The Truth Behind Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD)

[Music] you can watch the best parts of this series at met circle calm paranoid personality disorder or PPD actually does not consist of being paranoid in the ways that most people use the term and its behaviors are often mistaken as symptoms of other conditions like narcissistic personality disorder this series will debunk the mystery behind PPD and shine a light on the true signs symptoms and treatment options welcome to the med circle original series paranoid personality disorder overcoming hypersensitivity you and I have been talking off camera yeah about this topic paranoid personality disorder and I am at a loss for words at what this means for the people who have the diagnosis and for the people in the lives of the people with this diagnosis yeah you know the poor insight of this disorder meaning the person really doesn't reflect on it themselves it actually really takes an incredible toll on the people around it because there's a whole lot of like you find yourself thinking what what what and in you and yet the person seems to be functioning well enough mm-hmm so you're going to work they're going to school they're doing their thing so this isn't like a person who's sort of muttering to themselves you know in the streets like we might think of somebody who's psychotically paranoid yes and yet everything that comes out of their mouth is so suspicious and we'll talk about all this criteria it's just it's a very perplexing kind of a pattern and it's it's one of those patterns in psychiatry and psychology where we don't talk about it a lot but it's a thing it really is a thing it often though gets subsumed into other patterns when we talk in this series one of the things that's going to be you're gonna see how nuanced it is Kyle and our viewers will see that it's this why isn't this being called narcissistic personality there's so much overlap and I have to tell you as a clinician when I run into it I really have to pore over my notes and case records and all of that to really see where that separation is there's a tremendous amount of overlap so I think it's overlap makes it a really confusing of a pattern yeah well let's talk about what paranoid personality disorder actually is yeah so paranoid personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of suspiciousness distrust of others this assumption that there's sort of threat and hostility they do something we call ascribing malevolent motives that's sort of a fancy way of thinking anything that somebody else is doing is kind of out to get you there they can be very conspiratorial they'll buy into conspiracy theories and all of that and they'll they'll be concerned about things like the whether their partner is faithful they chronically chronically chronically accuse partner after partner after partner of being in unfaithful in a relationship it's a real sort of signature quality and as a result they often don't get involved in intimate relationships um when they do they're characterized by suspiciousness finally they're very very hyper sensitive they think people are looking at them the wrong way they think people are saying things to them you know a person will say something they'll read hidden misset messages into it they also tend to do things like hold grudges they're incredibly unforgiving and so all of this can make for a really kind of a interpersonally very rigid person that's incredibly difficult to get along with it's hard for them to get through the world but somehow many of them do and if they do have a lot of power or privilege or money or something like that they will exert that paranoia and the workplace for example they will like check everyone's bag when they leave the office to make sure nobody took a pad of post-its or something like that that might be the kind of thing you'd see with somebody who's paranoid personality unlike a lot of the disorders we talked about this one at least the name lends itself to some of the symptoms paranoid it does it but it doesn't it doesn't okay if I ran the world I'd probably name this hypersensitive personality disorder on that note myself and millions of others also wish you ran the world just in general I want that to be very clear there would be a nap every afternoon I'm all about the afternoon now okay so it's so go back to that bit it should be hypersensitive I think it should be called hypersensitive personality disorder to me paranoia should be a word that's really reserved for a break from reality so paranoia to me I've always thought of it more as a the the CIA is monitoring my house the FBI is downloading my brain you know the Mars rover is actually merely with there's a whole nother earth up there like that kind of thing is it's sort of you know what we traditionally think of sort of conspiracy theory Flat Earth kind of something that feels more paranoid to me that there's a break from reality in this usage of the term it really gets at this idea everyone's out to get me but they're able to give a rather well-crafted argument that's really based on a misinterpretation the person may have given them a look like but usually it's because it's what the hell are you saying but it's you know they're they're doing that this because it's very much I a they're confused but the person the person was paranoid personality who's receiving that will view that as a slight will view it as an insult will view it as a criticism and so then as a result they'll mount they all start getting very combative with them so they're finding proof to prove that they're paranoid paranoid you know assumptions are true I think that's beautifully put their very confirmatory they look for confirmatory evidence there was actually some really interesting theoretical writings on this one because for people this person I think I've written about this in 1950s or 60s I can't remember the theoreticians name but it said there's a real paradox here they think that everyone's out to get them and they don't they're not really understood and yet they're willing to believe any shred of gossip does that make sense like they're willing to believe all these weird theories from the outside but then they also think that no one's telling the truth right so it's a very confusing and that's why I think people are very confused by them and there have been some people who who have observed in more severe variants of paranoid personality disorder they can have moments where their paranoia is severe enough to must look psychotic yeah we hear the term in mental health paranoid schizophrenic yes that is not this that's not the Sudan that's that word paranoid you see paranoid is a descriptor yes so in schizophrenia