Recognize a Personality Disorder

Personality disorders also known as character disorders, are a group of personality behaviors, which depart from the traditional expectations of a society from an individual.

The types of personality disorder can be grouped into three clusters.

1. In cluster 1, the individual is showing odd or eccentric behavior. This includes schizoid, paranoid, and schizotypal personality disorders.
2. The second cluster is characterized by dramatic or emotional behavior. This cluster includes antisocial, borderline and narcissistic personality disorders.
3. The third and last cluster is characterized by anxiety and feelings of fearfulness. This cluster consists of avoidant, dependent and compulsive personality disorders.

Identification of personality disorders is quite subjective. It depends on the kind of personality disorder one may be experiencing. In general however, those who suffer from this disorder are inclined to be rigid, and not capable of reacting to the transformations and burdens of life. Even though they believe that their patterns of action are normal or correct, individuals suffering from personality disorders are inclined to have a restricted outlook in life and have difficulty in getting involved in social activities.

To recognize this kind of disorder, you must check whether the behavior of a person fulfills several criteria that would qualify as one. This disorder is usually apparent by teenage years or earlier, persists during maturity, and tends to become less noticeable when a person reaches his middle age.

To illustrate how to recognize a personality disorder we are going to take borderline personality disorder (BPD) as an example.

• Moods. People experiencing borderline personality disorder are inclined to change swiftly from feeling high to low and back to feeling high again. The duration of these moods continue only a few hours or for one day as a maximum.
• Impulsive. Check if someone is impulsive when it deals with money, sex or drug abuse. Irresponsible driving and overeating can also point to BPD.
• Self image. Borderline personality sufferers have a distorted self-image that can swing from unworthiness to victimization. They frequently change jobs, homes, partners, friends, goals and values.
• Splitting. See if a person is showing signs of "splitting." The latter refers to an attitude wherein the person visions only a black and white world. At one moment the individual will marvel and admire you but at an abrupt change he will hate or feel disrespect towards you.
• Anger level. People with this disorder frequently get extremely angry in situations that do not call for such level of anger. They may even get verbally and physically violent, so be careful and be ready to protect yourself and your children.
• Depression. People with BPD get angry or depressed when someone they feel attached to leaves even for a short time. So examine how your partner reacts when you leave even for a short span of time.
• Suicidal tendencies. Frequent suicidal attempts or threats when a person is depressed are signs that a person might be suffering from borderline personality disorder.

This serves as an example on how to recognize personality disorder. Diagnosing borderline personality disorder is not easy to perform. A number of signs are equally applicable to other disorders and almost every person shows at least one of these symptoms at some point in his or her life.