Ask HN: How did you fix your narcissism?

  Broken heart
  Broken leg
  Blindness
  Losing a child
  Having a low (or too high) IQ
  Having severe mental disorder(s)

Conceptually, think about how many times your friends have an issue that seems trivial for you (on the outside) to fix. Surely the same applies to you. Especially if you're high functioning, by definition anything left to work on is relatively outside your awareness and can't be solved from the "inside".

If you think you’re insane but also thinking it could be self-mis-diagnosis, no, you are not sane.

There is no such inherent contradiction in an ability for a logical system to detect its own anomaly were you one.

If it had been a false positive, the fact that a false positive is occurring itself is an anomaly, and an issue.

It's like asking, "what does a junior engineer get out of being mentored by a senior engineer that they couldn't just figure out by coding or reading blogs?" A therapist brings things like context, breadth of knowledge, and honesty. I felt like the therapist wasn't incentivized to sugar coat things to spare my feelings, something close friends and family might do.

I am not sure about seeing one for 5 years, though. The point of a therapist is to make themselves unnecessary, in my opinion - they're supposed to give you the tools needed to do exactly what you're saying people should do - understand their behavior and change it.

Psychologists are experts in defusing such resistance and helping us work with that unconscious content, content that most people probably aren't very skilled in helping with.

Are you saying if you were more attractive/deserving/whatever, people with therapeutic skills would go around sharing their insight with you for free?

That's half of the point right there. You only know all the thoughts you will come up with. You go to a therapist because a good one will tell you things you never would have considered at all. Your mind has ruts so deeply worn you don't even know they are there. A therapist will nudge you out of them.

I've had a number of therapy sessions where my therapist said something about myself or my past that I literally had never considered in my entire life.

The other half is that good therapists have a lot of training in how the mind works and the tricks it plays on itself. They know to look for patterns where when you say X the problem is really Y, which is a connection you yourself have never made.

It's like asking "Why should I read this book? I'm not aware of anything in it that I don't already know." The point is that you don't know what you don't know that's in it. You can't accurately simulate a therapist in your head because your simulated one only knows the things you already know. An actual therapist will provide novel insight.

Talking to a therapist does two things: it makes you interact with a human being, not an abstract concept or idea. This uses different areas of your brain, different cognitive and emotional pathways than does reading a book or simply "thinking about it"; and it allows you to receive the benefit of trained expertise in detecting what patterns, triggers, traps, and skills you have or need to have exposure to.

You might think that you are very unique, but often that's not the case. Or, at least, your behavior can be decomposed into patterns, and a therapist can often forecast where that behavior leads (and, if they're skilled and/or lucky, where it's coming from).

Do you grow your own food? If not, you are partaking in prostitutional farming.

Do you make the write the books you read? If not, you are paying for prostitutional authors.

What a therapist does is to help you to ask and answer questions by yourself. Sometimes just the fact that putting things into words to a stranger is enlightening. A therapist might ask "why do you think you need to reason in terms of money, ROI and investment when talking about relationships?"

How I know this? I'm seeing a therapist too! I see her everyday. I've been married with a psychologist for 15 years now. I've been hearing these kind of questions forever!

The problem is we all carry around a lot of subterranean shame, fear and guilt, and your mind has a way of blinding you too it because those feelings are too intense to handle on a day-to-day basis. As a result, we all have blind spots and dysfunctional habits that we will defend at all costs. Haven't you met brilliant, highly rational people that keep acting stupid over and over again because they refuse to acknowledge their own problems?

We're all a little broken for emotional reasons, not rational reasons. Everyone knows they shouldn't smoke, and drink too much, and spend too much. But lots of people have problems with that, because it's not about a lack of knowledge.

A therapist, over time, gets you to open up, accepts you, and thus shines light on those dark places. When you accept them instead of reflexively rejecting them, you can actually see yourself with more clarity and thus behave more rationally.

So yes, you could learn whatever a therapist could teach you from reading books. But the benefit of a therapist is the relationship. You could also go through the same process with a good friend, but most people are bad at listening and being accepting, especially when you're sharing your deepest secrets. And sadly, most people don't seem to have the time. Haven't you ever tried to share something with a friend, but then they say something judgmental and you never show them that again? A therapist is trained not to do that.

Your comment is terribly unhelpful. Therapy isn't about "fixing" someone, but to help individuals with issues that negatively affect their life find opportunities to manage those issues. CBT is not something you can start doing by yourself without an external catalyst.

I have ADHD, OCD, and bipolar II along with recurring bouts of PTSD from a terribly traumatic childhood. Without therapy, I would have considerable more issues integrating with my peers and navigating the emotional turmoil that is the battlefield of my brain. Therapy has assisted me in shifting my perspective and enabling me to live my best life despite the demons that seem to constantly want to drag me down.

This is a valid opinion, but it would be better presented with some evidence to support it.

When someone says "A therapist really helped me." then their opinion carries its own evidence. They are a living evidential proof of their claim. (At least, to the degree that you accept that the commenter is honest and able to correctly measure their own quality of life.)

But when you say "therapists are a waste of money", your claim shows only absence of evidence, not evidence of absense. It may be that therapists aren't good for you, or that you haven't had a good one, or simply that you have no experience with them at all.

Shop around? You're inviting someone to perform online brain surgery on you. Fortunately, you can undo the operation if you don't like it (sort of). If you don't like what the therapist is doing, keep looking for a different therapist that works for you.

I've heard a story where a therapist got upset with their client because the client said, during a therapy session, they were going to find someone else.

Simple point of order: I don't need to tell my therapist if they're fired. I just walk away.

But it's the same with Doctors. Some doctors won't listen to your symptoms, some doctors might have old information, or brush you off.

Would you put off going to a doctor because of those problems?

These challenges are deeply personal, so finding the right person is challenging. There are lot of therapists with different qualifications and experience. People seem to study psychology, do whatever qualifications they need, and start as a therapist, but the experience part is a challenge.

I don't think this challenge is much different from finding mentors. In fact, it's probably better because it's a discrete financial transaction and the conversations are protected. Finding mentors during your career, if you don't have them directly in your workplace, can be really problematic. You have few protections, and little ability to build up trust, until you've invested time building up trust.

When it comes to men (probably the majority) on HN there are also a number of specific issues which affect take up of therapy. That's after the cost issues which affect everyone. If someone is in some countries they may have little, or no availability of certain kinds of therapy.

In my experience the best way to find someone is through recommendations. Find someone with a good therapist, and contact the therapist for recommendations. They usually know other people in the field that work with a similar approach.

I feel CBT only works with simple issues. For trauma and deep running issues I would suggest finding someone who looks into the root of issues and doesn't just try to change behaviours. See psychotherapy for example.

Otherwise it depends on where you live as well.

In Australia, and definitely for NSW:

- look for a psychiatrist instead of a psychologist. With a psychologist you get 10 sessions for free by the government, but then you have to pay the full fee yourself. This ends up being around $150-$250 per session from what I have seen. With a psychiatrist the medicare safety net kicks in, and after $2000 of out of pocket expenses you get 85% of the session fees back. In my case I end up paying ~$40 for my $350 therapy sessions which makes a huge difference when therapy can be going for years.

Happy to help out with recommendations in the NSW Australia area.

Like all relationships, it's predicated on trust, and that means finding the right professional. There are shops that make their retirement letting people talk about themselves for an hour once a week, and there are others genuinely engaged in the art of helping people heal themselves.

See r/raisedbynarcissists

Pushing a narc to have a family is a terrible idea.