Personalities are the total of the way people behave and their tendencies. Some people tend to be more difficult, whether that means they are irritable, frustrated, or manipulating. They are just hard to deal with. Sometimes, those people who we think are a little off are really masking a personality disorder. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, as many as 9% of Americans have an underlying personality disorder. These are signs that the difficult person you know in your life might be suffering from a personality disorder.
Moody
Some people tend to be more moody than others. They are difficult to approach because you never know what type of mood variant you are going to encounter. Sometimes, the moods are triggered by an event; other times, they appear to come out of nowhere. People with extreme mood swings might be masking an undiagnosed personality disorder.
Feelings of Emptiness
When someone feels empty inside, it isn’t like they had a bad day and will rebound the next. Feelings of emptiness, despair, and general hopelessness are a way of life for some people. They are also emotions that can be a sign of particular personality disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
Fear of Being Abandonment
The fear of losing someone can be so prevalent that it can shape the way that people act in relationships with others. Those who have an extreme fear, which is usually a mixture of real and imagined fear of abandonment, might be harboring BPD. A person with Borderline Personality Disorder will often react with clinginess, and they tend to overreact to any perceived pulling away by those close to them.
Unstable Relationships
Those who have underlying personality disorders typically have a hard time maintaining stable relationships with others. Personality disorders can make it difficult for a person to bond appropriately or to find a balance in their relationships with others. Their condition is often misunderstood, and that can make relationships with them tumultuous at best.
Distorted Self-Image
People with personality disorders will often have a hard time with their self-image. They might have very low self-worth and change their identity constantly to be accepted by others. Often, they display erratic behaviors that don’t quite make sense to those around them.
Impulsivity
It is difficult to deal with someone who is erratic and impulsive. According to studies from the National Institutes of Health, nearly 3% of adults will have behaviors to classify them with Borderline Personality Disorder at some point in their lifetimes. People with BPD often make impulsive and destructive decisions and engage in self-harm activities such as substance abuse and driving recklessly.
Feelings of Never Being Good Enough
Pleasers are people who do what they do to please others, even at a detriment to themselves. Those who never feel as if they are good enough might be masking conditions like Avoidant Personality Disorder, which is marked by having a pervasive and overwhelming feeling of inferiority and inadequacy.
Difficulty with Intense Anger
Many people who fly off the handle and appear to not have the ability to control their anger might be suffering from a personality disorder. Disproportionate amounts of anger and outbursts tend to make an issue with the ability to regulate one’s reactions and feelings.
Paranoia
There are times when people can feel like the world is against them, but when someone has a general outlook that the world is a suspicious and untrustworthy place, they can have an underlying personality disorder. Paranoid Personality Disorder is one personality condition that affects anywhere from two to four percent of the population.
Isolation
It is normal for people to go through times when they want to withdraw and step back for a while. When isolation becomes a way of life, however, that might be a sign of a deeper issue. Those who push people away and live in isolation are often dealing with a personality disorder.
Manipulative Behaviors
Manipulative behaviors are those that are meant to get other people to do what you want through the use of control and manipulation. Although all humans are self-seeking, personality disorders such as Antisocial Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder make a life out of using people and lack human empathy.
Lack of Empathy
Empathy is the way that people understand the feelings of others. People with certain personality disorders such as Antisocial and Narcissistic Personality Disorder cannot empathize with others. That means they can’t understand when others are suffering and are indifferent to the struggles of others.
Rigid Thinking
When someone is unable to put themselves in someone else’s and use rational thinking, they might have an underlying personality disorder. Many personality disorders are marked by pervasive and rigid patterns of thinking that don’t alter for conditions necessarily around the person. When someone has rigid thinking patterns, they might suffer from a personality disorder.
Striving for Perfection
Many people are driven by the desire to perfect, but when it becomes obsessive, then it might be a sign of an underlying personality disorder. Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder is marked by an extreme need to control things. It can cause a great amount of stress in the lives of those suffering from it.
Anxiety
Anxiety is something that is becoming even more prevalent in our society. Those who have an extreme and intense fear of being around other people and suffer from anxiety in social situations might be suffering from Avoidant Personality Disorder or Social Anxiety Disorder. It is a condition that makes being in social situations difficult.
Identify Changes
Those who alter who they are to be accepted by those around them often have a very limited sense of self-identification and don’t have a problem taking on many different personality traits to get what they want. Often, an unstable sense of self is the sign of an underlying personality disorder.
Detached Sense of Reality
People suffering from personality disorders often have a hard time holding onto a sense of reality. Their personality disorder can come with episodes of dissociation where they have a hard time knowing what is real and what they are making up in their mind.
Difficult or Personality Disorder?
Most people know someone who they would characterize as “difficult.” Those people, however, might be more than hard to deal with. Often, signs of irritability, suspicion, and mood swings are a sign of underlying personality disorders that go undiagnosed.
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