Dear Seaturtle:

“Years ago when I was starting to spot narcissists, in my parents and on tv or on occasion my friends, I looked up what made a narcissist. I decided I couldn’t be because when someone explained to me how I hurt them I genuinely looked at myself and changed…“-

Wikipedia (I am paraphrasing some) makes an interesting distinction between Narcissism, destructive Narcissism, and Narcissistic personality Disorder, the three existing on the Narcissism Spectrum, or Continuum, and each one of the three existing on a spectrum of its own: “Narcissism exists on a continuum that ranges from normal to abnormal personality expressions… Some psychologists suggest that a moderate level of narcissism is supportive of good psychological health… Destructive narcissism is the constant exhibition of a few of the intense characteristics usually associated with pathological narcissistic personality disorder … <sup id=”cite_ref-APA_2-1″ class=”reference”></sup>On a spectrum, destructive narcissism is more extreme than healthy narcissism but not as extreme as the pathological condition”.

* I want to correct a mistake in my last post of Feb 24: “The diagnoses are categories of symptoms set by the DSM staff for the purpose of designing therapies to fit each category” (symptoms, not personality disorders).

“For some reason recently when I have tears, my eyes burn, it just happened again..“- it’s the sea turtle tears, more sea salt in its tears… Seaturtle is turning into a real-life sea turtle…

“this is funny I laughed out loud, I hope that’s ok“- yes, it’s okay.

“the gaslighting was the label of how he would be emotionally dishonest“- yes.

“Since I did it, I just hold on to this idea that if only I could explain it just right they would be like ‘oh my gosh, who am I?’ And so begins the journey...”- there is pain in the journey, and people are afraid of pain, therefore many don’t start or start and give up. Explaining things intellectually does not dissolve fear, if it’s intense.

“are you saying I demanded too much from him specifically, but not that my standards are too high for my lifetime partner who’s still out there? I hope so haha.”- at this point, I mean that you deserve a man who can carry on a deep conversation, one who does not Teflon and gaslight you, one who sees you and you need to lower your expectations in regard to a man seeing you and attending to you in all the ways you need to be seen and attended to.

I’ll read your 2nd post today and reply later.

anita