Do any of you suspect your adult children have any personality disorders?

[BusynMember]

I am positive (well, almost) that Sportsfan has a personality disorder. It seems to kick up the most when he is under pressure, but he is TERRIBLE when it kicks up. It is so over-the-top for a non-drug using man of his age. I'm not sure if he has one personality disorder or a personality disorder not otherwise specified (that was MY diagnosis), but I think he does. Since I have many Borderline (BPD) traits (and tried A LOT harder than he does to try to lick the symptoms), I am wondering if he has a taste of Borderline (BPD). I read that personality disorders, like almost everything else, are now said to run in families.

Sportsfan was much better today because some of his anxiety was appeased last night. He is intolerable when under pressure. Worse than many two year olds.

Any of you see borderline, narcicism or anything else in your self-centered grown children?

 

[CrazyinVA]

I'm 99% sure Oldest has Borderline (BPD). Years ago I read about it, and thought, "BINGO" that's her! I went through the checklist in the DSM and she had 7 out of 9 of the traits. The more I read, the more certain I was. Discussed it with my psychiatrist, who had been hers briefly at one point, and she seemed pretty certain of it as well. Since Oldest has never acknowledged her issues or sought treatment, there's been no "official" diagnosis, but I really don't think there's much doubt.

She has mellowed out in recent years, however. She seems to have learned that I won't put up with certain behaviors and she doesn't try them on me much any more. I see "flares" from time to time, but since I shut her down quickly when they pop up, it doesn't happen as often and I don't let it affect me. Given the number of friendships she rotates through (not to mention jobs and roommates), I suspect her Borderline (BPD) behaviors still pop up with other people. It's worse when she starts self-medicating with pain pills ... but that seems to be under control in recent years as well. Or she's hiding it better. I think I've just become the queen of detachment when it comes to her ... self-preservation, really ... so I may just have my head in the sand about a lot of it.

 

[Nomad]

Not particularly with my difficult child adult child. She received a diagnosis years ago and it seems accurate. Medication is helpful.

What surprises me, is I believe my own father had a personality disorder. I always knew he had "something." I hadn't seen much of him in a few years. Then I got some training and when I saw him and spoke with- him ....it hit me like a ton of bricks. Personality Disorders are so very difficult. Chaos + sadness seems to follow these folks....

If you suspect a PD...read "Walking on Eggshells," and whatever else you can get your hands on!

 

[BusynMember]

Well, the worst part about personality disorders is that the afflicted person goes postal on others and gets revenge when angry. I always think I see lots of Borderline (BPD) girls in this forum. Most won't consider getting help. I'm so very glad I did! I wish my son would, but if I mention "peronsality disorder" i think he'd flip.

 

[Hound dog]

With Katie, yes. But I have trouble pinning one down with any total conviction. If she doesn't have Borderline (BPD), she most certainly has so many traits of it she might as well have it. Might be something else going on. Dunno. She keeps too far at a distance to be able to tell much of anything accurately.

Nichole has Borderline (BPD). She does very well and has for several years now. In fact, she does so well.......you'd probably not know it was an issue. But it was not easy getting to that point by a long shot. She only got there because she wanted it so very badly.

MWM, most people with personality disorders would flip if you suggested they need to seek help. Heck, probably the vast majority would.

 

[InsaneCdn]

MWM, most people with personality disorders would flip if you suggested they need to seek help. Heck, probably the vast majority would.

Make that most PEOPLE, period. Get help for a mental challenge/problem/illness/whatever? But *I* don't have THAT. (even ADHD, or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), or Depression... the "ordinary stuff"...)

 

[BusynMember]

Well, many people with personality disorders refuse to face the facts t hat their poor relationships with others are due to their own behaviors and blame others.

It is a very difficult problem to deal with. I don't know how I would have taken it if anyone had suggested to me that I had Borderline (BPD), but I was good about trying very hard to help myself because I certainly was not happy with all the chaos, drama, and broken relationships in my life. And I have "traits", not the whole nine yards. I never self-harmed and I did have a few long term relationships and was not sexually promiscuous...those are part of Borderline (BPD) I did not have...thus Personality Disorder not otherwise specified.And, trust me, PD-not otherwise specified was no fun either...lol.

