ERP 180: What if I Think my Partner Has a Personality Disorder? An Interview With Gabrielle Usatynski
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Welcome to today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 180, “What if I think my partner has a personality disorder? An interview with Gabrielle Usatynski.” It is always such a pleasure to have people on the show that have done such development in their understanding and their work in the world, and have them share some of their perspective on the show. I also learn and just grow from these conversations.
Before we get started in today’s episode, I wanna take a moment and ground with you in the intention of the Empowered Relationship Podcast, and that is to improve the quality of our connection and our respective romantic relationships. And then as we are listening to these conversations, that we are learning, and we’re learning more about the landscape of long-term intimacy, things that we might encounter, and perhaps get insight and understanding into areas where we might feel confused, or feel threatened, or insecure, and really at a loss around how to move forward… And the larger context or paradigm that I’m holding about relationship is that it is one of the most powerful ways for us to become more whole.
Because as we enter into love and connection and intimacy… Intimacy is like that old — I think it was like an ’80s or early ’90s [unintelligible 00:02:20.10] It represents this full seeing and the vulnerability around that. We don’t come to relationship with just some parts of ourselves; we can try, and we can cultivate a very limited relationship where you don’t go to certain areas, and that’s gonna restrict the level of intimacy. But if we’re really saying yes to this fuller experience, it might require us to look at parts of ourselves that we have been ignoring, denying, or even suppressing, and that it’s a calling forth, a healing, a bringing to the surface, almost this transformational process that we are becoming more whole… But sometimes we have to go through the fire; we have to bring up stuff that we haven’t wanted to look at, or that we might get faced with.
In some ways, relationship in and of itself is a mirror that will show us ourselves… And so often we wanna point the finger to our partner – “You’re doing it. You’re the problem. You’re making me feel this way”, when really we’re having an experience in response to our significant other. Yes, there’s so many things involved, and hence that’s why this show is so important to me, that I’m helping support education around all of the different aspects that we are experiencing in a relationship.
Coming back to the basic intention – we are improving the quality of our connection, developing our relationship, and as we do so, we are growing ourselves and becoming more whole and complete.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can find them on my website, which is DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and you can find all of the episodes there. Again, today’s episode is 180, “What if I think my partner has a personality disorder? An interview with Gabrielle Usatynski.” Let’s get started in today’s episode.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gabrielle Usatynski, MA, is a Licensed Professional Counselor at Power Couples Counseling in Boulder, CO. She has been in private practice since 2008 and specializes in couples therapy. She is trained in PACT (a Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy).
Gabrielle has been named 2018 and 2019 Best Marriage Counselor of Louisville by the Louisville Awards Program. She teaches a masterclass on personality disorders in couples therapy to other clinicians in the Boulder area.
It is such a privilege to have you on the show, Gabrielle. Thank you for joining us.
Gabrielle Usatynski: It’s my pleasure, Jessica. I’m so happy to be here.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I just love that you’re willing to offer your expertise and just help in the way of educating couples who might be navigating challenges. We’re gonna really specifically talk about personality disorders.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yes.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: When we had a conversation, I was sharing with you how often I find people are struggling in relationship, and I actually have a personal example where someone very close to me called off their wedding, and was sharing with me some of the hardships, and was looking at “I think she’s got a personality disorder, I think she’s borderline”, and I’ve heard that commonly. People come in and they’re already diagnosing their partner – “He’s narcissistic” and kind of launch into that. So I just think it’s a common theme that people are grappling with.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yes…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Can you talk a little bit about — maybe let’s scale back. Just give us some orientation around personality disorders in general.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Sure. Well, a personality disorder really involves a fundamental distortion in the sense of self, and also in the sense of the other person. What I mean by that is that we have difficulty with our own self-identity, our own sense of self-direction, and we also have difficulty in relationships, specifically with being empathetic with other people, and in developing intimacy with another person. Those things are true of all the personality disorders.
The question is what does that mean when I say distortion? What kind of distortion are we talking about? Well, it really has to do with a fundamental split in the sense of who we are and who the other person is. What that means is like in ordinary development and in ordinary psychology, a person is able to see that they have both good and bad parts. Like, “Some days I’m kind of lazy, and some days I can get angry, but I know that I have other good qualities about myself. So I see myself as a whole person”, you could say. “And I see the other person as a whole person. My partner can sometimes make me angry, be really annoying, but I know that fundamentally I love them, and there are lots of things about them that I appreciate.”
