Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Anti-Social Personality disorder are considered UNTREATABLE as a mental health problem or condition. Because Cluster B personality types are just that — personality types — there is no real cure because the diagnosis of the condition has nothing to do whatsoever with illness.
When a person develops an egocentric perspective as a child, the older they get, the more likely they are to develop personality traits that reflect a sense of entitlement that’s quite grandiose. Expecting or demanding that the world revolves around them, all Cluster B thinkers tend to take advantage of other people’s goodwill and trust.
NPD, or Narcissistic Personality Disorder, tends to form in the mind of an over-indulged and under-parented or neglected child by or before the age of six. In cases of extreme neglect, egocentrism is the likely outgrowth of a survivalist perspective.
However, in children showing early warning signs that they are not maturing emotionally while keeping pace with their own growth and development in other areas of life academically as well as chronologically, it’s important not to give up hope.
Bad parenting choices create children with Oppositional Defiant traits; so can Dark Triad elders or social influences having an impact on the consciousness of a child who’s developing. But good parents can turn out children with NPD traits emerging in a child’s personality from their toddler years, forward.
If a medical condition like Autism or Fetal Alcohol Syndrome causes a child to lack the neurological capacity to view the world from a wider perspective, the way their caretaker nurtures them from birth through age 12 tends to have the greatest impact.
If parents have social and emotional support from one another (as co-parents) and actual help — rather than undermining — from extended family, family friends, therapists, and school teachers while the child is growing up, there’s a chance that many of the more toxic elements of NPD that take the shape of habits can be successfully ameliorated. This is true for working with children with ODD as well as Childhood Conduct Disorder, the precursor diagnosis to Anti-Social Personality Disorder.
However, note that exposure to trauma… especially REPEATED and varying forms of traumatization… has a major impact on the success or failure of any child or adult age human.
It is also crucial to note that the LESS support and MORE INTERFERENCE a loving, kind, non-Cluster parent has while raising an At-Risk Child, the more likely the parent is to develop C-PTSD issues themselves from being constantly exposed to not only the child’s temper tantrums and abusive behavior, but the pain of watching their child escalate in toxic behavior after witnessing or enduring trauma without being able to prevent Abusers and Flying Monkeys from eviscerating hope is overwhelmingly heartbreaking in the most tragic of ways.
At-Risk children who end up alienated from their healthier, more emotionally sensitive parents tend to go on to abuse in their personal and professional life as adults conscience-free and without mercy. It’s a sad fact, but if your child shows early warning signs of becoming narcissistic by nature, the right way to nurture them out of it is to totally remove them from the social influence of any and all toxic friends, family members, or strangers.
Homeschooling with private tutors and residential behavioral experts is one of the best options to help limit an at-risk child’s exposure to toxic adolescent and teen behavior. But even if parents are functionally able to limit a toxic teen’s run-ins with the law, gangs, drugs, alcohol, or bullies who they might deem it’s fit to emulate, once the child turns 18, the burden of responsibility falls squarely on their young adult shoulders.
Since many teens have been culturally nurtured to think narrow-mindedly and without empathy in order to survive things like being forced to attend public school or a private school where competition (rather than goodwill ethics) is fostered socially and/or academically, it is not surprising that many head off to college with a grandiose sense of self and little to no street smarts when it comes to relationships. As such, before giving up hope that your adult child is going to mature into a loving, caring, socially in-tune, and loving elder human being, be patient and give them space for a bit.
Those kids who have been properly socialized by word but failed to heed warnings tend to end up in miserable relationships, having problems with roommates, have difficulty finding or keeping a long term job (or if they luck into one, no one at work can typically stand to be around them much).
NPD and ASPD are lifelong conditions, noting that the symptoms define their very definition. Narcissistic people are egocentric, socially competitive thinkers who will do or say virtually anything in order to self-promote at the direct expense of others. The only thing that offends their vertical thinking sense and sensibilities more than the idea of being wrong or losing some sort of debate, conflict, or battle is the idea of anyone being able to create a win-win situation.
Since people who have NPD are competitive thinkers, the only way they feel successful in life is when they are scapegoat targeting someone else to be the loser. That mindset is not a philosophy one can “cure”.
The same thing goes for people with ASPD. Those who are emotionally numb or untrusting due to having witnessed or themselves been exposed to neglect or abuse tend to present as bored Sociopaths, preferring to taunt and provoke or make mayhem in the psychology of others to alleviate their own boredom while making themselves feel powerful.
People who have ASPD who also display traits of aggression tend to develop Psychopath or Malignant Personality types by or before the age of 29. Paying careful attention to their social interactions, their driving record, and whether or not they have been involved in criminal activity (regardless of whether or not they have been “caught”) is crucial for diagnosis.
If a person exhibits traits of NPD and ASPD simultaneously, and they are Machiavellian (meaning manipulative, duplicitous, and scheming), they are typically referred to as Dark Triads in self-help literature circa the year 2000 forward. Before that time, most were referred to as ‘psychic vampires’. Again, if the type is prone to enjoying violence, the term Psychopath tends to be used to describe their behavior. However, a Sociopath will use threats, brute force, and other intimidating threats of coercion on a targeted victim to get what they want when and if they deem physically abusing their target will produce results for them that are either (in their opinion) amusing or somehow expedient.
For these reasons, finding a CURE for something like NPD or ASPD — terms used to define character, not implying that a Cluster B person is mentally ill and therefore excused from taking responsibility for their words, choices, actions, deeds, lack of action, or any other socially toxic behavior — is not only impossible by definition, it’s futile to strive for in general.
