What does this fantasy tell you about my mental health?

Post Reply New Topic

Sounds like you might have a touch of narcissistic personality disorder. The narcissist experiences past slights, corrections to his work, and evaluations that are less than "you're the best" as threats to his existence. The "narcissistic injury" creates poisonous spite and need for revenge, in a narcissist.

"The [narcissistic] prodigy – the precocious "genius" – feels entitled to special treatment. Yet, he rarely gets it. This frustrates him and renders him even more aggressive...In a way, merely by existing, the prodigy inflicts constant and repeated narcissistic injuries on the less endowed and the pedestrian. This creates a vicious cycle. People try to hurt and harm the overweening and arrogant genius and he becomes defensive, aggressive, and aloof. This renders him even more obnoxious than before and others resent him more deeply and more thoroughly. Hurt and wounded, he retreats into fantasies of grandeur and revenge. And the cycle re-commences." Sam Vankin, a diagnosed narcissist, on narcisstic injuries.

"Heinz Kohut particularly has stressed the significance of "narcissistic rage" as a reaction to narcissistic injury: faced with the failure of the self-object, narcissistic rage would be the aggressive result of shame." Narcissistic Injury: Answers from Answers.com

That applies to me except the part about the prodigy and the genius.

You know, this is supposed to be a support forum but there are about three people here so far who've left unnecessary, hurtful and nasty comments.

Why do people have to be intentionally mean to someone, especially on WP of all places? I don't understand it.

Anyway, back to the topic.

Mw99, I can't comment much on your daydreams as I don't know much about those kinds of things. I'm sure there are other people more able to give you some decent feedback. I see a few people have already left you some comments and given better advice/explanations than I could have.

jilted by lack of acknowledgment of nobility?

the sudden release of indignity after irrefutable proof of your nobility is revealed by they that refuted it?

i am not being sarcastic. if you have the highest score, then if it is not a delusion of grandeur, then it is commendable.






ok so why did you stay in their presence while you learned?



well i do use the terms loosely i am afraid.
i should be more refined in my words.

did you really get the highest score or was that a factor only in your dream?

do you really need to be validated to a wide peer audience based upon a dream of who you are?

and the anger expressed at the teachers that did not see you as gifted when you felt that gifted was what you were, is relieved in dreams like which you have described.

the delusional content is one of grandeur (ideational exaggeration of status).
if you did score the highest and were overlooked i am so sorry.

but it seems unlikely that you would be recognized except in a dream of yours that yearns for actualization.

i do not endorse what i said about schizophrenia last night, but there are some aspects that make me wonder.







what does "ohhh" mean in this context? you sound confused in a way.
who cares what who says what? it will change your life not if you do not care.



i do not think there are psychopathic schizophrenics.

psycopaths are ruled by their idiological drives, and psychotics are ruled by their ideological precepts (conscience).

a psychopath who sees a person eating a sandwich they want, will plan to take the sandwich by any means. it is a function of the id to take into it's possession anything that is desirable without conscientious regard. babies will grab cake from the mouths of people and obliviously eat it themselves because they are without conscience in the same way a full grown intelligent person is if they are psychopathic.

on the other hand, psychosis is a function of too much conscience
if a person cares too much how he is, then he will become paranoid that he is not how he should be.
then there can be the ascription (by the sufferer) of external controlling influences on his thoughts.
he yearns to be "good" but is inevitably drawn into "badness" by the "devils in his head".
they are sometimes compelled to acts of absurdity (like cooking heads in ovens to boil their thoughts away) etc.

your dream was not psychotic i conclude. sorry

That's really interesting, because you are introspective, as well. Maybe some people here get irritated with you because they don't realize that you don't have a sense of proportionality relating to others that is independent to how you view yourself. I.e. your narcissism makes you see yourself a certain way relative to others, and that isn't something you can really control.

The fact that you are introspective is really interesting. You know narcissists can develop into the kind of people they envision themselves to be. The ones who have problems are those who have visions of themselves that are too different from their natural talents for them to succeed in living up to them. So they are always furious and angry at people for not recognizing them as the kind of people they envision themselves to be.

