What Psychopathy and Borderline Personality Disorder Do and DO NOT Have in Common

hi it's dr fox licensed psychologist in state of texas and this video is going to be rather unique and in that we are going to talk about bpd and psychopathy and we're going to really kind of do a deep dive in this video one thing i do want to explain is that i think that this confusion and certainly the confusion associated with bpd there's also a lot of confusion associated with psychopathy and i think when they're pulled together i think that people really sort of really lose touch with what these two disorders are and what they look like and the likelihood of them co-occurring so that's what we're going to unpack today we're going to do a deep dive we're going to talk about the two factors and four facets of psychopathy and how potentially each one could or could not or does or does not relate to psychopathy a lot of the information that i'm going to be telling you is from the research you can always look it up like on google scholar things like that which i think is really good to do because i think that the research and the genuine information helps to clarify this this is i'm going to be honest with you this is one of my my pet peeves that people say that oh well you know people with bpd they're all psychopaths that's that that's absolutely not true there are no alls right in human beings right we can't say oh well they're all like this they're all like that things like that okay so we're going to break that down and we're going to do that by certainly talking about that we're going to talk about over generalization of bpd as well as colloquial use of of the term psychopath and then again we're going to go into the two factors for facets of psychopathy related to bpd and then we're going to talk about like what can you do about it if you've kind of internalized this view if you've heard that online read it online seen it online and if you have vpd i think that puts people in a really bad position where they're like well here's something else that's wrong with me let's kind of break it down and let's get into it here we go like share subscribe see me online all that other good stuff and here we go so first right are those with bpd psychopaths exceptionally rare psychopaths are exceptionally rare genuine psychopaths are exceptionally rare in my 20 years of working in various prisons private practice working with different individuals across different socioeconomic statuses different parts of the world things like that i haven't only encountered one genuine psychopath i have a friend who is a forensic evaluator and she's been doing forensic evaluations for an exceptionally long time and she has only identified two individuals that were genuine psychopaths now the statistics are about 150 people right that are genuine psychopaths and if you look in prisons across the world the higher the security levels you're more likely to find individuals that have or qualify for psychopathy not everyone who is a psychopath is in prison right but the complexity of bpd i think that and the tendency not only of mental health providers but of people in the general population the community tend to really over generalize bpd to only recognize the upper third which is the top extreme three percent of bpd tends to be what people conceptualize bpd to be like that little rhyme for you but serious right because what happens is most of the individuals most of clients that i have fall into that moderate range okay now i have come across of course individuals that were severe in extreme bpd and they didn't even qualify for psychopathy right so the extreme individuals whom i've worked with and the individual that that i worked with that had psychopathy would not have qualified and did not qualify for borderline personality disorder bpd so we have to be sure that what we're looking at is the accurate disorder if we don't know what we're looking at how do we work with it how do we treat it and i think that that's part of the problem and if you look at the research most of the research that's done on incarcerated individuals and bpd and psychopathy is done with incarcerated individuals there's very few studies that are done on the general population to identify psychopathy because they're exceptionally hard to find they tend not to participate in research studies so what we're looking at is an incarcerated sample which then of course is skewed okay and from that skewed sample then we find sub samples of those that qualify for components of psychopathy components of bpd and then that that research is then conducted the problem then the big problem that happens is that that research people aren't doing that deep dive they're not thinking about that so what they do is they over generalize and say oh well everyone with bpd is a psychopath first of all no typically people use the term psychopath in a colloquial term when i use it it is a clinical term that clinical term is what we are going to talk about those two factors and four facets and it's a very very serious disorder it's a very very complex disorder and a lot of times a lot of these individuals their life is in constant upheaval now we're talking about psychopathy now those that are severe extreme bpd often have very chaotic lifestyles right a lot of times things are often in disarray and things of that of that nature but very different now this is why it's so important that we focus on core content which i talk about in all of my videos and surface content the core content of that vpd individual is because of that lack of connection it's because of those those fears of abandonment that's feeling invisible feeling unheard feeling disconnected where's your your psychopath that the core content is often about power profit it is often about how to take advantage of others often about very s stimulus response and aggression but there are components underneath that and that's what we're going to get into here so first let's talk about factor one factor one okay and we're gonna talk about facet one okay which is interpersonal the interpersonal components okay so it's glibness and superficial charm and that glibness and superficial charm what we see is you're kind of like yeah whatever you know you put yourself out there you know is that you're trying to connect to others you're not really maybe good at it maybe a little bit here or there but not great and you put this sense out in order to connect to others to convince others to do things that they wouldn't normally do that you want them to do so that you can take advantage of them so