I've known for a few years now that there was something abnormal about me. Most of the time I seem to lack emotion. I have social anxiety, phobic anxiety, feelings of humiliation, paranoia. I keep very few close friends. I've been characterized as odd or strange.

In fact.. let's go down the list found in the sticky at the top of the forum.

Ideas of reference (excluding delusions of reference)The only part of this that applies to me is that sometimes I think people are talking about me behind my back.

odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior and is inconsistent with subcultural norms (e.g., superstitiousness, belief in clairvoyance, telepathy, or "sixth sense"; in children and adolescents, bizarre fantasies or preoccupations)Well.. my religion is Asatru/Odinism. That is hardly in the cultural norm. I'm also pretty superstitious.

unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusionsDoesn't really affect me.

odd thinking and speech (e.g., vague, circumstantial, metaphorical, overelaborate, or stereotyped)I get told I am being vague all the time. I can never figure out why. It doesn't seem vague to me. I also tend to have very overelaborate speech.. although I always assumed that was from thinking too much about what I was going to say.

suspiciousness or paranoid ideationI always tend to feel as if I am being treated unfairly.

inappropriate or constricted affectLike I said.. I tend to lack emotion.

behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiarYup.. that's me.

lack of close friends or confidants other than first-degree relativesI currently have 4 friends outside of my girlfriend. They all always want to hang out but I tend to be withdrawn and not visit with them.

excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about selfAdd in the negative judgements about self and that fits me to a T.

Also, according to another website on Eccentric Behavior I found these...

http://www.charminghealth.com/applicability/eccentric-behavior.htm

General characters:
Chronic negative affects, including anxiety, fearfulness, tension, irritability, anger, dejection, hopelessness, guilt, shame; difficulty in inhibiting impulses: for example, to eat, drink, or spend money; irrational beliefs: for example, unrealistic expectations, perfectionistic demands on self, unwarranted pessimism; unfounded somatic concerns; helplessness and dependence on others for emotional support and decision making. Sometimes they display self-martyrdom or self-repression nature and may attempt to commit suicide out of that.

Low Extraversion:
Self-condemnation, Social isolation, interpersonal detachment, and lack of support networks; flattened affect; lack of joy and zest for life; reluctance to assert self or assume leadership roles, even when qualified; social inhibition and shyness.

High Openness:
Preoccupation with fantasy and daydreaming; lack of practicality; eccentric thinking (e.g., belief in ghosts, reincarnation, UFOs); diffuse identity and changing goals: for example, joining religious cult; susceptibility to nightmares and states of altered consciousness; social rebelliousness and nonconformity that can interfere with social or vocational advancement.

Low Agreeableness:
Cynicism and paranoid thinking; inability to trust even friends or family; quarrelsomeness; too ready to pick fights; exploitive and manipulative; lying; rude and inconsiderate manner alienates friends, limits social support; lack of respect for social conventions can lead to troubles with the law; inflated and grandiose sense of self; arrogance.

High Conscientiousness:
Overachievement: workaholic absorption in job or cause to the exclusion of family, social, and personal interests; compulsiveness, including excessive cleanliness, tidiness, and attention to detail; rigid self-discipline and an inability to set tasks aside and relax; lack of spontaneity; over-scrupulousness in moral behavior.

Behaviors:
Aloofness, odd communication, isolation; Ego-boundary problems, "ego-diffusion," merging phenomena and other severe distortions of the self, mirroring, narcissistic disturbances, faulty sense of identity; difficulty sensing what other people are all about or else at knowing how to best respond when their perceptions of interpersonal situations happen to be accurate; marked peculiarities of speech, dress, and habit; sensitivity to criticism, avoidance of intimacy; insensitivity to the feelings of spouse, over-sensitivity to spouse's behavior; extreme loneliness and need for human relatedness, inability to "connect" meaningfully and pleasurably with other people.

