This gentleman is a hard-working member of Aunt Alex’s Army. Whether he knows it or not.
Next time a narcissist pretends to be adorable, compare him to this kid, and see how he measures up.
Monthly Archives: January 2013
Fixing it.
Troops, I’d like to present the latest volume in the Aunt Alex’s Army compendium.
Mending the Mirror: What Science and Medicine Have to Say About Fixing the Narcissistic Personality, In Plain English, is the result of Aunt Alex spending many late nights curled up with scientific studies, books, and medical journals, shaking her head in frowning disbelief, vowing to spread the word to the troops about her findings. And her findings just aren’t pretty, Troops.
Does it ever seem like the mental health world has hope to offer people with personality disorders and their families, but the hope tends to be very vague and the evidence very obscure? In Mending the Mirror, we’ve sorted out what the research has been, what the findings are, what has been tried, and what the scientists are working on now. We’ll go through why that hope is so vague — and why toads act the way they do. We’ll do all of this with scientific data and medical references, all in plain, clear, simple English (something at which scientists and doctors tend to be somewhat untrained).
I’d like some thoughtful feedback about this book. If you’re interested and willing, please drop me a line at alexandranouri@gmail.com. The first six responses will get a free digital file of the book, and in return I ask only for an honest review on Amazon.
In the meantime, the above was taken at Army Headquarters, where it is currently a brisk 8 degrees Fahrenheit. Factor in the wind chill, and it’s -15 — that’s fifteen below zero, thank you very much. Bundle up, Troops. Mother Nature is reminding us who’s the boss.
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Viva la Voice
Preach it, Sistah Anne.
Troops, if you ever feel like you need to edit your own pasts to protect abusers, or to give toads the benefit of the doubt, or to keep from making waves (all MUCH more honorable reasons than the narcissist’s reasons, when he edits the past just to get what he wants), well, let those days be over.
Talk about, write down, and/or think through what happened with clarity, confidence and honesty, and let the responsibility for events fall where it may. You know the reality, and it’s time to trust it. The Army is protecting YOU. It’s giving YOU the benefit of the doubt. It’s calming things in YOUR mind and YOUR life.
End the voicelessness. Tell your story. Let the healing begin.
Note to give props: ‘Boy Reading to Elephant’ is by one of Aunt Alex’s favorite artists, Gregory Colbert. You can check him out at gregorycolbert.com.
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Dear Aunt Alex — 1/21/13
::Because Aunt Alex gets mail.
Dear Aunt Alex,
You call them narcissists, but they also sound just like psychopaths, or sociopaths, or antisocials. They do the exact same things. Does calling them narcissists let them off the hook, when, really, they are social predators? Do you think there’s a difference between narcissists and sociopaths?
Signed,
Gracie
Dear Gracie,
This is a great question. The short answer: There are differences between all of those, but those differences aren’t meaningful for the troops. All toads are toxic, and useless in relationships, and will ruin your life. Neither arsenic nor gasoline are good in a pie, and neither narcissists nor sociopaths are good in any part of your life.
So, having said that, here’s a primer on toads:
Narcissists, psychopaths, antisocial types, and sociopaths all are “defined” by the way they are seen by mental health professionals.
Unfortunately for those who seek understanding, this mental health perspective of things is always changing. However, most doctors, scientists and therapists agree that there is a lot of overlap among them all. The general issues clumping them together are empathy and disordered thinking. They’re bat-house crazy, and don’t care about other people. The subtle differences between them tend to involve whether they’ve been arrested yet or not, minor differences in their ability to control themselves or cover their butts, how grandiose they are, and whether or not they’ve tortured anyone physically. Those differences are important for scientists who are working on figuring things out, but they’re not important for the rest of humanity.
The point? They’re all the same. So, the next time a narcissist sends you a text, assure yourself: I want to gush to my friends about how thrilled I am that the psychopath is still in my life. I want to invite the criminal over for dinner. It’s really not so hard for others to see how adorable a sociopath can be. It’ll ruin your life, but it’ll keep him away from the rest of us.
I like your question a lot, Gracie, because the words we use are critical to how we make our decisions and sort out our feelings. Toads are nasty business, and if calling a toad a ‘psychopath’ or a ‘criminal’ instead of a ‘narcissist’ helps put their true nature into focus, by all means, do it.
It’s absolutely true that he is all of those things. Whether he comes in “has a police record” or “physically abusive” varieties, doesn’t matter. Call it poison, or toxin, or contaminant, or bad-bad-icky-stuff, I want that arsenic kept out of my pie.
Aunt Alex is finishing up work on a manuscript, the research for which has taken the Army’s understanding of toads (and the hopelessness of trying to get along with them) to a whole new level. Stay tuned.
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