Childhood trauma, HPD, DID, the way forward.

Hi All,

So, I've been thinking about some of the stuff I was discussing with Chinatown Charlie (hope you're still around, haven't seen a post in a while! :P ) and in particular, this post:
http://www.psychforums.com/histrionic-personality/topic42119.html#p285512

Chinatown Charlie wrote:Not just a new facade for every partner, a new facade for every person.

In familiar situations, this is easy, recognising a bunch of traits in a Non and adapting the mask to meet them, be the amazing new extraordinarily compatible friend. And change from person to person always. A million personalities.

I'm aware that I do this, but wasn't aware that other people don't do it. Surely you adapt to different people? Just not to such extremes perhaps, you adapt yourself a little, H's build because there's nothing TO adapt?

You're dead right. All people adapt to their environment. A 'normal' person (if such a beast exists) behaves differently depending on who they're talking to and where they are - just look at Joe Average while he's watching a football game compared to when he's reading his daughter a bedtime story. My theory is that this adaptive mechanism's response to early trauma results in a range of different effects on personality later in life.

Stress, Interfaces, and the Inner Mind

My basic assumption is that the mind can be divided into two layers, the 'inner mind' that contains core emotions, ego etc. and the 'interface' layer that allows the inner mind to communicate with the environment while protecting it from harm. A person only has one inner mind but can have as many interfaces as environments they are exposed to. Only one interface is active at any given time. Interfaces are created as a response to the stress induced by a new experience.

In the case of a 'normal' person, when they are exposed to a new environment, they naturally experience mild stress. This stress triggers the creation of a new interface to adapt to and process the new environment. Because the stress is only mild, the interface layer is 'thin' and 'transparent. This type of interface is like a hat. It offers mild protection and indicates your role, but people can still see your face.

In the case of an adult HPD sufferer, meeting a new person or environment triggers intense anxiety due to their fear of rejection. This severe stress triggers the creation of a much 'thicker' interface to protect the inner mind. This type of interface contains a much more comprehensive set of learned behaviours, including some attitudes, opinions, and emotions. In our analogy, this interface is a mask. It is presented as the real person, shielding their true face.

In the case of literally unbearable trauma, as causes Dissociative Identity Disorder, the inner mind cannot process the new, traumatic environment at all, and an interface is formed that is the full thickness of the mind. It contains not only mannerisms, attitudes, and so forth but it also contains its own core emotions, ego, memories - it is a complete personality. To carry our analogy forward, an interface like this is a complete new head that can be swapped onto the person's shoulders.

Early Trauma and Development

New interfaces can be formed at any age past infancy. However, the inner mind has no need to continue developing while it plus its current interface form a completed whole. In the case of a histrionic child, the thick interface created to protect the child from abandonment trauma arrests the inner mind's emotional development at the point where the trauma occurred. This leads to a vicious cycle whereby the traumatised core emotions require constant protection from a thick interface layer, which in turn prevents them from emotionally connecting with the outside world, which is the only thing that could potentially heal the core trauma, which must happen before the inner mind will let go of its thick interface and thus give itself room to develop.

In the case of DID, the interface formed in response to trauma is a full personality in its own right. While this brings its own problems, it doesn't stunt the development of the original inner mind (assuming that mind survives the trauma - if my understanding is correct, in some DID cases the 'original' personality's inner mind sustains too much damage and actually dies). The original inner mind is still free to create its own interfaces and develop as normal.

Towards a Possible Cure

If the above is correct, then some possible approaches to curing HPD become apparent. The vicious cycle must be interrupted in some way. The most obvious angle is to introduce a new environment that is totally, utterly non-threatening. The only thing I can think of that would fit is having a child - when a female HPD becomes a mother, she has a new person in her life who is completely safe and cannot emotionally wound her. While her primary focus is on nursing her infant child she (for the first time since her own early childhood) has a 'thin' interface active. This may open a window for her partner or others to give her the unconditional support and love that she needs for her core emotions to begin to heal.

The other angle I can see is if the HPD enters into a series of relationships where each time, the partner does nothing to hurt them. Each new relationship will be less threatening and hence require a slightly thinner interface than the last, allowing the inner mind room to grow a little. I suspect this may be the path that Charlie's on - he's now been in enough of these relationships that he's at the point where he can engage in meaningful introspection, realise something's wrong, and want to fix it. The downside is the damage caused to the partners along the way.

