lettered | there should be a name for that

Thanks for the prompts, everyone! I'm trying to work on them.

What do you call it if someone thinks they're awesome, beautiful, brilliant, creative, and hilarious, but just assumes no one else thinks these things about them? Because when people talk about self-confidence, you hear a lot of, "I think I'm awful so I think I can't be loved," and you hear a lot of "If you love yourself, you can believe other people will love you."

But you don't hear a lot of, "I think I'm awesome and terrific, but I also have these faults, which I know all humans have, but they make me feel like I can't be loved." And you definitely don't hear, "I accept and even love my faults; sometimes I find them interesting, and I struggle with them and attempt to overcome them, which is something I am proud of myself for doing and I deeply care about myself. But I still don't think anyone else could possibly get over them, because they're not me so they don't have to in order to live a healthy life."

Is there a name for that?

Also, is there a name for how Angel thinks he's the best at being the worst? I really like characters who think they're the best at being the worst. They never understand how self-centered and arrogant they are for thinking they're so awful, and if they do realize it they just think it makes them more awful. It's much better though when the author doesn't agree they're the best at being the worst and acknowledges the arrogance in some way.

Also, I miss Prince Zuko.

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The answer for both is: narcissism!

I mean, this is the Heinz Kohut super-finicky definition of narcissism, not the DSM version. This is not "permanent personality disorder that can never be cured" the way most people mean it; and unlike most people, by "personality disorder" I do not mean "symptom of evil that ruins everything this person touches." I mean, this is a sign of disruption in the basic tasks of lining up your reality with other peoples', and it is centered around needing to completely control what other people think of you, to the point of denying reality.

The DSM "narcissistic personality disorer" is also known as grandiose narcissism, which says I am the best! Kohut also delineates what he calls covert narcissism, which says I am the worst! (and you can wrangle covert narcissism around to the DSM definition, but it's not useful so most people don't, because it's the kind of thing many people pass in and out of and not a permanent condition).

Narcissism, at its core, is the feeling that if anyone got to know your true, authentic self, they would hate and reject you so utterly you would be annihilated. This is terrifying. So grandiose narcissists repress this feeling entirely under a false self of only good things--and if you're denying your own basic reality, it's a lot easier to deny other peoples' too.

Covert narcissists are less disordered because they're a bit more in touch with reality. They have to acknowledge their flawed selves. On the other hand, there's still that fundamental terror of ever letting anyone close and ever letting anyone see; but they still have to create a public self to deal with people, so they still end up manipulating the people around them into feeding their self-image in a gratifying way. (See also: a zillion depressed people who say "I'm so awful, how can you ever love me?" and their significant others reeling off good things about them)

The thing about your top example is, it's all happening in the person's head. That person has pre-determined what the outcome of an interaction will be before they have it, so they're not letting those pesky other people change that. They've already decided how other people feel. They've also decided that somehow their flaws are worse than everyone else's, because other people get a pass, but they don't. It's about being rigid, not empathizing with other people, and not being open to the wacky ambiguity of how people really are, because that's too painful.

covert narcissism

ah ha! This is the term I was looking for for Angel, then.

Narcissism, at its core, is the feeling that if anyone got to know your true, authentic self, they would hate and reject you so utterly you would be annihilated.

I'm not sure this was what I was looking for in the first thing I describe. The idea is sort of the reverse: the feeling that if anyone got to know your true, authentic self, they would love you and value you so completely you would finally be happy--but you don't show or feel unable to show your "true, authentic self", and you're convinced that people are either indifferent to you or actively dislike you. That is, your "true self" has flaws, but you think they're okay and you accept them, but you feel that those flaws outweigh the good in your "public self". It's sort of like the opposite of constructing a public self to deal with people--it's rather that you feel like your public self is a construct and you're constantly trying to deconstruct it to show people the real you, but somehow you fail at it.

There might not be a fundamental difference here (just as maybe there isn't between "I am the best!" and "I am the worst!"), but there's enough of a distinction that it seems like there should be a different term for it.

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That second set of self-descriptors, the mixed emotional bag ones, I identify with pretty darn strongly.

I'm sure TV Tropes has names for both that & the 'best at being the worst' characterization trope. *resists urge to go search through the Angel page on TV Tropes to find the latter*

I identify with pretty darn strongly.

Oh man, me too!

I'm sure TV Tropes has names for both that & the 'best at being the worst' characterization trope.

I don't know if it does, but

staranise says it's covert narcissism, which sounds about right.

there should be a name for that

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