Theyre everywhere

[Hazy111]

Its not an important a post, but i firmly believe PD is more the norm than the exception.

I was contacted by an old neighbor of mine to meet up. He comes back to the UK every year on holiday after living here as an overseas  teacher teaching Greek, with his partner of many years also a teacher.

We meet up and chat for a few hours, reminiscing , putting the world to right , despairing with the way the world is, etc . His partner is polite but very quiet and reserved. She didnt come along this time.

As i was listening to him , i realised certain things he was saying didnt add up and he was exaggerating stuff. My narc antennae were going off.

He was previously married now divorced, many years ago and his 2 sons grew up with his ex wife in another European country from his . One is now working on  a cruise ship and the other is at University. I asked how they were doing.

" I ring them every day, always have " he said.  Me   He had never said this before. Why say it?  I thought you cant and why would they want you to do that? Every day!! Theyre are men , not children, not objects  Red flag. Thats control.  Its a case of "Im still in your life , i wont let you forget me. Im important"  Or hes lying and he wants me to think hes a caring loving Dad. Just like my Narc cousin does with his children from his previous marriage.  " I phone them , i love them" . Later it jogged a memory from last year that i overheard him having another conversation with another neighbor , him telling her all about his sons and how he doesnt stop thinking about them.

Then he moved on to why left the UK and went home back in 2010 after the financial crash. ( I know from a teacher friend of his that had  stayed on in the UK , that the reason he went back like others did, was that their  Govt stopped funding overseas teachers, they paid there rent etc. )

But he started telling me he had seen the financial crash coming in the UK with certain  shops were shutting down in 2008 and he had started to make preparations to leave. lm thinking this is BS. Your Govt stopped paying your rent thats why.    Hes some kind of financial Nostradamus. Hes clever he says he  doesnt have his money tied up in property. He always rents as it allows him his freedom he says. I want to be able to access my money quickly, not tied up.  Theres no mention of his partner in any of this. Theres no "we"

In the  the "devalue and discard" phase its also very handy for Narcs, a clean break if needed is possible .

I see in his current relationship and  his partner is  perfect narc wife/partner material. Shy quiet docile no previous marriage, no children.

My Narc senses are now so strong and can detect them. I know the playbook so well and the Borderline one too. They always give themselves away.

Thats all. Ill see him next year maybe. Im just disappointed thinking "not you as well". 

[clara]

One of the side effects of visiting sites like this is you start seeing PD (and narc, not necessarily NPD) behavior for what it is.  It becomes harder to brush aside a person's comments about their self-perceived brilliance or rewriting of history.  Where at one time you would have regarded the person as kind of weird or just going through their usual exaggerations or bragging, you instead look for signs of PD.  And once you discover them, they become impossible to ignore.  You now know that the person isn't just engaging in that behavior to be more interesting or to have something to say...they're being driven to it by their PD.  When they don't stop, which is what you'd hoped they'd eventually do, you now know why.  You're more capable of going into the relationship with your eyes open, and have tools to cope. 

It's believed about 10% of the population has AsPD.  That's a lot of people.  So it would stand to reason that there are also a lot of people out there with other PDs.  I don't think it's the norm (although narc behaviors are become more normative as people are encouraged to become more self-involved), but I suspect it's pretty high.  I know I've certainly run into enough of them in my life, and I've never had a very wide social or work circle!

[Hazy111]

Yeah Clara youre right. I start to see it where others dont. Its just most people dont know what PD is.  i have insight where i used to have none. Its annoying in a way, as my antennae start to go off all the time.

Its not just this site, ive read mountainous stuff about PD. I think 10% of the general population is way low.

Just today a mother was sitting beside me in a cafe with her two children and she spoke loudly  in a really patronising sarcastic tone to one of them.

"Now why would you want to do that and upset mummy?" she said to one of them, for some minor misdemeanour at the table. I looked at her shocked and as i did she was finishing the sentence with "the look" accompanied by the upcurl lip.

Whats the average 6 year old supposed to say or think in response to that. "Thanks mummy for shaming and belittling me, i know now im a worthless piece of s**t" 

(My mother wouldnt have had the confidence to say something out loud, you would just get the withering shame glare and a tut/sigh thrown in for good measure.)

My antennae, said Borderline Queen btw.

[Starboard Song]

You now know that the person isn't just engaging in that behavior to be more interesting or to have something to say...they're being driven to it by their PD.

I completely understand the gist of this thread. It is true that our engagement with pathological personalities can make us highly sensitive. I do not handle raw expressions of anger very well anymore, for instance. I deeply wish that people could process their personal interactions in a kinder way, but I have become intolerant, sometimes, of even normal levels of drama.

But it is simply not true that personality disorders are the norm rather than the exception. And it is not productive to pathologize and diagnose the people around us without very deep interaction and expertise.

The diagnostic guidelines for most personality disorders list a handful of traits that are associated with that disorder. A person will be diagnosed if they exhibit too many of those traits, with too much severity, too much of the time. And those thresholds purposely only identifying the most extreme and pervasive cases.

The individual traits, of course, are ubiquitous: truly all around us. I like to exaggerate, for instance. I do that. But this forum is organized around the premise that personality disorders of the sort that can be diagnosed because they are severe and pervasive are a true challenge for the people who interact with them. And we come here for strategies for coping, managing, and healing.

