Psychology is not so much a science as it is an art. There is no "Theory of Everything" that explains everything about mental health and can be used to make predictions that can be proven wrong. Still, it's easy to spot common traits among people with personality disorders. Most personality disorders have the same signs and symptoms that the person with the disorder tells the doctor about (as observed by the mental health practitioner).
These are things that all people with personality disorders have in common:
They won't give up, won't stop, won't bend, and won't give in (except those suffering from the Schizoid or the Avoidant Personality Disorders).
They think they deserve special treatment and easier access to resources and people, which they demand loudly. They often have more than one problem. They play "power games" with people in charge, like doctors, therapists, nurses, social workers, bosses, and bureaucrats, and they rarely follow instructions or follow rules of behaviour and procedure.
They think they are better than other people or, at the very least, different. Self-importance and grandiosity are traits of many personality disorders. These people are unable to feel empathy (the ability to appreciate and respect the needs and wishes of other people). In therapy or medical care, they make the doctor or therapist dislike them by treating them like they are better than them.
Patients with personality disorders are self-centered, focused on themselves, and do the same things over and over.
People with personality disorders try to control and take advantage of other people. They don't trust anyone and can't love or share deeply because they don't trust themselves or love themselves. They don't know how to get along with other people and are emotionally unstable.
No one knows if personality disorders are sad results of nature or of the patient's environment not taking care of them well enough.
Most personality disorders, on the other hand, begin in childhood or early adolescence as problems with personal growth. When abuse and rejection happen over and over again, they get worse and turn into full-blown dysfunctions. Personality disorders are set patterns of traits, emotions, and thoughts that don't change. In other words, they don't "evolve" very often. Instead, they stay the same and are everywhere. By "all-pervasive," I mean that they affect every part of the patient's life, including his job, his relationships with other people, and how he gets along with other people.
Personality disorders make people unhappy and often go along with mood disorders and anxiety disorders. Most patients are ego-dystonic (except narcissists and psychopaths). They don't like and don't respect who they are, how they act, and how bad and hurtful they are to the people they love. Still, personality disorders are big ways to protect yourself. So, only a small number of people with personality disorders really know themselves and are able to have life-changing introspective insights.
Most people with personality disorder also have a number of other mental health problems (example: depressive illnesses, or obsessions-compulsions). They are tired of having to control their urges to hurt themselves and fail.
Personality disorder patients have alloplastic defences and a sense of control that comes from the outside. In other words, instead of taking responsibility for the results of their actions, they tend to blame other people or the outside world for their bad luck, failures, and circumstances. So, they start to believe that people are out to get them and start to worry about it. When stressed, they try to avoid real or imagined threats by changing the rules of the game, adding new variables, or trying to change their environment to fit their needs. They see everyone and everything as ways to get what they want.
Patients with Cluster B personality disorders (Narcissistic, Antisocial, Borderline, and Histrionic) are mostly ego-sync, even though they have serious character and behaviour problems, emotional problems and are easily upset, and have mostly wasted their lives and missed out on their full potential. Most of the time, these patients don't find their personality traits or behaviour annoying, unacceptable, disagreeable, or strange.
There's a clear difference between people who have personality disorders and people who have psychoses (schizophrenia-paranoia and the like). Unlike the second group, the first group doesn't have any hallucinations, false beliefs, or thought disorders. At the worst, people with Borderline Personality Disorder have short "microepisodes" of psychosis, which happen mostly during treatment. Patients with personality disorders are also fully oriented, with clear senses (sensorium), a good memory, and a good amount of general knowledge.
