I figured out something else about myself.
If you look up my traits on Google, my personality type would probably be called narcissistic. On paper, in checklist form, that is what it sounds like.
Confident. Intense. Draws attention. Always in leadership positions. People either love me or feel threatened by me. That kind of profile.
But my intentions are not to hurt people or use them. I care a lot. Maybe too much. I fight for justice. I speak up when something is wrong. I cannot just sit there and swallow it to keep the peace.
That is where things twist.
People misunderstand me, and sometimes they do it on purpose. The leader of the group almost always ends up jealous or uncomfortable. They feel like I am competition instead of support, so they turn everyone against me quietly first.
They do the fake smile, fake concern thing. Little comments. Side eyes. Subtle exclusion. Tiny shifts in tone.
Then when I finally call it out loud, when I say what everyone has been dancing around, they flip the script. Suddenly I am the problem. I am the dramatic one. I am the unstable one. They use every ounce of their power to pull strings and make me look like the villain.
At the same time, people rely on my good heart. They know I hate injustice, so they feed me stories, ask for my help, and pull me into fights so I will be the one to say what they are scared to say. They wind me up and point me at the problem, then step back and watch me take the hit for it.
So if you zoom in on the behavior with no context, it looks like this:
Always in the center of conflict. Always calling people out. Always intense and emotional. Always the one who "goes too far."
From a distance, from a cold diagnostic checklist, that can look like a narcissist looking for supply, drama, and control.
Up close, inside my actual body, it feels like this:
- I want things to be fair.
- I cannot stand manipulation.
- I love hard and I defend hard.
- I am tired of being punished for being the one who says what is really going on.
Sometimes the world punishes loud honesty and protects quiet manipulation. Then it gives the loud honest person the ugliest label it can find.
That is why self diagnosis on Google is dangerous when you are already hard on yourself. It takes your survival traits and your loud empathy and calls it a disorder. It ignores the pattern of how people respond to you. It ignores the way your heart is wired.
Are you trying to control people and feed your ego?
Or are you trying to protect yourself and others in a world that keeps twisting your words and punishing your clarity?
If it is the second one, you are not a monster. You are a nerve in the system. You are a warning signal. You are exhausted.
Your job is not to become smaller to make manipulators comfortable. Your job is to learn how to protect your heart, your voice, and your nervous system so you are not constantly dragged into wars that were never yours to fight alone.
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