In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is histrionic personality disorder. Histrionic personality disorder (HPD) falls within the DSM-5‘s cluster B of dramatic/emotional/erratic personality disorders. The primary characteristic is a pathological level of need for attention. People with this disorder are often charming and enthusiastic, […]
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Mental illness stigma is a very real problem. Those of us living with mental illness usually aren’t thrilled when people casually toss around mental illness diagnoses as adjectives, such as “she’s so bipolar”, “he’s so OCD”, or “everyone’s a little ADHD.” Yet, when it comes to narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), all of a sudden there
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is obsessive compulsive personality disorder. When people say that someone is “a little OCD,” chances are, what they’re referring to has little, if anything, to do with obsessive compulsive disorder. What they’re talking about is actually far more
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s terms are ego-syntonic and ego-dystonic. The terms ego-syntonic and ego-dystonic come from the field of psychoanalysis, and they were coined by Sigmund Freud in 1914. Ego-syntonic ideas match up with the ego’s needs, view of the self, and personality. Ego-dystonic
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s terms are antisocial and asocial. For some reason, I have a very clear memory of a moment shortly after my nursing career began. I was at work and was saying something about being antisocial. One of the psychiatrists looked at
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week, we’ll look at the difference between a personality trait and a disorder. Personality traits Wikipedia defines personality traits as “habitual patterns of behaviour, thought, and emotion” that are mostly stable across time and context. Some traits fall on a continuum,
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is narcissism, along with narcissistic personality disorder. You can find narcissism everywhere on the internet these days, although it’s not always used accurately. The term derives from Greek mythology and the story of Narcissus, who fell in love with
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