For my part, I do not want to go through my days pathologizing and stigmatizing common human frailty. That is just too defeatist for me. I hope we can all recognize our tendency to start doing that as one more scar of our interactions with personality disorders. And see it as one more scar that we should try to overcome. And I think we overcome it with a generous and non-judgmental interpretation of the frailties that all humans are born, live, and die with.

[all4peace]

I love SS's response and wholeheartedly agree.

I'll add in a framework that really helped me around this issue, our tendency to start to see PD everywhere and to label and "box people in," as I was very much in that space not too long ago. It felt icky to me, though, it was like an ill-fitting jacket, and in therapy I learned a framework that helped me shed that.

I've posted on here about the Enneagram. The most useful aspect of it in the context of this conversation is that not only does it describe 9 different lens through which we see the world, but it has 9 levels of wellness ranging from healthy to deeply unhealthy. I myself have been at much lower states of health than hope I am now, and could have been said to exhibit PD-like traits (or at least really unhealthy traits). I have expected people to meet needs of mine that I hadn't stated or even fully understood myself, I gave with strings attached, I have (and continue to) talked about problematic family members to other family members, I have tried hard to control things that weren't mine to control (like how my parents interact with my kids).

For me, when I start seeing "PDs everywhere!" (and I have) I become discouraged and afraid and I am not dealing with my own junk. When I deal with my own junk, I start having so much more compassion for other humans who are simply frail in different ways or to different degrees.

That said, there are a lot of distressing behaviors around us and I also have been on the receiving end recently.

[StayWithMe]

I am glad that I see light and can be more careful.  I slow down situations now so that no one fast talks into doing something that's not good for me.  And I take the time to crosscheck things.  When I look back at old situations I think about what I could have done differently that might have made a difference.

For example, I started dating a guy in grad school.  He then suggested that we have a dinner party.  I like dinner parties so that was not a twist.  We both agreed we needed to have it before Thanksgiving, since after that everyone would be in study mode.  He invited a few people and I invited a few people.  I may have asked him who was coming but I know now that I really should have queried it.

Two women arrived late.  They were very apologetic and  said more than once that evening that told my [new dating situation, NDS] that they could only come on this date if they came late and they said that he said it was ok.  Well, my NDS never gave me a heads up that.  But that was also a time when I was more flexible, free spirited anything goes type of person.  So I let it go.  They seemed like nice women.

But then 2 weeks later, at a time when NDS and I had fallen into a schedule of spending every evening with one another doing homework and other things, I could not find him one evening and I got a realy horrible feeling evening.

He finally called me late that night.  He explained that he went to an event with those 2 ladies who came late to the dinner.  He also admitted that they were his friends of his ex girlfriend.  So he used my home and my hospitality to entertain two friend of his ex gf.

He went on to explain that the two women gave his ex the right of first refusal in invitations.  So this was last minute invitation.  Umm, yes, this may have been the 80s, but I did have an answering machine.  He could have left message inviting me as well.  But he didn't.

And of course, months later, I had to reckon with the fact that I was nothing more than the rebound girl.  Wasted time.

I think if I had been more controlling --- oh, what a horrible word, but it was my place where the dinner party took place-- and inquired about his guest list --face to face-- and asked about anyone that I had yet to meet, maybe I would have been alerted to some "irregularities."..... instead of trying to be that cool, confident chic who can take any situation.

I also wonder now if any of the guests were thinking "SWM is getting steam rolled here."  Because I used to think that so many other people were uptight.  Now I know why.

[appaloosa]

Allforpeace--Is there a book you'd recommend re enneagrams?

[all4peace]

appaloosa, I'd start with The Road Back to You and/or the Path Between Us.

Hazy111, I hope you've had some days free of difficult or bewildering people!

[Hazy111]

Nah, just usual for Planet Earth, All4peace.

Yesterday got followed around my local supermarket by someone i regularly bump into. It got a bit freaky , especially when they caught up with me again and said " i thought you were going to help me carry this" 

I wouldnt definitely say PD, but insecure attachment probably.

Neurosis is the norm not the exception, Freud   

[KeepingMyBlue]

Yeah, I had someone at work try to gaslight over something trivial. I thought he was making conversation, then when I mentioned it, he swore he didn't say it.
I was turned away, so he didn't see my eye roll, and all he got from me after that was Okay, and then all business. I mean, what was the point? I'm barely more than a stranger to him.
It bugs me, but only a little. He has zero power over me, so what can he do?

I used to think I was being oversensitive, seeing dysfunction everywhere, but I agree. It is everywhere. All we can do is refuse to play the games. What's the harm if some near stranger thinks whatever?

[StayWithMe]

Yeah, I had someone at work try to gaslight over something trivial. I thought he was making conversation, then when I mentioned it, he swore he didn't say it.

Was it something related to work?  and something of particular interest to you?

[11JB68]

Ugh. I had a bizarre thing with a co-worker...haven't felt the same at work since. She said that ' other people' were saying xyz about me... I became really self conscious...evidence is to the contrary...unless everyone else is gaslighting too....it's so confusing and upsetting. So hard to know who to trust...

[KeepingMyBlue]

Yeah, I had someone at work try to gaslight over something trivial. I thought he was making conversation, then when I mentioned it, he swore he didn't say it.

Was it something related to work?  and something of particular interest to you?

Unrelated topic, not interesting to me, I was just being polite even responding. More reasons to let it go by and let him play games alone.