So that’s the situation with ordinary development, where we have this whole sense of self and a whole sense of other, that involves both positives and negatives. But the problem with the personality disorder is that those positives and negatives actually aren’t connected. So there’s this split, where either I experience myself as all good, or all bad. And I experience you as either all good or all bad. So you can understand kind of what the implications of that split are in relationship, because if we get into an argument, it’s sort of like everything good that ever happened between the two of us sort of goes out the window. It’s like I don’t remember that. Suddenly, you become this person who is out to get me, or this monster. Or I become this monster. I see myself that way.
So there’s a lack of continuity of the sense of self, a lack of continuity of the sense of other. Shall I say more?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, please.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Okay. Another way of approaching this in terms of what distinguishes people with personality disorders from those who don’t have personality disorders is that with personality disorders there’s a fundamental difficulty in dealing with reality. Now, we all have trouble dealing with reality, so in a way you could say this is on a continuum, because obviously maybe you wanna lose ten pounds, and you know you shouldn’t be eating chocolate, but you decide to eat chocolate anyway, because you’re kind of ignoring the fact that you’re trying to lose weight. That’s a minor example of not dealing with reality, and putting what we can say your own pleasure ahead of the reality of the situation.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Or when people rationalize, justify, or minimize their behavior… But that’s exactly what you’re talking about.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Exactly. In other words, we all have a part of us that does that. But with personality disorders, people tend to do that in a much more extreme way, and at a much greater cost, both to themselves and to others. For instance, a person with a personality disorder might be in a relationship where they’re being horribly abused, and yet they’re in complete denial about that, even though they’ve been physically hurt many times. That’s an example of denying reality in a very significant way.
Or another example could be a person who has hurt their partner in a really significant way. Maybe they’ve had ten affairs, or something, and they’re just not able to acknowledge the damage that’s been done to their partner, because they’re just not able to deal with reality.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gotcha. So you’re saying that there’s this real distinct dissociation almost, or cut-off from what the pain is, or their past, or the reality; that there’s this real extreme disconnect.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yes, that’s right. And that makes a lot of sense if you think about how personality disorders develop… Because what we know about that is that these disorders actually get formed very early in childhood development. We’re talking about the first three years of life, and really the first two years of life actually, if we wanna drill down.
There are what we call developmental arrests, or there are times in the development of the child where they’re not receiving the kind of support, the kind of love and the kind of investment that they need from the parent. Something goes awry at a particular stage of development, and depending on what age that child is at the time that that happens, is what is going to determine the kind of personality disorder that that child develops.
Ultimately, what happens with personality disorders is that they create a self-esteem problem. In fact, you could even look at personality disorders fundamentally as a self-esteem issue. Either you have sorely deficient self-esteem, or in the case of another disorder like narcissistic personality disorder, you have hugely inflated self-esteem. That all relates back to this early phase in childhood development where the child is developing their sense of self, starting to become their own person, to go out into the world, to walk, to explore their environment, and they need a certain kind of fuel (you could say) from the parents… And that’s not always available, for all kinds of reasons. So that’s where things initially get off-track.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gotcha. So as we’re looking at my initial naming of the topic, introducing the show today, of just how often we start diagnosing our significant other, that you’re talking about a couple things – there’s a fundamental self-esteem issue; and in my mind, I think about people having various degrees of self-esteem, whether or not they have great self-esteem, or whether or not they have low self-esteem, and that doesn’t indicate a personality disorder.
You’re also talking about this split in the ego structure, the internal structure… It’s almost as though the way they developed their structure, their ego, internal structure, to really cope with perhaps the low self-esteem – is that what you’re talking about?
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yes, yes. And one way of looking at that… You’re bringing up a good point, because a lot of people have self-esteem problems, but there’s a really big difference between saying “Well, there are days that I don’t feel very good about myself”, but I know how to pick myself up at that moment. I’ll call a friend, or I’ll go for a jog, or I’ll do something that can bring me back into equilibrium… Which is very different than people who feel so bad about themselves that they will self-harm, for instance. Or there’s no observing — see, part of this has to do with brain development, because personality disorders are also correlated with a lack of a certain development in the brain. That has to do with the frontal regions of the neocortex, that big cauliflower-shaped part of the brain… And specifically this area called the prefrontal cortex, that is responsible for observing our experience, and then kind of course-correcting.
