest memory of it was I was maybe three years old. I was at my friend Katie’s… I had this friend Katie at the time and I was at her birthday party. And I remember I went to the bathroom and then I was alone. It was just me in the bathroom. And then I left the bathroom. And everybody was outside because there was some party in the summertime. And I found some of her clothes. And I was feeling jealous that I couldn’t wear those clothes and dress like that. And I looked in her room and I was jealous I couldn’t have a room like that that had, I don’t know, My Little Ponies and stuff in it, Barbies and whatever.
Dawn: Oh yeah. So you think that really the transness, the gender dysphoria, all of those things came together and they were really the origin, the cause for the adaptations and for the shame?
April: There was a specific moment. I could say it exactly. So it’s at eight years old, I tried to come out to my dad and he... I told him that I wanted to get this plate that had Pegasus on it from Hercules. And he said that they didn’t have it and he got me the Hercules one instead. And then I looked at the counter and I saw that they did have it in the McDonald’s. And he lied to me, and that was when I realized that I had to hide things. I think it was the betrayal in that moment that made me develop it.
Dawn: Big hug. I’m a bit hugging you remotely. Here are some hearts. I’m a bit of a mind reader, though. Want to tell the positive, the happy ending, as it were, years later?
April: Wait, wait. You want me to tell you a happy ending?
Dawn: The happy ending when you probably started therapy at some point and actually got this plate?
April: Yeah, you knew that… Yeah, yeah, I did end up eventually buying it for myself online on eBay, and that definitely was a moment of “I did that for my younger self,” and I felt really a lot better after that. Yeah, I even... So that moment that I was talking about when I was standing there and I was saying to myself that I’m not gonna ever share anything anymore, I remember where that was, where it happened. And it was at my old school. And this one day – I’ve never told anyone about this – but there was a day where I just drove to the school and was standing in the same spot. Because it was outside. And I was standing in the same spot as where I said that to myself. And that felt cathartic in a way too. It was a similar thing to buying the plate for myself. I wanted to do something where I was telling my younger self that I forgive you, that it’s okay that you had to do that at the time. And that made me feel better after I did that. And that was, I think, pretty therapeutic too.
Dawn: A friend of mine who also has recovered from NPD also says that it’s super important, or was for her certainly, to feel gratitude for the adaptations that your younger self with lesser means came up with in order to cope with the environment.
April: That’s kind of what I was trying to do there. Yeah, I was trying to tell my younger self that you did what you had to do at the time, you know. And even though developing that adaptation caused problems later down the line, I forgive you for doing it. You did what you had to do at the time, and it’s totally understandable. And I guess something about that helped me come to peace with it. Because when I first got diagnosed, it was just... there was just a lot of shame in getting that diagnosis. So I did feel I needed to do that for myself to heal my inner child and also to make myself feel less bad about it. And it worked, it definitely worked. So I’m glad I did that.
Dawn: Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, I did a few of these things. There’s not this one event of the sort that sticks in my mind, but I’ve certainly visited my school again. And there was this one restroom stall that I always locked myself in during the breaks to not be exposed to all the other students. And I visited that bathroom, that restroom stall again. It doesn’t exist anymore, but the bathroom doesn’t exist and the window is still in the same area. It’s a really nice window and you can sit inside the window. It’s a really old building with thick walls. And yeah, so I visited that again, took some photos together with my partners, and so that was cool. And oh, and there was this one person, a friend of my parents, to whom I must have said something sort of mildly self-congratulatory like, “I’m good at writing these letters. Would you also like one, to receive one?” And I wanted to write a cute letter for her. And then she totally shamed me for the self-praise, and I was super ashamed and super embarrassed in front of the whole family. And yeah, and so now some 30 years later – she’s still alive luckily – I sort of took revenge by, in a conversation with her, saying a couple of self-congratulatory things.
April: Nice.
Dawn: Yeah, this memory sticks in my mind…
April: Because now you’re not feeling so bad about it anymore like that, yeah?
Dawn: Yeah. So a turning point where I started to be absolutely self-deprecatory all the time externally. You’ve got some grandiose fantasies, of course, but oh no, super self-effacing. Yeah, but luckily I’m out of that.
April: Yeah, interesting.
Cynic or Idealist
Dawn: I’ll see what the… I went through the questions a bit out of order, so I need to sort this out. Okay, yeah. Oh, this is actually the question that you suggested. Like, whether you see yourself more as a cynic or an idealist, and why in particular?
April: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Well, yeah, I definitely see myself as more a cynic, and I think it’s probably just because of having a lot of situations where I felt disappointed in life or people have let me down or something like that. I guess one thing I was thinking about was I’ve had a lot… I was bullied a lot growing up and stuff like that. I had to deal with a lot more than other people because of being a minority versus other people don’t have to deal with certain stuff. I guess bad luck too, just from… I don’t know, things affect me more than they might for other people because of being poor. Or if something bad happens to me, it’s hard to deal with that versus other people. I don’t know. Like having extra struggles in life, I think, made me more that way, I think.
Dawn: Like, what does it mean for you to be a cynic as opposed to an idealist? What do the terms mean for you?
April: It’s hard for me to trust as much as other people, I think, just because I’ve been hurt by a lot of people. So I think that’s a big part of it for me. I don’t know if I have anything else to say really about that.
Dawn: I feel like it’s much easier for me now to open up and trust other people now that they can’t hurt me so much anymore. People say random stuff, then I’m just hearing words and sounds, and sometimes they tell me something about the other person, but they don’t affect me so much anymore. And that makes it much easier for me to be open.
April: Yeah. It just feels like the world’s gonna… people will let me down and the world will let me down just because the world itself lets me down a lot as well.
Dawn: It’s also one of these things that I kind of appreciate about some of my personality disordered friends. They need to use the defense of projection, where they sort of fool themselves into thinking that something is true of someone else that they need to be true in order to cope with something. Like one standard way of doing that is to think that another person is angry at you in order to feel legitimized in your reactive anger, whereas the anger is originally yours really. And what friends of mine sometimes do instead is that they project on the world as it were, and just “the world is so unjust and that is why X and Y.” And on the one hand, it’s kind of true.
April: Maybe it’s just me, but I think I do project onto the world a lot. I blame capitalism.
Dawn: On the other hand, it’s really kind because they are not projecting that on me, so you’re not hurting other people at least.
April: Yeah, that’s the good thing about that.
Dawn: Like, if you have to use primitive defenses, then there’s an altruistic way to do it.
Misconceptions and Stigma
Dawn: My next question would be a bit of a standard question. What misconceptions about narcissistic personality disorder are there that make you feel most misunderstood?
April: Oh, I feel like there’s a lot. I feel I have trouble telling people that I have it because I feel like they’re… I feel like it’s gonna make them misunderstand me. People assume that if you have it then you’re an abuser. And in my experience with certain people that I’ve told, they start misinterpreting my actions as abuse tactics and stuff. Like if you tell someone you have NPD and then you do something nice for them, they’re like, “You’re love bombing me,” or that you’re... sharing your feelings is some sort of abuse tactic or something. And so then people just become worried that everything you do is some sort of a scheme. That’s why sometimes it’s easier for me to just not tell people. But then the problem is if I don’t tell them that I have it, then I can’t talk about a lot of what’s going on with me. I can’t tell them when I’m having black and white thinking. There’s a lot of nuances I can’t tell people about. It affects my ability to tell people what’s going on in my life. So that is a tough, a double-edged sword, really.
Dawn: Friends of mine also often have this problem when dating that, of course, there are tons of misconceptions about NPD, ASPD, HPD, and if they have some of those and they just… At some point they want to tell their partner, of course, but if they tell them just some label, then the person is just going to project a bunch of misconceptions on them.
April: Yeah, people start seeing you as just the label after that.
Dawn: My advice is usually to tell the person about the specific traits that they need to know about when they’re getting married. Like, describe the traits, don’t label them in any way, and then the person is prepared. They know what to expect, as it were.
April: Maybe what would help is tell people the specific traits. Yeah, tell people the specific problems. Because I’ve kind of had success doing that myself, where I’d be like, “I struggle with vulnerability.” I tell people things as they come up. “I struggle with criticism and stuff.” And then maybe down the road, after you’ve explained yourself enough without the label, then you can tell someone that you’ve had that diagnosis. And then just be like... At that point, you’ve already explained yourself enough, so it won’t feel like as much of a shock. They’ve gotten to know you without that. Maybe that would help more.
Dawn: It’s just sort of a fun fact at that point. Or you just only date psychologists.
April: That was one of the things that was really hard for me too. There’s a period of time where I had this almost resentment towards… because I felt a lot of people would be very progressive and I would think that they would be accepting of me. But they wouldn’t fully accept me. So they would accept me for being trans, which was great and I needed support for that. But then I would tell them about having NPD and they wouldn’t support me for that. And I remember there was a good year or two where I was just feeling very lost because I felt like no matter where I went, I wouldn’t get full support from people until I guess I eventually met enough people that did fully support me for everything about me.
Dawn: I was wondering whether you think that having a diagnosis, or specifically that diagnosis, whether that is sufficiently useful for finding your community and for the therapist to find the right treatment guidelines and so on, that it’s sort of worth it despite stigma, or whether it would be better to just use schemas like from schema therapy and then have this list of your five or so dominant maladaptive schemas and treat those instead, which are really widely unknown and also describe NPD to some extent.
April: I like having the diagnosis because it did help me meet other people that are similar to me. So it helped me find community in that way. And I think it also helped me at the time recognize what my problems were and not feel like such a weird person for having them. Because I was like, “This is a thing that exists. This is a mental illness.” And then that helped me have a roadmap for what I needed to work on in my life, which I’ve gotten a lot better at everything. But that especially at the time definitely helped me identify what I needed to work on.
Dawn: Yeah, I think there’s two big benefits that I also see in that.
April: Yeah, yeah. Because I remember I also had a friend – well, this was actually that friend I was talking about before, Becky – she’s like, “Maybe you just want to call yourself, instead of calling yourself something negative like your diagnosis, maybe you want to just say that you’re neurodivergent or whatever.” And I see your point, but I need the… Neurodivergent can mean a million things, and I like having the community of people that have the exact same problems that will fully understand me. So I think the diagnosis is a good thing to have, and I think it’s good to attach it. Not… I don’t want this to sound like I’m saying that’s all I am. But yeah, I mean that it’s important to recognize that I have it and it’s important to acknowledge it and meet other people that can relate to me with it.
Dawn: We can actually change the stigma. Autism used to be stigmatized, and now for me it’s very helpful. “Oh yeah, autism, that seems to fit. Let’s look for some communities nearby, meet some people with autism or some autistic people.”
April: I think it’s getting to the point where eventually people are going to start to recognize that. Because that happened with borderline. I mean, there’s still a lot of stigma around it, but to me it’s become a lot less stigmatized than the time that I’ve been aware of it. So I think it just naturally, eventually, NPD will too, once people can start to see it as it’s just a mental illness. It doesn’t mean you’re an abuser or whatever. That’s the problem right now, is that everyone associates that word with abuser. It’s just the diagnosis. There’s literally nothing actually in the criteria for getting diagnosed with NPD. The word “abuser” is not part of the diagnosis.
Dawn: There are so many folks with relatively internalizing presentations and lots of avoidance and very thin-skinned, and I don’t know…
April: Yeah, it’s just about the traits, the needing admiration and all that stuff. That’s all NPD is. It’s not being a gaslighting, mean, evil monster person.
Dawn: Yeah, and the fraction of people among actual abusers that have NPD is also super small. It’s, what, 10% of those?
April: Yeah, there’s a lot... First of all, people with NPD are more likely to have experienced abuse rather than be abusers. Like, I mean, I’ve dealt with a lot of it, how I developed it and stuff. And then also, abusers could be anything. People with addictions can be abusers. That’s a really big thing. Or people… even you could just be somebody with depression, but you just act in abusive ways because it’s just… abuse is just, the main thing is just your actions, not your diagnosis that makes you an abuser.
Dawn: Yeah, exactly. I’ve tried to research how many, what the fraction is of people who have committed some kind of domestic abuse who have any personality disorder. It’s kind of hard to find out, but I think a large part of them... there is this thing that I have the thesis that lots of people are personality disordered, but they don’t have a specific personality disorder that has been identified. For example, that probably if a lot of people were actually going through some kind of diagnosis for that, they would probably get a label like traits from here and there and whatnot. But it’s… I think that fraction is probably pretty large, but ignoring that, I think even the fraction of people who have any personality disorder among abusers is also pretty small. Like, I don’t know exactly what it is, but I would guess it’s less than half. And most of them are probably… I don’t know, ASPD or something.
April: Or maybe somebody’s just a freaking misogynist and then that’s why they’re abusive to their wife or something.
Dawn: Yeah, exactly. I don’t want to push ASPD under the bus. I have lots of lovely friends with ASPD who are not like that at all. Maybe I can get someone on for an interview at some point to reduce the ASPD stigma.
April: That would be cool to watch. Because I don’t know enough about that disorder and I would want to know more. I want to be more understanding of how that works and stuff.
