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Find a therapist who understands narcissism.

Most people can display selfish, defensive, or narcissistic traits at times without meeting criteria for NPD.

Accountability, self-reflection, and willingness to change are important when evaluating harmful behavior.

We don’t need to diagnose someone to recognize that their behavior is harmful or abusive.

Most of us have probably behaved selfishly at some point in our lives. We have made a conversation about ourselves when someone else needed support. We have struggled to empathize with someone because we were too caught up in our own hurt. We have become defensive when confronted with something we did wrong. Maybe we have even tried a little too hard to explain why something wasn’t really our fault.

Does that make us narcissists? Probably not.

One of the problems with the way we talk about narcissism today is that the term has become shorthand for almost any behavior we don’t like. An ex who cheated is a narcissist. Someone who talks about themselves too much is a narcissist. A difficult parent is a narcissist. Someone who refuses to apologize? Definitely a narcissist.

Spend enough time on social media, and it can start to seem as though everyone has........

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