5 Personality Disorders That People Mistake For Narcissism

Inflexibility having a very narrow emotional expression and having a lot of difficulty establishing close relationships and maintaining those close relationships a lot of it because of this rigidity and this um and sort of this need to get Garner all of their identity through work now borderline personality disorder has a lot of relationship to narcissism in General and you're going to see even as I describe borderline personality Styles in general you'll see where some of the overlaps are but you're also going to see where it's quite distinct borderline personality disorder is really characterized by one word

and that one word is instability it's instability and identity instability in how a person views themselves instability in a person's goals instability in relationships instability And emotions and then that instability is also accompanied by other behavioral issues such as impulsivity risk taking and chronic manifestations of hostility and difficulties with anger management when we look at the overall symptomatology of borderline personality disorder we're looking at patterns such as abandonment is a major issue people with borderline personality are frequently engaging in frantic efforts to avoid any form of Abandonment real or Imagined there's a pattern of very

unstable interpersonal relationships and these relationships tend to be characterized by going between two sorts of poles between an extreme of idealizing somebody the bad thing they're the best thing that ever happened to them and utter devaluation but a lot of going between the two another common element of borderline personality that we see is disturbances And identity a person with this personality style will have a very unstable sense of self and a very unstable just general self-image we see tendency impulsivity and impulsivity can be in a variety of areas and usually areas that are self-damaging this

would be things like risky sex with potentially dangerous Partners reckless driving substance use indiscriminate spending Behaving having discontrol behavior with food that sort of thing we can see recurrent suicidal Behavior recurrent suicidal gestures recurring suicidal threats or self-harming behavior for example self-mutilation we tend to see overall emotional instability and this most likely manifests through a reactivity of mood so the person has very strong emotional reactions to situations and this can be Intense episodes of depression intense episodes of irritability and these can last for just a few hours all the way to a few days people

who have borderline personality Styles will often say that they feel empty there will be issues with being a very major difficulty with Inc controlling anger they can have inappropriate intense anger and lots of trouble controlling or holding back on displays Of that anger and in some cases you can also see what we call transient um transient means sort of passing stress paranoid ideation due to stress so that's the kind of thing where a person really starts to feel paranoid and that gets intensified under conditions of stress really feeling that people are out to harm them

out to get them or you might even see dissociative symptoms in people with borderline personality when They're under stress so as you can see this is generally a pattern of instability anger acting out and despair now when we think about borderline personality disorder in line with narcissistic abuse let's start let's start by talking about what happens when a person who has borderline personality style isn't a narcissistically abusive relationship in a word it is a volatile very messy potentially very dangerous situation The narcissistic relationship as we know has this cycle right love bombing devaluation discarding can

you imagine how that plays out for somebody who really really struggles with abandonment so as a result when a person with a borderline personality style gets into a relationship with somebody who has a very strong narcissistic personality style you'll see numerous volatile crises play out around abandonment around how um Different shows of Cruelty from one to the other very strong outbursts of emotion these relationships can be so volatile that it's actually quite dangerous for children to witness them or be in the presence of them sometimes they can escalate to violence but there's a tremendous amount

of chaos and the narcissistic abuse can actually culminate in significant crisis for a person who has borderline personality and frequently feels abandoned in a Relationship with a narcissistic partner or in a relationship characterized by narcissistic abuse both when we see um when we see people are narcissistic and we see people with borderline personality Styles we see that dysregulation right and that dysregulation can really play out so in fact when sometimes when people are in a relationship with somebody with Borderline personality they'll report that the impacts of the dysregulation really take a toll on them there's

another interesting overlap is that that there's a there are overlaps in terms of Abandonment abandonment is an issue for people who are narcissistic abandonment is a very big issue for people with borderline personality and as a result you'll really see the sort of approach avoidance style people who really go in and almost get like too Intensely enmeshed with each other and then they as soon as they feel like they're getting too close somebody always runs away the other one tries to pull the other one back and it really seems almost like this senseless chaotic Carousel

of breaking up and getting back together breaking up and getting back together because people who are narcissistic are so contemptuous that contemptuousness for anybody really stings it feels awful Because it really does feel like someone's almost disgusted with us well in situations of narcissistic abuse that sort of contemptuous rejecting disgusted emotion that gets expressed if a person with borderline symptomatology is in a narcissistically abusive relationship just that contemptuous disregard can trigger those abandonment symptoms and an abandonment crisis the suicidal acting out that is not uncommon in borderline personality can Make these relationships very dangerous when

they're characterized by narcissistic abuse because what can often happen is that the abandonment crisis can set off a suicidal acting out suicidal gestures Suicidal Thoughts because abandonment crises are such a classical part of a narcissistically abusive relationship that can set off these suicidal crises more and more often and there's a real danger to that but in that an attempt could escalate to The point obviously where a person could lose their life or do signif such significant harm to themselves that it cannot be it cannot be turned back it could do severe damage to themselves physically

for example so in in a nutshell narcissistic abuse within the context of borderline personality is really really a messy potentially dangerous clinical space no when we think about narcissism and Borderline personality disorder there are definitely overlaps if we were to look at all the personality disorders sort of On a related continuum borderline and narcissistic personalities are contiguous they touch each other theoreticians like Otto kernberg quite frankly when he described and he's a major theoretician when it comes to narcissism and narcissistic personality Disorder if you read his writings the way he describes narcissism and narcissistic personality

