Understanding Personality Disorders in Divorce
Show Notes:
In this episode of the Thacker Sleight podcast, hosts Connie Thacker and Allison Sleight dive into the complexities of personality disorders within the context of divorce. They are joined by Dr. Dan Post, a board-certified clinical psychologist and lead forensic psychologist at Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services. Dr. Post explains the nuances of narcissistic and borderline personality disorders, how to detect and diagnose these conditions, and practical advice for dealing with individuals who have these disorders during the challenging divorce process. The discussion covers symptoms, diagnostic tools, treatment options, and specific strategies for maintaining stability and health during high-conflict situations.
Note: Always consult with a legal professional about specific circumstances and cases.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Introduction
00:36 Today's Topic: Divorce and Personality Disorders
01:09 Guest Introduction: Dr. Dan Post
02:38 Understanding Narcissism
04:45 Diagnosing Narcissistic Personality Disorder
11:52 Dealing with Narcissistic Individuals
20:25 Introduction to Borderline Personality Disorder
23:27 Dealing with Borderline Personality Disorder
30:29 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Read the Full Episode Transcript:
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Podcast Host (0:06): This Thacker Sleight podcast is hosted by Connie Thacker and AllisonSleight, two experienced attorneys who believe honesty, transparency, and knowledge are key to achieving the best legal outcomes. A variety of topics, particularly those related to sensitive family law matters, are candidly covered by Connie and Allison, other Thacker Sleight attorneys, and guests in a refreshing, timely, and practical way for listeners.
Connie Thacker (0:30): Welcome, everyone, to another Thacker Sleight podcast. Today we are going to be talking about divorce and narcissism, personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder. We are delighted to have with us today Dr. Dan Post from Pine Rest, who is going to share with us some wisdom on how to detect and diagnose these issues, and how to deal with people who have these problems, and particularly how to deal with them in the divorce context. So thank you, Dan, for joining us today.
Dr. Dan Post (1:08): Thanks for having me.
Connie Thacker (1:10): Give us a little bit of background about who you are and what you do in terms of forensic psychology.
Dr. Dan Post (1:17): Yeah, I'm a board-certified clinical psychologist, and I've been working at Pine Rest for the last 15 years. So I'm the lead forensic psychologist for the department, and we've done a lot of criminal and civil work, but I like to try and help out and work in the family court arena as much as I can. In the family court arena, often allegations fly about personality dysfunction in specific terms that are very common in society these days, like borderline personality and narcissist are thrown out all the time. So almost every male that I'm evaluating has been identified as being a narcissist, and so many of the females I'm evaluating are identified as having borderline personality, as if it's an arrow to shoot at them to somehow denigrate them or somehow win something during the divorce process. So a lot of the evaluations we end up doing for parental fitness or for custody or even just more of a independent medical evaluation in the family court arena is to at least consider, is there any personality dysfunction here, and does that have any impact on the question in front of us, or is it an unfounded allegation or just somebody in a difficult space?
Connie Thacker (2:37): Let's break it down first. I really want to talk about narcissism and all of it and what it looks like, and then I want to talk about borderline personality disorder. So why don't you tell us what narcissism is? Let's just start with that.
Dr. Dan Post (2:53): Sure. I'm even gonna back up a little bit and just talk about personality. Personality is something we all have, right? It's an enduring configuration of characteristics and behavior that really impacts how all of us relate to ourselves in the world, right? So we all have personality, right? For better or worse, you know, some of us are gregarious, some of us are introverted, some of us, you know, there's a lot of factors we can look around the room and identify of each other, right? And Theodore Millon came up with this kind of way of describing personality I think is helpful when we think about personality disorder. You know, personality ends up almost being like our immune system, kind of the thing that first engages with our environment, right? So if you have a stressor that hits your immune system, let's say it's the flu, you know, we know there's folks in the world, you know, some nurses down at Corewell who never get sick. They never got COVID, they never get the flu, they never get measles, you know, they never get anything. They have a bulletproof immune system. And in a similar way, some folks we know have personalities that are bulletproof.
