a lot of negative stigma for NPD mainly comes from people who have had bad experience with people with NPD.
if you could help those people learn that not all people with NPD are like That™ (horrible and bad), would you help? if so, what would ya do?
i will be honest with you, and i know it will come off harsh. 95% of people who say they have experienced """narcissistic abuse""" are lying. not maliciously, and not about the abuse, because that absolutely happened, but i doubt any of those people are professionals who can definitively say whoever abused them was actually a narcissist. someone can just be a fucking asshole. if you're abused by someone with autism, you wouldn't call it "autistic abuse". if you were abused by someone with psychosis, you wouldn't say "psychotic abuse". the term itself is not only offensive but most of the time people don't know what they're talking about, and are also reducing people with NPD to a single list of solely negative traits.
now, for the 5% or so who actually had abusive encounters with someone who has NPD, that fucking sucks, and i'm sorry. as an in general, you have to work on internal and unconscious biases. just like someone who's getting over trauma related to men, or trauma related to any other aspect of a human, you have to expose yourself to new environments where you can encounter those people. if that isn't something you can do, you need to work internally to re-teach yourself that everyone is different, and also that most people are not looking to harm you (it's actually quite detrimental for most narcissists to purposely harm other people, it's not something we really do, but not really the point). basically you need to understand that people exist on a spectrum. there are people with cluster b disorders who are absolute angels, and some who aren't, just like the rest of humanity. it takes time and effort to overcome unconscious biases, but as long as you work on it, you will heal in time.
and again, i'd like to say as a person with NPD who's been in recovery for a long time (not for NPD specifically, but recovering in general will improve most of your symptoms of anything you have going on) that you're obviously allowed to be upset if someone has hurt you. being angry is part of the healing process. it does not, however, give you the excuse to target an entire community of people. we are capable of love, we are capable of compassion. some of us have empathy, lots of us have cognitive empathy. while i can sometimes stumble, i've gotten to the point now where my struggles aren't a side of myself that others see too often. i chose kindness, and many others have too.