Odd speech: vague, circumstantial, metaphorical, over-elaborate, or stereotyped speech; idiosyncratic phrasing, unusual use of words, overly concrete or abstract responses to questions; odd, eccentric, or peculiar mannerisms or dress; excessive social anxiety associated with paranoid fears about the motivations of others, rather than with negative judgments about themselves; difficulty responding to interpersonal cuing and expressing a full range of affects; difficulty in developing rapport or engaging in casual and meaningful conversations; an inappropriate, stiff, or constricted manner.
Most of that applies to me.

Basically it all boils down to the question. How do I get past it all? I love my girlfriend and I do not want my relationship to get screwed up by this. I am open to suggestions.

edit: After talking with my mother about this she tends to think I have Borderline Personality Disorder like my father. That is probably true. BPD can occur with other Personality disorders as well.

N.B.

The personality disorder category of PD-NOS is the most widespread, in terms of 'labels'.

A lot of what you are describing are traits: we all have them. PDs are pretty crippling labels to have. I wouldn't really recommend seeking such a label out, as it can really be a kiss of death, therapeutically.



re: recovery ('how do i get past all this' as you asked)
-->DBT?

Do you know about DBT? (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy)

Many hospitals run such groups...

It has a lot of overlap for other disorders too, such as addictions and depression, etc.

DBT is pretty much the GOLD STANDARD for PDs (except Antisocial PD or Narcissistic PD -- as those folks are ego syntonic!)

Queensgirl is definitely right about being labeled with a personality disorder and having it follow you. I can understand the OP wanting to better understand themselves and/or PD's in general. But it is probably not a good idea to tell your doctor, for example, that I think I am borderline. Once a label gets in one's file it can definitely be the kiss of death.

The doctors and others who assist you in your treatment, if you are in treatment, will make up their minds whether or not to designate you with an axis II (ie. PD).

An online friend of mine and myself made an online javascript version of a public domain schizotypal personality disorder test.


test
http://themachine1.110mb.com/spq.html

explains the test
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~raine/spqrel.html

N.B.

The personality disorder category of PD-NOS is the most widespread, in terms of 'labels'.

A lot of what you are describing are traits: we all have them. PDs are pretty crippling labels to have. I wouldn't really recommend seeking such a label out, as it can really be a kiss of death, therapeutically.



Why exactly are personality disorders the "kiss of death"? I've heard this before. I guess that they (the labels) are hard to get rid of? And that they change how docs look at/treat you (but that would be discrimination....)?
Do some fear that they're contagious? :-)

I have a diagnosed schizoid personality disorder and I believe, after reading a lot on the subject, that my dad had a borderline personality disorder. I agree that we should try to avoid labels because when all is said and done we all have some degree of personality disorder, some are more severe than others. I was treated for severe depression for a long time before I was finally diagnosed. I have lived with this a long time and I survive and get by through writing my own scripts. I plan ahead one day at a time.

You can learn to live with a disorder. First it will require some intensive research and reading in order to understand you and your disorder better. It can be the kiss of death in some situation, like looking for a job, but you can learn to compensate for the weaker aspects of the personality disorder. While we are searching for answers we are driven to talk about ourselves and our disorder but eventually you will come to the same conclusion I did that it is better and safer to keep as much of it to yourself as you can - except for when you are on boards like this. Boards like this can be a positive healing experience. But as for the outside world, it becomes a case of the fewer people who know the better, then you won’t have people treating you so differently. Now I understand we are all different and what works for one may not work for another. All I'm doing here is attempting to share some information. I'm not telling you how to deal with anything.

May I just say that, no harm to your mother, but it would be in your best interests to get a profesional opinion on just what kind of disorder you are suffering from. And please remember that nothing is carved in stone.

#5

People do not want Borderline and other Cluster B clients b/c they tire of the Drama and Game Playing and Rages and Manipulation.

(And the client group is hard to treat b/c 'they don't have a problem'. They cannot ever take a shred of responsibility for ANYTHING. It is always 'someone else's fault' [impaired perspective taking]. And a person needs to be able to take a bit of [current] responsibility for their own recovery.)

Borderline is a 'Cluster B' PD and they are known as the 'Dramatic PDs'.

