April 23, 2007

• Personality

  Global Personality Test Results

  Stability (83%) high which suggests you are very relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.. Orderliness (20%) low which suggests you are overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense too often of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment. Extraversion (46%) medium which suggests you are moderately talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting.

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  The personality test scores above reflect my attitudes today.  On other days, I would certainly score near the same on stability and orderliness, but might score markedly differently on extraversion.  I am mildly bipolar (type II, hypomanic) and can be maniacally extraverted or depressively isolated and introverted, depending on transient brain chemistry.

  I really like the “trait snapshot” provided along with the results above:

  messy, tough, disorganized, fearless, not rule
  conscious, likes the unknown, rarely worries, rash, attracted to the
  counter culture, rarely irritated, positive, resilient, abstract, not a
  perfectionist, risk taker, strange, weird, self reliant, leisurely,
  dangerous, anti-authority, trusting, optimistic, positive, thrill
  seeker, likes bizarre things, sarcastic

  Reflexively, I started to dispute some of those traits.  Then I thought about it and realized that they are true now and I need to update my self-image to reflect recent growth. 

  Disorder	Rating
  Paranoid Disorder:	Low
  Schizoid Disorder:	Low
  Schizotypal Disorder:	Low
  Antisocial Disorder:	Low
  Borderline Disorder:	Low
  Histrionic Disorder:	Low
  Narcissistic Disorder:	Low
  Avoidant Disorder:	Low
  Dependent Disorder:	Low
  Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	Low
  – Personality Disorder Test – Take It! – – Personality Disorders –

  This one came as a surprise.  I even took the test a second time to make sure there was no mistake.  A few years ago, the same test rated me as “moderate” in schizotypal because I admitted that I “believe” I have psychic ability, and antisocial because I admitted I’d been in jail and have stolen things.  My answers to those questions haven’t changed.  Maybe the testers have adjusted their parameters.  I know that at earlier stages in my life I would have registered moderate to high on paranoia and obsessive-compulsive.  In those areas, I have changed through increased self-awareness and personal effort.

  ---

  NPD
  Narcissistic Personality Disorder
  
  I’m addressing this one particular disorder because life circumstances have impelled me to study it and gain some expertise in its diagnosis and treatment, just as I have become a minor expert in myalgic encephalomyelitis, neurochemistry, and nutrition, in order to treat my own illness.  In the case of NPD, it was my soulmate, spouse and partner in crime, my beloved Old Fart, Greyfox, AKA ArmsMerchant, who needed my expertise and impelled me to gain some.

  Four years ago, I had only recently heard of NPD from my daughter, Angie.  I had known Greyfox for about twelve years at that time, and from the start I had recognized much of his behavior as pathological.  “Pathological” was the word I applied to it because that was how I had learned in school, at work, and in group therapy, to characterize such dysfunctional ways of coping and relating as I observed in Greyfox.

  The first psychopathology I noticed was some exaggerated responses to frustration and thwarting, when he told me about prior incidents such as one when he had jumped repeatedly on and destroyed a Christmas tree stand he couldn’t get to work as he wanted.  It also seemed odd to me from the start that every time I expressed some opinion or belief contrary to one he had expressed, he apparently changed his mind. 

  As I got to know him better, I became aware of his tendency to exaggerate small injuries, illnesses, or disappointments.  He would become angry when the weather wasn’t to his liking.  One of his most difficult quirks for me to live with was the irrational time pressure he lived under.  When we would be preparing to go somewhere, he would hustle and bustle about, hurrying me so much that I’d forget things I needed to take or not get everything done that needed to be.  Eventually I learned to cope with that one by sitting down and refusing to work under such conditions.

  As I began to inform myself about NPD in 2003, I found all of those traits of Greyfox’s and many others in the NPD symptom lists.  I was gaining a new more diverse and specific vocabulary in which to discuss his psychopathology, and was also learning why he had seemed to go out of his way to agree with me early in our relationship and then suddenly switched to the opposite extreme, responding with hostility and derision each time I disagreed with him. 

  Pathological narcissists tend to put their lovers and “friends” (they are generally incapable of true friendship) on a pedestal early in the relationship, when they are receiving narcissistic supply from them.  As long as he believes the other is a useful source of narcissistic supply, he will respond to disputes or differences of opinion with ingratiation.  Then, as the lover or acquaintance fails to support his narcissistic fantasy world, the N takes narcissistic injury and gives up on the person as a source of narcissistic supply — no more pedestal, no more ingratiation, just rage as the narcissist’s fantasy life is threatened by the other’s differing views.

