Counseling the Paranoid Personality Disorder

Treating the paranoid personality disorder involves embracing a paradox: the best therapeutic strategy is to give up the need to help them. 

Why? Because their radar will translate any conscious or unconscious need of yours as a devious attempt to influence them. If you want to help them, they will see this as condescension—that you’re really only interested in taking their money or building your ego at their expense.

In other words, they come in armed to the teeth to defend themselves against dependence upon you or learning anything from you. Fritz Perls called this the bear-trapping game, by which he meant that aggressive-oriented counselees lay out traps that spring into action when you least expect it. 

Springing A Trap

They may cajole you with questions about your qualifications, your personal life, or your intentions for them, then place your words or actions into a distorted context that is aimed at your humiliation. Or they may jump on a phrase you use and put you on the hot seat.

You would not be human if you didn’t feel the occasional sting from these machinations. Yet you can foresee and avoid most traps by:

1. Developing modest expectations for the therapy.
2. Engaging the counselee at a more objective than subjective level.
3. When appropriate, uncovering the structure and function of the paranoid Arguer pattern with calm aplomb. 
4. Equally important is keeping the motivation for every aspect of therapy squarely on the counselee’s shoulders. 

One might wonder why paranoid Arguers are willing to seek therapy, let alone pay for it.

The most common answer is that they are motivated to recruit a mental health professional into agreeing with them that someone in their interpersonal world is stupid, devious, and argumentative because they are not doing what the Arguer wants them to do.

If they can convince you to agree with them that the other person (usually a spouse, child, or work associate) is guilty and they are innocent victims, then they can use your expert opinion as a hammer for battering the other person.

By thoroughly mastering the paranoid mentality, you develop immunity from various paranoid tactics that could otherwise leave you rattled. 

If you know their pattern as well as they experience it from inside themselves, and yet don’t use your knowledge to blame and attack them, they detect that they can’t manipulate you. Their trust and respect

for you as a therapist increases.

Here are a few points to keep in mind:

1. Paranoid Arguers are stubborn and proud of it. 
2. Their views are always right. 
3. Criticize them and they become vindictive. 
4. Threaten them and they become stronger. 
5. Attack them and they make vengeful plans to make your life miserable.

Paranoid Arguer

 

Their thought patterns run along these lines:

• People can’t be trusted because they are devious and will side against you.
• I am honest in saying that my philosophy of life is how things really are.
• I must test those around me to see if they are loyal.
• Other people want to interfere with my freedom, put me down, and discriminate against me. 
• I have never received the good treatment that society owes me.
• If people seem friendly, they’re only trying to manipulate me.
• I need to be constantly on guard against adversaries who want to take advantage of me.
• I am hard-nosed and proud of it.
• People make me angry because they are untrustworthy and exasperating.

For more on techniques for working with the Paranoid Personality Disorder, read:

COMPASS THERAPY:

Christian Psychology in Action

Compass Therapy and the Paranoid Personality Disorder

You can recognize when someone with the paranoid personality disorder has entered your practice because you feel uneasy, as though someone is sizing up your weaknesses to use against you. 

Paranoid Arguers exaggerate the Assertion compass point to the exclusion of the Love compass point. They exude an attitude of suspicion and testiness that reflects their penchant for blaming and attacking others. Just as a shark snaps up a mackerel, the paranoid pattern will take a bite out of the naïve therapist.

You can grow apprehensive if there are several paranoid Arguers in your practice, because they try to make you walk on eggshells, revealing their hidden agenda that the one who is going to change is you. Their edgy tension, abrasive irritability, and sarcastic humor contribute to a formidable defensive armor. 

THE PATTERN'S INTERIOR

Fearing the vulnerability that accompanies love, Arguers harden their hearts to the needs or suffering of others, ruling out the possibility of intimate bonding. Instead, the Love compass point is used to manufacture displays of fake charm. Likewise, the humility and soul-searching of the Weakness compass point are twisted into self-pity, where Arguers berate people, institutions, or life itself as unfair to them. The Strength compass point inflates the Arguer with airs of self-importance and invincibility, even illusions of omnipotence, and a burning need to get their way.

Paranoid Arguer Personality Disorder

The paranoid pattern exists as a pure prototype of fixation on the Assertion compass point with aggressive trends. It is also found in combination with the adjacent compass points of either Strength or Weakness. In the case of Strength, paranoid aggression combines with narcissistic pomposity or compulsive obsession. With Weakness, the paranoid develops avoidant depression or schizoid detachment. In all instances, the opposite polarity of Love is shut off and prohibited expression.

These compass distortions mean that paranoid Arguers believe people are out to get them, and that they are justified in the hostility and bullying they direct towards others. They levy castigating remarks with impunity because there is no remorse. Antagonism and suspecting the worst in others color everything they do. 

This pattern is expressed on a continuum from mild to moderate to severe levels, as are all personality patterns. This means that actualizing individuals need a mild dose of paranoid suspicion for healthy skepticism about advertising claims, product guarantees, smooth-talking sales tactics, and conning or cajoling behavior from other people. But the paranoid Arguer congeals these self-protective strategies into a mistrustful worldview that pervades the mind and heart, body and spirit.

 
CLINICAL LITERATURE

Paranoia is a term characteristic of the Arguer pattern meaning “to think beside oneself.” The term “paranoia” is of Greek origin, found in medical literature over 2000 years go, and precedes the writings of Hippocrates, capturing the sense of a delusional belief system that emphasizes suspicion and hostility. Unwilling to follow the lead of others, and accustomed to trusting only themselves, the paranoid Arguer pattern requires the reconstruction of reality in accordance with its dictates.

Freud termed paranoia a “neuropsychosis of defense,” highlighting how this pattern wards off reality through the defense mechanisms of denial and projection. Shapiro added that the projection of unacceptable feelings and impulses onto others both eliminates guilt and accounts for the lack of intrapsychic conflict.

Unwilling to acknowledge their faults or weaknesses, Arguers shore up their self-esteem by projecting personal shortcomings onto others, believing that it is others who are malicious and vindictive. This pattern is expressed in a variety of forms. They include: the “combative type” who wants to fight the world, the “eccentric type” who withdraws yet harbors persecutory delusions, or the “fanatic type” who recruits others into secret sects. 

Horney observed that paranoid-patterned persons exhibit “sadistic trends” that distract them from their hidden inferiority. By blaming and attacking they build a counterfeit self-esteem. This obnoxious behavior acts to isolate them from meaningful or intimate relationships, further confirming their suspicion that the world is against them and that the blame for their failure lies solely on external hindrances.

Compass Therapy has selected the term “Arguer” to stand for the perpetual contrariness and automatic argumentation that dominates the paranoid’s perceptual field. There are endless ruminations or “subliminal arguments” about past injustices or wounds to their pride; current quarrelsomeness with family members, work associates, or strangers; and plans-in-preparation for arguing their case in the immediate future. Like a disputatious defense attorney, they are always on the job, considering no detail too trivial for possible use in winning a battle in the courtroom of daily life.

For techniques to work with counselees diagnosed with the paranoid personality disorder, read:

COMPASS THERAPY: 

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION