Quotes & Sayings About Personality Disorders

It is unlikely that one ANP will serve as a constant throughout the person's life. Your client is, therefore, likely to have others besides the ones you know, or several who you might think of as "the host". Adults with dissociative disorders often have several ANPs from earlier stages of life inside. They usually have the same name but are of different ages. Sometimes, there are several current ANPs, each of whom assumes she or he is the "real" person and is amnesiac for the existence of the others. Their current knowledge and experience may overlap, while their other characteristics differ somewhat. This makes them glide easily from one to the other, and the therapist can easily miss the switch. p22 — Alison Miller

This was typical of my parents: in their minds, no one was just an asshole. There was always something wrong with people other than just sucking: they had socialization disorders, or borderline personality syndrome, or whatever. — John Green

But you are not your bank account, or your ambition. You're not the cold clay lump you leave behind when you die. You're not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are Spirit, you are love, and even though it is hard to believe sometimes, you are free. You're here to love, and be loved, freely. If you find out next week that you are terminally ill - and we're all terminally ill on this bus - what will matter are memories of beauty, that people loved you, and that you loved them. — Anne Lamott

Narcissism falls along the axis of what psychologists call personality disorders, one of a group that includes antisocial, dependent, histrionic, avoidant and borderline personalities. But by most measures, narcissism is one of the worst, if only because the narcissists themselves are so clueless. — Jeffrey Kluger

Murderers with severe personality disorders, police had learned, sometimes could fool a lie detector because they lacked shame and guilt, and didn't feel the normal stress when lying. — Michael Benson

Dissociation is adaptive: it allows relatively normal functioning for the duration of the traumatic event and then leaves a large part of the personality unaffected by the trauma. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

The disorders that psychology associates with the dissonance between what parents say to children and what children know to be reality - from deep insecurities to chronic anxiety to depression - are not to be found among the hunter-gatherers I have known. This is not to claim that they are people who know nothing of mental illness. Rather, it is to look at the absence of a particular kind of illness, one that in my own society is somewhere between common and the norm. The apparent sturdiness of the hunter-gatherer personality, the virtual universality of self-confidence and equanimity, the absence of anxiety disorders and most depressive illnesses - these may well be the benefits of using words to tell the truth. — Hugh Brody

The most chronic and complex of the dissociative disorders, multiple personality disorder, was renamed multiple personality disorder, was renamed 'dissociative identity disorder' in 1994 in DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association). The rationale for the name change, was among other things, to clarify that there are not literally separate personalities in a person with dissociative identity disorder; 'personalities' was a historical term for the fragmented identity states that characterize the condition. — Colin A. Ross

Anyway, there are people and organizations, that do recognize them for what they are (like the epilepsy society) and differentiate them from Factitious Seizures (fake) carried out by unfortunate individuals with Munchausen's Syndrome. My "special" seizures are called Dissociative Seizures too (specific to personality disorders in general) and are psychological, brought on by flashbacks or extreme anxiety. Most of my awareness goes. — Elizabeth T. James

There is no evidence of spontaneous remission or integration of personality alters without mental health treatment. Therapy is long-term and requires the establishment of a strong therapeutic relationship with the individual. — Danny Wedding

The primary driver to pathological dissociation is attachment disorganization in early life: when that is followed by severe and repeated trauma, then a major disorder of structural dissociation is created (Lyons-Ruth, Dutra, Schuder, & Bianchi, 2006). — Frank M. Corrigan

Because of media portrayals, clinicians may believe that dissociative identity disorder presents with dramatic, florid alternate identities with obvious state transitions (switching). These florid presentations occur in only about 5% of patients with dissociative identity disorder.(20) How ever, the vast majority of these patients have subtle presentations characterized by a mixture of dissociative and PTSD symptoms embedded with other symptoms, such as post-traumatic depression, substance abuse, somatoform symptoms, eating disorders, and self-destructive and impulsive behaviors.(2,10) — Bethany L. Brand