Afterword

So, that's basically my theory as it stands. If anyone here has actually studied psychology professionally, or in any other way has something to add, corrections to make, anything like that, I'd love to hear it. I know that some people here either are HPD sufferers who have had children (Scarlett?) or have had children with partners who have HPD. Can you give me any indication as to whether I'm on the right track?

Cheers, and thanks for reading.
TK

TatteredKnight, you're devoting far too much thought o this, but the points you've raised are interesting all the same. the approasch you suggest of changing environment is correct, and this approach wworks well for a whole host of mental disorders, including depression, OCD, HPD [I'm sure], etc. When we are exposed to something new, our brain creates new pathways and this gives us the opportunity to 'ditch' old habits, whether they be HPD in nature or otherwise.

Tattered,
This makes perfect sense in how this relates to me. I don't know when I developed these tendencies, and I think I realize that I am not a full blown HPD as I don't have the extreme end stories of not being able to function or walk around living in a fantasy all day or whatever. I still have the need to be noticed and want to fix that in myself which is why I am here. I want to grow old gracefully (inwardly and outwardly) and not do anything harmful to myself inside or outside. I want to eventually grow old with my husband and be happy. I have trouble with being happy as I am a worry wort by nature about everything. I obsesses on things that frighten me or on my fears of what might happen. I worry about most things that will never come to pass. My children are my number one worry and I over worry on them, but in todays world you just can't be too careful with your children. That leads me to what you said about an HPD becoming a mother.

I had anger issues due to everything in our household growing up was so chaotic and unstable and you never knew who was going to blow up and it was a "walking on eggshells" environment for me and my siblings. I was always good with kids and babysat for a few people here or there, and of course I was pretty much parent of my younger siblings. I have an older sibling but she never really had to do anything because she refused and my parents would give into her instead of making her do it because it was too much effort to fight with her. I was born guilty I guess because I could be guilted into doing anything and every thing and especially where my dad was concerned. I did whatever he told me and I wanted to be just like him. I thought he could do no wrong and I was very protective of him. He is diagnosed as what I now know is SKITZOID. BUT, I think the VA didn't dig deep enough because I think he was part HPD now that I realize how it works. My dad could be very charming and no one would ever guess he was angry, He has always been OCD and even long before the military caused him more OCD. He is also a NPD because he did nothing but talk of himself and how great he was and we kids couldn't even watch a show without him comparing himself to the men on tv and how much better of a man he is than them.

He took more pictures than KODAK founders and most of them were of himself or the scenery over his kids. We hated it when we got the video camera because he would choose which one of us was to be punished for the day and we had to follow him around and FILM him talking pretty much to himself, repeating himself over and over, or doing repeating rituals as stacking rocks a certain way or doing things so many times in a row before he could stop.

THAT IS WHY WE ALL HATE CAMERAS AND VIDEO RECORDERS.

My dad eventually became an alcoholic. And I don't just mean a little bit of an alcoholic, but a mean one. Before the divorce he ended up drinking a fifth of whiskey every night, and he DROVE for a living in his job, but luckily never killed anyone or had an accident, but you know he would not have sobered up by the next morning after drinking like that. He got meaner with my mother and more violent. SO, that is my dad......

MY mom, I am not sure if she woudl be diagnosed, but I feel she may have had histrionic traits, but my mom was more of a wallflower, not athletic, not the start of the show, or anything like that. I get a long with her now, but it was a rough start and stayed that way. I explained on another thread that one memory of my mother to me was good. I was in kindergarten we lived on an army base and she seemed happy. Only three kids at that time, two of us were in school and she was happy. I think. I just remember her being a good mother. Then we moved off base back to our home state and my dad went into the reserves as opposed to active duty and that was the biggest downfall of our family. My youngest sibling came a long we lived in a dungeoun of a house on a dead end road so that "my dad could protect us from everyone" and "keep the wolf out". My mom was miserable and my dad made her feel like a piece of $hit. I can remember my mom hugging me and feeling wierd as a very small child it made me cringe to hug my own mother. I always wondered what it would have been like to be a fly on the wall to see if my mother bonded with me as a child. I know she was young and didn't know that what she felt the baby felt when in her belly, but something wasn't clicking there with her and I from the time I can remember. THEN, my dad goes and cheats on my mom with a lady with MY NAME. THEN my mom turned on me and that made me more protective of my dad when she would badmouth him and me because I was the only one of us four kids that looked like my dad. My dad seem to favor me, my grandmother (his mother) favored me and hated my mother. So, naturally (NO it isn't natrual for a mother to turn on her own child because she was married to a jerk), but she turned on me. She and my older sister left me out of everything, made fun of me, tormented me. I was the only one in my family that had a talent in the music and singing and acting, I was a cheer leader, and played sports, and did everything there was to do in school. None of my friends new my home life was bad. I mean how embarrassing would it have been for them to know that. And the thing is, I was the peacemaker with all my friends. But I couldn't make peace in my own home. It was not a good life at all.