They can experience extreme distress, war, abuse, poverty, all the things, and somehow are not showing some of the signs of distress that we might think are normal, right? Like in terms of depression or severe anxiety or things like that. And they can be really resilient. So when we think about personality dysfunction, it's on a spectrum from healthy to dysfunctional, right? In some ways we think of abnormal personality just by based on social norms and what we think is normal, right? But also what's adaptive. And so folks with personality disorder have kind of those enduring characteristics that are dysfunctional and lead to difficulty with how they think about themselves and others, how they relate to others, how they control their behavior and how they respond emotionally, right? So when we think about narcissistic personality disorder, I like to think about what's kind of somebody with that, with that condition, what's their orienting kind of posture towards the world. And I think of when I do presentations on this, I usually put a picture up of the Wolf of Wall Street, right? And the guy has two thumbs pointing at himself and he's sitting on a multimillion dollar yacht, right? And the idea is I'm special, right? That's kind of the orienting principle for folks with narcissistic personality disorder.
And from that flows, you know, and of course this is all on a spectrum, but they can be particularly self-absorbed. They can have low empathy or concern for others. They often have maybe, well, they often have a superiority complex, so they believe they're special, right? And everything they do has to prove that, you know, from the job they have, the car they have and how other people talk and interact with them, what they do, things like that. Folks with a narcissistic personality disorder can be incredibly sensitive to criticism. We call it a narcissistic injury. If you challenge their greatness, that can be incredibly hurtful. They may be depressed, they may be angry, they may be vindictive, but it can't stand. It has a big impact, you know?
So they don't take even reasoned good feedback from somebody who they think is smart or they like or they're married to. They just won't take it well. They can be entitled and they often can even have a victim complex. So in the case of family court, we may have both spouses kind of talking about them being a victim, right? Of each other and their behavior and what's going on. So that condition itself, when we think about it's on a spectrum from unhealthy to healthy and often when we think about family court, you're in the midst of separation and divorce and people are talking about all the skeletons in the closet and the things that aren't awesome about you. So then if you have that personality, it's really going to express itself, right? It's, you know, the environmental stressors are big and they're getting right to your core, which is that maybe you're not awesome or there's signs that you might not be as superior to everybody else or at least other people aren't thinking it. So you may lash out, you may be angry, you may be vindictive in court, right? You may weaponize things to try and win.
Grant James (7:08): Talking about narcissism, thinking of the Greek myth narcissist, the kind of myopia, constantly thinking about yourself, what distinguishes the actual personality disorder of narcissism from just generally being self-reflective or thinking about yourself?
Allison Sleight (7:27): Or being confident.
Grant James (7:28): Yeah.
Dr. Dan Post (7:28): Yeah. There is a healthy variant of this, right? So it's on a spectrum. So you can be confident and assertive and not have a personality disorder. You can even be a jerk and not have a personality disorder. These are common ways that people sling that arrow at folks. And so, and it's not just a male disorder, right? 75% of folks diagnosed with this condition are male, but 25% are female, right? So there may be some differences in how it presents, but some of those same factors are there. So this is where, you know, in the context of family court assessment, it's challenging because you are seeing somebody in what might be the hardest point in their life. And there's a lot of stress and a lot of strain. And they may just be a confident, assertive, successful person who is being made out to have a personality disorder, but you wouldn't necessarily see some of that vindictiveness. You wouldn't see some of that lack of empathy or concern or remorse for others. And some of those kinds of things that maybe are only present during those months or year of the divorce process, rather than this has been this person their entire adult life, you know, personality kind of crystallizes in adolescence and it's pretty stable through adulthood, right? Certainly treatment can help and do things, but that's what really differentiates it.
Like if this person never had these signs of narcissistic personality disorder, and then just in this part of divorce where they're hurt and they're fighting for their maybe access to kids or resources so that they can continue to live, it may look different.
Connie Thacker (9:14): What's the differences between tendencies, features, and a real diagnosis?