For instance, if you wake up feeling really bad about yourself, when the prefrontal cortex is developed you would be able to observe that. “Oh gosh, I’m not feeling well today. I’m not feeling good about myself”, and then do something to help yourself… Because you have that observing faculty online, in your brain.
The problem with personality disorders is that there’s a lack of development in the brain. And the reason for that is because in those first three years of life a child needs a tremendous amount of contact with the primary caregiver in order for that part of the brain to develop. And it has to be a specific kind of contact. This is what we know from the research – they need face-to-face, eye-to-eye, skin-to-skin contact with an older brain. And they need that every day. That’s actually how these higher parts of the brain are able to develop.
So because in the first three years with personality disorders there tends to be a lack of that kind of rich relational contact with a parent, that part of the brain literally doesn’t develop. So when you get into having all of the kinds of self-esteem issues we’re talking about, there isn’t really another part of you that comes online to regulate that, to bring you back into balance. And that’s really a way to distinguish between what we’re talking about here – personality disorder versus non-personality disorder.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Super, super-helpful. And when I’m listening to you, I’m also recognizing that when someone’s in relationship – let’s say someone does have a personality disorder… Does that look different as they operate in the world individually, and then when they get into relationship are there other things that are getting activated there?
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yes. That’s a really interesting subject, because if we look at the DSM, which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is the book that we use as therapists to diagnose all mental disorders, it says that one of the hallmarks of all personality disorders is that the problems tend to be consistent across every area of the person’s life. And that’s one of the ways that ostensibly a therapist should be diagnosing a personality disorder.
The interesting thing about that though is that anybody who is in the field, I think, would agree that there are many people who have personality disorders who you would never know unless you knew them in their intimate relationship. They’re very functional at work, they have lots of social contacts, they’re very high-functioning, they’re very active in the community… They might even be seen as a paragon of wisdom in the community… And yet, there’s this whole other side going on that is very often only seen by the intimate partner. So that kind of explains something about the split that we were talking about, where somebody can appear very functional and very generous and kind and successful in a lot of situations, but then they have this whole other side to them that the world doesn’t actually see.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And intimate relationship really invites and calls for the deeper emotional connection. So when they maybe perhaps don’t have the capacity or the safety or the understanding of how to reach to another person or receive another person — in regular life, they might not get tested, they might not get challenged in that way or get confronted with that level of emotionality… Is that part of what you’re saying?
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yes. And another way of looking at that is that our intimate relationships hold a place in our hearts, brains and bodies that no other relationship will ever have. It’s a special kind of relationship. People often wonder “Why am I good at parenting, I have lots of friends, I get along with my work colleagues, I’m good with my in-laws, my pets, everybody, except for my intimate partner? It’s like I have all these problems.” And there’s a reason for that… Because when we enter into deeper stages of relationship – I’m not talking about the beginning of a relationship, when everybody is in love and it all feels great. I mean as we progress in the relationship, into deeper stages of commitment with one another, we become permanent to each other, in each other’s brains, you could say. Now we’re a couple, now we’re each other’s one-and-onlys, now we’re really doing this. And we become stand-ins at that point for all of our significant relationships that have come before, most especially our parents. So you become a stand-in for my mother and my father, and I become a stand-in for your mother and your father. And we start to see each other through the lens of all of those earlier relationships.
So if those relationships didn’t go well, then you can bet that that is gonna wreak havoc in our intimate relationship until we resolve those blueprints.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gotcha. So where people might be faced with this type of activation, if you will, or even the stand-in in the early modeling, in the early imprint – that might activate things; if you don’t have a personality disorder, that still might pose for working through a lot of that insecurity, or challenge, and the psychology that we might call attachment, right?
Gabrielle Usatynski: Exactly. What I’m saying is true in terms of that phenomenon of seeing our partner through the lens of those earlier relationships. That’s true whether you have a personality disorder (or your partner does) or not. It’s true for everybody.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: But particularly activating maybe for someone that does have a personality disorder?
