Written by What are personality disorders?
Personality disorders refer to a mental illness that causes people to behave in unpleasant or harmful ways. This post explains the personality disorders: types, diagnosis, and treatment.
Personality disorders are preoccupations with control and order, often accompanied by emotional instability. These conditions create conflicts in the internal and external environments that limit the individual’s ability to communicate effectively with the world around them.
People with personality disorders have an inflated sense of their abilities and achievements and an increased need for admiration. This often leads to manipulative behaviour towards others. There are different types of personality disorders.
Types of personality disorders
It is imperative to understand personality disorders so that you can avoid them. Let’s examine 10 different types of personality disorders and the symptoms associated with these disorders. Personality disorders can be classified into the following types:
Narcissistic personality disorder
In this disorder, individuals have a high sense of self and often exaggerate their achievements and abilities. People with this disorder often see themselves as superior to others only for their own benefit.
Symptoms
Symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder include:
Excessive need to please
- Visualize power, success, and attractiveness
- Believe that you are superior to others and that certain rules do not apply to you
- Expect special favours from others without expecting anything in return
Borderline personality disorder (BPD)
People with this disorder tend to be angry, anxious, depressed, or afraid of being abandoned or hurting themselves. This is because people with BPD often confuse their feelings as love or hate for another person. In the beginning, they may appear to be in a relationship, but when they feel abandoned, they despise each other. These conflicting emotions can lead to impulsive behaviour such as reckless driving, spending, or risk-taking.
Symptoms
These are symptoms of borderline personality disorder:
- severe emotional instability
- Unreasonable fear of abandonment by friends or family
- Impulsive behaviour such as spending, unsafe sexual behaviour, and reckless driving
- unstable self-image and relationships with others
Dependent personality disorder (DPD)
People with this disorder depend on others to meet their needs. They often stick with their relationships even when it is harmful to them. People with DPD are often very anxious about not having anyone around to provide support when they need it. As a result, they look to other people to deal with all these things. This can cause problems in future social situations because everyone wants to be independent of each other.
Symptoms
These are symptoms of dependent personality disorder:
- There is an urgent need to care for someone else, usually a romantic partner or spouse.
- Having trouble making everyday decisions without assistance
- Fear of abandonment and loss of support around you. This often leads to them being so attached to the relationship that it works against them, and they don’t feel abandoned. When they feel lonely, they may seek out other people with similar behaviours.
Congenital (histrionic) personality disorder
People with histrionic personality disorder tend to display attention-seeking emotional behaviours, such as being overly dramatic whenever something bad happens or feeling left out. They also tend to exaggerate their emotional reactions and appear “fake” in social situations when another person shows strong emotions (such as anger or sadness).
Symptoms
Symptoms of congenital personality disorders include:
- Frequent tantrums over any minor or perceived problem,
- Attention seeking hyperactivity
- Inappropriate appearance
- Be overly dramatic when dealing with any situation, even bad news or negative experiences.
Obsessive compulsive personality disorder
People with OCPD tend to be very rigid and inflexible about how their lives run and what rules they have to follow. They probably check multiple times to make sure they don’t make mistakes. People with OCPD often feel very hurt and angry when people around them try to change these specific ways of doing things for comfort.
Symptoms
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder has the following symptoms:
- Adhere strictly to rules, orders, or routines without considering the situation before deciding to act.
- Reluctance to change habits or routines
- Can’t let things pass, act quickly from negative situations
Introverted(avoidant) personality disorder
People with APD tend to feel anxious in social situations where they may interact with others, especially when it comes to new relationships. They are very anxious about any form of rejection, which often makes them want nothing rather than face the possibility of rejection.
Symptoms
Avoidant personality disorder is characterized by the following symptoms:
- Extreme shyness and social anxiety make it difficult to get along with others,
- Feeling that you are bound to make mistakes when dealing with others
- Lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem
- Always conscious of how others perceive you.
Fragmented or split personality disorder
People with FPD often feel that the many different parts of themselves are disconnected, so they may not be able to live in harmony. They can experience many different emotions and feelings at the same time, making it difficult to understand the world around them or how to respond to a given situation.
Symptoms
Symptoms of split personality disorder include:
- Inability to control your impulses, especially when you have harmful thoughts about yourself or others that could harm you in some way.
- Multiple emotional reactions to one event
- On a given issue, they may hold differing opinions
- The ability to predict what others think or feel about you.
Antisocial personality disorder
In this disorder, people cannot process their thoughts and feelings normally. Their inability to understand how others feel or why they feel the way they do often leads them to make irrational decisions. This is because they don’t think about what would happen if they took certain actions that could harm themselves or others around them.