Once a Cluster B thinker with an untreatable personality disorder is discovered, the right way to show respect for both them and yourself if to set healthy boundaries, keep a safe distance socially and emotionally, and learn all you can about how to recover emotionally and physically from the stress they are likely to induce each and every time you encounter one in a public setting or private sphere. Yelling at a person about their eyes being blue or them being too short or too tall is actually LESS abusive than trying to force a Cluster B person to behave with empathy rather than properly taught and successfully mimicked social virtue.
If you REALLY love a person with NPD or ASPD, understand that enabling them to abuse you or others directly harms everyone. They, every person they come into contact with in life, and everyone someone they have targeted for social abuse is personally involved within their social or professional life.
That is a lot of dominoes pushed by one person to think about, isn’t it? All the people victims cannot be there for to love, help, or care for properly because they themselves are psychically, physically, or emotionally restricted.
Look for signs of magical thinking in narcissistic people to determine the extent of their behavioral issues. For instance, a Malignant Narcissist might file a plethora of frivolous lawsuits seeking to gain emotional power over others and to financially abuse, but a Narcopath will file frivolous lawsuits and will do things like ignoring lawful court orders.
Any person with contempt of court charges and a history of High Conflict Divorce is likely to be of the untreatable personality disorder sort. So are people with excessive traffic violations, road rage incidents, and a history of animal abuse, pet neglect, or domestic violence.
People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and/or Anti-Social Personality Disorder are considered untreatable by mental health experts; here’s why. People with Cluster B personality types tend to abuse without conscience. Using techniques known as gaslighting and bullying to get their way, when you couple a remorseless nature with material profit and the illusion of social prestige gain, why on earth would they possibly be inclined in this lifetime to give a rat’s patootie about anyone or anything?
A statement like that might sound like sour grapes until you take out the emotional response and projected critique. Treatable, as a word, implies there is might be a “cure”; to say someone has an UNTREATABLE personality disorder, it literally means there’s no illness or malfunction to treat.
By and large, people with Cluster B personality disorders tend to thrive socially and emotionally. Dominating in business, personal life, and finances (due to bullish greed), they don’t end up in counseling.
Everyone who comes into close contact with people who have ASPD or NPD tends to end up emotionally distressed and spiritually fatigued. After all, the more people enable and spend time trying to figure out what on earth they did or did not due to provoke, disappoint, or enrage Cluster B people, the more likely the Abuser is to sit back and relax, gloating while watching people they can manipulate to do their bidding or to suffer paralyzing emotional breakdowns just by casting a glance after their supply source has proper Stockholm Syndrome style training.
People with NPD and ASPD tend to make the most money, have the most social support from duped, star-struck, or glamoured Enablers and they delight in chaos manufacturing. Lacking the neurological capacity to self-reflect in any profound or meaningful way, as their arguments get more cerebral or somatic in nature, they themselves tend to get more abusive towards other people (rather than less)as they age.
Thus, unlike people with Borderline Personality Disorder who can tone down their propensity to behave abusively towards others when and if they decide to rage by taking a mood-stabilizing drug and working with Psychoanalysts and Behavioral Specialists to learn more respectful and socially productive ways to engage in an effort to avoid driving people away, people with NPD and ASPD toe a different party line for their entitlement themed cause, purposefully.
Where a Histrionic craves being in the spotlight as the center of attention in a crowd in a theatrical way, the Borderline fears abandonment and being ignored or left to their own devices in some way. But the Narcissist, Sociopath, and Psychopath’s goals are to self-preserve, self-protect, and most of all to self ADVANCE.
What that means is, the more outwardly successful a person with NPD or ASPD appears to be in life, the more likely they are to have gotten ahead in life by seeking to dominate.
Power and control of other people’s emotional states, robbing victims and narcissistic supply sources of their private thoughts and IRL time by forcing them to deal with the social predator’s constant attempts to cause social ruin for their self-perceived rivals or to literally waste their time, and grandiose fantasies that involve the Abuser asserting they are somehow “entitled” are all the typical personality traits of human beings with faulty hardwiring.
It is their anomaly that makes them successful in one lifetime ONLY, noting that because all narcissistic thinkers tend to prioritize their own needs and desires over that of their young, entire bloodlines of toxic family units eventually just peter out.
Try treating them if you want — but not to “cure” some medical or moral defect. People with narcissistic traits know instinctively that because they all tend to destroy their own young, that it’s smart to breed as many mini-me conformist children that they can. If a person is the last of their line and they are so toxic they destroy their only living relatives, by the time they get down to having only one or two family members left, if the victims refuse to conform or enable, then the social predator’s damaged DNA stops culturally influencing the rest of the human evolutionary nest.
Narcissists and Sociopaths have similar thinking, though that’s likely to leave a co-dependent, co-narcissistic do-gooder feeling vexed. Both types are egocentric, socially competitive, toxic thinkers, making them likely to chew up and spit out any person or peer group who dares to suggest there’s a) anything at all wrong with their personal behavior or b) that they should in any way, shape, or form actually consider the very real fact that there might be a long-term benefit in being kind in general and behaving respectfully both with and towards other people.
Don’t believe us? Try setting a healthy boundary line — one that’s likely to only mildly trigger or inconvenience you if they break it. Put it out there clearly and respectfully in such a way that there can be no confusion about how you have asked to be treated. Then… wait.
The one thing a narcissistic social predator with a devious personal agenda to make mischief in the lives of other human beings cannot stand it’s being asked or told to respect other people. The more narcissistic, emotionally unintelligent, and biologically compromised a Cluster B suspect, the more likely they are to go out of their way to overtly show you implied social, emotional, and personal disrespect by crossing each and every healthy boundary or right to your personal privacy with zeal.