that you can get your needs met i think that is your psychopath now that's one component there are several components that that you need in order to qualify this video is not about diagnosing psychopathy it's not about diagnosing bpd either this is about just getting an understanding about how these two are so different and that people with bpd should not grab on to this idea that oh well if i have bpd i'm a psychopath please don't believe that please push back against that that is a misuse of both of these terms okay so let's go back to that glibness and superficial charm so for your bpd now bpd individuals they're going to have an array of of social engagement skills okay could they have a superficial charm maybe out of a need for for connection to others they may engage in promiscuity right or in particular behaviors in order to feel attached to others to pull others close to them that glibness we're not going to see too much of that so i think that you're not going to see much glibness superficial charm in bpd whereas you see it in psychopathy another facet interpersonal facet of psychopathy is grandiosity now grandiosity right for individuals you know that fall into that psychopathic category you're going to see that they're they often you know really sort of accentuate their skills their abilities who they are what they can do and things like that because they want to they want to impress you you know what i mean and then but i think on the other side of that bpd that grandiose you don't often see that right there i mean you don't you don't tend not to see individuals with bpd they're like i'm so great there's nothing that i can't do right and even on the other side of grandiosity that you may see which in those with dp is that sort of that grandiose sense of pain of suffering where they're like you know well no one suffers as much as i do no one is at this loss as much as i am and i think you may see that and when we talk about grandiosity we're talking about the extremes of the expressions of those behaviors okay so grandiosity is very different very unique in those with bpd and exceptionally different just in my example right of those that that fall into that psychopathic category as opposed to those that are along the bpd spectrum next we have pathological lying now this is where we may see some some sense of connection right which is now your individual that falls into the psychopathic category they're going to lie to take advantage they're going to lie to get what they want out of you usually to fulfill this need of power and profit those with bpd that have a tendency for lying for misrepresenting themselves they may engage in that but it's typically to emotionally connect with others it is out of this great need to not be alone to not feel as though they're in the middle of the desert and they have no water to drink but it's an emotional water right and so they are almost starving for that attention so then they put out these phrases right this lying of who they are and this misrepresentation which lying could also factor into that unstable self-image they don't really know who they are or what they believe and that's part of what's causing that confusion so there's a greater degree of complexity but when we're just talking about these factors there is a bit of overlap here right that both may engage in pathological lying but this is why we have to look at the core content not just get caught in the surface oh pathological lying check there you go no there's more to it these are complex disorders okay so we have to look at them from a much deeper frame next let's talk about conning and manipulative right now you can see both of these in those with bpd and those that fall into the psychopathic category conning and manipulative again goes back to right those motivations those underlying factors for those that are in the psychopathic category you're going to see that they're doing this again to take advantage of others power profit you know presenting in a particular way right that puts that person close that puts that person at ease and then they take advantage of that individual typically monetarily sometimes it is physically and then in order to get their particular needs met now on the other side for the bpd individual a lot of that manipulative behavior is again to try to pull people close so they don't feel alone so they don't feel rejected so they aren't abandoned and it's this internalized fear and it's this internalized fear of abandonment rejection the sense of being unnoticed unheard unseen i think we're talking again different core contents different approaches or goals with that connection okay and that's part of even though there are similarities there's great overlap in what drives it and that that's our facet one of interpersonal okay also under factor one we have interpersonal and effective now facet two is effective okay so facet two the first one we're gonna talk about is lack of remorse or guilt now here i think we've got very distinct um components here right we've two ends of the spectrum okay so here right you have your psychopathic individual all right who falls into that category and that lack of remorse are guilt because they just don't care they don't care what they take from you they don't care how much they hurt you they don't care how much you suffer they don't care how much you've lost as long as that need for power and profit is fulfilled and that need for them to feel this sense of power this sense of control right and them getting what they want they don't feel bad about it at all zero zilch okay but when we talk about those with vpd we're talking about his lack of remorse or guilt here it may seem that way and i think that sometimes that's that surface content is like oh they don't care but on the inside and all the clients that i've worked with it's intense internalized remorse and guilt now they may initially behave in ways that appears as though they're careless right that they don't recognize your boundaries they don't care about your boundaries right they're texting you all the time calling you all the time showing up at inappropriate times things like that like they don't even care and i think that's part of the pathological components associated with bpd and it's very different they may present with a lack of remorse or guilt however i have found that they experience intense guilt and remorse about their behaviors about their drive for self-destruction about their engagement in these maladaptive patterns that really cause continual upheaval in their life now the next one under fafsa 2 