Husband Prefers Histrionics??

Al... I did notice that you misspell words like behavior and honor... you have a tic that makes you spell them "behaviour and honour".

:0)

So... Happy Eastour.

As far as calling you "Al"... that's because I have a touch of damage to my brain, too. I was Googling my way to learning about memory, and discovered that names are stored in the tip of a person's left temporal lobe. I've always been bad with names, so mine must be damaged. I see that in a similar way to the hippo thing... I don't know if my problem is congenital or happened while playing sports as a kid... all I know is that I have it.

A friend of mine recently asked me how I refer to her, and pointed out to me that I usually pair WHAT a person is, with WHO they are... like "Bob the painter", "Jill the doctor", etc. I guess that's my coping skill to remember a name that I otherwise would forget.

So when I call you "Al"... it's because I can't remember your entire name.

For anyone who's interested, you might want to Google some memory stuff yourself. I've read that people with PDs "procedural" memory is unaffected... they never forget how to ride a bike, make love, cook, behave as the life of the party, etc. Realistically, there's only one way to ride a bike, so procedural memory seems to be a "black or white" memory to me... and that might explain a lot of the "black or white" thinking that PDs have, eh?

"Declarative" memory is broken down into "semantic" memory... the ability to remember names, definitions, grammatical syntax, etc. (Al appears to have intact semantic memory)... and "episodic" memory, which pairs an emotional memory with the episode that created it, like how you felt when you first kissed someone, how you felt when your boss hollered at you, etc.

My two cents (cute, eh?) on that, is that PDs have a problem with their episodic memory. A guy can be in bed with someone, squeeze her belly and affectionately say something like "I really love your baby fat"... and the lady's episodic memory might remember that as "He called me a lardass". As a "non", I've experienced that more than once....

I don't know much about DBT, although I did exchange one email with Marsha Linehan... she's a very nice person. But I think Linehan's forte is that she's been able to provide a "translator language" for people with PDs to cope with an off-kilter episodic memory, by translating it into a procedural memory... thereby allowing them to use the part of their memory that's unaffected.

(I'm a bit in left field with DBT... don't shoot me if this is wrong) I think the first dialectic is "There's nothing wrong with me; but I need to improve myself." That appears to be a contradictory statement; but in a "black or white" world, it actually becomes a "black AND white" procedure that procedural memory is able to handle. Most abstract thoughts are black AND white, so DBT seems to be a coping skill to create an abstract thought within someone's procedural black OR white memory.

I see it a bit as the way that I might call you guys (don't be offended) "Al the HPD", "Kontroller the fighter", or "Jamo the husband". I can't remember a name for it's own, so I pair it with something... maybe I'm translating my defective name memory into my procedural memory with a "name AND description"... creating a black AND white memory. My own form of DBT?

Jamo... thanks for the "hello", and the compliment that my stuff is "on the ball". It won't always be, and I hope nobody shoots me if something I say is "off" the ball.

The information is out there... or more accurately, the information is being discovered daily... a lot of books are going to be rewritten, courtesy of the new brain scanning stuff. I'll admit that a lot of what I might write will include my own conclusions; but I don't think anyone has the right guess yet, so we can all add our own and hope it's correct.

Like, I don't recall seeing any brain scan research on people with HPD... but I think it's reasonable to apply the information from BPD scans to other PDs. DSM-4 is often criticized for trying to categorize disorders too specifically... I think that's true; but I also think the categories aren't a bad thing, as long as they're kept in perspective.

My view is that all the Cluster B categories are fundamentally a problem with emotion regulation. That can be broken down further; but if I compare it to, say, someone with a herniated disk in their back... that too can be broken down further (sciatica, numbness, limping, pain); but that fundamentally ALL herniated disk patients share the same recognizable cause, although their symptoms will very slightly.

My own Unified Theory of PDs is that there MUST be a biological cause. My ex-BPD and ex-HPD don't keep repeating the same self-defeating mistakes in relationships because their diapers weren't changed promptly when they were babies. That would be like saying that you're limping today because you fell down in 2nd grade. PDs persist... just like bad backs persist... and we don't have a problem searching for a biological cause, like a herniated disk, for the cause of persistent back pain... why do we hesitate to accept a biological cause for persistant psychological pain?

