Narcs are everywhere!

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narcissists_everywhere

According to the largest study ever conducted on personality disorders (PD) by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), 5.9% of the U.S. population has BPD (Grant et al. 2008) and 6.2% has NPD (Stinson et al. 2008). As some people fit both diagnoses [BPD or NPD], about 10 percent of the U.S. population has BPD and/or NPD.

(From BPD Central: https://www.bpdcentral.com/faq/personality-disorders)

I’ve read elsewhere that this “rare” disorder (NPD) affects between 1 and 4% of the American population.

But narcs just seem to be everywhere. My boss is a narc, at least half of my family are narcs, every man I’ve ever been in a relationship with has been a narc, my roommate is a narc (low spectrum), my next door neighbor is a narc, and even random people I meet in places like the grocery store show a lot of narcissistic behaviors.

They’re all over TV, all over the news, hosting that obnoxious morning radio show as you battle traffic with more raging narcs on the road. They run for office and run corporations, they run churches and schools, and and they’re all over the Internet.

They’re lurking behind everyday people too. The nice lady serving you your morning coffee at the local Waffle House could be one. The guy who comes to mow your lawn could be one. So could the UPS guy, or God forbid, the woman you leave your kids with when you go out.

If I type “narcissists are…” in my browser, “narcissists are everywhere” comes up second. So evidently I’m not the only one who’s noticed this.

Since the planet does seem to be crawling with them like a bad case of lice, how do they make up such a tiny percentage of the population? ?

17 thoughts on “Narcs are everywhere!”

  2. I wonder; what would Make one narcissistic? If you do not have the problem genetically; what conditions would produce in you, the traits of a narc?
    I’m Thinking along the lines of spoiled kids never hearing no, and growing up rich (just as an example).
    would this adult not be ignorant to the hurt they cause, only thinking of their needs? (just a thought in any case).

    Expanding of nurtured narcissism; I firmly believe (excuse any offence) that some* men have some form of narcissism borne out of the message they grow up hearing about being all important and the head of humankind and growing up seeing a torrent of images of men conquering etc.
    *(particularly those that subscribe to patriarchy, sexism etc.)

    I think I read in a Guardian article about a study being done. best i look it up again.

    Anywho; maybe all of these thoughts are out there in the interweb already.
    goood post Lucky Otter and excuse my ramblingses!

    Liked by 2 people

    • Well, I think you are partly right–some narcs were spoiled when they were kids. Most were abused though. Vaknin considers spoiling a form of abuse, because it doesn’t allow the child to form a sense of self–they are put on a pedestal and this gets internalized.
      NPD is more common in males. I agree with you that might be due to the cultural factors, but I also think it’s just that men get diagnosed with NPD more than women do, who are more likely to get a BPD diagnosis even if their behaviors are the same.
      I’m glad you liked my post.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Maybe the word is easily over used and too many people get mislabled as one? It’s like how these women on ASPartners think every rude person or asshole has Asperger’s and I saw a thread there where few of them decided if one doesn’t laugh at your joke, they are on the spectrum and that is how you spot one. Or how people might think every smart person or someone who is socially awkward has it too or because they have a stereotype about it like computers or being good at math. We have to remember degrees and what makes something a disorder and when something isn’t a disorder. I also see psychopath being thrown around too so I am always skeptical when people say someone is one because I see people being labeled with it too often.

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  4. I also get offended when someone online suggests a kid that is violent has autism. I was offended when I was watching a Dr. Phil show with my mother about a violent 8 year old and he liked to threaten to knives also and my mom said “I wonder if he is autistic” when the mother said on there how he gets mad when he is told to do something and he is in the middle of something. I was like “Gosh no I hope not” and then was relieved when they said he was not autistic and I was like “Yay.” But I had to fight back the urge saying something about it to my mother.

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  5. I agree that it seems as if we’re up to our ears in narcissists these days. I think the problem is that some (many?) people are part-time (amateur) narcissists, while others are “professional” narcissists, and this latter group accounts for the percentage labeled as having NPD. The “me first” society has little to do with the original myth about a beautiful young man cursed to fall in love with his reflection and to then die of unrequited love. The ancient Greeks had a better sense of justice than we do, I think.

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    • I agree with this. Especially about the way modern day society encourages and idealizes narcissism and narcissitic people. I think our society is very dangerous right now, and NPD is probably far more common than it was about 30 years ago, which is when things all started going to hell with the “greed is good” mindset, which I’m going to post about later.

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  6. I don’t think the idea that a certain percent of the population “has” NPD and a certain percent doesn’t have NPD makes sense. Narcissistic traits occur along a spectrum from more to less severe, and furthermore are constantly shifting based on the environment/relationships each person has. So the idea of a certain percent of people that have NPD is all-or-nothing and misleading, to me.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Good point about the spectrum. Many people without NPD may display narcissistic traits, or act like narcissists in certain situations over others (such as in business, where narcissism is an “advantage”)
      As I replied to Dr. Linda Labin , I also think NPD may be far more prevalent today than it was 30+ years ago, when narcissistic traits were not as highly valued as they are right now.

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      • Perhaps that is true that the penetration or saturation of narcissistic traits… as well as the prevalence of superficially defined NPD… is higher today than 30 years ago. Maybe it was also high in the Gilded Age (e.g. 1920s) in the age of the robber barons and the gilded aristocracy, and also at other times in history like around the French Revolution.

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        • Yes, I would agree, the past 30+ years (since Reagan was elected really) is very similar to the Gilded Age, another time when narcissism seemed to be valued over community and cooperation.

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  7. Dear Lucky,
    i read somewhere in the Bible about the last days when men will become lovers of themselves…something like that. Sounds like these days, there seem to be alot of those maggots about. As for mislabeling??? If it looks like a duck… it’s a duck! What part do too many folks not understand. By the way, i do NOT trust the mental-health people – that’$ all a racket. If i have questions, i go to two places (1) the Bible and (2) blogs.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I really can’t say if we’re in the Last Days or not ( I do not interpret the Bible literally), but if we are, then it would fit that our society and the people in it have become more narcissistic. As for mental health people, you are probably right. There’s so much confusion about how to classify and label mental illnesses and narcissism is especially confusing. As I’ve said so many times before, psychiatric diagnosis is more an art form than a science really.

      Thanks for staying around, and by the way, your comment showed up in my spam folder–I have no idea why it did that. It’s happened several times over the last few days. That’s why I won’t set it to automatic delete.

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