Personality Disorders: The Controllers, Abusers, Manipulators and Users in Relationships Part 2

This is a powerful article written by a retired therapist. It very clearly explains Personality Disorders in general and NPD in particular. It is rather long, so I am presenting it in three parts. Herewith, Part 2

By Dr. Joseph M Carver, PhD

http://www.drjoecarver.com/

 (Reproduced by permission)

Chances are, you’re dealing with an individual with a personality disorder somewhere in your life — whether it’s your spouse, your parent, your co-worker…even your child. Dr Carver’s introduction to personality disorders in relationships puts the reality in plain English; more than just a list of diagnostic criteria, this explanation describes what it’s really like to be dealing with a personality disorder and offers tips for victims.

Core Features of Personality Disorders

Mental health professionals have identified ten personality disorders, each with their own pattern of behaviours, emotionality, and symptoms. However, in my observation, all Cluster B Personality Disorders have core personality features that serve as the foundation for their specific personality disorder. Some of those core personality features are:

Self-Centred

We often hear the phrase “It’s All About Me”. When making decisions, a healthy person weighs the needs and concerns of others as well as their own. A Personality Disorder weighs only their needs and concerns. A Personality Disorder may use money to feed their family for their own purpose. A brother with a Personality Disorder may intimidate an elderly parent for money or manipulate a legal situation to eliminate siblings from an inheritance. In most situations, if we are contacted by a Personality Disorder, the contact is for their purpose, not ours.

Refusal to Accept Personal Responsibility for Their Behaviour

Individuals with a Personality Disorder almost never accept personal responsibility for their behaviour. They blame others, use excuses, claim misunderstandings, and then depict themselves as the victim in the situation. Those that are physically abusive actually blame the victims of their abuse for the assault. Victims often hear “This is your fault! Why did you make me angry?” This aspect of a Personality Disorder is very damaging when the Personality Disorder is a parent. They blame the children for their abusive, neglectful, or dysfunctional behaviour. Children are told they are responsible for the temper tantrums, alcohol/substance abuse, unemployment, poverty, unhappiness, etc. of their parent. During a divorce, a Personality Disorder parent often blames the children.

Self-Justification

Individuals with a Personality Disorder don’t think, reason, feel, and behave normally. However, they typically justify all of their behaviours. Their justification often comes from their view that they have been victims of society or others and are therefore justified in their manipulative, controlling, criminal or abusive behaviours. A common justification in criminals is to blame the victim for the crime as when hearing “It’s his fault (the victim) that he got shot. He should have given me the money faster.” Healthy adults find it impossible to reason with a Personality Disorder, finding their justifications impossible to understand.

Entitlement

Individuals with a Personality Disorder have a tremendous sense of entitlement, a sense that they deserve respect, money, fame, power, authority, attention, etc. Some feel they are entitled to be the centre of attention and when that doesn’t happen, they are entitled to create a scene or uproar to gain that attention. Entitlement also creates a justification to punish others in the Personality Disorder. If you violate one of their rules or demands, they feel entitled to punish you in some way.

Shallow Emotions

Healthy people are always amazed and astonished that a person with a Personality Disorder can quickly detach from a partner, move on, and exhibit very little in the way of remorse or distress. A Personality Disorder can find another partner following a breakup, often within days. These same individuals can also quickly detach from their family and children. They can become angry with their parents and not contact them for years. A Personality Disorder can abandon their children while blaming the spouse/partner for their lack of support and interest. Their ability to behave in this manner is related to their “Shallow Emotions”. The best way to think of Shallow Emotions is to have a great $300.00 automobile (192 euros). You have a limited investment in the automobile, and when it’s running great you have no complaints. You take the effort to maintain the vehicle as long as the costs are low. If it develops costly mechanical difficulties, it’s cheaper to dispose of it and get another $300.00 automobile that will run well. Also, if you move a large distance, you leave it behind because it’s more costly to transport it. A Personality Disorder has shallow emotions and often views those around them as $300.00 autos. Their emotional investment in others is minimal. If their partner is too troublesome, they quickly move on. If parents criticize their behaviour, they end their relationship with them…until they need something.

Situational Morality

A Personality Disorder takes pride in being able to “do what I gotta do” to have their demands/needs met. They have few personal or social boundaries and in the severe cases, do not feel bound by laws of the land and quickly engage in criminal activity if needed. The motto of a Personality Disorder is “the end justifies the means”. Situational morality creates rather extreme behaviours and many Personality Disorders have no hesitation to harm themselves or others to meet their needs. Activities often seen as manipulative are tools of the trade for a Personality Disorder and include lying, dishonesty, conning behaviour, intimidation, scheming, and acting. Many Personality Disorders are “social chameleons” and after evaluating a potential victim/partner, alter their presentation to be the most effective. Severe Personality Disorders have no hesitation about self-injury and will cut themselves, overdose, threaten suicide, or otherwise injure themselves with the goal of retaining their partner using guilt and obligation.

Narcissism and Ineffective Lives

A Personality Disorder has a strong influence on the life and lifestyle of the individual. Cluster B personality disorders often have two lives — their “real life” and the imaginary life they present to others that is full of excuses, half-truths, deceptions, cons, lies, fantasies, and stories prepared for a specific purpose. Physical abusers who were forcibly and legally removed from their children and spouse develop a story that the in-laws conspired with the police to separate them from the children they love so deeply. Jail time is often reinterpreted as “I took the blame for my friend so he could continue to work and support his family”. A major finding in a Personality Disorder is an ineffective life — reports of tremendous talent and potential but very little in the way of social or occupational success. It’s a life of excuses and deceptions. Narcissistic and Antisocial “losers” often promise romantic cruises that never take place or have a reason that their partner needs to place an automobile in his/her name. Their lives are often accompanied by financial irresponsibility, chronic unemployment, legal difficulties, and unstable living situations in the community. Their behaviour often emotionally exhausts those around them — something the Personality Disorder explains with “My family and I have had a falling out.” We can be assured that no matter what “real life” situation is present in the life of the Personality Disorder, there will be a justification and excuse for it.

Social Disruption

There is never a calm, peaceful, and stable relationship with a Cluster B Personality Disorder! Their need to be the center of attention and control those around them ensures a near-constant state of drama, turmoil, discord, and distress. An individual with a Personality Disorder creates drama and turmoil in almost every social situation. Holidays, family reunions, outings in the community, travel, and even grocery shopping are often turned into a social nightmare. The Personality Disorder also creates disruption in their family system. They are the focus of feuds, grudges, bad feelings, jealousy, and turmoil. If you have a member of your family that you hate to see arrive at a family reunion or holiday dinner — he or she probably has a Personality Disorder.

Manipulation As A Way of Life

To obtain our daily personal, social, and emotional needs, a healthy individual has a variety of strategies to use including taking personal action, politely asking someone, making deals, being honest, etc. Healthy individuals also use manipulation as one of many social skills — buying someone a gift to cheer them up, making comments and giving hints that something is desired, etc. For the Personality Disorder, despite the many social strategies available, manipulation is their preferred method of obtaining their wants and needs. The manipulations of a Personality Disorder –when combined with shallow emotions, entitlement, and being self-centred — can be extreme. To obtain their goals, an Antisocial Personality may physically threaten, harass, intimidate, and assault those around them. Histrionic Personalities may create dramatic situations, threaten self-harm, or create social embarrassment. Narcissistic Personalities may send police and an ambulance to your home if you don’t answer their phone calls, using the excuse that they were concerned about you. Their real goal is to ensure you that their phone calls must be answered or you will pay the consequences. Borderline Personalities may self-injure in your physical presence. In a relationship with a Personality Disorder, we are constantly faced with a collection of schemes, situations, manipulations, and interactions that have a hidden agenda…their agenda.