we're going to talk about emotionally shallow now here for those individuals that are in the psychopathic category being emotionally shallow is that you there's just not a lot of like you know water in the pool right there and you know there's there's a saying and i'm not being derogatory is more for example is that you know like emotionally deep is a puddle you know and i think for for those individuals that are psychopathic that fall into that category that they just have this emotional shallowness like you get this sense that yeah something something feels wrong something doesn't connect here right you can see the sniffing right right it's kind of like you're something smells doesn't smell right something doesn't feel right right and it's because they don't have that depth of emotions that they can pull from and and acknowledge and express in an effective way that's genuine because a lot of times they have sort of a walled off sense of emotional response okay whereas those with dpd you're at the other side of that right is they have intense emotional reactions deep emotional reactions and they are intensive they are not emotionally shallow in any way shape or form they tend to be very emotionally deep which is that they have these deep emotions that they get you know it's almost like a tsunami of emotions right whereas you have a puddle for your psychopathic category but you have tsunami like emotions for those with bpd so vastly different the next one is callus and lack of empathy now here again even though there may be some similarities they're very different now psychopathic category individual that callousness and lack of empathy is it again they just don't care they don't care how they hurt you how they take advantage of you right what they do you know it's that their parasitic lifestyle which is an additional component we'll talk about in a moment is that you know they don't care that they're using up your resources that they're eating the food and you're catching it they're using all you know your cable they got your ac down to you know 62 you know or the heat's up to 78 you know and you can't afford your electric bill they don't care you know so there's no they just they're callous and they just don't care they don't care about the situation you're in and they don't have that emotional connection to feel that sense of loss the other side of that is we look at those with bpd that lack of empathy i think sometimes they feel this intense sense of empathy now those with bpd can often get confused right when empathy comes into play it's a lot of times because it's a lot of emotions it's a lot of sort of missing of that beacon of orientation right which is sort of empathy is we kind of know where we are and we feel empathy for someone else and what they're going through i think for those with bpd a lot of times i think that they have this confusion this empathy is that i feel sorry for you and i feel this sense of loss and i feel this sense of confusion and it's so intense that they get lost in it so they don't convey it very well and again it's different for everyone it all does depend upon the spectrum of vpd as to where they fall as well but i think that what we see is there is a lot of empathy it is intense empathy so much so that they could get lost in it very distinct the next one is failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions now i think here there is some overlap here we're going to have your psychopathic individuals right that fall into that category they're not going to accept responsibility for what they do and they don't care how much you suffer so i don't know too bad for you right it's kind of how they feel and they go on to the next person to take advantage and they continue to go on and engage in these maladaptive patterns that are often very fulfilling for their sense of profit and power that they need in order to fulfill and drive their maladaptive behaviors on the other side is failure to accept responsibility for their own actions and bpd i think we do see that a lot and i think that but we see it very differently and i think that we see that in that a lot of times it's this again this emotional turmoil that they get caught in it's this difficulty to slow down right in order to contain those maladaptive patterns right in order to recognize their behavior and consequence and sometimes others other individuals fall into that scenario of the consequence right where you have to sort of lack of a better way of phrasing it pay for the result of that consequence of that behavior right which is so right is that that person you know maybe they they do something right maybe you know you're at a restaurant and you get into an argument and they they get you know just really sort of expressive so much so that they're yelling screaming you know throwing things on the floor thing things like that and then they stomp out and perhaps this is a common maladaptive pattern right behavior response in this individual and you're embarrassed so on your way out right you happen to pass your boss and you see your boss there you're like oh man well here we go again right and then you think that and then so that person right there outside and they're still letting you have it right they're still chewing out they're still you know reacting because they're still in that reactive chaotic over responsive phase of their initial activation okay so then typically what happens is eventually what i have found in many of my clients and perhaps you've experienced something differently is that then once they're able to settle back down once they're able in order to gain that sense of control get that sense of insight get that sense of understanding about what they did and remember that this is different for everybody and where they are along their treatment it's much more complex in bpd than it is in your psychopathic individuals right but oftentimes in the folks that i work with is that they fear this sense of responsibility because if they take the responsibility doesn't that justify the other person leaving them so they resist that sense of responsibility so but it's sort of paradoxical right which is that if they say well if i take responsibility then they'll leave me but what happens is if you don't take responsibility they're probably going to leave you over time so what they need to do is you need to realize that i have to take responsibility for my behavior try to contain it try to control it so that i can have a better grasp of what's going on around me so i can make better choices and use adaptive strategies to control