when that term is used it is used because that individual with schizophrenia is perceiving that others in their environment or other institutions their environment are setting out to do harm to them many times that's accompanied by auditory hallucinations where they're hearing voices that are out to get them as it were and so they act in accordance with that which can be very fearful in some cases it could actually even be violent it's a whole range of responses as you would have if you genuinely truly believed someone was out to get you without that sense of threat though it's it's it's beyond a misinterpretation but that's why I'm saying that word paranoid is a tricky word and interestingly folks like Theodore Millan who's a very faint personality theorist he actually came back to this idea of paranoid personality and sort of took it apart and broke it down to subtypes that some people like this are very stubborn some people like this are very contemptuous some people like this are more like conspiracy theory types some people like this are really malignant they're almost like they're always looking for a fight so they always see negative motivations and everyone you know they almost always have a grimace and an angry look on their face and you know you didn't seat me in the right place because you don't like me in the restaurant you didn't you know you cut me off in traffic cause you're out to get me everyone is viewed through that they can actually be sometimes somewhat dangerous who is most affected by this disorder men are affected more than women we observe it more in men than women I've seen it in women certainly but it's definitely more of a male pattern you know there's not a lot of good epidemiologic research on this one and we know that the rate in the population is probably somewhere between one and two percent it's probably very under diagnosed and it's also very likely that a lot of these patterns are subsumed in another disorder and our statistic personality avoidant personality a disorder called skis personality or the person may actually be frankly psychotic in which case we wouldn't diagnose this right that makes sense are there physical health ramifications for someone who has this disorder a person who has paranoid personality disorder may be very suspicious for example a health care provider they may seek out multiple other opinions they may not they actually may become very arrogant and feel that they know better than a health care professional or someone like that so that kind of suspiciousness can not only make it that it's hard for them to get help they may not trust help but it's also really really hard for them to create a healthy alliance with a health care provider so much so that the healthcare provider may be a bit more alienated from them and you know maybe just want to give them the bum's rush and get them out of the office even unconsciously it can be really difficult for them to engage with health care which can be risky because they may not be getting the guidance that they need the tests they need the diagnostic you know assessments that they need because they are so suspicious so for somebody who's this suspicious and this sensitive and has paranoia at some form what are the consequences that they face in their life by not being able to live how you and I live well the consequences are there's many I mean one is that good luck with a relationship because how many times can you accuse someone of cheating on you who's not cheating on you before they lie I'm out yeah so the the odds of a successful long-term relationship are pretty slim in workplaces it's gonna cause nothing but tension because you're constantly accusing people in the workplace of of wrongdoing of insults of slights so either people are gonna keep complaining about them to HR or if this person is a person with paranoid personalities in a position of power people may not want to work with them one thing we know about people with paranoid personalities they're very litigious they bring lots and lots of lawsuits because they feel like people are out to get them and they'll say I'll see you in court kind of thing I'm going to punish you for what I think you were doing to me they tend to get very distant from their families because their families have kind of had it with all the the blames and the you know grudges because they hold grudges and because they don't forgive if they perceive someone in their family you know sort of engage in a slight or criticism they'll cut them off permanently yeah so that's a quick recipe for no longer having family it's hard for them to have friendships so they become very socially isolated it's hard to work with them it's hard to work for them and it's hard to have them work for you and it's also it's almost impossible for them to have them to have close intimate relationships so over time they do become quite isolated do they remain very angry at the world and and then they often slide through the cracks of the mental health system because nobody quite knows how to help them yeah when you say all that it reminds me of some of the stigma associated with BPD yes very much a lot of people go you know what yeah I can't touch this this is too difficult here's a big difference to me when I look at the data and the research on dialectical behavioral therapy what we call DBT as a treatment for borderline personality the outcomes on that are pretty good especially in terms of managing things like suicidal ideation and safety and helping people deal with all the the moods that are all over the place we see that clients with borderline personality disorder because of their internal discomfort are often more motivated to enter and see through treatment and it's not the case with paranoid personality and in fact the treatment literature is not very encouraging well that makes sense we covered a lot in this series but there was one part that really stuck out to me and I want you guys to get a sneak peek of that so take a look at this [Music] and as we're speaking about this Kyle take a step back and think of how many times paranoia has been a trope in our films television shows and novels you know like they a futuristic or dystopic story about somebody who's in a world where everyone's downloading your brains and now we're living in a time where because of data and tech and privacy paranoia levels are going up up up and I hate to say it not to sound paranoid there's some reason for that you know the minute you join a social networking site you're just given away a lot of yourself and you know I think that a lot of this is this personality disorder is about to take some really interesting leaps and bounds as we live in a world where