I knew a woman who imagined she was brilliant and the most sensual woman in the world. The problem is that she was very smart but not brilliant, and she hung around with leading researchers, so she was always doing underhanded and despicable things, like attacking people psychologically to upset them, to beat others down mentally in order to be on top. Because she was not smart enough to compete fairly and win against real researchers and inventors, she resorted to these other ways to make her feel secure in her vision of herself, and people hated her and she was always wondering why. If she had shaped a grandiose vision of herself that was in more keeping with her natural talents -- she was a clever, sneaky schemer and actress -- she would have been a winner, not a loser. She should have gone into a field where being a clever, sneaky schemer was a big plus, like lobbying, etc. Then she WOULD have been a brilliant success.

Often, happiness for the narcissist comes from finding right vision for oneself, that is attainable and that one can truly succeed at brilliantly from time to time.

You know, Barack Obama is a narcissist, but a healthy, functional one. He has a charismatic's ability to accurately judge how others view him relative to his own view of himself, and so he is able to avoid being humiliated or making big mistakes. Also, he has picked the right grandiose vision for himself -- he wasn't a good lawyer, and he wasn't good at a lot of things, but he was good at inspiring, leading and directing people. Obama has the intellectual ability to do those things his imagination and vision sees. When you have a natural narcissist who is talented enough to envision for themselves those things that they can really pull off, and has the insight to adjust their vision of themselves to be realistic when it gets out of sync with how others view them, that more or less just defines a natural leader.

People talk about narcissists as if they are bad, but that only applies to those people who are unrealistic and attack others for not appreciating their unrealistic visions of themselves. And all narcissists aren't selfish -- if they train themselves to be considerate (as part of training themselves to be superior people, perhaps?).

It is a problem if you are AS, because that would make it very difficult for you to coordinate your vision of yourself with how others see you. It would be very tough to work out how to deal with that.

anyone who is a true genius will not require "recognition".

the joy of seeing a beautiful scenario is not dulled by noone else seeing it.

geniuses are not prone to worrying that they are misunderstood.

a genius will travel in a trajectory that is undeflectable by social disapproval.

genius is solitary

Okay. If my comment was interpreted as mean, I apologize. It's just that, sometimes, with this particular poster, I get this light hearted vibe and it brings out my sense of humor.
I am adept at reading into written language and picking up on humor. Written words have become an anchor of sorts, kind of like having a guide dog or a walking stick. I prefer reading over listening.
When listening, I prefer songs and music over talking.
When left with no other choice, I will listen to someone speaking and do my best.
Thus, I detect a lot of humor in his posts. If this is not the case I guess I am missing something.

I think there is a tendency to pathologise and personalitise everybody. A greater question is why do you need to know this? Why would you assume they would be right?

All I can say about you is you have a very great grievance or sense of injustice. Some people might call it a 'chip on your shoulder'. You believe you have failed and you believe could be or are greater. I can relate to that, with some fundamental differences.

I think most people do share those sorts of thoughts, I do quite a bit. However I don't let them come to the forefront, it is a constant effort.

Your brain has a chemistry and structure that will determine how you are and how you think about things. Some of this is more dynamic and will be moulded by environmental factors and ‘choices’.

There was a test that showed people who had common mental illnesses like anxiety and depression often were more realistic about other people’s perceptions of them, than happy go lucky types. However in doing so they were also self fulfilling and as result were worse off in many ways.

Perception is one thing but your actual state of being is completely impossible to quantify. It literally is whatever you want it to be, and are capable of believing

So if I said you where a toughly decent chap, and you were able to believe me regardless of the redundant idea of 'truth' then you are a thoroughly decent chap according to you. Some 'personalities' are able to take this to an extreme, where they can literally block out any external information that contradicts their perception of themselves.

