Dr. Syed Nesar Ahmad Rumy :
NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), a sort of mental disorder that cannot be understand always and we often misunderstand the persons affected by NPD.
This sort of state of mind is prevailing among our friends, well-wishers, family members and persons known to us. By the activities of NPD patients, persons associated with them misunderstand him and as a result of this situation the normal relationship, friendship might be affected.
Nowadays in Bangladesh society many people have become netizens and those persons are equipped with computers, cell phones, tablets and many other gadgets etc. A big portion of a day they spend their times with these sorts of gadgets and technological inventions. For that reason many of them do not get time to make them socialized.
In these consequences, a gap might be created between him and the persons associated or surrounding him. May be, those persons are their family members, near and dear ones. In this situation normal relationship gets affected and ultimately that NPD affected person becomes isolated.
So, the person affected by NPD might be somewhat eccentric and reactive. And that person seems to be always not accommodative. They usually think what is felt by them is absolutely correct and final. He/she even does not think of alternative opinions on any issue proposed by others surrounding them. In a group of friends we usually find such type of persons affected by NPD.
Person affected by NPD is always in a state of mind that he/she is right and he/she always wants to be in the pivotal position. People surrounding them cannot always understand them and the state of mind he/she possesses. So, there is an ample chance of misunderstandings among themselves. In this situation, friends of NPD patients should show the endurance to him bypassing their grievances.
This sort of action ultimately helps the NPD patients. But in reality it is very tough to create such environment because everyone present there may have different state of mind and that is quite natural. But to make situation calm & quiet someone of that particular group usually take a stance to way-out of this situation. In this way our society, our friendship & congeniality survive.
We see many NPD affected people surrounding us. Even many influential persons holding responsible position are suffering from NPD. In Bangladesh we find much such type of persons holding important posts in the government, political parties and in many other organizations.
In this respect we can say there might have some sort of characteristics of NPD of our deposed Prime minister. So far we know she was very much egoistic person and at the same time very much judgmental in nature. Usually she possessed these sorts of characteristics.
Intransigent attitude was one of her characteristics and persons surrounding her knew this very well and for that reason everyone close to her were used to admiring her. And steps taken by her are always on right track that she usually would believe so. These types of persons sometimes fall in obsessive situation. As a result of this, decisions taken by him/her have ample chances to be wrong.
Sometimes we see many affected by NPD are in a very high position in the society and organizations. Rational and reasonable persons usually face problems working with them. For that reasons service deliveries of that particular organization have strong chances to be hampered and usually it does not reach to the point of optimum level.
Generally NPD starts at the time of adulthood of a person. In this stage of age, person affected by NPD gets maturity. So the stage of molding his/her behavioral pattern has already gone. In a normal way it may not be possible to anyone to change the attitude of that particular person. Yet we can do something.
1. Use empathy to deal with them. While it may seem impossible, try to use empathy when dealing with some who has a NPD;
2. Stay calm and don’t take things personally;
3. Set healthy boundaries;
4. Don’t ignore warning signs;
5. Focus on solutions with the person, not problems.
It is very tough to change someone’s attitude. If that person has NPD syndromes it is almost impossible to change their behavioral pattern. But with empathic initiatives, maybe, we can reduce their unnatural activities and pattern of behavior.
(The author is a former civil servant)