 

[DammitJanet]

I remember the day I found out I had Borderline (BPD). I cried my eyes out. Bipolar I had no problem with but a personality disorder just absolutely sent me into a tailspin that I almost didnt come out of. What was really bad was that no one told me about it either but I read it on some paperwork upside down. Most likely it was there for quite awhile but I had never known.

I didnt understand what borderline is and just like so many of the talking heads on TV today, I thought I was the next Ted Bundy. I was so crushed. I kept thinking that at anytime I would flip out and kill someone and my life was hopeless. Finally someone managed to talk me down enough to tell me to read online what Borderline (BPD) really is and I felt a bit better though I was still irate that no one ever told me about it.

 

[Hound dog]

That's exactly why I made certain Nichole knew what her dxes are, and made certain that she was well educated about them too. She also got quite a bit of family history she never knew before in order to show her that there are people with mental illness who can still live good lives on the whole. She needed the latter as a rope to hold on to while she was working to get stable. Without it, I dunno if she would've done very well.

I couldn't imagine finding out something like that in that way. That had to be horrible. Although bff's list of dxes was rather long and I'm fairly certain there were probably two or more personality disorders on that list. Of course with her, drugs/alcohol muddied the waters so bad that it was really hard to tell what was addict / drug / withdrawal behavior and what were the mental illness behaviors if that is what they were. I know none of her psychiatrists would tell her about the personality disorders for fear she'd nosedive right over the edge and there would be no hope of saving her. But I still don't think it's fair to lead someone to believe they have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).......when they don't, but they have these other things......and are not being educated about them ect because a doctor isn't being honest.

 

[hearts and roses]

Aw, hugs, Janet, my heart aches for you crying so hard.

I suppose both my girls could have some of the traits for sure, I mean, I'm sure they do. Believe it or not, it's actually more apparent in easy child on a regular basis and more cyclic in difficult child. Maybe that just means that easy child is a moody, selfish person deep down? I don't know.

However, I know for CERTAIN that my loco sister has Borderline (BPD) and we all agree that my mom had it. Now that mom is in the throes os dementia, it only comes out sporadically...as she really has very little power anymore. But she still lashes out. Just about every time I see her she tells me she wants to tell the staff to F-off, lol. Thats about as powerful as she can get besides refusing to toilet.

ANYWAY, I wouldn't be surprised if my mother in law didn't have some sort of personality disorder either.

 

[dashcat]

I suspect BiPolar (BP) with my daughter, though she does exhibit many of the traits of Borderline (BPD). At this early stage, I can only talkk "around" it with her. I pray that, like Hound's Nichole, she'll want to be well badly enough to face whatever she's deaing with on her own. I know she knows I will accept and love her no matter what, but what I'm not sure of is what she can accept about herself.

She is at the therapist right now .. a huge step, but it's really a baby step in the scope of reaching/accepting any kind of diagnosis I know at some point the therapist will refer her to a psychiatrist. I trust the therapist and she knows difficult child's history. As to whether or not difficult child will go and - if she goes - how honest she'll be, remains to be seen.
Dash

 

[recoveringenabler]

Although my daughter has not been diagnosed, because of her behavior and our genetics, I believe she is bi-polar with severe adult onset ADHD. She exhibits most of the symptoms of both and may, like most in my family, have a cocktail of disorders which even if diagnosed at some point, might present a real difficulty in providing medication for. My sister has gone through years of diagnosis for many disorders and finding the appropriate medication has been challenging at best. My daughter spun into a real decline after the death of her husband, a trauma, which is another opening for these disorders to come flying in through.

She is presently in jail in a program about life skills which has many good classes, but the most positive for me is that they have therapy groups. This may be an opportunity for her to get some help. She has a very high IQ and is in some ways, like many who suffer certain mental illnesses, brilliant, so my hope is she can learn something about herself which will spark that bright mind into wanting to help herself. I still have hope for her.

 

[BusynMember]

I was never diagnosed with borderline. I told my therapist I thought I'd had it (and still do, but have figured out how to deal with it..dialectal behavioral therapy). They don't diagnose it enough in my opinion. It's treatable. Some other personality disorders...not so much.

