Hello, all. I just stumbled onto this website while reading up about narcissism, and I feel like it is a great place to share my experiences. I am a 26 year
old black male, and I feel that my older brother has NPD. He does not have an official diagnosis, but he definitely fits all the symptoms.
I do not mean to offend anyone with the title, but most of the posts on the website seem to be from women. I sure you all don't need convincing, but guys who grow up with family members with NPD have their issues as well. Sometimes I think that we are so macho that we have a hard time talking about it with each other. It is almost as if we should just kick the dude's ass and move on. It is not that easy when it is your brother and you love him. Being a black male is also a factor that affects one's openess abut the subject. Mental problems is something we don't really recognize as a problem in the black community, but it is jsut as frequent as in other communities. It's frustrating becuase most of the time, people just give this easy answer of "he needs the Lord in his life" or whatever. It's bigger than that and more serious. My dad says that a lot and reject the mental aspect of my brother's problem. It makes it hard to talk to him about it, even though I know he feels the same feelings I do. Yet he is less likely to have to deal with my brother for most of his life.
Anyways, my brother and I grew up in the same house with the same mother. We have different fathers, which is a fact I did not really find out until I was 20. While growing up with him, I, too, always felt like I was walking on egg shells around him. He would always push my buttons and make me so angry that I would go crazy. A remember a couple times when I slapped him in the face in front of my parents. My parents told me that I actually was going into the drawer to get a knife becuase he made me so angry. Luckily, I did not do anything to him, but I did not realize how he was manipulating me. He started it when I was young, so it would be easier to do it when we were older, so I think. He would tell me how he imagine me to be a lot better as a brother and made fun of me becuase I was overweight. He would call me stupid and a mama's boy and other negative terms. He used to rag on me for following what our parents would say, especially if it was against what he wanted. For example, if I picked up the cordless phone and it was for my brother, he would get in my face and cuss me out because our parents told me not to give him the cordless phone and make him use the regular phone in the kitchen. It's just a damn phone!
All during elementary school, I felt so tense when I was around him. I knew he was going to !+$% with me whenever he felt like it because he was bigger and stronger than me. I would often watch television in my parents room or go do things in my room just to get away. Deep down I always wanted him to like me as a person. I wanted to be his friend as well as his brother becuase he always treated his "friends" from school better than he treated his family. my desire to be close to him left me susceptible to his manipulation techniques. I would do things for him, and if it was not quite right or off, he would give this disparaging comments like I'm stupid and I don't think. Sometimes, I believed him. I do know that to this day, when I am around him, I am so nervous about doing something to set him off that I end up doing it anyway. I cannot get my !@$% right when I am around him, and I am a completely different person around anyone else. It was awful when we were living together. He always looked at things that I did in terms of how it made him look better. When I started my music in 4th grade, he cared more about bragging to his friends about my talent than my own happiness playing. I ended up quitting after 4 years (which I definitely regret). How I dressed, what sports I played, what sports teams I liked - all of it was about how it reflected on him. Forget about everything else. He would get on my case for not talking around his friends when they came over - after telling me not to talk when they are around. He would go ape !@$% if I was playing baseketball outside and the ball tapped his car. I was afraid to ask him to move the car because i was afraid he would snap at me. I really felt and still feel that he cared more about that damn car than he did about me.
I will never forget how different the house environment changed when he left for college. It was a breath of fresh air. The tension level dissappeared immediately. Our parents and I felt that we could finally relax. When he returned during holidays, the tension came back as if it never left. The first time he came back, it was almost comforting, but afterward, it was annoying and stressful. Our mom and I talked about it a lot, but we both loved him. The funny thing about his departure is that some things started improving for me. My grades were going up. I started running track and weighlifting in 8th grade and got my weight under control. I started being a little more social with girls, even though I was still nervous as hell around them back then. It is funny how as much as my brother ragged on me about my weight, it was not until he left that I did something about it. once the pressure was gone, I succeeded. He even tried to get me to lose weight by working out with me when I was younger and it did not work. He said I cried and moaned too much, and that's why I did not keep the weight off. I remember it being so awful that I dreaded coming home after school. I could tell that he was not concerned about my health; he cared about his image He talked about our dad being overweight, too and how disgusting he was. He told all of us how he was ashamed to be related to us and how he did not ask to be there. I know it is not easy lving with someone who is not your biological father, but my brother's words were hurtful to all of us. I don't think any one of us really go over it.