it actually resembles borderline personality as its list is described in the DSM so the overlap has often been well known what we do see for example in borderline personality is a real variability in empathy there are times when there's no significant stress present and where there's not an abandonment crisis being activated a person with borderline Personality actually will often have excessive empathy be deeply attuned to other people very caring almost to a fault like where they're actually giving up too much of themselves to be present for another however when stress or abandon abandonment or some

other crisis gets activated that empathy really dissipates it's as though then the person's entirely focused on trying to Stave off abandonment and then it can turn into a place of rage and that rage Isn't always rage out at other people in borderline personality it can also be rage inward which is where we hear the terrible negative things that people with borderline personality will say about themselves or think about themselves or the self-harming behavior but there can be some overlap when we look at what I call sort of pure borderline personality Styles we see a lot

of Despair we see a lot of internal pain the ability to express that pain a Sense of helplessness with the symptomatology wishing there was a way to address it very aware of the harm this is causing to other people almost sometimes actually quite insightful at moments of what we call Lucidity when they'll say I recognize what I'm doing is not okay and I'm going to burn this relationship up with all my fears that you're cheating on me or going away from me or abandoning me I'm aware of that and I'm so sorry for all the

chaos I'm Causing that's the kind of reflection you can hear from somebody with pure borderline it starts getting messy when both borderline and narcissistic symptoms are present in the same individual when you see both narcissistic and borderline symptoms in the same person we may see less Insight much more externalized anger the screaming the yelling the Raging at others more manipulative Behavior more entitlement so and a Subsequently more boundary violations still that despair but a lot of other patterns that are interpersonally much much more challenging so yes there is a relationship between the two and again

this gets into much much deeper theoretical musings about this topic but when you really think of it as a Continuum pure narcissism we know that the lack of empathy entitlement arrogance all that pure borderline very despairing but that overlap Can often result in this rather panicky angry acting out manipulative style that is often interestingly often viewed in line with how a lot of people think of borderline personality but in fact is a little bit different it's not that purest type that's much much more despair oriented now when we think about the treatment of borderline personality

disorder actually the treatment outcomes here may be better than they are for any personality Disorder there is Marshall linehan's work in the development of dialectical behavior therapy has definitely shown some good outcomes and particularly on the more severe elements of borderline personality such as emotional regulation around suicidal Behavior there's been numerous clinical studies that show that the use of DBT the dialectical behavior therapy with people who have borderline personality or borderline Personality disorder does decrease the number of suicidal attempts and events cognitive behavioral therapy has also been shown to be useful helping people understand better

their thoughts and their beliefs and their subsequent Behavior this idea for example a person with borderline personality can really really assume that people are going to leave them and then communicate with another person as though they are when they're not Teaching people about those patterns medications are often brought to bear in borderline personality people who prescribe medications may use a combination of things including antidepressants mood stabilizing medications antipsychotic medications and anti-anxiety anxiety medications for that you'd have to see a psychiatrist or a psychiatric nurse practitioner who can engage in more education specific to the symptoms

somebody's having to come up With sort of the perfect medication balance if that's what's indicated and there's always a need for long-term Psychotherapy this is not something that's going to be knocked out in five or six or eight or ten sessions this is often longer term clinical work a combination of individual therapy group therapy doing long-term work doing work between sessions and workbooks and homework and all of that so it's a long-term commitment however it does Work and many people who really have the right treatment for borderline personality really do see changes they're able to

regulate emotion better and manage relationships in a better way another important piece of borderline personality disorder is that the vast majority of people with borderline personality disorder have a co-occurring mental health condition like a mood disorder or an anxiety disorder or substance use disorder so a big part of The treatment is also managing those co-occurring conditions which can get worse in light of having co-occurring borderline personality occurring with them so histrionic personality disorder is is a is a personality disorder that's actually about to probably be retired as they're making decisions in the DSM about which

personality disorders are going to keep this one looks like it's going to get the ax it's a rather unfortunately named disorder the Disorder is basically a pathologization of a woman's body histrionic come from Hysteria which comes from wandering uterus and you know the rest of that story so it's a problematic word but it's the word we've got because it's the word they use and I'm very aware that it's a problematic word so let's talk a little bit about what this thing called histrionic personality disorder is in a word this is a disorder that's very much

characterized by shallowness it's a Person who's excessively and exaggeratedly emotional constantly attention seeking and these are these the patterns we say here are things like a person who's very uncomfortable when they're not the center of attention their interactions with other people are often characterized by being seductive or inappropriately sexual very very very flirtatious it feels like boundary violating flirtatious their emotions are very rapidly shifting they use their Physical appearance to draw attention to themselves they will enhance themselves they'll be very dressed they'll often dress quite provocatively in a way that would attract attention or outlandishly

there's their speech is very um it's very impressionistic and that's a what that really means when we say something is impressionistic what we mean is that it's very how do I put it like it'd be someone like saying I met someone and we had the most magical Connection and I feel this magic energy between us I'm like what does that mean so there's no there there when these folks are talking very does it lacks details they talk in these sort of big broad strokes but you're you want to say to them what exactly do you

mean this is a very self-dramatizing kind of a personality so a very theatrical very exaggerated I guess like I'm doing that lots of gesturing you know the there again Theatrical is really the best word very suggestible it's very easy for them to be influenced by other people and in this way they can actually fall for all kinds of cons and scams and even conspiracies of all kinds like they can easily be influenced and they can be easily tricked and as a result sometimes may spend money on things that are um they're being told this is

