Let's say you suspect someone has a personality disorder of some sort: what can actually, practically be done?

[Unprune]

We've all known for years (from an early age, perhaps) that my brother is not quite right. He's 34 now, and yesterday my grandmother told me a story of a particular way he'd treated my father, and I thought, oh for goodness sake, this isn't going to stop, he isn't going to grow out of this behaviour (until a few years ago my family were still excusing him as 'just a bit young for his age' - unbefuckinglievable!).

I don't have any contact with him, and I like it that way. He's a scary man. But my father obviously still wants his son, my grandmother is very stoic, and I just wondered if anything could hypothetically be done if he allowed himself to be helped.

Hmm, ime not really. I haven't met any who, after much therapy etc., are able to form/sustain meaningful and functional relationships. However, being engaged with MH/PD services can be a damage limitation exercise iyswim. What sort of PD do you think he has? Antisocial? Emotionally unstable? Most of the people I've worked with who have PD have been diagnosed with several forms actually.

I couldn't begin to say! I'm totally untrained. I suspect he is massively fucked up

Unprune

You could be describing my brother

at 43 he has never left home - bullies my ageing parents, has stolen from them and me and would literally take the food from a starving man.

He does nothing to help around the house and was out of work for years whilst my parents subbed him.

They have left the house to him in their will because "Sun you have always been so sensible and don't need it!!"

He will lose the house within a year because he would not pay the bills. I am terrified for my parents yet they defend him and defend him.

It is like dealing with a stroppy 13 year old child - he can be very, very funny but he has no real friends only 'drinking' buddies and I can see that they have no respect for him.

I have just learnt to bite my tongue when Mum phones up in tears about his behaviour because it ends up in a fight and her saying "He is my son"!

I am afraid I have just given up on him and have told him straight that when Mum and Dad go, he is NOT going to turn up on my doorstep!

Mum and Dad have let him get away with his behaviour for years and even supported it - but I think he is just an overgrown child but no 'mental health' problems.

Whilst Mum still buys all his clothes and irons his underpants why should he change?

And breathe..............

Unprune - your brother is my sister IYSWIM. Absolutely identical. I have almost nothing to do with her, to ensure my children are not poisoned/used as pawns in her merry little game. She is the same age as your brother (I tell you, she IS your brother!).

I have not explored it, but I don't see what you can do. I am saddened about the impact she has on my parents lives, how they have to deal with certain things/handle things in a particular way to "accommodate" her absurdities. I refuse to, which is a real problem now in my relationship with my parents.. Because they spent their whole life compromising getting trodden all over, they absolutely do not understand why I will not "compromise" as they put it.

And the key is, your last sentence of the OP "if anything could hypothetically be done if he allowed himself to be helped."

IMO, people like our brother/sister person are not the type who will allow themselves to be helped, because the very essence of their problem is that they are ALWAYS RIGHT, and the rest of the world is fucked up and wrong, so there will never be a recognition of an issue, even in the face of a 35 year dossier running to several thousand pages (which I could write if I had the time!)

Just let it go - keep him out of your life, and don't waste energy trying to get him to do something he won't do, and you will only get more upset and frustrated.

Suncottage

^^

Good grief suncottage
Mine is actually violent and threatening and tends to come home and live rent-free with my father for three months of every year. He clearly bullies my dad. There's a lot of guilt on my dad's part because of past issues.

I realised yesterday (for the first time!) that my whole upbringing was one of everyone pandering to my brother. It was when my dad made a comment: oh you were fine, we'd just give you a book and you'd go off and read for hours.

Nothing wrong with that but I felt incredibly sad, because I did go off for hours, until I left home, as it was somehow better than being with my dad and my brother and being called names or being the butt of jokes.

I remember leaving home to go to university and discovering that feeling that other people were mostly really lovely!!

Oh no anonymousbird, not another one

I am worried now about my dad. I realised how much he has been bullied too, and now he's getting on, there's more to come.

Anonymous and Unprune

It is quite strange isn't it - maybe we should put them in a room together and see what happens.

