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Making Sense of Personality Disorders
Borderline? Narcissistic? Sociopathic?
First, you wondered if you were crazy, after the abusive treatment you lived with.
Now you understand that it's caused by a personality disorder. But trying to figure
out which disorder is again driving you crazy! Borderline? Narcissistic?
Sociopathic/Antisocial? All of the above?
Knowing that your "significant other" has a personality disorder
allows you to say, "Finally, I know it’s not me!" But now what? This book can help you answer
the questions that continue to trouble you, and remove the uncertainties that keep you from
making positive changes.
It's borderline! It's narcissistic! No! It's SuperDisorder!
For most people, life or work with someone who has a personality disorder eventually
reaches a point where things become intolerable. You know something has to change,
but what? To answer that, most people need to understand what disorder they are
facing, and then understand how the disorder leads to the troubling behavior they
experience.
That’s where The Hypervigilant Personality comes in. First it will help
you clear the fog around the disorders with a new concept for a single disorder
– HVPD – that embraces both the official narcissistic and borderline personality
disorders. Then it will explain to you the kind of childhood experiences that lead
to this illness, and the basic psychological characteristics that those with HVPD carry
into adult life: self-loathing, constant expectation of criticism, and a pathological
fear of criticism. HVPD is not a list of symptoms, but a combination of these three psychological
characteristics.
You'll learn how
these are engendered in childhood, and more important how they lead
to all the puzzling and hurtful behavior you experience.
The Hypervigilant Personality goes on to explain
all the dysfunctional behaviors that HVPD causes, including what appears to be frequent
lying. Those with HVPD exhibit very consistent patterns in certain
settings. The book describes and explains this in all the important settings, including: in intimate
relationships,
in family; in extended family; in community; in work; in ending relationships, and
in divorce.
The book goes on to explain why diagnosis is so difficult, even for professionals.
And since, in divorce, those with HVPD sometimes alienate their children from the
other parent, the book explains how HVPD characteristics lead a parent to this abusive
treatment. Finally it looks at similarities and differences of adult trauma, which
can lead to PTSD, when compared to HVPD.
In sum, The Hypervigilant Personality gives you the insight you need to understand
all of your experiences with the disordered person in your life, and an understanding
of what you can expect to experience in the future. With this, you can
start to answer "What now?" and start taking positive steps to improve your life.
Put it in your cart
now.
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Reader Comments
I've just finished reading Meaning from Madness and The Hypervigilant Personality. Thank you for your clear
writing. It has helped me understand greatly, especially the spectrum of disorder. I thought my ex showed
signs of both BP and NP. He went from abusive and raging to helpless and begging when I wanted to leave;
then came the hoovering and then the threats . It all makes sense. Thank you.
Tina
Author's Comments
I help people to understand and deal with partners, family members or coworkers
who treat them abusively. I do this through phone consultations, in which I use
a directed interview to cull out the important patterns in behavior, analyze
them, and then begin explaining the what and why of the experience.
There’s a natural process to this. First people need to realize they’re facing someone
who has a personality disorder. Then they need to figure out, if it’s possible,
which disorder it is. With that knowledge, it’s then possible to start explaining
the dysfunctional behaviors, and the patterns the disordered people tend to follow
in their relationships.
It turns out that most abusive behavior is caused by borderline or narcissistic
personality disorders, but understanding which can get quite confusing. And when
we start looking closely, we realize that it's not only that the diagnostic
definitions are confusing; these two disorders have a lot in common. Even more,
in some people the disorder changes over time, sometimes more borderline, sometimes
more narcissistic. Yikes! Personality disorders are supposed to be stable, so what's
that about?
After several years of dealing with this, I came to a unifying realization. What
are now formally defined as borderline and narcissistic personality disorders I
see as two different manifestations of a single disorder: what I call hypervigilant
personality disorder, or HVPD. HVPD is not an official disorder, but a way of better
characterizing and understanding people who can be diagnosed with either of the
two official disorders.
The core characteristics of HVPD are a self-image as unworthy and despicable; a
belief that criticism can come at any moment; and a deeply embedded connection that
leads to terror at the thought of criticism. People with HVPD have a constant watchfulness
– hypervigilance – to avoid criticism or fault and the terror that results.
In The Hypervigilant Personality, I explain this unifying disorder concept.
HVPD rests on hypervigilance to protect a delusion
Those with HVPD inherently strive to build and maintain a delusion: a belief in
something with no objective reality. The delusion they build is the belief that
they are without fault. When they can maintain this delusion, they feel safe, act
assertively, and are considered narcissistic. But when the delusion breaks down,
they intensely feel their unworthy self-image and become despondent and helpless.
Those with HVPD can move from one state to the other, along what I call the narcissist/borderline
spectrum.
This simple psychological dynamic gives rise to all the characteristic symptoms
of both borderline and narcissistic personality disorders.
In The Hypervigilant Personality I explain all the characteristic behavior
patterns I have observed and refined over years of experience: what HVPD is;
how it is engendered in children; why it encompasses both BPD and NPD. I describe
the consistent patterns of social behavior: in intimate relationships, in family;
in extended family; in community; in work; in ending relationships, and in divorce.
I explain how the disorder's characteristic delusion gives rise to inexplicable
distortions, including what appears to be lying, and belief in a reality that is
different from what others observe.
I explain why diagnosis is so difficult, even for professionals. And because I
believe it is caused exclusively by HVPD, I offer an etiology for the alienation
of children in divorce. Then I explain why those with HVPD at the narcissistic end
of the spectrum are not emotional toddlers; and finally explore parallels between
HVPD and trauma.
The Hypervigilant Personality is my attempt to pull together the whole of
my understanding of HVPD and the experience of being in a relationship with someone
who has HVPD. After you’ve read it, you'll know what you're dealing with,
why you see the behaviors you do, and you’ll realize that the relationship you're
in follows one of many common patterns. Then you can stop struggling to understand
what you're facing and start to effectively respond to this puzzling illness.
Why not
put it in your cart
now?
Richard Skerritt