Everybody seems expert on personality disorders nowadays.  What with the proliferation of public figures exposing their proclivities (deliberately or not); talking heads (or asses) are busy categorizing and explaining behaviors utilizing labels ordinarily reserved for diagnosis by experts in the field of psychology.

“Narcissistic” is maybe most bandied about, perhaps because that diagnosis is tops on most lists describing U.S.A.’s idiot in chief.  Given the human penchant for seeking comprehension of … anything and everything… of course people wanna understand “why/what the heck is that (insert here: a behavior, a statement, anything that makes you go “what the fuck?!”) coming from?!”.

Next natural jump in thought is to apply this newly discovered, popular armchair diagnosis, to people in one’s own personal world.

And here is where the rub lies.  What does the label mean in real life?  To you, to me, to any person?  I research the crap out of these categories of human behavior and have learned that some personality disorders could also be known as “nasty unrepentant manipulative shitty shit”.  Guess what.  The behavior itself is what matters.  Not the label.

So when my mother shitbombs me with one of her missives that arrive dressed up as a serial killer’s envelope, (no return address, no post office stamp, my name typed on separate piece of white paper, then cut out unevenly, and taped carefully to a large manilla envelope yet contains only a single page), it matters not whether she has a formal diagnosis.  Whether a professional in the field of psychology has determined her to be borderline personality disordered, dependent personality disordered, narcissistic … is in the hard life of reality, completely irrelevant.

Diagnosis or not, my mother is a poisonous self pitying manipulative nasty mean unempathetic delusional liar.  Happenstance that her most prevalent traits are those contained within the professionally approved label.  The toxicity that she embodies is untenable to tolerate no matter, because it is the person she IS, not the label she is given, that matters.

Raining down protestations are weapons of mass effective perspective blockers, and are utilized by toxic people often.  Aggressively or plaintively asserted, “I’m not a this and that”…. Then they go ahead and engage in one or other of the very behaviors that a person diagnosed with “this and that” is characterized by.

Keeping perspective clear is tough for every person because our darn emotions and stray wishes love to color our view and move the horizon from where it actually is.  Keeping perspective when in constant chronic pain is a newish journey for me, and I’m finding the pain useful as providing both a deadline and a windshield wiper.  A deadline is a must have for tolerating toxicity because after all, I ain’t voluntarily allowing myself to die drowning in poison thank you very much, and after a while the breathing gets really tough.  The wiper, well just think of a mechanism cleaner, and most importantly, one that is much more effective than squeegees once used by the guys hanging out in traffic over by the Holland Tunnel.

Being thankful for this epiphany of my pain as a tool towards my mental health is an understatement, for no other reason that because clarity is VITAL.  The alternative I dread, but which could entirely be plausible, is that the insane-pain could be a total brain blocker rendering me oblivious to just about everything.   Oblivious meaning completely letting my rational analysis be rendered into shreds too tiny to be patched back together.   Luckily for me, when the holysheitpain- ness strikes, obliviousness equals shutting down entirely and sleep.

The moral of this post is, know your own true identity if you can.  Keep your perspective clear and free from the temptations of tempests of drama.  Be real about what is and isn’t healthy for you.   Utilize whatever challenges you face as motives,  the challenges are enough by themselves.  Keep it real so you can move it forward to happy goodness.  Just remember, and be gentle with yourself. Because the places that your challenges will take you are easily swayed off direction, for the winds of poison gust strong.

Holding onto positivity ain’t easy.

But nor is it irretrievable when a grip is lost.

Grab it back knowing it is up to you.

Yours in keeping it as clear as can in order to live a positive existence,

Renée