I've heard that someone can have NPD while also not being grandiose, and while having social anxiety. How does that work? /genq
So, there are two main ways that narcissistic personality disorder can present. The first type that most people are familiar with is known as "grandiose" or "overt" narcissism. We feel very talented, more special than other people, flawless or perfect.
The second type is known as "vulnerable" or "covert" narcissism. This feels the opposite way: like you're the worst person in the world, like you're unskilled at everything, like even if you are talented, no one will recognize it, or even like everything wrong with the world, every terrible issue is caused by you somehow actively choosing not to fix it. Like everyone is staring at you all the time and knows about all the awful things you (think) you've done.
Both forms of npd ultimately revolve around you and what you need to do, as they're actually not that different at all. People with npd tend to worry excessively about what other people think of them, and hold extremely high standards for themselves... So, no matter if you're covert or overt, npd often comes with social anxiety!
The alters in my system swing both ways, and this is pretty common (Revised Criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, @/kindnessoverperfection), even for singlets.
An alter like me (Adrian here~) is definitely rather grandiose, cuz' I know I'm a fancy bitch. But when I, say, try out a new painting style and I realize I'm not good at it yet, I'll crash, and suddenly I feel like I'm the worst person in the world. Absolute bottom of the trash pile. Some people are always covert, some always overt, but most narcs tend to slide between the two rather frequently.
If you want some medical literature on covert narcissism, here's an article from Medical News Today which isn't terrible, but please keep in mind it still suffers from being written from a highly biased neurotypical perspective, and conveys some frequent misconceptions (5 Things You Got Wrong About Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Everyday Feminism) about npd.
Hope this helps, lmk if you have any other questions!
