Hope for Aggressive Personality Disorders

Do you find that the people you see in pastoral counseling lose hope? Like when someone stuck on the Assertion compass point with too much aggression feels there is no way out of reacting with anger or deception? 

Losing hope

You can offer them some good news. The Paranoid Arguer and the Antisocial Rule-breaker personality disorders do offer hope. Here is how you might say it:

There is a curious paradox rooted in your personality pattern. Every personality pattern possesses a particular virtue unique to that pattern. Yet it is only accessible by embracing your whole Self Compass. 

Compass Virtues

Arguer—virtue of courage. 

• A master of debate and rhetoric. Not intimidated by anyone.
• Able to hold up under stress.
• Good at confrontation and challenging unfairness.
• A fearless negotiator.

As a recovering Arguer, you shed the angry chip-on-the shoulder and discover what love is all about. Drawing on the virtue of courage, you find ways of asking for forgiveness and making amends to those you have harmed (Love and Weakness compass points). Instead of ventilating explosively when you feel mad, you ask God and others for help in handling anger. Combining caring with the ability to assert, you stand up for others' rights as well as your own.    

Recovering Arguers turn suspicion of people’s motives into a discerning trust of others. Because your Assertion compass point is balanced by with the Love compass point, you can now upgrade your negotiating skills to include less competitive tension and more concern for overall fairness.

Finding more pleasure in relationships, you laugh or hug more readily. When arguments or emergencies occur, you use the ability to handle stress by holding steady, while working out a solution for the common good.  

Arguer & Rule-breaker Self Compass Growth

Rule-breaker—virtue of creativity.

• Inventive and imaginative.
• Non-conforming.
• Risk-taking.
• Knows how to cut through red tape.
• Gives novel responses to new or difficult situations.
• Is not intimidated by threats or punishment, which only makes for more resourcefulness. 

There comes to be a good feeling about doing the right thing. About researching guidelines for doing tax forms and following them to the letter. About paying for everything you take from a store, even if there’s an opportunity not to. About establishing an inner code of conduct where you care about God’s opinion of your actions. You like the inner security that comes with having integrity.   

When you humbly ask God to be part of your life (Weakness compass point), God can use your creativity to bring innovation and needed changes to the status quo.

Because you are not rule-bound, you can ferret out inventive but workable solutions to problems. A recovering Rule-breaker’s sense of adventure and fearlessness allows you to live on the edge where others would fear to tread.

Creativity takes on an altruistic dimension by incorporating empathy from the Weakness compass point with caring service from the Love compass point. 

As rigid patterns fall away, in their stead comes the harvest of your labor: Compass virtues. Virtues that can now sprout forth as fruits of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22). Why? Because you are surrendering your patterns to Jesus Christ. 

For more, read: 

THE SELF COMPASS: CHARTING YOUR PERSONALITY IN CHRIST 

The Self Compass

Transforming Personality Disorders Into Virtues

Virtues lie hidden within personality patterns. When accessed with God’s help, and freed from manipulative rigidity, these virtues house the power to disarm the very patterns that contain them. To transform personality through the process of becoming Christlike. 

Becoming Christlike

Growing more like Jesus is at first tentative and feels self-conscious. It is a process that requires rhythmic swings between the compass points of Love and Assertion, Weakness and Strength, resulting in fewer manipulative ploys. More core self-disclosure.

When the Dependent Pleaser patterned person asserts rather than placates, for example, the need for always pleasing others lessens. The core self grows less dependent on others, resulting in less anxiety, more authentic caring. There is more congruence between an interior feeling and its external expression.

Out of a pattern’s rigidity, its virtue is born. And now the person takes hold. With God’s guidance, for evermore.

• Out of the Dependent Pleaser pattern comes the virtue of Charity: kindness, untainted by placating neediness.
• From the Histrionic Storyteller: Good Cheer. Confident lightheartedness.
• The Paranoid Arguer: Courage. The ability to speak hard truths diplomatically.
• The Antisocial Rule-breaker: Creativity. Risk-taking that does not harm.
• The Avoidant Worrier: Empathy. Sensitive rapport.
• The Schizoid Loner: Objectivity. Fair-minded exchange of ideas.
• The Narcissistic Boaster: Autonomy. Confident leadership.
• The Compulsive Controller: Discipline. Competence, with room for error.

Compass Virtues

Compass virtues are born, not of striving, but from unforced rhythms of grace. They grow from experiential trust upon the Holy Spirit coupled with relaxed growth stretches into neglected compass points. Virtues flow energetically from the alternating polarities of Love and Assertion, Weakness and Strength, as they did in Christ’s personality. Such movement creates a dynamically balanced Self Compass that provides direction in emerging life situations.

How do these virtues emerge? As personality patterns are redeemed.

 

When persons offer themselves to God in this transformative process, they are aligning with the full power of the Trinity. When they acknowledge their wrongs and begin the journey that will claim their entire Self Compass, they find hope in Jesus Christ: “In (Jesus) we have redemption through his blood,” Paul declares, “the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph 1:7).

For example, Redeemed Pleasers cultivate the virtue of charity as they catch it when compliance verges on placating. They recognize the curls of tension forming in their chest and stop to ask an internal question: Am I appeasing this person when both of us would be better served if I said what I really feel?

The old undercurrent of resentment caused by overly pleasing behavior now replaced by authentic love, the virtue of charity.

For more, read:

COMPASS PSYCHOTHEOLOGY"

Where Psychology & Theology Really Meet