Seeing narcissism before it finds you can be a task. Self-absorbed and narcissism are not the same thing. Each human possess some trends toward narcissism and we all can be selfish from time-to-time. Empathy is the easiest distinguishing factor between self-absorption and narcissism. Someone who is self-absorbed feels empathy and can show genuine sympathy. Someone who is narcissistic cannot and does not understand the concept. He or she may act sympathetic because this is what is expected and this person is mirroring those around him/her rather than expressing emotion. But when pressed to discuss, reflect or analyze why he or she has feelings of empathy, a narcissist cannot.

One of the reasons Couples Company and most relationship experts recommend dating, (seeing each other at least twice a week and speaking on the phone nearly everyday…long distance does not count in this recommendation) a full year before marrying comes from a concern over spotting psychological problems, anti-social behavior and sociopaths in the dating pool before you say I do. Some problems like active drug and alcohol addition, mental or physical abuse and con-artists bubble to the surface during this period. Most people, including narcissists can behave well for 3-to-6 months. Very few can hide who they really are on a day-to-day basis for a full year.

Living a lie takes a tremendous amount of energy and one of the advantages of dealing with narcissists, self worshipping elitists, is they think they are smarter and better than everyone else so they tend to slip up sooner than con-artists or addicts, whom are somewhat paranoid and hyper-vigilant due to the fact they know they are hiding something. Narcissists do not believe they have a problem. Everyone else does, but not them. Second, they are very good at superficial relationships, possessing charm, a sense of excitement about being with them, (remember they are grandiose and attribute a high level of sophistication and elitism to self and often look like the ‘person in the know’ the person to be with. A little research into their background will tell you if their boasting matches their presented achievements. Narcissists, you’ll find are generally smoke and mirrors with little substance). With that said, what types of signs should you be looking for in dates, friends and business associates to discover if you are dealing with a narcissist?

Nine Warning Signs of NPD

1. Narcissists refrain from introspection, rarely discussing memories, dreams or thoughts of self-analysis

2. Cause and effect are foreign ideas as nothing is ever a narcissist’s fault. Personal accountability is an unknown concept.

3. Narcissists are unable to relate the process of how they learned a lesson about themselves or the world at large.

4. Self-improvement rarely enters a narcissist’s realm as the narcissist already sees him or herself as perfect, superior and above most others. If efforts are taken, generally it is done for manipulation’s purpose: to get something he or she wants. At the same time, they are very good at pointing out everyone else’s faults, shortcomings or handicaps.

5. Narcissists do not share thoughts, feelings or dreams of their own. Rather if thoughts are shared, they quote others, rarely thinking for themselves. When asked to elaborate or explain how they came to such a conclusion, unless it’s scripted, they cannot. Ask where the opinion came from, few will source this information as to do so takes the spotlight from them and places it on another. If feelings are shared, they’ll respond with what is expected and they perceive to be the answer you want to hear based upon behavior they’ve seen in others. When pressed to elaborate, they cannot.

6. Narcissists consider themselves superior and never ask for collaboration in problem solving. Rather, they prefer to find someone else to do it and then minimize their contribution, taking the glory or ignoring the contribution all together.

7. When asked about their past, narcissists are vague and ambiguous. Childhood friends, siblings and others hold no importance unless they can be used to make the narcissist seem more important than he or she is.

8. Empathy is a foreign language. Narcissists are void of empathy and cannot “put the situation on the other foot to look at it from both sides.”

9. People are tools to narcissists, not human beings. A narcissist sees no problem with using people to attain his objectives and does not care if he destroys others in the process because his needs, objectives or agenda are the only thing that matters. He is superior and everyone else is here to serve him, the legend in his own mind. The God complex illustrates why physical contact rather than long-distance relationships are needed. This type of behavior surfaces through interaction with others, specifically family and friends. If you are not there, you won’t see it.

Your Options

So what can you do if you find yourself involved with a narcissistic personality? If dating and not married or employed in a situation where you are required to work with someone like this in close cooperation, run, leave and do whatever you can to limit contact and distance yourself from this person. You cannot fix a narcissist and the nature of their disorder prevents them from fixing themselves. The emotional cost to you is not worth it. A narcissist cannot love you and cannot receive love for love’s sake. They think differently than you and me. Stay with a narcissist and you will spend the rest of your life, unfulfilled, snatching scraps of attention and rationalizing while the rest of your energy squanders setting right the escalating damage the narcissist leaves in his/her wake.

