What are Personality Disorders?
Personality disorders are a type of mental disease. They entail harmful and rigid long-term habits of thinking and behaviours. The actions generate issues in relationships and at work. People with personality disorders struggle to deal with day-to-day stressors and issues. They frequently have tumultuous connections with others.
Personality disorders have no specific root cause. Genes and early experiences, on the other hand, have a role to play.
Each personality disorder has its own set of symptoms. They might range from minor to severe. People suffering from personality disorders may be unaware that they have a problem. Their thoughts are natural to them, and they frequently criticize someone else for their issues. They may seek assistance due to issues in relationships or at workplace. Talk therapy and medication are commonly used in treatment.
Types of Personality Disorders
Currently, psychologists employ a diagnostic approach that defines 10 categories of personality disorders. These are divided into the following three groups.
Suspicious Type
- Paranoid Personality Disorder
- Schizoid Personality Disorder
- Schizotypal Personality Disorder
Emotional & Impulsive Type
- Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)
- Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
- Histrionic Personality Disorder
Anxious Type
- Avoidant Personality Disorder
- Dependent Personality Disorder
- Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD)
Each personality disorder is diagnosed using its own set of criteria. Some of these criteria must be met in order to receive a specific diagnosis. The minimum number required for each category varies, but it should always be more than one or two. If you fulfil the requirements for more than one personality type, you may have mixed personality disorder.
It is additionally possible to obtain a diagnosis without satisfying all of the requirements for a particular kind. This is known as personality disorder trait specified (PD-TS) or personality disorder not otherwise specified (PD-NOS).
Despite having quite distinct personalities and particular experiences, a wide spectrum of persons may receive the same diagnosis. Functioning with a personality disorder will be an individual experience for you.
Signs and Symptoms of Personality Disorders
Paranoid Personality Disorder
- Paranoid Personality Disorder is characterised by paranoia. The paranoid ideas, sensations, and experiences may induce you to:
- Find it challenging to confide in others, including your friends and family
- Have a hard time believing others,
- Feeling they will exploit of you
- Have trouble relaxing
- Interpret warnings and risk (which others do not perceive) into ordinary circumstances,
- Harmless statements or casual glances from others
This could develop into such a major issue in your life that you are diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder.
Schizoid Personality Disorder
Many persons with schizoid personality disorder can perform rather well. Unlike schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, psychotic symptoms are not generally present. However, you may experience the following symptoms as a consequence of the emotions and thoughts connected with this diagnosis:
- Find it challenging to build intimate ties with others
- Want to live your life without intervention from others
- Like to be alone with your ideas
- Have no desire for sex or companionship
- Have problems relating to or are emotionally distant towards others.
Schizotypal Personality Disorder
Everyone has their own quirks or odd behaviours. However, if your thought and behaviour patterns make relating to others difficult, you may be diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder.
Unlike with schizophrenia, you are not likely to develop psychosis. You may, however exhibit the following signs and symptoms:
- People who have erroneous views or perceptions find it incredibly difficult to form close connections.
- Think and express oneself in ways that others find uncommon, utilising unusual terms or phrases, making it difficult to relate to others.
- Believe you can read minds or have extraordinary abilities such as a “sixth sense”
- Feel uneasy and uptight among people who do not share your ideas
- In social circumstances, feel highly apprehensive and suspicious, making it difficult to relate to people.
Antisocial Personality Disorder
It is natural to prioritise our own wants, enjoyment, or self-benefit over the needs of people around us. However, if these behaviours occur regularly and you struggle to maintain consistency in your life, or if you often behave spontaneously out of anger or a lack of respect for others, you may be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.
