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Comment by da_chicken | Hacker News Reader

> There is also a healthy debate over the degree to which personality disorders represent a true disorder, or just an extreme personality on the edges of normal distribution.

I'm not sure that's a meaningful distinction. That is to say, a "disorder" should be something that interferes with your ability to function and flourish in a normal environment. I'm not sure it's meaningful to draw a distinction between people who absolutely cannot function and people who merely effectively cannot function. Just because your ankle is sprained and not broken doesn't mean you don't need medical care or that you should be walking.

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Well, if functioning and fluorishing is defined by conformity, this doesn’t seem very meaningful. Some personality disorders allow a high functioning career and social life.

To be clear I am trying to illustrate the idea that a disorder seems inherently devilish to define.

> Some personality disorders allow a high functioning career and social life.

No, they don't, because built into the definition of disorder is the impact it has one someone's life.

Which is a bit of an issue isn’t it. Is Shkreli in Cluster B? Probably, and now he has the impact on his life to prove it. So before that, when he was just incredibly successful, had no criminal record, and seemed able to function at a high level did he have the same disorder? If outcomes represent a diagnostic criteria then it reveals a weakness in understanding or even defining the disorder in question.

It’s important to distinguish between diagnostic criteria, and the disorder itself, if they are actually disorders.

Ok... so most mental “disorders” with high functioning people aren’t actually disorders? The definition seems useless without meaning simply “nonconforming”.

Years ago I dated a woman with a “high functioning” career and from outside apparently normal social life who in retrospect was clearly BPD.

She was very good at hiding her feelings during most casual interactions, and was clever and generous and fun to talk to when calm, but had almost a second personality which would come out when she became even slightly stressed which was bitter and entirely self-centered and extremely manipulative. She was at that stage of her life completely incapable of maintaining a close personal relationship, and she was frequently (on a daily basis) under extreme stress about perceived grievous slights from everyone around her that were to an outside observer inconsequential mistakes or misunderstandings, and she was harboring numerous long-term grudges.

It seemed like she knew she had a problem, and during times where she wasn’t stressed out would regret her outbursts and seemed to wish she generally had better emotional control. She seemed generally pretty miserable about it, but maybe I was projecting based on the way her problems made me feel.

I dated a high-functioning borderline as well. It was a horrible experience, but in retrospect I'm (kind of) grateful to have learned about personality disorders as a result. I guess I learned a lot about myself too.

I feel absolutely awful for people who date high-functioning borderlines and never learn about it. At least with the ones who are low-functioning, you absolutely know something is deeply wrong with them at all points in the relationship. With a high-functioning one, you second-guess yourself constantly.

I really do think there needs to be more general awareness about Cluster B personality disorders. The occurrence rate among the population is low, but the nature of the disorder means a high-functioning borderline establishes relationships with (and potentially harms) a large number of people. It's hard for victims to seek help when they don't even know the name or nature of what they're dealing with.

People generally don't write glowing reviews of their exes, so forgive my skepticism of your and parent's anecdotes.

The event that ended the relationship was: I was talking to her nice (edit: male) roommate about politics or something at about midnight while she went to bed apparently in a good mood. Turns out that was unacceptable, and she came back out of her room 20 minutes later, started berating me for it while I was confused, escalated to shouting at me for an hour while I remained calm, and finally threatened to call the cops on me. I walked a couple miles home at 2 AM through a snowstorm, while she sent me 10 desperate text messages. I never talked to her again, though I spent months agonizing about it (to the point of panic attacks), because I felt guilty that she desperately needed help and I thought I might be able to help her through continuing to patiently and reliably engage with her (it didn’t seem like anyone else was around to help her), and I liked and respected her as a person, but decided I couldn’t take it for my own mental health.

We only dated for a relatively short time, but it took me a move across the country and a year to sort out my feelings and start dating again.

YMMV.

For those taking notes, your girlfriend may respond negatively to going to bed alone while you have one-on-one time with her friend or roommate (or any other woman) late at night, especially if the other is being "nice."

Yes, it’s reasonable and entirely within the realm of normal human feelings to not want to go to bed alone while your boyfriend continues a conversation with your male roommate. It is reasonable and normal to feel upset that this desire wasn’t implicitly obvious to your boyfriend.

But the typical response to a minor misunderstanding like that is to make the communication more explicit with a simple request that the boyfriend come to bed and share that you felt upset about it, trusting that your caring boyfriend will feel sorry, make a note and try to do better next time. Not to lead with accusations of ill intent and quickly escalate to a full range of emotional manipulation and threats of physical violence.

FYI you're responding to a borderline on a throwaway. Don't waste your time.

Don't you think calling out somebody as having BPD based on a couple comments discredits your BPD anecdote somewhat?

Had a pretty similar relationship. I was the one that wanted to get back together though. But this one time he didn't apologize and did the most incredible 180 on me. Never felt so hated, almost killed myself [0]. I tried to engage once in a while, sometimes he would too. But would never act/talk "normal" again. He found a new bf and talked about how much he loved him just to make me sad [1]. And one day just minutes after insulting me all of a sudden he starts talking like the old him again. Wanted to meet up. Was so happy. He wanted to just hook up tho, not into that, but still I wouldn't outright say know, was very happy to meet him anyways. I tried saying something like "lets go eat something and we'll see what happens", but he snapped and started berating me again. And that was the final end of us, never messaged him again and neither did he.

[0] which what made me start reading about BPD [1] he'd either talk about this or berate me, wouldn't mention anything else, work or anything. We were always super chatty about literally everything so yea

Maybe you just need to know better people.

> I feel absolutely awful for people who date high-functioning borderlines and never learn about it. ... I really do think there needs to be more general awareness about Cluster B personality disorders.

But people are increasingly aware of it. The "creepy abuser" (male) and the "crazy chick" (female) are stereotypes for a reason, and both of these seem to closely match Cluster B. More specifically, people are also becoming aware of Cluster B's associated dysfunctional thought patterns, and how to mitigate those, or at least how to effectively counter e.g. the gaslighting, unprovoked outbursts/tantrums, fanciful accusations, etc. that result from such thought patterns.

Right, everyone knows the stereotypes, but not everyone knows that there's an identifiable condition behind it, with signs and patterns that are identifiable and uniform, as well as support for victims.

>More specifically, people are also becoming aware of Cluster B's associated dysfunctional thought patterns, and how to mitigate those, or at least how to effectively counter e.g. the gaslighting, unprovoked outbursts/tantrums, fanciful accusations, etc. that result from such thought patterns.

I also like to think that this is true, but I still don't think awareness is spreading as fast as it should be. We'll get there, though, right?

Homosexuality was considered a disorder until fairly recently

Yes, so was gender identity disorder (i.e., transgender) which was often classified with pedophillia or body integrity disorder.

There is no frame of reference for psychology to use except society and general assessments of normality and expected behavior. That mean the only method to determine whether or not something is a disorder at all is a) determine the impact of the condition on the individual's ability to function, and b) determine whether or not the condition results in harm to the individual or others. These are both very subjective measures. The fact that we think we're more right today than we were yesterday is really pretty immaterial.

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