Why
are personality disorders/patterns so alluring to individuals who cling to them? I agree
with Gordon Allport that a disorder 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.
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| The Power of Personality Disorders |
From the view of Compass Therapy, every personality pattern 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!” 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.
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| Personality Disorders Self Compass |
Yet
for 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 patterns and their concomitant styles of resistance
reside within the Self Compass, the therapist can impart new information
throughout the therapy, gradually strengthening counselees’ resolve to escape
from the pattern by challenging their own resistance.
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| Resistance to Personality Change |
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 exaggeration or avoidance of 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.
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 pattern 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.
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| Personality Growth |
In
this manner, patterns 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 counselees replace them with signs of an integrated
Self Compass. Many pseudo-problems and wild-goose chases fade away
as substantial personality growth occurs.
For more, read:
COMPASS THERAPY:
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION
as substantial personality growth occurs.
For more, read:
COMPASS THERAPY:
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION
