Illinois Divorce Lawyer Blog

Much of my work focus around complex and sometimes high conflict custody cases involving Borderline personalities, and other psychological disorders. With BPD custody cases, and many other cases, there are elements of the narcissistic personality. What characteristics define a narcisisist? A recent article, "Beware the Narcissist; Know the Signs," by Heidi Stevens (McClatchy) offers a solid description:

``Narcissism is an epidemic in our society,'' argues LIsa Scott, author of It's All About Him: How to Identify and Avoid the Narcissist Male Before You Get Hurt (CFI, 2009). ``Our culture breeds it.''

While it's one thing to watch reality show contestants bask in their own glory for the sake of finding love, it's another to find yourself dating such a character -- man or woman.

So, how do you avoid such a fate? We turned to the experts for tips on sniffing out the self-obsessed.

THE SIGNS

The American Psychological Association identifies nine traits of narcissists, five of which need to be present for a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) diagnosis:

• Feels grandiose and self-important for reasons not supported by reality.

• Obsesses with fantasies about unlimited success, fame, power or omnipotence.

• Believes he/she is unique and special and can be understood by and associate with only other unique or high-status people.

• Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation.

• Feels a sense of entitlement.

• Exploits others without guilt or remorse.

• Is devoid of empathy.

• Tends to be envious of others or believes others are envious of him/her.

• Displays arrogant and haughty behavior.

The biggest red flag, Scott says, is lack of empathy.

``They're unable to see that other people have feelings,'' she says. ``Narcissists only enter into a relationship to stroke their ego. They disconnected from themselves a long time ago in order to avoid feeling, so they need the outside world to validate their image.''

So, the whole relationship revolves around meeting the narcissist's needs and wants, while yours go unnoticed. The trick to spotting lack of empathy, or any of these traits, for that matter, is penetrating a narcissist's ego-shield -- also known as charm.

``Narcissists are gifted manipulators who can sweep anyone off their feet,'' Scott writes in her book.

That's why it's not enough to focus on someone's early behavior. Focus on how you're being treated throughout the relationship. Scott maintains that after the chase has ended, a narcissist's true colors will show.

``He becomes demanding and angry, unaware that the other has needs or a separate self at all,'' Scott writes. ``He is not consciously mean. He simply finds it impossible to see others as independent entities.''

Individuals with BPD and NPD present with these traits, and these traits, when severe, make healthy parenting problematic. Children are independent entities that need care, nurturing and validation; parents with pathology have difficulty offering this kind of support to children. The needs of the parent trump those of the children,and when the children's normal developmental needs frustrate the NPD/BPD, raging, criticism and other forms of abusive parental acting out can occur.

If you have concerns about BPD or NPD in your family or in your divorce case, visit my friend Randi Kreger's site, www.BPDCentral.com, and contact my office for an initial consultation if a divorce or other intervention is needed to protect the developmental health of your children.

I have spent a good part of my legal career working in the area of divorce and custody in the context of a parent with suspected or diagnosed BPD and NPD traits. Borderline personalities in divorce cases make for higher conflict cases, and when the cases involve the custody of children, many times there are elements of domestic violence, false allegations of domestic violence or sexual abuse, distortion campaigns, and parental alienation. I was fortunate to write the foreword to, and help edit, Bill Eddy's landmark book on divorcing a borderline or narcissist, Splitting.

Today I saw a reference to a recent Time Magazine article on BPD. "The Mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder," by John Cloud.

"A 2008 study of nearly 35,000 adults in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that 5.9% — which would translate into 18 million Americans — had been given a BPD diagnosis. As recently as 2000, the American Psychiatric Association believed that only 2% had BPD. (In contrast, clinicians diagnose bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in about 1% of the population.) BPD has long been regarded as an illness disproportionately affecting women, but the latest research shows no difference in prevalence rates for men and women. Regardless of gender, people in their 20s are at higher risk for BPD than those older or younger.

What defines borderline personality disorder — and makes it so explosive — is the sufferers' inability to calibrate their feelings and behavior. When faced with an event that makes them depressed or angry, they often become inconsolable or enraged. Such problems may be exacerbated by impulsive behaviors: overeating or substance abuse; suicide attempts; intentional self-injury."

What concerns me most in cases involving personality disorders is the high likelihood of levels of parental alienation by the disordered parent, along with false allegations made by the disordered parent to harm the other parent's custody case. If you are in a divorce with BPD or NPD, or contemplating a divorce from a disordered spouse, please contact my office to arrange an initial consultation.

Through the years, I have been involved with divorce and custody cases that involved elements of unhealthy narcissism. My friend and colleague Billy Eddy's book, Splitting speaks in detail of the difficulties dealing with litigants with NPD and BPD. I am often consulted on cases involving BPD and NPD in custody cases.

Psychologists are fascinated by narcissists, both why they are attractive to healthy partners despite on some level recognizing their dysfunction, and because they embody so many paradoxes. Extreme narcissists inevitably reveal their true nature to those around them and are eventually rejected. So why don't healthy people (and the narcissists) learn?