information our identity in essence our sort of informational identity as it were is getting more and more people know about it and can sort of use it to their advantage you know when you see those tailored ads that pop up in your email server you're like how did they know I want a new pair of socks you know and so I think people are feeling a little more unsettled as a whole I think people are trying to think critically what does this mean there are certain convenience to this but there's not that's a higher order way to think about it for these folks everything is hostile in fact they comb their environment for threats they're the person will almost walk into a house and it almost feel like their case in the joint you know what are the threats here who can see in there's an old yarn about how when you're in the mob you always take a table where your back is to the door they call it the Mafia see right you never and so it's like we're coming into like a mafia seat kind of world where everyone's concerned about having their back to the room but I think we're tongue-in-cheek about that a little bit for folks with paranoid personality they really just always want to make sure their back is against the wall so no one can come back and shoot them in the back yeah and on the note of being in a digital world that has access to more information it's one of the reasons that Med Circle has not allowed advertisers on the medical platform we do not ask we ask for very limited information just so we can deliver the content and we don't share with anybody I'm not saying that is like I'll go mad circle it's because when we're talking about mental health this is not something that should be shared or exploit Addai I do agree with that and I think that that's that's a struggle as people try to get health information online then they're worried like what kind of footprint have I left out in the world and so but again we're all struggling with that as a society and as a culture with paranoid personality styles again it's much more generalized and it's these things are without justification it's not as though that person really did give them a menacing look they may literally have been looking at someone on the other side of them and they will make it about them now although treatment is maybe more difficult for someone with PPD is there still hope for them to start living a more Stressless life you know I because the stress is almost self-imposed to their misinterpretations in environment probably where treatment can do its best work is to give the person an alternative hypothesis say I hear you I can totally understand why you think that person might have thought that is it possible that they could be thinking this so a lot of the work of therapy is cognitive behavioral work where you're trying to encourage looking at alternative perspectives the hard thing is is that by offering that alternative perspective the client was paranoid personality may often feel that you're now in on the sort of the larger world out to get them peace so a lot of the work of therapy with folks it's paranoid personality is very Alliance building work it's almost like Here I am I'm willing to hear you I'm willing to hear your point of view I'm not calling you out and dismissing you yes you know I can really empathize and like wow if you know giving it that if that was the case and if is a very powerful word in that sentence if that's the case that must have really hurt so you're normalizing that if that was the case and by using if it's a subtle I'm gonna use that it's everything okay so going to use them no it's not everything well since that happened yeah yeah this is very different yeah if that happened it must have felt awful yeah you know and so it's those kinds of subtle things but I would say a lot of the work therapy here is developing an alliance and not trying to say yeah no that sounds like really often you have to be terribly wrong because then the client won't come back I mean you're not going to be able to do anything and you're gonna give them one more piece of data that the mental health establishment is out together that's right what will viewers get out of this series viewers that will get a glimpse at a personality pattern that's not often discussed but that they may actually be encountering and here's an interesting bit about this series you may not be encountering this in your own personal life family life or professional life but you may be seeing it in the world at large for example you might follow news websites where there's people who get really entrenched and what feel like really paranoid opinions if maybe this will give them a framework to not be so like why is this polarization happening in the world some of it may be driven by this 1% of people who really do have this paranoid style and may be the ones who are more likely to participate in these sort of these discussions on a whole variety of news boards and news sites and all of that about what's happening in the world and what they may often do is foster these conspiracy theories out there so I'm hoping this may give our viewers a real glimpse at like you know be very careful when stuff's not carefully vetted because people with this personality pattern will often really put the time and effort to create to almost share their a paranoid ideation with the world which can foster more paranoia the best way to create more suspiciousness is to be with suspiciousness you know when you work in a suspicious workplace you start becoming suspicious of everyone and everything so in that way paranoid personality has an almost infectious feel to it I really hope that the series helps inoculate people from that yeah well said well I am very very excited to get started I'm Kyle Kittleson and remember whatever you're going through you got this thanks for watching your next step is to go to med circle comm and finish watching this series there you can also access other series and get actionable advice and simple explanations continue your mental health journey at Vet circle comm and I'll see you there [Music]

Channel: MedCircle

Views: 293,999

Rating: 4.8935108 out of 5

Keywords: paranoid, personality, disorder, personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, borderline, narcissist, narcissistic, personality disorders, disorders, narcissism, ppd, suspicious, paranoia, trust, sensitive, stress, mental, health, mental health, mental illness, interview, discussion, ramani, dr ramani, dr. ramani, chat, conversation, youtube, video, videos, educational, educational videos, medcircle, kyle kittleson, ramani durvasula

Id: vMWGKZMC0oE

Length: 19min 14sec (1154 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2019