We were able to maintain some sort of decency for the most part as the years went on, but things turned really bad when my mother died a few years ago. It was hard for all of us in the family, but my brother acted and still acts like he was the only person who lost someone they loved dearly. He refers to her as my mother instead of ours. He feels that everyone else is dealing with it better than him and tries to make me feel bad about moving on with my life. He specifically gets on me about visitng our mom's grave. I did it once and felt that I was not something I needed to cope with her loss. He proudly proclaims that everytime he is our hometown, he visits her. He says the same thing about our grandmother after she died. It's cool for him to do that if it helps him, but I hate how he says it in a way to make him feel better than everyone else as if he was the best son in the world. This is the same guy who would rather give a tip to a total stranger than by our mother some candy at the movie theater. This is the same guy that when our mom told us 7 years before she died that she has a chronic illness, the first question he asked was whether it was heriditary - and then got mad at me for crying after our mom told us. This is the same guy who receives a car when he was 17 and then leans over to our mom and says "you should have got me an Ultima." It angers me so much to deal with his hypocrisy and abusiveness. It has had such an huge affect on my life and experiences.
One of the worst aspects about my relationship with him was that my first serious girlfriend probably had NPD as well. She had all the traits (emotional abusive, self-centered, disregard for the feelings of other, selective memory of past statements and actions). When I finally got the courage to break up with her, the thing that kept lingering in my head was how much she reminded me of my brother. It is what stings the most about the relationship. You how people talk about when you have someone in your family that is abusive, you will probably end up with someone just like them. Well, I think I feel for that.
The past 3 years have been probably the most unpleasant, even though I have rarely seen him. Our dad got remarried, and that gave my brother lots of ammunition to throw at dad and force people to choose sides. Even though I was not estatic about dad's remarriage, I felt he deserved it for fulfilling his vow to our mom. Plus, the complete and total lack of empathy that my brother displayed made me wanna be more accepting of it. On top of that, my brother went through divorce with children and a couple of DV injunctions. That just made things even worse. I would try to reason with him about the issues, and he would just accuse me of taking her side. To him, there is no side to take because we are brothers. I want to support him and I essentially do, but I cannot hold back my honest opinions anymore. I did it for too long and let him run over me. For the past couple years we have spoken to each other maybe 7 times, and I saw him once after not seeing him for 2.5 years. We have had a few arguments in between time. I told him that I was dating someone else (we are now engaged). He kept bugging me about whether we had sex; we did not have sex for a year after we met because it was a long distance relationship. It was getting on my damn nerves and I told him that. He then hung up on me. We talked about that incident almost a year later, and all he talked about was how I was putting her over him - all becuase I did not want talk about my damn sex life! He said it was becuase I went to go visit her often and not him. I was in school or working, and she was closer. At the same time, the guy admitted to me that he had been in the same town as me and did not call me or anything. While I thought this conversation was helpful to us, I realized later that it was really another one of his manipulation plots. Not talking to him made more of an impact because he felt that he was losing control. When I talked to him and got angry and emotional, it seemed that he needed that to know he still had control over me. It's messed up, man. Currently, we haven't spoken in 4 months because he got mad that I would not do something that I was not allowed to do and could face severe punishment for it. He accused me again of not taking his side and then used our mom as a tool to make me feel guilty for turning him down. It made me so mad that I could not sleep tonight and decided to write this post.
Anyway, I feel that us guys have a hard time being real about this stuff when it exists and hide it behind our tough exterior. But living with a NPD in the family can scar you even if you will not show it. Me and my fiance are working some of these issues out and we are happy. It is still hard though to cope. Websites like these are good for us to express our pain.