a magical cure for something and like sign me up Or if you take this class you'll learn everything on all the secrets for the rest of life sure sign me up and so they're very vulnerable to those kinds of mechanisms and they actually consider relationships to be closer than they actually are so they'll meet someone once and think this is my best friend or they'll tell you after meeting you once I love you and you'll say wow okay and so there's there's a real Assumption of intimacy and closeness which obviously Can't be the case when

you've known someone a short time and it really speaks to the deficits we see in Intimacy in people with a histrionic personality Style folks like this are very inappropriate and it's interesting because this is a pattern that has been called by some researchers as what we call ego syntonic people who are who have this histrionic personality style actually don't have much insight into the idea that these Patterns are a problem and they're actually a little bit surprised when other people are bothered by them or their relationships start going South the prevalence of this is about

two to three percent just like we see across most of the personality disorders now this time I'm going to go in the other direction and talk about how narcissism links to histrionic personality style because it'll help us talk about narcissistic abuse a little Bit more clearly I have always believed that histrionic personality and is really sort of narcissism light it's a reason I think it actually probably does need to be retired because I think a lot of these patterns might almost be sort of the mildest levels of narcissistic personality Styles they're very very close in

presentation now obviously much more in line with the grandiose narcissistic style think about it the Histrionic style has amongst its diagnostic criteria things like being attention seeking not and and feeling uncomfortable when they're not the center of attention being seductive have shout having shallow emotions being overly focused on their appearance talking in the sort of shallow way where they're not really saying anything being grandiose being overly concerned about other people having poor boundaries this definitely feels like narcissism light And there's another pattern we tend to see in people who are histrionic they tend to be

psychologically image mature for their entire life not just as like young adults like they'll be 70 and still have this very very childish immature presentation youthful in in ways that sort of seem like that ship has kind of sailed and so again it's a real kind of a psychological immaturity that we see in them a stuntedness of storage which can Be fine on a happy Summer's afternoon but in the day-to-day it's really unsustainable like I said this is a diagnostic group a diagnostic style I should say this personality disorder that's probably going to get booted

from the DSM but it really is a lot of this gets absorbed by the narcissistic style and might be more of a stylistic issue this sort of attention-seeking shallow style more than a disorder per se when people with histrionic personality sort Of find themselves having more of the disorder issues where it's causing impairment or it's causing distress it's because it's you usually blowing up their relationships and they're going from relationship to relationship and people are leaving them because they find this to be a very immature kind of a relationship Style now when we shift gears

to narcissistic abuse Given how much of an overlap there is between histrionic personality and narcissism you can see that somebody's gonna it's gonna have similar impacts on someone in a relationship with them maybe not as severe because as I said histrionic personality almost feels like narcissism light so let's start with if this is your parent you have a parent who has more of a histrionic presentation many times people will then feel like They are becoming the parent to this person even as a child because like let's say you have a mom like this it's always

the mom show it's always the dad show the drama their passions their stuff and you're always feeling like you're always having to indulge this really immature parent a child with a parent like this can feel sometimes even ashamed and embarrassed around their parents attention-seeking Behavior their immaturity their Inappropriateness or even their flirtatiousness or their seductiveness it can be really sort of again shame inducing for someone and because these are parents who often don't have deep empathy or or have the capacity to make a deep connection they can really be emotionally unavailable parents but then these

are parental these really big strong of emotions like hey everyone let's turn the house into a circus today and so it'll feel fun like Okay we'll have a circus but at the same time you're thinking but tomorrow is a school day and I still need to get my homework done so there's this always this Push Pull if you live in this fun fun place but a child can sort of start feeling panicky if there's really no adult kind of keeping the trains running on time and so a child may feel that they need to parent

their image or a parent and say Mom it's coming to dinner time it'll be 10 o'clock and they'll Still be setting up the darn circus so for those of you who grew up like this you know it and while it's it may not have the same you're not enoughness that we see in narcissistic abuse it's still the sense of confusion a still a sense of um sometimes shame and still a sense of what is going on here like a sense of self-doubt because a child is really having to step in and sort of parent their

parent In a close intimate relationship the histrionic personality symptoms can result in a greater likelihood of patterns we also see on narcissistically abusive relationships like infidelity or really really uncomfortable embarrassing lack of boundaries on the on behalf of an of a histrionic partner a person once again may feel like they're in a relationship with sort of a an adolescent even though it's an adult relationship And because we know that in some cases you can have a lot of this sort of shallow immature theatrical emotional histrionic stuff alongside traditional narcissism and if you have both of

those things happening at the same time it actually does feel like really toxic narcissistic abuse and Incredibly frustrating it's actually not unusual for a person with histrionic personality disorder or histrionic patterns to end up in Relationships with narcissistic people the grandiose Zaza zoo and Pizzazz of a narcissistic person is actually quite appealing to a person who has a histrionic personality style and when that sort of grandiose arrogant controlling unempathic narcissism meets up The Superficial emotionality but the equal incapacity for intimacy we see in a histrionic person it's sort of interesting especially in the love bombing

phase we can see a lot of talk Of twin flames and magical relationships and magical connections and this is a you know this is something that's Transcendent and no one's ever experienced this before it's like you've got two people in this sort of shared strange space with each other but as is often the case in any narcissistic relationship at some point the narcissistic person will probably lose patience with the histrionic style person and then these end up becoming Very very volatile relationships where the history where for example a narcissistic a partner will become very jealous

