© 2015 NeuroInstincts | All Rights Reserved

It’s natural to hope the personality disordered person we fell in love with was … less disordered. With the callous, disrespectful traits abolished, the relationship could be much better. But unfortunately, personality disorders are not easily changed. To make changes to social abilities requires sustained extensive effort, commitment, time, and perhaps even medication to modify something as deeply ingrained as personality.

Even under such conditions, the changes tend to be in relation to aggression management and behavior, rather than emotional processing (e.g., bonding/ empathy/ genuine kindness).

We desperately need more research in this area to figure out if there is something that can help.

1) The person with the condition.

• Are they able to sustain the insight needed to work on themselves?

• If one feels they are superior to others, why would they want to change?

• If the ‘condition’ causes them no pain, but rather can easily lead to a self focused life fulfilling desires – why would they be motivated to change?

• Many lack the insight to see that their personality style is the primary cause their relationship problems. Instead, there tends to be blame shifting and minimizing responsibility.

2) The presence of limitations due to brain dysfunction.

3) The limited success of treatment interventions for those with severe personality disturbances.

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Can a person with psychopathic traits try to work on their symptoms? Yes. They could and should try to address their disorder.

It will be important that they engage in treatment with a skilled professional with expertise in the treatment of this disorder. Psychopharmacological interventions might also be helpful to address some of the symptoms of the disorder (i.e., emotional dysregulation/ aggression). However, due to the symptoms associated with the condition, many tend to reject or see no need to modify their behavior patterns.

© 2015 NeuroInstincts | All rights reserved