If married and you’ve had children with this person, once you’ve determined you are dealing with a narcissistic personality disorder, your primary responsibility is the children. The cost to them and their self-esteem on a daily basis can produce issues that last a lifetime. If divorce isn’t an option, counseling is a must. The children need to learn how to deal with this disorder without undermining their self-worth. Parental approval and recognition means a lot to children and the withholding of it or attaching conditions to it causes extreme confusion and angst. Children need to learn that though they express love, this person is sick and cannot, but this is no reflection on the quality of their love or being. Children brought up by a narcissistic parent often find themselves chasing poor relationships because this is the only definition of love they know, that which is given and never returned. As the healthy parent, you have the ability to prevent a lifetime of heartache once you realize this is the cause.

By far, the best way to deal with persons with NPD is not to deal with them. If avoidance is not possible, limiting exposure is essential for your health, sanity and the health and sanity of those around you.

No one can build  security upon the nobleness of another
person. ~WILLA CATHER

Where do we look for our security? Do we look to our significant others or
our lovers? Do we look to a parent or our children? Perhaps we
seek our security in our jobs. But none of these avenues brings
lasting contentment, as we’ve each probably discovered, just as
pills, alcohol, or maybe food failed to give us lasting security.

Security of the spirit is with us from our birth. It’s just that we
haven’t tapped into the source. Perhaps we don’t even know the
source, but it’s been with us always, awaiting our realization of it.

No step do we ever take alone. Each breath we take is in partnership
with the eternal source of strength and security within us. We have
the choice to accept this partnership any time. And this guarantee
of security in all things at all times is the gift of freedom.

Shame can be a powerful force in our life. It is the trademark of
dysfunctional families.

Authentic, legitimate guilt is the feeling or thought that what we did
is not okay. It indicates that our behavior needs to be corrected or
altered, or an amend needs to be made.

Shame is an overwhelming negative sense that who we are isn’t okay.
Shame is a no-win situation. We can change our behaviors, but we
can’t change who we are. Shame can propel us deeper into
self-defeating and sometimes self-destructive behaviors.

What are the things that can cause us to feel shame? We may feel
ashamed when we have a problem or someone we love has a problem.
We may feel ashamed for making mistakes or for succeeding. Me may
feel ashamed about certain feelings and thoughts. We may feel
ashamed when we have fun, feel good, or are vulnerable enough to
show ourselves to others. Some of us feel ashamed just for being.

Shame is a spell others put on us to control us, to keep us
playing our part in dysfunctional systems. It is a spell many
of us have learned to put on ourselves.

Learning to reject shame can change the quality of our life.
It’s okay to be who we are. We are good enough. Our feelings
are okay. Our past is okay. It’s okay to have problems,
make mistakes, and struggle to find our path. It’s okay to be
human and cherish our humanness.

Accepting ourselves is the first step toward recovery. Letting go
of shame about who we are is the next important step.

“Dragons” are self-defeating thoughts that come up over and over again as repeating themes, sometimes with variations but usually easily identifiable on close inspection. These tools can help us think logically and rationally whenever we have created painful statements and the dragons are causing mischief.

Dispute your beliefs that you are not lovable and thus worthless
While it is very nice to be loved, Paul Hauck points out that as adults we can survive without love. It can be our preference to have people in our lives that love us. To avoid feeding the dragons, we need to take care not to turn this into a demand (”I must have love!”). Furthermore, nobody has the right to judge our worth, including ourselves. We are worthy simply by the fact that we have been born.

Learn never to blame, rate, or judge

Blame leads to anger either against ourselves or others. To avoid this destructive feeling – anger – we need to learn not to blame ourselves and not to blame others.  To overcome this blaming-game, we can learn to not judge ourselves or others but rather judge only our actions. We might have done something bad (or self-defeating), yet this does not make us a bad person.