  When I went to school, mental illness was classified as either neurosis or psychosis.  Narcissistic Personality Disorder wasn’t defined until the ‘seventies, and wasn’t included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual until the ‘eighties.  DSM IV was published in 1994, and a “text revision,” DSM IV-TR, came out in 2000.  With all the recent progress in neuropsychology, the current DSM’s obsolescence is a given, but it is the official diagnostic bible and we are more or less stuck with it.   Its classifications and definitions are certainly superior to those in currency as recently as thirty to fifty years ago during my school days.

  Personality disorders are considered as distinct from organic brain disorders, although increasingly it is acknowledged that they involve abnormalities of brain chemistry and neurological function.  They are divided into three clusters:

  • Cluster A (paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal): odd or eccentric disorders
  • Cluster B (antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic): dramatic, emotional or erratic disorders
  • Cluster C (avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive): anxious or fearful disorders  (wikipedia)

  It is not unusual for a person to possess traits of disorders from all three clusters, and quite common for someone to display traits of several disorders within a single cluster.  Cluster B disorders, in particular, are often accompanied by abuse of alcohol and other drugs.  Behavior may be perceived by family and associates as arising from the drug abuse.  What is more likely is that a person with a Cluster B disorder is dysphoric and lacks normal societal inhibitions from self-medication.  Drugs may alter and intensify the symptoms, but even in abstinence disordered behavior will persist.

  DSM IV says that NPD is characterized by:

  1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance

  2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power,
  brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

  3. Believes he is “special” and can only be understood by,
  or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

  4. Requires excessive admiration

  5. Has a sense of entitlement

  6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his own
  ends

  7. Lacks empathy

  8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are
  envious of him

  9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors
  or attitudes

  Normal personalities are narcissistic to some degree, and a normal adolescent is practically indistinguishable from someone with pathological NPD.  Some of those traits are also found in other disorders such as Asperger’s syndrome or bipolar disorder.  A diagnosis of NPD must take those factors into consideration.  Here, I have been referring to overt NPD.  There is yet another form of pathological narcissism that is covert.  It is termed, “hypersensitive narcissism,” and is characterized by easily-hurt feelings.  There is a self-test for this type, here.

  I have referred above to narcissists in the common shorthand, as Ns.  It is common for those with diseases and disorders to be referred to as patients, clients, sufferers, etc.  Some writers in the field claim with only slight facetiousness that it is incorrect to call an N a sufferer, because he makes others do the suffering.  I also tend (along with other writers) to refer to the N as he because the majority of Ns are male, and the one in my life is.

  At a vulnerable and receptive time in his life, as he was detoxing from a near-fatal alcohol binge, Greyfox took the 4degreez personality disorder test.  With the help of that self-diagnosis, transcending his NPD (and the histrionic PD that he diagnosed at the same time) became part of the self-healing he undertook when he went into abstinence on all his substance addictions (except caffeine and sugar).  If not for that self-diagnosis, given the rage with which a typical N greets anything he interprets as criticism, his prognosis would have been much less optimistic.

  A narcissist’s prognosis in therapy is usually dim at best.  They are most likely of all personality disorders to resist or discontinue therapy.  Theirs is also the personality disorder most likely to frustrate or abuse a therapist so that he or she will give up on them and quit.  Trust between N and therapist must be strong and the therapist must be able to tolerate a lot of resistance and abuse. 

  Greyfox trusts me.  He has said that I’m the only person he will trust to the extent of swallowing any handful of pills I offer him.  It’s not only because he knows I wouldn’t knowingly do him harm, but because he knows that I am knowledgeable about nutrition and such.  While my son and I were supervising Greyfox’s detox, I gave him a similar bunch of supplements to those I had been using to kick my sugar addiction, to help him over the withdrawal from alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, etc.  They were effective in preventing the withdrawal miseries, and they might also have helped him cope with his narcissistic rage and begin his recovery from NPD.

  To help him transcend his NPD, I just did more of what I had been doing for as long as I knew him:  I confronted his pathological behavior whenever it came up.  It started working then as it had never worked before, for several reasons.  Probably most importantly, he was finally ready for it.  He wanted to change.  I was doing a better job of it, too, since I’d gained a broader vocabulary for talking about it.  Instead of referring to psychopathology or pathological behavior, I could point to narcissistic rage, ingratiation, narcissistic supply, etc.

  And I had a lot of help.  Greyfox developed an interest in spiritual growth and self-improvement.  He read E. J. Gold, Neale Donald Walsch, Deepak Chopra, and others.  He still reads a lot of such inspirational material, and there is ever less and less narcissistic behavior for me to confront.  Instead, we talk about his progress.  He is developing empathy and compassion for the first time in his life.  He has decided to forgive me for having attained some landmarks in personal growth before he did.  The effort he has put into his therapy, and the progress he has made, makes me very glad that I chose to take on the role of therapist with him, but… Don’t try this at home, kids!  It is being done here by a couple of certified loonies.

  
  

  • 9:46 pm
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