Your experience of someone with a personality disorder

[Checkers271]

I've been friends with someone for around 8 years now. For the last 5 of those years I've thought they had some sort of personality disorder. Some of the behaviour (without being too specific)

-multiple affairs
-very focused on possessions
-selfish
-controlling
-loves to spend money but not prepared to earn their own
-has fallen out with lots of people, friends and family
-is very black and white in her expectations of how others should behave but doesn't hold herself to the same standards
-zero remorse for when she hurts others
-is always the victim

The flip side to these things is that she can be great fun, vivacious, thoughtful, generous. I've never met anyone so complicated.

Have you met anyone who you've thought might have a personality disorder of some sort? What did they do to make you think like that? Are they still in your life or did you have to cut off from them?

Adversity and trauma in childhood go hand in hand with PDs. Emotional trauma during the childhood years disrupts normal cognitive development and the changes in the brain can be irreversible and impact throughout a person's entire life. The PP who used an analogy of the bucket with holes in is a useful way of looking at it, and yes there sometimes will be individuals with PDs whose behaviour can be challenging but it is not their fault.

Sorry if I caused offence, but I do think it’s not helpful to decide someone might have a particular disorder and let it influence how you treat them. You can be understanding of someone’s issues without labelling them. On the flip side of this, if your friends behaviour is really bad you can distance yourself and there’s no shame in that.

As others have said, this post is inadvertently quite offensive to people diagnosed with BPD. There’s so much stigma and misunderstanding and I really don’t think people should be throwing the term around to describe anyone they know with difficult behaviour.

I had a BPD diagnosis. In my opinion it’s quite a problematic diagnosis, often thrown at women who’ve experienced trauma and have issues with self harm/suicide attempts. There’s a growing movement to abandon this label. Personally, I was misdiagnosed. Turns out I’m actually autistic. It’s a common misdiagnosis for autistic women apparently

I would hazard a guess and say that the majority of people who post on Mumsnet, including myself, have some form of a personality disorder.

You can have autism and childhood trauma which >>> adult problems that look like or are borderline pd though, one doesn’t exclude the other. They probably go together quite well?

I think we should try to be tolerant of other people’s way of being in the world wherever possible for whatever reason but you don’t have to be friends with everyone or anyone if it’s disruptive to your own wellbeing.

Thank you for sharing fantasmasgoria1, and others on this thread. That is an insight. I appreciate you sharing.

I used to manage someone with a diagnosed personality disorder (among other conditions). She was very charming and excellent at her job.

Unfortunately she was also impossible to manage. I did everything I could to accommodate the many reasonable adjustments she requested but it was never enough and her demands continued. She regularly submitted grievances, which were never upheld due to, in her mind, some sort of conspiracy against her. She was always the victim and seemingly had no ability to see anything from someone else's viewpoint.

It was stressful and exhausting.

I know someone with suspected NPD. This person’s behaviour was unlike anyone I’d ever met before. It wasn’t until I did some research that I discovered that she had classic NPD traits. Later I ended up seeing a psychologist because of the damage she did to me and the psychologist agreed that this woman is a classic narcissist. Luckily I can mostly avoid her. Sympathies to anyone that has to deal with anyone with NPD on a regular basis.

This woman can make up the most astonishing lies. She is the perpetual victim and everything she has done to me she accuses me of doing to her. It’s the biggest head fuck I’ve ever had.