Start your life now and stop waiting for a soul mate
Modern society has created the myth of the soul mate. There is no perfect match out there, so move on and start enjoying your life – with or without a partner (and there’s no soul either: when you die, you’re dead, so enjoy life while you can!). This myth perpetuates the idea that we are incomplete without a partner, not a full adult. It also suggests that we cannot truly be happy unless we find “our other half.”  Happiness requires work on our part, not a cure-all partner. To expect a magical change in our lives simply from one person is absurd and puts too much of a burden on that person. Kay Trimberger identified six building blocks of a happy life as a single (or for anybody, really).  Leading a satisfying life can be a helpful anti-dote to the dragons.

The most important suggestion Hauck has, slightly adapted: We have the right – even the obligation – to accept ourselves despite all our dragons that have set up camp feeding us self-defeating thoughts. It will take some time and lots of thought disputing to tame those dragons and turn them into pets. They will still try to hijack our thinking, so we need to remain vigilant. The payoff is immense, though: self-acceptance is the foundation of a happy life.

More Here

Spring is guaranteed to come. I can bloom no matter what the weather, because I am growing spiritually each day. Today I take time to notice how I have bloomed so beautifully despite my circumstances. I am capable of reaching for the sun and sky because that is my natural state. I am reaching upward every day and do so joyfully, knowing I am grounded in the life cycle of spiritual development.

From “The Women’s Book of Empowerment: 323 Affirmations That Change Everyday Problems into Moments of Potential,” by Charlene M. Proctor, Ph.D.

More affirmations here

By Edwin Harkness Spina

Probably the most debilitating emotion that humans must confront is that of fear. Fear confuses. Fear paralyzes. Fear prevents you from thinking clearly, accessing your spiritual gifts and being who you truly are.

Fear is the anticipation of future pain. It’s been said that 90% of humans are motivated to avoid pain, while only 10% seek pleasure. It’s no surprise that we suffer from fear. We’ve been trained to fear from an early age. Don’t play in traffic – fear of getting run over. Don’t talk to strangers – fear of being abducted. Don’t misbehave or Mommy won’t love you – fear of abandonment.

As we grow older, we learn new fears: Fear of not being loved. Fear of being rejected. Fear of not having enough. Fear of being unworthy or inadequate. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of being restricted. Fear of getting fired. Fear of being annihilated by nuclear-armed terrorists.

Every day, we are bombarded with new fear-based messages by advertisers, politicians and the media. It’s easy to understand why: Fearful people are easy to control.

Fear is one of humanity’s most primitive emotions, triggering the adrenaline rush associated with the fight or flight response to danger. In life-threatening situations, this is helpful, better preparing you to do battle or to escape. But in non-lethal situations, fear clouds judgment and encourages you to REACT – rather than carefully consider alternatives – thus ensuring a less than optimal response to your problem.

Even worse, attachment to fear inhibits your ability to tap into your innermost self. Connecting with your inner master requires you to be balanced and your brain hemispheres be in synch. Fear causes your brain to automatically return to its dominant side – logical or emotional – again, ensuring unbalanced input into solving your problem.

Fear is a low vibration, dense emotion. Clinging to this negative, energy-draining emotion guarantees you will be unable to transcend to higher states of consciousness, characterized by higher vibration emotions such as love, joy, peace and happiness. You can’t take your baggage to the higher worlds, so eliminating fear is critical.

All people, even warriors, have some degree of fear. What separates warriors from timid souls is not their inability to recognize danger. What makes some people warriors is their willingness to act in the face of fear. By repeated experience, warriors come to know that fear dissolves with conscious action.

Action has another benefit. It focuses you in the Now. By definition, fear is the anticipation of future pain, that is, in the future – not in the Now. Acting keeps you focused in the Now, which is how you reach higher states of consciousness – where time is malleable and fear does not exist.

As a 17-year old youth driving our family car with my new driver’s license, I remember being threatened by a crazed driver on a deserted highway. It happened so quickly, I had no time to become fearful. Everything began moving in slow motion, giving me time to observe the situation. I had a bigger car, more horsepower and, if need be, I could run him off the road. I accelerated and left him behind. Only years later did I realize that by acting in the Now, time had stretched to assist me.

Look at your life and observe where you are stuck. Likely the cause is fear, in some form or another.

Ask yourself: What is the worst thing that can happen to you if you act and confront your fears? Will you look foolish? Will your self image suffer? Will you be rejected?

