It was 1 a.m. on a Sunday. My phone lit up my dark room as I sat on the edge of my bed googling, "Am I a narcissist?" I added "signs," and then "symptoms," as if I were trying to diagnose myself with something contagious.
I had spent the hour before my search spiraling about the 23 unread WhatsApp messages at the top of my screen. Some were days old. Some were months old. One contained a voice note I had received three weeks earlier, and I still could not bring myself to listen to it. Others were group chats making plans I had not responded to.
Every time I opened the app, a tightness bloomed in my chest. My friends must think I am self-absorbed, I told myself. Rude. Uninterested. A bad person. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, ready to reply, and then froze. The longer I left the messages, the worse I felt.
According to the internet, narcissists do not worry that they are narcissists, which should have reassured me. Instead, I wondered why I worried about it all the time.
A Lifetime of Struggle
Ever since I left high school more than a decade ago, friendship has felt like a language everyone else learned at some point, but I somehow missed out on. Other people seem to know the rules. You reply within a reasonable time frame. You suggest hangouts. You follow up. You remember birthdays. You do not disappear for weeks because answering a message feels inexplicably overwhelming.
I have tried. I really have. I have shown up to parties even when the thought of small talk made my stomach clench. I have sat with my calendar open and tried to coordinate meetups like a normal adult. I have forced myself to send cheerful replies when all I wanted was silence. And yet, there has always been a pull inside me — a powerful urge to retreat. To ignore everyone. To stay in my own contained, quiet bubble where nothing is expected of me.
Over time, friendships quietly faded. I remember scrolling through Instagram one evening and seeing a photo of a dinner I had not been invited to — a long table full of women I used to see almost every day in college. I stared at the image and tried to work out when I had quietly fallen off the list. Other friendships dissolved more gradually. Friends who used to call every week eventually stopped calling. My boyfriend, with whom I live, has gently asked, "Why do not you reach out? You used to be so close." It is not that I do not care. Reaching out feels like trying to lift something impossibly heavy.
The Mask of Normalcy
In my early 20s, I decided I needed to fix myself. I became aggressively social at university. I went to every freshman event I could physically tolerate. I joined the cheerleading team so I would be forced into training three times a week. Before lectures, I rehearsed small talk in my head so I would not seem aloof. I studied other women closely — their eye contact, enthusiasm, the rhythm of their conversations — and copied what I saw.
By the end of university, I had one real friendship. I went to her wedding. And then, somehow, even that slipped away. We have not spoken in almost two years. The harder I tried to be socially "normal," the more exhausted I became.
I also struggled with grudges — deep, all-consuming ones. A throwaway comment from a family member could sit under my skin like a splinter for months. If someone called me "rude" or "difficult" or "cold," I replayed it over and over in my head and felt a rush of heat I could not regulate. I would either shut down completely or obsess over whether I had been wronged.
Eventually, the shame grew loud enough that I started searching for explanations. What kind of person avoids friends, holds onto resentment, and feels relief when plans get canceled? A selfish one, I thought. A narcissistic one.
Building a Case Against Myself
I returned to the same definition online for weeks: "a narcissist is someone with an excessive interest in themselves — self-important, demanding, overly sensitive to criticism." The descriptions unsettled me because I could recognize distorted reflections of my own behavior inside them.
My need to escape noisy offices or work from home felt impossible to explain without sounding entitled. I imagined colleagues assuming I wanted special privileges that others did not receive. I could not articulate that the environment itself felt physically overwhelming — only that I seemed unable to tolerate what everyone else managed effortlessly.
I had a rigid sense of right and wrong. When something felt unfair, I struggled to let it go. I was convinced I was defending a principle, but others experienced me as argumentative or morally superior. A casual remark could replay in my mind for weeks. The websites I read framed this as narcissistic fragility — an inability to tolerate criticism. I wondered if my hurt feelings were proof that I believed I deserved special treatment, rather than evidence of a nervous system struggling to regulate emotional impact.
Even my social preferences felt suspect. I said I preferred deep conversations to small talk, but I worried this sounded like a value judgment — as if I believed myself more thoughtful than other people. What I meant was simpler: Depth gave me structure; surface conversation left me lost. I avoided situations where I might get things wrong — parties with unclear expectations, group plans requiring spontaneous enthusiasm, workplaces demanding constant interaction. Avoidance, I read, was another narcissistic trait. It protected the ego from failure. I began to wonder whether my withdrawal was really arrogance disguised as anxiety.
