Yeah, "sometimes, I am..." That's exactly the kind of a thing a narcissist would say. So maybe I'm a narcissist all the time, and hide it really well, most of the time. I don't know.

But my new self-reflection regiment has really got me thinking about how I respond to even the most helpful criticisms (notwithstanding those from members of this site, which I always, truly, love and appreciate!). I tend to get grumpy, to put it mildly. Not-so-mature, counter-productive thoughts race through my head, and I even fantasize about what it will feel like to be right in the end, to bask in smug, self-righteous satisfaction. Like I said, it's immature; it's juvenile. But still, I do it, a lot. It's my knee-jerk response to being proven wrong. I need to be right, and more importantly, I need people to see me as being right.

Now, whether this is just human nature, or real, clinical narcissism, I don't know. What matters is that I think it's affecting my progress in recovery. I'm able to admit that I'm an addict. I've become one with the idea that I have an allergy to lust. But still, my ego is making it difficult, I think, to truly let G-d fix my lust addiction. This is just something that's been ever-so-slowly dawning on me

Thanks for reading!

TC

I can totally relate! Sometimes, for me, it's my inner child rebelling and screaming that he can't possibly be wrong, and that he doesn't want to do the work, and why me, etc. It's hard to be told that what we're doing is wrong, but it's a process to be able to come to accept it. With time, it'll get better.