Typical things my brother does;

'Takes' money - paying back is not something that has ever occurred to him

Music is to be played LOUD - when our elderly neighbour was dying of cancer his wife came round and asked if he could turn the music off as "Ted is very close to death now" - my darling brother smirked and turned it UP. Mum defended him. I hated him from that day forward - I was thirteen and he was 15.

My father is seriously ill with cancer and begs him to turn the music down - fat chance.

Falls out with everyone but it is never 'his' fault. Mum and Dad always decide, "They never liked (include name) anyway"

They live on a remote island and I worry sooo much about them but they refuse to throw him out or move to the mainland.

Banging my head against a brick wall.

That whole "Oh ABird will be ok, don't worry about her" (like, the sending you off with a book thing you describe). She's as strong as an ox, she doesn't need any help (if only they knew).

Don't get me wrong, my parents, my dad especially were fantastically supportive of me throughout my upbringing, but at the end of the day, I absolutely had to stand on my own two feet. They have also been generous to me over the years, saw me through Uni and some other things which was obviously a huge help. But I never ever expected it, whereas my sister sees their constant financial bailouts support as a god given. They bought her a house, she has a lodger, she keeps the rent, pays nothing to my parents. They pay her bills, they bought her a brand new car and so it goes on.... she is so self absorbed that it hasn't even occurred to her that this is actually rather embarrassing for a 35 year old. They have paid off loan sharks, they have paid for that solicitor who gets people off drink driving on technicalities, you know, they have done everything.

We all have to tip toe around her, she freaks out if we get "caught" trying to do something without her being at the centre of it. My mum actually LIES to my sister when they come to see us. How utterly sad is that??? She has them completely manipulated into where she wants them.

Oh yes, and when she gets her inheritance (which she will) god only knows what she will do with it. She will squander all their hard earned cash. Dad started with nothing and really made something of his life and is now (very) well off. She will just piss it up the wall.

OMG

We are all related!!! With me is is my sister.

Nothing that has happened is ever HER fault. Her 17 year old boy hitting her (now he is bigger than her) and being violent isn't her fault for using him like a punch bag all his life and letting him see her being beaten by the scummy men she always had around.

Her 4 daughters being taken off her and my mum having custody for 19 years - not her fault for her choices again obviously.

My last straw with my sister during an argument was when she randomly from no where brought up the line 'it is not my fault my dad nonced you'....

My stepfather abused me from the age of about 8.

I cannot bear to look at her and am just about civil if we both show at my mum's house at the same time.

She is destroying my mum and doesn't even realise it as my mum still lives in hope that one day this person will change.

OH Xales I am so for you and your mum

With my sister, at least she has no partner and no children so her impact is "limited" so to speak to my parents (poor them).

The problem is you have to make yourself hard against it or else you are constantly pulled into their lives and sorting out their problems which makes your life a misery.

She asked me once for £5 to feed 2 of her daughters when they came back from the weekend with their dad (before she lost them).

There was I like a mug reaching into my purse when in the next breath she tells me that she & her latest piece of live in scum spent all their money on cocaine at the weekend.

I even now 6/7 years later I feel bloody awful and guilty saying no I am not giving you any money when she is the selfish bitch spent it all on drugs.

anonymous xales unprune

Yep my brother drinks as well - very heavily. Mum pays for it behind Dad's back.

I think we have hit the nail on the head - he started drinking young and his emotional development stopped then.

Whilst she is supplying it - he will carry on, but he was never denied anything in his life.

My mum was told when my brother was a toddler "You are making up a monster". That was from my godmother and boy was she right!!

Do you siblings go into vicious verbal attack mode at the slightest criticism? I walk away and he thinks he has 'won'.

Yep he was totally pandered to and my parents thought he was some kind of genius as a kid and woe be tide ANY teacher who tried to correct them or disipline him. Darling boy was being picked on by a nasty teacher!!
I also locked myself away with a book - my mum did not tie the aprons string too tight with my brother - she used chains and a padlock. He was never 'allowed' to learn to drive because 'he would just kill himself'!

