The Cause of Personality Disorders - One Theory

[Sallying Forth]

This is probably the most interesting web site I have found on PDs. This doc actually has a theory about the environment in which PD's develop. In my h's case it is 100% accurate, abandonment by both parents. Here is an excerpt:

Personality disorders tend to be chronic with intermittent breakthroughs of the real self. These disorders are real mental disorders and the sufferer experiences above normal states of disturbed thinking and emotions. Mental disturbances are not as severe and intense as in psychosis, however, but they are testify to how much damage a person has suffered in childhood.
 
A personality disorder is a hidden disorder. The person may appear to be quite calm, rational and even functional to the average observer. The personality disorder does not become evident until one becomes more involved in that person's life. As the repressed childhood damage begins to seep into intimate relationships, the transference and counter-transference phenomena becomes disturbingly evident. In my opinion for an intense personality disturbance to be formed, the victim has had to suffer some form of deprivation, neglect and abandonment from both father and mother. It's the combination and intensity of both parents’ disturbances that create the transference/counter-transference reaction in the personality disordered individual, as though the sins of the parents are visited upon their children. In essence, the personality disordered individual is programmed and scripted to eventually activate earlier disturbances within adult relationships.
 
The contamination of the early years becomes a mental disturbance process of the adult years and adult relationships unconsciously activate the contagiousness and contamination of the deep down, disturbed personality organization. Relationships are destroyed by personality disorders. These people can't maintain and sustain "in love" relationships. They eventually become so disillusioned and disappointed in everyday reactions that they are compelled to act out emotional withdrawal and disintegration in their adult bonding processes.

The web site:
Personality Disorder Defined

http://www.nvo.com/psych_help/personalitydisorderdefined/

My h then asks me, "how come you don't have a PD? You were horribly neglected, abused and abandoned."

I dissociated. I believe that is the only thing which prevented me from developing a PD.

[Portia]

Hiya SF, yep, this is definitely me.  Or rather, it was.

I've found life much more interesting since I gave up on the idea of 'love relationships'. I simply don't believe that romantic love exists.

I think our attraction in romantic, sexual love is always based on our parents. And that thought alone is enough to put me off!

Honestly, the more I think, the less I want to ...err...

Seriously: Is celibacy a personality disorder? I bet the guys who write the DSM and those who make profits from the pharmaceuticals produced to treat the disorders written therein – they’d love to see celibacy included. After all, they included homosexuality as a mental disorder way back in 1968. Fact.

Please don’t believe everything you read SF. Trust yourself. If you want a divorce, do it because it’s what you want. Are you looking for reasons? Are you looking for permission? You have these in yourself.

[Sallying Forth]

Please don’t believe everything you read SF. Trust yourself. If you want a divorce, do it because it’s what you want. Are you looking for reasons? Are you looking for permission? You have these in yourself.

I don't believe everything I read. I take it all in and come to my own conclusions.

I am no longer looking for reasons. I have them. I don't love him any more. I don't see how the relationship can ever become a real relationship as it never was from the start. My h is incapable of making that leap, he is incapable of loving me and participating in any kind of emotional intimacy.

[Healing&Hopeful]

I've found life much more interesting since I gave up on the idea of 'love relationships'. I simply don't believe that romantic love exists.

I think our attraction in romantic, sexual love is always based on our parents. And that thought alone is enough to put me off!

Please don’t believe everything you read SF. Trust yourself. If you want a divorce, do it because it’s what you want. Are you looking for reasons? Are you looking for permission? You have these in yourself.

Hiya Portia hon

I'm going to differ with you on romantic love existing.... but I feel it only exists if you have the mutual respect, and that you are as romantic as your partner/husband.  I feel that our relationship will only work if we are both prepared to put the work into it, and I feel that means working at being romantic as well sometimes.  The little things are the big things.

Hiya SF hon...

Yes, trust in yourself and do what will make YOU happy.  You have that power and strength.

H&H xx

[Lizbeth]

My N son was raised by me (along with my other son, his half brother, who is not personality disordered).  He was not raised with his N father, we separated when he was only a few months old.

However, he is very much like his father.  There are a few differences (one has a better work ethic), but nothing major.  But they spent very little time together, I lived a state away from him when I was raising my son and he only saw him every other weekend.

I don't believe that PD's are caused solely by abuse in childhood, I didn't abuse or abandon either of my children.  I raised both of them the same and one came out like his N father, even though they were  not  living in the same house together.

I think genetics has something to do with it too.