I believe that new brain scanning technology is finally finding the biological cause for psychological pain.

And that's a great thing. Prior to X-Rays, the only thing a doctor could tell someone with a herniated disk was that they had "lumbago"; and then the person lived their lives in pain. They can't cure what they can't see. Once they could see it, they could heal it.

Remember Depression a couple of decades ago? All the psych docs could do was tell someone to think cheerful thoughts, eat an icecream, or "get over it". Using old brain scanning and blood tests for stuff like serotonin, they pretty much got lucky and stumbled onto some drugs that work to treat Depression.

So Depression used to be treated like PDs... "get over it".

Now Mike Wallace (60 Minutes) does TV commercials telling people that they can be successfully treated for it... the same way he is.

It's reasonable to believe that PD treatment will follow in those footsteps, and brain scanning seems to be opening lots of new doors for that to happen.

Kontroller... interesting bit about NPD perfection... I hadn't thought of that; but you're probably right on the money. I think it jives with my single cause, multiple symptom view of PDs. Ever notice that sometimes a cold makes your nose run, and other times it makes your nose get stuffed up? Maybe sometimes an off-kilter limbic system produces people who don't spell well... and other times it produces people who can win Spelling Bees.

Other than that, Happy Easter to everyone (I don't stand a chance of typing everyone's name that I've read here).

Or... if you talk funny... Happy Eastour.

:0)

Interesting bit about spelling. My ex hpd, although very litterate, does an awful lot of spelling mistakes, no less than one or two per line. I always wondered how could he manage to do less spelling mistakes writing in English than writing in our mother tongue.

Hellou froum your funny spelling Nourthern neighbour...

And Happy Easter!!

I have a different take on it. I believe that body & soul are more closely linked than is generally accepted, and that over time, trauma in childhood translates into brain damage because of wonky (wounky) hormonal balances. It's a chicken-egg argument, really; you talk about diaper changes, but of course childhood trauma can be horrendous beyond description. I know you realize this, but I'm going to talk about it a bit to illustrate my point.

The classic originating trauma for BPD is childhood sexual assault (although that is not necessarily the originator in all cases). I just finished reading a book in which the author posited that the average child molester will attack between ten and one thousand children. That's active abuse; marasmus is the death of a child otherwise well-cared for who does not receive parental love or interaction. Infants can physically die from lack of love. Now, that's a measurable physical change.

So rather than it being a case of the "slight" trauma, we should consider how bad trauma can be, and how severe it's physical effects.

It's well-known that even adults who live with depressed adults are at higher risk to become depressed themselves; I'm assuming they also demonstrate the attendent physical changes. Is depression contagious? Men here confess to PTSD from living with HD partners; PTSD has measurable physical effect. These defects in the brain would be acquired after the fact from living in stressful conditions.

I am not waiting for the "big breakthrough" that will correct my brain damage, because to be honest, I don't believe it's necessary. I think if you remove someone from a stressful environment, support them, give them therapy that teaches them to function in such a way that their self is expressed, that self will fill out the brain again and the parts that are damaged will return to health.

And sweetie, no offence, but if you're in bed with a woman and you squeeze her belly and compliment her on being fat, keep your sneakers next to the bed and learn to run realllllyyy fast....

Al... you have a good sense of humour... sorry I picked on your mother tongue. I didn't realize that you are a British citizen to my north.

By the way... "And sweetie, no offence, but...."

Listen, sweetie, honey buns, babe, snookums... I believe that "offense" is spelled with an S, not a C, even in one of the Queen's Commonwealths.

hahahaha... that bugs you, doesn't it, Ms Writer?

:0)

I lived in Montreal for a year (best pizza I've ever had), visited Quebec City for a few days (more great food), Toronto (didn't like it), and Vancouver Island for a week. Been through New Bruswick, PEI, and Nova Scotia... nice country you have there.

OH... have you ever had a Nainaimo Bar? Almost as good as sex.

I do owe you an apology for trivializing the trauma in your childhood. I hadn't meant to do that. My childhood was an episode out of Leave It To Beaver... I was blessed by that.

I don't have a reference point to comprehend what you went through... maybe that's one of the problems we "nons" have, that make you "PDs" get bugged when we can't understand you. I know what you and many others went through... but I don't understand it. I am always gaining insight, though. All we can do is try, eh?

For anyone who's interested, you might want to do some Googling on memory. There's Procedural memory (how to ride a bike, make love, be the life of the party) which reportedly is intact in people with PDs.

Then there's Declarative memory, broken down into Symantic memory (names, word meanings, word syntax), which appears very much intact with you, and Episodic memory (the pairing of an emotion with an episode... like your first kiss), which is the memory most often off-kilter in someone who has a PD.

I think of DBT as a translator language to change Episodic memories into Procedural memories... Marsha Linehan appears to understand how to use the intact parts of memory. That's my goofball theory, anyways.

My own memory is skewed... I'm very, very bad with names, and names are stored in the tip of the left temporal lobe, so I was either born with a bad tip, or it was damaged along the way. So the truth is, I call you "Al" because I can't remember your whole name... but I am glad you liked it.

A friend of mine recently pointed out to me that I tend to pair a person's name with what they are, like Bob the Painter, Bill the skinny guy, etc. Maybe that's my way of using undamaged parts of my brain.

"I think if you remove someone from a stressful environment, support them, give them therapy...."

We absolutely agree on that, Al. Every part of our body is capable of healing. The hippo does regenerate, in the absence of stress.

"It's well-known that even adults who live with depressed adults are at higher risk to become depressed themselves...."

Agreed... earlier I posted about "fleas" that partners pick up from each other. If your partner loves garlic, you'll develop a tatste for it. If your partner likes athletics, country music, or showering together, chances are that you will pick up those "fleas", too.

Jamo - Hello to you, too. Thank you for the compliment about the stuff I've posted. I'll admit that I also post some of my own conclusions about the stuff I read... but I don't think anyone has made the correct guess yet, and mine is as good as anyone elses.

Kontroller - interesting point on NPD perfection... I hadn't thought of it - you're most likely correct.

It can be spelled either way -- which I would know, being a writer and all.

It really comes down to a question of whether or not our brains are born damaged, or we become damaged. If we're born damaged, then it's probably in our genetic code, and therapy simply won't help us heal; there is no original "normal" state to restore to. If we become damaged (which is my belief) due to trauma, then therapy can help us begin to restore our brains, much like physio helps accident victims regain the use of their muscles. I think our genes only come into insofar as they predispose us to "breaking" one way or the other.

Al, this time I'm disagreeing with you 100%.

Every single day, there's somebody, someplace, who had a congenital "defect" repaired. Maybe a bad leg, maybe a hairlip, maybe lots of other stuff.

And... depressed people are never "cured"... but most are successfully treated and live full lives. They were born depressed, and they're not anymore. When I was born, their condition was hopeless... that ain't true anymore.

So I don't buy it that congenital problems can't be cured.

Because it happens every day.

I'll defer to your offence/offense argument; but I'll bet you a Montreal pizza that you're wrong about genetic problems being hopeless.

Cause the reality proves my point.

:0)

I won't be lining up for brain surgery anytime soon to cure my BPD -- so it's just as well I don't believe I'll need it!

Had a big discussion with my husband about the career thing. Guy thinks big; wants me to start my own business, whereas I'm thinking I might like to move more slowly, work for someone else for awhile. Anyway, the upshot is I'm going back to work. This time, however, I am going to be taking it more seriously and trying to see where I can go with it.

Thanks for the advice guys. I've got to sort out my resume now. Talk to you later.

I recommend the book "Who is pulling your strings?- how to break the cycle of manipulation and regain control of your life"!

It talks about histrionics, narcisists, antisocials and other types of manipulative people. It helps you understand why you are manipulated, what kind of people are easier to be trapped, what to do about and how to solve your problem and how to spot them before they even start thinking of manipulating you.

This is your salvation!!

Hmmm did you recommend this book to me before on another forum New Order?

Someone on a different forum recommended me the same book.

The recommendation came only yesterday so uh yeah seems like a bit more than a coincidence...

Hey New Order you written a book entitled Who is pulling your strings?
You seem to be spamming it alot.