Why are personality disorders so alluring to individuals who
cling to them? I agree with Gordon Allport that a pattern exists as an
autonomous complex within the personality. It functions much like a tapeworm
within its host, taking energy and usurping what would rightfully belong to the
host, and giving nothing back but its own waste. This is the mystery of
iniquity, identified even in the Bible, which troubles people from one generation
to the next and defies rational explanation.
Any one of the personality disorders has the power to speak, think, feel, and act as though it is a living person.
The truth is that these patterns are neither living nor responsive to life, yet
they act with a purposeful autonomy. Often when counselees try out a creative
new thought, feeling, or action, the personality pattern will assert itself as
if to say, “Don’t you dare change or something bad will happen!” Harry Stack Sullivan
called this the defensive alarm mechanism of patterned behavior. It is
just as predictable as the patellar reflex which occurs when a doctor taps a patient’s
knee.
Though Freud documented the resistance levied by
defense mechanisms, a personality pattern’s ego-syntonic autonomy goes way
beyond the theory of transference. More often than not, the pattern makes
repeated bids to take over the counseling dialogue, and without vigilance a
therapist and counselee can sit there powerless to intervene.
Yet from the view of Compass Therapy, the form this resistance
takes provides vital information about how a counselee thinks, feels, and acts
in everyday life. For instance, the histrionic pattern leads to
non-stop talking that drives a counselee to perform rather than communicate.
The therapist can gesture for a “time-out” (as officials do in an athletic
game) to help move through this resistance and make relevant points.
Or, in the case of the avoidant-patterned counselee, the
therapist can point out the psychology of the obvious by saying gently, “It’s
like your unconscious came up with a solution to anxiety long ago: ‘If I just
sit here and say nothing, then nothing bad can ever happen.’”
By knowing in advance where the personality disorder pattern and their correlated
styles of resistance reside within the Self Compass, the therapist can impart
new information throughout the therapy, gradually strengthening a counselee's resolve
to escape from the pattern by challenging their own resistance.This motivates clients to participate in their growth toward freedom and health, a decisive gain for successful therapy.
This process of pattern identification and the forming of a
compass conception of what life could be without the pattern, works even when
there are pattern combinations involved. Just as all colors on an artist’s
palette originate in the primary colors of red, blue, and yellow, so all
personality patterns and their combinations originate in exaggerating or
avoiding of one or more compass points: Love and Assertion, or Weakness and Strength.
The LAWS of
personality and relationships link together the potential for actualizing
growth with manipulative trends, personality patterns, and psychoses. To learn more about these LAWS of personality read Christian Counseling That Really Works: Compass Therapy in Action.
For instance, someone who combines both compulsive and dependent
patterns will not only compulsively set about seeking other’s perfect approval,
but will experience an inner conflict between controlling everyone’s reactions
while needing others to control them in an authoritarian way. This neurotic
conflict is like prizing your new car so much that you are afraid to drive it,
while at the same time offering the keys to anyone who needs a ride. In this
particular case, you can see the neurotic dilemma in which the counselee’s unconscious
resentment of people (compulsive control) co-exists with an unceasing quest for
people’s approval (dependent pleasing).
When counselees learn to discriminate between the false
voice of their pattern and the true voice of their spiritual core, the personality disorder
loses its allure. The therapist’s clear vision into the nature of these
patterns is passed on to the counselee as though through a vaccination that
gives them immunity toward the pattern.
In this manner, the patterns that underlie personality disorders are gradually flushed out, brought into
consciousness for constructive reflection, and increasingly discarded in favor
of new behavioral experiments that yield more satisfying results. Otherwise,
therapy will bog down or last forever with only marginal results. No wonder
therapists can burn out and not know why.
As a therapist, you know you’re making progress as you
illuminate these ineffective coping strategies and watch clients replace
them with signs of an integrated Self Compass, with all its benefits of personality health and fulfilling relationships.
To master how to successfully treat the nine most common personality disorders (Narcissistic, Compulsive, Histrionic, Dependent, Antisocial, Paranoid, Borderline, Avoidant, and Schizoid), read several times through:
COMPASS THERAPY:
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION
