Thursday, November 04, 2004

Confessions of a Narcissist

Joe G. over at beppeblog had a recent post with a link to a quiz to determine your personality disorder. I thought that sounded like fun, so I took it. Now, I think I'm pretty healthy and even had that view confirmed, unsolicited, by a friend who is a social worker. But we can all use improvement, so I thought I'd find out where my problem areas are. I can't recall all the results, but my highest score was for narcissism and the next highest score was for being antisocial (which is not avoiding people, its more of a lack of empathy). I can't recall the rest, though I'm really low for obsessive-compulsive, which you'd know if you've seen my house -- it is not neat.

My initial reaction was wondering how high the percentage had to be for the disorder to be an actual problem -- I was in denial. I think its a good idea for me to sit with and reflect on the idea that I'm a narcissist because it will point the way to improvement. John Sanford in The Kingdom Within talks of how Jesus was the perfect personality from a Jungian--Myers-Briggs perspective. With that in mind, I'm not at all concerned about not having the optimal personality -- the goal is to become as perfect as possible and to work towards this, one must know where they fall short.

The description of narcissism is in keeping with some insights I've been having (you see, I'm so narcissitic that I knew it and I know how to stop being that way ;0). Seriously, I know I'm narcissistic in my mothering because I yell at my children out of frustration and annoyance rather than seeking a kinder response to them, being aware that they are just little growing, developing people, following childish instincts and learning all the time. This post is too long and is about to morph into a different subject, so I'll post on that next....

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