The person in personality disorder

November 22, 2019 by twikst 1 Comment

A person’s personality refers to the long-standing traits and patterns that depict how we think, feel, and behave through life. Our personality is really what makes us unique people and different from everybody else. While we often share personality traits with other people we also each have our own idiosyncratic patterns that depict how we interact with others and the world around us. It is thought that our personalities are long term, stable, and not easily changed.

According to Lumen Learning; ‘The word personality comes from the Latin word persona. In the ancient world, a persona was a mask worn by an actor. While we tend to think of a mask as being worn to conceal one’s identity, the theatrical mask was originally used to either represent or project a specific personality trait of a character.’

So then what separates our normal idiosyncrasies and the characteristics of a personality disorder? What decides how you behave to be normal and how I behave to be a disorder? Well, personality disorders are considered as a group of mental illnesses involving the core personality. They look at the patterns of thoughts and behaviours, long-term, that are unhealthy and inflexible. These behaviours often cause serious problems with all of the person’s relationships. People diagnosed with personality disorders will more often than not have trouble dealing with everyday stresses and problems and their relationships with other people are unstable.

In my experience, as a person with a personality disorder, I find it difficult to make and maintain friendships. So many of my friends have walked away from the friendship because they found my behaviours too difficult to deal with, they didn’t like the way I behaved sometimes or I took up too much of their time in their minds. Whatever their reasons most of them would just cut the friendship off without asking any questions or explaining why they didn’t want to be friends any more. I’m not talking about monsters here or horrible people, these were all generally nice people who I enjoyed my friendship with but in the end, found me to be ‘too much’ and so left. I cannot begin to express how hurt I have been over these transactions with people and how it has further fed into the inflexible beliefs that I have. Beliefs such as, ‘I am unloveable’, ‘Everybody leaves’, ‘I am a bad person’, beliefs that further cause me to behave the way I behave.

We are all people

Unlike a mood disorder, there isn’t really a medication that you can give to someone with a personality disorder. They have to battle it out in therapy and learn to change the behaviours. Unfortunately, with most personality disorders the person does not even realise that their behaviour and thought patterns are a problem, to them, their thoughts are normal, and they often blame others for their problems or for not understanding their thought process. Some may try to get help because of their problems with relationships and work like I did but many will just carry on with life completely unaware that they even have a personality disorder. Therapy itself though is not a complete answer, it takes years to learn and understand the thought processes and behaviours and then learning different ways to behave. Changing your underlying personality is not something that just happens or is even ever complete.

Theory and problems of a personality disorder aside though I want to bring to light that even if the person is difficult to be around or gets really annoying at times it is important to remember that they are not always aware of how difficult they are being. My sponsor told me a while ago to change the message I have been telling myself (I am a difficult person) because it is negative and doesn’t help with my already below par self-esteem. She told me to think of myself as ‘complex’ or ‘complicated’ instead. It’s important to remember that your friend or family member that you struggle to understand or deal with is not always aware of what they are doing. To them their behaviours are normal, they are not being difficult on purpose. I do not purposefully demand perfection from those around me, I do not do it to be mean or make myself better than others. For me, they are natural behaviours and I struggle to realise or even conceptualise why others do not understand. I do not purposefully push you away, act mean or snap at you, more often than not I am simply expecting your brain to work the same as mine. Are you not doing the same thing, is it not understandable that we often expect people to think the same as we do?

I think what I am really asking people to think about before they make snap judgements and decisions about people is to consider the person behind the behaviour, the feelings that person might have. Those of us with mental illnesses like a personality disorder are at a distinct disadvantage as our brain works differently. We do not have the flexibility to change and adapt like many others do and while I don’t want to take the blame away or assign blame anywhere either, rather I would like to help create a world where people treat people as people. Where mental health issues are not stigmatised. Where people like myself have the safe places and people around us to work on our inflexibility without fear of everyone leaving us. Without fear of being pushed to the sides because we are different.

Remember that there is still a person behind that personality disorder, a complex person, but still a person. A person who often feels far more deeply but doesn’t know how to show it appropriately, who doesn’t know how to relate to others in an acceptable fashion, who is doing the best they can with what they know. I am a person, a complicated person, but I need relationships and people who care about me just as much as the next person. I know I can be a pain in the ass, really, I know I can be a stickler for certain rules but I do want your friendship even though sometimes I may treat you as though I do not. I simply ask that you try to understand my personality disorder a little more before making a judgement about whether I am worth your time or not.

For others like me, I encourage you to seek treatment. Regular talk therapy and things like DBT are very helpful in understanding yourself more and changing the behaviours. Years later I am still learning ways that my personality disorder plays out in my life but I also know it’s not as bad as it was 10 years ago. It takes time but it is worth it. Love to you all.

Mental illness is a journey not a destination.