situations notice the explanation is vastly different as well as the presentation so that's factor one right and those two facets are interpersonal and effective let's talk about factor two which is lifestyle and anti-social so let's first talk about facet three which is lifestyle and this is need for stimulation and proneness to boredom now here in your psychopathic individuals they are sensation seekers they are they do need that level of stimulation and they do require a greater degree of stimulation in order to reach that level of let's just call it a level of satisfaction right where they get that sense of need met with like yep okay you know i got it so they need a higher sense right of stimulation in order to reach that level of satisfaction those with bpd they tend not to really have that they tend to have a very low responsive style or very you know that need for stimulation tends to be very low in my experience with these individuals which is that they experience something and it becomes so intensive right that they may drive for that sense of stimulation but that stimulation is more to be okay to feel connected to someone to feel heard to feel recognized very different okay as opposed to the psychopathic individuals very different components the next one is a parasitic lifestyle now when we talk about parasitic lifestyle what we're talking about these are individuals right for your psychopathic category individuals this is somebody who you know they're like oh hey can i just sleep on your couch for a few days and then four months later they're still there they don't have a job they're taking complete advantage of you right they're turning the air down they're eating your food right they're doing all that stuff and they just don't care and they're just taking and eating off of you it's parasitic with with bpd i think that you could say that there may be an emotional parasitic component which is that emotionally right they're always pulling from you right that they're always pulling the sense of emotion from you this emotional response that they need to be okay but very different we talk about parasitic lifestyle here we tend to have more of items goods materialistic issues as opposed to over here you could say that it's an emotional parasitic component but again because it's the emotional component i i do think that it is inherently different than what that parasitic lifestyle in when we talk about the category associated with factor two and the facet of lifestyle is vastly different so we're talking about there's some similarities there which is why i think it's important that we that we contrast the two for this particular one now the next one is a lack of realistic and long-term goals and i think here sometimes we we do see some similarity here for those with your psychopathic components right that fall into that category they just they they live day by day right they're not planning for the future they don't have 401ks they're not saving for tomorrow nothing like that because the man they're they're just living it i'm living to get my needs met right now right to get that high sensation seeking need stimulation satisfied right to keep on going and i don't need to plan for tomorrow because many of them hold this idea that i probably won't live until tomorrow so i might as well take advantage of everybody today whereas i think those individuals with vpd i think sometimes there is a lack of realistic and long-term goals but i think sometimes it's more of a difficulty planning for the future understanding how to plan for the future it's a lack of hope it's these depressive spirals sometimes are very long they can be very intensive a lot of times there is of course you know comorbid conditions of major depressive disorder or bipolar 2 disorder that also occur with bpd that's also very common right you don't see that in those that are along the psychopathic category that fall into that category so it's very different so that lack of realistic long-term goals i think it's a difficulty planning it's a lack of hope it's a lack of kind of faith in themselves that they can control their condition move forward and succeed next is impulsivity now here's where we're gonna have some overlap right is that both of these individuals engage in impulsivity which is that there's an initial activation right and they engage in maladaptive behaviors in order to control the situation of what's going on and they tend to be very maladaptive very destructive to self and others so there is some overlap there okay all right and then we have irresponsibility and i think with irresponsibility what we look at is i think from our lens of sitting here right that you're watching the video maybe on your phone or your computer wherever you are and you said oh well how could he or she do that that's what you're responsible right and then on your psychopathic side what is going on here that's irresponsible right is it there is a tendency for both to engage in behaviors that have long-term consequences that are pretty significant and pretty severe so they can be very destructive so there is this sense of irresponsibility but i think that the issue with irresponsibility when you look at your psychopathic category individual here that irresponsible they don't care and they're just like don't doesn't matter to me because i'm getting my need met i'm getting what i want out of this and that's all there is to it and i'll do whatever i got to do in order to get that need met so eat it whereas i think that irresponsibility for those along the bpd spectrum becomes very much about poor planning again a lack of hope again a lack of being able for self-containment of a lot of those maladaptive patterns realizing they control their behavior realizing that if you engage in behavior a the consequence of b is pretty severe so it becomes this irresponsibility but not because of a lack of not caring which i think is your psychopathic category individual but that irresponsibility of being sort of lost and being sort of caught in this sense of confusion and misdirection so i think in some ways that there is that that sense of confusion but they do both you know i mean right we just got to call it that there is this sense of irresponsibility that that we may see in both but again i think that it presents very differently i think the factors are also very different as well even though there are some similarities there and then next let's talk about facet four which is anti-social and the first one here is poor behavioral control now both of these individuals are going to show poor behavioral