A Quick Survey to Help You Identify the Degree of Narcissism within Yourself
The following is a quick survey to help you identify the degree of narcissism within yourself. Prayerfully answer the questions either “yes” or “no.” When answering, consider your overall patterns, not isolated instances. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God (see Romans 3:23). Thus, we will all behave narcissistically at times.
1. Do I feel remorse and/or guilt when I have hurt someone, either intentionally or by accident?
2. Do I generally care about the feelings of others and feel sadness or anger if I witness someone else being wronged or in pain?
3. Do I seek to become increasingly self-aware of my strengths, areas of growth, and impacts on others?
4. Am I open-minded to the possibility of being wrong and willing to look at circumstances from a different perspective?
5. Do I allow others to have a varying perspective without putting them down, either directly or behind their backs?
6. Do I take responsibility for my contributions to problems?
7. Did someone who is clinically narcissistic accuse me of being narcissistic, and that’s the main reason I think I may be narcissistic?
If you honestly answered “yes” to two or more of these questions, you are not clinically narcissistic. Additionally, not only are you not clinically narcissistic, you may have a strong desire for self-awareness and growing as a person. Which clinically-narcissistic, Biblically-foolish individuals cannot have, according to the definition of a personality disorder as outlined in the DSM-5.
If you answered “yes” to the last question, you may not only have a strong desire for self-awareness and growing as a person, you may also have a narcissist in your life who is shame-dumping his or her narcissism onto you. This is called narcissistic projection, and it is one form of abuse.
You are not narcissistic. And you are not crazy. You are Precious. Don’t let the narcissist in your life convince you otherwise.
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