Dr. Dan Post (9:21): Yeah. So Kreger has a book called Splitting, which is really useful for understanding kind of some of the things that come out from a personality disorder in family court litigation, things like that. But what I like about parts of this book is that they essentially say for lay folks, it kind of doesn't matter, right?Are these patterns of a personality disorder and dysfunctional behaviors we're seeing, or is it a full personality disorder? Now in my world, it absolutely matters to discern that and understand what's going on. So really, we're talking about degrees of how much that's being expressed on the spectrum from healthy functioning to abnormal or unhealthy functioning. So for the full personality disorder, you have to have enough of the symptoms that are present in causing significant impairment, and it has to be consistent over time and setting. Now, of course, in the midst of significant distress, it may be more evident than it was at other times, but that piece of it being an enduring trait over time and severe enough to cause impairment would lead to more of the diagnosis. Whereas patterns, maybe they're not the most empathic person.
Maybe they're going to step on people's shoulders to be more successful. Maybe they are a little self-absorbed and really, really care about clothes they wear, how good their haircut is, what car they drive, right? But maybe it's less dysfunctional. Maybe they still have some good relationships in their life. Maybe they aren't causing a lot of dysfunction in other places, right? So the difference between traits and the full condition is really severity and how it's expressed. And we get to see that in the midst of distress, how do they respond, right? And if they do have a little bit more healthier response to that, and maybe can be a little bit more likely to compromise or maybe not looking at people in all black and white terms, the book splitting just kind of throws it out there right there. You're not all good or you're not all bad. And I don't justify what I'm doing because I have now decided you're all bad because you're leaving me, right? So that's some of those nuances. And so in an evaluation, the diagnosis matters, but identifying the symptoms and what's being expressed is really important because that can lead to intervention or even knowing what's coming down the pipe for difficulty, maybe in a co-parenting relationship or even just in court. Good question.
Connie Thacker (11:52): How do you deal with people who are narcissistic? What's the best way? I often tell my clients just not to engage with someone that we think has these features or what do you suggest on how to deal with them? And then let's talk about really how you get an actual diagnosis.
Dr. Dan Post (12:15): Yeah, I'll start with the diagnosis first. So again, avoid TikTok. It's not accurate. It's not going to do that. You can't armchair quarterback this one and just kind of diagnose your friends and family or soon to be ex-spouse with this condition. But there are characteristics and traits that you can obviously start to identify that maybe get that into the realm of, hey, this might be a concern, right? So when we're doing an evaluation, we will definitely use some psychological testing to kind of ground our evaluation. So things like the MMPI or the MCMI-IV, things like that can ground it in kind of a broad psychological test to see where things are at. We'll also do interviews. We'll definitely look at records as much as we can, therapy records, talk to other folks, because again, it's not something that just pops up in our 40s that suddenly we have a personality disorder. It's something that probably started to show itself in the teenage years and really started to express itself throughout adulthood. So it's identifying the symptoms, identifying the impact, and having some ways to verify this. So it's not just a he said, she said kind of situation where the one person who has something to gain by this other person being diagnosed with something like a personality disorder, it's not just their word against his or hers. That's usually what we do. And then ultimately when our data is kind of convergent and all pointing in the same direction, or at least enough data points to point that it's patterns of a personality dysfunction or even a personality disorder, then we could more confidently diagnose. What was the second part of your question? Kind of what do we do?
Connie Thacker (13:53): How do you interact with somebody that even has features or tendencies, or they've got something going on with respect to a personality issue? How do we deal with that? How does a spouse deal with that? And how do they deal with that ultimately? What's their treatment? So I guess it's another two part question. One is how do you deal with them? What's the best way to engage and not get caught up in the whole mistreatment that often happens? And then how do we treat people who have this condition?
Dr. Dan Post (14:26): Yeah. So the treatment, there's definitely hope for folks who have been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. One, if they identify it themselves and care and want to address it, psychotherapy can be very helpful. Psychodynamic psychotherapy and other modalities have shown that you can not show some of those behaviors down the road. You can have less of that anger and reactivity. You can really be healthier.
