March 13, 2012
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Am I Narcissistic?
Now that I wrote out that title, I am getting a sense of deja’ vu…like I have blogged about this subject previously. But I have no idea when and don’t know what conclusion I came to at that point, so we’ll just start fresh.
Shall we?
For some reason, I always have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that maybe I am a narcissistic person. I think it is because I am naturally quite selfish (Why do you think being a Mom has been so hard for me?) and because I like to get my fair share of the words in when I am having a conversation with someone else. Or because I tend to think, when someone tells me something, “How will this affect me?” (Not that I don’t care how things affect my friends, but I tend to also care a lot about how the situation will affect me.) I also have struggled to be an empathetic person. It is not real easy for me to put myself in someone else’s shoes when I haven’t actually ever been there myself.
Plus, I seem to think about myself a lot, which bothers me.
I feel like if I were to catalog my thoughts every day and have them displayed in a pie graph, they might look something like this:
{Does the fact that I just spent about 10 minutes of my life making a pie graph which showed the break-down of my perception of my daily thoughts say anything about the subject I am writing about? Let’s say not, OK? P.S. I absolutely could not figure out how to get that pie graph to copy and paste onto Xanga. So, I then thought of drawing out the pie graph in “Paint” and seeing if that would work. Hey, you gotta give me this. I am VERY determined once I get an idea into my head.)
(Note…in case you can’t read it, the yellow part of the pie graph stands for “Food”. And yes, I am currently on a diet. How did you guess?)
Oh, and I also did 2 quizzes online in preparation for this blog post and read up on narcissism on Wikipedia. From all of the information that I gathered, it turns out that I am not at all narcissistic, because the way I am using the word is nowhere close to the way a person who is actually narcissistic feels or acts or thinks. In fact, on the one 40 question quiz that I took, I scored about 1.3 points lower on the narcissism scale than the national average. (If you want to take the quiz for yourself, HERE is the link!)
I think maybe sometimes healthy confidence can be confused with narcissism. At least it seemed so to me in the one quiz that I took.
But…when you think the whole world revolves around you, when you always want to be the center of attention, or when you think everybody needs to notice and care about everything related to you, then you are probably bordering on narcissistic.
Another part of my problem is that often when I am thinking of “myself” during the day, it is in the interest of learning to become a better person. I have never had much respect for people who are not a bit introspective. I think that when you just glibly go on always doing things the way you have and don’t recognize your negative patterns, you are on the fast track to becoming someone that no one really cares for and you will have a lot of problems in your life and never be able to figure out why.
But…here is what I think that I am learning and maybe why this whole “thinking too much of myself” subject is nagging at my brain. I think it is the Holy Spirit saying to me something like this:
“Audrey…if you would focus more on God, you WILL change and become more like Him. And, if you focus more on other’s needs and concerns and interests, you WILL find yourself surrounded by people who also care about you.”
Sometimes I go about things backwards and God needs to stand in my path, make a pie graph for me, and tell me to stop being so concerned about myself.
Yeah, I think that is what just happened.
PS — This post may be a bit too honest. I have this urge to write a bunch of disclaimers about how I really am a nice person, how I do have friends that I care about, etc., etc. But, back to the honesty thing. It is. ^^^ So I’ll just leave it at that.
Comments (6)
Audrey you’re so funny. I could have written this post myself, I think. I feel the same way. I would like to applaud you for food making the chart. Seriously, I love that.
I love you so much and I think you are one of the nicest people I have ever come across online, so the disclaimers aren’t necessary. I obsess about myself like waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much too… So i’m going to have to take that quiz, OF COURSE! I know everyone appreciates it, but THANK YOU for being honest. I never get done being refreshed by it. I am having a lot of trouble being honest, thus my lack of blogging.
haha. you make me smile.i would totally agree that you just have a healthy confidence vs. being narcissistic. that’s so not you.and that part about going at things backwards.. yeah. me too.
nope. not too honest for me. and you are so not narcissistic. n.o.t. i like what meg wrote ^^^ you are one of the nicest…and “THANK YOU for being honest. I never get done being refreshed by it.”and your words about God… ”Yeah, I think that is what just happened.” funny how HE does that. maybe our backwards is His forward.
I really love the pie graph. And I could have written almost every word here. But you got to it before I did and did a better job than I could have. I like you.
ah, my dear friend!! this is WHY i love you so much!! your honesty!!! ”keep on keeping it real”!! (does that bring back any memories??!!)