To be sick of personality disorder being used as an excuse for bad behaviour?

[fluffydressinggown]

I see it all the time on here, people say their partner/friend/family member has behaved badly and someone comes along and says maybe it is a personality disorder.

Personality disorder does not necessarily make you a bad person or give you bad behaviour. Some people are just dicks. Not dicks with a mental health problem.

If you have a personality disorder, your patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving are more difficult to change and you will have a more limited range of emotions, attitudes and behaviours with which to cope with everyday life. This can make things difficult for you or for other people.

If you have a personality disorder, you may find that your beliefs and attitudes are different from most other people’s. They may find your behaviour unusual or unexpected, and may find it difficult to spend time with you. This, of course, can make you feel very hurt and insecure; you may end up avoiding the company of others.

The diagnosis applies if you have personality difficulties which affect all aspects of your life, all the time, and make life difficult for you and for those around you. The diagnosis does not include personality changes caused by a life event such as a sudden traumatic incident, or physical injury.

... From Mind. More information here.

I don't think posters are misunderstanding, fluffy. It is extremely difficult to maintain healthy relationships with people whose mental & emotional processes are unusually rigid, particularly when the partner under discussion has no diagnosis and the poster has been trying to get them to see reason in ways that the partner simply cannot do.

You don't say what type of PD you have, but you should be sufficiently well informed on the subject to appreciate that no-one here says "All PD sufferers are bad people". There is, however, no law saying that people have got to live with anyone they find abnormally difficult, whether or not that person has a mental health condition. Considering whether their partner might have such a condition can help them make that choice, having accepted the partner's unable to change significantly.

About 1 in 10 people in the UK have a Personality Disorder - all PDs, not just Cluster B variants. This actually makes it quite likely that someone having problems with a highly intractable partner may be looking at a PD.

What one person may perceive as simply twattish behaviour may ring bells for someone who has a PD or ASD or someone close to a person with one of those conditions. They may see reasons behind the behaviour that bypass others. I know for a fact that ASD can make children appear to be behaving appallingly and it can make adults appear to be very selfish and unpleasant.

I think it's important that people who recognise certain behaviours because of their personal experience feel able to offer these suggestions as explanations because, just occasionally it might offer someone a new depth of understanding that saves their relationship or helps them support a loved one who is struggling.

I've never seen anyone make one of these suggestions with the intention of doing anything but helping the OP.

If you are on the receiving end of shitty behaviour, it doesn't make you feel any better to think the person can't help it.

But it makes you feel worse if you think that they are doing it on purpose, surely?

If you're on the receiving end of shitty behaviour and someone suddenly gives you an explanation for it, you will probably find it easier to accept and you may also have a starting point for solving the issue.

I get tired of all the armchair clinicians on here. So tedious. If a psychiatrist diagnosed them so flippantly and at a similar distance they'd be up in arms.

I think it does make you feel better! It certainly does me. Once I accepted they weren't just "misunderstanding me" or "bad at communication", I could let all the expectations and the resentment go :)

saintly.... I can't write a sentence for every eventuality and very many adults with learning difficulties live lives with varying degrees of independence - and I did say if it is not being allowed... rather than not possible.

Then again, I too can be pedantic...

The difference is, LilAnnie, nobody's claiming to be a psychiatrist. Labelling isn't diagnosis. It's a tool for comprehension.

Well I'll continue to appreciate strangers who recognise that my son can't help it - pretending he's normal really isn't any help to him at all. You can have expectations whilst recognising that some things are not possible. It's a delicate balance & I appreciate those who recognise that when something has gone very wrong he's really not in control.

Slightly OT, but in my day to day life people having awareness helps (for starters they ignore us rather than gawp). It would be churlish to complain about those trying to help who get it wrong.

I am not talking about autism or ASD or SN because I would not consider them mental health problems.

I just think people are so quick to armchair diagnose a PD when it is in fact shitty behaviour.