Despite the growing clinical and research interest in dissociative symptoms and disorders, it is also true that the substantial prevalence rates for dissociative disorders are still disproportional to the number of studies addressing these conditions.
For example, schizophrenia has a reported rate of 0.55% to 1% of the normal population (Goldner, Hus, Waraich, & Somers, more or less similar to the prevalence of DID. Yet a PubMed search generated 25,421 papers on research related to schizophrenia, whereas only 73 publications were found for DID-related research. — Paul H Blaney

Cruelty, whether physical or emotional, isn't normal. It may signal what psychologists call the dark triad of psychopathic, narcissistic and Machiavellian personality disorders. One out of about every 25 individuals has an antisocial personality disorder. Their prognosis for recovery is zero, their potential for hurting you about 100 percent. So don't assume that a vicious person just had a difficult childhood or a terrible day; most people with awful childhoods end up being empathetic, and most people, even on their worst days, don't seek satisfaction by inflicting pain. When you witness evil, if only the tawdry evil of a conversational stiletto twist, use your ninjutsu, wait for a distraction, then disappear. — Martha N. Beck

And we all get mired in the bullshit, the personality quirks, the personality disorders (ours and everyone else's), the jealousy, the disappointment, the blocks, the financial struggle, our egos, I do it too, I do it too, but if you can't remember it is all about the work and nothing else then I can't help you and you can't help yourself and you will lose. I promise you. You will lose. — Jami Attenberg

Narcissism: It's Primal. No Productive Control of Energy: Seeks constant fresh sources of stimulation and is highly energized running from human-object to human-object, activity to activity, but does not accomplish anything and never evolves or learns from activities and the many people recycled through. — Lynna Kivela

Dissociative symptoms - primarily depersonalization and derealization - are elements in other DSM-IV disorders, including schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, and in the neurologic syndrome of temporal lobe epilepsy, also called complex partial seizures. In this latter disorder, there are often florid symptoms of depersonalization and realization, but most amnesia symptoms derive from difficulties with focused attention rather than forgetting previously learned information. — James A. Chu

Our present conscious self and our shadow must learn how to coexist. The first step to attaining personal transcendence commences when the conscious mind and the unconscious mind square off and battle for preeminence. A person who achieves self-realization understands the interworking of both their conscious mind and the unconscious mind and integrates their unique dichotomy into their sense of a self. A person who suffers from a personality disorders or neuroses failed to confront their shadow or unsuccessfully integrated the conflicting motives of the conscious mind and the unconscious mind into a central and fully integrated persona. — Kilroy J. Oldster

There was another epidemic that was not talked about much, a silent scourge - the explosion of mental illness: major depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, manic-depression, personality disorders, grief response, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, etc. - on a scale none of us had ever witnessed. — Chinua Achebe

It's not about blame or wallowing...you are all molded by so much more than a dysfunctional past, and you must ultimately take responsibility for creating the life you want. — Kimberlee Roth

When I got home, I thought about the fact that Einstein supposedly used to stock his wardrobe with the same suits and shoes so he'd never have to think about what he was going to wear. I lack the intellect it takes to solve problems that way. I've advanced nothing in the field of psychology, and my paper on PTSD was given little attention; I wrote that psychological disorders with a genetic link, such as borderline personality disorder, might seem impossible to treat, while PTSD, which is based in trauma that has been experienced, seems easy to tackle, at least to the layperson. The opposite is true. It can be difficult to find the right medication for genetic disorders, but they can be sufficiently treated. Conversely, PTSD never goes away. One might think that our genes are so elementary that we cannot escape them, but our experiences have the ability to do far greater damage. — Bryan Way

Literature is the adventure. It's the story, it's the fight, it's people falling in love, it's people with deep personality disorders who succeed anyway beyond themselves. That's what great literature is. — Walter Mosley

Kai's lips ticked up. "I don't think you'll convince Tag of anything. This is one man who could use some time on my couch. I dream about it at night, you know. Ian Taggart is one large mass of previously undiagnosed personality disorders. He's a walking, talking Nobel Prize. Well, if they gave them out to psychologists. — Lexi Blake

