Sure, you can ask. I don't think I had ever visited this forum before, that I can remember anyway.

I have never used labels on people like they do here at PC. I can't ever remember saying or thinking "oh that person is a real narcissist" either. I always was taken back when I came across others who just didn't care though. I know most people use the computer a lot and are so used to doing research on it, but I didn't use it until I had to for my business. I didn't like the computer because when my daughter was using it in High School, someone was able to figure out her password and did some bad things and even used our credit card that we had set everything up with. Back then there was not as much protection as there is now either. Plus I was always working and very busy so I never had the time to sit and interact on the computer. But, then it got so I had to use the computer for my business and pretty much that was the only thing I really used the computer for.

Well, when I witnessed my neighbor's dog cause so much damage to everything I worked so hard for, and I did love and appreciate every pony and horse and was often picked on for being so maticulous about all of them, I was overwhelmed by all the damages. I had a minni hospital going on and it was sad and overwhelming me. My neighbors "knew" their containment system was not working, they knew I didn't want their dogs on my farm, so they let that dog out late at night or when I was not home. I had so much anger and grief and shock really and I was constantly tending to so many injuries and my favorite one died in spite of my efforts to save her, that I broke. I was not sleeping well for going on 5 months and it got so I just could not get up and go out there and do another day of it.

I had spent so much time and effort into trying to manage my family challenges, understanding my husband's alcoholism and how to help my daughter thrive and do well in spite of her dyslexia. I had to learn all about how my husband never really matured because he had started binging at such a young age and his maturity level was that of about 12 or 13. Then I had a whole other set of issues in trying to understand how my daughter's brain worked and while she had a high IQ, she processed information very differently. Both my husband and daughter are dsylexic. They both had low self esteem because of it too. I did not want my daughter to end up like my husband either, having a problem with drugs or alcohol. So everything I did was all about providing a "positive" way of living and being "productive" instead of "running from life and into alcohol abuse".

I found my husband crying in the woods as his pony he worked with was badly damaged and my daughter's show horse was crippled and she was a mess, it was way too much. I could not "fix" any of it, it was just too overwhelming in every way. My brain just didn't know what to do with all that and I became very suicidal. It was complete "overload" in every way, physically and mentally. I had been constantly tending to these injuries every day for 5 months and it was physically draining with all the hand walking and kneeling on my knees tending to the one that didn't make it. I did not know what "hyper vigilance" was, but, I was stuck day and night in it. So, it got to a point where in every way I just could not "function" and being suicidal was out of shear mental and physical exhaustion.

I just broke down and ended up being taken to a psych ward. I just remember the overwhelming exhaustion and needing to have a presence to help me process it all, because I could not process it all. The psychiatrist I met was from India and spoke with an accent. I did not know it then, but he decided that I should not be "that upset" and diagnosed me with "narcissistic". I was treated "badly" for breaking even by my own family and my older sister came in to see me and basically yelled at me to get with it or I would lose my marriage/family/farm/everything. I was so cold, could not get warm and did not realize that I was in "shock". Plus the room they put me in was also cold, the patients knew I was in the room where the heat was not working. I had this thing they called a blanket, but it really did not provide any warmth and I was so cold that I kept it wrapped around me, even over my head, I just could not seem to get warm. My feet ached too because of all the handwalking I had been doing and I developed planter's facietus, but didn't know what that was at the time.

I just remember wanting to sleep and being so tired, I had never been that kind of tired in my entire life either. But, they don't let you really just shut down in a psych ward, they were constantly coming in the room every 15 minutes and I was constantly being "startled awake". I tried making the blanket into a tent over me to block that constant intrusion out because the desire to "sleep and let go" was unbelieveable. My entire mind and body wanted the "hyper vigilance" to "stop". That can't happen in a place where they intrude every 15 minutes, and the people around you are "crazy" and a man follows you around telling you he is "Jesus Christ" and "drugs" are not something desirable either, when in a place where you don't feel "safe" at all. I was kept there for 9 days and I could not leave as I was locked in. I sat at a table with people who were on all kinds of drugs with all kinds of MI problems for a Thanksgiving meal. None of my family came to see me either. I took one shower there as a friend called me and told me she was coming to see me and it was important I take a shower. That shower was horrible, not private and I had to have a nurse watch me blow dry my hair and make an attempt to look like "me" somehow. And it is hard to take a shower and be in such a cold room afterwards too.