Feel free to reply if you disagree, agree, or whatever. Just sharing my experiences.
I do not mean to offend anyone with the title, but most of the posts on the website seem to be from women. I sure you all don't need convincing, but guys who grow up with family members with NPD have their issues as well. Sometimes I think that we are so macho that we have a hard time talking about it with each other. It is almost as if we should just kick the dude's ass and move on. It is not that easy when it is your brother and you love him. Being a black male is also a factor that affects one's openess abut the subject. Mental problems is something we don't really recognize as a problem in the black community, but it is jsut as frequent as in other communities. It's frustrating becuase most of the time, people just give this easy answer of "he needs the Lord in his life" or whatever. It's bigger than that and more serious. My dad says that a lot and reject the mental aspect of my brother's problem. It makes it hard to talk to him about it, even though I know he feels the same feelings I do. Yet he is less likely to have to deal with my brother for most of his life.
Anyways, my brother and I grew up in the same house with the same mother. We have different fathers, which is a fact I did not really find out until I was 20. While growing up with him, I, too, always felt like I was walking on egg shells around him. He would always push my buttons and make me so angry that I would go crazy. A remember a couple times when I slapped him in the face in front of my parents. My parents told me that I actually was going into the drawer to get a knife becuase he made me so angry. Luckily, I did not do anything to him, but I did not realize how he was manipulating me. He started it when I was young, so it would be easier to do it when we were older, so I think. He would tell me how he imagine me to be a lot better as a brother and made fun of me becuase I was overweight. He would call me stupid and a mama's boy and other negative terms. He used to rag on me for following what our parents would say, especially if it was against what he wanted. For example, if I picked up the cordless phone and it was for my brother, he would get in my face and cuss me out because our parents told me not to give him the cordless phone and make him use the regular phone in the kitchen. It's just a damn phone!
All during elementary school, I felt so tense when I was around him. I knew he was going to !+$% with me whenever he felt like it because he was bigger and stronger than me. I would often watch television in my parents room or go do things in my room just to get away. Deep down I always wanted him to like me as a person. I wanted to be his friend as well as his brother becuase he always treated his "friends" from school better than he treated his family. my desire to be close to him left me susceptible to his manipulation techniques. I would do things for him, and if it was not quite right or off, he would give this disparaging comments like I'm stupid and I don't think. Sometimes, I believed him. I do know that to this day, when I am around him, I am so nervous about doing something to set him off that I end up doing it anyway. I cannot get my !@$% right when I am around him, and I am a completely different person around anyone else. It was awful when we were living together. He always looked at things that I did in terms of how it made him look better. When I started my music in 4th grade, he cared more about bragging to his friends about my talent than my own happiness playing. I ended up quitting after 4 years (which I definitely regret). How I dressed, what sports I played, what sports teams I liked - all of it was about how it reflected on him. Forget about everything else. He would get on my case for not talking around his friends when they came over - after telling me not to talk when they are around. He would go ape !@$% if I was playing baseketball outside and the ball tapped his car. I was afraid to ask him to move the car because i was afraid he would snap at me. I really felt and still feel that he cared more about that damn car than he did about me.
I will never forget how different the house environment changed when he left for college. It was a breath of fresh air. The tension level dissappeared immediately. Our parents and I felt that we could finally relax. When he returned during holidays, the tension came back as if it never left. The first time he came back, it was almost comforting, but afterward, it was annoying and stressful. Our mom and I talked about it a lot, but we both loved him. The funny thing about his departure is that some things started improving for me. My grades were going up. I started running track and weighlifting in 8th grade and got my weight under control. I started being a little more social with girls, even though I was still nervous as hell around them back then. It is funny how as much as my brother ragged on me about my weight, it was not until he left that I did something about it. once the pressure was gone, I succeeded. He even tried to get me to lose weight by working out with me when I was younger and it did not work. He said I cried and moaned too much, and that's why I did not keep the weight off. I remember it being so awful that I dreaded coming home after school. I could tell that he was not concerned about my health; he cared about his image He talked about our dad being overweight, too and how disgusting he was. He told all of us how he was ashamed to be related to us and how he did not ask to be there. I know it is not easy lving with someone who is not your biological father, but my brother's words were hurtful to all of us. I don't think any one of us really go over it.
