A grain of salt is warranted. I also had Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and the interviewee said some pretty whacky things, maybe owing from the fact that he still has the disorder. He hasn't actually figured it out.
NPD is a tool to protect yourself from mind-shattering degrees of shame. You latch onto something that makes you feel special, and you hold onto it for dear life. All of your decisions will stem from a desire to validate or protect that sense of being special. You'll seek admiration to validate it, and you'll seek to destroy critics to protect it. You might be capable of empathy, even great compassion, but you'll remain utterly cruel and self-absorbed, because you're a drowning man. You're desperate, and you'll see people as objects you can push underwater to get a gasp of air, and you'll treat someone who snubs you as someone actively stepping on your head to drown you: your anger will know no bounds.
That's what fragile narcissists actually are. They're not wired differently; they're drowning men.
If a narcissist is strongly motivated, and if they have a decade to devote to schema therapy for their underlying intense shame, then they can slowly morph into a normal prosocial human.
However, that doesn't happen often, for a variety of reasons.
NPD is a tool to protect yourself from mind-shattering degrees of shame. You latch onto something that makes you feel special, and you hold onto it for dear life. All of your decisions will stem from a desire to validate or protect that sense of being special. You'll seek admiration to validate it, and you'll seek to destroy critics to protect it. You might be capable of empathy, even great compassion, but you'll remain utterly cruel and self-absorbed, because you're a drowning man. You're desperate, and you'll see people as objects you can push underwater to get a gasp of air, and you'll treat someone who snubs you as someone actively stepping on your head to drown you: your anger will know no bounds.
That's what fragile narcissists actually are. They're not wired differently; they're drowning men.
If a narcissist is strongly motivated, and if they have a decade to devote to schema therapy for their underlying intense shame, then they can slowly morph into a normal prosocial human.
However, that doesn't happen often, for a variety of reasons.