I had to literally "beg" to get out of there too. I had to beg my older sister, plead with her to help me get out because of how that place was not good for me. I finally got to leave and I was more tired than when I went in and my husband was not nice to me "at all", he was "angry" and "cold and mean". I did not know what "trauma" meant, and I was not treated for it "at all".

Then I saw a psychologist in out patient. She did not believe the value of some of the damaged horses/ponies and diagnosed me with "illusions of grandeur", which is part of narcissim too. I did not even realize she would not believe me or I would have provided her with the appraisals.

Then I saw another psychiatrist who diagnosed me with PTSD and told me how that psych ward was the wrong place for me to go. He had lots of ideas about medications too. And he put me on Welbutrin, which actually "aggrivated" the PTSD and is not even recommended to treat PTSD with either. The only diagnoses I heard was PTSD. And I could no longer afford to even see the psychiatrist because of the mounting debt created by all the veterinary expenses from all the damage that took place. I had started a lawsuit too. And the first lawyer I had quit the firm she was working with so I had a new lawyer who thought that I could include my psychological in my case verses the other one telling me I could not. So I signed a release so he could get my medical files.

The psychiatrist I had seen prescribed Klonopin to help me sleep as I had been experiencing night terrors and was not sleeping. He told me that my GP could take over refilling that prescription. My GP did not want to do that and so I went in to see him and he came into the examining room and was angry, so angry and he told me how anyone could expect him to be able to treat a patient who was so mentally disturbed was wrong and he called off things I had never heard of to me, and threw my records at me. I actually left him very confused and upset with all I could do to get to my car tbh. I sat in my car and looked at my records for the first time and that is when I saw this "narcissistic" diagnosis along with other things I didn't understand.

Well, I have to say that reading what had been said about me was "another shock" and it made me feel like what it boiled down to was, "OE is a bad person and should have never reacted to what happened to her the way she did". That is really when I began looking these different things up to try to understand it all. I thought, maybe I "am" a bad person somehow and I just didn't know it. And, now that I know a lot more about PTSD and trauma, I was already "self blaming" and expressing all the PTSD symptoms and it only "added insult to injury". I did take a very open minded approach to learning about what I was reading in my file, but it did make the PTSD worse because I began feeding into the "self blame" too much. And my family was also reacting to me already like "I was bad and wrong and selfish" too. I was not allowed to "grieve and talk" either, "Dont talk about it, don't go there, you are behaving badly if you go there".

I don't know why I am explaining this in length here because from what I have learned, I won't get any "empathy" from it. It took a very long time before I had the right kind of therapist to explain to me "why" I had been misdiagnosed too. Am I close to people who have NPD? Well, I think people around me have strong narcissistic traits. And I have come across people in my life with NPD and I didn't really understand it.

So, this thread happened to catch my eye and I decided to click on it. I do feel that there is a spectrum with "narcissism" and it would not surprise me if someone is misdiagnosed with NPD either, especially if they have experienced "trauma" because of how "trauma" can present "apathy" and "apathy" doesn't mean "no empathy" is there, it is just such a deep wound that someone can be emotionally turned off.

I "have" been hurt by people who have strong narcissistic traits. I can get triggered badly because of the PTSD and how badly I have been treated and misunderstood and misdiagnosed. I think that understanding it better can help take the bite out of the "triggers". I have "way too much" empathy to have it, I get very upset if I think baby birds in my barn are not being fed, or if my barn toad gets stepped on or if I see someone get treated badly or abused and I tend to self sacrifice to help others or hurt animals. However, at the same time because I have been so "traumatized" seeing things I loved destroyed, I can also have "apathy" where I am "afraid" to love now. It is something I now "fear" verses "embracing" as I used to.

I have also learned a lot about how different therapists and psychiatrists can be "apathetic" and can be too quick to diagnose patients wrong too. When I questioned my diagnoses I made it a point to go back and address that with the second psychiatrist too. I had brought information with me including the appraisals with me too. After that session he looked at me in a very serious way and said, "You are a very misunderstood person". Yet, time was up and he said no more so I have been learning all about "that statement" ever since.

So that is my long explaination. And I am glad I stopped here because I was able to learn about the INTJ which I had not known about before, I really think that discribes my father rather well too. Always nice to "understand" better IMHO.

OE