Gabrielle Usatynski: In the sense that they’re gonna have a really hard time realizing that you are not that earlier person. And again, that has to do with that observing function of the brain; this is a distinction that we make as therapists – I’ll see couples in my office where one person says “Gosh, when you look at me like that, it really reminds me of how my mother used to look at me. And I hated that look! I know that’s not who you are, I know you love me, but that look – it really bothers me.” That’s a whole different kind of thing than that person seeing the look in their partner’s eyes and flying off the handle, as though their partner has now suddenly become their mother. So there’s no distinction there. It’s like “Now you are that person! You are that person who abused me, you are that person who hurt me, and I’m going to react to that exactly the same way as I would if you actually were her. It’s sort of like I just lose all sense of reality in that moment.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Super-helpful.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yeah, and that’s really a big distinction there with personality disorders.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Great. Is there anything that you might be able to say that will help people be able to recognize — because there is so much online around “How to know if your partner is narcissistic…” Do you have some things that could help people navigate if they’re suspect that their significant other has a personality disorder? How to spot them.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Right. Well, the question I would have about that question is “Why would a person want that information?” Because what tends to happen is that when people suspect that their partner has a personality disorder, they think that perhaps that’s a reason that they should end their relationship. Like, “Uh-oh… This person’s a narcissist” or “This person’s borderline. Time to get out, before it’s too late” kind of thing. And the fact of the matter is that people are actually much more dynamic than that. The whole idea of personality disorders, while it’s helpful in a certain way to understand certain tendencies and problems that people have, the downside of it is that it tends to turn people into static entities that are a certain way… And that’s not really true. That’s not actually how people are.
The reason I can say that is because we know that there are people who will meet the criteria for one of these personality disorders in certain situations, but in other situations they don’t. And so it’s a lot trickier than just figuring out what label your partner has, and then deciding what you’re gonna do, right?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right…
Gabrielle Usatynski: So what I tend to say is that the importance really is thinking about what kind of relationship are you really looking for? What kind of relationship do you wanna have? And really having that conversation with your partner about what it is that we’re doing in this relationship. What are we going to do for each other, that nobody else is going to do? Because a lot of people have a “fly by the seat of their pants” kind of approach to relationship; they get into relationship with somebody they’re really attracted to, and then as they progress into deeper stages of the relationship, things start to go awry and their expectations of the other person are not fulfilled, and vice-versa. But they’d never really sat down and talked about what kind of relationship they wanna have.
So my tendency is to focus more on the kind of relationship that people wanna have, and if they really can’t agree to that, then that’s a time where they really need to talk about whether it’s the right relationship for them.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So it pivots the focus on “What are we creating together and what are we really for in a relationship? What are we really wanting?”, versus “I’m freaked out” or “I’m super-scared about this dynamic I’m experiencing” and then perhaps looking for answers, and then pathologizing your partner. That’s a whole different conversation.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. I wanna give you an example…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: That would be great.
Gabrielle Usatynski: …from the practice of how I see this playing out. There are two main mistakes that people make when they suspect that their partner might have a personality disorder. The first one is what we would call gaslighting. Let’s take a couple – we’ll call them John and Sandy. John and Sandy called my office because they both felt that Sandy had what they called a resentment problem.
They came into my office, and Sandy really looked like a wreck. John had told me on the phone, prior to the appointment, that he suspected that she had a borderline personality disorder. They came into my office, and she really didn’t look good at all. She was just extremely distraught, and all of her thoughts and feelings – everything was just kind of blurred together. She was having a hard time expressing herself clearly, she was very upset, and they were reporting that her drinking was out of control… And really just looked like she was falling apart.
Of course, in a situation like that, one would be tempted to at least want to rule out borderline personality disorder, because there are a lot of things about that presentation that looked like it could be that. But as I started to explore their situation, I learned that John had made a decision a number of years ago to travel for his job, and that he hadn’t ever talked to Sandy about it, but he was traveling all over the world and was gone essentially 90% of the time.
He would have 16-hour turnaround time at home, so he’d go to Hong Kong and then he’d come back for 16 hours at home, just basically to repack his suitcase, and then he’d be off again to Australia.
So she was feeling completely dropped, emotionally, and abandoned by him, and she had been trying to get through to him for years about this… So every time he had come home, she was angry with him, and just anxious, and their interactions were really horrible. Then he would leave again.
So what became apparent was that her behavior was being triggered by a decision that John had made unilaterally, and we know that unilateral decisions don’t work in a couple. It’s very important that couples make all of their decisions together, as a team, and that they come to choices that are good for both of them.
She had started having all of these behavioral problems since John had been doing this… And this had gone unrepaired for years.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: How many years?
Gabrielle Usatynski: Five years.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Five years… Wow.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yeah. So in therapy it became really important for them to have a conversation about — well, first of all, for him to understand the impact of that choice on her and her behavior… And for them to figure out “What kind of relationship do we wanna have here?”, and for them to also understand that those types of absences in a relationship are extremely stressful for couples. Long-term separation is extremely stressful, even for really strong couples.
