Toxicity - Dan Cassenti, Novelist

Love and rights go hand in hand. When people love others, they want happiness for their loved ones. Toxic people want domination, control, and possession of others. They may claim love for others in their lives, but the harsh reality is these statements are lies perhaps to themselves, but most definitely to the people they claim to love.

Cluster B

Clinical psychological research classifies personality disorders into three clusters (A, B, and C). Cluster A includes paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal personality disorders. Cluster B contains antisocial (i.e, psychopaths and sociopaths), narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline personality disorders. Cluster C consists of obsessive-compulsive, avoidant, and dependent personality disorders. Although Cluster A and C personalities can wreak havoc in personal relationships and you could argue that they are toxic, I only categorize Cluster B as toxic personalities. Oro House® published a great summary article about the personality disorders where they include quick descriptors for each cluster. Cluster A is “Odd or Eccentric” Cluster C is “Anxious or Fearful.” Cluster B is “Dramatic, Emotional, or Erratic.” Seeing the clusters this way gives the picture of usually manageable and unintentional harm within relationships. Cluster B relationships, on the other hand, have a greater potential to turn your life upside down, creating a constant battle to maintain stability and reduce harm when in the presence of the toxic personality.

Some Considerations

Before diving into the types, there are a few considerations to offer. First, only an individual’s therapist can diagnose the individual with any of these personality disorders. Absent that knowledge, the rest of us can only guess and should understand that taking the liberty of diagnosing someone without extensive training and numerous one-on-one sessions with the individual is to unjustly malign and stigmatize them. It’s okay to refer to one of the Cluster B types in general, but labeling an individual with a personality disorder is a tactic we should consider a boundary. No need to shame yourself if you do (we all make mistakes), but a gentle reminder to yourself might help.

Another point is that labeling an individual’s behaviors as characteristic of a personality disorder is perfectly fine. As long as you’re not making unwarranted assumptions about a person, labeling someone’s behaviors is an objective comparison between what you experience and your knowledge about the common behaviors of the condition.

Lastly, it’s one thing to have symptoms of a personality disorder and another to have the condition. If a person sneezes, we don’t know if it’s due to a cold, allergies, or simply the body trying to clear out some inhaled debris. If you had a stressful day at work and come home snapping at your loved ones for the slightest provocation, that doesn’t make you a narcissist. If you do it every day and never apologize, it’s more likely. The Narcissism Encyclopedia has a lot of references to narcissists, but I use it as shorthand for a class of people who exhibit general narcissistic behavioral patterns, not to label any given individual. Anyway, these are just my standards. You may have your own and they can be nothing like mine. The trick is to make educated guesses about the tendencies that those in your life exhibit. That said, let’s look at the Cluster B disorders.

Histrionic Personalities

Histrionics are typically the least harmful of the Cluster B types. They’re motivated by having as much attention as possible. They may flaunt their sexuality in speech, action, and dress. They love to tell wild stories that are often dissociated from reality where they are the heroes with everyone else as the villains. Histrionics enjoy being in the spotlight but will quiet down and listen when others tell secrets. They keep mental catalogues of these secrets and tell others when gossiping or seeking retribution against someone they feel has slighted them. Life with a histrionic can be exciting, but the longer you have to endure them, the more draining life becomes. Everything is amplified coming from a histrionic, including positive and negative emotions. Histrionics also love to blame others in their life and take perceived slights seriously, holding on to grudges, which erodes relational connections the longer they continue. By the time relationships with histrionics come to their almost inevitable end, both parties will likely have resentment for each other and a burden of regrets and disappointments.

Borderline Personalities

Borderlines are the mostly likely type to become stalkers. Their identities have been marred mostly through difficult childhood experiences where they often ended up feeling abandoned and made to fight for themselves with little confidence in their abilities to handle the responsibilities. As such, they developed a strong aversion to the idea of abandonment. Whereas they may seem competent and easy going upon first meeting, the borderline soon exhibits clinginess and routine check-ins with their significant others. It may seem somewhat endearing to have someone put so much investment into you so early, but that sense of specialness can quickly morph into feeling trapped and desperate for moments alone. As the relationship continues, accusations of distancing and unfaithfulness turn into rageful outbursts that can, and often do, turn violent. Even if not outright violent, threats of violence against you, others, or themselves emerge, depending on the depth of borderline characteristics. Borderlines also have their ups and downs. At one minute, you’re the worst human being alive and the next, they’re apologizing to you for their behavior and begging your forgiveness. Instability defines the relationship and most people who entangle themselves with borderlines end up devoting the vast majority of their time trying to bring moments of calm to their lives. The silver lining with borderlines is that they’re the most likely to willingly enter therapy with best results of all the Cluster B types from the treatment.