Specifically, one whose life is ruled and dictated by dependency needs suffers from a psychiatric disorder to which we ascribe the diagnostic name "passive dependent personality disorder." It is perhaps the most common of all psychiatric disorders.
People with this disorder, passive dependent people, are so busy seeking to be loved that they have no energy left to love. They are like starving people, scrounging wherever they can for food, and with no food of their own to give to others. It is as if within them they have an inner emptiness, a bottomless pit crying out to be filled but which can never be completely filled. They never feel "full-filled" or have a sense of completeness. They always feel "a part of me is missing." They tolerate loneliness very poorly. Because of their lack of wholeness they have no real sense of identity, and they define themselves solely by their relationships. — M. Scott Peck

NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER According to James Masterson in The Narcissistic and Borderline Disorders, the main clinical characteristics of the narcissistic personality disorder are: Grandiosity, extreme self-involvement, and lack of interest and empathy for others, in spite of the pursuit of others to obtain admiration and approval. The narcissist is endlessly motivated to seek perfection in everything he does. Such a personality is driven to the acquisition of wealth, power and beauty and the need to find others who will mirror and admire his grandiosity. Underneath this external facade there is an emptiness filled with envy and rage. The core of this emptiness is internalized shame. — John Bradshaw

By the late 20th century, the idea that parents can harm their children by abusing and neglecting them (which is true) grew into the idea that parents can mold their children's intelligence, personalities, social skills, and mental disorders (which is not). Why not? Consider the fact that children of immigrants end up with the accent, values, and norms of their peers, not of their parents. That tells us that children are socialized in their peer group rather than in their families: it takes a village to raise a child. And studies of adopted children have found that they end up with personalities and IQ scores that are correlated with those of their biological siblings but uncorrelated with those of their adopted siblings. That tells us that adult personality and intelligence are shaped by genes, and also by chance (since the correlations are far from perfect, even among identical twins), but are not shaped by parents, at least not by anything they do with all their children. — Steven Pinker

People with Complex PTSD suffer from more severe and frequent dissociation symptoms, as well as memory and attention problems, than those with simple PTSD. In addition to amnesia due to the activity of various parts of the self, people may experience difficulties with concentration, attention, other memory problems and general spaciness. These symptoms often accompany dissociation of the personality, but they are also common in people who do not have dissociative disorders. For example everyone can be spacey, absorbed in an activity, or miss an exit on the highway. When various parts of the personality are are active, by definition, a person experiences some kind of abrupt change in attention and consciousness. — Suzette Boon

You are not your bank account, our your ambitiousness. You're not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You're not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are spirit, you are love. — Anne Lamott

The effect of hallucinogenic mushrooms on the user's experience and behavior depends in part on his or her personality and genetic predisposition, which can vary to a great extent from person to person. As symptoms of psychiatric disorders can sometimes be elicited after one-off use, people with a genetic tendency to depression or psychosis should be discouraged from using psychoactive mushrooms. — John Rush

Not bad for a bunch of reprobates with a galaxy of personality disorders. — Chris Wooding

You think she's got a personality disorder?"
"No, she's just a nasty bitch. An unpleasant personality isn't a medical condition. Just a symptom of not being slapped around the head enough. — Karen Traviss

Denial is commonly found among persons with dissociative disorders. My favorite quotation from such a client is, "We are not multiple, we made it all up." I have heard this from several different clients. When I hear it, I politely inquire, "And who is we? — Alison Miller

FMSF Advisory Board Members Dr Martin Orne and Dr Louis Jolyon West are CIA and military mind control contractors with TOP SECRET CIA clearance. Both received MKULTRA contracts to study dissociative disorders, implantation of false memories, and techniques for creation of Manchurian Candidates. The dissociative disorders, false memories, and the therapist-created multiple personality are the focus of the FMSF campaign. — Colin A. Ross