of a histrionic partner going being out there drawing attention to themselves and flirting so you can see where this goes isn't it it's very very explosive in terms of treatment like most personality patterns and personality disorders histrionic personality can be pretty treatment resistant mostly Because of the lack of insight Because unless something else goes wrong in the life of somebody with histrionic personality they are not likely to come in for therapy and they're not likely to turn this style off they think there's nothing wrong and they actually think everyone else is like oh you're such

a you're such a big old you know wet blanket you're not fun and you know gosh why do you have to be so stodgy in this so you always feel like you have to be The grown-up when you're around this person it's interesting when you see people with histrionic personalities and they get into later life like 70s and 80s they remain sort of childlike and shallow and attention seeking all the way through there's a still that sort of strange theatrical quality to them and and it's the but it's interesting that theatrical part is more ridiculous

but it's not the part that's disruptive in This relation in this um personality style it's the shallowness of their emotions and their inability to connect with other people with any kind with other people with any kind of depth that's what causes problems for them so as a result people with histrionic personalities may go into later life sometimes will continue to date pretty vigorously into their older age but it's hard because they may not have Consistent relationships consistent caregivers and you may find if you're the adult child of a histrionic nurse a histrionic parent or a

parent with histrionic personality style you feel very frustrated that you feel like you're babysitting a teenager but in fact this teenager is 85 years old but treatment not so much I mean again if they start experiencing some other mental health issue they may go in for that but it's hard work for the Therapist who's still often having to bat up against this more histrionic personality style let's talk a little bit about this passive aggressive negativistic personality some of you might say I didn't know that this was a thing in the mental health realm and it

is interestingly it it's not something that has sort of an official diagnosis it's not like there's no official diagnosis of passive aggressive personality disorder there was some Consideration of it at a time but it's not there but I think it's really important to understand these themes you'll see that they overlap into a lot of the other personality disorders but it helps you especially you'll see to understand narcissism so when we think of a passive aggressive style or a negativistic style the patterns we're looking at is a person who chronically feels a sense of being misunderstood

they feel chronically Unappreciated they're often very Sullen they're very argumentative they often want to defy authority and they don't like authority figures telling them what to do they resent the success and the Good Fortune of other people they often complain of their own misfortune and they vacillate between what we call Defiance and Contrition so they vacillate between I'm not going to follow the rules to oh I don't want to Get in trouble for not following the rules sorry about that because as much as they have a lot of bite they don't like to get caught

and some of you I know are sitting and watching this and girls you're talking about covert narcissists yeah kinda sorta and this is very much a strong theme in that presentation now as I said this is not a diagnostic category in the DSM or the ICD in any of the diagnostic manuals it didn't get taken into sort of its own Phenomenon I think that's unfortunate because I think that list of patterns really are problematic from a personality style but I also have to say the overlap in that list is very heavy with personality Styles including

the narcissistic style the paranoid style and the obsessive compulsive personality style someone who's a very famous personality research he's since passed but people are still still doing the work on his sort of what we call Taxonomy or organizing system is a guy named Theodore Milan and he was somebody who really kind of punched out this particular style and I actually appreciate his work in this area because I think it's important to understand it for those of us who are therapists but also those of you who may be on the receiving end now this is one

of those times I'm going to talk about narcissism and its relation to this pattern first because then I'm going to be able to Explain the narcissistic abuse piece of this now again you just listened to this and you're saying well that's everything that happens with a covert narcissist isn't it yeah it is and we know that passive aggressiveness is a massive part of the presentation of covert narcissism I would actually say and I think other people have written about this too that the grandiose and the malignant narcissist in particular could be called actively aggressive and

the covert Narcissist is more passively aggressive right so they're not you know they may not culminate you know as much of the screaming in your face as this sort of sullen resentful kind of Rage but then they really bristle against people telling them what to do I often liken it to them being sort of the um the Adolescent boy who doesn't want to empty the dishwasher if you ask them even to do something simple I want to do that I mean it's annoying enough from a 15 year Old boy it's really annoying when it's from

a 45 year old boy man so the many things that are that comprise this sort of covert narcissist that constant brooding anger at the world the entitled victimization their unrealized grandiosity and not being able to do the next big thing all of that Fosters the holding of grudges and then subsequently even more Insidious abuse at everybody because I feel like the world has conspired to Stop them from reaching their grandiose sorts of goals it also overlaps with that Oppositional Defiant style and and again this constant argumentativeness and their unwillingness to follow rules like they will

do they'll even do things that are almost like little violations of rules usually not enough to get into trouble or be afoul to breaking the law but enough to cause distress or problems for other people Now much more importantly let's talk about then narcissistic abuse in light of this passive aggressive negativistic Style this style this personality style because it's so often in line with narcissism is what makes narcissistic abuse so exhausting okay because many of you are exhausted this stuff is what makes it so exhausting and it's a really big contributor to stuff like that

walking on eggshells and the having to Validate them just to keep the trains running just because they constantly feel like Sullen sad victims it really drives things like the silent treatment it drives the constant arguments about every little thing like emptying the dishwasher it's anger about being told what to do once again those little things you might ask them to do well I don't have to do that I don't want to do that it's a lot of that this sort of contemptuous spoiled teenager kind of Stuff very big on don't tell me what to do

that's a very passive aggressive style they don't like that sense that somebody else and this is why these people don't do well at jobs because because they really resent and they always think that the workplace is deeply unfair very much part of this passive aggressive style these folks tend to have this low-grade anger they're almost like chronic mouth intense all the time Initially because the passive aggressive style because it's in covert narcissism often sits alongside sort of a certain level of anxiety you may have even tried to appease them like oh come on now life

isn't that bad or it's all going to be fine you might have actually tried to piece them try to tell them no things will be okay for them nothing you say is going to change this and when you're in a relationship with somebody who may have a narcissistic Style very much tinged by this passive aggressive and negativistic style you may have actually become more isolated as a result of a relationship because it's actually embarrassing their behavior they're so Sullen they're so grumpy they make everyone around them miserable that it's embarrassing to be with them and

be associated with them in public they can be very very impolite with other people because of the Stars this style it's always sort of a Grumbling under their breath and again this anger that never quite quite dissipates now it's a um when we look at the passive aggressive negativistic style what we know is that because they're so difficult many times life doesn't go the way that they want sometimes it does but usually it doesn't which only fuels more of the passive aggression but because this sort of passive aggressive overlay on top of narcissism Results in

people with who are narcissistic with this style are even less socially skilled they're not going to be the ones who can build strong collegial relationships in the workplace they're not able to sort of play politics at work and sort of climb up the ranks that way they are not going to be able to attract new clients or sales leads because they're kind of again there's sort of this undergoing kind of anger they don't have that usual charm And Charisma front-facing game of your more classical grandiose narcissist it's a very unpleasant style thus it's called negativistic

and their lack of success for people who have this passive aggressive negativistic style in line with the rest of the covert narcissistic stuff it becomes this brooding rage that they carry around with them all the time and when again that plus the narcissism they tend to blame everyone else for their all of their hardships everyone Their Partners their families of origin their children in their co-workers the people who park in front of their house everyone over time your pity your need to rescue them will give way to exhaustion and then potentially even discussed the key

to trying to get out of one of these situations sooner rather than later is to not let the guilt and that and sometimes yeah the guilt more than anything that can be evoked by these Passive aggressive Styles impede your ability to just set a boundary there's a point at which you're like this is just too unpleasant and I'm sorry you know all these bad things happen it's not unusual for people with this personality style for people to think they're depressed or sometimes for the passive aggressive negativistic person to say I am depressed I'm on antidepressants

because probably a therapist didn't know what to do with them and then people Will sometimes feel bad and feel like well I can't step away from them that's not very nice maybe they're angry because they're depressed the depression never goes away they keep being passive aggressive and then the longer you're in it the harder it is to set the boundaries now in terms of treatment not not so much possibility as with most of these really difficult personality Styles I think there's probably some hopeful and Optimistic therapists that will throw some cognitive behavioral therapy at this

when I've worked with clients like this you know the best I could do is sort of put a mirror in front of them and say you want to see what this sounds like by and large they really just remain permanently stuck in their victimized thought loops and you know often sort of kind of unaware of what they're doing to other people every so often it'll break through they're like You know this is sort of unpleasant for other people but again it's very much a manifestation that we see in the covert narcissistic style causes lots of

problems in as a function of narcissistic abuse today we're going to be talking about obsessive compulsive personality disorder what is that you say obsessive compulsive personality disorder and this is not obsessive-compulsive disorder I'll talk About the difference in between the two in a minute but obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and I'm going to call this OC PD because it's going to be a mouthful if I have to keep saying it but ocpd is characterized by this sort of sense of workaholism workaholicism uh rigid perfectionism inflexibility uh having a very narrow emotional expression and having a lot of

difficulty establishing close relationships and maintaining Those close relationships a lot of it because of this rigidity and this um and sort of this need to get Garner all of their identity through work so there's a there's a preoccupation with being orderly with perfectionism with always being in control mental control relationship control and these people do not have a capacity for being open to New Perspectives or different points of view being flexible or being efficient they're also very inefficient they tend To be really mean cheap again rigid controlling self-righteous they're very much Workaholics they're perfectionistic and

they always choose work or work related things over relationships the best way I can say put obsessive ocpd or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder in a way you might understand it is that these are people who are really good about sending thank you notes but they're really bad at authentic gratitude So I want to just also make a point between the difference between obsessive compulsive personality and obsessive-compulsive disorder in obsessive-compulsive disorder the person is having these intrusive unwanted thoughts these compulsive behaviors usually designed to offset those intrusive thoughts or correct them or cope with the anxiety from

them it's very time consuming to engage in these Obsessions and compulsions but it's not this it's not this sort of orderly Obsession some people with OCD may have that kind of their focus is on symmetry but not all and people with obsessive compulsive personality disorder may or may not be anxious and whatever rituals they have sort of make sense they're inefficient and strange like they'll make these weird strange color-coded binders and spend three days doing it but still not make the deadline because They spent so much time doing the binder the binder makes sense but

it was a bad use of time that's very different than a person feeling like they have to count ceiling tiles to come down from you know relax from an obsessive thought so I hope that makes sense that there's a very much a difference it's really dumb that this is what they named this disorder it's a very foolishly named disorder but we're sort of stuck with it so when we look at this diagnostically The kinds of patterns we see in somebody with ocpd is that they get really over focused on rules and details and schedules and

