Narcissism: Why We All Have A Personality Disorder

In 1996, when Gov. George Deukmejian approved “The State Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem, Personal and Social Responsibility”, every other state in America thought California was having a laugh. Even a specialist of political behaviour at San Jose State University was quoted as saying “I can’t imagine Idaho having a task force on self-esteem”, they all said “It sounds so Californian”.

Guess what though? After the task force, headed by statesman John Vasconcellos presented the result of it’s study 3 years later that “People with a strong self-image are more likely to live productive lives”, everyone suddenly caught the self-esteem bug.

Prominent figures like Oprah declared that ‘self-esteem’ would be the buzz word for the 90s, the get-in-shape wave hit and everyone wanted to look good, the importance of self-confidence was pressed in schools and child rearing activities, one teacher was quoted as saying “They began to tell me, it doesn’t matter if a child could spell, as long as she feels good about herself.”

People were being encouraged to feel great no matter their imperfections and also treat other people with ‘unconditional positive regard’, which means everyone was brimming with self-love and also sharing this emotion with friends, families and especially strangers.

Now I’m not surprised that the hub of social media, Silicon Valley, is cooped up somewhere in the state of California, but it is actually a huge coincidence that the hub of ‘happiness’ in the 90s, birthed the hub of virtual social interactions in the 2000s. But, that’s an aside.

Growing up, we all battled insecurities, heartbreaks, and major Ls. All these things contributed to our shaky self-esteem, and then all of a sudden, social media is all the rage, and there are filters, photo editors and what not, all promising to make us look better, even sound better.

There is a whole community of other people validating our opinions and ‘gassing’ our pictures/videos up.

It’s very normal to go crazy with it, because as human beings we are generally drawn to things that makes us feel good about ourselves.

However, while engaging in virtual social activities and getting positively validated by our friends and families, we can easily get lost in the sauce, we can become so gassed by these ‘appraisals’, so much that it can create some sort of grandiose feeling.

You may not have up to N5,000 ($10) in your account but at least your Instagram picture has 1065 likes and 33 comments, right?

Everywhere you go, you want to show off your outfit or the ambience on Snapchat, you want people to see who you are hanging out with because that means you have clout, right? You feel on top of the world when your tweet gets bare 200 RTs, because that means you are funny/intelligent, right?

You are bent on feeding your ego with likes, retweets and views.

The defining feature of Narcissism is “Excessive interest in, or admiration of oneself and a craving for attention”.

Sounds familiar?