I agree that this woman is off base. I’ve been a follower of Jillian Michaels (the real deal despite teh kettleball debacle) and her business partner Jackie Warner (also the real deal) who don’t use their sexuality disguised. Crystal wants to be famous. She should have gone into acting. Instead she is pretending to be an empowerment coach for women. When my sister sent me this the first thought was, Crystalize: (def) verb for narcissist. I have way more respect for Kim Kardashian because she is HONEST about being a fame seeking missile who, though she can’t cook, may be coming out with an Armenian cookbook! Watch out Rachel Ray

From the book “The Narcissim Epidemic”:

Narcissism is not simply a confident attitude or a healthy feeling of self-worth. As we explore in Chapters 2 and 3, narcissists are overconfident, not just confident, and – unlike most people high in self-esteem – place little value on emotionally close relationships. We will also address other myths, like “narcissists are insecure” (they’re typically not), and “it’s necessary to be narcissistic to succeed today” (in most contexts, and long-term, narcissism is actually a deterrent to success).

Understanding the narcissism epidemic is important because its long-term consequences are destructive to society. American culture’s focus on self-admiration has caused a flight from reality to the land of grandiose fantasy. We have phony rich people (with interest-only mortgages and piles of debt), phony beauty (with plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures), phony athletes (with performance-enhancing drugs), phony celebrities (via reality TV and YouTube), phony genius students (with grade inflation), a phony national economy (with 11 trillion dollars of government debt), phony feelings of being special among children (with parenting and education focused on self-esteem), and phony friends (with the social networking explosion). All this fantasy might feel good, but, unfortunately, reality always wins. The mortgage meltdown and the resulting financial crisis are just one demonstration of how inflated desires eventually crash to earth.

From Chapter 3: Isn’t narcissism beneficial, especially in a competitive world? Challenging another myth about narcissism

Narcissists have a high tolerance for risks, because they are so confident they are right and that things will go well. For this reason, narcissists are successful when investing in bull markets, when their overconfidence and willingness to take risks pays off. In a study using a simulated stock market, narcissists did better than others in when the market was headed up. Of course, this superior performance disappeared as soon as the market turned south – then narcissists lost their shirts due to their higher tolerance for risk. …

U.S. high school kids have not improved in academic performance over the last 30 years, a time when self-esteem has been actively encouraged and boosted among American children. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 17-year-olds’ math scores have risen slightly, from 304 to a 307, but reading scores have stayed completely flat at 285. So, at best, there has been less than a 1% improvement in academic performance. At the same time, high school students’ grades have inflated enormously. While only 18% of students said they earned an A or A- average in 1976, 33% said they were A students in 2006 – a whopping 83% increase in self-reported “A” students. So, we have had less that a 1% improvement in actual learning over 30 years, but an 83% increase in A grades. Apparently, our culture has decided to go with the strategy of boosting the fantasy of success rather than success itself, similar to the amplifiers in the movie Spinal Tap that “go to eleven.”

Narcissists may seem like a tasty treat when you first meet them, but they are not. Narcissism is absolutely corrosive to social relationships. People who have been deeply involved with narcissists can tell you this. These relationships destroy trust in others. You learn not to trust anyone after being mistreated by someone so charming and likable. You also lose trust in yourself. If you couldn’t see this coming, what does that tell you about your judgment? And then, to dip the wound in salt, relationships with narcissists are remembered and ruminated about for a long time. People ponder what went wrong; they ruminate about the warning signs they should have seen; and they waste a lot of time trying to figure out what made the narcissist into a narcissist.