Experiencing yourself as exceedingly talented and important, feeling intensely irritable when others don’t appreciate your specialness, and devaluing people who don’t impress you could indicate a narcissistic personality style. Dr. Kleinman can help you understand this way of experiencing life and offers treatment options using highly effective, well-regarded methods. As a board-certified psychiatrist, Dr. Kleinman can help you address off-putting attitudes and help you develop a more grounded sense of yourself.

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What is narcissistic personality disorder?

In general, your personality is the way your mind is organized around how you see yourself, how you see others, and how you understand the world to work. Narcissistic personality style is a particular way that the mind can be organized, and it has a broad spectrum of symptoms and severity. It is a maladaptive personality style that can emerge in individuals who learn to determine their value through superficial qualities such as superior wealth, beauty, power, or achievement.

In this personality style, a person’s feeling of superiority is so intense that they rigidly refuse to compromise for anyone else. They know what they want, and feel entitled to get it, even if that means exploiting others. They look down on everyone and refuse to be vulnerable to anyone, meaning relationships are merely performative and transactional. If they feel humiliated, they can fly into a destructive rage or become vindictively cruel. They may struggle to keep employment due to their arrogant attitude, inflexible behavior, or self-righteous laziness.

When these attitudes and behaviors cause major problems in multiple domains of a person’s life, the personality style may be classified as a disorder.

What are the symptoms of a narcissistic personality?

Common symptoms of narcissistic personality include:

  • Constantly seeking others’ attention
  • Frequent efforts to impress others
  • Desiring admiration for positive or negative things
  • Feeling superior to other people
  • Feeling more deserving than other people
  • Having extreme or distorted self-confidence
  • Avoiding situations that may end in failure
  • Bragging about achievements or struggles
  • Being inordinately upset by criticism
  • Being incapable of self-reflection
  • Being needlessly critical of others
  • Having problems getting along with other people
  • Refusing to think of other people’s feelings or perspectives
  • Taking advantage of other people
  • Leaving relationships before they get too serious
  • Maintaining relationships that are impersonal or transactional
  • Having intense social insecurities
  • Being prone to irritability, impatience and anger outbursts
  • Having deep, unspoken feelings of emptiness and loneliness

While some people with a narcissistic personality style may appear excessively confident, others may seem overly dependent on those around them. All people with this personality style have a strong sense of how impressively unique they are and act in ways that are entitled and demanding, whether they have accomplished more or suffered more than anyone else.

What are the risks for developing a narcissistic personality?

Risk factors for developing a narcissistic personality include:

  • Parents or family members with narcissistic personalities
  • Inconsistent parental attention or neglect in upbringing
  • Receiving excessive praise or advantages for cleverness, beauty, or achievement
  • Being humiliated or criticized for kindness, weakness, or failure
  • Having an inordinately competitive upbringing
  • Having peer groups that share a narcissistic personality style

These risk factors alone may not cause a person to have a narcissistic personality. These factors along with a person’s unique biology, their way of thinking, and their general life circumstances may all contribute to the development of a narcissistic personality.

How does Dr. Kleinman diagnose a narcissistic personality?

Dr. Kleinman may diagnose a narcissistic personality after having an extensive discussion of your primary concerns, current symptoms, and general life circumstances. She conducts a full psychiatric evaluation which includes asking about any past symptoms, experiences in psychotherapy, and any past use of psychiatric medication. She also asks about your life history, family history, and lifestyle habits. She will share with you whether you have a milder maladaptive personality style or a full personality disorder and will customize a personalized treatment plan that’s best suited to your needs.

How does Dr. Kleinman treat a narcissistic personality?

Dr. Kleinman offers Transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP), which is an intensive, twice-weekly therapy that is an Evidence-Based Treatment for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. TFP was especially designed to help patients with Narcissistic Personality regardless of whether the personality pattern is more of a maladaptive style or is at the level of a full disorder.

TFP works by exploring the underlying forces that may be causing the maladaptive personality pattern in the first place. This includes exploring your sense of self and personal identity, reflecting on your experience of how the world works, and examining your patterns of interacting with and relating to other people. TFP is specially designed to help you observe patterns of relating to others as they occur between you and the therapist in the moment. If symptoms of anxiety or depression develop over the course of treatment, Dr. Kleinman can offer medication to help manage these symptoms.

Dr. Kleinman’s treatment approach could be particularly helpful for people who have tried other kinds of counseling or therapy in the past but had only limited improvement.

Dr. Kleinman tailors each treatment to your personalized needs and follows your progress closely to ensure meaningful improvement.

Request a consultation with Dr. Kleinman today.