organizations so much so that they almost lose the point of the activity like they'll have this they'll be planning a birthday party and they'll have this big binder that's all about the birthday party and they'll get upset that something's not color-coded right and they lose track of the whole idea that this was supposed to be a joyous Birthday party they're very perfectionistic so much so that it gets in the way of actually getting a project done because they're so perfectionistic like if it's not perfect here it's not perfect there then they'll just keep at it

so it's just it's very inefficient they're they're completely devoted to work and being productive they don't have any leisure time they don't have any friendships it's all they're about they're very very Um they're rigid about matters of things like associated with being morality values ethics and completely inflexible and that's not kind of always how life works so for example they may think that divorce is very wrong and that you have to stick out a marriage no matter what and then sometimes a friend you know on this channel a lot of you know what that territory

is like that doesn't work out and they'll find that somebody with this personality style would say well I Believe marriage is forever and if you couldn't make that work well I guess you don't see through your word and there's a lot of them very it feels grotesque almost interpersonally for their rigidity like well a person's gotta build themselves up by their bootstraps and so you might literally have like a terrible medical bill for your child and your insurance doesn't cover it and you're you ever may have a parent with this ocpd and they have more

than enough Money they'll say well it's bootstraps and you know I don't think it's morally right to give you the money in your family might actually go to financial ruin even though there was the ability to provide for that interestingly they're not able to throw things out like old shoes or old clothes or anything that's worn out not because it has sentimental value but because they're cheap so they'll hold on to things forever and it may not Necessarily be to a point of hoarding but it'll be there all this old stuff and they'll say oh

this jacket still works and it's like from 1960s and it smells like you know mothballs and mildew um they're reluctant to delegate work to other people unless that those other people do things exactly the way they want so they won't let other people do it and then they'll say it has to be this way and so it's Almost impossible and by the time they get so involved they might as well have done it themselves the first place they're very very miserly with money they've hoard money and they hoard money for themselves but they will not

spend money on other people and so it's very again very very miserly very very not generous um they will be like they'll put like a spending limit you know so you might be married to someone like this and they Put put a spending limit like we don't spend more than a hundred dollars on gifts and it's like your 25th anniversary and it's like well you've got that hundred dollar limit and very cheap they're cheap and they're very rigid and they're very stubborn so you can see this is a relatively unpleasant style um I don't even

know why it's in the more sort of anxious avoidant cluster of personality disorders it is but I really Find it to be sort of an offensive kind of very difficult style and it's not made for relationships now as you can imagine and in this video I'm going to start by talking about the overlaps with narcissism because it'll set us up better to talk about how this would overlap with narcissistic abuse the overlaps between narcissism and ocpd some of you are already watching this and hearing what I'm saying and saying oh heck this wow this I

thought this was Narcissism is this ocpd the answer is it may very well be both let's think about it let's break it down a little right you've got the perfectionism you have this idea of getting identity from work and money the choosing work and choosing status over personal relationships that self-righteousness and that domination through moral superiority the being controlling the financial manipulation and that rigidity that all very much Overlaps with narcissism ocpd is also a style characterized by limited empathy and an over focus on details and on work over the feelings of other people and

there's a sort of an absolute disinterest in having interpersonal relationships now it's one difference would be a narcissistic person typically needs interpersonal relationships because they need supply for people with ocpd they get annoyed by interpersonal Relationships because they not only distract them from work they also feel like they're expensive that it costs money um some of you have heard me in other videos talk about the self-righteous narcissist and the neglectful narcissist this ocpd pattern when it overlaps with narcissism this is when we see those patterns of self-righteous narcissists and the neglectful narcissist that's a Lot

of this overlap now those of you who have gone through really brutal divorces with narcissistic people you know what that felt like they would fight you to the death so they didn't have to pay spousal support ocpd people hate paying spousal support even if they make a million dollars a year and you don't they There's Something about making a regular payment in a divorce it's very very much a part of this personality Style And this this is the kind of divorce where you were arguing down to the wire about every Fork every cup I mean

the last the number of miles on the car like it's every little thing that you would have seen this that's that ocpd overlay those of you who might have had that very hyper moral and very self-righteous parent they always sent flowers at the right time they'd always make sure those thank you notes got out but they would also be very judgmental Very cold not emotionally available as a parent so you saw all these sorts of benchmarks getting hit the flowers the thank you notes everything was sort of done in the sort of moral appearance thing

like everything's just look at me I do all the things right that would be very important to them that it's it although it's a family gift they'd expect a formal thank you card after Christmas morning kind of thing they will be Judgmental not only of people in the family but if people outside of the family might be judgmental of a neighbor who is getting divorce they also tend to be very cold and remote As parents and tend to be very very controlling parents so you can again see that there's an overlap there with the ocpd

and with the narcissism so that is so those of you watching this might be saying ah this is interesting now this is the puzzle piece that's helping me understand this lots Of narcissistic people have overlaps with this style you know because of the limitations with empathy the disconnect from intimacy the superiority this pattern ocpd in a relationship feels just as bad as narcissism and the overlap between ocpd and narcissism can actually really confuse people many people are used to the sort of lying cheating sort of libertine kind of narcissist ocpd people again like that Self-righteous

narcissistic style ocpd people can be coldly loyal like family sticks together there's no warmth there's no love but family sticks together like they'll like they have these like Rules and Things and they'll act very morally superior but you're like family sticks together you're the most emotionally abusive awful person you're cold but they're very big on that sticking together thing and so they and they do all these right things Societally but they're very judgy about it like well unlike those neighbors next door we do this every night we eat Sunday dinner like it's a lot of