Piece by piece, I built a case against myself, translating overwhelm into evidence of selfishness. I was not worried that I loved myself too much. I was worried that, despite trying so hard to be considerate, I might secretly be the kind of person who only ever thought about herself.
The more I analyzed myself, the smaller my world became. Every interaction felt like evidence in a trial I was quietly conducting against my own character. I monitored my tone, my reactions, my silences, searching for proof that something inside me was fundamentally wrong. I eventually looked for a therapist because I was exhausted by trying to fix what I believed was a personality defect that could not be fixed. I wanted help becoming easier — less sensitive, less avoidant, less difficult to be around. I was not looking for insight so much as correction. I assumed something in me needed to be trained out of existence.
A Therapist's Revelation
One evening, during an online therapy session, I was sitting on my bed in my room. I had just rushed back from the kitchen after cooking dinner, my whole body tense with "kitchen anxiety" — the fear that a flatmate might walk in and I would be forced into small talk I did not have the energy for. My heart would race, and my muscles would tighten, as if I were trying to outrun something dangerous. I had not even washed my plate before logging onto the call because someone else was still in the kitchen.
As I described another argument I could not move past, my therapist paused. "Lara," she said gently, "has it ever occurred to you that you might be autistic?" I laughed at first. Autistic? I made eye contact. I had a job. I had a boyfriend. I did not believe I fit the stereotype. However, later that night, instead of googling "narcissism," I googled "autism in women."
Something shifted. The first word that made my stomach drop was "masking." It described a lifetime of overcompensation. The exhaustion I felt after spending more than two hours with anyone who was not one of my "safe" people — my twin sister or my boyfriend. The way I could not hold down a job for longer than six months — not because of the work itself, but because of the constant performance. The deliberate eye contact. The rehearsed warmth. The small talk I forced myself through, even when my brain felt like it was shutting down. It described feeling fundamentally different and not knowing why.
I felt a wave of relief so strong it scared me. Maybe I was not morally flawed. Maybe I was not selfish. Maybe my brain just worked differently.
The Diagnosis Journey
Getting diagnosed as autistic was not straightforward. I waited more than 10 months for a National Health Service assessment. When I was finally seen, I was told I had social anxiety and emotional dysregulation. But after months of obsessively researching high-masking autism in women, I knew the diagnosis I had received did not fully explain what I felt, so I sought a private assessment.
When the psychologist finally said, "You meet the criteria for autism spectrum disorder," I felt two things at once: relief and grief. I was relieved that I was not broken, and I grieved for the 27 years I had spent believing I was.
If I had known about my autism sooner, my teenage years might have looked different. I might not have punished myself so relentlessly for struggling with friendships or small talk. I might not have tried to shrink myself into something more acceptable. In my teens and early 20s, I developed an eating disorder. I controlled food. I over-exercised. I constantly compared my body to other bodies. It was another attempt to fix what I believed was wrong with me — to discipline myself into being better, smaller and easier. I was my harshest critic. All along, I was starving for the truth: There was nothing morally defective about me.
A New Understanding
I do not see myself as broken anymore. My hyperfocus is not self-obsession. Leaving a party early is not selfishness. The unopened messages are not proof that I do not care. Struggling through small talk is not indifference. It is my nervous system. It is the way my brain is wired.
I realize now that narcissists do not lie awake dissecting their tone. They do not spend years worrying they have taken up too much space. I still replay conversations in my head. I still leave social events early and feel the familiar rush of relief when I get home. I still sometimes hold onto comments longer than I would like. But I no longer interpret those things as evidence that I am fundamentally defective.
For most of my life, I scanned myself for signs I was too much, too cold, too selfish — not enough. Since my diagnosis, that internal surveillance has softened. Now, when my phone lights up with a WhatsApp message, the dread is not quite as sharp. Sometimes I still do not open it right away. Sometimes I reply weeks later with a brief explanation instead of an elaborate apology. I am not justifying myself anymore. I am finally understanding myself.
Ironically, learning that I am autistic has made me feel less narcissistic — and more open to connection. I know that caring about people does not always look the way I thought it was supposed to. And when I see those unread messages now, I assume I am just overwhelmed — not a bad person.
Lara Rodwell is a lifestyle writer focusing on identity, mental health and modern connection. Her work explores loneliness, belonging and the social pressures shaping how we relate to one another today. She is also the founder of The Lonely Club, a community initiative creating inclusive spaces for meaningful connection.