The Talk and Behaviour Gap

We know how people are by two samples of their personality — their talk and their behaviour. A person who is honest has talk/conversation/promises that match their behaviour almost 100%. If he/she borrows money and tells you they will repay you Friday, and then pays you Friday, you have an honest person. When we observe these matches frequently, then we can give more trust to that individual in the future. The wider the gap between what a person says/promises and what they do — the more they are considered dishonest, unreliable, irresponsible, etc. Due to the shallow emotions and situational morality often found in a Personality Disorder, the gap between talk and behaviour can be very wide. A Personality Disorder can often assure their spouse that they love them while having an extramarital affair, borrow money with no intention of paying it back, promise anything with no intention of fulfilling that promise, and assure you of their friendship while spreading nasty rumors about you. A rule: Judge a person by their behaviour more than their talk or promises.

Dysfunctional Parents

Individuals with a Personality Disorder are frequently parents. However, they are frequently dysfunctional parents. Personality Disorder parents often see their children as a burden to their personal goals, are often jealous of the attention their children receive, often feel competitive with their older children, and often attempt to obtain their personal goals through their children. Personality Disorder parents control their children through manipulation, with little concern for how their parenting behaviour will later influence the lives or the personality of the child. Personality Disorder parents are often hypercritical, leaving the child with the feeling that they are incompetent or unworthy. In extreme cases, Antisocial parents criminally neglect, abuse, or exploit their children — often teaching them to become criminals. Criminal parents often use their children to steal or carry drugs to avoid criminal charges as an adult, allowing the children to face the legal charges. Spouses with a Personality Disorder are often jealous of the attention their partner provides to children in the home, frequently targeting the child for verbal abuse in their jealousy. The narcissism and shallow emotions in a Personality Disorder parent leave the children feeling unloved, unwanted, unworthy, and unappreciated.

Article originally accessed at http://counsellingresource.com/therapy/self-help/understanding/

Personality Disorders: The Controllers, Abusers, Manipulators and Users in Relationships--Part 1

This is a powerful article written by a retired therapist. It very clearly explains Personality Disorders in general and NPD in particular. It is rather long, so I am presenting it in three parts. Herewith, Part 1.

By Dr. Joseph M Carver, PhD

http://www.drjoecarver.com/

 (Reproduced by permission)

Chances are, you’re dealing with an individual with a personality disorder somewhere in your life — whether it’s your spouse, your parent, your co-worker…even your child. Dr Carver’s introduction to personality disorders in relationships puts the reality in plain English; more than just a list of diagnostic criteria, this explanation describes what it’s really like to be dealing with a personality disorder and offers tips for victims.

Who are these people that damage us emotionally, financially, socially, and even spiritually in relationships? Some are con artists like Victor Lustig (1825) who sold the Eiffel Tower not once, but twice. Some remind us of "Alex Forrest" in the movie "Fatal Attraction" (1987) who screams "I will not be ignored!" In mental health terms, they are Personality Disorders. This article describes the four Personality Disorders that create the most turmoil, damage, and emotional exhaustion in our lives.

Personality Disorders: Who Are They?

Who are these people? In romantic relationships, they are controlling, abusive, manipulative partners who can ruin not only the relationship, but our self-esteem, finances, and reputation. As a parent, they can put the “D” in Dysfunctional Family and be the parent that abuses, neglects, ignores, or psychologically damages their children. As a friend they may be irresponsible, selfish, unreliable, dishonest, and often create significant problems in our life. As a neighbour, they spread rumours, create disharmony in the neighbourhood, and steal our lawnmower. As a family member, they maintain themselves as the centre of attention and keep the family in an uproar, or they may be the 45 year old brother who has never worked and remains dependent on the family for his support. They may be the brother or sister who verbally bullies and intimidates others with their temper tantrums. As a co-worker they are manipulative, unethical, dishonest, and willing to damage co-workers to achieve their employment goals. On the street they are the criminals, con artists, and people-users who purposefully damage others, then quickly move on to avoid detection.

