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?)

it was actually a relief!

borderliner - my experience with my Narc. H is that - no - he does not understand/accept/acknowledge/will ever entertain the idea there is anything wrong with him. The word 'sorry' is not in his vocabulary. But then, he obviously never feels sorry/guilt/remorse for any hurtful action towards another human being.

Therefore, not that he would ever go to something like counselling, it would be of no benefit to him whatsoever anyway.

autumnlight - I think thats the difference though between NPD and the BPD ladies even here on MN - we are trying to get better, or at least limit the damage we cause, because we recognise a problem and we cooperate with those who can help us.

I think its quite important when discussing these kind of things to specify the PD concerned, and there is a bit of an assumption on MN sometimes that PD=NPD, which is where the confusion can come in.

Your h sounds awful.

Thanks, both autumnlight and borderliner, for your very careful & helpful posts. Autumn, I'm sorry if I have ever seemed to harangue or lecture you. It's a wonderful relief to hear that you are, genuinely, working to rebuild your personal resources: it's an escape plan and I wish you all good speed in every aspect of your development.

Other disorders, besides NPD, can wreak long-lasting, widespread destruction. My dad, for instance, did not love or overrate himself. He was probably ASPD/sociopath. Moreover, Borderliner, you touched on the effects of untreated PDs - raging, lying, etc. Those are the effects of many untreated disorders (not just PDs): the damage caused is just as vile, whatever the underlying cause. We are not psychiatrists; we need an explanation for the incomprehensible horror we find ourselves living. If the partner won't get the explanation, we need to make our own diagnosis; a 'label' that fits; for the sake of our own sanity!

I do appreciate that this horror is what pertains inside your own head. I do sympathise. I think you understand how, if untreated, you would have inflicted your own symptoms on those who tried to love you. That's what this thread's about.

I have been reading up extensively on neuro-surgery recently. I feel that after quite literally, days of study, and despite not a little scorn from so-called professionals, the time has now come to carry out my first practical experiment.

Unfortunately, my husband left me when I advised him of my plans, and even the cat won't come in when I called him. As a result, I have regrettably decided to perform this first procedure on myself.

I have purchased all of the relevant tools (hand mirror, scalpel, soap and towels).

Don't you let the naysayers put you off folks. I will be back tomorrow to report on my progress.

Meanwhile, I trust that your own diagnoses will be as successful as my experiment and that you will have sectioned yourselves by close of business today.

STIDW, for example, is an arse.

STIDW = Silly Tart In a Disordered World ?

biscuit.

makes as much sense as after all

ST please don't make us all think you are going to kill yourself. If you are thinking about it then ask for help. If you aren't, please understand that I am no good at handling the (empty in my exh's case) threats and would feel totally shit if you did go through with it.

If you are taking the piss, well, words fail me.

It's not funny

This is really worrying me

erm erm i have a proper diagnosis with my ex - does that make what has happened to me better or worse - STIDW just stop it, you are not helping anyone and making yourself look a bit petty really

You are being an arse a pedantic arse at that

wtf was that all about ?

Unlikelyamazonian. Going by the tone of STIDW's other posts, she is still trying to ram home her pointless point about amateur diagnoses. That post was, I believe, supposed to be witty.

I'd like to think she'd be dismayed when she realised how likely it was that her 'threat' would trigger people in this thread.

But I suspect she knew that, damn fine

Stidw. The ex I refer to in my posts has been diagnosed by a qualified psychiatrist. I have also read the full report he completed in the forensic psychiatric assesment

does that not count as diagnosed?

Please tell me?

And are you ok?

FGS, don't worry about her. You're just feeding her warped sense of control. Read the post again; she was trying to be sarcastic. And to get to you.

yes but you know about the double bluff, where they lap it up then try it anyway as it is getting some interest and then it works and so on

also I think she was being honest and it must be bloody awful knowing you are trying and people like us are so hardened to it we can't help

Why don't you practice with some proctology first, STIDW?

lol, Math

It has been postulated that NPD and BPD both arise from the same childhood types - abusive and confusing or alternatively, smothering and idealising. Or both together, so the small child has no idea of where they are for the most part with regard to the parent or authority figure. But it is thought that this results in more men becoming NPD and more women becoming BPD.

The child's reality is so terrifying and confusing that they construct another reality for themselves (their false self), and this becomes their security blanket .

If you read something like 'mothers, and what they do when they look like they are doing nothing' or similar titles about mother-love, you can see how important the loving and consistent treatment of small children is. The correct growth of the brain depends on this being spot on in those crucial early years.

With my parents I can see exactly why they ended up as they did from looking at their own parents. And with my ex-H too.

My mother I think has little, rare flashes of self-awareness and she has sometimes said that she wishes she could 'just switch her brain off'. My father was textbook NPD, with never a glimmer of anything to show that he had any self-awareness at all.

As for STIDW....pleasure at other's distress, attention seeking behaviour, pontificating about all sorts of things they know nothing about, sarcastic and unpleasant language when ignored or challenged, missing the point, using archaic and pompous language. What does that sound like to you , ladies?

And also STIDW, you have absolutely no idea of the academic background of any of the posters on this thread. For all you know we may all be psychology/psychiatry professionals.

There is one thing for sure...you have absolutely no empathy whatsoever..oops there's another marker.

Good for you those posters who have tried to sort their PDs out.You have my utmost respect.

As for STIDW....pleasure at other's distress, attention seeking behaviour, pontificating about all sorts of things they know nothing about, sarcastic and unpleasant language when ignored or challenged, missing the point, using archaic and pompous language. What does that sound like to you , ladies?

is it NPD Frankie, is it is it?????

