Living with a Personality Disorder

1. Understanding Personality Disorders:

Personality disorders are characterised by enduring patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviour that differ from societal norms and expectations. These disorders encompass various conditions, including borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and avoidant personality disorder, among others. Each disorder presents its unique challenges, but they all share the common thread of causing significant distress and impairing functioning.

There are three types of personality disorder whereby your behaviour might be said by others to be unusual or eccentric, or you might find it hard to control your emotions, or have strong feelings of fear or anxiety.

2. The Emotional Experience:

You may feel intense emotions that fluctuate rapidly, leading to feelings of confusion, instability, and anxiety. This emotional turmoil often impacts their ability to interpret and manage relationships and can result in strained connections with family, friends, and coworkers. You may find your emotions tiring and hard to control and you may develop other mental health concerns like depression or anxiety. To cope you might use alcohol, drugs or self harm.

3. Identity Struggles:

You may struggle with identity, feeling uncertain about who you are or where you fit in the world. This lack of self-clarity can lead to a constant search for validation and feel overwhelming, leaving you feeling lost, fragmented, and disconnected from your own life.

4. Relationships:

Difficulty with emotional regulation, fear of abandonment, and a tendency to view relationships as either all-good or all-bad can strain connections and push loved ones away. These patterns can become self-fulfilling, perpetuating the cycle of distress and isolation.

5. Daily Life:

The impact of personality disorders extends beyond personal relationships. The challenges with emotion regulation and impairments in self-identity often seep into daily life. Simple tasks can become overwhelming, and maintaining stable employment or pursuing education may be compromised. This can lead to financial instability, diminished self-esteem, and a sense of failure, further augmenting the felt sense of emotional burden.

Diagnosis of personality disorders

Our Practice is an independent private clinic able to offer clinical assessments, psychological interventions and further psychotherapy and counselling to adults over 18 years.

We can offer specialised assessments for diagnostic and/or clinical purposes. Assessments include providing evaluation of the meaning and possible neuropsychological causes of the concerns. Personality disorder assessment includes: a questionnaire beforehand, a 2-hour full initial assessment and one hour follow up appointment where clinical opinion, recommendations and suggested treatment plan will be provided and discussed. 

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