Recognize that all of these fears are ego-based. Your true self is not affected by any of these consequences.

In addition to dissolving fear and placing you in the Now, consciously choosing a course of action will take the focus off of you and your ego, and places it on the task at hand.

So what to do? Begin simply by taking small steps. If you have a social anxiety disorder, you don’t start to conquer your fear by signing up to address the UN. You begin by attending a meeting of people that share your interests. You don’t even have to speak; just be there. If you immerse yourself in a subject that you love, you will lose yourself, you will have fun, and you will be in the Now, as you act or interact with others.

Remember, also, that failing to act will compound your problem. To protect your ego, you may come up with justifications for why you didn’t do anything. You may convince yourself it was prudent, smart, unimportant, wouldn’t matter, etc. Soon, you have convinced yourself that you did the ‘right’ thing. This makes it harder to act in the future. Recognize that it is your ego that is busy justifying your inaction, not your true self. It is a self-reinforcing, bad habit you are developing.

You can nip this habit in the bud by bringing conscious awareness to your problem and then acting. People that act in accord with their true self are not constrained by fear. They are not driven by their egos, and consequently are free to do what they like. These people are charismatic. They act from their innermost self. They are unconcerned with how others perceive them. They are not controlled by others. They are their own person, free to love and be loved.

The choice is yours. Love or Fear. Clarity or Confusion. Higher consciousness or stagnation. Eliminate fear by taking conscious action and being your true self.

To eliminate the underlying low-vibration energies that manifest as fear and stress, practice the program I developed, Energy Center Clearing, described below…

Edwin Harkness Spina is an award-winning author and speaker. Ed is dedicated to presenting practical mystical techniques to improve people’s lives and expand their minds. His workshops and seminars emphasize the practical application of these techniques to help others manifest their dreams.

“Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous – not just to some people in some circumstances – but to everyone all the time.” –Thomas J. Watson

These videos have been broken up into over 30 video segments, all of which can be watched on YouTube or from SAI.

The first videos start with the person telling about their experiences when they had social anxiety and what life was like.  As they progress, they begin to tell you what they did to overcome social anxiety and how they did it, and what progress against social anxiety means.

Here’s Max:

Researchers have discovered that not only does body shape relate to how attractive we find others, but also in the way they carry themselves.

The findings reflect the views of over 700 individuals who participated in a series of five studies, three of which involved animated representations of people walking. The attractiveness ratings for perceived women increased by about 50 percent when they walked with hip sway, and attractiveness ratings for perceived men more than doubled when they walked with a swagger in their shoulders.

“When encountering another human, the first judgment an individual makes concerns the other individual’s gender,” said Kerri Johnson, one of the study’s authors. “The body’s shape, specifically the waist-to-hip ratio, has been related to gender identification and to perceived attractiveness, but part of the way we make such judgments is by determining whether the observed individual is behaving in ways consistent with our culture’s definitions of beauty and of masculinity/femininity. And part of those cultural definitions involves movement.”

“It turns out that decisions about a particular individual’s attractiveness are high level ones which integrate an entire complex of cues, one of which, again, involves how the individual moves.”

The study appears in the most recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed publication of the National Academy of Sciences.

Louis G. Tassinary, one of the study’s authors, first became interested in visual cues to human attractiveness when he realized he was unsettled by a popular 1990s take on the subject – that female physical attractiveness depends primarily on the ratio between an individual’s hips and waist. According to this line of thinking, waist-to-hip ratios greater than the “ideal” (approximately .7) portend that a female will be perceived necessarily as less attractive.

This early research used simple line drawings, asking study subjects to rate figures as to attractiveness and was supported by evolutionary arguments – that is, that females with certain waist-to-hip ratios were more fecund than others and were therefore perceived to be more attractive.

In collaboration with former Texas A&M professor Wendy Wood, and current Texas A&M professor Mardelle Shepley, Tassinary and Kristi Hansen, then working on her master’s degree in architecture, demonstrated in the late 90’s that the linkage between the waist-to-hip and perceived attractiveness was likely an artifact due to the commonly used line-drawn stimuli. Tassinary then worked with Mitsitoshi Higa, then a master’s degree student in visualization at the college, to develop more dynamic, animated figures to use in experiments on perceived attractiveness.