So gradually, through therapy, they were able to decide that “We want to prioritize each other’s well-being, and we don’t wanna make choices here that are going to be so threatening to the other person that they’re going to turn into a mess, because “Why should we be together if that’s what we’re about?”
So then John actually was able to completely change his work schedule in such a way that they were able to come to an agreement about how that was gonna look in their lives. He was home now most of the time, with a lot less travel, and suddenly Sandy’s behavior started to change, and I mean radically change. She stopped drinking, she didn’t have that feeling that she was always falling apart, she stopped having angry outbursts, and she suddenly looked like a different person.
This is really an example, because their presenting problem had been Sandy’s resentment problem. That’s an example of what we call gaslighting, where the partner is actually doing something that is fundamentally threatening to their partner, and that actually produces these kinds of symptoms that would be consistent with one of the personality disorders.
This is really the value of couples therapy – we wanna look at what’s going on in the relationship that might actually be making this person behave at their worst, and then deal with that problem, before we go and start diagnosing people.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that example, because it’s really giving people an opportunity to see how, like you’re saying, it could look so — like, you could hop online and look at all the traits or characteristics and be like “Yes, yes, yes”, and then wanna diagnose, and really focus on that as the issue, when in fact relationally there’s some real challenge around how they’re being for each other and how they’re caring for one another.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Exactly, exactly. And I think this problem that we’re talking about, with people jumping to a diagnosis like that without really looking at the relationship dynamics, is a reflection I think of a larger societal fact – our culture as a whole is very focused on the individual, and we’re very good at sort of pulling people out of whatever system they live in, and trying to look at them as though they don’t exist in a larger system. So we’re very focused on autonomy, on the separate self, and self-development.
In fact, Dr. Stan Tatkin, my teacher in couples therapy, said that in the West we worship at the altar of autonomy. [laughs] So we don’t tend to think at how we are impacting each other, and how we affect each other that way. So yeah, we need to look at people within the contexts that they live.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: But with that couple, what if she did have borderline?
Gabrielle Usatynski: Of course, there are times that people have bonafide personality disorders, and that needs to be dealt with in the relationship, so that it doesn’t cause problems. But that’s true of every kind of destructive behavior that people have, whether they have a personality disorder or they don’t.
For instance, with borderline personality disorder – we’ll just take that as an example… Usually a person with borderline personality disorder actually has legitimate concerns about the relationships. Kind of like what we talked about a moment ago, where they’re being either abused, they’re being criticized, stonewalled…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Abandoned…
Gabrielle Usatynski: Abandoned… Right? We always have to look at “Is there actually anything behind what’s causing this person to act out?” and we wanna deal with that first. And once we’ve dealt with that, we can actually look at “Okay, is this person able to take in the good changes that have happened?” And of course, I’m talking about in couples therapy here.
Let’s say they’ve been feeling really criticized by their partner; and it’s true, and we get their partner to actually stop that behavior, because that’s a very destructive behavior in relationships. So when they stop that behavior and they start saying loving things to their borderline partner, we expect that person to be able to take in the love, and to start matching that in kind., to become loving in kind, to match that behavior.
Now, with borderline personality disorder, very often they’ll have a negative reaction to receiving the love. They’re getting love and they react with hate. And that’s understandable, because they came from a family where there was this horrible, hot-cold/love-hate dynamic all the time with the parent. But it’s important that that borderline individual start to practice taking in the love and responding with love, in a way that’s meaningful to their partner.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: The thing that I’m hearing as you’re talking, Gabrielle, is you really meet people with what is and where they’re at, and whatever level or whatever degree… They might be having certain tendencies, or have a disorder, but the real therapeutic work is similar – how are they responding, and then do we need to slow that down and deepen into how they’re receiving, or whatever the therapeutic principle is.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yes. Because in a certain way, from the perspective of couples therapy, we’re not making – at least in the way that I’m trained to practice – we don’t do things differently with people who have personality disorders than we do with people who don’t. We’re still holding the same container for people to create relationships that are based on safety and security, that are based on distress relief, that are based on fostering each other’s well-being, boosting each other’s self-esteem… These types of principles that couples can subscribe to, because we know that that’s what makes relationships work. Nobody gets a pass on doing that, no matter how much of a personality disorder they might have. And that’s why I think the focus really needs to be on “What are we about? What do we stand for? Do we stand for fairness? Do we stand for justice? Do we stand for sensitivity to one another?”