I always feel like an interloper in the family group - an outsider with opinions that upset the dynamics and their darling 'boy'.

Can't help OP - maybe he does have problems that can be sorted but I am buggered if I know where to start

Vicious verbal attack. OMG yes. On numerous occasions, but one springs to moind

I was with my parents, around 3 years ago, I was very poorly, so rather than DH struggle to look after me and two very young DC, I went to stay with my folks for a few days. They didn't tell my sister I was there for obvious reasons. There was no need for her to know, so they didn't tell her and they didn't not tell her IYSWIM. It was irrelevant for her to know.

Anyway, accidentally she found out on day 3. She called my Dad and SCREAMED at him down the phone, I could hear her even though Dad was the one on the phone. She screamed so much (fuck knows why, who knows) that eventually my Dad, a very mild mannered man, actually yelled back down the phone "Just FUCK OFF XXXXX and leave us and your sister alone for once". I have never heard him tell anyone to Eff off in my life before. I was so shocked, but that is what her utterly irrational and bizarre behaviour had driven him to. I sent her a text telling her to stop bothering them and that I was going to report her to her boss for personal use of the phone at work. She claimed she was on her mobile (a blatant lie - we had caller ID! - blatant lying is another trait). I still said, piss off, I'm going to report you anyway. Obviously I didn't, but it felt good threatening to!

I just wish he had the strength to speak up for himself more often.

And of course it was OUR FAULT for not telling her about what was going on .

I just feel so sad that my parents have never had 'their' time to enjoy their retirement - my brother has always been there.

They watch what he wants to watch, eat what he likes to eat and when they come and visit me Mum is constantly on the phone to him - she needs to check has is not having parties or 'women' round.

He is 43 FFS and has not had a girlfriend for 15 years - who the hell would go out with him anyway?

Unprune

Does your brother work and where does he live when he is not at your Dad's?

Ah yes.....the over-indulged manchild. All of us with sons need to take note!

Thanks for the thread OP but I am ashamed I have hijacked it to let off some steam but it has helped to let some of my anger out.

I never talk about my brother to anyone apart from DP.

Dad is going through chemotherapy and his sense of taste had changed through that.

I bought all sorts of different food that he could stomach and actually liked. For the first time in weeks he ate a whole meal. My mum practically danced around the house with joy.

My brother ate all the food he liked in one go and threw the rest in the bin 'Because I don't like it'.

Mum has now gone back to buying the crap her darling boy likes but makes Dad nauseous.

Go figure.

In my experience of rellies with a personality disorder nothing can be done. All people on the receiving end of their crap can do is avoid them at all costs. NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) is I think at the root of some of what has been written about here because these people always have to be right and everyone else is wrong. They also show no empathy towards others.

BIL got bloody close to being sectioned a couple of years back due to his behaviours at home; it was his parents who stopped this from happening because they objected. They did not want the stigma or the neighbours seeing what a godawful mess their lives are in.

BIL has cut us out of his life thank god and he has not spoken to us for three years.

Suncottage is truly correct when she wrote:-
"My mum was told when my brother was a toddler "You are making up a monster". That was from my godmother and boy was she right!!"

My MIL did just that from the time her eldest son was a little boy. She overindulged and smothered him. Nothing was his fault; he was never told off by her or him. He developed a massive sense of entitlement - they created a narcissist. MIL and FIL are both equally responsible for the mess they find themselves in retirement. BIL is now a 47 year old manchild with no home, no job, no pension and no future prospects whatsoever. And he bullies his parents whom he lives with into submission so he does live the life of Reilly. I hope MIL in particular is proud, the silly, silly bitch. I personally have as little to do with this sorry lot as much as possible; it is my DH who is their other son that I feel for the most.

BIL also does nothing around the house.
It is all too sadly predictable really.

Xales

You have put my 'problem' into perspective though - at least my brother never had children. For that I am grateful.

I've got the same problem with my sister on a much lesser scale.

