Your Ex Probably Doesn’t Have A Personality Disorder
This post brought to you by a pair of sisters.
In the shadowy corners of the internet lives a subset of breakup listicles designed to help you diagnose your ex-partners’ psychopathology. Oh, you didn’t know this was a thing? It totally is a thing. According to several recent pieces on sites like the Huffington Post and Thought Catalog, almost everyone who ever dumped you had a personality disorder. These articles will walk you through the process of deciding just how “crazy” your ex was. Borderline Personality Disorder is used to label someone who seems too emotional, OCPD is assigned to those who can’t compromise, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder explain the behavior of someone who doesn’t care about you anymore. “I dated someone just like this!” flood the comment sections of these articles as readers recount their ex’s symptoms.
Having any sort of relationship with an individual who struggles with a personality disorder can bring unique interpersonal challenges. That can be a tough row to hoe, and this article is not for the people who turn to articles about psychopathology as a source of support, community and information. This article is for the type of person that diagnostic pop psychology articles prey on; those who have a habit of labeling their exes as “crazy” once the relationship is over. There is an entirely different motive for seeking out information to help diagnose an ex. Slapping mental illness labels on people who treated us badly can be the real-life equivalent of Robin Williams embracing us with whispers of “it’s not your fault.”
“But!” you might say. “You don’t understand. I looked at the DSM-V and my ex TOTALLY fits this list of bullet points! Are you telling me the DSM-V is wrong?! It has science in it. SCIENCE.” I’m not going to get into the DMS-V debate, but I will explain how you can be staring straight at an “objective” list of criteria and make anyone fit a personality disorder diagnosis.
First, it’s actually fairly easy to find a personality disorder that fits any individual to some degree. This is because personality disorders are designed to describe extremes across a broad range of maladaptive interpersonal styles (Millon, 1999). Everyone has some traits or tendencies that align with a disordered interpersonal style because we’ve all got our own special quirks. When we are in a happy relationship with someone, these quirks are endearing at best and mildly frustrating at worst. When a relationship hits the skids, the trouble starts. Many classic theories of psychopathology acknowledge that stressful life event can heighten maladaptive traits for a period of time (Prochaska & Norcross, 2009). Breakups are typically stressful, therefore if you go through a breakup with someone it’s likely that their (and your) more challenging traits will magnify.
Second, emotion impacts how we process and interpret information. There is a term to describe this called “confirmation bias” (Fiske, 2010). Confirmation bias means that how we attend to, interpret and remember information supports our preconceived beliefs. When we are faced with information that contradicts our beliefs, we experience discomfort. This discomfort is a powerful motivator to see what we already believe. This isn’t a conscious process, and in a way it’s protective of our cognitive resources. It takes time, energy, and effort to change our beliefs. The world runs much more smoothly when we all have the inherent tendency to see what we already believe. But sometimes a trade-off for cognitive simplicity is accuracy. This means that once we decide “this person is acting crazy,” we will actively work to make the “facts” fit our thoughts. So if you believe your ex must be a narcissistic jerk, it’s extremely easy to selectively remember all the information that supports your hypothesis.
Third. it’s easy to twist memories about how a person acted in a relationship to fit a personality disorder if you don’t think about two aspects that are crucial to the diagnosis a personality disorder; to what extent and to what degree symptoms are occurring. Check out this sweet noise from the APA’s DMS-V committee:
“Personality disorders are associated with ways of thinking and feeling about oneself and others that significantly and adversely affect how an individual functions in many aspects of life.” (APA, 2013).
Extent means a person with a personality disorder will have the same relationship issues with you, as with their mom, as with their boss, as with their best friend, as with grocery store Pete who gives out free samples in the deli section. Pop psychology diagnostic articles rarely mention the importance of consistency across context.
“But, Elise! I told you I was using the DS-goddamn-M-V!”
Even if you are using the DSM-V, it’s easy to forget that the criteria listed needs to apply across multiple situations. This creates a susceptibility to a confirmation bias because the reader only has to apply a list of criteria to how their ex treated them.