If you go about your relationship that way, people who are not interested in that or not capable of doing that are just gonna fall by the wayside. You’re not going to attract a relationship with somebody — if you are talking about “I want a relationship where we tell each other everything, where we always have each other’s back”, somebody who’s not interested in that is just gonna walk the other way.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. One of the things I love about what Dr. Stan Tatkin talks about in his book Wired For Love is just how in relationship we have the responsibility of how to really learn how to care for our partner, as do they with us. And that sometimes when we’re in relationship, it’s easy from this individual, autonomous mindset to really point the finger, and hence the criticism, or the blame, or even the pathologizing around “Oh my gosh, I think my partner has a personality disorder.” It’s almost like this “Eww…!” type of push away from energy, and so you’re really calling forth, it sounds like, that “Okay, so if my partner has challenges (and I feel like we all have challenges, to some degree or not), how do we work towards caring for each other, caring for our relationship?”, and that that’s where the focus should be.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yes. And at the same time, nobody should stand for being in a relationship where they’re being treated with cruelty, with unfairness, whether it being treated poorly in any way. What’s the point of that, right?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: The boundary is more about what you’re standing for and the type of relationship you want, rather than “You’re bad because you have a disorder.”
Gabrielle Usatynski: Right, right. I think our understanding of personality disorders really has evolved tremendously from where it was when the whole concept first started – as something that is untreatable; these people are not capable of being in relationships, intimate relationships certainly.
We look at this very differently now. People can have a capacity to grow and change in a way that we didn’t know about earlier on… But the thing about that is that if you are in a relationship where you’ve had these conversations, you’ve talked about “What do we want as a couple?”, and you’ve made agreements with each other, and those agreements are being continuously broken by your partner, and your partner has no interest in fixing that, or in taking responsibility for what they’re bringing to that problem, there are times that you have to be willing to let go of a bad relationship.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right.
Gabrielle Usatynski: In other words, I’m not saying that if your partner has a personality disorder you should stay with them, and understand their wounding, and figure out how to work with them, and all of that. Everybody is an adult in relationship, and everyone’s responsible, has to take responsibility for their own behavior… And sometimes people are not willing or able to do that. So we shouldn’t remain in relationship at any cost. They need to be based on – at least in my opinion – principles of fairness and sensitivity, total collaboration, total cooperation.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. Absolutely. And what I’m hearing is if someone’s really struggling and there’s conflict, that it could be helpful to get support from someone like yourself, or people that are doing this therapeutic couples work, that can assist in maybe looking at the system and trying to help with some interventions around where they’re directing their energy, so that they can see “Is there room here?” But in fact, if there’s not, then there’s some look at — the example that I have in my mind, Gabrielle, is I had a couple that I was working with; they’d been together for 20+ years, kids were grown… She was convinced, had literally like 20 pages of how he was a narcissist. And we worked on their dynamic, and she really also had come from a family where her needs didn’t matter, and she had a really hard time asking for what she wanted, or feeling like it was okay… So when she was able to do that, he was very responsive, and he was very able to support her.
It was so beautiful to see what evolved for them, and how it really shifted their dynamic. If he does have, in fact, some narcissistic tendencies, which I’m sure he does, they were still able to cultivate more of that way of being there for each other. But in fact, if she was feeling like he doesn’t — so the listener’s question I had shared with you, she was asking about covert narcissism, and feeling like she’s trying to set boundaries and he’s not responding… So what would you say to that?
I guess for me, the way I’m seeing that right now is that is she in fact able to see — like, when we’re in the forest, we can’t always see the trees; so if you get a third-party that’s skilled, to help look at that… But if she keeps feeling like her needs don’t matter and he’s not willing to respect her boundaries, and she keeps feeling really pained by that…
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yes, then it’s time to throw down the gauntlet. [laughs] In other words, relationships don’t work when there is continued insensitivity, lack of accountability, dishonesty, lack of repair. All of that stuff takes an enormous toll on both people, actually. But it takes a huge toll not just on your mind and your heart, but also on your immune system. Because we know that toxic relationships take an enormous toll on the physical body, and that’s a scientific fact.
What happens very often – especially with narcissism – is that you have a partner who is not willing to take any responsibility for their behavior… And again, that goes back to that early wound, where they didn’t get what they needed early on, but it’s like they’re making their partner pay for that now.
