Paranoid Personality Disorder

Paranoid Personality Disorders Paranoid Personality Disorder is a disorder commonly mistaken for schizophrenic personality disorders. Schizophrenia, a psychosis, is when a person is has an image of a world and its transpiring events, and he/she is"living" it. Paranoid Personality Disorder, however, is a neurosis where an individual is living in the real world. This disorder, though not as draining as other disorders, but can still devastate someone's life. Individuals with this disorder always assume that other people are "out to get them" even if there is no evidence that this is true. They are constantly doubting others around them and scrutinizing every action. This attitude is taken on towards all people, like friends or associates, not only strangers. For these reasons, people with this personality disorder rarely confide in people and are actually amazed if someone shows loyalty. However, this amazement also gives way to disbelief and falls back to distrust.

Suspiciousness and lack of distrust in others, being “cold, objective, hostile, stubborn” many of the characteristics of a person with Paranoid Personality Disorder. Paranoid Personalty Disorder, or P.P.D. , is as a dictionary put it, “a personality disorder characterized by a pervasive pattern of distrust and suspicion of others resulting in a tendency to attribute the motives of others to malevolence.” People with P.P.D. can also express unreasonable self-worth and mention. They also might be susceptible to twist reality, “hypersensitivity” to misunderstand events and has an enlarged perspective of themselves.

P.P.D. usually first appears in childhood or during teens years with isolation from others, lack of friends, outlandish thoughts, “hypersensitivity” and disjunctive illusions. People with this disorder usually have grown up in an environment of frequent chastisement, blame and aggression. Most often, P.P.D. occurs in males.

A person with Paranoid Personality Disorder may have six fundamental beliefs which have a pull on their view of themselves and others;

1. Disaster awaits

2. The world is full of adversaries

3. Humbling events are held by people with intentions to hurt

4. All events associate to self

5. Anything that goes wrong is never their fault

6.They’re “different from the rest of humanity”

They also believe that everyone in the world is out to hurt them and that many people aren’t “loyal”. Many times they will not give out their personal information to their family members in fear of them freely handing it out to strangers. They are always on guard and often confuse compliments as a secretive “criticism”, this lessens the chances of establishing relationships. People with P.P.D. also struggle with the fact that another person may have more power over them such as a police officer. Adults with P.P.D. have constant struggle with authoritative figures. These people are in constant fright of being overpowered by authority, such as being enslaved and having a loss of “autonomy”. They will try to inflict “interpersonal power” to guard against the consequences that will be pursued on them due to their criminal actions. They also “counter attack” when they feel endangered.

People with P.P.D. have an unusual, but subtle behavior. Only when they feel overpowered do they start to become argumentative.