Dramatic Personality Disorders and Suffering

Hello. I have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, and I have had personal experience with people who exhibit the Dramatic Personality Disorder (NPD, BPD, HPD) traits. These people include myself, my father, my mother and my significant other.

I want to ask you HPD subforum users if you believe your disorder causes you suffering. There is perhaps too much emphasis on the suffering of people with BPD, as they used to call us truly helpless and predetermined to be miserable. On the opposite end, you have the disgust and gross negligence by "nons" towards the feelings of people with NPD and HPD. Psychologists say NPD is characterized by a deeply insecure and vulnerable need to be grand and admired, not be a conscious decision to be narcissistic. Does the same go for an HPD's acting out and accidental manipulation?

In my experience with every dramatic personality, they did things that one would characterize as "evil", but perhaps these ideas of evil could be dispelled the same way I dispel the idea of evil in myself: I was really suffering and behaved as well as I could, considering I am not an evil person in my core beliefs (and who is?).

I'll restate the basic questions I had about your suffering with HPD
1. Do you believe you experience more emotional pain and turmoil (less peace) than the average person does, due to your personality disorder?
2. Do you believe that you are negatively acting out of a personality disorder, and not a truly malicious or manipulative core belief system?

I have witnessed real beauty and optimism in people who display HPD traits. I have also seen horrors, but I am not ready to chalk them up to "evil" or anything. I think that the suffering of all people is real, and I don't think anyone I have truly loved or understood has been "evil" in any real sense of the word.

Your attention and comments are really appreciated. Thank you.

I don't think that people with HPD are evil. I have a niece who I suspect of having HPD, but she isn't evil.

mentallydisordered wrote:I don't think that people with HPD are evil. I have a niece who I suspect of having HPD, but she isn't evil.

Neither do I! I was just simplifying. It's not like the word evil was really resonating with me in this context. Maybe at the time of the abuse, it did. Maybe I could have said, "I struggle with controlling resentment, and understanding their actions."

As a male I find that engaging in theatrics and deniable efforts at seduction with my therapist is abrasive to my pride. As is acknowledging that I have a tendency to assume that individuals who show to much care and attention too quickly are infatuated with me regardless of gender. In the moment while I am being driven to behave in a seductive and misleading way toward a woman it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything wrong, it feels like I'm finally attractive and valued whereas by default I feel rather repulsive and of insufficient value to others for them to care about my needs and feelings.

I'm trying to be more aware and cease such behaviors. The results are terrible headaches, nausea, feeling my reason and discernment fall to something of a caricature and PAIN. Pain that tells me that my need to be loved will be responded to with incredible injury.... but playing at love will sooth that injury.

That pain is far out of reach most of the time, considering the lengths I apparently go to in avoiding it this may be a good thing.

I've been intrigued by portrayals of synthetic humans as long as I can recall, especially their potential romantic lives. Now? When I sense histrionic tendencies in a woman it feels as though she is a proxy seeking the love a child was denied. Doll-like. It's hard to see her as an adult female capable to mature sexuality. And *I* an nearly incapable of normal desire, the women I'm tempted to play with get a version intended to purchase behavior of them that resembles love.... I don't crave their company... I can't function sexually with them unless self/other boundaries in my mind vanish to the point of feeding off their desire... which is easy because I disappear. It feels like my needs mean nothing and I'm obligated to pleasure them.

If I CAN feel that a woman does love me I am capable of more mature desire. And ISSUES come up. And I am driven to push her away. And I'm driven to do the Barbie Play Time with other women even more... which looks a lot like having interest in these other women until whatever game I'm playing at with them hits a point where it's obviously abusive.

Only once did I actually feel I was being evil with a woman. It took me a while to consciously acknowledge that. "Just because I FELT cruel and Machiavellian doesn't mean I did anything!" It took a while to notice that I couldn't remember who she was to me before that game. APPARENTLY my efforts to remember who she really was and to have empathy, compassion and remorse involved 'taking back' a projection of that "need to be loved equals measureless hurt" thing. Without guidance from mental health professionals mind you, I knew I needed to do this and I understood how intuitively. The pain in my heart was extraordinary and mostly felt as physical pain.

When the effort was as close to completion as it may ever be I understood that I needed to get to a point where I could feel that pain without having to put it outside myself and take it back. And here I am. It does not always feel like physical pain and this is good.