So that person is not able — they’re continuing to act out. They may have had many affairs, they may have been embezzling money, there may have been anti-social behavior going on… And they’re continuing to lie, they’re continuing to threaten, and they’re not willing to take any responsibility for what they’re doing. The problem in that situation very often – and this is actually the second mistake that I was gonna talk about, that I mentioned earlier in the conversation…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Perfect, perfect…
Gabrielle Usatynski: …is that very often the partner of that person, that narcissist, is not willing to deal with reality. They are putting on the rose-colored glasses and they’re not willing to say “If this doesn’t change, I’m getting out”, and be willing to act. In other words, it’s very common with partners of narcissists, when they feel like they’re being abused and hurt, they will threaten to leave, but they don’t actually do it. And that is a big problem in relationship, because it’s a way that that person is, you could say, throwing their weight around, trying to get their partner to change through fear and threat… And that never works. They’re all talk, they don’t mean it.
So it is perfectly reasonable and important and right and good for a person to say “I’ve had enough”, but they have to be willing to throw down the gauntlet. It’s not fair to just only threaten to do it and not follow through.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right, right. I couldn’t agree more. And from what you’re describing here, it almost sounds like if you’re the person that’s feeling injured, and has been trying to bring attention to the pain and nothing’s shifting – this particular behavior, whether or not it’s lying, cheating, whatever it is, “I can’t feel healthy in this. I can’t continue.” So it’s more about the behavior, rather than the personality disorder.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Exactly. Because what is a personality disorder? Ultimately, it’s a construct; it’s not like you can cut-open someone’s brain and say “Oh, there’s the personality disorder.” It’s not like that. It’s an abstract construct that is the best way we have to describe certain behaviors, really. That’s one way of looking at it. So what we’re really concerned about is the behavior, and “Can I live with the behavior?” That’s much more the issue than “Can I put the label on this person?”, you know I mean?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I do. And you have one last question here that I would love to give space for, if we have time. Do you have time?
Gabrielle Usatynski: Absolutely.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay, perfect. Can people have a good relationship when one person has a personality disorder?
Gabrielle Usatynski: Yes, they can. [laughs] Yeah. Fundamentally, at the root of all personality disorders, there is a fundamental self-centeredness. Not just with narcissism, but with borderline personality disorder and all of the other ones, too. And what really allows people to move beyond that is when they understand that they can choose to commit themselves to something greater than themselves. And that is the relationship. That is a relationship based on devotion to a partner, and “I choose to do that because I get the same thing back. And at a certain point I understand that I might not be able to have everything I want for myself all the time, but what I get back in return when I’m willing to make choices that prioritize the relationship – what I get back in return for that is something far greater than what I would get if I were just taking care of my own needs.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. Yeah, I’m feeling the emotion of just how powerful a healthy, secure relationship is, and how healing it is.
Gabrielle Usatynski: That’s right. And that is whether you have a personality disorder or you don’t, there’s a reason to be together, which is we understand that we all come to relationship with our unique vulnerabilities… And a part of our job as a couple is to care for those vulnerabilities. Not at the expense of ourself. That’s not the same thing as saying “I’ll do anything for you, even if you continue to hurt me.” That’s not at all what I’m saying. But we have to be able to find a way to balance caring for ourselves with also caring for our partner, at the same time.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So wonderful… Thank you for your insight and your understanding, and rich knowledge and expertise in this area. For people that are interested in what you’re doing, or want to connect with you, particularly if they’re in the Denver, Colorado area, how can people find you and reach you?
Gabrielle Usatynski: Sure. My website is PowerCoupleCounseling.com. You can contact me that way. You can also go to my website where I have a free eBook that you can download on how to stop stressful fights with your partner. And I have a private practice in the Boulder-Denver area, where I see only couples. So if you are in this area, I would be happy to see you.
I also provide education and consultation nationwide for other therapists on personality disorders and couples therapy, and lots of other challenging clinical issues. So those are some ways that you can contact me.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Perfect. Again, thank you so much, Gabrielle.
Gabrielle Usatynski: Jessica, it’s been a pleasure, really. Thank you.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s episode. Again, I believe that Gabrielle is offering such a rich, dynamic, comprehensive and very concise understanding of what to consider if we think our partner might have a personality disorder.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit my website, DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and you can find today’s episode (#180) there.
Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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