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A diagnosed narcissist has revealed the 'biggest danger' about being in a relationship with someone who has the pathological disorder.
Lee Hammock, 39, from North Carolina, US, suffers from narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), as those diagnosed with NPD tend to pervasively seek admiration while displaying little to no empathy.
Symptoms often include lying, manipulating and losing touch with reality.
The father-of-three said he started to become more aware of his condition when the son of one of his best friends passed away.
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In an interview with LADbible, Lee said: "I remember going to his son's funeral and thinking life can end at any moment, and I'm not happy.
"My behaviour started becoming more and more erratic.
"Me and my wife got into a huge argument. I was blaming my six-month-old son for holding me back in life.
"I always think he has this core memory of his dad yelling at him when he was a baby.
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"And she came home and heard me yelling and screaming at my son.
"And that's when she first called me a narcissist.
"And she ended up leaving, and that's why I ended up looking the word narcissist up.
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"I was like, 'Damn, that sounds exactly like what I've been doing for 20 plus years'."
Meanwhile, Lee has explained what he thinks the 'biggest danger' about being in a relationship with someone like him is.
In an interview with 7NEWS Australia, Lee said: "So I feel like the biggest danger in a relationship with a narcissist is losing your own identity.
"I feel like that's one of the biggest dangers of being in a relationship with a narcissist/toxic person, whoever, is losing who you are, trying to fix this person and trying to help this person be better.
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"You know, no narcissistic person can be better without them, themselves, wanting to be better.
"Without them, themselves, wanting to put the work in themselves.
"A lot of people think that they can heal a narcissist or they can fix a narcissist, or they see they are broken, they feel like they are dealing with a broken person.
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"So you give pieces of yourself, trying to fix this broken person. You cannot out love the trauma that makes somebody a narcissist, they have to work on themselves.
"I feel like the biggest dangers is loss of identity, loss of self and typically you get isolated, you lose a lot."
Speaking more broadly about relationships, Lee also told us: "Narcissism has destroyed most of my relationships. Most of my relationships follow the cycle of narcissistic abuse, love bombing, devaluation, discard.
"All my relationships had fallen apart in the same exact way. I'll be madly in love with somebody, and then one day I will wake up and I will view this person in a different light."
Lee Hammock now runs YouTube channel Mental Healness, along with coaching sessions for narcissists and victims of narcisstic abuse. He is also working on his first book.
Topics: Health, Sex and Relationships
Anish Vij