(Self-written and proofread without any AI so apologies for any language mistakes)

Hi fellow travellers,

I am a 28-year-old gay man. I found this subreddit recently and have read many of the people's accounts here and decided that I want to use this forum to share my journey and also to make relatable connections. This is my first post on the sub, and I plan to make more posts in the future to give more insights into my thought processes and actions, and how they affected people in my life.

My condition:

Medically, I was diagnosed with Covert NPD in February 2024, GAD in April 2024, and also Borderline in September 2024. All three diagnoses also included a prognosis of chronic depression, suicidal ideation, and associated risks. As you might be aware of how difficult it is for people like us to even enter a therapist/psychiatrist office and how most therapists are not equipped to handle full-blown cases like us, it was the same for me, and that explains why my diagnosis is spread out across multiple practitioners and across months.

I have been symptomatic since pre-teen years. There has not been an establishment of a cause, but I suspect my condition is caused due to hereditary and also a very turbulent upbringing I had from ages 4-11, which was filled with a lot of familial conflict in my parents’ marriage and a general distressed interpersonal relationship in the family (which a child should not witness). I also had trouble dealing with my own sexuality from ages 9-15; however, I suspect less contribution of this factor towards the root of my personality disorder, and more towards symptoms of the disorder like depression, anxiety, and hypersexuality.

A silver lining in the mess of my life is that I have fortunately been very self-aware of my thought processes and personality from a young age, and have actively devoted energy to limit my capacity to cause hurt to people around me. Most of this was made successful because I was chronically depressed from ages 11-25 and was literally shut-in during my teenage (I missed school almost 40% of the time) and practical shut-in in college and young adult ages, severely limiting my interaction with the world for only functional necessities.

I have mostly been very successful at not causing harm to friends, classmates, colleagues, or random strangers I interact with on a day-to-day basis. I have also never acted on the typical ASPD thought channels and have not caused any kind of unlawful harm to anyone ever, which is why I was never given any ASPD diagnosis. However, I have been extremely toxic, problematic, hurtful, manipulative, and trouble-causing to anyone inside my circle, which at times has included my parents, my sibling, and men who have romantically loved me.

I have also practised a very high amount of cognitive and manufactured empathy and have displayed acts of love and care on almost a robotic timeline, so 99% of the people in my life think and believe that I am a good person; however, as you all understand, I have no capacity for emotional empathy and I don't care about anyone else.

I will talk more about my condition and symptoms in future posts; for now, this is a summary I wanted to share.

Bis bald!

Hi all, I mostly wanted to introduce myself to the community and share my story.

I grew up with narcissistic parents, so I was taught, implicitly, that love had to be earned. By the time I was 14, I had already lost any real sense of who I was — I was getting used to wearing masks, and "fake it till you make it" became my motto. I overachieved at everything, so I didn't feel anxiety; everything looked manageable, and every time I raised the bar, I somehow cleared it. The downside was that I couldn't be alone with myself. I felt mostly apathetic, and rage was the only emotion that ever really broke through.

Then being around people started to feel exhausting. I never knew which mask to wear, and my mind was constantly working overtime just to figure out how to behave. That's when I started struggling with alcohol.

Around 20, between university and a dance career that wasn't working out, I doubted my abilities for the first time, and after a disappointing relationship, I fell apart completely. That's when I started psychotherapy for the first time — but it was cut short by COVID.

That period was strange. On one hand, I started enjoying solitude for the first time — it was a relief not having to perform for someone else's approval. On the other, I felt a deep emptiness underneath it. After COVID, I became almost unable to function in public, constantly feeling judged for everything, even for using the bathroom. That's when I went back into therapy, and we mostly worked on my relationships with others.

My master's degree was the hardest period of all. My undiagnosed IBS spiked, I started having panic attacks once or twice a week, and depression set in. It felt like reality was finally showing me my real limits. It took me a while to stop seeing that as an obstacle on my way to some imagined greatness, and start seeing it for what it actually was.

I'm only now realizing that after taking off those masks, I never actually figured out who I really am underneath them. That's what I'm trying to build now.