Personality Disorder - any success stories of living with them?

[feelingpositivemum]

Just that really, is there anyone out there who has successfully changed the way they are and react to someone with a PD (abusive) to make a success of the relationship?

(Really, could I have changed the way I reacted to my exH and forced him to change his behaviour. Did my lack of boundaries make it worse, and if I developed some would he have responded positively?)

preferred men as it turned out, and left me a lot of mornings with a 'to do' list) He has moved on to someone else. She is welcome to him.Crikey.....you too? Skihorse, the point is that people are just sharing their own experience and their own interpretation of research (which is all very subjective anyway). My ex is terrifying, absolutely disconnected from the usual moral framework in which we live our lives and has terrorised me and his own children. Personally, I couldn't give a shite if there is a cure... my ex may have done what he's done because he is unwell and it is inexcuseable whatever the reason behind it. My ex is perfectly capable is hurting us all, i think even killing us because he has suicidal tendancies which apparently are part of his 'condition'. But honestly, I don't care. If he can be cured, fine - If he kills himself, fine. Not tarring everyone with the same brush just saying how it has affected my family.

That's fine and I understand that everyone is different, but when you say he's capable of murder, lacks a moral framework et al you imply that all people having a PD act in this manner.

It's like saying everyone with blonde hair is stupid. It's just ludicrous.

I just wanted to add that I also think it's a shame that your ex-partner's diagnosis and/or your research didn't allow you to discover that of the 9 personality traits associated with borderline behaviour, only 5 must be matched for a diagnosis - which of course means there are many multiple types of character associated with such a diagnosis. It's a bit mathematical but I can explain it to you if you like.

I think you have misunderstood. My intention is not to make you feel bad or diminish your achievements. I do appreciate how difficult it is. What I said was personality is who you are and cannot be changed but personality disorders can be treated or managed and there is evidence that BPD symptoms may get better as people get older. It isn't my interpretation of research, this is what the Royal College of Psychiatrists says;

"However, in mental health, the word ?personality? refers to the collection of characteristics or traits that makes each of us an individual. These include the ways that we:
? think
? feel
? behave

By our late teens, or early 20s, most of us have developed our own personality with our own distinctive ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. It remains pretty much the same for the rest of our life.......

Do personality disorders change with time?
Yes. There is evidence that they tend to improve slowly with age."

www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthinfoforall/problems/personalitydisorders/pd.aspx

Other references are NHS Evidence/National Institute for Health Clinical Evidence and the British Journal of Psychiatry resources for health care professionals. In fact the BJP published a paper about BPD last month and the February edition contains the new NICE guidelines.

My quote about experts describing personality disorders as being ?fuzzy at the edges? is from the mental health charity Mind which aims to provide high quality information and promotes a society where people with experience of mental distress are treated fairly, positively and with respect. Rightly or wrongly experts refer to 'fuzzy around the edges' because parts of the personality of people with personality disorders develops in a way that makes it difficult for you to live with yourselves and/or other people. Again see the RCP link above.

Coming back to the original OP and the question about boundaries, I think it's important to realise that if you're dealing with someone who is an abusive personality type (irrespective of any psychological disorder), the only boundary you can ever successfully establish is to leave. Until that point, you have no sanction that means anything. If you'd tried to establish boundaries sooner feelingpositivemum, all that would have happened is that you'd have reached this point a bit more quickly.

As an aside, I think the information STIDW gave about how some people with PD can 'normalise' as they age proves the point that PD shouldn't be confused with abusive personalities, as the sad truth is that most people who abuse others do not change.

feelingpositivemum, sorry I think my post was a bit cold. I meant to add that I think you should feel proud of yourself for reaching this point. Leaving is hard. Learning the lessons to ensure you don't find yourself in the same situation in the future is even harder. It was not your fault that your XP was abusive to you, but self reflection and understanding the role you were forced to play in that unhealthy relationship is definitely the way to ensure a manageable relationship with your XP and a happy, healthy relationship with another in the future. It's hard to examine our own behaviour, so good on you!

i'm sure tarty and i have the same ex!!

thing is though,we have left,so really dont care about these people anymore.....reading up on the ins and outs is to me,almost like still giving him the attention he craves,even tho he doesnt know what i'm doing,and theres 230 miles between us.

would read all the research if i in any way cared about him...

i'm only on this thread to say what it was like living with a person who has this disorder. for me it was hell.

but for those who know all the ins and outs,could you please enlighten me,is this disorder in any way genetic/hereditary,because then i WOULD have an interest?

