Traveling to office, an auto driver hits your car, your dearly beloved car is damaged, you feel something churning inside you, ready to burst out; what happens next needs no mention.
You love her to bits; she walks towards you, looks at you with those beautiful eyes, and says, "its over! Its never gonna work out between us", you are left alone by yourself and the thought process tumbles down to a restart of unhappy thoughts and threats.
You fall down, he sees you, comes rushing to help you, buys a bandage for the wound and then helps you walk to where you can sit so that he can get you a glass of water, you watch him walk towards the water cooler, something lightens your heart, you feel warm, and his presence starts making you feel nice about yourself.
Anger, depression, love are just some of the emotions that humans feel without controlling them. Other than feelings there are certain characteristics in us that we always fall prey to, but somehow we control ourselves and fit into the societal norms in one way or the other. In normal circumstances, most people can handle these emotions. But not so is the case with the people who suffer with behavioral disorders. Things are more magnified and unmanageable for them.
OCPD
Take the case of a person suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. Suppose a person named X has OCPD then he will be very disturbed and even angry if you put his red mug before the black one and he keeps it the other way round. Just like you cannot help being angry with the auto driver who scratched your new car, X cannot control his anxiety when you misplace his things.
Reason behind this, you could say is that, X is an extreme case of perfectionism, orderliness and has the need to control his environment. This does not mean that anyone who likes to have things a certain way and want things clean is an OCPD patient. We are talking of extreme cases here. The intensity to which orderliness matters and otherwise affects the individual must be really high to be said that he is suffering from OCPD.
It is usually difficult for X to maintain relationships because of his inability to understand and accept others who might not be like him. The demands from spouse, children or friends are very high and rigid. They have to have things their own way.
BIPOLAR DISORDER
Y has not gone out with her friends for over two weeks now. She mostly stays in her room, does not feel like meeting people. She feels low and anxious. She feels fatigued and sleeps a lot. She has lost considerable amount of weight in the past month.
But after a few days Y has become overtly active and worked up. Her attention span is very less. She bursts out into sprouts of anger and is so impatient and irrational that something seems to be abnormal about her to others around. Almost every second day she goes to party and has more than one sexual partner.
If we study Bipolar disorder we will know that first Y had a depressive episode and later a manic episode. These are the two episodes that occur for certain time spans to individuals who suffer from this disorder.
Sometimes these episodes can happen simultaneously, known as the mixed episode. The person might start crying during a manic episode or have racing thoughts during depression. These times are extremely frustrating and most dangerous for the patient. During which, they might even try to commit suicide.
Bipolar disorder is divided in three types according to its episodes. The mildest one is Cyclothymia: With hypomanic episode (less intense than manic episode) and mild depressive episodes.
Then Bipolar II is has hypomanic and depressive episodes. Last and most intense of all in Bipolar I where the individual has full-blown manic and depressive episodes.
BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER
Suppose we took the story further of the girl who fell down, mentioned in the beginning. She falls in love with this man and starts idealizing him completely immediately after he has got a glass of water for her. She tells him about her love and he rejects her proposal, as he was only being polite in helping and had no romantic interest. Thereafter she starts hating him. She goes to the extent of slitting her hand in order to express herself.
This girl can be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. In this disorder person live is two extremes of either idealizing a person or demonizing a person.
There are various types of behavioral disorders. One cannot even hope to understand what they go through, we can only understand that they cannot control their behavior the way normal humans can. Which is the reason why they usually find it extremely hard to adjust in the society. And the society also finds it hard to accept them as they hardly ever can stick to the norms of the society, which creates a stigma about them thereby making it even harder for them to live normally; hence victimizing them to a vicious cycle.
Anger, depression, love are just some of the emotions that humans feel without controlling them. Other than feelings there are certain characteristics in us that we always fall prey to, but somehow we control ourselves and fit into the societal norms in one way or the other. In normal circumstances, most people can handle these emotions. But not so is the case with the people who suffer with behavioral disorders. Things are more magnified and unmanageable for them.
Satya Shourie
Writer, Researcher and Web Content manager
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