Degree is the next important piece. Let’s use this article as an example. It was written by a woman who identifies as having dated someone with narcissism. The signs she lists are:
1. Do they, at first, shower you with attention?
2. Do they retract when you pay positive attention to someone else at a party or social gathering?
3. Do they seek to criticize or reduce others?
4. Do they never seem satisfied with positive feedback, and are always angling for more specific affirmations?
5. Do they lack empathy towards others, and you?
6. Do they have an unrealistic belief in their own abilities?
7. Do they use you and others purely for their own gain?
At first glance this may seem like an okay list. She’s got the superiority complex, the need for attention, and lack of empathy all represented. She even acknowledges that how this person treats others (that’s the extent part!) is an important piece. A few pieces are missing such as the expectation of special treatment, but overall it seems like a fair representation of a portion of the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder… except when you think about degree. Take item 5 for example, to what degree does someone need to lack empathy? Would someone staring blankly at you while you cry count as a lack of empathy? Would someone burning all of your shoes, waiting for you to buy new shoes, burning the new shoes, and then laughing about it count? What about someone who tries to listen when you vent about work, but can only stand 5 minutes before needing to be on the internet again? My point is, there can be a wide range of how we define acceptable behavior.
The factors listed above could impact anyone’s ability to make an accurate diagnosis. Mental health professionals take this into account and try to avoid using personality disorder diagnosis until there is a clear indication of pervasive interpersonal patterns that interfere with life functioning. We also use standardized assessments to help in the diagnostic process, because it can be so difficult to objectively determine what’s going on based on observation alone. This is one of the many reasons why it is unethical for a mental health professional to diagnose or treat someone they have a preexisting relationship with. The idea is that having professional distance will make an unbiased assessment more likely. Whether this actually happens is a discussion for another day. In short, it’s difficult enough to make an accurate assessment with training, relative objectivity, and the use of standardized psychometric tools, and super difficult if it’s your ex.
The diagnostic labels that come from this process facilitate communication between researchers and practitioners, providing language to describe a common experience of suffering for a subset of individuals. But mental illness labels can also be used as a way to dismiss or degrade. It’s unnervingly easy to write someone off as not mattering in our society if they’re “crazy.” This is especially true with diagnosis that have extra stigma attached, like personality disorders. So sometimes I worry when I hear someone flippantly diagnosing their ex-partner as a sociopath, borderline or narcissistic. Those are powerful labels that mean so much more than what I think the person using them is trying to convey which I suspect might be; “this person behaved in a way I dislike, do not understand and it hurt me.”
References
Fisk, S. T. (2010). Social beings: Core motives in social psychology, 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Millon, T. (1999). Personality-guided therapy. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Prochaska, J. O. & Norcross, J. C. (2009). Systems of psychotherapy: A transtheoretical analysis, 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
http://www.dsm5.org/Documents/Personality%20Disorders%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
Tags: armchair psychology, it's not your fault, mental health, science, the dsm, your ex is a monster, your ex is fine
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About Author
by Elise R
Elise R is a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology. She suffers from seasonal allergies and chronic impostor syndrome.
While we're at it, can people stop using "bipolar" when they really mean "changeable" or "moody"? Thanks a bunch.
Also, "autistic" for "somewhat awkward."
Well, the DSM is getting rid of "autistic" (if I recall correctly, which is unlikely), so that should solve that!
The DSM is removing Asberger's Syndrome, and also I don't think that a term not being in the DSM will stop people from using it as an insult.
I believe it's autism spectrum disorder now.
Preach, tubatoothpaste and Pantomime_Horse!
My mom is someone who should know better, but she still says of every awkward/somewhat obnoxious person she meets, "I think he/she has Aspergers." At least she's come to expect my lectures in response.
But, what if they were? I've dated 3 that were diagnosed BP, either before or after our relationship (those with prior knowledge did not share said knowledge). All were met and relationship started when they were in a level state. It wasn't the BP that ended the relationships, it was the addictions, abusive behavior and lack of self-care.
I think if a professional diagnosed them, you're totally in the clear. But you might wind up having that problem that men do when they say their ex is crazy and they get the stinkeye from every woman in the place and then have to clarify, "No, I mean she was straight-up diagnosed as a schizophrenic, she hears voices and believes that her brother is God. Not 'crazy' like she got mad when I cheated on her."
This. But I wouldn't use the word crazy even if an ex had schizophrenia. It's so dehumanizing.
Oh for sure! I did not want to invalidate anyone's experience in dating someone with a PD, and I'm sorry if this came across that way. My target in writing this was to address a trend I was seeing of pop psych articles that help people diagnose ex partners on their own.
It's ok, I understood that. I think I just flared up because I've said "bipolar" before, and yes, been dismissed by those that don't know the actual situation OR the actual definition. Unfortunately, it is easier for some to simply dismiss those they've scorned or been scorned by as "broken" or "sick". Easier than accepting responsibility, accepting that the only perfection is imperfection, and that sometimes…there just aren't any answers or good reasons. I'd much rather be friends with a person that has been in treatment or therapy than the unstable masses that harm others with ignorance and indifference.
I used to have a Big Problem with that since I'm Type II. It doesn't phase me quite as much anymore, but it really, really doesn't mean as many things as people think it means. Throwing it around is kind of unhealthy.
Also "OCD" to mean "neat" or "anal-retentive" or "particular"
THIS. A MILLION TIMES THIS.
Can I also throw "ADD" on the "please stop using this to describe perfectly normal and non-debilitating behaviors, you insensitive asshole" list?
I second the motion, as someone who was diagnosed with ADD by a doctor at the tender age of 12.
brb bookmarking this article to throw it at people for the foreseeable future till they stop being buttheads on this subject
(also BEST HEADSHOT CHOICE)
Right?!? And I'm right there with her on having chronic impostor syndrome. Had it all my life.
This is great.
And I'd second tubatoothpaste, and take it further: let's everyone stop using medical diagnoses for non-medical conditions. Because then you make me add "disorder" onto the end of perfectly good words, and it makes me feel iller than I am. TA.
I've been trying to use 'anal' instead of 'OCD' because if I remember correctly one is a medical condition and one is a thing Freud made up? It makes me sound slightly vulgar at work, but I also utter "balls!" loudly when something fucks up, so they already knew this about me.
Yep, I think so. The popular image of OCD stopped me getting proper treatment for years- so it's not just a "politically correct" thing, it really does do actual harm. </earnest voice>
Awesome! Yep, OCD can be a pretty debilitating mental illness, while anal refers to a psychosexual stage of development. When you call someone anal, you are really saying that you suspect they have unsuccessfully resolved that psychosexual stage and are now fixated. Fixation means you can range from being super messy and disorganized to super neat organized and restrictive, but most of the time people mean "anal retentive" which is the restrictive end of things. *inserts the more you know rainbow* *readjusts huge glasses* *cowers in locker from the football team*
Wow, really? And here I thought it meant that you were acting like someone who was chronically constipated…
Don't have chronic imposter syndrome, this was great! Now do "No, not everyone who is slightly awkward has Asperger's."
Hey thanks! I totally agree about the autistic spectrum! I wanted to include it, but I felt like I already wrote a tome and a half only focusing on PDs.
As someone who's spent a lot of time dealing with people with actual, real mental-health issues, I really, really appreciate this post. Thanks.
Yeeeeah. My experience has generally been that it never fucking occurs to me that this person might have a diagnose-able problem, and then it turns out I should really have realized their behavior was well outside the norm.
This is less for exes (who have generally "traits" from one category or another, but never anything I think a psychologist would actually diagnose as an official thing), but people who have been in your life forever, like parents and friends you've had since childhood. You never really think to question their behavior. It's just kind of who they are. It's "normal." Exes are way easier, because you had this little snippet of their life in which you knew them, and you can analyze the hell out of just those experiences and pretend they're the big picture.
The "big picture" is really the problem with diagnosing these things. If you're not a professional and don't know what you're looking for, you're way more likely to not see that someone you know really well is borderline or bipolar or whatever, because you see them in lots of situations where they're not obviously displaying those traits. And then this article describes really well how you could reverse-engineer a diagnosis regardless of facts for someone you don't know well.
That's a really interesting point! I think it can definitely work both ways. I've noticed this in therapists (myself included) when dealing with their own lives a lot. The people who are doing the diagnosing often have the hardest time seeing their own shit.
Part of it is, I think, the "frog in boiling water" phenomenon. When my mother was losing her memory, it was much easier for me to see than it was for my stepdad, precisely because I didn't live with her, so when I would see her after a few months had gone by, I would note a drastic change. But he, from day to day, only noticed tiny changes, which seemed too small to get worried over (for a while). It's obviously not at all the same thing as dealing with personality disorder, but I think it's akin to what you're saying about being habituated to something making you think it's "normal" when to an outsider it wouldn't be.
This is a great post, and I LOVE that it includes academic citations. Good job.
Why don't we all just agree to use the word "asshole" (or synonyms thereof) more often? None of this, "My ex was so autistic, my ex had NPD, my ex was totally bipolar but not really" nonsense. Can't we just say, "Dude, my ex is SUCH a DICKWEED"? Colorful and usually more accurate.
I'm partial to "my ex is such a fuckwit" my own self. My online pals & I call them "FWXH"s for short.
My mom insists that an asshole is a useful thing, so she prefers to call people hemorrhoids (thankyouspellcheckInevergetthatwordright) when insulting them.
someone can be a dick to you wothout having some kind of disorder, too, so if your ex treated you like crap just go with that. I get the urge to retrospectively diagnose them with a disorder – it makes their behaviour make sense – but it's ok. Some people are just awful.
(one of my exes claimed he was a demon in human form though, so maybe don't take my advice)
One of my exes claimed she was schizophrenic, and that's why it wasn't really cheating on me, see, because it was actually one of her alternate personalities who slept with that other woman. (No, she didn't even Google schizophrenia before telling me that one.) She was probably just an asshole.
Since schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder aren't even close to the same thing, yeah, she was an asshole.
Great post! As a person pursuing a career in psychology (though not clinical), pop psych posts sometimes/often make me feel squicky, and you are much better at verbalizing the squickiness of it than I am. I second blushingflower's citation appreciation!!
"row to hoe," not "road to hoe."
Fixed, thanks!
could be one of them dirt roads and the tire tracks leave a nice mounded row in the middle perfect for growing potatoes or watermelons or that kind of thing that likes to germinate in hills. Gotta hoe them carefully, when that happens, otherwise the cars start running over your watermelons and all of July looks like the cars coming from that direction drove through a massacre.
I appreciate this article, and I definitely agree with your points/concerns. However, I would just like to share my experience from perhaps the opposite side of the spectrum…
I went to therapy in 2002 because I was having major problems with my mother. I went to this therapist and literally asked her to help me figure out what was wrong with me, so I could be a better daughter. In therapy I learned that my mother has a textbook case of BorderlinePD…that I wasn't "the crazy one" as she had led me to believe for years and years. I bought the book Stop Walking on Eggshells, and my whole life started to make sense. In reading that book I also learned about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and suddenly the charming but simultaneously assholic guy I was dating made sense, too.
Now I doubt that this guy has been diagnosed NPD, and my mother has never been *formally* diagnosed as BPD (because, as you know, Borderlines are notoriously averse to therapy). But learning about these disorders gave me a framework with which to make sense of two people who had abused me. These labels helped me justify my decision to stick up for myself and remove myself from two very harmful relationships. So, in my case, **privately** labeling people with formal diagnoses was immensely helpful.
Thanks for sharing! I think that is a really important perspective, and I completely agree that labels can be helpful for a lot of people and are not inherently bad. It's one of the number one reasons I'm not anti DSM-V or against using diagnostic language (although many mental health professionals I respect have another perspective). It can be life changing to realize that there is a way to describe what you (or those close to you) have been experiencing, resources to understand it and ways to work on it. I'm really glad you (and others) are sharing your stories, because there certainly are people who have (and have had) close relationships with individuals with PDs.
Yeah, labels are definitely tricky. Throw them around too much, and their meanings get diluted/misunderstood…but you can't do away with them entirely! As with most things in life, moderation is key! :)
I've had a pretty similar experience – also with Stop Walking on Eggshells, also with my mom. But, I also think there's a really big difference between reading multiple books and investigating what certain jargon means and trying to understand when exactly it becomes a personality disorder, and then not going around telling everyone "oh, my mom's totally BPD" but instead using it as a way for you to personally deal. Whereas, this article seems to be more about the phenomenon of people reading the DSM criteria on wikipedia and instantly going, "oh, that's what so-and-so has, obviously" and then using it to make them the villain and you the put-on angel.
Absolutely—very different situation. I just wanted to share a complementary scenario involving labels.
The only time I mention my mother's "alleged" BPD is if someone really pushes about why we're not in contact. And even then I usually just say that she has an undiagnosed mental illness. (ETA: The only time I mention it in person; obviously I just mentioned it here, anonymously, for the sake of example!)
Yes, thank you! Some time ago, I and a number of other people in my community had some really difficult experiences with a very manipulative person. We all really struggled to understand why someone we cared about and who had seemed to care about us would act that way. His behaviour just didn't make sense, and we had difficulty putting the experience behind us without being able to understand his actions. It wasn't until we started comparing notes and considering the possibility that he had a personality disorder of some kind that we found an explanation that made sense. Being able to recognise his behaviour as abnormal and representative of dark triad traits really helped me process the experience.
