The purpose of this thread is to link any MB materials pertaining to personality disorders.

I was married to someone with a personality disorder and I ended up enabling the insane thinking.

Basically, persons with serious emotional disorders cannot have a MB marriage model.

Here are two quotes from Dr Harley. I will post additional links and quotes as time allows.
I hope this will help others.

"The exception to the Policy of Joint Agreement is when the health or safety of
yourself or members of your family are at risk when following it (doing
nothing until an agreement is reached). �In the case of serious emotional
disorders, the healthy spouse must make many decisions unilaterally for the
sake of the family, which puts the marriage at risk."

"But those with emotional disorders usually can't
follow the POJA, and the expect to be catered to when they take a position
on any issue. �Ultimately, most of these people end up divorced because they
can't form a mutually caring partnership for very long."

What exactly was the emotional disorder you are describing? It seems too vague and most waywards fall under this broad category.

What specific emotional disorder is Dr. Harley referencing?

Tough~

Dr. Harley also cautions against making armchair diagnosis's of waywards. For example, MOST waywards mimic narcissism and even bipolar behavior when they are wayward. It goes hand in hand with adultery or any other addiction. He also believes that those disorders are OVER labeled by professionals in an attempt to apply a syndrome to sin.

The ones who truly have "disorders" are the rare exception. It is more typical of Dr Harley to dismiss such diagnoses.

In my case, the disorder resulted in this:

Laying on the couch all day, due to mystery illnesses doctors (including specialists) could not diagnose.

Unable to keep a job longer than 2 weeks.

Distrust of medical professionals.

Distrust of school officials.

Multiple moves due to "indoor air quality" (mold), even though insurance investigators denied multiple claims because no mold was found.

Restricted diets due to concerns about illnesses the family doctor said did not exist.

That is part of my experience but everyone is different.
The point is that these people cannot follow the POJA. In fact, Dr Harley told me that he has no doubt that I could follow the POJA. But he didnt think my wife could.

I am glad you were able to get his help because I can see how it would be pointless to try to implement Plan A with her. I just wanted to point out that your experience is the exception, not the rule.

But about this part:


Do you think they should be trusted without question? There is so much bad medical advice out there that I question everything. I research everything before I accept any medical advice. I don't view that as a sign of a disorder, but just plain common sense. Are you describing something different?

Well. In my case the medical professionals couldn't be trusted because they wouldn't find what was wrong.
She felt they were trying to trick and manipulate her. She felt she was Ill because of mold and an allergist tested her and said she was not allergic. She said the test must be wrong.

As an example, she opposed child vaccinations because she felt they would poison the kids. She told the children they can't trust doctors and that the vaccinations would make them sick. In my case, it was this specific example Dr Harley referred to as an exception to the POJA and he said I had to take the children to doctors for routine care and vaccinations even though it was a HUGE low buster for her. I couldn't POJA because you can't when someone is so paranoid

So who diagnosed her with a personality disorder? A medically-qualified doctor?

The lesson I learned and I hope others will benefit from is that I actually enabled the insane behavior for years by ignoring it and making excuses for it.
It's very similar to living with a problem alcoholic. Just as a spouse will actually enable the self destructive behavior of the drinker so will the spouse of someone with a mental disorder.

After reading Dr Harley's statement about personality disorders I visited the borderline personality disorder support group website "love cycle of a BPD" and it matched my marriage to a fine line. Without exception.


As Dr Harley makes statements about personality disorders I will post them here in the hope that it may benefit others.

In my specific case, I am unaware of any diagnosis.
I proceeded under the assumption that she had a emotional disorder after Dr Harley told me she probably had one.
But when outsiders looked within, they always found her behaviors bizarre. My thinking had actually became insane because I defended and covered up te bizarre behavior. (which actually enables it and did not help her)

According to the BPD organization, most of them aren't diagnosed because they don't think they have a problem and (and probably wouldn't trust any professional that diagnosed them anyways).

Not saying there are not any BPDs out there, but you do know that Dr. Harley is dubious of most BPD diagnoses? He believes it is a catch all for everything.

Wasn't it the other way around? I have a memory that you strongly suggested a personality disorder and Dr Harley went along with your suggestion.

Do you have a copy of the email you wrote to him, and of his full reply?

The purpose of this thread is not to discuss my specific case.
I will post excerpts of his statements to help others in similar situations.
I can't discuss the specifics of my case but I was a typical enabling spouse and my thinking was unhealthy.

I've checked - and it was the other way around.

You choose to discuss your case often on these boards, and sometime you misrepresent what was actually said to you, as in this thread. Now that I ask you to cite both emails, suddenly you can't discuss your case. This is being very selective.

Dr Harley is not a medical doctor and is not in a position to diagnose a personality disorder. Neither would he do so in someone that he has never met, spoken to or even emailed - your wife. He took your description and said "from your description that is what you are dealing with" - from YOUR description, not his.

Actually clinical psychologists are the BEST professional to diagnose a personality disorder. We are able to give the psychological tests and are well-trained in discerning and diagnosing these. Better than a psychiatrist IMO. However, you are correct that we don't diagnose people we haven't met or evaluated.

And I agree that BPD and many personality disorders are way overdiagnosed, and I also believe that a personality disorder is mostly just labels for really bad behaviors. It is diagnosed on Axis II in the DSM, and the mental illnesses such as schizophrenia etc are on Axis I. They are separate issues.

I believe that in the UK the diagnosis needs to be made by a psychiatrist - but I can't find a source for this, so I might be wrong.

I found this article interesting. Why are personality disorders controversial diagnoses?

It seems that your point that "a personality disorder is mostly just labels for really bad behaviours" is widely accepted, and that no-one should be labeled as having a PD without a rigorous evaluation - certainly not from a description in an email.

I don't get it -- I've heard him say on the radio show he doesn't believe in "personality disorders." I wonder if you equated different types of disorders and that caused you to mishear what he said, or I wonder if his stance is more fluid than I thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorders

This article seems to list only 12 currently classified personality disorders. There are other disorders that are not personality disorders, if I understand correctly. One example would be bipolar or manic-depressive disorder. I've heard Dr. Harley talk about manic-depressive disorder and manic-depressive psychoses, and he treats them as very real phenomena, but then I've heard him basically completely dismiss narcisisstic personality disorder, which is on this list.

Inasmuch as the purpose of this thread is to collect Marriage Builders material related to disorders, I'd like to review what you received from Dr. Harley, because that seems pretty relevant.

The poster was happy to discuss his wife on this thread here.

Where did Dr Harley write these statements?