Killer Relationships: Living With Narcissistic Personalities

Many times, common assumptions about narcissists are incorrect. For instance, narcissists are not secretly insecure, in fact, overconfidence is a distinguishing characteristic of narcissism.

Befriending a narcissistic person is like inviting an emotional vampire into your life. Narcissism is considered to be a less form of psychopathy; a soul with no footprints. Narcissistic people need admiration and believe themselves to be self-important and special. They are preoccupied with success, power and beauty. They think they are entitled to special treatment and that everyone should comply with their expectations, and take advantage of others to get what they want. Narcissistic personalities are unwilling to recognize the feelings or needs of others. They will be envious of others that appear to have been rewarded more then themselves, and display arrogant and bad behavior.

Some myths about narcissist personality disorder are:

1. Narcissism is high self-esteem. Absolutely not. People having true self-esteem focus on relationships; narcissists don't have this ability. Their objective is only what other people can do for them.

2. Narcissists are insecure and have lot self-esteem. Most people assume that narcissists are hiding insecurity. But, research does not confirm this belief. Narcissists think they are awesome. People that act like jerks do not need to boost their self-esteem; self-esteem is their problem!

3. Perhaps they have a reason for being narcissistic. This is not true. Narcissists are like everyone else, except they believe they are stupendous. They proclaim to be intelligent and smart, but actual IQ tests indicate they are just average.

4. A bit of narcissism is healthy. Basically, narcissism is never healthy for other people. It seems to work out alright for the narcissist in short term, but in the long term, they will destroy relationships at work and home, only to end up in a state of depression later on it life.

5. Narcissism is physical vanity. Physical vanity is connected to narcissism, but other aspects of narcissism are materialism, entitlement, anti-social behavior, and relationship difficulties.

6. You must be narcissistic to be successful. This is not true. Self-esteem does not create success. Successful narcissists are highly visible people, like Donald Trump and Paris Hilton. But, there are man successful people who we haven't heard of; they're just successful.

7. Narsiccism is healthy love for yourself. Society promotes they idea that you have to love yourself in order to love someone else. But, if you love yourself excessively, there isn't any love left over for anyone else. Narcissistic personalities are not good relationship partners, most of the time. They do not really care about their partners as non-narcissistic people do.

If we allow this condition to be unopposed, sit back and do nothing, it will ruin us. Each of us has the power to decide whether or not we allow 'old fashioned' values for a healthy and prosperous life to be taken away and destroyed by narcissistic individuals.