#advice asks

My whole world as I know it would crumble and its even worse cause it seems so possible with how little trauma I remember.

Is there anything that makes it so trauma is more impactful? Or maybe I really was just sensitive?

I've fought so hard for people to believe me, what if I was wrong and I genuinely lose everything?

I’m so sorry you’re going through this, anon. I want you to know, though, that trauma is not an event or set of events. Trauma is your reaction to those events. Something that is effectively harmless to one person can be traumatic to another. If you were distressed to the point of making use of dissociation as a coping mechanism in your early childhood, that’s all it takes. All it takes it for something to stress you, an impressionable and helpless child, out enough for you to need to dissociate repeatedly to cope with it. There’s no trauma that’s “enough” or “not enough” to cause a CDD.

Allow me to remind you, as well, that it’s completely normal for you to not remember most of your trauma at this point. And that which you do remember, you may not realize the extent of. It’s very common (it is a symptom of the disorder, actually) to minimize what you went through to yourself/to not realize how harmful it was to you.

What makes trauma more impactful? How sensitive you are to it. This could be caused by a million things, pathological and not.

I’ve been seeing someone who I suspect may have undiagnosed npd. I’m trying to educate myself more about this, but so much of the info is negative and ableist.

He puts himself down to get more validation and has low empathy. The relationship is really on “his time”. He struggles with anxiety and depression when “little things” go wrong. But there’s none of these “abusive” symptoms present like gaslighting, or putting down others, or belittling me. I enjoy being with him and know that there would be things we need to work on together, but everything online is all “break up immediately, narcissists can never love you back”. He’s human and dealing with trauma just like a lot of other people, and I think it’s shit that all I can find is advice from abled people saying to just leave. What advice do you have as someone with npd?

Hi, Anon!

I think it’s very sweet that you want to help your boyfriend, and I agree that the vast majority of resources on NPD are ableist and horribly stigmatizing.

I can really relate to your description of your boyfriend’s traits because that’s how my NPD presents for a good amount of my alters. I would like to point out that as of the most recent revised DSM criteria, manipulation/abuse is NOT a symptom. It can absolutely be a negative manifestation of traits and bad choices made on the part of the person who has NPD, but nobody with NPD is inherently abusive or manipulative and abuse/manipulation is not a criteria to be diagnosed with NPD.

So yes, based on your description of him, he could possibly have NPD. You say he’s dealing with trauma, so he could (also?) have a disorder like PTSD/C-PTSD that could be causing these symptoms.

My advice is to be patient with him, to help him as much as possible while not allowing him to break your boundaries and hurt you. Maybe bring up the traits you’ve been noticing in him (if he’s okay with you voicing your observations) and if he has a therapist or psychiatrist he can bring these symptoms up with them. Make sure to voice when you’ve been hurt, even accidentally, because often traumatized people struggle with realizing when we’ve hurt others.

hello doll,

sorry if it's taken a while to answer you, honestly I was struggling to come up with something helpful because it's something I struggle with too

I find that, writing down whatever is happening in your head can help, getting down all the overflowing thoughts in writing so that you can see them

talking to someone is another good idea, sharing the heavy load, and it's even better if that person is a professional

Aww honey, I’m sorry that happened to you. The only advice I can really think of is to be judicious with the specific subcircles of fandom you run in, so you only see content that boosts your confidence. If you’re trying to get back into posting content, maybe start small and turn off all feedback for a little while. Or carefully find one new writing friend and slowly share your creations with them until you’re confident they’re a good friend, and then start adding to your circle.