The charming narcissist:

To find out, social psychologist Mitja Back and university colleagues decided to investigate (Back et al., 2010). They asked 73 freshman students who had never met before to introduce themselves to the rest of the class, one by one. Each person was rated by all the others on how likable they were as well as being videotaped for later analysis. After the session all the students filled out some questionnaires, amongst which was an assessment of narcissistic personality traits.

Here are the findings:

1. Narcissists were more popular at first site. Self-rated narcissists were initially more liked by others than non-narcissists.

2. Participants liked narcissists' sense of entitlement most. Of the four aspects of narcissism they studied, leadership/authority, self-admiration/self-absorption, arrogance/superiority and entitlement/exploitativeness it was the last of these that most predicted liking.

3. Narcissists look, sound and move better. The reason narcissists were popular is because they used more charming facial expressions, a more confident speaking tone, wore more fashionable clothes, had more trendy haircuts and were funnier.

Naturally all these effects only hold true in the short-term. Narcissists are usually soon found out and shunned since few people will put up with a self-absorbed, authoritarian, arrogant, exploitative partner.

Divorcing a narcissist, or person with traits of BPD, creates enormous challenges, especially in disputed custody cases. My practice has dealt with these challenges for many years, and if you have questions about divorcing someone with NPD or BPD, please contact my office.

I was reading a social networking site that had a thread on Borderline Personality Disorder. It can be very helpful to read the DSM for the diagnostic criteria for BPD, but it can be also quite insightful to read the stories of people affected by a relationship or marriage with someone with BPD. Here are a few examples, below:

"Get out as fast as you can, don't look back.The only reason to stay with a BPDer is if you are a parent who has a child with the disorder. I was married to someone with BPD. The horrors.

The non-BP has been sucker punched. When you are in a relationship with a BPD you both share a private, intense world of ups and downs. 3 AM screaming matches, stomping, acting out, and in some cases, self harm and violence. This brings you both together in a co dependency. Each time there is a blow up, the couple is drawn closer together in the resolution phase, when the BPDers devaluation episode subsides. This codependency is insidious. I call it being sucker punched."

"I dated a borderline for 2 years, the 1st few months were great and it was mostly downhill from there. BPD is an illness that prevents the person from truly loving anyone, not even their parents, their spouse or their children. They are often self abusive and are a physical and mental threat to themselves and to those who love them the most. BPD is often passed from parent to child. My advice to you if you want the loving husband, children and family thing is to cut your losses and move on. I know it is easier said than done but for your own mental health you need to do it. I hear and fully understand your reasoning and thinking as to not wanting to leave someone because they are ill, I felt the same way. The one thing a borderline fears the most is abandonment yet the truth is they almost always end up abandoning the relationship themselves within 2 years. Often the people that are willing to stick with a person with BPD are usually suffering with their own co-dependency issues. I wish I could say be patient with them and love them unconditionally and they will get better but it is just not the case. About the time you think things are getting better their illness will cause them to destroy any progress that has been made and sabotage that progress. I can not imagine the personal hell a borderline lives in but have witnessed it and had a taste of it by loving someone with this illness. Now knowing and understanding what BPD is I will always feel strongly for anyone with this illness but will never let myself fall in love with someone that suffers it. Suffering with BPD makes for a long hard lonely life for the one who suffers with it and equally as hard for those that love them."

If you feel you are in a marriage with someone with the traits of BPD, please see my friend Randi Kreger's site, www.BPDCentral.com. If you are in a failing marriage with BPD issues, please feel free to contact my firm to set up an initial consultation.

As many of my cases deal with possible BPD and NPD-type disorders, I see traits of Parental Alienation Syndrome in alienating parents. These cases are very challenging...in part because there are kids being harmed by the alienation and by the pathology directed at them on a daily basis by the alienating parent. Further, the cases can be difficult to manage as the alienating parents are often skillful manipulators that have had some prior success through the years harming the healthy, non-disordered "target" parent's legal standing, through false accusations and false orders of protection (often easy to obtain on an ex parte basis). Many disordered parents obtain custody and control of children through manipulation of the court process. In the end, the non-disordered target parent suffers, and the kids suffer, perhaps more, emotionally and developmentally.

There are strategies to combat PAS in custody cases. The article below discusses PAS in some detail.

"Welcome to the Swamp." by Amy Johnson Conner

That's what a judge once told a client of a divorce attorney when accusations of parental alienation were leveled against the client in a custody hearing.

Parental alienation syndrome - a controversial diagnosis to describe a child who compulsively denigrates one parent in response to consistent brainwashing by the other parent - has become a not-uncommon theme in custody cases.

According to Richard Gardner, the psychologist who is considered the father of the syndrome, it typically manifests itself as a campaign of denigration by one parent against the other, which is accompanied by weak, frivolous and absurd rationalizations for the deprecation. As a result of this steady campaign of insult, the child reflexively supports the alienating parent and experiences no guilt over their own cruelty towards the targeted parent.

But the mental health profession is far from agreement about the existence of the syndrome. Noting the lack of supporting data, the American Psychological Association has "no official position on the purported syndrome," according to a statement in its website.

The legal community is divided as well.

Continue reading "Parental Alienation Discussed " »