After the divorce it was a little better, and we moved with my mom out of state but only a couple of hours from my dad. A year later he quit drinking and seemed better, not perfect as he still had SPD and NPD, but he wasn't as mean and THEN he made me into his personal slave and assistant and new best friend that he would confide things in me that you should never confide in your daughter and yes of a sexual nature about his girfriends. I would just tell him I don't want to hear about it and he would eventually shut up. In the mean time my mom would do the same thing to my older sister.

My mom went through a second childhood and made some new friends and partied every weekend and every weeknight in the summers for sure and I was left taking care of my brother and sister quite often. Even to this day my little sister and I are best friends and she views me more as her mother even though we get a long with our mom now. I had to grow up too fast and it was a miserable life growing up. A lot of disappointment. So much to the fact that I didn't think I deserve to be happy. When I would tell my husband that, he would say why not?? I said because when I start to get happy, that is when somehing would go wrong. Don't depend on the good to stick around because the bad is lurking there if I am happy for long at all.

Which leads me to the point you made about relationships or creating new ones and the stresses. I was very young just out of high school almost 19 when I had my first daughter. My husband and I both said she changed us both for the better. I can't tell you once I got over the scaredness of being a mother so young at the beginning of the pregnancy, I was perfect and happy. I had a really good pregnancy. I love it. And I know men hear women say that all the time (well some don't because some women hate to be pregnant- ) BUT it was wonderful. We were poor and I started college that fall while I was just starting to show, and my normal skinny little body was gone, and I was delighted. I grew more huge as the monhs went on and took care of myself and ate right for her. She was the reason for everything. and my following two pregnancies were the same for the most part other than a little sickness here or there. It can change a woman. Maybe it can't take away all of the pain of the past, but it is a reason to move forward.

I am just not the kind of person who can do what everyone else has always done if it doesn't work. My dad used to say the sins of the father are passed onto the sons. Well that isn't what the bible says at all like he claimed where he got it. The sins of the father can affect the sons, but the son doesn't inherit the sin. It is not my shame that my father and mother ruined their lives, but I can change myself to not make the same mistakes that they did. Do I still get lonely and feel issolated, Of course, do I want attention to a certain extent, Yes, do I want to break myself completely from needing that attention???? OF COURSE I do. I know many "normal" mothers that don't put much effort into their chilren and many stay at home mothers who are miserable and can't wait for thier kids to leave home. My husband saw the potential in me a long time ago that I would be different from my family and I have broken the cycle of a lot....... alcohol, fighting, abuse, dysfunction, and chaos have no place in my life because my children and my husband do not deserve that. I made many mistakes and I still live with the guilt, but don't want to have guilt when I try to be completely happy. I am getting better with time and the more years out of my dysfunctional child hood home the better I get, and I do have hope that I will get past it completely one of these years.

I do believe that having my first daughter opened a door to loving my husband in the right kind of way and not a "false" or fake sense. We don't have a fairytale life and I don't care about material things, I just want to eventually be able to say YES, when someone asks me, ARE YOU HAPPY? I always say, for the most part, now if someone asks me that.

I appreciate any and all of you listening to me because it is a relief to know I am not all bad, and not full blown HPD, but try to understand why I am defensive of the HPD that do not see what they are doing is wrong. I can only imagine what they had to go through that made them who they are. I know because I have been there. So, here is my comments for what it is worth, take it or leave it.

Thanks for reading my wall of text. :)

Chucky - I'd have to respectfully disagree that I'm putting too much thought into it. If by understanding HPD and so improving my ability to manage or even improve the symptoms, I can save my marriage, then any amount of thought is worth while. I'm glad that the basic concept makes sense from your perspective - I'll admit I hadn't looked it from a physical neurological viewpoint.