that and it's dismissive and yet those Sunday dinners are these really cold awful kinds of uncomfortable experiences these people are also incredibly controlling people with ocpd about money and many times people will say he'll get into a relationship with someone who has an ocpd Style Will say well I because people with ocpd are obsessed with money they love money they love counting money they love having money and then they hoard it away I don't know what they're hoarding it away for but they do hoard it away they think they're going to need it someday and

so and so sometimes people who get into these relationships will say well gosh my partner the ocpd person they don't quite get it yet my partner really gets money like they really understand It or a family member they really get money so I'm gonna let them manage the money because they really get it and then you don't understand your finances anymore this is a really high risk issue because when that time comes for example in a divorce you don't quite understand where all the money is I can promise you people with this personality style especially

when it's alongside narcissism will fight you to the death for every cent These are people people with ocpd who are not willing to spend money on Joy they do not spend money on anything that's pleasurable joyful fun they will not spend want to spend money on a vacation they will not want to spend money on a spontaneous fun night out they hoard it and you can imagine them sitting like Ebenezer Scrooge or Gollum from Lord of the Rings just sitting and counting it it's mine it's all mine that's very ocpd that's styling nobody's Going to

take it away and they'll have a million passwords on financial accounts and all of that so no one in the family can really fully understand what the money is about now when we talk about narcissistic abuse understanding ocpd can also be very helpful I talked about the narcissism piece first because you can see given how this sort of coexists with narcissism how this can result in some specific kinds of patterns with regard To narcissistic abuse the control the financial abuse the rigidity the coldness the neglect the being a workaholic this is the type of narcissistic

abuse where a person will literally feel invisible and eradicated in a relationship or you'll feel that you're nothing more in a relationship than a financial burden to this person because they'll keep calling you that and that there's nothing you can do to get them to pay attention like you could Honestly walk into the kitchen in some sort of really racy lingerie and they probably won't look up from their spreadsheets and then you're judged a lot when these patterns are at play in narcissistic abuse and this is what I mean by that they will then person

with ocpd is just always so judgmental so they may judge you and say gosh somebody that's a new code what that costs how much someone's being very spendy and careless with lots Of judgment about your spending you'll often find yourself potentially over time becoming very secretive because even basic expenses maybe you'll buy a slightly better ingredient at the grocery store and they'll say why weren't you buying generic and they'll really really be you know again everything it's not even like a big high-end expenditure it could be something as ordinary as a grocery store thing and

this can bring out guilt in a Person who's in experiencing narcissistic abuse within this context of ocpd and narcissism and this can happen even when there's plenty of money in fact in in the cases where there's not enough money people sometimes obviously they get it but when there's millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars and somebody is grousing because you got the organic bananas it's really uncomfortable they may also A person with ocpd may also get restrictive around money for important things like life or death things like health care and they'll say things

like well can't we just go to that cheaper hospital or why can't you use that doctor yeah I understand they're not the leading person but it's better it's they pay reimburse more on my insurance and this might be for something like cancer treatment like probably the one place you don't want to skimp they'll skimp You may have children who need very basic things and it's a fight to get this I'm thinking of one story that comes of my to mind and it was sort of a multi-millionaire narcissist who would only purchase his children's shoes twice

a year only twice a year even when the shoes had holes in them and were in tatters he didn't care he had used a prenup to be able you know to really restrict how much money went to the former spouse the co-parent And and she'd said I just have to save my money up to do things get basic things for them like shoes and she was getting to the point where the legal fees and everything got too much and she ultimately had to relent that's the kind of stuff we see in this sort of ocpd

pattern where the ocpd and narcissistic overlay get most problematic as you can imagine is in divorces workplaces and wills and Estates in divorce you are going to have An expensive fight to the death they hate paying spousal support they're not thrilled about paying child support they don't like giving money monthly to anybody they feel that everything belongs to them they keep financial matters secretive that means you often have to invest in expensive forensic accounting they literally don't understand what community property is and they actually probably didn't even understand what getting married means or If they

did understand what it meant they would have insisted on cruelly restrictive prenuptial agreements people sign them I don't know maybe they think it's going to last forever maybe they think I don't know what they think but the fact is people sign them and that person with ocpd even if for example the former partner is ill or something like that they'll hold by that prenup because that's it it's a contract In family estates and in Wills they become very rigid in controlling you'll even notice if a person with ocpd and a narcissism overlay they die that

family member will still control you from the grave or if you have a surviving family member so a parent dies and you have a sibling who has both this ocpd and narcissism overlay then this may have this this ocpd narcissistic sibling for example may have really gotten themselves in Close to the parent and started sort of hijacking their financial affairs made themselves an Executor or a trustee ensure they get the most money take money off the top for the money there the debts they're incurring to take care of the parent sometimes it even falls under

the the rubric of elder abuse um because these folks with narcissism and ocpd will be so controlling of an older family member's finances in the workplace people with the ocpd And narcissism overlay are obsessed with observing and tracking the people who work for them they are obsessed in fact during during this time and last year with all the remote working they've hated not being able to control everything and have found ways to put software on computers to ensure people don't walk away from their computers for too long they are convinced everybody in the workplace is

stealing from them and stealing time from them and stealing Resources for them they will put in complicated systems of accountability in the workplace that are often excessive and intrusive they'll typically expect people to work inhumane hours the way they work they will expect emails to have been answered in the middle of the night or on a holiday because they keep those hours so it'll really really be restrictive demanding abusive work conditions people with this ocpd and narcissism overlay will also be Narcissistically abusive in the way that they don't pay well they will often be too

