Appreciated. I follow Crocker’s Rules, so don’t hesitate to call out my bullshit.
Quite simply, hard work and small incremental gains are beneath you. Failures on inconsequential steps are unacceptable. If only a simple solution were found, the key would turn, and an uber-awesome-individual emerge.
That rings very true. Intellectually, I’ve learned over the last few years how wrong this attitude is and how crucial hard work is. Also, there were things I did work hard on, say programming or writing, but this ability has essentially disappeared by now and I’m unsure why, though it very well might be because I’m getting less attention nowadays. I’ll look into that.
Same goes for the link. The description is quite fitting.
Masochistic narcissists keep finding themselves in self-defeating circumstances which render success impossible—and “an objective assessment of their performance improbable” (Millon, 2000). They act carelessly, withdraw in mid-effort, are constantly fatigued, bored, or disaffected and thus passive-aggressively sabotage their lives. Their suffering is defiant and by “deciding to abort” they reassert their omnipotence.
The narcissist’s pronounced and public misery and self-pity are compensatory and “reinforce (his) self-esteem against overwhelming convictions of worthlessness” (Millon, 2000). His tribulations and anguish render him, in his eyes, unique, saintly, virtuous, righteous, resilient, and significant. They are, in other words, self-generated narcissistic supply.
This in particular gets an “Ouch! Yeah, I might be doing that, I guess… ”.
However, I notice my pattern of “Oh, that’s a cool idea, that must be it!”, but it doesn’t entail any actual improvement.
Thing is, I’m totally willing to accept that I’m fairly narcissistic and a “special snowflake”, but I realize that this is causing me suffering and is not a good self-image to have. Consciously, I see the value of small improvements and how disastrous and crappy my past approach is, so I’m interested in changing that. Whatever is causing the problem, I wanna get rid of it, not “merely” understand it.
I suspected (because of MoL) that I was only changing my personality on a very superficial level, but the unconscious need for specialness and attention was unaffected and just undid my changes every time. But trying to mentally access these unconscious needs or modifying them hasn’t worked out at all so far.
I have already given up hope of a silver bullet that will fix everything at once, but maybe I wasn’t nearly as thorough about giving up this fantasy as I should’ve been. I’ll try working on that.
I notice that you don’t mention other people in any of your solutions (except #9 where you are causing an attention fueling ruckus). Why not?
Because I’m not very social. I don’t find other people particularly interesting or helpful to be around, so I’m not. (This doesn’t include appreciating all their useful outputs, but only the people themselves.) I can enjoy spending time with friends (introvert style), but actually talking to people is very boring most of the time. (And I’m no exception here. I’m nowhere near the most interesting person in the world.)
I have tried talking about my problems / finding solutions with friends, but I found it to be ultimately useless or inefficient. (I can introspect much faster alone when I don’t have to explain myself all the time.) It’s the general psychotherapy problem. I end up with lots of “great insights”, even have fun, get some “deep emotions”, but it doesn’t actually change anything in the long run.
Appreciated. I follow Crocker’s Rules, so don’t hesitate to call out my bullshit.
That rings very true. Intellectually, I’ve learned over the last few years how wrong this attitude is and how crucial hard work is. Also, there were things I did work hard on, say programming or writing, but this ability has essentially disappeared by now and I’m unsure why, though it very well might be because I’m getting less attention nowadays. I’ll look into that.
Same goes for the link. The description is quite fitting.
This in particular gets an “Ouch! Yeah, I might be doing that, I guess… ”.
However, I notice my pattern of “Oh, that’s a cool idea, that must be it!”, but it doesn’t entail any actual improvement.
Thing is, I’m totally willing to accept that I’m fairly narcissistic and a “special snowflake”, but I realize that this is causing me suffering and is not a good self-image to have. Consciously, I see the value of small improvements and how disastrous and crappy my past approach is, so I’m interested in changing that. Whatever is causing the problem, I wanna get rid of it, not “merely” understand it.
I suspected (because of MoL) that I was only changing my personality on a very superficial level, but the unconscious need for specialness and attention was unaffected and just undid my changes every time. But trying to mentally access these unconscious needs or modifying them hasn’t worked out at all so far.
I have already given up hope of a silver bullet that will fix everything at once, but maybe I wasn’t nearly as thorough about giving up this fantasy as I should’ve been. I’ll try working on that.
Because I’m not very social. I don’t find other people particularly interesting or helpful to be around, so I’m not. (This doesn’t include appreciating all their useful outputs, but only the people themselves.) I can enjoy spending time with friends (introvert style), but actually talking to people is very boring most of the time. (And I’m no exception here. I’m nowhere near the most interesting person in the world.)
I have tried talking about my problems / finding solutions with friends, but I found it to be ultimately useless or inefficient. (I can introspect much faster alone when I don’t have to explain myself all the time.) It’s the general psychotherapy problem. I end up with lots of “great insights”, even have fun, get some “deep emotions”, but it doesn’t actually change anything in the long run.