Symptoms
Antisocial personality disorder manifests as the following symptoms:
- Inability to talk to people
- Not understanding why certain actions should not hurt even if they hurt others
- Inability to control his anger and aggressive motives
- May harm others physically, emotionally, etc. No remorse or guilt for the offense.
Paranoid personality disorder
All these disorders depend on how a person processes the information he receives from the world around him. They may have certain thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about certain issues because of what they have learned in their life experiences so far. This can cause problems for those trying to change themselves, as some find it difficult to “let go” or get over their thoughts and beliefs.
Symptoms
These are the symptoms of paranoid personality disorder:
- Believe that something negative will happen, even if you can’t prove it, others will believe it.
- Suspicion that every little thing someone says or does makes you try to dismiss such statements/actions as false.
- Feel taken advantage of or taken advantage of by focusing too much on what others want rather than what you need.
- Do not trust anyone, even if they have proven to be trustworthy.
Schizotypal personality disorder
People with schizotypal personality disorder are often seen as “odd” or moody. They have difficulty socializing, so it is difficult for them to adapt to the world around them, especially when they have to socialize in their field. This personality disorder is also accompanied by a form of schizophrenia, so trying to properly diagnose someone without all the necessary information can be confusing.
Symptoms
Symptoms of schizotypal personality disorder include:
- A strange way of thinking/speaking that makes it difficult to understand how others function in normal society
- The belief that bad things can happen even when they cannot be proven, such as paranoid personality disorder
- unusual or strange ideas that may not be understood by others
- You have difficulty with social interaction, especially if you are new to social interaction. In some cases, this can be seen as shy or introverted and is not necessarily the same as a schizotypal personality disorder.
Schizoid personality disorder
People with schizoid personality disorder often do not enjoy being around other people. Even if they develop close friendships or romantic relationships over time, they may find that they don’t need any social interactions in their lives, causing those close to them to perceive them as ‘alienated’. People with this disorder tend to be alone most of the time and don’t want to interact unless they really like being alone.
Symptoms
Symptoms of schizotypal personality disorder include:
- Complete withdrawal from society and rarely interact with others. This is because they prefer to mind their own business
- Hardly make friends or acquaintances because you rarely get along with others
- Dislikes doing tasks or activities when others are present, which may include family activities and gatherings.
- Focusing so much on the things that interest you that you ignore what’s going on around you because it’s distracting you.
Diagnosis of personality disorders
There are several ways to diagnose someone with a personality disorder, including:
Diagnostic test
A psychiatric specialist will start the process by conducting a comprehensive interview with the person concerned. Here they ask about your symptoms. They will also ask how they are feeling over time. They may also perform a few different tests with psychological tools. This can help determine if a person has a disease. personality test
If mental health professionals feel they need more information to determine if someone has a disorder, there are many different tests that can help them make a diagnosis.
One such test commonly administered to people with personality disorder includes the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, or MMPI. The test consists of a series of questions that a person answers that can help determine if a person has certain symptoms associated with a personality disorder.
Treatment of personality disorders
If you have one or more mental health problems, there are many treatment options available, including:
- Psychotherapy
If you are dealing with any type of psychological problem, there are several ways to gradually recover from your symptoms through treatment. The main goal here is to discover the cause and treat some other aspects such as relationships, depression, anxiety, and feelings of inadequacy.
- Drug therapy
If you have symptoms related to a personality disorder, there are medications that may help reduce the severity of such problems so that they don’t interfere too much with your daily life. The type of medication you need depends on the type of disorder you have.
- Lifestyle modification
If you don’t think your condition is serious enough to require medication or treatment, the most important thing is to make some lifestyle changes. This may include
- sleep better
- Avoid excessive caffeine consumption
- Avoid drinking alcohol
- Avoid stress
It may also be a good idea to exercise more every day. These can help improve mood and reduce stress levels, among other natural treatments for personality disorders.
Conclusion
Personality disorders are a serious problem that can cause a lot of suffering to the individuals involved. They don’t see things from their natural perspective and often live in little worlds in their own minds. This is something that needs professional attention because someone doesn’t know there is a problem until it gets out of control, or they get hurt.
Some people with personality disorders also have psychological disorders such as anxiety or depression. Treatment for such disorders often requires medication and therapy to help patients adjust to society and form healthy relationships.
If you think you may have any of these problems, talk to your doctor about what you can do. Find a remedy before it gets worse and harder to control.
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