Dawn: I have a couple of friends who have the diagnosis.
April: From what I’ve heard, there’s an aspect of it, of boredom or something. They’re just trying to relieve boredom in some way.
Dawn: Yeah, they’re not that type. I mean, I could potentially get in touch with someone who has that type. I think somehow I tend to befriend people who have this combination of NPD and ASPD. I call it sovereignism, but that’s sort of my term for that. It’s not malignant narcissism necessarily because they don’t have the paranoia. It’s sort of close, but without the paranoia. I don’t like the term malignant narcissism. They are pretty kind. Maybe I just want to make this whole channel about just combating stigma.
April: Yeah, that’d be cool. I would be a big supporter of that.
Dawn: I suppose by the time this video airs, I’ll have come up with a cool name for it. Maybe I’ll just call it Impartial Priorities, my blog.
Traits and Remission
Dawn: I was wondering… I think you told me in another call at some point that your therapist considers you to be in remission so that you don’t meet the full criteria for NPD anymore. And I was wondering, what traits of NPD you found to be the most sticky ones and which ones are not so sticky?
April: Yeah, yeah. Just like one of… my old therapist was the one that diagnosed me with it, diagnosed me as NPD. And my newest one that I have said, “Oh, you have traits of NPD,” but wouldn’t… she would just say, “You have narcissistic traits,” that’s it. So I guess that’s… to me that was such a… I don’t know, it was validating. It made a difference in myself that I’ve gone from a full thing to just traits. To me, I’ve made a ton of progress on being more vulnerable. To be able to have this conversation I’m having right now, I wouldn’t have been able to do that at all when I first got diagnosed. But then also, I think I’m a much better listener. I don’t really have people too much complaining about my listening skills compared to they used to do it all the time. They used to struggle with me all the time. I still have people complaining that I’m not being empathetic enough. I still am extremely sensitive to criticism to the point where people either… Either they know how to handle it like Sophie does. Sophie’s like, “Okay, you need a break.” And that helps me. But other people, I think because they don’t know what I need, I think that they sometimes feel like they need to tiptoe around me sometimes because they know that I can be very sensitive. So... I think needing external validation has been something that I still very much need. I get very sad with social media. That’s a big one for me. Like when I’m posting something or even if someone’s not liking my messages, I’ll be in a group chat and I talk and no one likes my message or acknowledges it, then I’ll get upset. Or if my post doesn’t get likes online. Like if I make a post on Instagram and it gets no likes, after an hour I just delete it. Because I feel like it affects my worth. You know, I feel like a loser because my post didn’t get likes and stuff. Which is why I hope some people give me compliments and stuff, because it does make me feel better.
Dawn: Yeah, share your post. If I’m awake and I see your message, then I’ll give you the like.
April: Sounds good. Yeah, if you give my post likes, that’ll make me feel good. Oh my gosh, I’ve lost the message. I lost the question. So even if Sophie hasn’t been online a while, she’ll have not been on for a week and then she’ll come back at the end of the week and she’ll literally go through my profile and all my old posts, and my day is made.
Dawn: Does it help when someone does want to criticize something, does it help to sort of embed that in, “Hey, April, totally love you, you’re a really good friend of mine”?
April: Yes, a million percent. A million percent. Then I can hear them if they remind me that they love me or they... or if they’re very validating or reassuring like that, that’s what people need to do. Because then I’ll hear their criticism and then I won’t take it as a personal attack, you know.
Dawn: I imagine the preamble can’t be too long because you already know that something’s coming and it probably builds a lot of tension.
April: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well it’s gonna be like, “Yeah, just like, ‘April, I love you. I care about you very much, so that’s why I’m gonna just tell you this little thing. You’ve been doing this, April, it’s really freaking annoying, but it’s all good.’” You know, that’s fine. If it’s a long… I guess if it’s like a… if they’re giving a five-minute monologue before they give me the criticism, then I… I guess that would be kind of weird.
Dawn: Let’s keep it to five to ten seconds.
April: Yeah, yeah, quick thing is good. Just need that reassurance. Yeah, I guess a five-minute preamble… Some people do that thing of “we need to talk.”
Dawn: Aww.
April: It’s horrifying.
Dawn: Oh God… Even my super mentally healthy, super stable and extremely self-confident, self-loving ex had this from her mom at one point that on Friday the mom was like, “We need to talk, but I only have time on Monday.” She had such a horrible weekend. So yeah, this is not just a rejection sensitivity thing apparently.