These early efforts opened up a fruitful line of inquiry, Tassinary says. “Using our more dynamic figures, it became clear to us that the waist-to-hip ratio is just one cue to perceived attractiveness. Because attractiveness generally is both complex and multidimensional, Kerri and I designed this current line of research to broaden the scope of inquiry.”

Knowing the cognitive mechanisms undergirding the relations between judgments of attractiveness and body cues is essential to understanding human evolution, Tassinary notes. For example, physical manifestations of “femaleness” differ across cultures. Western cultures may favor a smaller waist-to-hip ratio (the “hourglass” figure), while certain non-Western cultures have been found that favor a larger ratio (the “tubular” figure).

Not only has the research proved fruitful and significant, but it is a model for collaboration in the academic realm, Tassinary notes. Johnson was once his student, earning her master’s at Texas A&M while the two worked together on earlier projects, and their collaboration has continued since Johnson received her doctorate from Cornell University.

“The current findings bolster our understanding of how and why the body is perceived attractive,” Johnson notes. “Body cues bring about the basic social perception of sex and gender, and the compatibility of those basic precepts affects perceived attractiveness.”

Source: Texas A&M University & New York University

~ Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully ~

~ Memorize your favorite poem ~

~ Don’t believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want ~

~ When you say, “I love you”, mean it ~

~ When you say, “I’m sorry”, look the person in the eye ~

~ Be engaged at least six months before you get married ~

~ Believe in love at first sight ~

~ Never laugh at anyone’s dreams ~

~ Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it’s the only way to live life completely ~
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Positive psychology is an emerging field recognized by the American Psychological Association, and many experts who design stress-control programs harness its principles. It focuses on determining and promoting the factors that permit people to thrive. Rather than search for the roots of unhappiness, research coming out of this field investigates the ingredients of a good life and weighs the effects of traits like optimism, humor, and even eccentricity.

Optimists, for example, tend to do better than pessimists when coping with stressful situations. They are more likely to put a positive spin on stressors, look for ways to make the best of a bad situation, and use problem-solving strategies to tackle difficulties. Some studies indicate that optimists often fare better physically, too. A long-term study of more than 830 Mayo Clinic patients published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2000 found that those classified as pessimists had a 19% higher risk of mortality over the course of 30 years than those who were optimists. A 10-year study of 1,300 men based on data drawn from the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study was reported in Psychosomatic Medicine in 2001. It suggested that a sense of optimism may protect older men against developing heart disease.

If you’re not a natural optimist, this information could merely fuel your pessimism. Don’t let it. Take a deep breath and relax. Evidence suggests avoiding pessimism is more important than boosting optimism. It’s true that there are people with naturally sunny natures, but it’s equally true that the way you handle yourself emotionally owes a great deal to nurture. With practice, your current outlook and behaviors can change for the better.

You may already have tried some techniques used in positive psychology. They include cognitive restructuring and journal writing, as well as emphasizing the importance of intimate bonds. Other techniques help people tap into a sense of gratitude and thankfulness or simply a sense of humor. All of these therapeutic approaches focus on amplifying the positive.

While research backing some positive psychology approaches is still preliminary, there have been many intriguing studies on humor. Researchers have found laughter boosts immune system activity and lowers the amount of circulating stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. No wonder many mind/body practitioners prescribe laughter. They often urge patients to rent funny movies, spend time at comedy clubs, peruse amusing books, and embrace the absurd in daily life.

Source

Most people feel badly about themselves from time to time. Temporary feelings of low self-esteem may be triggered by being treated poorly by someone else recently or in the past, or by a person’s own judgments of him or herself. This response is normal. However, low self-esteem is a constant companion for too many people, especially those who experience depression. If you go through life feeling bad about yourself needlessly, low self-esteem keeps you from enjoying life, doing the things you want to do, and working toward personal goals.
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“What does money like? Money likes speed.
That’s the secret few know about money.
Money comes to those who act fast. If you think,
wonder, question, doubt, plan, meet, discuss, or in any other
way drag your feet, money goes to the next person in line.”
— Joe Vitale: A motivational author and coach

“Man is a magnet, and every line and dot and
detail of his experiences come by his own attraction.”

— Elizabeth Towne