I have BPD diagnosis which means I should be shite at interpersonal relationships - and yet I am not. I don't threaten suicide if my DH pisses me off - I do do suicidal things but it is not to manipulate or hurt those closest to me, it is about me, being fucked up. I am sure it hurts my DH but it is not done with the intention to hurt and that is the difference. Partners who are abusive to hurt don't have to have a PD to behave that way, they may well just be dick heads.

I am not talking about autism or ASD or SN because I would not consider them mental health problems.

Why?

saintly... I think that was a translation error... I thought I had explained it was not the best choice of words but rather a choice that those without a clue could understand.

I was not talking about your son, but thinking about the wide range of errors well meaning people who have no personal experience of children or adults with a wide range differing diagnosis make when trying to be helpful - not the helpful ones, but those who undermine the child/adult's progress by assuming they are utterly incapable.

Which in my experience, is quite a lot of them. Like the school TA who fed a child yogurt, because he screamed if he had to chew. It took all summer to get him to eat solid food and she undid all of that hard work in less than a week. The carer hired to take my uncle on holiday who upped his medication because he was getting agitated. He had spent 6 months reducing his meds and she set him back to square one (or would have had he not died falling down and drowning at the end of the holiday, probably due tro being overly medicated).

Or the woman who squared up to me and threatened to hit me because I refused to let a 12 year old bum shuffle his way round a supermarket... apparently he was disabled and I was being cruel. No shit Sherlock, was my immediate response.

Did I say I either try humour - or explode?

Exactly whitecandles, just because someone has a disorder which makes them unpleasant or nasty to their partners, does not mean their partner has to out up with it, especially in the op I was talking about, she was giving, he was taking and not reciprocating. he was a twat towards her, when she directed her wages into her own account so he could not leach off her, he suddenly got nice to her, I wonder why!

Yes my dd 7 years has ASD and dev delays. I do wonder if she will have a relationship or independent life. I hope so.

In order to 'label' you first need to go through a process of diagnosis and if you think that can be done by discussing subjective perceptions of the behaviour of a third party on Mumsnet you are having a laugh.

Arguing that you are not 'diagnosing' is semantic obfuscation.

I am not talking about autism or ASD or SN because I would not consider them mental health problems.

You realize autism is a life long mental health disability, why wouldn't you consider it one?

In my life of 50 years, a number of people have caused me trouble. It happens to us all, and we all cause trouble for others too.

Two of those people made life seriously unpleasant, and from my armchair, I would say they had personality disorders.

But I didn't care about their motivations or problems. I just wanted them to fuck the fuck off.

I also wished people not experiencing the shit I was going through to have refrained from trying to mitigate the behaviour of my tormentors or worse, invited me to sympathise with their experiences.

They can fuck off too because they're a huge part of the problem.

As I explained to them.

They looked hurt when I did that.

Completely agree, if someone can function as an independently living adult and only directs unreasonable and unacceptable behaviour towards one person, then its not a personality disorder.

this is the kind of post that gets my back up. How do you know that? If I said my husband had a PD but could hide it very well at work and with friends, would you say I was a liar? or that his psychologist misdiagnosed him? It's often far easier for PD sufferers to hide their PD in superficial relationships, while it's not so easy when you're living day in, day out with someone to hide the true you.

The people that make statements like this seem to have no trouble understanding kids on the autistic spectrum can appear fine at school, yet have meltdowns at home.

Why then do so many people believe that a person with a (diagnosed) personality disorder is just choosing to be a cunt unless they are equally cuntish with everyone around them.

is it really so difficult to imagine that some people with personality disorders will show that side of their character far more readily in close (husband/wife parent/child) relationships than they would do in non-close relationships (at work, weekly sports club, with friends etc).

A particular classic I saw the other day was that someone didn't have a "real" mental illness as defined by the DSM. They probably just had a personality disorder instead.

I have been told that on mumsnet as well. Go away with your PD questions and observations, we're talking about REAL mental illnesses here, like bipolar and anxiety. It's shocking.

Ah okay nomama - I get what you are saying and agree. I suppose I was thinking of people who (for example) offer to let is go ahead of them in a queue. They're rare & I think I've always said thanks but no thanks as ds1 needs to learn to queue. However if I thought he was about to lose the plot, I'd accept the offer & jump in front to get him out of the situation (he's bigger than me & when he loses the plot I end up very bruised. He only loses the plot like that through anxiety/panic - so not situation he can learn in). I'd hate someone who would offer to think they shouldn't iykwim. Although we've never as far as I can remember taken up the offer - I appreciate it iyswim

@saucyjack

*YANBU.

A particular classic I saw the other day was that someone didn't have a "real" mental illness as defined by the DSM. They probably just had a personality disorder instead.

Note to all- if you wouldn't say it about someone with bipolar or anorexia, then don't say it about someone with a PD either. It's no different*

I never said that I said traits of a personality disorder and never said a PD was not a real mental illness. So either you cannot understand what I have written or you are deliberately twisting it to fit your own agenda.

FWIW I have bipolar and suffered with borderline pd for years. The borderline was caused by severe child abuse. However since I have gone nc with parents and practised DBT, I have been downgraded to traits of borderline rather than the full diagnostic criteria.

To say to someone who has self-harmed from the age of 7 and had numerous suicide attempts (2 near fatal) that personality disorders are not real mental health problems is offensive and ignorant.

The point I was making about the journalist with erratic spending is she did not appear to have enough of the DSM criteria to meet the diagnostic threshold for a pd, however she may have traits.

So you can take your "note to all" which you have based on misquoting me and twisting my words and shove it.

I would consider autism and ASD a learning disability which although has things in common with mental health problems are not the same as personality disorders. Thats not to say autism and ASD are armchair diagnosed on MN as well and used to excuse abusive behaviour when again the reality of autism and ASD is very different.

In order to 'label' you first need to go through a process of diagnosis and if you think that can be done by discussing subjective perceptions of the behaviour of a third party on Mumsnet you are having a laugh.

Arguing that you are not 'diagnosing' is semantic obfuscation.

I agree with this too. My mother is diagnosed with NPD. I have a lot of understanding for the many posts on the relationship forum about very difficult parents or inlaws, but I don't think true narcisism (as in NPD) is half as common as the realtionships board would have us believe. When you look up "difficult parents" in the dictionary, a photo of my (npd) mother and (bipolar) father pops up. I still get irked though at the amount of times I read "well it's obvious your mother/mother in law is a narcissist, here read this DSM definition, and if it fits, then that's her diagnosed".

The thing is though, we all have narcissistic traits. It's very easy to look at a list of symptoms and say "yes ticks every box". If it was that easy, why does it take professional psychologists and psychiatrists months to diagnose a PD? Surely, going by mumsnet standards it would be

lack of empathy - tick
self-centred - tick
quick to anger- tick
irresponsible with money- tick

(and so on)

and the diagnosis would be complete in 20 minutes.

people need to stop making these armchair diagnosis's on the basis of a few hundred words written by a person on a forum, who is not even talking about themselves, but they're answering on behalf of someone. Someone they usually don't like very much at that moment in time. Like a difficult parent or sibling or partner. Hardly objective.

LemonChicken I never said pd's are not real illnesses I have been misquoted.

Isnt it just PC ness? Like show off parenting? "Ah but it could be autism?" (Expecting a pat on the back at inclusiveness and excellence where poster is obvs ignorant and lesser being)

It's exactly the same with other topics, little boy drops his trousers? A def sexual predator in later life. Dh cross? Sure he's not DV capable? You're a bit sad this week? Call the Samaritans, you might be suicidal. Had a baby? Bit worried if you're holding it right? Oooh careful, tell hv as you may be undiagnosed pnd.

It's like some sick version of bingo round here sometimes waiting for mn cliches to arrive.