One big challenge of that though is if you have that condition, you may be less likely to acknowledge it or willing to acknowledge it. You may see yourself as excellent and amazing and superior. And somebody else telling you that there are some difficulties here may be very threatening. So treatment is possible. And there are countless stories of folks who have gotten help and can be healthier versions of themselves, which can be awesome for the family system, the kids, all those kinds of things. But for the soon-to-be ex-spouse or ex-spouse, how do we engage effectively or how do we go through the divorce process effectively with somebody like this? I think knowledge is power. So there's tons of books out there for how to understand what a narcissistic personality disorder is. And then know the person you're working with, so what their triggers are. It may be all about prestige and finance, or it may be all about how I look as a dad. So if you threaten my ability to see my kids, then I'm going to go on the work path, whatever. So knowing what their triggers might be, how they might react, to be very intentional and thoughtful about what battles are worth fighting and what aren't.
But I also would recommend being complacent and just letting this person, let's put some bubble wrap around this person and not do anything. I think you have to be assertive, you have to be calm, you have to be firm. There's a method called the BIFF method. So be brief, be informative, be friendly, and be firm with communication in these situations. So if you have to use Our Family Wizard or things like that, which is probably useful if somebody does have a personality disorder to keep it documented and clean, but that method will help you start less fights and less fires. So you're trying to be very clear and direct, keep good boundaries, but also not unnecessarily attack or trigger that person into bigger fights and bigger conflict. But you have to be ready for high conflict. You have to be ready for false allegations and threats. You have to be ready for unfairness and those kinds of things. So being well-represented, documenting things well, but also trying to stay well yourself and take care of your mental and physical health is really important because it can be exhausting.
Connie Thacker (17:22): Yeah. You mentioned the MMPI and the MCI-IV. Can you tell our audience just a little bit about what those are and what those tools are?
Dr. Dan Post (17:31): Yeah. Those are evidence-based valid and reliable tools that have been developed to do more broadband assessment. So we get pictures of personality function. We get pictures of other mental health factors like depression, anxiety, PTSD, things like that. We even get a sense of if they are approaching the test in a valid way. Are they being open and honest or are they trying to paint themselves as perfect and superior like we might see with the narcissistic personality disorder?
So these tools are well-respected and well-regarded, but they're also not magical. It's a self-report measure that folks are answering questions, tons of questions. And if they're coming at it in an open and honest way, it can be very illuminative on what's going on with the person. But if they try and fake good or fake bad, that's pretty evident too. But it still takes interpretation. You have to work with the tools and you have to use other measures, not just one measure in interviews and other things to actually get to the point of clinical diagnoses are actually understanding a lot about the person. So some folks take these tests and they're terrified because they think it's going to just open a window to their soul that they're not ready for. They're not that magical. I wish they were, but it can be helpful just to characterize where they are in the spectrum of severity, where they are, how they're approaching the whole evaluation process. So they're used very commonly.
Allison Sleight (19:03): How many questions are on the test?
Dr. Dan Post (19:07): I feel like I'm on the stand right now. Next you're going to be talking about the reliability coefficient, all those kinds of things. Yeah, wonderful. It depends on the measure, but we're talking several hundreds of questions depending on the measure, so 355 or whatever, depending on the measure. So they used to be longer. The MMPI-2 was very long, so they're getting shorter, but they're still maintaining some of their characteristics that we need, which is they're admissible in court and they're useful and they give us good information.
Connie Thacker (19:34): Who develops those tests? I mean, where do they come from?
Dr. Dan Post (19:38): Yeah, so the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is from the University of Minnesota and Yossi Ben-Porath was one of the developers of that measure. So they've been developed by psychologists through a lot of research and the questions have been scoured and made sure to be the best we can have right now to identify these conditions because there's other measures that aren't as valid and reliable, but they may just be very simple like, are you depressed? One to five, right? Those are easier to manipulate than things like the MMPI.
Allison Sleight (20:17): And what time is Connie's appointment next week?
Dr. Dan Post (20:21): First thing, we'll get going bright and early.
