People with a personality disorder react in many situations with inappropriate behaviors. That's why they often get problems in relationships, says Eckhard Roediger, head of the Institute for Schema Therapy in Frankfurt am Main. In the conversation, the psychotherapist explains how to deal with an affected partner.
Why do personality disorders cause problems in relationships?
Eckhard Roediger: Early life experiences shape us. They form a template, a scheme by which one perceives the current situation, evaluates it, and then acts accordingly. Some people with difficult childhood develop survival strategies that become part of the personality. An example: let's say that you were often left alone in childhood and learned to cope with the situation by withdrawing and doing everything yourself. Then they will also expect to be abandoned by others in a relationship, or they will not even get involved in a deep bond in the first place. This is often experienced by others as dismissive: "You can't even talk to you, you're so closed." Another reaction to the same experience: you start to cling, because you expect that the other will leave you. At the very first signs of disinterestedness or unreliability, they behave jealously, reproachfully and in a controlling manner. Then the partner says: "You're crazy, I haven't done anything at all. You are always the same on 180." To the same scheme, emotional neglect, you can react one way or another: with retreat or combatively.
What personality disorders are more accompanied by combative behaviors?
An example are narcissists: Many of them experienced humiliations, analysis and resolutions as a child. Imagine that a boy gets to hear from his parents: "You don't do it well enough, strict more, otherwise nothing will become of you." Then he learns: "I am only worth something if I am worth something strip. The second best is the first loser. ”Instead of withdrawing, he tries to exercise control and always be admired. This is a possible compensatory handling of childhood injuries. However, some people react avoidingly to the same injury. They think: "Maybe the others are right and I'm really not that great." These are people with a dependent or anxious-avoiding personality disorder.
Personality disorders
People with a personality disorder act according to deeply rooted behavioral patterns. In contact with other people, they are inflexible and do not react accordingly to the expectations of the environment or society. Most of the time, those affected suffer from the fault and have severe problems in social interaction.
How do these people behave in relationships?
Uncertain people who have already learned to make others in childhood are the ideal partners for narcissists. They rather give in, admire the narcissists sufficiently and thus compensate for their dominant tendency. The classic example is the narcissistic doctor who marries a helpful nurse. As long as both partners benefit from each other and the dominant person takes enough consideration, the relationship can work. However, if the subordinating person makes therapy and is encouraged to be more confident, the system becomes unstable. It may be that the dominant partner then says: »We didn't bet that way. I want to be the boss here, you should add. ”Or vice versa: The dominant person is annoyed at some point that she always has to set the tone and does not feel supported. Such a relationship system is susceptible to the fault because it leaves little space for developments. The roles are set. In couple therapy, we are working on the fact that the relationship becomes more flexible and the roles can change.
What does a partnership with a person suffering from borderline personality disorder look like?
The borderline disorder stands for an unstable self. Many borderliners are very stressed and act more aggressively. They often fluctuate in relationships: they can be very clammy and compliant - until they feel exploited. Then they become angry and aggressive and share. After that, they are sorry and they do everything they can to not be left. But there are also borderliners who are very withdrawn and avoid conflicts.
How can you, as an unaffected person, deal with a sick partner?
People with a personality disorder have a tendency to still expect that the world is like before. This is called a projection in psychodynamics. If I assume my wife long enough that she is cheating on me, she is so annoyed at some point that she may really do it. Then one speaks of a projective identification. So the danger is that those affected will open the mask from their own childhood to the partners until they fit. It is important that as a partner you do not get on it, but say: »No, I don't want anything bad, I don't want to cheat you, I don't want to leave you. I want to talk to you at eye level. ”Those affected have to learn how to talk to each other without the conversation becoming a fight. For example, there are courses on non -violent communication or couple therapy.
What if the relationship is under a lot of stress?
If a partner acts so rigidly according to a certain interaction pattern that the other has to adapt, it is often no longer possible without an intervention. Then advice makes sense. You can see if you can still press the reset button. It makes sense not to wait too long. It usually takes five years for affected couples seek help. Then the patterns drove out quite a bit.
How well is it still possible to press the reset button after such a long time?
Usually very good. Pair therapy is not only successful if both are happy afterwards. The couples often think: "Either we have a good relationship or we have to separate." That is of course nonsense. Most relationships are medium. For me in practice, a few couples separate in the long run. Instead, you will learn to better coordinate your needs for closeness and distance. You don't have to do everything together, you don't always have to agree. But you shouldn't fight yourself.
And if this does not succeed?
Of course there are also couples who do not go together. Then the therapy is about pointing out the wounds from childhood and the different coping styles and making it clear that it is better to look for someone whose lid fits their own pot. Sometimes someone wants to try again, while the other says: "Sorry, I'm through." In the therapy, I may continue to work with the person left behind. I show that the strong despair and the pain of separation also result from childhood.
And people with personality disorders are struggling with this more?
Exactly. Your adult side cannot dampen the feelings so well. Then they become attacking, accusing, stalk the partner - or they drown their feelings in alcohol, resigning, become depressed, some also suicidal.
Can those affected still have healthy relationships?
The patterns that have been built up for decades. But you don't have to go either. The problem is not the emotions themselves, but that they take the lead. Someone who perceives his emotions, classified properly and reacts adult can also cope with a narcissistic tendency. He would then say to the partner: “I know I always chatting a lot, sorry. Now you'll tell. ”You have to build an inner therapist who whistles the first impulse and creates space for functional behavior.
How exactly does a therapy help with this?
One goal of couple therapy is that fair conversations take place at eye level. The problem is only: if those affected do not understand where the shoe is stuck with them, they keep sliding into their old patterns. That is why some people need a few individual lessons before they can really use the couple talks. We try to find out what kind of childhood injuries are behind it, for example with the help of imagination. We let people go back to childhood based on a current situation. In the course of the partner, the partner comes, contacts this injured child and consoles it. This suddenly experiences the partner very differently. This creates emotional cohesion.
Schema therapy
Many mental illnesses are based on maladaptive patterns of experience and behaviour – so-called schemata. These are usually rooted in painful experiences in childhood. Some children react by submitting and withdrawing, others become aggressive or rebel against their parents. When these behaviors prove successful, they solidify until they eventually become a kind of master key to solving all sorts of problems, thereby hindering alternative experiences. As adults, those affected sometimes see the world as if through children's eyes and react accordingly to their environment.
In order to break through these patterns, schema therapy combines deep psychological and cognitive-behavioral therapy methods. Scheme therapists often work with experience -activating techniques such as imagination exercises. The patients with closed eyes of childhood experience, who trigger the same feelings that they still experience in difficult situations today, and learn to "overwrite" them. The patients experience the type of support they wanted in childhood. This principle of "re -relief" is one of the central building blocks of schema therapy.
