Someone had mentioned to me that everyone under the age of 45 is living in the “Age of Anxiety“.

I had to pause and think of everyone in my social circle. Okay, yeah, COVID was not kind to anyone’s mental health… can I recall how these same people were before the pandemic… huh.

This conversation came up when a close ‘friend*’ of mine was diagnosed with mixed personality disorder, mainly Cluster B (be aware that these kinds of diagnoses are used as place markers until a patient has had enough treatment to assess them more clearly). If you have a few minutes, I recommend watching this video (it is 12 minutes long). It gives you an idea of how it feels like people have become more… unhinged.

Let us chat about the diagnosis and what it means (briefly).

What was just your garden variety narcissists before is now blown up into moral theatrics, emotional volatility, self-indulgence, and outbursts of violence (that they could not care less about the consequences of). You can get high from all the attention when the whole world is on your stage.

The Cluster B personality disorders: are the narcissist, the borderline, the histrionic, and the antisocial (sometimes called sociopathy).

Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by a sense of entitlement, obsession with one’s importance, and deep feelings of resentment, often expressed through moral self-righteousness.

Borderline personality disorder is marked by an unstable sense of identity, black-and-white thinking, feelings of emptiness, and recurring self-harm and suicide attempts.

Histrionic personality disorder exhibits excessive emotionality, sexual provocation, and attention-seeking, often to serve a pathological need for sympathy.

Antisocial personality disorder is typified by impulsivity, manipulation, disregard for others, and a penchant for violence and aggression that violates social norms.

To test as a mixed personality disorder is to have traits or symptoms of more than one personality disorder at the same time, while not meeting the criteria for any single one of them.

While telling this story, we will call this ‘friend’ Neil.

Neil: constant psychodrama – victimhood replaces accomplishment as the standard of merit; accusation replaces disagreement as the means of settling disputes; false compassion becomes the primary method of manipulating friends/family/lovers into compliance, and the whole scheme is enforced with threats: obey, or suffer the consequences.

He is a hateful bigot who lacks basic empathy, yet he is extraordinarily effective in controlling what you think – his charm is record-breaking. His self-righteousness is constantly craving affirmation and if it is not fed regularly, he will sulk and blame his bad moods on generalized anxiety disorder.

His psychological disorders are job qualifications rather than problems to be solved; ideology replaces competence as a marker of distinction. Neil looks for new labels to stick to his chest, versus looking for ‘help’. He is all attention-seeking, all black-and-white thinking, and excessive emotionality associated with Cluster B.

The goal is not to arrive at ‘answers’ but to browbeat anyone who disagrees with him and to make them feel remorseful for denying him what he wanted in the first place.

If I were to bring up any kind of ‘nebulous’, therapeutic concepts such as trauma, white fragility, and systemic injustice, Neil would pitch a fit, it validates his self-pity. He is always under attack. Everything that might cause him ‘harm’ or is ‘offensive’  is promptly removed from his life – the perfect recipe for enabling and encouraging Cluster B-style narcissism and hysteria.

“Neil,” I say, “maybe you should work on resolving some of this trauma so you stop hurting others?“
“My therapist says I should not do anything that makes me feel uncomfortable.“

A preposterous standard – healing trauma is going to be uncomfortable.

Yes, Cluster B personality disorders are characterized by dramatic, overly emotional, or unpredictable thinking or behaviours. So none of these should be overtly surprising. Neil has raped women while they have been drunk. He has primarily dated women in their teens so he can control them (he is in his mid-late 30s). He has stood by and did nothing while someone he was dating was being beaten nearly to death (and she was pregnant with his child). Neil lies for sport, cheats because he cannot be without constant female attention (even if the woman has a husband/boyfriend – jeopardising someone else’s relationship does not bother him), betrays every person he knows, keeps all of his friends separate from each other so they do not know what the other group knows, is an alcoholic and a drug addict (that has a job that allows him to capitalise on these addictions) and when asked what he thought about me, he said I was a loser, a nigger, fat, ugly, unfuckable, boring, old and that he would never date me because I had too many baby daddies (like all black women did).

Some of these things he said to my face to “help me”.
The other things I heard from other people.

He does not think it matters that he said it because “he did not mean it“. He was trying to put someone else in their place and thought it was okay to dismantle me in the process.

 

 

*A friend is someone with whom we have a deep emotional bond, trust, and loyalty. They support us, share common interests and activities, and play a significant role in our lives. On the other hand, an acquaintance is someone we know casually, with limited interaction and shared experiences.