She isn't a bad person but just quite selfish and wholly without insight into her own behaviour. She also has quite a strong personality which can be quite bullying in a certain sort of way.

She can't keep down a job (she's had seven in the last eight years) and then turns to us for sympathy and money when she can't pay the bills. She spends money like water and can't handle a budget. She's always outraged that she has been "sacked" or "made redundant" once again and yet never gets to work on time and takes loads of days off, even though she isn't ill.

We've all been on the point of confronting her at various points and her friends are running out of patience too. She borrows money from each of us without mentioning it and then is seemingly unaware that we don't mention this amongst ourselves. (We didn't for years but then it just became too much.) She's totally in denial.

She's in her late fifies though and as I am much younger, it is a difficult situation.

It's also complicated by the fact that she's had a difficult time in life, she is a very funny and engaging person and damn it, she's my sister and I love her and even now, feel guilty about writing about her in this way.

It's so hard to see someone you love make the same mistakes over and over again. It's almost harder to see that same person you love hurt other family members.

As you can tell, I don't have any answers for you Unprune. Just posting for solidarity's sake! You have my sympathy. It's such a tough one ...

Stillcounfounded

Bumping this thread because three of us have said their siblings 'are very funny'.

I am thinking of all the comedians that were/are 'funny' or 'down'.

Spike Milligan
Peter Cooke
Dudley Moore
Stephen Fry
Peter Sellars
Linda Smith
Tony Hancock
Hugh Laurie
Emma Thompson
Tony Slattery
Ade Edmundson

Correct me if I am wrong - that was the short list!! My brother is/can be very, very funny and a great comedian

God we have some awful siblings! I am very sorry for you all. DH had chemo a few years ago and I cannot, just CANNOT imagine anyone buying food that makes a chemo patient feel worse, that is just desperately sad. It's all desperately sad.

Basically his pattern is: work seasonally, move around a bit. Fall out with boss or work out isn't being paid enough, then go to dad's for 'a couple of weeks' which turn into months. He is abroad atm but I suspect will go to dad's for Christmas as dad's wife's sons will be there = an "in" (dad can't deny him a bed if the other two are staying), then stay on for a couple of months.

My grandmother was just telling me how good he is to her (despite his treatment of her son ) as he comes to her village unasked and grits her lane in winter, does odd jobs etc. What she doesn't know is that when our grandfather died, he told me at some length how he used to come to see my grandfather every time he was a bit short, as he knew he'd get paid just for turning up and having a cup of tea with him - my grandfather used to slip him a twenty and tell him to keep it quiet.

He did, actually, at the time seem genuinely remorseful. I suspect he wasn't remorseful at all, but how can you tell?

He also, once, told my dad about the lies he used to tell as a child. He said he planned them meticulously, working out what he would do if a person did X or Y, working through all the possibilities. I think that's chilling.

The thing is that everyone has spent so many years brushing these things off and explaining his behaviour as him growing up motherless. (Our mother is a flake.) When I heard the above story, I said "He should have been a politician." Now I say "I don't think he is normal, I think he has a personality disorder of some sort" and it upsets people. Even though it's so stark staring obvious that most people don't go round behaving in a threatening, dishonest way for a whole lifetime - if they do, it's usually provoked.

I have broken contact with him - well, not deliberately but it has happened. I would like to talk to my family more about personality disorders but I sense it would be very sad for them and if the logical result is that we all break contact with him, I don't know if I can be the one to suggest it.

My grandmother also said 'Well I don't think he'd be violent towards women' so I told her about the time he tried to beat me up. I have absolutely no doubt, having seen him talking about women and practically spitting the words out, that he wouldn't be held back from violence very easily.

In response to the original question, I think it depends on the type of personality disorder. I think some types of personality disorder (e.g. avoidant, even borderline) can be relatively responsive to talking therapies (CBT, schema therapy, DBT) and these should be available on the NHS. However I don't think there is any effective treatment for antisocial or narcissistic pd. As someone posted previously, it is probably more a case of damage limitation with these people as, of course, they won't acknowledge that they have a problem.