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle conceived Sherlock Holmes, why didn't he give the famous consulting detective a few more quirks: a wooden leg, say, and an Oedipus complex? Well, Holmes didn't need many physical tics or personality disorders; the very concept of a consulting detective was still fresh and original in 1887. — Christopher Fowler

Owing to a poorly defined sense of self, people with BPD rely on others for their feelings of worth and emotional caretaking. So fearful are they of feeling alone that they may act in desperate ways that quite frequently bring about the very abandonment and rejection they're trying to avoid. — Kimberlee Roth

My sadness is beautiful. It infuses everything I do. It is at the core of my identity and always has been, just as happiness is in some people. I refuse to be told that it's a flaw. I will not mute it with medications for the sake of society. I will hold it close to me and celebrate it rightfully while the rest of the world fails to see it for what it is and it will be their loss. — Ashly Lorenzana

Extreme versions of DID occasionally develop in response to particularly horrific ongoing trauma (e.g., children exploited through involvement in years of forced prostitution), with so-called poly-frgamentation, encompassing dozens or even hundreds of personality states. In general, the complexity of dissociative symptoms appears to be consistent with the severity of early traumatiation. That is, less severe abuse will result in fewer dissociative symptoms, and more severe abuse will result in more complex dissociative disorders. — James A. Chu

Imagining that you are deep and complex, but others are simple, is one of the primary signs of malignant selfishness. — Stefan Molyneux

The main reason why clinicians may not diagnose personality disorders is that they think that doing so supports therapeutic pessimism. Recent research has shown this is not true; most patients get better, either with time or with treatment, that the prognosis is actually better than in many patients with severe mood and anxiety disorders. — Joel Paris

Moods are by nature compelling, contagious, and profoundly interpersonal, and disorders of mood alter the perceptions and behaviors not only of those who have them but also of those who are related or closely associated. Manic-depressive illness - marked as it is by extraordinary and confusing fluctuations in mood, personality, thinking, and behavior - inevitably has powerful and often painful effects on relationships. — Kay Redfield Jamison

People who've Been to Hell and Back develop a certain sort of self-righteousness. There is a tendency to say: I have an addictive personality, I am terribly sensitive, I'm touched with fire, I have Scars. There is a self-perpetuating belief that one simply cannot help it, and this is very dangerous. It becomes an identity in and of itself. It becomes its own religion, and you wait for salvation, and you wait, and wait, and wait, and do not save yourself. If you saved yourself and did not wait for salvation, you'd be self-sufficient. How dull. — Marya Hornbacher

In graduate school, I learned this simple distinction: when people are driving themselves crazy, they have neuroses or psychoses. When they drive other people crazy, they have personality disorders. — Albert J. Bernstein

I have heard that we are spirits having a human experience. Perhaps those of us who have no conscience are dark spirits having a human experience. — P.A. Speers

Research has also revealed that women who have developed PTSD in relation to early childhood sexual abuse often develop borderline personality disorder. Some severe cases will result in the development of dissociative identity disorder or depersonalization disorder. Patients who have been exposed to protracted and repeated sexual abuse may also develop schizophrenia simultaneously with PTSD. — John M. Duffey

We therapists often make inaccurate assumptions about people living with DID and DDNOS. They often appear to be "just like us," so we often assume their experience of life reflects our own. But this is profoundly untrue. It results in a communication gap, and, as a consequence, treatment errors. Because the dominant culture is one of persons with a single sense of self, most with multiple "selves" have learned to hide their multiplicity and imitate those who are singletons (that is, have a single, non-fragmented personality). Therapists who do not understand this sometimes describe their clients' alters without acknowledging their dissociation, saying only that they have different "moods." In overlooking dissociation, this description fails to recognize the essential truth of such disorders, and of the alters. It was difficult for me to comprehend what life was like for my first few dissociative clients. — Alison Miller

A quick glance at the American left reveals a movement in the midst of a nervous breakdown, displaying behavior that goes beyond inconsistency into the realm of bipolar moods and multiple personality disorders. — Michael Medved