You could:
- Put oneself in unsafe or risky circumstances, frequently without considering the implications for yourself or others
- Act in a risky and sometimes unlawful manner (you may have a criminal record)
- Behave in ways that are offensive to others feel quickly bored and act on impulse – for example, you may find it difficult to keep a job for an extended period of time react violently and get into fights
- Easily accomplish things even if they may harm others – to obtain what you want, putting your wants and goals ahead of other people’s
- Have empathy difficulties – for example, you may not feel or express any feeling of shame if you have mistreated others
- Have received a conduct disorder diagnosis before the age of 15
- You are terrified of rejection and abandonment
- You have unstable moods and powerful emotions
- You have an unstable self-image
- A persistent sense of emptiness
- Difficulty participating in enjoyable activities
- Inability to separate for school, employment, or other activities
- Difficulty calming down
- Thinking in black and white
- High standards for yourself and others
- Periods of intense melancholy
- Receptive to criticism
- Easily irritated
- Outbursts of rage and violence
- Impaired impulse control
- Impaired reasoning and logic
- Feeling confused
- Self-injurious conduct
Histrionic Personality Disorder
- actively seeking attention
- being nervous in circumstances where they are not the center of attention
- expressing improper sensual or overtly sexual conduct
- being sexually suggestive, sensual, or charismatic
- being deceitful
- showcasing emotional responses that seem superficial and change rapidly
- using physical features to garner attention
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
- An exaggerated feeling of self-importance.
- Persistent ideas of being more accomplished, strong, intelligent, loved, or desirable than others.
- Perceptions of supremacy and a desire to interact primarily with persons of high rank.
- Excessive adoration is required.
- A feeling of entitlement.
- Willingness to exploit people in order to attain aims.
- A lack of awareness and regard for the feelings and needs of others.
- Arrogant or snobbish attitudes and acts.
Avoidant Personality Disorder
- avoiding people and situations or holding back if you can’t escape them
- evaluate oneself inferior to others
- being very delicate to judgement or negative comments
- trying to dodge actions that require you to interact with individuals
- keeping private information to oneself
- recurrently worrying about the influence, you make on others
- believing others find you unattractive or unpleasant
Dependent Personality Disorder
- Incapacity to make tough choices without counsel and comfort from others
- Avoidance of duties by seeming weak and meek
- Hypersensitivity to criticism
- Excessive negativity and lack of self-esteem
- A predisposition toward imagination and immaturity
- Putting others’ needs ahead of their own
Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder
- Obsession with technicalities, regulations, checklists, regularity, organisation, or timetables to the point of losing sight of the main goal of the action
- Perfectionism that prevents work fulfilment
- An exaggerated focus on work and production at the expense of recreational activities and relationships
- Obsessiveness, anticipatory anxiety, and rigidity in concerns of morals, principles, or beliefs
- Reluctance to abandon worn-out or useless goods, especially if they have no personal meaning
- Reluctance to assign responsibilities or collaborate with others until they agree to their particular method of operation
- Adopting a miserly spending style toward both self and others
- Rigidity and stubbornness
Causes of Personality disorders
Personality Disorders are primarily caused due to Negative Early Life experiences, or certain environmental and social circumstances such as the following:
- an unstable or chaotic family life, such as living with a parent who is an alcoholic or who struggles to manage a mental health problem
- little or no support from your caregiver – this may be especially hard if you’ve experienced a traumatic event or situation
- a lack of support or bad experiences during your school life, peer group or wider community, such as bullying or exclusion
- poverty or discrimination
- some form of dislocation, such as migration from abroad.
- neglect
- losing a parent or experiencing a sudden bereavement
- emotional, physical or sexual abuse
- being involved in major incidents or accidents
- often feeling afraid, upset, unsupported or invalidated.
Treatment of Personality Disorders
- Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) is a treatment created expressly for borderline personality disorder (BPD). Personal and group therapy are used to help you gain strategies for managing your emotions.
- Mentalisation-based therapy (MBT) – a long-term talking therapy that tries to increase your ability to recognize and comprehend your own and other people’s psychological state, as well as to assist you in examining your own and others’ thoughts to determine if they are legitimate.
- Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) seeks to assist you in understanding how your ideas and beliefs impact your feelings and behaviour.
- Cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) combines CBT approaches with an emphasis on developing a trusting connection between you and your psychologist who will assist you in making sense of your circumstance and finding new, better ways to cope with your challenges
- Other talking therapies– such as schema-focused cognitive therapy, psychodynamic therapy, interpersonal therapy or arts therapies.
