can you have more the 1 disorder?

My ex has more then 3 traits to npd aspd bpd ppd.he is a drug addict did that make the disorders worse.he was'nt just emotionally abusive he was violently abusive with me.can you have more then 1 disorder.can they over lap eachother.im just looking for some advice.i dont wanna hate anymore.im hoping this will give me some closure.thanks everyone for your much appreciated advice.

Hi,

I'm sorry you went through all of the things you have with him. To answer your question, yes, there can be comorbidity; that's not uncommon at all.

It's unlikely that this person fits all 4 disorders. Often times there's criteria that's similar or overlaps.

Looking for some background I went ahead and looked for any other posts you have made and I see you're so desperate for feedback that you're hitting every forum you can. That's understandable

You might want to start in this one with some background: family-support/

Once there's a better idea what problem he may be struggling with, it'll make it easier to move into that specific forum where you can find more assistance.

I do have to tell you, I'm personally concerned. You mention a lot of abuse here and elsewhere you commented about "making it work". While that is your choice, it is a very unhealthy one. Anytime a person becomes physically violent and abusive, the relationship should end immediately. Once that boundary is crossed the person almost always escalates and that behavior becomes more common. Leaving was very wise and very brave of you. And nobody can fault you for needing some answers, understanding and closure, but please be sure you're not hoping to fix them. You can't do that unfortunately. He has to do it himself.

Empathy201 wrote:Hi,

I'm sorry you went through all of the things you have with him. To answer your question, yes, there can be comorbidity; that's not uncommon at all.

It's unlikely that this person fits all 4 disorders. Often times there's criteria that's similar or overlaps.

Looking for some background I went ahead and looked for any other posts you have made and I see you're so desperate for feedback that you're hitting every forum you can. That's understandable

You might want to start in this one with some background: family-support/

Once there's a better idea what problem he may be struggling with, it'll make it easier to move into that specific forum where you can find more assistance.

I do have to tell you, I'm personally concerned. You mention a lot of abuse here and elsewhere you commented about "making it work" While that is your choice, it is a very unhealthy one. Anytime a person becomes physically violent and abusive, the relationship should end immediately. Once that boundary is crossed the person almost always escalates and that behavior becomes more common. Leaving was very wise and very brave of you. And nobody can fault you for needing some answers, understanding and closure, but please be sure you're not hoping to fix them. You can't do that unfortunately. He has to do it himself.

I want him to get help.i still love him.i pray with my absense he will get long term help.its hard to be without him.everyone else judges me for loving and wanting to help.i was hoping, it wouldnt happen hear.i thought ppl might understand that its not his fault.he did go to n.a which is a big step for him.

sounds like a sociopath
once you know how those work they are harmless

read this

The manipulative con-man. The guy who lies to your face, even when he doesn’t have to. The child who tortures animals. The cold-blooded killer. Psychopaths are characterised by an absence of empathy and poor impulse control, with a total lack of conscience. About 1% of the total population can be defined as psychopaths, according to a detailed psychological profile checklist. They tend to be egocentric, callous, manipulative, deceptive, superficial, irresponsible and parasitic, even predatory. The majority of psychopaths are not violent and many do very well in jobs where their personality traits are advantageous and their social tendencies tolerated. However, some have a predisposition to calculated, “instrumental” violence; violence that is cold-blooded, planned and goal-directed. Psychopaths are vastly over-represented among criminals; it is estimated they make up about 20% of the inmates of most prisons. They commit over half of all violent crimes and are 3-4 times more likely to re-offend. They are almost entirely refractory to rehabilitation. These are not nice people.

So how did they get that way? Is it an innate biological condition, a result of social experience, or an interaction between these factors? Longitudinal studies have shown that the personality traits associated with psychopathy are highly stable over time. Early warning signs including “callous-unemotional traits” and antisocial behaviour can be identified in childhood and are highly predictive of future psychopathy. Large-scale twin studies have shown that these traits are highly heritable – identical twins, who share 100% of their genes, are much more similar to each other in this trait than fraternal twins, who share only 50% of their genes. In one study, over 80% of the variation in the callous-unemotional trait across the population was due to genetic differences. In contrast, the effect of a shared family environment was almost nil. Psychopathy seems to be a lifelong trait, or combination of traits, which are heavily influenced by genes and hardly at all by social upbringing.