We were able to maintain some sort of decency for the most part as the years went on, but things turned really bad when my mother died a few years ago. It was hard for all of us in the family, but my brother acted and still acts like he was the only person who lost someone they loved dearly. He refers to her as my mother instead of ours. He feels that everyone else is dealing with it better than him and tries to make me feel bad about moving on with my life. He specifically gets on me about visitng our mom's grave. I did it once and felt that I was not something I needed to cope with her loss. He proudly proclaims that everytime he is our hometown, he visits her. He says the same thing about our grandmother after she died. It's cool for him to do that if it helps him, but I hate how he says it in a way to make him feel better than everyone else as if he was the best son in the world. This is the same guy who would rather give a tip to a total stranger than by our mother some candy at the movie theater. This is the same guy that when our mom told us 7 years before she died that she has a chronic illness, the first question he asked was whether it was heriditary - and then got mad at me for crying after our mom told us. This is the same guy who receives a car when he was 17 and then leans over to our mom and says "you should have got me an Ultima." It angers me so much to deal with his hypocrisy and abusiveness. It has had such an huge affect on my life and experiences.
One of the worst aspects about my relationship with him was that my first serious girlfriend probably had NPD as well. She had all the traits (emotional abusive, self-centered, disregard for the feelings of other, selective memory of past statements and actions). When I finally got the courage to break up with her, the thing that kept lingering in my head was how much she reminded me of my brother. It is what stings the most about the relationship. You how people talk about when you have someone in your family that is abusive, you will probably end up with someone just like them. Well, I think I feel for that.
The past 3 years have been probably the most unpleasant, even though I have rarely seen him. Our dad got remarried, and that gave my brother lots of ammunition to throw at dad and force people to choose sides. Even though I was not estatic about dad's remarriage, I felt he deserved it for fulfilling his vow to our mom. Plus, the complete and total lack of empathy that my brother displayed made me wanna be more accepting of it. On top of that, my brother went through divorce with children and a couple of DV injunctions. That just made things even worse. I would try to reason with him about the issues, and he would just accuse me of taking her side. To him, there is no side to take because we are brothers. I want to support him and I essentially do, but I cannot hold back my honest opinions anymore. I did it for too long and let him run over me. For the past couple years we have spoken to each other maybe 7 times, and I saw him once after not seeing him for 2.5 years. We have had a few arguments in between time. I told him that I was dating someone else (we are now engaged). He kept bugging me about whether we had sex; we did not have sex for a year after we met because it was a long distance relationship. It was getting on my damn nerves and I told him that. He then hung up on me. We talked about that incident almost a year later, and all he talked about was how I was putting her over him - all becuase I did not want talk about my damn sex life! He said it was becuase I went to go visit her often and not him. I was in school or working, and she was closer. At the same time, the guy admitted to me that he had been in the same town as me and did not call me or anything. While I thought this conversation was helpful to us, I realized later that it was really another one of his manipulation plots. Not talking to him made more of an impact because he felt that he was losing control. When I talked to him and got angry and emotional, it seemed that he needed that to know he still had control over me. It's messed up, man. Currently, we haven't spoken in 4 months because he got mad that I would not do something that I was not allowed to do and could face severe punishment for it. He accused me again of not taking his side and then used our mom as a tool to make me feel guilty for turning him down. It made me so mad that I could not sleep tonight and decided to write this post.
Anyway, I feel that us guys have a hard time being real about this stuff when it exists and hide it behind our tough exterior. But living with a NPD in the family can scar you even if you will not show it. Me and my fiance are working some of these issues out and we are happy. It is still hard though to cope. Websites like these are good for us to express our pain.
Feel free to reply if you disagree, agree, or whatever. Just sharing my experiences.