One thing you should know is it is not other people’s ‘fault’. Yes it is true you can have bad things happen to you and they do genuinely cause emotional trauma. But in your day by day life, especially a day like today, other people have the same effect on you as everything else. Everything can have an influence on almost anything. Even your thoughts now are only a relative ‘minds eye’. It is not that other people don’t have influence on your outcome, but more that everyone wants similar thing ‘success’ and they have no idea of who you are and you have no idea about them. They are not thinking of you and you are not thinking about them individually. Not because they/you don’t want to acknowledge but because it didn’t occur and there are too many people to contemplate in the first place. You also can be destroying your chances just as much as everyone and everything else. Blame sort of becomes irrelevant. It sort of has its place, but it only really work where you can see a pattern of cause and result and you can say with a high degree of certainty there is definatel intent.

Through that minds eye you are making choices, and I believe many people go through this stage similar to what you are going through. It is ultimately a question of if you analysis stretches a bit further that where you are currently at as to whether you will be able to break out of it.

I am going through a struggle that has some similarities right now. I still got some of the desperation, but I more focused on finding an actually solution rather than find people or things to blame.

You the basic things you need food, water, warmth, shelter, healthcare, etc. You do also have need to strive to be someone, and there is a real pressure to be a part or at least achieve something within a society (even if it is not fully apart of). Of course it is technically possible to live out in the wilderness, if you can become fit enough, learn the necessary skills, and so on. It is not for everyone, but it an option for some people. There are extremely small settlements of people (one hut in a small clearing sort of thing) that are spotted by planes in remote areas flying over the vast Amazon basin that have never seen the modern world. Due to how spread out they are, there is a good chance they will not glimpse another tribe for generations. Yet they survive.

I think just about everybody fantasizes about being wildly successful at something, though--like, you know, the third-grader visualizing winning the spelling bee; or the high schooler dreaming of getting a perfect SAT score; or just about anybody wanting the top score on a hard test... Doesn't it make sense, then, if people have mistreated you, to fantasize about doing something wildly successful like that, and to show them that they were wrong about you, and what's more, you aren't going to take it anymore? It really sounds rather normal to me. Fantasies like that are quite harmless, if you aren't spending all your time immersed in them.

You obsess over school too much.

Weird.

All my fantasies are in the form of iambic pentameter spoken in the voice of an aged Sean Connerie.

The fantasy doesn't sound unusual, or like a sign of any kind of mental health issue. It sounds like the fantasy of someone who feels misunderstood and is tired of that.

Correct. I don't want people messing with my head, one day telling me that I am intelligent and the other day denying it. Also, I know that I am not a genius (as in, IQ > 2 SDs above average), but I also know that I am not stupid. I am an intelligent person, and any person who sees in me an idiot, I consider an idiot, and I have no time for them.



My understanding is that I had the highest scores in at least one of my classes.




I think it had to do with their taking attendance.




Possibly. I don't remember my high school experience in great detail, except perhaps the negative social interactions that I went through.



I don't know.



My anger was at teachers who did not see me as an intelligent person, even though I was getting As in their classes. I was never under the impression that I was gifted, only perhaps more capable and more determined than most of my peers, as evidenced by my academic performance.



I wasn't overlooked, there were people who actually claimed that I was a genius... Of course, they were wrong about me.

And at the end of my senior year I received an academic recognition for my performance in one of my classes. Perhaps my problem was not so much that I was overlooked but that I was looked down upon.



ok



I just felt like adding some melodrama to my answer. thought it was funny.



ok

The daydream makes sense to me.

That's when you can lie, cheat, steal, and get away with it. If you don't do it, or if you do it badly and get caught, there's something mentally wrong with you.

No, this is exactly the place for that kind of talk. It's good to talk, and who else could hear it?

To those who harass you for an honest question, just ignore them.

It shows your world view. And could become a self fulfilling prophecy.

It's good to share this, but you need to work on this to change what you feel about your role in nature and society.

This fantasy shows that you have to make changes to yourself and improve your outlook, or as I said, this will come true and you won't make anything of yourself. You need something to strive for, even if it's simply greater happiness or contentment with yourself.