In over three decades of experience of dealing with victims, it’s clear that the majority of emotional victims I see in clinical practice are actually victims of an individual with a “Personality Disorder”. The “Personality Disorder” has been around for many years. For several centuries, professionals working with all types of people recognized that some individuals clearly thought and acted differently — without “normal” feelings, attitudes, behaviours, and interactions. In 1835, Dr. Pritchard suggested the term “moral insanity” to reflect the fact that these individuals were not insane by the standards of the day, yet had significant differences in their behaviour, attitudes, ethics, morality, emotional expressions, and reactions to situations. Despite their significant differences when compared to others in their culture, the individuals exhibited little emotional or social distress.

Personality Disorders are individuals who have a long history of personality, behaviour, emotional, and relationship difficulties.

Personality Disorders are individuals who have a long history of personality, behaviour, emotional, and relationship difficulties. This group is said to have a “personality disorder” — an enduring pattern of inner experience (mood, attitude, beliefs, values, etc.) and behaviour (aggressiveness, instability, etc.) that is significantly different than those in their family or culture. These dysfunctional patterns are inflexible and intrusive into almost every aspect of the individual’s life. These patterns create significant problems in personal and emotional functioning and are often so severe that they lead to distress or impairment in all areas of their life. (Source: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition)

Personality Disorders are divided into three groups, or “clusters”.

• Cluster A personality disorders are individuals who have odd, eccentric behaviours. Paranoid, Schizoid, and Schizotypal Personalities fall into this cluster.
• Cluster B are personalities that are highly dramatic, both emotionally and behaviourally. Antisocial, Borderline, Narcissistic, and Histrionic Personality are in this group.
• Cluster C are personalities characterized by being anxious and fearful. Avoidant, Dependent, and Obsessive-Compulsive Personality fall into this cluster.

The Relationship Destroyers: Cluster B

In considering individuals who create the most damage to social and personal relationships, the abusers, manipulators, “players”, controllers, and losers are found in Cluster B. For this reason, this article will focus on the behaviours associated with Cluster B personality disorders.

In the general population, the largest number of personality disorders fall in the Cluster B group. The four personality disorders in Cluster B are:

Antisocial Personality

A pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of others and rules of society. The Antisocial Personality ranges from individuals who are chronically irresponsible, unsupportive, con artists to those who have total disregard for the rights of others and commit criminal acts with no remorse, including those involving the death of victims. In clinical practice, the Antisocial Personality has near-total selfishness and typically has a pattern of legal problems, lying and deception, physical assault and intimidation, no regard for the safety of others, unwillingness to meet normal standards for work/support/parenting, and no remorse.

Borderline Personality

A pervasive pattern of intense yet unstable relationships, mood, and self-perception. Impulse control is severely impaired. Common characteristics include panic fears of abandonment, unstable social relationships, unstable self-image, impulsive/self-damaging acts such as promiscuity/substance abuse/alcohol use, recurrent suicide thoughts/attempts, self-injury and self-mutilation, chronic feelings of emptiness, inappropriate yet intense anger, and fleeting paranoia.

Histrionic Personality

A pervasive pattern of excessive emotional display and attention-seeking. Individuals with this personality are excessively dramatic and are often viewed by the public as the “Queen of drama” type of individual. They are often sexually seductive and highly manipulative in relationships.

Narcissistic Personality

A pervasive preoccupation with admiration, entitlement, and egotism. Individuals with this personality exaggerate their accomplishments/talents, have a sense of entitlement, lack empathy or concern for others, are preoccupied with envy and jealousy, and have an arrogant attitude. Their sense of entitlement and inflated self-esteem are unrelated to real talent or accomplishments. They feel entitled to special attention, privileges, and consideration in social settings. This sense of entitlement also produces a feeling that they are entitled to punish those who do not provide their required respect, admiration, or attention.

The majority of clients with difficulties related to their childhood find a Personality Disorder as a parent.

