preview

Don't Be Defined by Personality Disorders Essay

Best Essays

From the moment a person is born, his or her personality begins to take shape. As they grow and develop, they may become extroverted, introverted, kind, strict, or take on any number of traits that will define who they are. However when certain traits, such as lack of empathy, recklessness, and anxiety, seem to cause strange patterns of behavior that interfere with their daily lives and relationships with other people, it is easy to assume that some form of mental disorder may be the culprit. What many people fail to realize is that instead of it being a mental issue, it may be something in their personality. Although mental disorders and personality disorders are associated with one another, clinicians often pay more attention to mental …show more content…

A person may also be over-confident and arrogant, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are narcissistic. Therefore, Yudosfky has coined a new term to determine whether a personality disorder is genuinely serious or not. The term “fatal flaw” is a “brain based dysfunction of thinking and impulse that leads to persistent patterns of personality and behavior that betray trust and destroy relationships.” A person with a fatal flaw is a danger to themselves and other people if they are unwilling to acknowledge that they have this flaw and are unwilling to seek help for it (Yudofsky). Though many personality disorders are not recognized until the person has reached adulthood, the signs and symptoms of an impending personality disorder are developed during childhood and adolescence. Personality disorders already receive little attention from clinicians and researchers, but these disorders receive even less attention in children and adolescents between the ages of nine and nineteen (Kernberg, Weiner, and Bardenstein). However, the majority of the signs and symptoms of personality disorders in adults can all be traced back to childhood. For example in the case of hysterical personality disorder, which is most common in women, a woman who is constantly seeking the attention and approval of men more often than not had displayed the symptoms of this disorder in early childhood. Instead of going through the normal phase of the growing attractiveness

Get Access