Cluster B Personality Disorders as defined in the DSM-5 create for loved ones, neighbors, co-workers, adult children, and anyone in their proximity, a “crazy-making” gaslighing, abusive and chaotically devoid of boundaries and limits experience. This hurts even the mentally healthy tremendously.
People on the other side of a person(s) with a Cluster B personality disorder – Borderline Personality Disorder, (BPD), Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) or Anti-Social Personality Disorder (ASPD) a sociopath or a psychopath often feel lost, hurt, confused, engulfed in very stressful chaos. Why then, do so many mentally healthy people become so emotionally reactive?
It is so important for anyone in a relationship or in any way in the proximity of a Cluster B personality disordered person or persons, BPD, NPD, ASPD, to understand that in order to take care of “self” he or she needs to find ways to have boundaries and limits and to even more importantly recognize when he/she is way over his/her boundaries.
When you go way over your limits and boundaries you will begin to lose yourself. You will become much more highly emotionally reactive to the emotional chaos and volatility of the cluster B person you are trying to relate to regardless of which relational dynamic that relating is in.
I work with people who are the loved ones, family members, neighbors, or co-workers of those with BPD, NPD and/or psychopaths or sociopaths to help them understand emotionally, what is happening to them and why and what they can do to create the healthy change they need so as not to be in so much pain and suffering. So as not to be so emotionally reactive when that is not who you really are.
Many feel that it is their fault, or responsibility because those with BPD to an extent, but those with NPD and ASPD in more extreme and calculated ways seek to get the supply and fuel they need from you in targeted and calculated ways. It is not your fault or your responsibility. How you react, is however. Whether you take care of yourself or not, is also your responsibility. What is it about this person that keeps you in a highly reactive mode – as they want to and need to in order to keep you off balance? What is your reactive role in that. I explore with clients how to disengage that reactive role that is all you can change in these interpersonal or proximity experiences of abuse from those with cluster B personality disorders.
© A.J. Mahari, July 20, 2016 – All rights reserved.