I am continuing here from where I left off last week talking about a mental illness and my son. I suppose I can say it is a mental health series, on this blog site. Before I begin I would like to mention to ANYONE who has a loved one, lives with or deals in any way with someone with a personality disorder, such as Anti Social Personality Disorder I do hope this is of help to you. I am a mother of a son who has Anti-Social-Personality-Disorder or ASPD. It is extremely difficult to understand and is mentally and physically exhausting. And I am sure it is hard for him too. Mentally I am not coping well at the moment. I am doing as much research on the disorder my son has in hopes of helping him. But, I am believing more than ever he has to help himself and he isn't. I can tell you that living with a person and dealing with the day to day anguish, rage, conflict from a person with a personality disorder, such as anti-social personality disorder, just drains you. If you are familiar with this please leave a comment and tell us your story and the outcome. The more we educate ourselves and other people about this type of mental illness as well as all others we can start to have the understanding on the steps to take and try to save our loved ones as well as saving ourselves.
The days and weeks are passing. He has been staying with his Grandfather and his wife. He really wants to continue staying there but, he is in complete denial that anything is out of the ordinary. His Grandfather is elderly and not well and has dementia, but not so bad that he can't tell when someone is trying to pull the wool over his eyes (so to speak.) But, as the days and nights go by the worse he is getting. I am so afraid he is going to snap on one of them. He doesn't listen to my suggestions much anymore and lately he sees me as someone in his way. I am his worst enemy at this moment, in his eyes.
The person with ASPD has a way of manipulating the persons he comes into contact with and that is how we get so caught up in the feeling and we don’t listen to the alarms and we don't see the red flags that usually guide our way. The most important thing you need to do is learn everything you can about the disorder that the person has and how they are dealing with their day to day living. It starts out as they want you feeling sorry for them and when they have you convinced that they are not mentally ill (and believe me, my Grandparents have doubted it more than once) because of the manipulation that is going on and when they do that, you are trapped with them. The person with ASPD they will simply use all your feelings against you. It is said that you need to harden your heart in order to see very clearly what you are dealing with. Never listen to words. Observe the behavior. It is by behavior that we really know people and that goes for all people. Words are just a con job, I guess to understand what I am saying is it is like using adjectives to describe something unique and breathtaking, almost to good to be true. That is the same case here, when you meet someone with Anti Social Personality Disorder or ASPD you will not know they have it, they look and can act just like you or I. Another thing is don’t try to figure out what they’re up to, what’s in their mind, or even second guess them. Getting into their head means trying to figure out their motives, trying to make excuses for them, trying to rationalize their behavior, trying to manipulate them, and especially getting sucked into the content. Do not listen to or give importance to the content of what narcissists saying. One thing my son does to me is the working two people against each other. It is their way of sucking you into their world and keeping you there, a world of total confusion where you always end up the bad guy. They will do and say anything to you to keep you trapped in their little dream world. Instead, observe what they are doing. Anyone dealing intimately with this disorder is going to be emotionally and mentally abused and exhausted.
I even tried to talk to him about his mental illness and I mentioned to him "You know, each time you do this it gets worse." He knew what I meant. Him and his medication does not go well, many times he refuses to take it and that is exactly what is going on. As a matter of fact he has thrown out all his medication and signed himself out of his treatment and closed his case. He has never gone that far before and now we have no one to turn to except each other and he is working on that by trying to get everyone arguing with each other.
I have seen him a few times this week and I was there no more than five minutes before he started being disrespectful and mean to me and is constantly threatening to cause trouble. He is being very rude. Like I said before without his medication he is just about the exact opposite of who he is on medication. And, interesting to see how he interacts with other people around me and comparing it to how he treats me is unbelievable. He says the most cruel and demeaning things that hurt so much. I will save that for another post on this topic.
