Eating Disorders and Personality Disorders
Eating disorders are impulsive behaviors that can exist with cluster B personality disorders, particularly with borderline personality disorders. The key to improving the mental state of patients who have been diagnosed with both a personality disorder and an eating disorder lies in focusing it first upon their eating and sleeping disorders and only then on their personality disorders. The treatment of personality disorders requires enormous, persistent and continuous investment of resources of every kind by everyone involved, especially the patient. Patients with eating disorders may be in mortal danger, and the therapist’s goal is to buy them time.
Narcissist: Masochism, Self-destruction, Self-defeat
Narcissists exhibit self-defeating and self-destructive behaviors that are pernicious and subtle. These behaviors include self-punishing, guilt-purging behaviors, extracting behaviors, default behaviors, and frustrating, negativistic, and passive-aggressive behaviors. Narcissists are terrorized by intimacy and interpret it as co-dependence, emotional strangulation, and imprisonment. They are also fiercely independent and want to be free to frustrate themselves by inflicting mental havoc on their human environment.
Pathologizing Rebellious Youth: Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) labels rebellious teenagers with oppositional Defiant Disorder, which is a pattern of negativistic, defiant, disobedient, and hostile behavior towards authority figures. The DSM’s criteria for this disorder are arbitrary and subject to the value judgments of adult psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and therapists. The diagnosis of oppositional Defiant Disorder seems to put the whole mental health profession to shame, and it is a latent tool of social control. If you are above the age of 18 and you are stubborn, resistant to directions, unwilling to compromise, give in or negotiate with adults and peers, you stand a good chance of being diagnosed as a psychopath.
Narcissist: Socially-anxious, Schizoid
Schizoid personality disorder is characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships and interactions, limited emotional expression, and a preference for solitary activities. Schizoids are often described as robotic and uninterested in social bonding. While there are similarities between schizoid and narcissistic personality disorders, the two are distinct in that schizoids are uninterested in bonding, while narcissists are both uninterested and incapable due to their lack of empathy and grandiosity. Narcissism is not about self-love, but rather a broken ego or self that withdraws from society to protect itself.
Children Psychopaths? Conduct Disorder
Children and adolescents with conduct disorder are budding psychopaths who repeatedly and deliberately violate the rights of others and breach age-appropriate social norms and rules. They are socially, occupationally, and academically dysfunctional, and their diagnosis changes to antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy beyond the age of 18. These children are in denial and tend to minimize their problems and blame others for their misbehavior and failures. Adolescents with conduct disorder are often embroiled in fights, both verbal and physical, and many underage muggers, extortionists, hearse snatchers, rapists, robbers, shoplifters, burglars, arsonists, vandals, and animal torturers are diagnosed with conduct disorder.
Narcissists: Difficult and Hateful Patients
Patients with personality disorders often evoke dislike or hatred in their physicians, with the narcissistic patient being the worst. They insist they are equal to the psychotherapist in knowledge, experience, or social status, and resist psychotherapy. Management of personality disorders consists largely of helping the person find a way of life that conflicts less with their character, and aims should be modest. Healthcare professionals who treat patients with personality disorders may experience resentment, alienation, and burnout.
Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers
Narcissistic mothers can have a significant impact on their adult daughters’ relationships, with children of narcissistic parents being ill-adapted and prone to deploying psychological defense mechanisms. They can become co-dependent, needy, demanding, and submissive, fearing abandonment and displaying immature behaviors. Some children of narcissistic parents become inverted narcissists, craving relationships with narcissists, while others become counterdependent or even narcissists themselves. Narcissistic mothers micromanage their child’s life and encourage dependent and infantile behaviors, emotionally blackmailing them and threatening to disinherit them if they do not comply with their wishes.
Narcissists Fear Therapy
Narcissists cannot cure themselves, and gaining insight into the disorder is not the same as healing. The best way for a narcissist to help themselves is by resorting to a mental health professional, but even then, the prognosis is dim. The therapeutic situation implies a superior/inferior relationship, which is difficult for the narcissist to accept. The narcissist must shed his false self and face the world naked, defenseless, and to his mind pitiful.
Narcissist Never Sorry
Narcissists sometimes feel bad and experience depressive episodes and dysphoric moods, but they have a diminished capacity to empathize and rarely feel sorry for what they have done or for their victims. They often project their own emotions and actions onto others and attribute to others what they hate in themselves. When confronted with major crises, the narcissist experiences real excruciating pain, but this is only a fleeting moment, and they recover their former self and embark on a new hunt for narcissistic supply. They are hunters, predators, and their victims are prey.
Narcissist: Is He or Isn’t He?
Narcissism is a spectrum of behaviors, from healthy to pathological, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual specifies nine diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). A malignant narcissist is someone who has NPD and wreaks havoc on themselves and their surroundings. They feel grandiose and self-important, exaggerate accomplishments, and demand recognition as superior without commensurate achievements. They require excessive admiration, adulation, attention, and affirmation, and are interpersonally exploitative, devoid of empathy, and constantly envious of others.