First published on the WeChat public account "Broken Thoughts of The Heart" | Author: One Man, One World
All happiness is by no means without troubles and worries, and all adversity is by no means without
Consolation and hope. —Francis Bacon
Perhaps we will find that there is a group of people around us who are always highly vigilant about anyone and often suspect that others are planning to use, deceive or harm them; who feel that they may be being attacked at any time without any reason, who, despite the lack of evidence, still cling to their doubts and ideas, firmly believing that their interests are being violated; and that some of the unintentional words and deeds of others are likely to be "interpreted" by them as people always talking about themselves behind their backs and believing that it is hostility or conspiracy against him Often unwarranted suspicion of a partner in sex. There are infidelities in relationships or otherwise; they can even develop disgusting feelings toward people and can easily suspect that others have these negative emotions toward them.
In the eyes of others, such people tend to be extremely self-righteous and completely self-centered.
They lack a truly clear and stable positioning of themselves, their perception of themselves changes with the changes in their environment and the people they are with; they lack real insight into the attitudes and behaviors of others; their self-esteem is often unrealistically high and low, and they often blame the problems they encounter on those around them, but turn a blind eye to their own negligent behavior and are irresponsible.
As a result, it is difficult for them to form intimate, long-term, stable relationships with others.
That's what we're going to explore today—paranoid personality disorder, or ppd for short, also known as paranoid personality disorder.
I mentioned in my article about anxiety disorders (click on the blue underline font to see the article) that all diseases are the result of the interaction of genes and the environment. The environment includes the social environment, the school environment and the family environment.
Genetic factors aside, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is a personality disorder caused by limited emotional expression and perfectionism;
Borderline personality disorder is caused by physical and mental abuse in childhood, loss of parental love or separation from parents, and insecurity in attachment to caregivers;
Paranoid personality disorder is caused by childhood often being in an environment of constant fear of sudden blame or punishment, or exposure to an environment in which an adult has unpredictable anger and rage, lacks parental love, is often blamed and denied, and is not trusted; growing up suffering continuous blows from life, often encountering setbacks and failures, such as frequent insults or grievances, and he does not have a mechanism to cope or evade.
Patients develop a series of paranoid ways of thinking to relieve coping stress. For example, extremely high standards for the self. Over time, they will treat the expected self (the idealized self) as their true self, and the true self will be suppressed. So (click on the blue underlined font to view the article). It is this internal conflict that leads to their excessive and unwarranted suspicion and externalization into hostility, anger, counterattack, control, and other behaviors.
This is also my mother's third illness, one of the most difficult mental disorders to cure, as with all other types of personality disorders.
If (click on the blue underline to view the article) is usually accompanied by major or persistent depression; (clicking on the blue underscore to view the article) is often accompanied by anxiety, depression, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), eating disorder, or substance use disorder; then the condition of people with paranoid personality disorder is often intertwined with the following disorders:
One or more of the following conditions may occur:
1. Other types of personality disorders (such as borderline personality disorder)
2. Schizophrenia or a disorder similar to schizophrenia (delusions, especially persecution delusions, auditory hallucinations)
3. Somatic symptom disorder (one or more chronic somatic symptoms accompanied by significant and disproportionate symptom-related pain, anxiety and daily dysfunction. ）
4. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
5. Substance use disorders (such as bad drugs, bad alcohol, and various addictive habitual behavior patterns)
6. Some kind of anxiety disorder, such as (insomnia, easy fatigue, muscle tension, irritability, panic disorder, etc.)
In fact, as a patient's family, it is easy to find these mixed diseases from daily life, but most of the time, we have no basis for judgment.
According to the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (dsm-5) in country m, the diagnosis is usually based on the following points: the patient must harbor a deep distrust and suspicion of others, and often regard the motives of others as malicious. This can be seen in a variety of other contexts:
At least 4 of the following points are met:
1. Imagine that others are always deliberately humiliating, using, hurting, exploiting or deceiving themselves.
2. Worry without reason about the loyalty and credibility of their friends or collaborators.
3. Unwilling to confide in others, inexplicably afraid that others will take advantage of this trust, which in turn will cause harm to themselves.
4. Often interpret someone else's words or actions as deliberately demeaning, threatening, or hostile.
5. Long-term resentment towards the events in which you have been hurt, such as being abused, hurt or neglected.
6. As soon as you perceive that your reputation has been attacked, you will immediately show anger or fight back.
7. Repeated suspicion of marital infidelity of a spouse or partner without reason or evidence.
8. Symptoms begin early in adulthood.
That is to say, the patient always associates events as "conspiratorial" and unfounded pre-eminent notions; is extremely suspicious and unfounded to doubt the loyalty of the other half; shows aggressiveness and stubborn tendency to defend the rights of the individual disproportionate to the actual environment; has a tendency to distort facts, often misinterpreting the unintentional or friendly behavior of others as hostility or contempt; extremely critical of others but overly sensitive to their criticism; easy to harbor hatred for a long time, refusing to forgive others for insults, harms, or contempt for themselves ; see yourself as too important.
When it comes to building relationships (especially intimacy), they always act hesitant. The reason is that, on the one hand, the idealized self thinks that he is a superior person, that he tends to exaggerate his belief in his efforts and in what he can achieve, and that he tends to show more or less blatant arrogance, ambition, aggression, or harshness, that he feels self-sufficient, contemptuous of others, and in need of praise and blind obedience.
But on the other hand, the suppressed true self in the mind often feels that he is helpless, submissive, conceited, dependent on others, and eager for emotions.
