About Personality Disorders

[Mark]

Dysfunctional personality styles are hard to treat because they are so deeply ingrained. With something like depression (at least non-chronic depression), there was a condition that got superimposed on something else, and treatment largely is about trying to remediate and remove the condition so as to get back to "normal". With a personality issue, normal is the personality issue - there isn't anything to remove to get back to normal. So the way you need to think about it is that new growth is required. Which is what we otherwise call maturation. No matter who is speaking, there is always a path forward for new maturation - a better way of understanding the world and your relationship to it. See my articles on Robert Kegan's ideas about how development progresses. Kegan is not the only intelligent person who has written about this stuff and neither has he necessarily got a lock on the "truth", but it is a useful read.

the fact that you are frustrated with the way that you habitually interact with others and have some insight into it suggests that you are at least ambivalent - that there is some tension inside you which is unhappy with the status quo and which is perhaps ready to do the work that will produce the growth. This work will likely involve confronting various anxieties however, and portions of it will be frightening and/or hard to tolerate and it will be easier to just stay put as you are today. So that is the tension - the desire to become more independent which is thrilling and which will help you to feel better about yourself - but the downside is that you will have to tolerate a lot of anxiety and discomfort which nobody wants to do, and so you may back down from the forward momentum on that basis. And people sometimes go back and forth with this sort of thing for a while; some ultimately moving forwards and some not, depending on which they ultimately are more motivated by - fear/anxiety or the desire to be more free/independent and enjoy the benefits of that freedom (e.g., healthier relationships, etc.).

Psychotherapy is a good way to address this sort of thing - but the process will likely be somewhat lengthy - a few years may be necessary. If you think about it - what you are trying to do is to grow new capabilities and that will really take some time however you do it. It's not as simple as just learning some new coping skills (although that will be part of it too). You don't have to do this in therapy - it may just happen for you without any intervention depending on how much the discontented part of yourself drives you forwards, but a therapist can help keep you on track, point out when you are hiding from your goal (to avoid anxiety), offer guidence, and be a presence in your life which can be very motivating. A therapist can be a sort of midwife to the growth process

Mark

Edited April 3, 2009 by Mark