Like a lot of mental health problems it isn't clear what causes personality disorders. It's thought that a combination of genetic predisposition and upbringing can play a part.

One point. There is no condition of abusive personality recognised in psychiatry. Someone who has mental health problems may be abusive, but not all abusive people have mental health problems and not all those with mental health problems are abusive. In fact people with mental health problems are a greater risk to themselves than others.

STIDW, I think you've clarified my point, thanks. By 'abusive personality' I am referring to someone who chooses to be abusive to others; someone who does not have mental health problems or a diagnosis. Someone who is perfectly aware of what they are doing and does not want to change. Most abusers say things like 'but I didn't mean it' or 'it's not my fault, I had a bad childhood' etc., and they often convince their victims that they need support and help (yet more control over them).

Maybe I should just use the word 'abusive', rather than 'abusive personality'?

I also agree with you that most people suffering mental health issues pose most risk to themselves rather than others. In my personal experience, the only aggressive people with MH issues I have come accross were aggressive long before they had problems. And my best friend, who has bi-polar and has had probably the shittiest childhood ever, is never aggressive, even when in the grip of an uncontrolled episode!

OptimistS, I didn't think your post cold, it's interesting. I think I know that the only boundary to set is to leave as I think I tried everything before.

I unfortunately live 50 yds away from him(that's another story) so I'm trying to rationalise the whole thing so that I can co parent with him, understand where I went wrong to avoid doing the same again and just UNDERSTAND.

This post has been very helpful, in that trying to find a label, whilst useful as a benchmark from which to allow myself to leave as such, is in fact almost irrelevant.

What is relevant is that I tried all I could, it was gradually getting worse and I needed to get out for my own mental health.

Whether he has a pd or not is in fact a red herring. He just wasn't/isn't very nice!

And from that, hopefully I can move on!

Oh god, i posted that without reading it properly and whilst on the phone.

I don't mean he isn't very nice because he may have a pd, just that he isn't very nice.

A separate issue, obviously.

feelingpositivemum, I think you're going to do just fine...

Ah thankyou.

ItsGraceAgain Sat 30-Jan-10 14:12:50
The thing is, personality disordered people find your vulnerabilities and exploit them. They don't need you to have 'weaknesses' in your own personality, an efficient psychopath can twist any characteristic to their purposes.

I am a very regular poster with a diagnosed PD although another doctor refused to give such a diagnosis. I am not a psychopath and do not exploit or hurt anyone other than myself. I am sometimes difficult to live with but people generally find me warm, compassionate and kind.

I don't seek to deny the pain of abuse but am becoming very angry at this constant hate directed at a very vulnerable group of society. I know that if I posted under my real name some posters would blank me and perhaps worse. Infact I have experienced worse on here so there is not even a need for the perhaps.

I'm sorry you were distressed by the words I used. Your point has been answered further up the thread. Nobody should have said "personality disordered", we should all have used a more accurate expression, like "manipulative/controlling/abusive" or something.

Oh dear, I feel I need to add this and am probably going to get flamed.

When making your point about "Personality Disorders", please take care not to diminish the experiences of people like Tiffany & Tarty, who have suffered greatly at the hands of abusive partners diagnosed with certain of the disorders.

I appreciate - and do know! - that most of the conditions diagnosed as personality disorders are dangerous to the sufferer, not to other people. The blanket term is used rather lazily in this forum, and it shouldn't be. But this is NOT a mental health forum, and we don't offer clinical diagnoses. As this is a relationships forum, the term is understood, by most, to mean a collection of abusive behaviours and/or attitudes - whether the result of a clinical condition or not.

Your irritation is understandable but I think a moment's reflection would show that the discussion is about behaviour patterns, not whether all PDs lead to abuse.

Grace; I don't see constant hate directed at a very vulnerable group of society, on this forum anyway. Some personality disorders express their symptoms primarily in the way a person behaves in a relationship, hence the frustration, the anger, the personal animosity directed at certain individual ex or current spouses. A big, sore bruise on your arm is a big, sore bruise on your arm whether it came from someone 'abusive' or someone whose 'personality disorder' made it impossible for him to accept that another person had a right to her opinion.