Sufferers can be highly impulsive, unpredictable, cunning, manipulative and terrifying.

"Lack of Empathy" and 'Blaming their Victims' is common. (Repeat of their own caregiving.)

One minute friendly, next minute you are pulling the knife out of your back (maybe literally).

Let's say you don't give them a cigarette -- the person might fly into a rage at you.

You are grossly and intensely de-valued. To make you feel worse, the sufferer will, in turn, 'overvalue' another person. (This is called "SPLITTING".)

Another 'game' is called GASLIGHTING. This involves denying reality of a fact [e.g. if the person stole your wallet, for example)... to they deny that reality and deny your right to your feelings, and then go about attacking the person. (e.g. games of 'crazymaking' and switching the focus/issues.)

Because the sufferers have unresolved trauma issues (and use "creating conflict" as their MO in life), they tend to instigate a lot of problems with their caregivers. Key features of the disorder are rage and manipulation.

When I was young, I was attacked physically by a Borderline person before. The person started making up wild accusations (yes, it is also essentially a dissociative disorder too, so their flashbacks or paranoia may SEEM LIKE their version of "reality".)

Obviously, I wanted to get away from them -- well, be careful b/c the problem is that the person will do ANYTHING to prevent abandonment. (And ofcourse you want to leave an abusive person. This person sets up the abuse and rejection and then protests the 'abandonment'? Messed up. But you have to keep yourself safe, too.)

Read up on:
TRANSFERENCE and
COUNTERTRANSFERENCE and
PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION and
PROJECTION and
INTROJECTION and
TRAUMATIC RE-ENACTMENT and
SPLITTING
for more understanding of some of the psychodynamic problems playing out.

Trauma Spectrum sufferers can keep repeating their interpersonal history until they "figure out" their history. Sad, but most Clinicians (and Friends and Family members) don't want to be the targets of their rage, attacks and even assaults.

Borderline PD and Histrionic PD [another Dramatic PD) are basically the 'Female Equivalents' of Antisocial PD in males. [You may know that about 75% of prisoners are Antisocial PD, and more than 50% are Psychopaths. Borderline and Histrionic ['the seductive borderline') share a lot of traits with sociopaths: such as Low Empathy, Impaired Perspective Taking, Blaming their Victims, Trivializing others suffering, other Emotional Impairments, etc.]

(NB Borderline PD in males is uncommon. It is also WAY OVERDIAGNOSED in trauma sufferers. Trauma history plus self-injury does NOT = Borderline. This is a common misunderstanding among bush league mental health workers.)

A classic dramatic PD movie would be "Single White Female" (female stalking and harassing female roomie).

Another would be "Fatal Attraction" [Glenn Close; Michael Douglas].

Remember how he finds his harasser [Glenn Close] has cooked his kid's pet rabbit on the stove? Nice. *yikes*

QueensU_girl,

Oh dear you painted such a bleak picture there but I have to agree with you on a lot of points. Therapists are not too keen to treat some personality disorders because most of the people with a personality disorder have trouble keeping appointments and what they agree to one day they disagree with the next day.

I suspect my dad was suffering from a borderline personality disorder. I'm not like my dad, he was very abusive and had a very short fuse.

Those movies you mention and very extreme cases, over dramatized. And certainly don't do PD sufferers any favours.

re: #9

movies:
Movies such as those mentioned contribute to stereotypes. (Doesn't mean they are accurate. For starters, no two people are the same.)

re: reluctance of undertrained staff to work with BPD folks

it *is* a sad picture to paint.

and it used to be viewed as 'hopeless'.

however, there are *new treatments* such as Marsha Linehan's DBT. BPD doesn't have to be seen as "incurable". There is hope.

Is it cure type hope, or more meds type hope?
I consider myself in recovery but not cured. I think of myself like this because I have been living with this a long time and all the tools I created to help me cope with this work pretty well.
And you're right when you say everyone is different, which is a pity. It's a pity that some of us have made some discoveries but unfortunately what works for some doesn't work for all.