April: Yeah, the “we need to talk” thing being scary is pretty universal.
Core Fears: Narcissism, Echoism, and Sovereignism
Dawn: So one thing that I was wondering about… In my article, the latest article I think on echoism and narcissism and sovereignism, I have these core fears that I distinguish. And while the article is about these things overlap, they’re potentially positively correlated, kind of contradicting Craig Malkin there. Craig Malkin sort of sees echoism on one side of the spectrum and narcissism on the other side, and probably something like sovereignism there as well. But for me, these are just three completely independent dimensions. Well, let’s say independent dimensions. I think they’re actually positively correlated. But yeah, so just sort of not opposites at all, probably the opposite, very similar things. I sort of think that narcissism sort of at its core could be summarized, though that always loses some information, as sort of a fear of worthlessness or a defense against a fear of worthlessness. Echoism as a fear of uselessness or purposelessness, and sovereignism as a fear of helplessness, of being controlled by someone. And then these feel kind of similar to me already, though I feel kind of close, much closer to this fear of worthlessness and uselessness. So the last one doesn’t connect that much, but I would still sort of resonate with it to some extent. And yeah, so I was wondering whether you think that these terms are well chosen, whether they resonate with you on some level, or whether you would choose different terms?
April: I guess, hold on, can you describe some examples of the sovereignism and the echoism ones?
Dawn: So echoism would be a fear of uselessness, and this I think is sort of what you described with the therapist persona, that you derive a feeling of... you could probably describe it as a feeling of worthiness, but probably my theory more closely describes it as a feeling of usefulness and purposefulness, that you can derive that from helping another person. And then with NPD, it would be having some kind of external proof, like admiration, for example, or some physical provable successes, material successes that show you that you’re worthy. And with sovereignism, it’s controlling other people, exerting power in order to prove that you’re powerful and you’re not helpless.
April: I think out of the three, I mean, I think probably the main one is the obvious one, the narcissism that I relate to. I think for me, helping people, it’s more that I want to be seen to other people. It’s because I want them to see me as a smart person who knows about a lot of things, that knows really psychology well. So then when they have a problem and then I’ve helped them, then I feel like I’ve validated in my ability to be this wise person. It’s different than… I don’t know, because for me it’s different than people that go out of their way to do helpful things. I feel like I have to remind myself to do helpful things more. I don’t know.
Dawn: But if you were to do it in some indirect way, like you’re just at home alone and you write some blog posts that can’t even get any likes on whatever platform, and you’re hoping to reach some people with that, help with that, and maybe you have some view count that goes up so that you have some reassurance that you’re actually helping people, would that also give you a self-esteem boost?
April: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when I used to… well, when I was… when I posted about how long I’ve been sober from… I don’t know if I mentioned that, but I’ve been… I haven’t drank in a while, and it’s been two years since the last time I’ve drank. But I’ve had people tell me that I’ve been an inspiration for them or a motivation, and that’s made me feel a sense of worth, you know.
Dawn: But can you give that to yourself that you do something great and you know that you’ve had some impact and you feel the positive effect on your self-esteem without anyone having to tell you?
April: I can now, yeah. I don’t know if that was something that I initially was able to do, but I definitely nowadays can. Because now I… I mean, it also just feels good in terms of being two years without drinking. That makes me feel good about myself on my own. Reminding myself of my good traits is another way that I make myself feel good without the validation of others or whatever.
Dawn: Yeah, that’s cool that that works. Yeah, congrats!
Closing
Dawn: I’d just like to go through some more questions. Like, are you getting tired? Because we have only started the question list at this point.
April: Yeah, I am getting a little bit. I know, yeah. Of course I gotta eat and stuff.
Dawn: Yeah, we can do a part two at some point. Do you wanna do this again and then we can do the other questions then?
April: Yeah, another day.
Dawn: Yeah, sweet. Do you wanna say some final words, pitch your band, or whatever comes to mind?
April: Um… I guess. I don’t know. I had a fun time. Check out Violent Melody. Thanks for watching this. I hope I was a good guest.
Dawn: Yes, you were. Thank you so much for your openness and vulnerability and for coming on with your time.
April: Absolutely. All right. Well, yeah, we’ll do another one soon.
Dawn: Yeah, let’s schedule something. Thank you.
April: Yeah, we’ll schedule something for that. Cool.
Dawn: Yeah, bon appetit, and then good night at some point.
April: Yeah, you have a good night too.
Dawn: Yeah, bye.
April: Bye.
