Seriously, when I read about narcissistic personality disorder, I see nothing of me in that. I sure as shit see a whole lot of my abuser's qualities, but I think he had something wrong with him beyond just that.
You could combine several different types of narcissist from the subtypes, and there'd still be more f*cked up shit to add. That's why I think what he had going on was a whole different monster. No idea what the f*ck was wrong with him and I'm not going to play guessing games, because there's just flat out no way to know. You can't figure out what someone has going for sure on unless they get a professional diagnosis, and he never was honest enough to the professionals to get the right treatment for whatever was -actually- wrong with him. He just manipulated them to get out as fast as possible.
I think that our symptoms could be confused for narcissistic behavior. When I isolate, I'm doing it because being out in the world and interacting with people is overloading me, or I am too anxious/hypervigilant to be subjecting myself to all sorts of things that will set off my danger alarm, when it's being really sensitive.
If I'm not feeling like that, and things are going relatively well enough, I don't isolate.
People who don't have PTSD, at least in my experience so far, seem to have a difficult time understanding us, and what our behavior is really being caused by, and what it really means. People can very easily misunderstand what we are trying to communicate. They take things the wrong way.