Adding a third to this exact same scenario. Yes, labels can be really helpful if you're using them to better your own situation. It can be useful to find out the behaviors you thought of as your fault are really just the products of a disorder, and for me, I found that the studies that have been done on children with BPD parents were really helpful, because traits I'd always considered personal failings turn out to be really natural defense mechanisms. It also gives you someplace to start in getting better – oh, okay, I see why I do that now, so how can I get around it?
That said, even knowing the correct label isn't that useful if you don't do anything with it. If you're just using it to dismiss the person in question, the helpfulness diminishes after you remove the relationships from your life. Not that removing the relationships isn't pretty damn helpful, but there's more to do for yourself, you know?
Very true. In my case, discovering the label was just the first step in a continuing journey of research and introspection.
That's really great. I hear a lot about how labels aren't useful, but sometimes it's just so helpful to know that what you're experiencing is normal under those circumstances.
Amen! My experience is that most women assume that their ex's ridiculous behaviour is their fault, not that said ex has a personality disorder. (It also seems like women are likely to struggle to understand what's wrong with them when they have trouble with another person's erratic behaviour.) In my case, it helped immensely when I realized an ex's truly extreme behaviour was an expression of a personality disorder, and it really wasn't my fault that he seemed to go from loving me so absolutely to hating me, all in the space of one day, for little reason.
However, I do think that websites attempting to categorize mean or erratic exes as having personality disorders are harmful, especially because they obscure how truly devastating a personality disorder is, both for the person in question and their friends/family. A person with a personality disorder who has not been in therapy will typically demonstrate extreme behaviour. For example, my ex had fallen out with all of his friends ever with the exception of one, had repeatedly stolen and shoplifted, had self-harmed, had attempted suicide twice, couldn't be alone for more than an hour or so because of intense feelings of emptiness, had no idea if he 'even had a sexual identity' etc. More harmlessly, he was very changeable and he'd tried every ideology or religion out there, had joined various political groups, etc. (Some of this behaviour is just typical of people in their 20s, I realize.) He had caused immense devastation to every person who'd ever cared for him, basically, and was in a great deal of pain most of the time. And he really didn't want to act the way he was acting, which was the sad part. You could see that to a large extent, he was suffering and didn't want to suffer and had no idea of how to stop. He'd been in talk therapy (which doesn't work super well for BPD), he'd taken all kinds of psychiatric drugs, he'd dropped out of school to 'get better.' That kind of stuff is the hallmark of a personality disorder, not being self-absorbed or impatient or unkind.
In my case, it was helpful to realize that this person really meant well, but was at the mercy of forces much larger than himself. He truly didn't want to act the way he was, but his unsuccessful attempts at therapeutic or psychiatric treatment had convinced him that he truly was a problem.
row to hoe…not road to hoe….
this was great though. sick of hearing about all the 'crazies' out there
Thank you, from all the mis-hoed roads out there…
This article was awesome! I learned! I laughed!
My ex's are just depressed, cause I broke up with them, which ruins anyone's life. Poor bunnies.
This was a superbly constructed / reasoned article, and great fun to read, too.
To be fair, even with people actually qualified to diagnose, personality disorders can be kind of bullshit diagnoses. My parents are both clinical psychologists, and they joke that "borderline" just means your psychologist doesn't like you and isn't sure why. That's obviously an exaggeration, and personality disorders can be useful in explaining why someone acts a certain way, but ultimately they're just names for behavioral patterns, as this author points out. And I know a lot of therapists really shy away from diagnosing patients with personality disorders because it's not that useful for the patients themselves–it's extremely stigmatizing, and it's not like an anxiety disorder or something, where the diagnosis can be followed by "so you should do CBT and see a psychiatrist about medication."
I think the tendency to assign some kind of mental health defect to your ex is another way of assigning blame away from yourself.
Okay, but you do seem to acknowledge that BPD exists, so surely there are some people who have really dated those who are diagnosable as BPD…
True! I was trying to address the issue of diagnosing people who are close to us, but I can see how my title might be a little misleading:) HINDSIGHT!
They say you can tell a lot about a person by the way they talk about their exes, even the ones who were assholes. Pathologizing an ex instead of identifying problematic behaviour seems cheap and lazy.
What about if my therapist is the one who thinks my ex has NPD?
