ellima01

I have studied psych nursing pretty extensively. I think my ah may have antisocial personality disorder, (APD) or he at least exhibits traits of it- even when sober, some of these symptoms are there (although when drinking they are all there). I know the mental instability of the active AH puts us all in that "they're crazy" state of mind. But I am beginning to think there is more to this than just the alcoholism. I mean obviously, he is an alcoholic- but I am wonderig if his chronic relaping may be due in part to trying to deal with something that is underlying....

keepinon

Definately could be, but as you know there is no cure for anti social personality disorder.

Still Waters

..and there is no way to diagnose a mental disorder when an alcoholic is actively drinking.

My AH is IMO severely mentally unstable. I say that because he is that way dry...as well as when drinking.

Absolutely nothing can be done about it though, since he thinks he's fine and I'm the one with the problem.

laurie6781

Alcoholism can and does mimic many other mental illnesses. That is why 'good' psych drs will not even attempt a diagnosis until the patient/client is at least 90 days (sometime longer) sober and clean.

Right now Ellima it DOES NOT MATTER. This man has already physically assaulted you and will do it again.

Call the DV center for you and your child and GET OUT OF THERE.

J M H O

Lots of love, and bunches of hugs,

dollydo

It really doesn't make any difference. He is a drunk. If he drinks because he is mentally ill or if the booze has made him mentally ill, it's all the same. He is not right in the upstairs.

AND, then you have the physical abuse, now, that is in a catagory of its own, there are many abusers who do not drink or do drugs, they are just mean spirited bullys.

Rather than waste your time trying to figure him out, spend the time making a plan to get you and your children out and away from this demented man.

suki44883

Instead of trying to figure out why he beats you, why don't you call one of the DV hotline numbers given to you last week? It doesn't really matter why he does what he does, the issue is that he beats you. Please get away from him. Your life is in danger.

LexieCat

Antisocial personality disorder is a fancy way of saying "criminal". It isn't something amenable to treatment, it's just a description of a set of characteristics.

Bernadette

Hi Ellima-
That's awesome that you've studied Psych nursing. Are you a nurse or in school? I'm in nursing school right now and we create care plans for our patients. Oh they can be tedious to write out and figure out but the exercise of doing them is so educational!

What I love about them is they follow the very logical steps of the nursing process: ADPIE.

Assess the problem(s) the patient is having. Part of that assessment includes looking at areas of strength as well as weakness!

Diagnose the problems (in nursing we use nursing diagnoses not medical diagnosis because we deal with the human responses to disease or injury)

Plan - (just like in AlAnon or in any of the work I've done on myself!) we make a little plan to correct the problems we've found. Included in the plan is an expected time range for improvement: y'know we can't wait around and just hope things will improve with time - we have to take action!

Implement - stick to the plan! We use the nursing interventions we've come up with to improve the situation.

Evaluate! Did it work? Did things improve? Do I need to tweak or change the plan to make it more effective?


Outside of school I have found this nursing tool to be one more helpful way to self-reflect. In fact my classmates and I tease each other whenever we start complaining about ___________ (fill in the blank!) that if we apply the nursing process we can improve ANYTHING in our lives!

I know when I focus on my own "mental disorders" I am able to make a plan and take the steps to improve my situation. I know when I focus on other people's problems, especially alcoholics, I feel blue and confused and angry and self-righteous and lost!!

It all goes down in my mind, and when I am "other-focused" I forget that I am in fact free in each moment!

Peace-
B

naive

ellima-

take the focus off of him and back onto what it is YOU want.

he could very well be what you diagnose him as...but at the end of the day, his behavior his unacceptable to you. it doesn't really matter what label you put on him other than : this man is not meeting my emotional needs.

naive

JenT1968

If he does have a personality disorder, have you worked out what that would mean to you personally? Would that "excuse" his behaviour in your eyes? or would that make it easier for you to take steps to protect yourself?

I found that I have a host of unconscious beleifs about how I am "supposed" to act around people who are "sick" or "mentally ill". It's one of the reasons I am less than happy with the alcoholism-as-a-disease model. Which whilst I am sure is helpful for alcoholics, I think can hook those around them further into guilt and crippling self-sacrifice.

You are trained/training in a valuble, caring profession, and society desperately needs people to are prepared to work in those professions to function. But, I think there is a danger in people who work in that sort of area, that over-caring can spill into personal lives. Remember in a ward or other therapeutic setting, you would have support, work as a team, have coffee breaks and lunch, perhaps mentoring when working with especially difffcult people, annual leave, security personnel, strict policies regarding harassment and an end to the shift when you can go home to a place of peace, safety and joy.

Hope you are ok.

Learn2Live

ellima,

So often in my life I have gotten involved with an alcoholic or addict and then, in trying to keep them in my life, I have focused on WHY they are that way. Then, I would try and try and try to fix what I thought was the problem. Fix after fix after fix. I was desperate to fix the problem and thought, "If he only X, then he would get better and we could live the life I want us to live." When all that line of thinking did was keep me spending money, exerting precious effort, spending all my time, energy and resources on fixing someone else's problem so that I could have what I thought I wanted. When all I had to do was let go.

Please go to Al-Anon.

