The traditional definition of a personality disorder is a persistent characteristic personality disorder in which some character traits are suppressed, and others predominate.
It sounds rather complicated and abstract. Let’s try to figure out what it means.
Understanding how we generally perceive the world, how our personality is formed, our view of ourselves and others, and why we make our own choices is essential.
An Example of Personality Disorder
Let’s take Mary for this. She recently turned one year old. She has recently taken her first steps and is actively learning about the world. It is not always easy for Mary’s parents, but they try to meet her needs and spend time with her. Mary knows that if she is hungry, cold, bored, or wet, she can cry, and her loved ones will fix everything. They smile at her, and even if they sometimes yell or get angry, they love her. Talking about her problems and needs is safe. Mary has a cognitive schema – past positively colored emotional experiences interacting with another – that allows her to perceive the world as a relatively safe and responsive place, and she behaves accordingly. When Mary grows up, the accumulated baggage of positive experiences with developed defense mechanisms will help her to perceive reality as something that does not always turn out the way she wants, but in which she can be happy and change something by incorporating new experiences into her existing ideas about the world.
Paul, on the other hand, is not so lucky. He’s almost two, but his parents are having financial difficulties, and they don’t seem very happy with each other. There is a lot of yelling and crying at home. Paul decides not to make the situation worse by his own desires, doesn’t pester him with silly questions, doesn’t make any noise, and generally understands that this is a hard time. Paul has a different cognitive schema, his experience tells him that his needs and emotions don’t matter, and the other person is unlikely to respond, help or reassure. Often, Paul is anxious, cannot predict his parents’ emotions and behavior, and tries to be excellent. When Paul grows up, he will have difficulty understanding his desires and expressing his emotions and probably will feel that he is not very interesting to others. There is no point in making contact, which can lead to difficulties in the social sphere, work, and personal life.
Cognitive representations of ourselves and others colored by negative or positive emotional experiences are the basic building blocks of our psyche.
With the development of the neocortex, we can draw conclusions from these experiences and abstract them into basic ideas about ourselves, the world, and what we should expect from communicating with others and create patterns of behavior for the future that allow us to have more positive experiences and avoid negative ones.
Our past experiences shape our character and the way we perceive and interpret the world according to the ideas we have about it.
What Leads to Personality Disorder
Usually, our psyche and behavior are quite flexible and adaptive. Suppose we have had enough positive experiences of acceptance in our lives. In that case, we can incorporate negative experiences into our lives, draw conclusions and move on. When negative experiences prevail in the form of physical, psychological, or sexual abuse, severe physical illness of loved ones, emotional chaos, and a stressful environment, it becomes challenging to integrate negative experiences, which can lead to a split between good and bad.
In reality, this leads to the fact that good experiences are devalued and turned into bad experiences when stressed. This makes one feel more comfortable because one has already experienced quite a few bad experiences in life and knows exactly how to act in that situation. It also helps to confirm the existing picture of the world as unsafe.
Thus, in a personality disorder, some character traits become too rigid, even exaggerated, and lose flexibility and changeability, while others are suppressed. This prevents the person from fully and harmoniously expressing themselves from different sides and adapting in work, recreation, social contacts, romantic relationships, and creativity, which significantly limits the person’s life and reduces its quality. These rigid behavior patterns continue for a long time and are not a response to situational stress.
Personality disorders can have varying degrees of severity and do not necessarily affect all areas of life. Persistent disorder in one of these areas already allows us to speak about a personality disorder.
Factors of Personality Disorder Severity
The following factors influence the severity of a personality disorder: integrated self-identity, development of defense mechanisms, reality testing, and the ability to establish and maintain relationships with others.
When people have an integrated self-identity, it is easy to describe themselves, their character, the values they can defend, their goals in life, and an understanding of where they are going and why. This description is consistent, transparent, and realistic. At the same time, a person with difficulties in self-identification finds it challenging to decide what he is, good or evil, the description may be contradictory, one-sided (the person describes himself as very good or, on the contrary, very bad), or he can tell what he is not, but cannot understand who he is.
Defensive Mechanisms in Man
Protective mechanisms help us cope with stress, avoid negative emotions, protect a good self-image, and maintain self-esteem. There are several levels of defense mechanisms. Primitive defense mechanisms help us cope with negative experiences but distort our view of reality quite a bit and can cause long-term difficulties in work, personal life, and recreation. For example, denial allows us to avoid and ignore the problem in reality, which reduces anxiety, but the problem goes nowhere.
Mature defense mechanisms help us adapt to changing conditions and maintain good relationships with others, give us a sense of satisfaction and control, and help us integrate negative events into our life experiences.
Reality testing allows us to distinguish ourselves from others, reality from fantasies and expectations. We can maintain contact with daily events and be objective about what is happening in our lives and where and when we are. In extreme cases, impaired reality testing manifests itself in hallucinations, which are not characteristic of personality disorders. In severe cases, however, impaired testing in a highly stressful situation is possible, which may manifest as super stress or paranoia, delusions, derealization, and depersonalization.
Problems in interpersonal relations can manifest as tricky in establishing contact, an extreme degree of introversion, or, conversely, can appear as extreme dependence on others and indiscriminateness of social connections. At the same time, as a rule, people with a personality disorder need a clearer idea of the other person’s image and personality in the same way they have difficulty understanding themselves.
Quite often, people with a personality disorder believe that the problem is not with others around them or the unjust world they have to battle with daily. Because of this, they rarely seek help or do so because of some other difficulty in life without linking it to their behavior.
So now, what if I haven’t had positive experiences? Do I have a personality disorder? Not necessarily. Current research shows that about 10% of the population suffers from various personality disorders. Genetics and inheritance contribute up to 50%. Psychological models recognize the contribution of a person’s developmental conditions and genetic predisposition, type of nervous system, the environment outside the family, and defense mechanisms. The same experiences can have different consequences for different people.
This Film Will Help You Get to the Bottom Line
Girl, Interrupted
Suzanne has a borderline personality disorder. On doctors’ recommendation, she is admitted to a psychiatric clinic, where her situation worsens. On top of that, the girl meets Lisa, played by Angelina Jolie. The latter makes the situation even more confusing and grim. Almost all the scenes were filmed in a real hospital for the mentally ill. The atmosphere is not pleasant.
IMDb 7.40 – Girl, Interrupted
The drama “Girl, Interrupted” based on the biographical novel by Susanna Kaysen, was a triumph for Angelina Jolie: the actress won four film awards, including an Academy Award for her supporting role. Watch the complex, tragic story of lost souls online right now. Suzanne is trying to convince the doctors and residents of the mental hospital that she does not want to give up on life and, in general, that she does not belong among the unstable residents of the institution. The vulnerable girl dreams of becoming a writer. Still, it is difficult for her to share her experiences with strangers.
However, the frankly inadequate but philosophical Lisa, desperately trying to escape from the hospital captivity, inspires Suzanne’s trust. The girls manage to escape. But Lisa seems to take pleasure in driving those around her to a nervous breakdown. Another victim of a violent psychopath is a former clinic patient, out of kindness, which lets the fugitives spend the night. Fox provokes the girl, and she commits suicide. Shocked by her friend’s indifference, Susanna is again forced into treatment.