When encountering the victims of emotional and physical abuse, the Personality Disorder individual is already present in their lives as a mother, father, sibling, spouse, partner, or relative. The majority of clients with difficulties related to their childhood find a Personality Disorder as a parent. For many, they have found themselves in a romantic relationship or marriage with a Personality Disorder. Others discover they are working with a Personality Disorder as a co-worker, supervisor, or supervisee. A smaller group finds they are victims of the severe behaviour of a Personality Disorder and have been assaulted, robbed, traumatized, or manipulated.

Personality Disorders are present in 10 to 15 percent of the adult population, with Cluster B accounting for approximately 9 percent based on research. At such a high percentage, it’s important that we learn to identify these individuals in our lives. A failure to identify them may create significant risk. While most of our contact with a Personality Disorder may be brief, the more involved they are in our lives, the higher the risk of emotional, social, and other damage. For this reason, it’s helpful to identify some of the characteristics of a personality disorder.

Article originally accessed at http://counsellingresource.com/therapy/self-help/understanding/

JADE: You don’t owe your Ns anything

From the NPD Glossary: As long as you feel you are obligated to JADE (Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain) or you do it to forestall a narcissistic blow up, you are succumbing to emotional blackmail and passively allowing your N to dictate your choices for you.

This can be a difficult concept to wrap your head around. Conditioned since early childhood to be obedient and answerable to our NParents and never allowed to individuate in adolescence, many of us enter adulthood believing that we are still answerable to those parents, and will be for as long as they live.

This, in case you didn’t know, is not normal. The teen years is the time that children are supposed to be learning how to be independent adults. A normally developing teen who has normal parents will have the stability and security of the parental home but, in increasing amounts over time, be allowed to make more and more personal, life-influencing decisions. They begin learning to take care of themselves, they begin trying on adult responsibilities, and their parents begin relinquishing control.

In a household dominated by a narcissistic parent, however, the exact opposite is the case. The Scapegoat Child is not allowed to individuate because that way lies independence, something the NP does not want because it threatens the NP’s control over the child, control that is necessary for the security of the NP’s NSupply.

What is insidious here is that our NParents have taken something that was initially something that benefitted and protected and taught us and they have twisted it into something to benefit themselves, not their children. In a household with normal parents, children learn necessary life-skills through learning to persuade others (justify), to win others to their point of view logically (argue), to stick up for themselves and others (defend) and to make their positions or decisions clear to others (explain). These are all valuable abilities in the larger world where you job—even your safety—may depend on these skills. Unfortunately, for the children of narcissists, these skills are not learned in an atmosphere in which they can develop into useful talents.

For their own safety, it is important for children to be answerable to their parents. If a child does something disobedient or dangerous, a rational, loving parent will require an explanation or justification of the deed before deciding if a punishment is required and what kind of punishment will be invoked. A rational, loving parent will allow a child to discuss (argue) issues with him, even if he doesn’t give in: argumentation is a valuable life skill and adults are often called upon to make rational arguments to support their positions. A rational, loving parent will call upon a child to defend his or her ideas or notions, an essential part of learning critical thinking. A narcissist parent, on the other hand, will require a child to defend him/herself. Unlike the rational, loving parent who elicits their child’s opinions and who guides their thinking, the narcissistic parent will demand that the child agree with the parent, forcing the child to justify, argue, defend and explain himself, perhaps his very existence.

Rational, loving parents allow—even help—their children to individuate and gain independence. As their children grow and mature into young adults, the reins of parental power are loosened and the child grows from a subordinate to a peer in which his/her opinions, while perhaps not agreed with, are respected. The narcissistic parent, however, is unwilling to make that transition from superior to peer and seeks to keep their children subordinate forever.

In a normal household, children will grow into adults whose parents love them no less than when they were dependent babies, but who respect their autonomy as independent adults. In a narcissistic household, however, no matter what the children accomplish in their lives, they are forever expected to be subordinate to the authority and wishes of their NParent.

Growing up with an NParent, learning to justify, argue, defend and explain are not stepping stones to independent and critical thinking, they are the life preservers of the embattled subordinate. They are the means by which a person might be able to talk his way out of an Nrage. They are a means to placate the beast, to save one’s own skin. They are not useful, positive life skills that can be used to advance oneself, they are the result of having been put on the defensive by a narcissistic onslaught.