The two defining characteristics of psychopaths, blunted emotional response to negative stimuli, coupled with poor impulse control, can both be measured in psychological and neuroimaging experiments. Several studies have found decreased responsiveness of the amygdala to fearful or other negative stimuli in psychopaths. They do not seem to process heavily loaded emotional words, like “rape”, for example, any differently from how they process neutral words, like “table”. This lack of response to negative stimuli can be measured in other ways, such as the failure to induce a galvanic skin response (heightened skin conduction due to sweating) when faced with an impending electrical shock. Psychopaths have also been found to underactivate limbic (emotional) regions of the brain during aversive learning, correlating with an insensitivity to negative reinforcement. The psychopath really just doesn’t care. In this, psychopaths differ from many people who are prone to sudden, impulsive violence, in that those people tend to have a hypersensitive negative emotional response to what would otherwise be relatively innocuous stimuli.

What these two groups have in common is poor impulse control. This faculty relies on the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, most particularly the orbitofrontal cortex. It is known that lesions to this part of the brain impair planning, prediction of consequences, and inhibition of socially unacceptable behaviour – the cognitive mechanisms of “free won’t”, rather than free will. This brain region is also normally activated by aversive learning, and this activation is also reduced in psychopaths. In addition, both the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala show substantial average reductions in size in psychopaths, suggesting a structural difference in their brains.

These findings have now been united by a recent study that directly analysed connectivity between these two regions. Using diffusion tensor imaging (see post of August 31st 2009), Craig and colleagues found that a measure of the integrity of the axonal tract connecting these two regions, called the uncinate fasciculus, was significantly reduced in psychopaths. Importantly, connectivity of these regions to other parts of the brain was normal. These data thus suggest a specific disruption of the network connecting orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala in psychopaths, the degree of which correlated strongly with the subjects’ scores on the psychopathy checklist.

All of these findings are pointing to a picture of psychopathy as an innate, genetically driven difference in connectivity between parts of the brain that normally drive empathy, conscience and impulse control. Not a fault necessarily, and not something that could be classified as a disease or that is always a disadvantage. At a certain frequency in the population, the traits of psychopathy may be highly advantageous to the individual.

This conclusion has serious ethical and legal implications. Could a psychopath mount a legal defense by saying “my brain made me do it”? Or my “genes made me do it”? Is this any different from saying my rotten childhood made me do it? Psychopaths know right from wrong – they just don’t care. That is what society calls “bad”, not “mad”. But if they are constitutionally incapable of caring, can they really be blamed for it? On the other hand, if violent psychopaths are a continuing danger to society and completely refractory to rehabilitation, what is to be done with them? Perhaps, as has been proposed in the UK, people with the extreme psychopathic personality profile (or maybe in the near future even a specific genetic profile?) should be monitored or segregated even before they commit a crime.

While it is crucial that these debates are informed by good science, these issues have no clear-cut answers. They will be resolved on a pragmatic basis, weighing the behaviour that society is willing to tolerate versus the rights of the individual, whatever their brains look like, to define their own moral standards

madjoe wrote:sounds like a sociopath
once you know how those work they are harmless

read this

The manipulative con-man. The guy who lies to your face, even when he doesn’t have to. The child who tortures animals. The cold-blooded killer. Psychopaths are characterised by an absence of empathy and poor impulse control, with a total lack of conscience. About 1% of the total population can be defined as psychopaths, according to a detailed psychological profile checklist. They tend to be egocentric, callous, manipulative, deceptive, superficial, irresponsible and parasitic, even predatory. The majority of psychopaths are not violent and many do very well in jobs where their personality traits are advantageous and their social tendencies tolerated. However, some have a predisposition to calculated, “instrumental” violence; PPviolence that is cold-blooded, planned and goal-directed. Psychopaths are vastly over-represented among criminals; it is estimated they make up about 20% of the inmates of most prisons. They commit over half of all violent crimes and are 3-4 times more likely to re-offend. They are almost entirely refractory to rehabilitation. These are not nice people.

So how did they get that way? Is it an innate biological condition, a result of social experience, or an interaction between these factors? Longitudinal studies have shown that the personality traits associated with psychopathy are highly stable over time. Early warning signs including “callous-unemotional traits” and antisocial behaviour can be identified in childhood and are highly predictive of future psychopathy. Large-scale twin studies have shown that these traits are highly heritable – identical twins, who share 100% of their genes, are much more similar to each other in this trait than fraternal twins, who share only 50% of their genes. In one study, over 80% of the variation in the callous-unemotional trait across the population was due to genetic differences. In contrast, the effect of a shared family environment was almost nil. Psychopathy seems to be a lifelong trait, or combination of traits, which are heavily influenced by genes and hardly at all by social upbringing.

The two defining characteristics of psychopaths, blunted emotional response to negative stimuli, coupled with poor impulse control, can both be measured in psychological and neuroimaging experiments. Several studies have found decreased responsiveness of the amygdala to fearful or other negative stimuli in psychopaths. They do not seem to process heavily loaded emotional words, like “rape”, for example, any differently from how they process neutral words, like “table”. This lack of response to negative stimuli can be measured in other ways, such as the failure to induce a galvanic skin response (heightened skin conduction due to sweating) when faced with an impending electrical shock. Psychopaths have also been found to underactivate limbic (emotional) regions of the brain during aversive learning, correlating with an insensitivity to negative reinforcement. The psychopath really just doesn’t care. In this, psychopaths differ from many people who are prone to sudden, impulsive violence, in that those people tend to have a hypersensitive negative emotional response to what would otherwise be relatively innocuous stimuli.

What these two groups have in common is poor impulse control. This faculty relies on the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, most particularly the orbitofrontal cortex. It is known that lesions to this part of the brain impair planning, prediction of consequences, and inhibition of socially unacceptable behaviour – the cognitive mechanisms of “free won’t”, rather than free will. This brain region is also normally activated by aversive learning, and this activation is also reduced in psychopaths. In addition, both the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala show substantial average reductions in size in psychopaths, suggesting a structural difference in their brains.
LoO
These findings have now been united by a recent study that directly analysed connectivity between these two regions. Using diffusion tensor imaging (see post of August 31st 2009), Craig and colleagues found that a measure of the integrity of the axonal tract connecting these two regions, called the uncinate fasciculus, was significantly reduced in psychopaths. Importantly, connectivity of these regions to other parts of the brain was normal. These data thus suggest a specific disruption of the network connecting orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala in psychopaths, the degree of which correlated strongly with the subjects’ scores on the psychopathy checklist.

All of these findings are pointing to a picture of psychopathy as an innate, genetically driven difference in connectivity between parts of the brain that normally drive empathy, conscience and impulse control. Not a fault necessarily, and not something that could be classified as a disease or that is always a disadvantage. At a certain frequency in the population, the traits of psychopathy may be highly advantageous to the individual.

This conclusion has serious ethical and legal implications. Could a psychopath mount a legal defense by saying “my brain made me do it”? Or my “genes made me do it”? Is this any different from saying my rotten childhood made me do it? Psychopaths know right from wrong – they just don’t care. That is what society calls “bad”, not “mad”. But if they are constitutionally incapable of caring, can they really be blamed for it? On the other hand, if violent psychopaths are a continuing danger to society and completely refractory to rehabilitation, what is to be done with them? Perhaps, as has been proposed in the UK, people with the extreme psychopathic personality profile (or maybe in the near future even a specific genetic profile?) should be monitored or segregated even before they commit a crime.

While it is crucial that these debates are informed by good science, these issues have no clear-cut answers. They will be resolved on a pragmatic basis, weighing the behaviour that society is willing to tolerate versus the rights of the individual, whatever their brains look like, to define their own moral standards

Thank you so much for taking the time to educate me on disorders.thanks for not juding me and for not being cruel.

<adhd

<schizoid,borderline,clusterB

<psychopath

You can - in fact, IIRC a lot of people tend to have more than one. Also, remember that a lot of disorders have similar traits and behaviors.

Yes i have a few disorders. Be careful around the kind of person you described. I used to be like that. Without him getting help, id advise avoiding him. Took me years not to be that way

Most psychologists use to use the term sociopath and psychopath interchangeably, but now a days more psychologists are just equating it as and calling it anti-social personality disorder. It might help to learn more about and research a bit on ASPD specifically if you really think your ex may be suffering from that then you will know better about where to go personally with your decisions in relation to your interactions with him.

A quick thought on one thing you mention. That you wish him to get help.

I would encourage you to look closely at this. People who are in distress or have negative behaviors are just as capable of searching for help as any of us.

People who are empathetic and have been abused or injured by folks on the N side of the spectrum often get a strong emotional need or desire to help heal their abuser. I see this as a major warning sign that you're leading with your chin and can get hurt.