Just how hard it was to acknowledge behaviors related to this was ridiculous. But now I can start to dust off and mend up before I enter a relationship. Awareness of and refraining from certain behaviors is disobedience to the messages that can shape my behavior, affect and cognition so as to allow for them. This allows for less hurtful messages to take root, the angels and hosts "normal" people obey.

The contents of my mind are bright and not beholden to my usual ways of thinking. Impressionistic? Shallow save for the things I hold onto from when I was different? It feels animistic. Hosts of unseen observers. Obedience or disobedience. Choosing allegiance. I can't feel guilty right now because the angels that would demand such of me, those most are beholden to, are cruel to me, would punish me for wanting to be loved.

"Humans are cruel." A quote from a succubus in a video game I forget the title of. I'd be in a special hell right now if I hadn't continued to love and forgiven one woman who put me through almost exactly what my instincts would have me do to others, sorry, have made me do to others.

Thanks for sharing so much. I can understand why someone going through even half of what you described would act out in harmful ways, despite them not having any bad intentions.

When you talk about the "PAIN" arising out of trying to stop your behavior, I can relate. My behaviors went unchecked as personality disorder symptoms, until I came in long-term contact with some real, updated professionals...There was a wake up call when I tried to start a relationship with a girl I loved, and the relationship backfired, but there was not much true insight until my behavior was called out as disordered.

Trying to stop the behaviors, I too can only summarize as pain. I understand getting very lost in other people, and the troubling somatic symptoms too (if you meant to say you suffer from those). I needed intramuscular injections for the dystonia. When there were no more people to get lost in (or simply to count on), I dissociated severely.

What you said about only seeing people as dolls was in a way relatable. I only see people as victims and victimizers. I see everyone as requiring to be more sensitive, and I have yet to see someone I haven't accused of hurting themselves or others through foolish and insensitive (abusive) means. Please remember that neither of us is wrong, or out of touch with reality. There is just more going on outside our paradigm, and we don't see it yet. As much as I don't want to be labeled "permanently helpless", I don't want to see you labeled "permanently superficial." We are both dynamic, conscious human beings.

You're right that seeing people as robots is (from a utilitarian standpoint) incorrect and unjust, but so is seeing yourself as a permanent outsider, or a videogame character. Gaining more insight just to out yourself further is not a selfish or utilitarian use of the information about being histrionic; it's just destructive.

It seems like you are feeling somewhat unable to surpass this, and unable to bare the pain, but there is more to the situation than meets the eye, more to be hopeful about that hasn't been found yet.

My advice for baring the pain when stopping dramatic behavior is to taper off. Don't try to build your new personality in a day...That sounds painful (and impossible) to me. Sometimes I engage in a little "healthy" drama, because I know it is necessary to not be in immense pain. If I am less Borderline every year, that is an accomplishment. It's not about 'fixing yourself tomorrow', and I certainly wish it was easy as "brushing yourself off."

All this in mind, I know not changing looks appealing. Society looks like a big shitting accident, totally alien and unrelatable. People talking about participating in it (like I am now) sound swayed and influenced. The truth is that, even if society is a train full of deluded people speeding off a cliff, and everyone else I have ever cared for is in on it. Accepting society and other people is a huge pill to swallow, and most people I know who are intelligent have a hard time doing it.

Love, hope, and awareness are the only ways to surpass personality disorders, in my opinion. If someone is too short on or stops pursuing one of those, the problem will persist. So, you have my best wishes, and feel free to reply with a response or more details.

Final note: I am also glad I met my troubled ex. I have a hard time relating to people without dramatic personality disorders. They seem to be on a different, less sensitive wavelength, and unless that difference between the two of us is acknowledged (as it often is), the interaction will feel totally fake and empty. So, in short, maybe it is a good thing that I met my ex as well, as I never really connected to anyone else on the same emotional level.

One day we were talking in bed about what "my problem" must be. I said, "I just don't mesh with the world. I'm not right for it." She grabbed my face, stared into my eyes and said, "The world is not right for you." Regardless of her intentions, I'm glad she saw it that way. Balance changing yourself and your environment, and don't be helpless.

I'm hpd and have manipulated people without honestly intending too. I just did what I did without really thinking about the consequence. and I think that's the main point. That when it comes to a PD theyaaren't evil because they don't intend to hurt people or manipulate people or when they do intend it out of a deep hurtful need inside. Not because they want to cause hurt. So I don't think you could say evil.