Narcissistic Personalities

Narcissists suffer from unmatched burdens of shame and self-loathing. For those unfamiliar with narcissism, they will likely doubt your claims that someone you both know has a strong internal sense of shame. To them, the person you’ve cited is conceited and capable of shameful acts without hesitation. Yet, the conceit is all an act, meant to fool themselves just as much as others. They do and say things to deny the reality that they can’t accept. A narcissist allowing their malevolent deeds to seep into their consciousness would put them on a path to facing what they dread most, the burden of shame. So, the narcissist will compete with everyone and only allow evidence to come in unchallenged that matches their false narratives of superiority. Their self-focus is so deep that they care only about their own needs and will do whatever they can to ensure their success without regard for moral limits. They aim to have control over others and use them as pawns to achieve their goals, especially those of self-glorification. The victims of narcissists become their supply, always feeding the narcissist’s desires or, if failing to do that, facing manipulation and then force to keep the victim in line. Unfortunately, narcissists are largely impervious to psychological treatment. When compelled to go to therapy, they’ll attempt to manipulate the therapist into believing that their troubles are caused by others in their lives. Taking any more than the most superficial responsibility would be too much for the narcissist to handle.

Antisocial Personalities

Antisocials are motivated by a desire to attain complete domination of people in their lives. In their book, Dating Radar: Why Your Brain Says Yes To “The One” Who Will Make Your Life Hell, Bill Eddy and Megan Hunter explain that an antisocial saying that they’ll make sure no one ever hurts you, leaves out the part that they’re reserving that right for themselves. This encapsulates the antisocial, they generally have no moral limits, leaving few behaviors out of the question. They tend toward hedonism, consuming, taking, stealing, breaking laws, and treating others in whatever manners support thier goals. Narcissists are capable of the same acts, but they’re limited by what others might think of them. Antisocials have little regard for what others think of them as long as they can still get their way. Dr. Ramani gives a great statement summary of the differences in this video, explaining that antisocials have muted emotions, which suppresses even their fears. When the interviewer questions whether they want to get caught and go to jail, Dr. Ramani explains that they don’t want to go to jail, but once there, justify that it was just the cost of doing business. If you suspect that you’re in a relationship with an antisocial take the safest path to getting out with minimal damage to yourself and loved ones.

Why the Narcissism Encyclopedia?

So, why does this site have the Narcissism Encyclopedia and not the Cluster B Encyclopedia? One reason is because all Cluster B types share the same kinds of behaviors. For example, they all attempt to charm or love bomb their targets because the lines between their identities all blur with others. They’re clustered together because of their propensity to use others to improve their self-identity. Even if the primary motivation is different (histrionic–attention; borderline–fighting possible abandonment; narcissistic–suppressing shame; antisocial–domination), each Cluster B type depends on someone else to deliver for them. Across the board, Cluster B types share a one-sided self-interest and as demonstrated by their abuse, generally lack the capacity to love. You could argue that a borderline has the capacity to love when they’re not in the low period of their pendulum swings. Yet, until they begin the process of healing through therapy, they’re allowing periodic abuse against their victims, which is not loving. When we love someone, we’re compelled to end abuse, not let it continue. On top of everything else, the Cluster B personalities are often comorbid. They blend together, often making diagnoses difficult to make. Virtually anything in the Narcissism Encyclopedia can be applied to the other Clusters B types as well.

You’d be right to point out that my answer doesn’t address the question fully. Okay, so you can apply the NE to any of them, then why did you pick Narcissism? My reason is more social than logical. I had reasons to eliminate each of the others for the sense of utility that a focus on narcissism would bring to those seeking help to escape from toxic relationships. Histrionic PD does the least amount of damage. Sure, secrets told about others can put them through difficult and painful experiences, but this can generally be endured. Also, we can reason with borderlines depending on the severity of the disorder, especially when they’re experiencing one of their highs. A commitment to therapy can halt their abuse. Also, a breakup with a borderline can be very dangerous, but as long as the disorder isn’t too comorbid with antisocial or narcissistic traits, time will heal the pain from the abandonment, and they’ll move on to a new relationship. An antisocial label was ruled out for a different reason. Their behaviors are not all that different from narcissists. Sure, the narcissist cares about what others think of them and will apply brakes when they feel like their abuse can’t be done in secret. Yet, when they can abuse in secret, they can do anything an antisocial can do, including violence. An antisocial can hit you in public, almost daring a passerby to call the police, if they think they can get away fast enough. A narcissist would wait to hit you until there are no witnesses. So even the most extreme behavior is a subtle difference. I could have called it the Narcissism and Antisocial Encyclopedia but chose to avoid confusion and focus on the more common framing for the type of abuse the NE discusses.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that all abuse is unacceptable. Even if you don’t think someone who has a Cluster B personality in your life has much comorbidity with narcissism or antisocial, I hope that you can benefit from the Narcissism Encyclopedia. It can still give you insights. In truth, it can give anyone insight for their potential future relationships. Chances are that we’ll encounter these abuse patterns from someone in our individual lifetimes. It’s a good idea to understand abuse so we can understand what happened in the past, what may be happening in the present, or what we can prevent in the future.

Narcissism Encyclopedia