When these two forms of self-knowledge work at the same time, they are bound to be divided within them, because these two conflicting forces pull him in two very different directions.
When they are internally unable to reconcile this conflict, they take "separation" measures to try to alleviate the conflict. They approach life with either extremely humble or extravagant behavior, but they are not disturbed by contradictions, because in their minds the two selves are completely cut off and have no connection. This is the fundamental reason why they are not self-aware in the eyes of others.
Like my mother, after he was with her stepfather, she gradually put all the cabinets in the house with new locks, and only she had the keys. When we found out and tried to persuade her not to do that, she would say, "You know what, his (stepfather's) daughter has been beating you up, maybe one day he will take all your things and give them to his daughter." ”
In fact, there is nothing valuable in the cabinet at all, it is all some books and other things from the past. But her purpose is to prevent anyone from infringing on her (because she treats me as her own, so violating my interests is tantamount to violating her interests) (whether physical, emotional, or material), even the pillow person. Maybe it was just because one day the stepfather and his daughter said something inadvertent or an unintentional look, in short, there was too much suspicious in her opinion.
Mothers don't think this behavior is very extreme, wrong, and harmful. She has "rationalized" it in her head.
Although the stepfather never complained about it, our psychology was very uncomfortable, and we felt that the stepfather had borne too much suffering that should not be endured.
Another thing is about the mother gradually taking her stepfather's mobile phone for herself. At first, it may be accidental, the stepfather did not have time to answer the phone, asking her to help answer first, which was originally a sign of trust between the family. However, the mother did not stop asking the other party about the intention of the call, and directly refused the invitation of the stepfather's colleague on the other side of the phone, making a decision for the stepfather (seriously crossing the line).
Gradually, she took all of her stepfather's phone calls herself, and if her stepfather didn't want to, she would become suspicious. She even refused to speak to her stepfather to his own daughter and his family. Mother's reasoning was that the family was plotting something against her and us. Later, her stepfather's mobile phone number eventually became her mother's second mobile phone number, and she told many relatives and friends about that number, so that she could use the phone for granted. Later, the stepfather really had no choice but to change the number again. After the stepfather changed the number, the mother gradually did not use the mobile phone number.
All the motivations for fortification and control are due to the need for self-protection.
Ppd patients on the one hand long for emotion, on the other hand, do not want to trust each other, thinking that the other party knows themselves too well will cause disadvantage to themselves. They fear being seen as helpless, submissive, conceited, and dependent on others. This fear of anything that implies helplessness is their most intense fear. So they act disgusted and despised the feeling because it made her feel humiliated (low self-esteem). So taking control of the situation became her best approach.
Why is personality disorder so difficult to cure?
All personality disorders are the result of deviations from the patient's inner experiences and behaviors from the early stages of life. Patients' patterns of thinking, cognition, reaction, and emotional relationships are significantly impaired and permeate every aspect of life for a long time. This long-standing pattern of behavior causes patients to maladapt to their environment, affect their social functioning, and even conflict with others and society.
But ppd patients themselves are often unaware of their own problems. Therefore, they are very convinced that the way they think about the problem is based on the fact that they are absolutely right, so it is always someone else who is wrong.
The concepts that normal people think are reasonable, safe, and acceptable are all distorted in their cognition.
The reason why they are hostile and aggressive is because in their cognition, they are kind, innocent and reasonable, but they do not know why they are always violated and framed by others. This is not their delusion and hallucination, but their real and real feeling of being seriously and irreversibly hurt by others, so they believe that they must always be vigilant to protect themselves from harm, and focus their attention on themselves at all times. This is also the reason why, in the eyes of others, they are too self-centered.
Therefore, they always take a closer look at others and look for clues of potential insults, contempt, threats, and infidelity from their words and deeds, casual actions, and even some dynamic in the other person's social state, look for their hidden meanings, and use them as evidence to support their suspicions, thus proving the correctness of their speculations.
For example, they may distort "the other person wants to help him" to "the other party is implying that he can't complete the task"; or "the other party wants to ask him for help" to "the other party is not at all considerate, thinks he is a free laborer, and takes advantage of him", and so on.
Once they decide they have been insulted or hurt, they will not forgive the other person and will continue to remember it.
They often respond immediately to the damage they perceive, or become angry as a result. Even in some cases, although they can suppress superficial anger, the motivation for internal counterattack is organized into relatively "grandiose" or "polite" language, "euphemistically" expressing their anger, dissatisfaction and counterattack. Because they don't trust anyone, they feel the need to be self-sufficient and take control of the situation.
Of all personality disorders, obsessive-compulsive and paranoid personalities are the most difficult to intervene in.
The reason why it is difficult to treat ppd patients, the complexity of the condition is only one aspect, the most important thing is that it is difficult for patients to have a sense of trust in others, even after long-term observation, it has produced some trust, but if you are not careful, you will immediately be listed by him as a "blacklist". Sometimes they think that the counselor is not trying to help them, but is picking faults with them or attacking them. This increases the difficulty of treatment. Because it takes a long time for a mental or spiritual healer to gain his complete trust in the first place.
Secondly, even if the patient is "willing" to take the initiative to meet with the psychologist and the psychiatrist, their main purpose is: to prove from the counselor that their defensive behavior is justified and reasonable, and to get more defensive methods from the counselor, and how to let the people around them understand their innocence and make everything around them as they wish.
In the next issue, we will focus on the treatment and getting along with ppd patients...
Author: One Man One World, Yoga Astrologer who heals himself with psychology.
If you also desire to heal your wounds and allow your soul to inhabit,
Let the soul be set free, then your arrival, just right.