that is riddled with illogic, but you raise some points i will address.
PDs exist exactly how they are defined - maladaptive personality given a particular environment. a set of early learned rigid behaviours stemming from learned rigid ways of thinking and feelings (the definition of personality) that are ill-fit for a particular environment, that the person cannot change (easily) because...it's their personality!
it exists as much as any other mental illness.
so, some live in stressful environment, or due to work experience clinical depression, anxiety, etc. if they were to leave that environment, and go somewhere else, they may cease having those issues.
so yes, mental illness is environmentally relative, which means that it can become very common or not common at all, as circumstances change even within the same location.
i don't know how that amounts to PDs not existing...again i believe it is due to misunderstanding.
it's like many people are very knowledgeable on PDs here, but they lack sort of the essential part of understanding. it's like they are just missing this little piece and it skews the rest a bit.
So, because they're not "invested" in their work, they have identity "pathology". lolol
it's not like that. is that what your psych has seen as basis for identity issues?
i will give my experience. before i was diagnosed with a PD i had horrible identity issues and still do to some extent.
to cope with stressors at the time, and these got worse under stress as many mental illness symptoms do, i used to,
even from day to day or hour to hour, change my identity internally and externally, or not to cope but to fit in to different groups i wanted to fit into. this was past that teenage stage of trying on hats. day to day i would radically change who i was, from punk chick, to nerdy, to whatever, and i would change my appearance drastically even day to day, and buy all the clothes to fit that person. even from hour to hour i would drastically change who i was and had no stable sense of self internally that caused great distress...like being lost in an ocean the only floaters being some kind of identity. and you are torn between extreme detachment and extreme attachment as you vacillate between different identities seeking approval from others and nothing seems to stick and you alienate your friends because they get freaked out by your weirdness and extremeness.
i even thought i was animal once and had like these mini psychotic breaks as an extreme form of coping. this wasn't me merely being not invested in work, no i didn't get that far.
i couldn't do any work because i was so fuked up.
i was visibly mentally ill. when my employer called me to fire me he even said i was fuked and need help lol.
and i knew why at the time, it was identity issues...and it was underlying my depression, paranoia, fears of abandonment as i pushed people away but then sought them out again even hours later franticly, overly sexual to distract myself from what i was feeling inside...basically borderline behaviour
and i felt on the borderline. it's an apt description. and i recognize exactly the signs and symptoms in others who actually have BPD, and not a poorly affixed label.