Connie Thacker (20:23): Yeah, it sounds good. I'm a little scared. Let's talk about borderline personality disorder. I mean, I assume that some of the tests are the same.
Dr. Dan Post (20:34): Yeah. I think one way to consider this is everything I was talking about with narcissistic personality disorder, this is kind of another similar condition. It's in the same cluster of but it just tends to be expressed more with women, right? So whereas 75% of folks diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder are men, 75% of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder are women. So at the end of this, we'll talk about what resources we have for that population too, but its expression is much different, right? So it looks different, it feels different. It's possible to have both conditions, but when we kind of just stay…
Connie Thacker (21:19): That would be like a double whammy.
Dr. Dan Post (21:21): It could make things more challenging. Yeah, absolutely. But for borderline personality disorder, first you have to discern this from some of those conditions we talked about in other podcasts with bipolar disorder and substance use disorder and things like that. But you're going to see intense anger and reactivity. You're going to see mood that's very volatile and is on a roller coaster. The mood swings might be primarily related to relationship. And if you think back to that Millon's thing of what environmental stressors are really going to hurt this person, it's maybe a threat to relationship, right? It's somebody saying, I am leaving you. We're going to start this divorce process. They talk about abandonment fears with folks with this personality structure, and that is often their core biggest fear, right? So when that's there, then you're going to see a lot of these impulsive behaviors, intense anger, vindictiveness, things like that that can come out.
You can also see a lot of reckless, dangerous behavior in terms of self-harm behavior, suicide attempts, even more dangerous behavior like stalking and things like that can come out in those difficult situations. The book Splitting again talks about how you see a lot of that black and white all or nothingness, right? So when things are good, that person's way up on a pedestal and they're amazing and they're the best person ever and they can't even acknowledge anything negative about them. But very quickly, they can fall off that pedestal into the basement of being pond scum, being terrible, having everything wrong. And so in an assessment with this person, if I'm asking about their spouse, it may be impossible for them to say anything positive about this person they were married to for 15 years, had two kids with, and up until two years ago had nothing but positive things to say about, right? So it's this very intense swing from all good, all bad, maybe behavioral and emotional stability, and then incredible recklessness and difficulty.
Connie Thacker (23:27): What are some guidelines or tips on how to deal with somebody that has personality disorder? I mean, I know we talked about it in terms of narcissism and maybe most of it's the same, but is there anything different that we should do if we have a client who's suffering from that disorder or we have a client whose spouse is suffering from that disorder? Yeah.
Dr. Dan Post (23:49): When I think about their orienting principle, it's commonly thought of, I love you and I hate you all at the same exact time. So it's a much more reactive condition. So I think you need to have more concern for safety, have more concern for substance use and things like that that may come out of some of those difficult periods, right? So again, avoid reacting emotionally, which is incredibly hard in the midst of divorce and some of the hardest things you're dealing with in your life, right? If something is said by somebody with a borderline personality disorder, it may be some of the most toxic and hurtful things you could ever have possibly considered in this world. But to not react emotionally really helps to not pour gasoline on that fire, right? Sometimes even using, and this is from Stop Walking on Eggshells, which is another one of Randi Kreger's books, to respond with validation is really important. Now, by validating somebody doesn't mean you agree. You just acknowledge that that emotion's in the room and that that's hard, right? That can be one of those pouring water on a bonfire situations to bring the intensity down. So avoid that. That BIFF model of communication's important, good documentation, good limits and boundaries, and not waffling between things, but just being very clear because that can be very confusing and lead to things. But being vigilant for threats and false allegations and things like that, we may see allegations of abuse or allegations of substance use disorder, allegations of a lot of things that come out of these reckless times or these periods where they might be most threatened and challenged or wanting the relationship back or any of those things.
Allison Sleight (25:45): Is it possible to have a healthy relationship with someone that suffers from one of these personality disorders?
Dr. Dan Post (25:51): Absolutely. Now, is it hard? Yes. Is it better if it's identified and you're working with it? Absolutely. But there's a lot of challenges if you have a personality disorder to having healthy, stable relationships, but it's not impossible by any means.