control right your psychopathic category individual has a high tendency to be violent could be passive aggressive depending on their ability of self-control about what they can see in others and who they can take advantage of so how socially skilled are they right that's your psychopathic individual poor behavioral control i think for your individual along the bpd spectrum but again i think that that is more goes back to our impulsivity our irresponsibility but that poor behavioral control is that it is this old maladaptive default behavior pattern that they fall into that is highly destructive but they are driven to learn more effective ways of managing it and having a greater sense of control whereas your psychopathic category individual doesn't care and they don't care enough to participate or try to control it or anything like that i just don't care the next one is early behavioral problems now a lot of folks with bpd don't have early behavioral problems in their history now they may have emotional problems early on whereas your psychopathic individuals times they have callous and unemotional traits that are peppered throughout their history of development maybe they drug to the babysitter and they took advantage of the babysitter maybe they were killing cats maybe they were killing birds maybe they were engaging in all of these early behavioral problems in school right their fights and bullies and taking advantage of others and things like that that you don't see with those with bpd they don't have those typically in their history okay next is juvenile delinquency again goes back to your bpd individuals are unlikely to have that now they may have some again emotional components you're going to see a lot of emotional issues whereas those along your psychopathic categories they're going to have those callous and emotional traits right which drive them into these really aggressive behaviors taking advantage of others right being destructive of others property taking advantage of others and extreme very intensive some often violent in some cases behaviors whereas for those with vp again they they tend not to have it revocation of conditional release now this is facet for anti-social again it's unlikely that you're going to see an individual with bpd who may be on probation oh that doesn't mean that that some aren't and i think when we go higher up the bpd spectrum i think you may see some of those anti-social behaviors we're not talking about anti-social personality disorder we're talking about the extreme of anti-social personality disorder or traits and that is your psychopathic category that's what we're talking about we're talking about the extreme here there may there are individuals right that i think they are fledgling sort of bpd cases that later on as they get older they are going to have bpd they do have a tendency for acting out they do have a tendency for violence they may have some of these issues but again it's going to be more emotionally driven than it is about power profit destruction taking advantage of others so there's a distinctive drive here if they have been into sort of a juvie right juvenile detention something like that or they are on a conditional release something like that they are likely to revoke that conditional release particularly and much much much more so if they have those callus and emotional straights and they are certainly falling into that psychopathic category whereas those bpd do not and lastly criminal versatility i think that you're not going to see that with bpd you're not going to see that level of sort of sophistication i think lack of a better word that you see in your psychopathic category individual who is taking advantage of others who is learning to become a better criminal who is learning to become much more threatening much more risk taking in the way that they take advantage of others and the severity in which they do that whereas those with with bpd if they do get incarcerated it it tends to be more along sort of the the mainstream right of you know maybe they you know committed a crime whatever it may be or it's federal state you know whatever it may be they commit that crime but they tend not to have a lot of different crimes in the past they all tend to be related and under perhaps one similar umbrella whereas your psychopathic category individual is much more likely to have that criminal versus it could be theft right could be sexual assault could be you know could be computer crimes course i think a lot of psychopathic individuals are much more likely to have a hands-on approach or aggression to that acting out because of that need for stimulation so we've gone over factor one and factor two and the four facets that fall underneath and i think that it's really really important that as you go through this that you hear those differentiations yeah there's some overlap but these are two distinctive personality types very very distinctive and i think that it does all of us a disservice particularly those in the mental health field as well those for those that are trying to get mental health to inappropriately throw them all together and to say well you know people with bpd they're also psychopaths i think it does everyone a disservice and i want to encourage you to resist you know watching stuff like that to resist internalizing that false that those false narratives right those those false descriptors and things like that and that bpd is a treatable disorder psychopathy is not and you can look at the research and the research over and over and over again shows psychopathy is not a treatable disorder okay the research really supports that bpd is bpd is a good prognosis diagnosis and if you follow along the bpd spectrum do not internalize that term of psychopathy is equates to bpd because that is a fallacy and absolutely not true and i hope that you found this video helpful like share and subscribe and i wish you all the best please take care thank you bye bye

Channel: Dr. Daniel Fox

Views: 118,401

Keywords: What Psychopaths and Borderline Personality Disorder Do and DON'T Have in Common, bpd symptoms, psychopathy, bpd psychopathy, bpd secondary psychopathy, dr fox bpd, dr fox, daniel fox borderline personality disorder, dr fox psychopathy, psychopathy pcl-r, identity disturbance, bpd, bpd aggression, bpd impulsive, bpd treatment, borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, mental health, narcissistic, unstable relationships, chronic feelings of emptiness

Id: Bmk2VGprJSo

Length: 34min 18sec (2058 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 23 2022