When I was a kid in treatment they told me and my parents I was "at risk for developing a cluster B personality disorder" What does that mean? I thought personality was pretty set in stone from a young age and you can't just "develop" a new personality like that Anyone with a cluster B disorder here? What does it mean for you? How young were you when it was identified? Was it a change from your previous personality or more of an exacerbation of traits, if that makes sense? How does it affect your life and relationships today? Do you notice your own bad behaviors or do you need someone else to point them out to you? Any interest in treatment or are you fine how you are? Did you suspect something was up with you before you got diagnosed or was it more of a shock?
Being told as a minor that you might develop a personality disorder is hugely inappropriate and irresponsible, especially by, I presume, someone in the psych field. It's medical malpractice at best. Generally speaking, personality disorders of any kind cannot be diagnosed under 18, and other things must be ruled out first even so. This is because it's hard to tell the difference between a kid with no independence going through puberty and the trauma of middle and high school and a potential mental illness. Your personality isn't set in stone, and this is especially true in adolescents. And other things have to be ruled out first because for example, autism and borderline cannot be co-morbid according to current diagnostic criteria, so autism has to be completely ruled out before a borderline diagnosis would be ethical. (This poses a particular problem for afabs with atypical autism (waves) but thats neither here nor there.) Got it ruled out, but I was misdiagnosed borderline at 17 and misdiagnosed bipolar numerous times starting from 14 until 24. So what it meant for me was that the psychiatric care system was utterly failing me, and my borderline diagnosis was because I was being actively abused by a romantic partner when I have an attachment disorder. Cluster B's in particular, I believe, need to be extensively considered from all angles before an official diagnosis is handed out: what relationships do you have, what other disorders or divergences might better explain the symptoms, what attachment style do you have and is it disordered, things like that. If you haven't been pegged as having a personality disorder since you were a kid, I think it's safe to say that that analysis was bogus. What they probably wanted to get at is that you may have been exhibiting a fearful-avoidant attachment style, which is where most cluster b's tend to fall.
Yeah my parents weren't too happy with that assessment haha I've heard of that but in practice diagnoses seem to be slung around willy nilly. For example anxiety disorders technically can't be diagnosed during a depressive episode, but in practice that's the standard action. What they say is not what they do. I even had a friend in group therapy with me who got diagnosed borderline at 14 yo. It definitely happens. Sounds typical for dealing with psych "professionals" I think it had more to do with them identifying me as "impulsive," "aggressive," and "irritable," with "oppositional defiant disorder." So basically calling me a fucking brat with a shitty future ahead of me if I continued down the path I was on. I don't think they thought too hard about it, seems pretty straightforward. Bad kid bad adult
Oh, for sure, I wasn't trying to say it doesn't happen, hence my example of how I was misdiagnosed bipolar at numerous points in my life, but a good, actually caring doctor who genuinely wants to help you find answers will, ideally, either avoid slapping you with the diagnosis until they're certain, or take special care to only label things as [x] traits or [x] tendencies, like how i have "OCD traits" without actually having OCD. Ideally, you'd be able to find a doctor who's more willing to look into more common explanations like autism/adhd or depression before they consider a personality disorder, but alas, america etc etc I feel like ODD is one of those things they severely over diagnose, I won't lie. Seems to me like it's commonly used as a way to dismiss a child who is expressing hurt, either due to an undiagnosed neurodivergency, abuse, or neglect. That's not to say you're any of those things, but I feel like if you genuinely had ODD, you would have been pushed towards a more appropriate diagnosis by now, or have seen continuing symptoms, which you haven't described either from what I can tell, so who knows.
Yeah, I have yet to see a doctor who actually adheres to those standards or is at all cautious in labelling. Good for you for finding one, they're unicorns. In my work so far with ped psych patients I've only come across one with ODD. If they're more common than that I don't know where to find them! But that one was definitely a case of abuse getting blamed on the child by medical staff. I have a parent with ADHD and a sibling with autism, so I think I would have been diagnosed if I had either of those. I've read of subclinical forms presenting in first degree relatives though. Shrugs Right around that time I got yanked out of treatment til I was an adult so I don't know what I might've been properly diagnosed with. As for continuing symptoms I definitely still have problems with authority but with hard work I'm now better at controlling my anger than when I was a kid. It hasn't gotten me into much trouble yet. I might have been diagnosable with conduct disorder in the following years, who knows. Reading criteria quite a bit of it is "oh shit that was me"
ADHD and autism are very, very commonly comorbid, and due to the way they tend to mask each other as it were, most people with both tend to go well into their adulthood without being diagnosed. I still don't have autism on my chart despite my diagnosing physicians agreeing I have it, and I've had ADHD there since 2019. If you're interested in exploring that route potentially, here is one, two, and three videos that talk about ADHD and autism combined, how they might hide the other, etc. All from one channel, I'd also recommend checking out "I'm autistic, now what?" (channel name) and looking into monotropism (the aforementioned channel has a view videos on it) Regardless, what you choose to pursue, if anything, as far as a diagnosis goes, is entirely up to you. I'm just, frankly, going based off of vibes here, that I think it might be worth looking into the auDHD spectrum.
What I meant to say was, given the number of different child psychiatrists I saw, if either ADHD or autism were present, I'm sure at least one of those child psychs would have identified one/both and diagnosed one/both especially given a positive family history for both. I'm just saying I assume they must have already been assessed and ruled out when I was a child. So self diagnosing now would be a bit foolish given the fact they were already ruled out. On the other hand a couple counsellors I've seen have informally pegged me with aspergers, which kind of makes sense. But I grew up with a kid with diagnosed aspergers at school and she was way more obviously impaired and in need of assistance than me. I was pretty normal in comparison. I think retrospective assessments will always be biased in favor of whatever one's looking for, so it's best to rely on the formal assessments actually done at the time. In this case, negative for ADHD and autism. A different explanation is required for ODD.
