everybody has a personality and part of having a personality is how we um experience the world um our inner experience of the world our emotional experience and also how we behave outwardly so what happens when we say somebody has a personality disorder well what we're saying there is that there's a really um deviation from what we expect them how we expect them to behave or how they are um experiencing the world and that really leads to a great deal of distress and impairment in their functioning now saying somebody has a personality disorder is actually um a controversial thing and actually this whole category has been controversial in many regards but there are lots of details and the research hasn't fully validated ated some of the things I'm saying and further work needs to be done so please bear that in mind one of the things that we know in the current categorization there are 10 personality disorders and they are separated out into three big clusters as we can see the three circles we have cluster a cluster B and cluster C now as a general overview the personality disorders in cluster a are often defined as being odd or eccentric those in B are often labeled as being dramatic emotional or erratic and finally in cluster C these personality disorders are often described as encompassing anxiety and fearfulness features one of the things that you may have noticed is that there's a fair degree of overlap between these clusters and it may very well be that even though there's 10 different types of Personality Disorder an individual may very well have one or more types so let's start with a and in our a category we have three different personality disorders paranoid personality disorder schizoid personality disorder and schizotypal Personality Disorder so let's start off with par personality disorder the key feature that really causes impairment here is this really profound distrust and suspicion of other people and that would be in keeping with the name right paranoid let's look at skitso someone who's skitso is often very emotionally detached detached in their relationships and shows little emotion and finally we get to skiter time people with um schizotypal personality disorder not only um tend to avoid close relationships but they also have this kind of odd or magical thinking that would really differentiate them from the other cluster a personality disorders now there's a whole heap of extra um criteria and descriptions but this is just an overview so as we can see these individuals are somewhat odd and um somewhat detached from the people that are um around around them and they may have unusual beliefs or degrees of distrust or suspiciousness let's move on to Cluster B this is a cluster that has four of the personality disorders including antisocial borderline histrionic and narcissistic as I mentioned these are cluster B often contains dramatic emotional or erratic traits when we think about um people with antisocial personality disorder they tend to be they tend to have little or no regard for others they're often involved in the legal system they may commit crimes and they will often Show No No Remorse they're very inconsiderate of others and that would be consistent with the with the name right anti- social they're not social people they're the opposite of social secondly we have borderline people on the borderline are always at the brink of having some kind of um emotional or relationship issue they have very unstable relationships their emotions can actually be pretty unstable too and they could have a really variable self-image they can be pretty impulsive and this can put them in quite a lot of danger next we have histrionic people with hisonic personality disorder are very attention seeking they might wear really bright clothes they might wear things that are very provocative and they can display a lot of their emotions outwardly and finally in this category we have narcissistic people with narcissistic personality disorder have huge egos they might think that they're the best thing since sliced bread they have a lot of Need for admiration and praise and they don't take it lightly if you try and criticize them one the other ways to describe them as being very grandiose they think very very highly of themselves much more highly than you would think of them and finally let's move on to our last our last cluster the anxious and fearful cluster SE and in this cluster we have three different personality disorders we have avoidant we have dependent and we have obsessive compulsive personality disorder and I'm going to stress that this is a personality disorder here as opposed to obsessive compulsive disorder do not mix them and I'll tell you why in a minute okay let's start with avoidant the main issue with people who are avoidant is that they're very inhibited they feel inadequate and generally they try try to um avoid putting themselves in a situation where they can be criticized secondly we have dependent people who are dependent are as the name says very dependent they could be very submissive they could be very clingy they may really need the help of others all the time now I want to spend a second on this obsessive compulsive personality disorder because these people are um very focused on their life being ordered things being perfect and for them to be in control of everything that's going on and the reason why this is actually different from obsessive compulsive disorder which is which is another condition is that with obsessive compulsive personality disorder the focus is on order and Perfection and then being in control they don't necessarily have to check the locks and the windows repeatedly wash their hands be very concerned about germs or bugs or things like that that some people with actual obsessive compulsive disorder will be so these people the the real Focus here for obsessive compulsive personality disorder is this focus on control orderliness and Perfection and they do it to such an extent that it really annoys other people um and can delay projects like at work and at school because they're hyperfocused on these issues so this is overview of the 10 different personality disorders over these three different ABC um clusters and you can go into far more detail and there is um a large degree of controversy over these because not all the research has fully validated this concept but this is the broad concept that you need to uh be aware of