cheap to recognize excellence and they and then people will often leave these workplaces or people will be stuck in these workplaces especially if they're in smaller towns where there's fewer opportunities and so when you have narcissism overlaying on this ocpd pattern on top of everything else you may also then have gaslighting manipulation Invalidation and frightening rage in relationships and in the workplace so you may be wondering what if a person who has ocpd gets into a relationship with a narcissist that's an interesting conundrum there may be a lot of tension between a narcissistic person and

an ocpd person because the narcissistic person may be frustrated that the ocpd person is so controlling or works too much but they may also miss some of the red flags Because they're so focused on details and perfectionism so the ocpd person they're not good with relationships so they won't recognize it these relationships may work for a minute because both of these styles are so money focused and achievement focused and they're not about intimacy or depth so they may not notice but I think at some point The Narcissist will probably get frustrated with the ocpd person

call them too controlling and I think the Whole thing will probably fall apart the narcissist may actually also even feel abandoned or neglected ironically by someone with this personality Style and we also see that people who are narcissistically abused May develop patterns like perfectionism or an attempt to control elements of their environment just so they can have some level of mental control over the chaos and the situation of the relationship but if this isn't accompanied by Rigidity or that moral rigidity or that Perfection you have the I'm sorry the workaholic quality and the perfectionism and

the moral superiority and the cheapness it's not the same thing and I've really almost never seen someone who's in a narcissistically abusive relationship start to develop these kinds of qualities other than the perfectionism piece to protect themselves you might be thinking about treatment no not really there's very Little evidence of any treatments that work consistently with this pattern some researchers looked at CBT but the rigidity in the moral superiority of people with ocpd means that to them therapy is a waste of time and a waste of money and they're often quite contemptually contemptuously dismissive of

it because they actually have little use for relationships so when they have a divorce their bigger issue is not the Loss of the relationship but the loss of money in a divorce and if they have to pay child support or have children that will often become an ongoing stress but treatment really is not an option least of all if there's also narcissism on boards drum roll the difference between narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder I have to understand some people might have heard a previous video someone didn't so I'm going to keep bringing this up I'm

going to be really Clear about this and start here this channel is about narcissism I don't give a rat's ass about narcissistic personality disorder I really don't I don't even think it should be a thing if I was the Grand Puba of the DSM I would have had it removed by now but I'm not and this whole NPD thing has confused and muddied the waters on such an important conversation and more people waste time screaming and yelling about how dare you Diagnose someone with NPD or narcissistic personality disorder or my favorite is how dare you

diagnose someone with narcissism personally I am not diagnosing anyone nor are the people who are calling out toxic behavior and calling it narcissism you can't diagnose someone with narcissism because that's not a thing just like you can't diagnose someone with stubbornness or a bad sense of humor or a bad fashion sense or kindness Narcissism is not a diagnosis when you say someone is showing narcissism or is narcissistic you're making an observation about their personality and about how they go through the world but you aren't diagnosing them that word narcissism was just only a descriptive word

until the cabal of the DSM decided to codify it and toss it onto a diagnosis which actually made no sense to create a diagnostic typology around something that really doesn't have an Evidence base of effective treatment nor that that these folks who are like this would ever come into treatment and it's actually a personality style that results in people making more money and being more successful and being more successful at online dating and being more likely to be your boss does it really make sense to diagnose that pattern so if you are going to use

this third rail Of a word narcissism let me only ask you this make sure you're using it right it is lack of empathy grandiosity entitlement arrogance superficiality chronic egocentricity admiration and validation seeking Envy incapacity for intimacy and instead exploiting and using people in relationships it's dysregulated anger it's the two faces the validation seeking face in public and the abusive one I'm private that's narcissism because keep in mind just Because a person posts selfies doesn't mean that they're narcissistic just because a person cares about fashion and makeup and plastic surgery and photoshopping doesn't mean that they're

narcissistic just because a person is confident doesn't mean they're narcissistic you need all the stuff on that list I just read you I am seeing a lot of nonsense on social media from people who do not use this word right if you're going to use it learn what it Means it's a powerful word but it is useless and even dangerous if you do not use the word correctly now for those of you in narcissistic relationships I 've made videos about this before I'm gonna do it again please stop calling them out it doesn't work when

you roll up and say yeah right it says and it makes your situation so much worse use that laundry list of lack of empathy and title in it on and on if you want to call them out And for all of you out there watching who are so angry at being called narcissistic calm the hell down and ask the other person why they're using this term and for a pattern narcissism that makes people so successful I find it fascinating when people get so bent out of shape when they're called out it's time for you to

self-reflect on why you're taking issue with being called narcissistic Is it because you think of yourself as empathic and you're upset because someone else doesn't think you are why might they think you aren't empathic if you can have that conversation without yelling at them that's a good start and then figure out why someone thinks you are that it's the same with entitlement the same with arrogance and no I have the goods to back it up is not a reason to be Arrogant it's not a nice trait nice pattern I'm gonna keep coming back to this

topic every few months because clearly everyone needs a bit of a refresher on this from time to time narcissism is a personality style not a diagnosis remember that and when you communicate about it please be clear and stop using the word as an insult if you're going to use the word have the patterns to back it up and substantiate it when you're Talking about it hope that makes that clear and thanks again