Multiple Faces of Personality
A Psychological Article by Boomeryearbook.com
You may have seen movies or television shows depicting those with personality disorders as someone with pretty bizarre symptoms and a very disturbed mind. Perhaps you’ve thought that this psychological disorder could never happen to you or anyone you love. In this psychological article we will take a hard look at the causes of personality disorder.
As all you Baby Boomers out there are aware, some of us did not grow up in a “Ward and June Cleaver” household. Maybe there was some fighting, yelling or even violence. Below is a checklist of various factors, which can contribute to personality disorders. This psychological article will discuss how these childhood traumas can develop over time into what the American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) describes as personality disorders.
1. Was there fighting, yelling or violence in your childhood?
2. Did you feel unsettled much of the time? Like anything could happen; an environment in which there was no sense of stability.
3. Did you grow up with parents that you were ashamed of for some reason? Maybe they were lazy or alcoholic or even abusive.
4. Did you suffer from verbal, physical or sexual abuse?
These are some of the main factors that can take root in a child and manifest later in life as a personality disorder. This psychological article explains how this can happen.
The traumatic events named above occur while we are still children. We are not fully developed. Our minds, hearts, personalities are still very fragile. As children we are like sponges. We absorb whatever’s around us.
Violence or abuse can distort our self-image. We begin a life long journey of figuring out who we are except that we base our findings and conclusions on erroneous information. Many psychological articles explain this in great detail but the bottom line is that in order to grow into healthy adults without personality problems human children need to be told by those they trust that they are good, beautiful people with something valuable to contribute.
Children need constant affirmation as they are growing up. All psychological articles agree upon this. When they don’t receive healthy affirmation of who they are, they begin to develop a self image that is distorted. They begin to believe they are worthless and have nothing to contribute. They have no purpose or destiny. They struggle their whole lives with low self-esteem.
Most psychological articles additionally conclude that co-comittant depression will very often develop out of this type of childhood. Now you have several different psychological disorders that you’re dealing with and no understanding of why you feel this way or why your life has gone in this negative direction.
At this point in someone’s life, all it takes is a catalyst in order to develop a personality disorder. These can come in a variety of sizes and shapes and most psychological articles agree that it largely depends on the type and severity of abuse you received as a child. Here are a few catalysts that can trigger a personality disorder:
1. A friend or loved one is suddenly killed.
2. Your spouse betrays you by cheating or doing something completely unexpected that stuns you.
3. A friend or family member suffers some type of violence such as rape.
4. You are the victim of some type of violent act.
5. You are abandoned by those who love you.
This is just a partial list in most psychological articles but Baby Boomers have lived long enough to have seen a lot of stuff like that in their lives. It takes a harsh toll on us as humans to see someone we love suffer or even to have something of this nature happen in your own life and have no one to walk thru the Valley of the Shadow of Death with you.
Psychological articles suggest that along with the development of personality disorders these are triggers that in some extreme cases, can cause a second personality or multi personalities to develop. The old fulfillment of the adage that if you can’t deal with what has happened or you aren’t strong enough and you have no one to lean on, your unconscious mind can create an alternate personality to help share the traumatic burdens.
Psychological articles inform us that this secondary, or split off part of the original self, can display more adaptive, stronger, or “more heavily psychologically guarded” coping skills that protects the vulnerable aspect of the person’s wounded emotional makeup. The primary personality can “hide” behind the new personality which has the palliative effective of allowing the person to withdraw from pain through this extreme escape mechanism.
This Psychological Article on A Baby Boomers Look at Some Causes of Personality Disorders
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