And while there are some personality disorders that can be cured, the trick is, in a lot of cases, to get the person with the disorder to accept that they need help, that they and not everyone else, have the problem (everyone else has a different set of problems mostly thanks to them a lot of the time). In the case of my ex, he only sought help after a complete mental breakdown, with knives and threats of bodily harm involved.

my ex wont accept it....enjoys the attention from it,but wont take any pills.

he has gone on to beat up first girlfriend,for which there was a court case,and he got thrown out of the army (bye bye maintenence for our 4 dc). a police officer described this as 'worst case of dv they had ever seen'. this was from the newspaper report of the incident.

second girlfriend had dc....he 'went for' her youngest with sn,tried to knife himself in front of them all,then went to do it to himself anyway. he beat the mother in front of the youngest. social services told her her kidsw would be taken if he stayed

3rd girlfriend...she caught him cheating so his reaction was to punch her in the face and had her by her throat over some railing til her dad came and shoved him away.

he went to prison...sentence extended for attacking another person there...

it wont end....he loves the attention from all of this,even tho its negative...

he wont stop tho,because he says his 'mother'made him like this..he wont take help,its his mothers problem. she died few years ago...had heart attack in my lounge,had to do mouth to mouth/heart compression til ambulance arrived,20 mins,was really hard work. he was saying 'leave her,dont bother' she lived for a while after that. i can only summon up hatred for him

Skihorse - That's fine and I understand that everyone is different, but when you say he's capable of murder, lacks a moral framework et al you imply that all people having a PD act in this manner.

err at no point did I say this or indeed would I say it. I also have a close friend who has been diagnosed with narcissistic PD and he's a lovely man actually, he works really hard on it and although isn't capable of holding down a job and that sort of stuff is not a bad person, in fact ironically, quite the opposite.

My Ex has restyled himself as a healer/psychic becuase he is highly manipulaative and attention seeking - by definition he is in contact with vulnerable people - all very worrying but not a battle i can fight and has nothing to do with me.

My ex is an abuser of me and his children, he carries on abusing us now and we are still considered, 4 years later to be at high risk from him. I can only talk about him but to be clear he has 8 out of 9 traits for a match how about that??? No one around him can admit there is a problem, his entire family have blamed me although he has exhibited strange behaviours since childhood and had contact with MH intervention since then. They have alos covered up suicide attempts - one of which I think happend when my children were staying with him. Scary scary scary and my oldest daughter has seen him abuse me terribly and has been in the firing line herself even as a very small child. This is because he has a fragile sense of self, that we are just extensions of him and when we fell from grace, we became worse than the lowest thing on the planet and without value. It maybe that someone suffering from the same problem does not do this - to be frank I couldn't care less, I am talking about me and my children and the lasting damage that has been done to us all. He could kill us, this is a fact. He has tried to kill me, he has also told others he wants me to die and this is why I do not let him see the children on his own because I know hurting me is a priority over loving them.

Bloodangry....becoming very angry at this constant hate directed at a very vulnerable group of society

Again I have done nothing of the sort, I am directing hate at my ex who happens to have a BPD which makes him very unstable and scary to be around.

It must be hard for people who have PD's to see all this evidence from posters but then again we are all grown ups and we all know how different things affect different people - Depression can make some people extremely aggressive but by no means everyone.

So please, get off your victimisation high horse and see that I and others are posting about our own personal experience with someone who happend to have this problem.

The plain fact of the matter is that some people with BPD (I can only speak about this because this is my experience) make things very hard for those around them because of their fragile sense of themselves. A lot of people around my ex regard him as kind and wise and he teaches spiritual development to a lot of people and gets paid for it. More people speak highly of him than do not, making me in the minority. He is also a violent, sadistic, raping bastard who has proved time and time again that his only concern is self preservation (whoever the self is this week)

My ex is paid £1000 a day for his emotional intelligence and he's much in demand. (Recruitment consultant) He reminds me of this....so I must be wrong musn't I.

I did say in my post that I did not want to dimish the hurt caused by abuse. My own condition was caused by constant sexual, physical and emotional abuse from birth to my mid twenties. Why would I want to diminish the hurt caused by abuse? Especially when one of the people who subjected me to abuse had a diagnosed a personality disorder which caused him to be sectioned a number of times.

I was not annoyed by the fact that a poster was talking about her own abuse, infact I have read time and time again about people who have been abused by people with PD disorders and not said anything. I know that people with PD can be abusers.

I admit that I am hard to live with myself.

I was annoyed by the statement that we should avoid people with PD full stop. This is a view often expressed on here, whenever anyone posts about an abusive man posters pop up from everywhere and say he must have a PD as if the two have to go hand in hand. I purposely did not direct my post at the OP but towards the comment made by a certain poster. If I did not make that clear I apologise.