Oh boy! Well hopefully your therapist was clear about their inability to actually diagnose a person who was not their client, and framed the conversation as "based on your description it sounds like they have traits that align with some NPD traits." In the comments, some people have shared how it's been helpful to have labels to make sense of their experiences of having a close relationship with someone with a PD. I totally support that and alluded to that in the second paragraph of this article. I think having a therapist point out things that are atypical either interpersonally or intrapersonally (i.e yeah you're ex shouldn't have locked you out of the house overnight for talking during Scandal; OR you shouldn't have locked your ex out of the house for talking during Scandal) is one of the more valuable pieces of therapy. Getting that outside perspective along with knowledge about resources and techniques that can create change, that stuff is the shit:) As an additional piece, I think a good therapist will help you make sense of how you got into those relationships and how past relationships have contributed to your current interpersonal style, but that's my opinion and it's heavily influenced by my theoretical orientation. Anyway, I wish you all the best things in therapy!
Great article, thanks for writing it! I was actually going to write a blog post on the same subject, but I never got around to it. I HATE armchair psychological diagnosis. I understand it's easy to do and almost intuitive, but it's really harmful.
I've actually dated a few women with serious mental disorders and it definitely affected parts of our relationship. Heck, I needed to go to therapy for months after the abuse one put me through. Despite that, I still wouldn't call them 'crazy' or whatever. Their mental disorder may have contributed to our issues, but I still wouldn't even say that they were insane and that's why it didn't work out.
Just had to say… years later, googling the phrase "personality disorders? bullshit." I find this article and feel a teensy bit better about the world. Sorry if it seems like I'm damning you with faint praise but I am waaaay down in the deep dark dumps and have been looking for the secret exit to the oubliette for a while now. So what I mean is thank you for writing something well thought out, worded and played. I've recently formed the belief that personality disorders are a 'nonsense word' that we made up for something that already has a name. Stress, or pain. They have a similar effect on a person. I swear, we got full of ourselves (as a species) with all our grand and new knowledge illuminated in the past few centuries and when we saw the application of our science to our people, the ones who suffer greatly and for many years of their lives, the image got flipped. Like babies seeing the world upside-down, as our eyes do without our brain's conditioning. We sought to help with science and diagnoses, categories… but instead of reaching out a bare hand to our frail and wounded, reassuring "You've been through a lot. Can I help you?" we thrust a syringe and a list of criteria, calling them "dysfunctional" and "disordered", fundamentally floored "personalities". It is exactly as you say, when you go through stress (a break up), your more challenging traits will magnify. Aspects of your normal, individual personality. They may have been deeply shaped by experiences, but they're not dysfunctional. Overstressed, overblown, overemphasised for good or bad, until you've had a little compassion shown to you – but they are essentially normal. Everyone is. Psychology is a useful science, and is deeply helpful to developing connections and understanding people, in conjunction with an open heart. But personality disorders… even schizophrenia seems like extreme but natural neurological misfirings that are always linked to trauma, often untreated for years. Pain hurts your brain, from your psyche as well as yours nerves. We admit that we don't understand very much at all about the brain, but we're willing to label millions of people as schizotypal or histrionic or avoidant, dysfunctional personalities, a pejorative declared on their very selves? Nothing about that adds up. Except that we're not as smart or benign as we've convinced ourselves. As a species, as animals, as living beings in this world. No joke, we suck hard.
But you're pretty cool.
The main thing I have learned through this lots of readings on PD on the internet, is something that had never occured to me before: when someone claims you are responsible for their behaviour and you believe it, something is not ok. I don't care about putting PD labels on people, but there are people out there who can manipulate you into making you feel guilty for something that they have done, and that's difficult to see from inside the relationship (and in my case, also for the therapists involved). That's where the "pop psychology" comes in, bringing some dynamics to general awereness, and making you question your own "brainwashing" (at which point it's a good idea to find out what issues do you have to end up brainwashed in the first place). It's not a matter of labelling your ex "assholeness" but of making sense of the chaos that is generated thought their reality-twisting manipulation that makes you feel bad about yourself and doesn't bring any positive contribution to the relationship. I am not particularly interested in finding out if the "toxic" person in question is BDP, Narc, Asshole, very skilled at manipulation, or more probably a mix of truly dysfunctional traits and average assholeness, but thanks to the readings on the internet I was able to recognize a pattern that I was just going along with. My ex kept justifying some cyclical, nasty behaviour with "abandonment issues" due to his possibly (according to him) BDP mother and I went along with it, trying to be more helpful, but in the end it was never enough and I was always the problem. It took me years to SEE that I was overgiving and that certain things were not normal. So I guess, for how oversemplifying some labels can be, they might be useful to get out of the manipulation. He displayed some behaviours that are just a bit above the bar of the "assholeness". I don't need to put any more labels on him, but now I am able to make myself unavailable.