Personality Disorders

Personality Disorders:

The word “personality” describes our characteristic ways of seeing and interacting with ourselves, other people, and the world around us. Our personality develops as we grow through infancy to adulthood and is shaped by our experiences along the way. 

In tough situations throughout life, we develop coping mechanisms that help us survive, but these mechanisms can become harmful if they stay with us after the tough times end. 

Sometimes, these coping mechanism change how we see ourselves and other people based on the nature of the pain we have been through. If we continue to see ourselves and other people as we did in relation to traumatic events, we might act in ways that do not line up with reality, and that can be harmful to relationships and ourselves. If these patterns become stuck, we might be described as having a “personality disorder.”

Different labels or names for personality disorders describe typical groupings of thoughts, behaviours, and problematic coping strategies that tend to go together based on how as person has learned to deal with stress.

At DPPC, we help people with personality disorder diagnoses, including: 

  • Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

  • Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)

  • Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD)

  • Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD)

  • Avoidant Personality Disorder (APD)

  • Dependent Personality Disorder (DPD)

How we can help

Many psychotherapy approaches to personality disorders teach coping skills to help manage symptoms and the impacts of symptoms on daily life. Symptom management can be helpful and necessary at times but often leave the main causes of the symptoms untouched.

Research has consistently demonstrated the effectiveness of psychodynamic therapies such as Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) in reducing or resolving personality disorder symptoms.

At DPPC, we focus on the possible underlying psychological and emotional causes of symptoms. We take an ambitious approach to therapy with the hope of not just managing but reducing or eliminating problematic symptoms and damaging coping strategies at their emotional root.