Enough years of this and JADE become habituated. First we anticipate the NRage and we offer up our justifications in advance, hoping to forestall the rage. Eventually we simply adopt these behaviours, putting ourselves on the defensive before anyone else even has a chance to, and then reacting to that defensive posture with JADE. We may even perceive attacks from others where there are none, becoming defensive when there is nothing to defend against. And when we habituate this behaviour, we don’t even see it anymore.

This all came about because your N refused to relinquish his/her emotional control of you as you grew up. The appropriate role of demanding that you be able to explain yourself and your actions ended when you became an adult, but they refused to give it up. And you, habituated to being on the defensive and believing that you were still answerable to your N, did nothing to end it.

But the truth is, you aren’t really answerable to anyone but yourself and duly constituted authority. You are not answerable to your Ns and, believe it or not, they are way, waaay out of line to pretend that you are. They have absolutely no right because once you become an adult you are no longer accountable to them. You can stop justifying yourself and your choices, you do not have to argue with them, they have no right to try to put you on the defensive and you owe them no explanations, no matter what they try to tell you!

This may be hard to grasp and it may even sound like victim-blaming, but past the age of your majority, you have a choice in the matter and if you are over 18 years of age and your N are abusing you or attempting to hold you accountable to them, you are permitting them to abuse you. Yes, there are consequences for standing up to their abuse—and that is exactly why it is a choice: you are choosing to submit to the abuse rather than stand up to them and take the consequences.

Is this okay? Actually it is, as long as you are doing it consciously and for a reason. When it is by conscious choice, that is a very different situation. When you have considered your situation and weighed the trade offs, when you know you are choosing to put up with their shit because it is worth it for the benefits you are deriving, then it is ok because you are in control of it. You know you can leave if it gets too much, you know the reason you tolerate it, you know the benefits you are getting outweigh the crap you are dealing with. You have control of your life and you have chosen this, it is not being forced upon you. It is a battle you have chosen and you can un-choose at any time.

If you don’t owe them JADE, do you owe them anything? What about respect? It has long been my opinion that you owe everybody respect, right up to the moment they earn your disrespect. Many people seem to think others should earn their respect, but if you really think about that, it quickly emerges as a very narcissistic frame of mind. Who, after all, believes the entire world needs to earn their respect except a narcissist? But if you give respect to everyone, you can selectively cease to respect those who have earned your disrespect through their own actions.

So what do you owe your NPs? A better question would be “What do you owe yourself?” Because that is where everything has to start. Nobody lives your life but you and that means nobody but you has the right to make choices about how it will be lived. Do you like being in a situation in which others think they have the right to demand you justify your every choice, option, decision? Suppose your mean-spirited Aunt Maude calls and wants you to come to tea on Saturday and, based on experience, you know it is going to be weak tea, stale biscuits, and nasty, rude gossip about everybody she knows. Do you want to go? When you respond do you say “No, I can’t, I don’t have transportation that day…” thereby justifying your refusal? And if she offers to pay an Uber driver to pick you up and bring you back home, do you argue with her, perhaps give another excuse? And when that doesn’t work, do you feel backed into a corner, defensive, fighting to find a way to get out of it without just saying “No, thanks for the invitation but I must decline.” Can you even say that without feeling like you must explain why you must decline? You have been trained to JADE by your Ns but that training was for their benefit, not yours, so you can stop now. You owe yourself honest, authentic communication with others, explanations only when you feel they are appropriate…like when my friend called me to join her for dinner at a restaurant and I had already eaten. “I’d love to come, but I’ve already eaten.” We ended up meeting for dessert.

What you owe yourself comes first. In a conflict between what you owe someone else and what you owe yourself, you must come first. Nobody has the right to demand that you justify, argue, defend or explain yourself, no matter what they may believe. Only you have the right to decide if any of those things are appropriate to the situation and if you decide it is, then it nobody’s decision but yours to decide what and how much you say.