St - be nice.

I fail to see how saying "Oh dear, I seem to have hit a nerve" ie a polite exclamation that I've offended someone, my poor attempt at humour to get a point across or anything else I've posted can be construed as a lack of empathy, or unpleasant language or that it warrants insults. Never mind, make of it what you will.

Just two points. First, I'm a survivor. I understand someone who is suffering/has suffered from trauma needs to sort out the confusion in their own mind and temporary blame is often essential but when blame is ongoing people get stuck and remain victims rather than becoming survivors.

Secondly, it is very dangerous when creedence is given to pop psychology or amateur psychiatry because it can be used against us too eg parental alienation syndrome.

Exactly what are you a survivor of, STIDW? Were you dropped on your head as a baby?

'I understand someone who is suffering/has suffered from trauma needs to sort out the confusion in their own mind and temporary blame is often essential'? I am interested in the idea that anyone here might be suffering from confusion of any sort. Could you elaborate?

Figuring out what went wrong and establishing the truth about a relationship like this is so not about blaming someone, even temporarily, for any reason. It is about self-education, and about rebuilding your life and your sense of self. Most people who have suffered through a relationship with an abusive partner who has a PD, especially NPD, sadly require such rehabilitation and reassurance because they have spent years being torn down and having their feelings of self-worth destroyed by their abuser.

Parental alienation has nothing to do with anything on this thread. Do you think any posters are doing this to their children?

ST - like I said be nice.

I still cannot get what axe you have to grind here, my as well as others have a proper, done over months assessment and a proper diagnosis (shame i cannot remember the doctor or indeed took a copy)- it is very frustrating for me as you can imagine, I know something is wrong, it has been ratified by a professional who indeed his mummy paid for so I know it is impartial. I now cannot probably get access to another diagnosis that the courts can see and so my children and I remain at risk.

The original op was about success stories at living with those with PD's - clealry I do not have one.

Also being with someone with a PD is like living on another planet - i thought for ages it was me, he told me it was me, like an arse I believed him because before i read up on this stuff I had no real idea that people could be so far off the moral radar and be completely fine with it. I know that sounds a bit daft but my psychology is pretty normal and i just didn't get it.

And I am blaming him and I will tell you why: It is his fault. Pure and simple. He left me four years ago and still we are subject to his whims (although now the majority of bullying is done through the courts) I am not sure if that makes me a victim but in reality I still am a victim because i am scared to answer my door without checking who it is and my children are really suffering with first the abandonment and then the punishment he dished out - being a victim is not a reflection on me, it is a reflection on him.

Saying that I am also a survivor too because I have a relationship and my family , aside from this are really well settled and happy. I am also a survivor because I am not dead - which in my own situation is indeed an achievement for which i take all the credit.

Whether you are intending it or not, you have a pithy and superior tone which has constantly niggled people and offended them, so why bother. This has been pointed out to you in a variety of polite to less so way, but you carry on.

In many of these situation, the people you are accusing of being airmchair psychiatrists have been in life and death situations, most of us, despite all the 'survivor rhetoric' will carry this until our dying day and tragically this is probably true for some of our children too.

So, given this it is no wonder you are given short shrift here - please take your well worn and contrary opinion and shove it up your backside.

'I understand someone who is suffering/has suffered from trauma needs to sort out the confusion in their own mind and temporary blame is often essential but when blame is ongoing people get stuck and remain victims rather than becoming survivors.'

I seem to recall up thread saying that the realisation that my parents are PDs allowed me to stop hating them and being angry at them for what they did to me. It wasn't personal, it wasn't that I was a hateful person or that there was something terribly wrong with me , a child, it WAS THEM.

This again is the polar opposite of what you are telling us STIDW.

In my experience, PDs (Ns again I stress) have such cognitive difficulties that they miss the point spectacularly every time. JM Ashmum describes this well. This I find the most frustrating part of the PD. A normal conversation is impossible as PDs (Ns)do not have the cognitive ability to follow a train of thought and cannot converse about anything that does not have them as the central topic. So they lock onto any random word in the conversation and go off on weird tangents , which, funnily enough, all lead back to them.

Everything, just everything, is all about them.

Survivors of this Hell on Earth have a desperate need to make sense of this insane-making experience, and end up in therapy thinking it is them who are nuts. My own Ns have driven me to suicidal thoughts. If it hadn't been for my children then I probably would have driven my car into a concrete pillar on the A1.

Now I am not spending every waking hour being a victim. I am making a new life. But this forum is for us survivors to help each other and to encourage each other to build new lives free of the nightmare.

If you have nothing to add but sarcastic and downright nasty comments about us then please don't post. You remind me of the abuser who makes a nasty comment and when puled up on it says 'it was a joke...can't you take a joke?' or the other classic abuser's excuse ' you are over-reacting'.

You keep saying that you are joking or that you have a point of view. What is your point of view, as I am finding it difficult to sort out anything from your posts but the fact that we should all just shut up about our experiences because YOU think that we are talking cobblers.

parental alienation syndrome.....doesnt actually exist according to british courts. my ex cant use that one....he's been banned from seeing his kids by the courts,cafcass and social services....not me! his behaviour has alienated him....he had numerous chances,but no....he's the bloody victim,not me STIDW....i'm the survivor,along with my children,he's the one who has lost everything. i find it hard to pity him though and very easy to laugh at his stupidity,personality disorder or not

he's been properly diagnosed,and he's been labelled as having a personality disorder....he's been labelled as the sort of person he used to despise and call names. he's now that person,and oh,how i laugh!!