Lizbeth

[miss piggy]

Hi Lizbeth,

I totally agree with you.  A combination of abuse and genetics would explain why my brother is full N and I am not.  I have heard over and over that NPD is caused by "trauma" and I just don't buy it completely.  Was my arrival in my brother's life a trauma for him?  The recent research in MRI scans of brains capable of empathy and those that aren't is really illuminating.

MP

[MissChloe]

Of my four children, only one is like her father, a narcissist.  During their childhood they could not have had a more loving, giving mother.  Their father was intensely jealous of any attention that I gave the children.  It was like walking on eggshells.  Even 25 years after I divorced their father, he mounted a vicious verbal attack against me at every opportunity and did everything he could to turn the children against me until the day he died.  Narcissism wasn't even a psychiatric diagnosis during this time and I had no Idea why he was that way and divorce was not an option under our state laws until we had been married 21 years.   One thing I do know.  I left him(to save my own sanity) and then took it upon myself to have a battery of psychological tests which determined that I was normal in every way.  All of his narcissist  characteristics are manifest in this one daughter.  Now she does the same things that he did and has since about the age of 14.  The only thing I can do is to recognize this and keep as much distance as possible.  The sad thing is that she has produced a daughter just like her and that daughter is in the process of producing a couple more of the same kind. It comes back to the same question.  Is it genetic or is it environmental or a combination of both?  There is one thing that I know for certain.  There was not one thing that I could have done to change any of this because I tried.

[Lizbeth]

Hi Miss P,

Thanks, I needed that.  Especially since N son has recently re-entered my life (with a wife) after another two year disappearing act (which he is blaming me to others for).

One of the "family things" I'm dealing with right now.  Ugh.

I'll have to check out that info on the brain scans, thanks for bringing that up.

Lizbeth

Hi Lizbeth,

I totally agree with you.  A combination of abuse and genetics would explain why my brother is full N and I am not.  I have heard over and over that NPD is caused by "trauma" and I just don't buy it completely.  Was my arrival in my brother's life a trauma for him?  The recent research in MRI scans of brains capable of empathy and those that aren't is really illuminating.

MP

[Lizbeth]

I feel for you, Miss Chloe.  I took my children out of harms way (or so I thought) and it still happened to one of them.  I was abused as a child by my schizophrenic mother, and my father basically looked the other way, but I'm not personality disordered.

I don't think they know why these things happen, not really.  But blaming it all on the parents yet again is not helpful, especially to those of us who know better.

Lizbeth

Of my four children, only one is like her father, a narcissist.  During their childhood they could not have had a more loving, giving mother.  Their father was intensely jealous of any attention that I gave the children.  It was like walking on eggshells.  Even 25 years after I divorced their father, he mounted a vicious verbal attack against me at every opportunity and did everything he could to turn the children against me until the day he died.  Narcissism wasn't even a psychiatric diagnosis during this time and I had no Idea why he was that way and divorce was not an option under our state laws until we had been married 21 years.   One thing I do know.  I left him(to save my own sanity) and then took it upon myself to have a battery of psychological tests which determined that I was normal in every way.  All of his narcissist  characteristics are manifest in this one daughter.  Now she does the same things that he did and has since about the age of 14.  The only thing I can do is to recognize this and keep as much distance as possible.  The sad thing is that she has produced a daughter just like her and that daughter is in the process of producing a couple more of the same kind. It comes back to the same question.  Is it genetic or is it environmental or a combination of both?  There is one thing that I know for certain.  There was not one thing that I could have done to change any of this because I tried.

[MissChloe]

Hello Lisbeth,
Thank you so much for your input.  Too many times the mother, especially, is blamed for things beyond her control.  If I had been born a generation later I would have been more able to get my children away from that environment.  We were taught that divorce was a mortal sin and that marriage was to be forever.  That marriage for me was a prison sentence and I am sad for what my children suffered.

[Hopalong]

Aww, Chloe. I'm so sorry.
forgive yourself, right now, for doing all you then knew to do.
And NEVER hesitate to tell your kids, I am so very sorry for what you went through, it was because I was doing all I then knew how to do...
and the best gift I can give you now is to let GO of yesterday, and find out how to be a happy woman from today forward.
So THAT's what I'm going to give you now.
I'm going to show you that sadness can give way to peace, and even happiness.

(Sorry, I'm always making up dialogue for people.
Very presumptuous of me but your story touched my heart so I made a new one for you.)

Gently
Hopalong

[Portia]

Hi SF
I don't believe everything I read. I take it all in and come to my own conclusions.
Okay.