Daybreak

I used to think if I could determine whether AH had Anti-social Personality Disorder I would know what to do. Personality disorders are never fixed so if he had ASPD, I was out of there. If he was "just" an alcoholic, I should stick around for recovery. Ah, good times.

Freedom1990

His chronic relapsing has everything to do with the fact he has no desire whatsoever to be in recovery, Ellima.

The facts are that this man has assaulted you, and you and your children are in danger until you take steps to keep this man away.

Lola1024

Ellima,

Honestly I really don't think it matters what the diagnosis is when there is a threatening living situation. When you are getting hurt like you are the cause of his behavior is really a moot point. Spend your time focusing on you and taking care of the safety of yourself and children. His mental state and its origins will not matter a bit if the worst happens to you.

If a storm blows your house down who really cares where it came from. Warm front? Cold front? Either way your house is still flat.

Please take care of yourself.

wicked

Ellima,

I am a recovering alcoholic and an ACOA. My father might have been borderline or even antisocial personality disorder. He was an abusive alcoholic, and even though I am now 51 years old, and have done much work through therapy and recovery, I still have issues about trust and abandonment. My sister, is an active oxycontin addict who ruined her marriage and lost custody of her son, and her career as an R.N. My brother is emotionally disturbed and an alcoholic living in Viet Nam now, after a stint in the French Foreign Legion, my youngest brother lives in Pennsylvania somewhere, actively drinking himself to death and using his brilliant mind to be a line cook at a rib joint. Please tell me how you think your husband is affecting your children and their psyche now?

If your chonically relapsing alcoholic antisocial personality disordered husband is still living with you and your children, can you imagine the effect it is having on them? My father was quite mean, and he could cut you off at the knees while smiling about it. His sarcasm was poisonous. He would hit our knuckles with the handle of the silver (real silver) dinner knives if we picked up the wrong fork to eat our salad. He pulled out my sisters hair, a hand full of it, because she didnt turn around quickly enough when he said "hey, daughter number 2". There were nights when he kept us up for hours asking our SSN, our address, our phone number, over and over and over again. My youngest brother was four years old at the time.

One especially memorable night, he ran our mother out of the house, and told us four kids she had died in a car accident. We sat huddled in the bedroom crying (but not too loud, cause if he heard us, it would be bad) while he broke every dish, plate, cup, porcelain figure in the house. One at a time.
Muttering the whole time "i will show that bitch"

One more experience that happened last week. My father has been dead for over twenty years. I was looking through some old pictures, and found some pictures of me and my sister looking for easter eggs in my grandmother's (fathers mother) yard. We looked beautiful, pastel dresses, bright white shiny shoes with ruffled socks, little gloves and hats. My sister was very intently looking for eggs, would not look at the camera. My face was panic stricken, anxious and scared. "Am I doing this right?" "Can we stop now?"
"Havent we found them all yet?"

Was my father antisocial, borderline, manic-depressive, he was an abusive alcoholic for sure, but I am not sure that matters.
Does it matter what your husband is, other than he is abusive?
What kind of life do you want for your children?

Please, I am asking from the child in me, the childhood I never had, to take your focus off the illness of this man, and on the wellness for yourself and your children.

Thank you for reading.

Beth

barb dwyer

(((Beth)))

Bolina

Of course he could be. Or maybe he is just displaying similar behaviors.

Like others have said, I am interested in how that knowledge would change things. Does it really matter if he was hurting you because he was drunk, was "evil", had a frontal lobe trauma or his mother didn't breastfeed him?

Before you do anything, make sure you read these links from the stickies:

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ationship.html

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ituations.html

Or look at the whole list of links here http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...out-abuse.html

I know you might feel numb at the moment, but you are in a dangerous situation. We'll never know if people who have posted before on here in similar situations got out OK, because sometimes they don't come back and let us know. I hope every day that it is because they are too busy enjoying their new life, not because thet stayed until it was too late.

Reach out, hon. Arms are there to catch you.

Summerpeach

I'm not familiar with your story, but don't feel bad about trying to figure him out. Criminal profilers do this for a living because we need to try to understand why someone does what they do.
Of course it's important to look after you as well, but I totally understand why you need answers.
Answers help you move on and let go.
My ex had some very strange behaviour during and after the relationship. He cheated on me and I was baffled as to his actions before and after that.
I needed to understand.
Fortunately for me, I met a RA who's a social worker. When I shared my story with him, he told me personality disorders are very common in addictions.
There are some more severe than others like sociopath but some that are not severe and are just manifestations of childhood coping skills.

When I asked my ex if he maybe cheated on me out of spite, he agreed. Every time my ex and I would fight or break up, he was calling other women. I could never EVER understand this, I don't think he could either, but then when I talked about this to this RA guy, he said "sounds like classic passive agressive disorder to me"
He shared a site with me and bang, there is was, as clear as day.

Get Your ANGRIES Out

This also helped me focus on me and what role I played

Knowing this helped me understand the whole dynamic. As you and your H are a dynamic, it wasn't just you, so I get why you need answers.

coffeedrinker

Heartfelt. Powerful. True.



((((Hugs))))

keepinon

Alcoholic, Anti social, sociopath, psycho path, or A-hole? Probably a combonation of several.If he is violent it doesn't matter.What he is, is an ABUSER. Pleas seek help from your local shelter if this is the case. Don't waste time trying to diagnosis him, keep you (and your family) safe.