PERSONALITY DISORDERS

Can People With Personality Disorders Ever Stop Being Abusive?

Is change possible in an abuser?

I am diagnosed with a personality disorder. I also don’t think I would be considered “abusive” anymore but rather someone with attachment problems.

Abuse is the result of primitive defence mechanisms such as projection, black-and-white thinking (splitting) and devaluation.

If someone with a personality disorder becomes aware of these defences and starts the process of self-introspection, they can gradually improve their behaviours.

The maladaptive behaviours won’t stop completely but can be reduced in severity over time and become manageable.

The goal is to shift from abusive behaviours to dysfunctional behaviours. The latter means the person in question has more difficulties compared to other people in relationships but isn’t traumatizing anyone.

What Self-introspection Looks Like:

I had a brain mapping done last year, which involved detecting neuromarkers I have that correlate with certain personality traits and past experiences. This is one of the pages:

I remember when the guy who did my scan was going through the report with me and I saw ‘passive aggressive’ on this page.

Immediately I started laughing. Then I said “You know what? I AM quite passive-aggressive.”

The guy looked at me as if he thought I was nuts for being so cheerful about this revelation.

But that’s the point — I didn’t get offended or defensive. It’s true, I can be very passive-aggressive.

I started thinking more about why that is the case and I came to the conclusion that it was because I had difficulties standing up for myself and expressing myself directly. So I started paying closer attention to when I engaged in this behaviour.

Incident №1

Last summer, I was seeing this guy whose behaviour was manipulative and annoying so in my usual manner, I told him to “f**k off” indirectly.

But I noticed that I was being passive-aggressive and decided next time I have a problem with someone, I’m going to try to be more direct.

Incident №2

When that time came later in the year, I was direct but then I realized I was way too confrontational and hostile, which made the person in question defensive.

So I made a mental note that I needed to try to be direct but less aggressive next time because I don’t want the person in front of me to get defensive. I want them to hear me out and understand me.

Incident №3

Then I had a disagreement with a close friend towards the end of the year that made me just shut down. I refused to engage with her for two whole months.

In the end, we managed to speak about it face to face and sort it out, but this incident gave me more information about what triggered me into implosive and passive-aggressive behaviours.

Analysis:

If something bothers me, I prefer to hint at it as opposed to directly confronting the person.

In the past, my main reason for doing this was fear of direct confrontation due to anxiety and low self-esteem.

Now I am indirect at first because I still see confrontation as something to be used when there is a need to be openly aggressive.

I noticed if I’m hinting at something multiple times and the person doesn’t understand and continues to project their own emotions and assumptions onto me, that’s when I tend to shut down and deactivate.

When I deactivate, I feel resentful and angry and I want whoever set me off out of my life.

The problem was I had been friends with the person in question for seven years. It was a relationship I valued. So instead of confronting her angrily and cutting her out of my life, I decided just to remain shut down.

Because the friendship was important to me and even if I was angry, I could remind myself that this emotion is temporary and our friendship at least deserves an attempt to solve the problem once my anger dies down.

So as you can see, with every argument or incident, I have to think back and ask questions like:

• Was I being passive-aggressive?
• Could I have been more direct?
• Was I too hostile and defensive?
• Why was I being aggressive in the first place?

I know I use aggression because, as a result of my past experiences I expect others will mistreat and abuse me and I don’t want to be victimised again.

But this is me projecting my past experiences and assumptions into new situations. Just because someone mistreated me in the past doesn’t mean the same thing will happen now.

And, even if it did, I remind myself that I cannot control other people’s reactions.

Aggression was a way for me to control others’ behaviour. Now I changed the way I look at things — people’s reactions do not define me.

If I express myself clearly and the other person chooses not to hear me, that’s on them. I don’t control what they do but I control my reaction and how I interpret the situation.

Conclusion:

This is essentially what someone with a personality disorder would have to do with all their weaknesses and dysfunctional traits. They would need to analyse every situation they are in with brutal honesty asking themselves:

• Am I projecting my own emotions, insecurities or assumptions onto this person?
• Are there any cognitive biases involved?
• Am I externalising blame?
• Am I communicating clearly?

Because how I came to see things is I might fuck up one relationship, but there will always be a next time with someone else. If I learn from now, I can use that to avoid failure in the future.

Training not to react when feeling an emotion

When emotions are engaged, we all have trouble seeing things as they are. The problem is, people with personality disorders lack impulse control and are much more reactive compared to healthy people.

The goal for them is to develop a more detached view towards life by understanding others’ perspectives and where they are coming from. The ability to understand people makes it easier to deal with toxic and difficult situations.

Incident:

I was seeing this guy on and off a while back. At one point, I didn’t hear from him for a month and then he messaged me “b**ch” out of nowhere.

I have a very low frustration tolerance so I started swearing back immediately. Then he messaged “Because you don’t love me.”

I ended up having a massive go at him and he backed down but then I started thinking “What the hell was that?” When I thought more about why he had that reaction, I could understand what was going on a little bit more.

I never texted this guy first. Ever. It’s because I always look at relationships as “I can take it or leave it.” I never invest too much in a person. I never show I value them.

I do this because I always feel like once I show interest in someone or tell them I like them, they start acting like they have power over me and try to abuse me.

And this guy had enough manipulative behaviours when we first met that I never felt safe enough to initiate anything.

Analysis:

He was verbally abusive, but my behaviour was also abusive — dismissing people and making a show of how little you care about them is emotional abuse.

Do I do this purposefully to be abusive? No. I really struggle with being vulnerable. Sometimes it’s a mental block and I physically can’t do anything that’s going to put me in a vulnerable position.

The purpose of my behaviour wasn’t to reject him — it was self-defence due to past trauma but also his past behaviour. But it triggered his trauma anyway.

Conclusion

There is a misconception that in relationships with people who have personality disorders, there is an abuser and a victim. Sometimes this is true, but in many cases, it isn’t.

All of my relationships have been mutually antagonistic and both sides had anger problems. I have never dated an empathic and/or securely attached person in my life.

What I had to do was to understand that while it’s not okay for people to abuse me, if I start to realize the complexity of every situation this makes it easier to not react out of anger.

The goal is to become more strategic as opposed to escalating arguments and taking things personally. This comes with the realization that people have their own traumas they are dealing with and their own perceptions of situations clouded by their biases.

It is also important for me to see if I have done anything to contribute to the situation, which reduces the anger I feel towards the other person.

The more situations I analysed, the easier it got for me to not react out of anger and remain calm. Also through this exercise, I noticed a huge reduction in my levels of anxiety over time.

I think the overall message is, while it’s possible to change abusive behaviours, it’s difficult and it takes a very long time. It’s not a case of realising that one is abusive and just stopping because abuse is not as premeditated as people think. Personally, I see l abusive behaviours as either compensatory or defensive — they either compensate for what someone is lacking or they are used as a defence to protect oneself against perceived threats.

In other words, for me, change happened over time and I had to improve other issues in my life that were preventing me from being able to communicate in a non-abusive manner simultaneously, such as low self-esteem and anxiety. The more confidence I developed, the less I needed abusive behaviours and the more I analysed myself, my behaviours and other people, the more confidence I developed.

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