(Using sex pronouns in this write-up mirrors the professional realities: most narcissists are guys.) acim.
Anxiousness Problems– and also especially Generalised Anxiety Condition (GAD)– are commonly misdiagnosed as Egotistical Personality Disorder (NPD).
Stress and anxiety is uncontrollable as well as too much apprehension. Stress and anxiety disorders normally come teeming with obsessive thoughts, uncontrollable as well as ceremonial acts, uneasyness, exhaustion, irritability, problem focusing, and also somatic symptoms (such as a boosted heart price, sweating, or, in Anxiety attack, breast discomforts).
Necessarily, narcissists fear for social authorization or attention (Narcissistic Supply). The narcissist can not manage this demand and also the consequent stress and anxiety due to the fact that he needs outside feedback to control his labile sense of self-respect. This reliance makes most narcissists irritable. They fly into rages and also have a very low threshold of disappointment.
Like patients that suffer from Anxiety attack as well as Social Anxiety (one more stress and anxiety disorder), narcissists are horrified of being embarrassed or criticised in public. Consequently, many narcissists cannot work well in different settings (social, occupational, enchanting, and so on).
Numerous narcissists establish obsessions as well as obsessions. Like patients of GAD, narcissists are perfectionists and also preoccupied with the quality of their performance and the level of their skills. As the Diagnostic and also Statistical Handbook (DSM-IV-TR, p. 473) puts it, GAD individuals (specifically kids):.
” … (A) re generally overzealous in seeking authorization and also require excessive reassurance regarding their efficiency and also their various other worries.”.
This could apply equally well to narcissists. Both courses of people are paralysed by the anxiety of being evaluated as imperfect or lacking. Narcissists along with patients with anxiousness problems regularly fail to measure up to an internal, severe, and also vicious doubter as well as a grand, inflated self-image.
The egotistical option is to prevent comparison as well as competition completely and also to require unique treatment. The narcissist’s feeling of privilege is incommensurate with the narcissist’s true success. He takes out from the rat race due to the fact that he does not consider his opponents, associates, or peers deserving of his initiatives.
As opposed to narcissists, people with Anxiety Problems are bought their job and their career. To be exact, they are over-invested. Their obsession with perfection is counter-productive as well as, paradoxically, makes them underachievers.
It is easy to mistake today signs and symptoms of specific anxiousness conditions with pathological vanity. Both sorts of clients are worried about social approbation as well as seek it proactively. Both present a haughty or impervious exterior to the world. Both are dysfunctional and weighed down by a background of individual failure on duty and also in the family. But the narcissist is ego-dystonic: he is proud and pleased of who he is. The distressed individual is troubled and is trying to find help and a way out of his or her predicament. Thus the differential diagnosis.
Bibliography.
Goldman, Howard G. – Evaluation of General Psychiatry, 4th ed. – London, Prentice-Hall International, 1995 – pp. 279-282.
Gelder, Michael et al., eds. – Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry, Third ed. – London, Oxford University Press, 2000 – pp. 160-169.
Klein, Melanie – The Writings of Melanie Klein – Ed. Roger Money-Kyrle – 4 vols. – New York, Free Press – 1964-75.
Kernberg O. – Borderline Conditions as well as Pathological Narcissism – New York, Jason Aronson, 1975.
Millon, Theodore (and Roger D. Davis, factor) – Conditions of Personality: DSM IV as well as Beyond – Second ed. – New York, John Wiley and also Sons, 1995.
Millon, Theodore – Personality Disorders in Modern Life – New York, John Wiley and Sons, 2000.
Schwartz, Lester – Egotistical Personality Disorders – A Professional Conversation – Journal of Am. Psychoanalytic Association – 22 (1974): 292-305.
Vaknin, Sam – Deadly Self Love – Vanity Revisited, 6th revised impact – Skopje and also Prague, Narcissus Publications, 2005.