two questions

[LuckyNicki]

Can a person not have a personality disorder and still be incredibly emotionally manipulative?

I ask this because every site I read up on about emotional manipulation always seems to refer to a personality disorder. 

I wonder about suicide too:

Does a person that has attempted suicide have a personality disorder for sure?

Thanks for your answers and posts in adv bpdfamily

[BuildingFromScratch]

I'm of the belief that anyone can have the symptoms of a personality disorder. It's just with a personality disorder the modes of coping are extreme and resistant to change. There's many shades of people between "normal" and "personality disordered"

[LuckyNicki]

I'm of the belief that anyone can have the symptoms of a personality disorder. It's just with a personality disorder the modes of coping are extreme and resistant to change. There's many shades of people between "normal" and "personality disordered"

Im confused.  Sorry. Youre saying that a PD copes in extreme ways?  Can u provide an example?  And they don't want to change?

So a person with just symptoms of PD are willing to change?

[newlyhopeful]

We can all at times show some signs of the personality disorder traits. The difference is those that are disordered are extreme in the expression of those traits and show little insight into their own personality.

Most people are guilty of manipulation at some time to get what they want

Suicide occurs for many reasons not just disordered individuals who can no longer cope

[BuildingFromScratch]

Even if a person with a PD wants to change, they have extreme difficulties in doing so. But most of the time they deny there is a problem, because they can't handle feeling bad about themselves. That's what I mean by resistant to change.

As for the coping in extreme ways, lets give an example. Lets say I got scared that my girlfriend is leaving me, I might do something to try to avoid that, something I really regret. A personality disordered person might do sometimes 100 times worse because their ability to handle it would be less.

Another example is lets say someone puts up a really cocky front to try to not get hurt by people. A person with a personality disorder might get delusions of grandiosity and take it to an extreme.

[Tolou]

I think what makes it a personality disorder and falls into that spectrum is when it effects the people around that person and relationships and interactions with others.  If it were just effecting them if I am not mistaken it fall into an AXIS 1 most likely.  hope that helps?

[Infern0]

Extremes like having 0 empathy point to a personality disorder imo.

Anyone can be an ass,  but normal people usually feel bad for it.

[enlighten me]

Personally I think what distinguishes it as a personality disorder is the duration and regularity.

With a personality disorder it is constant. I don't mean that they are always in a certain state just that the disorder is never far away from appearing.

With things like suicidal thoughts I think at some point everyone has them. Everyone has been at that low point in their life where they have thought "whats the point?". The problem with personality disorders is that they are more likely to act on this.

[Suspicious1]

I've always seen personality disorders as being made up of a certain set of traits that we all have, but for a pwPD occurs to an extremity or with a regularity that negatively affects their functioning. According to my psychologist, it can appear on a spectrum and some people can only show signs of the PD when they're under stress etc.

Just for example, I know I split people black sometimes. Right now, at the end of a relationship for example, it's easy to say "he was a dreadful person". Well he wasn't always - he was occasionally dreadful, but when I'm trying to get over someone I focus on the bad. The difference is, to a certain extent it's deliberate and I'm aware that it's happening (and could stop it if I wanted to). In BPD it seems to be uncontrollable and consuming, and ruins otherwise good relationships.