Personality disorders
To speak of personality disorders is not to speak of disturbed personalities or people. This differentiation allows us to give a first glimpse of their symptoms, because whoever suffers from them is as if they were wearing a pair of glasses that disrupt reality, without the person knowing that they are wearing them. The disorder is then justified in all that it perceives.
The person (who is as he is, and in this there is no disorder) does not allow himself to rest in the unfolding of his own life (changes, relationships, etc.). For example, a literary god never changes (Zeus is always Zeus).
"Where will you go? Where will you run? Where will you hide? Nowhere. Because there is no one like you."
But in his own way he does make things change (If Zeus is angry, he sends his destructive flame and condemns the world; but if he is happy, he saves it). On the other hand, Marta, Francesc, or Iolanda, neither condemn nor save the world, neither condemn nor save themselves, because they are only persons, limited and conditioned by their time. But when a person functions as a god, there is a disorder. Not because the person is bad, but because he or she functions in a way that upsets him or her.
Treatment therefore involves differentiating between the person suffering from the disorder and the person suffering from the disorder. This task is very hard when for the person (and even for his environment) there is no difference between one thing and the other. It happens as in El Quixot, where Alonso Quijano (person) identifies himself with El Quixot de la Manxa (personage), and that makes that, instead of windmills, he sees (and is confronted) with terrible gegants, although it is not true. This epic generates in him and in his environment, a great suffering.
I will now specify the characteristics of the most frequent personality disorders:
The person experiences a continuous self-boycott, as if he/she had declared war on him/herself, using, as artillery, intense and contradictory emotions that make him/her lose control. She feels deficient in comparison with others. Therefore, she becomes dependent on the idea of being abandoned because of this fact.
We refer here to an instrumental dependence, not so much emotional (as would be the case of emotional dependence). The person feels incompetent and in need of others to survive, obtain resources and make decisions.
People who suffer from it, yearn to relate to each other to the extent that they fear being harmed by placing their lives in the hands of others (to love someone, gives that someone a significant influence on the person). This makes them distant, even if they want to contact.
The person who suffers from it, systematically attempts against coexistence and social welfare, as a way of self-repudiation, as the person is one with his or her circumstances (environment, community, etc.). This leads them to commit crimes, manipulate or extort, without remorse.
Whoever suffers from it, presents himself as superior to the rest, subjected to an unconscious threat of inferiority. It is an escape upwards, to feel above everyone else, even if it is not justified by any merit, because it is just a way of feeling absolutely unworthy.
There is a guilty obsession with control, order or rules, because of an imminent catastrophe due to one’s own negligence. The person tries to control reality through rituals, but in reality it is the person who is controlled by the disorder.
The person is driven to act in a dramatic and emotional way, even theatrical, in order to draw all the attention to herself. It is never enough and this leads her to put at risk everything that is important to her, since “the show must go on”.
The person is systematically suspicious and distrustful of the people around them, whom they suspect of malicious intentions.
Those who suffer from it remain distant and disconnected from their environment, avoiding all intimacy. This rejection of others prevents them from communicating their emotions.
The sufferer feels very uncomfortable in intimate relationships, which is why he or she lacks confidants beyond first-rate relatives. He/she assumes magical or distorted ideas or beliefs, with extravagant statements and unfounded beliefs.