Scarlett - Thanks for your extensive background information. :) I was hoping you'd reply, as you're the only histrionic person posting here (to my knowledge) who's had children. I know my wife was a totally different person (or rather, it seemed to me that she was the caring, loving side of her without the erratic emotions and the nasty side) while she was pregnant. Hopefully if this model is accurate enough to be useful, I can somehow figure out from here how to better help her.

Tattered,
I don't know if it helps you or not with your HPD, but I have always said becoming a mother changed me. It didn't make me perfect, of course, but it gave me a reason to change. Had I not become a mother or at least so young, I think I would have continued on a path of destruction. AND I didn't want a divorce or a broken family. I came from one and I was determined to not become one or do that to my kids. Our first few years were rough, but we overcame it together.


I hope it does help you in some way. I am very protective of my children to not let anyone affect them the way I was. They don't get to stay the night with my mom even though my mom is better now, I can't trust that she won't revert back to her old ways. My dad is not even capable to be around them right now so his mind crap cannot get to them either. I am determined to keep my kids good and hopefully they will make good choices when they are grown. At least they don't have a PD and that in and of itself is a miracle from the back ground I came from. I chose not to let that be passed down to them.

Before any of the haters start saying how I am not being truthful or etc, etc, I am speaking to Tattered and who wants to honestly get help or help this situation that Tattered is talking about.


If you want to bring me down, save it.

Thanks Scarlett. It sounds like you had the same experience we had - right up until we lost our baby. She's been gradually worsening over the last few months and now emotionally she's a weather vane in a tornado. It's a total crap shoot what will set her off. I can see that it's hurting her too and that she doesn't understand what's happening, I just wish she'd see that too and accept help. If I were sure that it would permanently change things, I'd love to have another child and make everything perfect, but I can't gamble our childrens' happy upbringing in a stable home on my flimsy theory.

Thanks for sticking around, and don't let the haters get to you! (But don't stop listening to people just because they may be negative about your behaviour, remember there's a difference between criticising what you *do* and criticising who you *are*!).

Very interesting theory, Tattered. So the way an HPD acts is a clue to when the "thick" interface they are using was formed, is that correct? Very interesting.

Just an aside here but my mom is HPD. She had three kids. Motherhood did not change her.

Therapy can help you look at your motivations for doing things, look at the pain, the emptiness and start to heal. But therapy only helps if you have a *sincere* desire to want to change, if you truly want to be made aware of all that you've been running from.

You have to be highly motivated and dedicated to working on yourself to overcome this. Having a baby alone, will not cure a personality disorder.

flawless_victory - Yes, good point. If my theory's right, their emotional age will match up with the age at which they experienced the initial trauma (although the current interface may have been formed at any stage afterwards, and if you're alone in a room with them, it was probably formed the moment they met you). Hmm... actually this ties in nicely with the fact that I've always felt that a particular person I know has an emotional age of around 12, and he had a fairly gruelling life experience at around that age that I'd always suspected sort of 'stopped him growing up'. Score one for my theory! A prediction that is later validated by experimental data is an important milestone in the verification of any theory...

pinkflamingo - Ask your dad what she was like during late pregnancy and early motherhood? I'd be willing to bet (based on other stories here plus my own) that her HPD traits diminished markedly or vanished altogether until her current infant started forming its own separate identity and differentiating itself from her. I agree, though, that this in itself doesn't provide a cure. I'm merely suggesting that it opens a window during which a cure might be possible.

Tattered, as I mentioned before, I suspect an exes mom might have had HPD, if she's like that mom, the children will become the most important thing in her life, and she'll do her best to bind them to her so that they can't leave. She'll also be more interested in being best friends with them then being their mother. I think that there are much worse parents out there then an HPD, but there will be issues.

Providing a safe environment for a HPD will just convince them that they're perfectly fine as they are. The key needs to be in providing a "safe enough" environment where they feel uncomfortable in their situation, but secure enough to try new methods in trying to fix it. Providing "reality checks" would also be valuable where you keep her aware of the missing pieces in her reasoning until she's in a place to internalize them.

Other then that, most of your post makes sense, but I'm not too sure about the emotional age bit. I think that their emotional age has less to do with any specific trauma, and more to do with how secure they're feeling. The more that they're feeling like they have a handle on things, the more emotionally mature they can act. When they feel like things are spiraling out of control, that's when they enter their most infantile emotional states.