Hello and welcome, Tika.
The horrible answer is yes... yes I did indeed have a Narcissistic Personality Disorder Jehovah's Witness in my life. She died a year ago but the affer-effects of the emotional poison she inflicted onto my family will live on. I too, found some GREAT sites on the subject while I was dealing with it and trying to make sense of it all... it seems the greatest problem is that they have no empathy, and lacking empathy, there really is NO WAY for them to appreciate you or understand you... that is a losing battle, they are incapapble, emotionally handicapped, one might say.
A great indepth discussion of traits is linked below... I have just quoted it here and there, it really is worth clicking the link and reading the entire article.
http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/traits.html
Here are a few quotes from the site:
Almost everyone has some narcissistic traits, but being conceited, argumentative, or selfish sometimes (or even all the time) doesn't amount to a personality disorder. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a long-term pattern of abnormal thinking, feeling, and behavior in many different situations. The traits on this page will seem peculiar or disturbing when someone acts this way -- i.e., you will know that something is not right, and contact with narcissists may make you feel bad about yourself. It's not unusual for narcissists to be outstanding in their field of work. But these are the successful people who have a history of alienating colleagues, co-workers, employees, students, clients, and customers -- people go away mad or sad after close contact with narcissists.
The most telling thing that narcissists do is contradict themselves . They will do this virtually in the same sentence, without even stopping to take a breath. It can be trivial (e.g., about what they want for lunch) or it can be serious (e.g., about whether or not they love you).
If you're like me, you get into disputes with narcissists over their casual dishonesty and cruelty to other people. Trying to reform narcissists by reasoning with them or by appealing to their better nature is about as effective as spitting in the ocean. What you see is what you get: they have no better nature. The fundamental problem here is that narcissists lack empathy.
Lacking empathy is a profound disturbance to the narcissist's thinking (cognition) and feeling (affectivity). Even when very intelligent, narcissists can't reason well.
Narcissists lack a mature conscience and seem to be restrained only by fear of being punished or of damaging their reputations.
Narcissists are envious and competitive in ways that are hard to understand.
Narcissists are generally contemptuous of others.
Narcissists are (a) extremely sensitive to personal criticism and (b) extremely critical of other people .
Narcissists are naive and vulnerable, pathetic really, no matter how arrogant and forceful their words or demeanor.
Narcissists are grandiose . They live in an artificial self invented from fantasies of absolute or perfect power, genius, beauty, etc.
Narcissists have little sense of humor . They don't get jokes, not even the funny papers or simple riddles, and they don't make jokes, except for sarcastic cracks and the lamest puns. This is because, lacking empathy, they don't get the context and affect of words or actions, and jokes, humor, comedy depend entirely on context and affect. They specialize in sarcasm about others and mistake it for wit, but, in my experience, narcissists are entirely incapable of irony -- thus, I've been chagrinned more than once to discover that something I'd taken as an intentional pose or humorous put-on was, in fact, something the narcissist was totally serious about.
Narcissists hate to live alone . Their inner resources are skimpy, static, and sterile, nothing interesting or attractive going on in their hearts and minds, so they don't want to be stuck with themselves. All they have inside is the image of perfection that, being mere mortals like the rest of us, they will inevitably fall short of attaining.