I am no longer looking for reasons. I have them. I don't love him any more. I don't see how the relationship can ever become a real relationship as it never was from the start.
Can ever or ‘could have’ ever become a real relationship? Present or past tense? Past tense would mean it’s over. 

My h is incapable of making that leap, he is incapable of loving me and participating in any kind of emotional intimacy.
Okay....why write this thread which appears to be about him? I’m asking because if you have made up your mind, it seems to me like you’re still looking for reasons for why he is as he is, and that says to me you’re still attached to him? Does my perception make sense to you?

Hi H&H

I'm going to differ with you on romantic love existing.... but I feel it only exists if you have the mutual respect, and that you are as romantic as your partner/husband.  I feel that our relationship will only work if we are both prepared to put the work into it, and I feel that means working at being romantic as well sometimes.

Thanks for differing! I guess I meant the ‘in love’ relationships referred to in the quote. Being ‘in love’ to me is not the same as loving. I think enough writers have talked about being ‘in love’ as a form of psychosis but I probably agree with you – loving is about being reciprocal, not about some idealised romantic story-book type ‘experience’. And I agree about work – all relationships need work.   

[CeeMee]

Just chiming in with my two cents.  I whole heartedly agree that N has a genetic component.  In my view, everything must have a biological predisposition in order to manifest.  Then nature and nurture together determine the final result.

Portia, I am so sad for you not believing in romantic love 

Of course it exists.  You've probably experienced it.  Unfortunately, when it doesn't blossom into true love (reciprocality) the romance fades and later we even forget the memory of romantic bliss.  20 years ago, I told my date (it was our first date together) "there is no such thing as love."  He didn't agree and set out to prove it.  Twenty years later, I am married to the same man and we have two lovely children.  I  laugh when I think of how jaded and cynical I was about love (I was rebounding from a  baaaaaad first marriage is all).  Maybe you are speaking from a similar standpoint.  If so, please know this can and will pass when you least expect it.  That special someone could walk into your life at any moment and change your perspective forever.

Just a side note.  Fifteen years into the marriage I was still giddy with excitement whenever I was home waiting for him to return from work.  Now, I am usually in bed on the computer not thinking about him till he hits the door, but when I want to revisit that romantic blissful feeling, I pull out the old leather jacket he wore on our first date and during our courtship (it was VERY short).  One whiff of that and I am catapulted back in time and it feels like twenty years ago all over again.

Keep the hope for love and romance alive

    CeeMee

[Sallying Forth]

Hi SF
I don't believe everything I read. I take it all in and come to my own conclusions.
Okay.

I am no longer looking for reasons. I have them. I don't love him any more. I don't see how the relationship can ever become a real relationship as it never was from the start.

Can ever or ‘could have’ ever become a real relationship? Present or past tense? Past tense would mean it’s over.

Hi Portia,
A real relationship for me is one where there is emotional intimacy. A sharing of minds is the only thing we have. Beyond that there has been nothing. There is no real connection.

My h is incapable of making that leap, he is incapable of loving me and participating in any kind of emotional intimacy.

Okay....why write this thread which appears to be about him? I’m asking because if you have made up your mind, it seems to me like you’re still looking for reasons for why he is as he is, and that says to me you’re still attached to him? Does my perception make sense to you?

I am a researcher at heart and that is way in which I come to my truth. I research information, journal, research some more, and journal. The truth comes to me through a process of gaining information and then my own personal insight. When I come to a concrete truth then I move forward onto the next step. Basically posting these topics is presenting everyone here with what is going on within my emotions, thoughts and spirit as I come to my conclusions.

And truth for me comes on different levels: mental, emotional, spiritual and physical. Not all are in sync at this time. I am close to that place. In my last book I wrote that I physically leave him. I wrote that about 3 months ago. Now the rest of me has to catch up with what my mind has acknowledged.

And then there is a financial component as well.

Ultimately it is all coming together in God's time and way.

[Sallying Forth]

Please don’t believe everything you read SF. Trust yourself. If you want a divorce, do it because it’s what you want. Are you looking for reasons? Are you looking for permission? You have these in yourself.

I need to respond to this again because I now understand what I was going through when I wrote these things.

I was not 100% sure I wanted a divorce. I am closer now to that 100% but still not there. After reading on another forum I realize the only thing holding me back is my finances and that may never get better while in this situation.

I believe I am going to have to take a leap of faith at some point and trust God. When I get a little stronger and get enough rest I will be able to make that break.

Thank you Portia for the conviction I did need to hear and read.