Connie Thacker (26:08): Is the borderline personality disorder, is it like a spectrum or do you either have it or you don't?
Dr. Dan Post (26:14): It's absolutely a spectrum. So we can go from very healthy relatedness with a lot of anxiety and stress about somebody leaving me to much more destructive, reactive, emotional things that lead to safety concerns and suicide and psychiatric hospitalizations and things like that. So when you're understanding where the person is on that spectrum, that also impacts recommendations about best interest for the kids and safety and even treatment, what's needed. There is a very well thought out and developed treatment modality for borderline personality disorder that's incredibly effective to help them have emotional stability and behavioral stability and really get past some of these more expressive and detrimental things. So it's dialectical behavior therapy by Marsha M. Linehan is excellent. What is that? So it's a very structured intervention for this that has some cognitive, behavioral, and dialectical kind of pieces to it. And so Pine Rest Program, for example, is a year-long program that's twice a week. One of the pieces of it is a skills-based group learning situation and the other is therapy with a lot of support around risk of suicide and other things like that. So it's a year-long intensive program, but it's incredibly effective for adolescents and adults with this condition. So that's one of those things of what do I do if I know I have somebody with this condition? It's encourage help in a compassionate and loving way. There's good care out there that can make this person much healthier, much safer for the kiddos, or much more likely to have healthy relationships.
Allison Sleight (28:05): I wonder though, I mean, when you're talking about the kids, can you breed a narcissist or someone with personality disorder? I mean, are they more likely to have it if their parent has it? How do you prevent that continued cycle?
Dr. Dan Post (28:21): Yeah. So it's a nature-nurture question you're asking and it's both. You can have some of the genetic predispositions or have a certain type of way, but the nurture really matters. So somebody with a borderline personality disorder unfortunately often has a trauma history, often has a family context or growing up where they've been invalidated, where they've had a lot of difficulty growing up. It's definitely not a choice and it's definitely something that grows over time with experience. It's how you learn to engage your world. Do people leave you? Are you abandoned? Those kinds of things can have a huge impact on emotional development and personality development. And so with narcissism too, if you're teaching this child of yours that they're only good if they're the best, if their only value is these things and do everything at all costs to do that, and you're emotionally distant and you are not, those kinds of things. If you also have that personality type, it can engender that in your child too.
Allison Sleight (29:28): Should we be looking at keeping these people away from the kids if they're not treated?
Dr. Dan Post (29:34): That's an incredibly hard question to answer, but I would say not necessarily.
Connie Thacker (29:38): It depends, right? It depends. Yeah.
Dr. Dan Post (29:40): Again, it's about where they are on the spectrum and how healthy or unhealthy they are, right? So in a very severe presentation of this condition, they may struggle to parent effectively and they may do a lot of harm to their child. They may actually be abusive, right? So that ends up being a simpler answer to a hard question where on lesser severe cases, I don't think we need to keep children away from them, but man, do we need to encourage insight and awareness and hopefully treatment to be healthier parents and use parenting methods that are more healthy, but might they meet the low bar of good enough parenting? Probably. It's a great question.
Connie Thacker (30:29): Yeah. It's really very, very helpful and insightful for us and for our clients. Dr. Post, we just really want to thank you for coming today and sharing your wisdom with us. It's always great for us as practitioners and lawyers who represent people in family law to learn about mental health. So thank you very much.
Dr. Dan Post (30:50): Thank you.
Podcast Host (30:55): Thank you for listening to this episode of our Thacker Sleight podcast. If you have additional questions, do not hesitate to contact us at 616-888-3810 or visit our website, thackersleight.com for further information.
When personality disorders are part of a divorce, communication, conflict, and co-parenting can become especially challenging. Understanding these behaviors and knowing how to respond can help you protect your well-being and make informed decisions throughout the process. If you are navigating a high-conflict divorce involving narcissistic or borderline personality disorder, reach out to the experienced family law attorneys at Thacker Sleight can help you understand your options and determine the best path forward.