I myself have been told on here that I should not have children because of my illness, that I am a danger to those around me.

I actually don't see myself as being on a victimisation high horse but I do know that people with PD are very very vulnerable with shockingly high suicide rates. I am lucky that due to having a fantastic support network and the finances to access private help my illness is under control. Others who may have the same disorder may not be as fortunate, mainly because we are difficult people to love and our relationships tend to be intense but short.

Back to the OP my partner does have a very positive relationship with me but it has taken time, patience and a lot of money on counselling. I have never ever been violent to anyone other than myself though so I may be a very different case. I have been emotionally cruel to him in the past though and bitterly regret that. It is very hard to be in a loving relationship when you have never experienced love before that is not accompanied by abuse.

I am going to leave this thread now as I do not think it is fair to the OP to turn this into a "debate" on personality disorders. I am sorry if I have offended her. Once again I should have just bit my tongue and walked away.

My ex.
He is undiagnosed, but I lived with him and his behaviours for 17 years. So I guess I made my own diagnosis based on what I read and learned. It was only after I did this that I could stop blaming myself for everything, and I mean everything.
So; I may not be medically trained, but by matching a PD description to my h it helped me to see that maybe I wasn't to blame after all. It released me.

Anyway, I don't go around telling everybody he has a PD. It's just my private opinion. I share it with other people on line, annonymously, who have shared experiences with me. We talk about specific examples, find similarities and give support. I wouldn't dream of doing this in real life as I'm not qualified. But I do have to unburden myself somewhere.

As for the change in behaviour bit once you split up. Oh yes! That too is my experience. But I'm now in a position of power to him. He needs my cooperation so he can visit the dc in my home, although this is probably just an excuse to remain in my life. I tried to remain distant but wasn't talking on line for a while, so no support. He caught me off guard.
He comes to the house about twice a week. He is charming and polite, can't do enough for me. He is the man that I first knew when I met him, however I have 17 years of experience since then, so I am wise to him.
He always brings alcohol with him. Insists on pouring me a drink, a large one. He must think I was born yesterday.

Bloodyangry - you absolutely have not offended me, and I'm sorry if you got that impression. You shouldn't have bitten your tongue. It's been informative for me.

I never thought that this thread would start a debate like this and it has been really interesting.

I have learnt a lot from both sides and although I needed some explanation for my ex's behaviour, I now feel it's actually no longer relevant.

therealme, I think it is the power shift, he knows he puts a foot wrong and he will see the children less. Also, I was wondering if, now it's more'public' if you like, not what actually went on but the fact that I left, means that he feels his behaviour is under more scrutiny.

He wouldn't necessarily get away with it anymore as he knows people know.

the notion of passive aggression has crossed my mind reading all this.....

clip -I was annoyed by the statement that we should avoid people with PD full stop

I haven't said any such thing, in fact as I sad I have a close friend with npd

it really does depend what type of pd you have and how that manifests itself

clip -I actually don't see myself as being on a victimisation high horse but I do know that people with PD are very very vulnerable with shockingly high suicide rates.

Yes again this actually depends on the type of pd. And this may be so but in my own case I couldn't give a shit - please understand this is not applied to you personally but as far as I am concerned in my own case the sooner the better.

And frankly you are being very contradictory - you are saying oh, people with PDs have a high suicide rate but also complain that some people have suggested that you should not have children. Whilst I an not forming an opinion on whther you should or not, surely given this fact alone you can see why people form this opinion??

clip - we are difficult people to love

well actually again this is not so - you can be difficult people to love my friend with npd is actually very easy to love and for those with unstable BPD loving them can be catastrophic for everyone as they swing from idealising you to demonising you, that can happen with their children too - not a choice they are making if course but nevertheless, the result is the same.

So, like I said, it depends what sort you have and how it manifests itself and if you are willing and able to access help for your condition. Clearly you have done something about it and good for you and your family but women on here are speaking from terrible personal experience and saying that I am implying that anyone with a pd could kill etc is absurd. It is true you could kill someone but it is also true that i could do so - it is just more likely that my ex, unstable and untreated bpd will do so because that sort of behaviour is involved in the pathology of his illness. He has already had a go and i have no intention of letting him anywhere near me or my children to have another go. He should be locked up because genuinely, if you knew what he was capable of you would throw away the key. Just out on interest, the extent of his childhood trauma is being left at boarding school at 7 but he also has an aunt with a pd (unspecified)