 

[toughlovin]

When I was in social work school over 20 years ago Borderline (BPD) was the diagnosis given to all the women patients who were difficult to treat and there was not much available treatment. I had wondered for a while if my son had antisocial PD but it didn't really quite fit. Then last Sept when he was hospitalized because he was suicidal the psychiatric hospital suggested he might be Borderline (BPD). I was quite shaken up at first. Then I did the research and found that in fact it is now thought that many men have Borderline (BPD) but are diagnosed with something else, such as antisocial personality because men are more likely to get into legal trouble. I read about DBT treatment and got hopeful... but then my sons issues with substance abuse got in the way and we went on a crazy roller coaster ride trying to get him appropriate treatment.... the focus was on substance abuse treatment but he relapsed over and over and over again. It became clear to me that unless we also deal with the Borderline (BPD) traits (if not total personality disorder) then he will never be able to stay clean.

When I read the description in the DSM it fits him very well.

Thing is he wants help with the Borderline (BPD), he really does. He just doesn't think his substance abuse problem is that bad (it is) but I do think the substance abuse is his way of coping (badly) with his mental health issues.

So now finally he is in a program for young adults with a specific track for Borderline (BPD) or Borderline (BPD) traits...and they are one of the few that also treat young men.

So we shall see, we shall see. I am hopeful again.

TL

 

[TerryJ2]

This is an old thread, but when I was researching, I thought, why reinvent the wheel?

I am wracking my brains to figure out what is going on with-my difficult child. I realize that's a job for the "experts" but since I'm his mom and see him day in and day out, it's hard not to think about it and him all the time.

Now that our therapist has suggested a possible direction toward antisocial personality disorder, it makes perfect sense to look at borderline, as toughlovin pointed out. Mental illness presents differently in men and women.

I do not know if lithium works for Borderline (BPD) but I can definitely say that we are about to embark on a long, new journey, toward new medications and new restrictions, and if we can afford it, new living arrangements.

Every time I typed in "impulsivity," I came up with-Borderline (BPD). Hey, better than sociopathy! The hard part is that impulsivity is present in so many disorders.

Thank you for starting this thread, MWM.

 

[witzend]

I'm unclear as to what a personality disorder is. In the broadest sense, I consider having a personality that makes it impossible to function within the realms of normal society - not caused by a physical disease or disorder - to be a personality disorder. I don't know that the DSM would see it that way. I'm absolutely certain that L is a Borderline Personality Disorder, and will never be ok. She would gut you with a pocket knife if she felt it served her purpose.

Although I would not subject myself to M at this point in his life, I do hope that he may find his way someday. It's a stretch, but I hope that if he meets the right girl or loses the right girl he might actually push himself to be a better man. I don't have strong hopes, but I at least feel like I would be ok to tell him "no" and although he might storm off, he would know that "no" means "no". diagnosis-wise? I haven't a clue. It's not my job to know or fix anymore.

 

[LSH44]

When my difficult child was in 3rd grade, the SD said they suspected she had "ODD" - Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Understand that I don't mean this against anyone, but I don't believe in these diagnosis'. I believe they are a way to pigeon-hole a particular behavior, rather than look at the big picture of the child and make a true diagnosis of mental illness and respond with early proactive treatment. There are children who behave badly. Professionals need to help us find a reason for that early so i can be addressed. Putting a colored label on it such as "ODD - won't accept directions from authority" or "ADD - won't sit still and stop talking"....just puts a band-aid on the problem. As parents, we need professional help to place a correct diagnosis on the child as the whole, so we can start therapy early or begin a medication program early so that they can be as productive and successful as possible.

With that said, I suspect my difficult child has borderline personality or is Bi-polar. I got so tired of psychologists telling me when she was a child, that she was just strong-willed. No, she has a problem. But aside from a colored label that would put her into a special education class where she would be treated as simply defective and unable to learn, they offered nothing. So I refused to sign off on the "ODD" label and tried to handle it myself. She is very bright and took advanced AP classes. Had I allowed them to label her as needing "special education", I don't believe she would have gotten that opportunity.

In essence, I believe that the schools use such labels as ODD and ADD to corral children with mental illness into one room where they can focus on keeping them and their behaviors away from the other kids and out of the way. While I understand the need to do that, the problem is that they don't focus on learning in those groups. I knew my difficult child was very bright, and there is nothing wrong with her intelligence...and I wasn't going to let them tamper that intelligence. It may have been the wrong decision, but that's the one i made and I don't regret it.