Is Cluster B the same as narcissist/other personality disorders/DSM?

Granted its Wiki but I have seen cluster B mentioned before so I googled it. Is it its own thing? Or is it a larger category with the other personality disorders as sub-categories? Can anyone help me understand the clusters?

Quote:

Cluster B personality disorders From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Personality disorders Cluster A (odd) Paranoid Schizoid Schizotypal Cluster B (dramatic) Antisocial Borderline Histrionic Narcissistic Cluster C (anxious) Avoidant Dependent Obsessive–compulsive Not specified Depressive Haltlose Passive–aggressive Sadistic Self-defeating Psychopathic vte Cluster B personality disorders are a categorization of personality disorders as defined in the DSM-IV and DSM-5.[1] Cluster B personality disorders are characterized by dramatic, overly emotional or unpredictable thinking or behavior and interactions with others. They include antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.[2] The British National Health Service has described those with this disorder as someone who, "struggles to relate to others. As a result, they show patterns of behaviour most would regard as dramatic, erratic and threatening or disturbing."[3] There are four recognized Cluster B personality disorders:[2] Antisocial personality disorder (DSM-IV code 301.7): a pervasive disregard for the law and the rights of others. Borderline personality disorder (DSM-IV code 301.83): extreme "black and white" thinking, chronic feelings of emptiness, instability in relationships, self-image, identity and behavior disturbances often leading to self-harm and impulsivity. Histrionic personality disorder (DSM-IV code 301.50): pervasive attention-seeking behavior including inappropriately seductive behavior and shallow or exaggerated emotions. Narcissistic personality disorder (DSM-IV code 301.81): a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.

clusters are just things that share the same problems. example in mental disorders sometimes some mental disorders share the same problems symptoms.

personality disorders have symptoms / problems in common so closely together that they are grouped together. which is why its called a "cluster"

Cluster B (the grouping you are asking about) personality disorders all share the symptoms of being very drama filled / dramatic/ and unpredictable.... example instead of just saying something like I lost my job today, guess I need to hit the classified section of the newspaper, a person with the cluster B disorders would exaggerate and get very dramatic, emotional and suicidal. ..I lost the best job of my life because of some..... who did this that and the other thing what a piece of ... I might as well be .... I will never be able to find another job ..... my life is over.... on and on and on over exaggerating and being extremely dramatic/ emotional.

my point all cluster B disorders share these same symptoms/ problems so they are grouped together.

cluster A is the personality disorders that all share the problem of being paranoid, and cluster C is the personality disorders that all share the problem of fears/ phobias, strange behaviors and avoiding things.

This may not be an answer to your Q, more of just a comment. I don't think BPD should be clustered with the others in B. Also I don't like the language used to describe these personalities as "dramatic." It seems insensitive an not compassionate.

Cluster b personality disorders are similar in a sense of people having difficulty regulating emotions and controlling impulses, unstable and inconsistent view of themselves (not knowing or understanding themselves and often inability to commit to or sustain consistent activity like keeping a job or attending school or making every day decisions), difficulty with interpersonal relationships (instead of stating they had a basic argument they might insist they were assaulted, attacked, raged at etc. even if it’s not what happened)

Now they are not all the same, but they are very similar and disorders often overlap. Of course people with cluster b personalities didn’t choose it, and treatment isn’t easy. Some people say there really is no treatment but I believe people could get better.

Cluster B personality disorders are not easy to diagnose

I also don’t think “BPD” is similar to the others in Cluster B...

Often people with a diagnosed personality disorder will also check off traits of other personality disorders and may even have more than one diagnosable PD.

Most often this will happen for PDs in the same cluster rather than PDs from different clusters. This mean for instance that people with NPD might also have symptoms of BPD or ASPD more so than symptoms of a PD from clusters A or C.

That's interesting. I think it does seem similar, having interacted with people who have BPD and other cluster B disorders and seeing the similarities in behavior and symptoms. People I know with cluster B disorders all have trouble with mood instability (in different ways), emotional disturbances and trouble regulating their emotional state.

I'm curious to know why it seems dissimilar to you? (Not arguing, Fuzzybear, just curious to know your take on it.)

Do psychopaths have trouble or with mood instability? I thought they weren’t emotional?

I'm not an expert so I can't answer that. But I would say that the outlier in Cluster B seems to be ASPD versus BPD, in my opinion. But, you know, just my opinion. Again, not an expert.

Actually, if a clinical psychologist and even sometimes certain psychiatrists don't know the clear red flags for ptsd or a patient presenting suffering from trauma they can misdiagnose that patient with cluster B traits. A trauma ptsd patient can also be misidiagnosed with bipolar when a professional decides hyper vigilant triggers are the same as mania. A "trauma" therapist who genuinely specializes in trauma can tell the difference.

So do people who suffer from ptsd. They definitely struggle with emotions. Often you can tell as often they experience crying when they don't want to cry. It's embarassing so they tend to withdraw from exposure to others and avoid talking about certain things.

My understanding is that psychopathy is not considered to be a personality disorder in the DSM 5. A significant fraction of psychopaths will be diagnosed with ASPD but, although the overlap is high you can have a psychopath who is not ASPD and someone with ASPD who is not a psychopath.

My understanding is also that psychopathy is associated with pronounced alterations in brain development so it can be considered a neurological impairment that can be measured objectively.

My therapist told me that women notoriously get misdiagnosed.

What is your point? We are talking about classification of cluster b disorders, not misdiagnosis of PTSD.

Just to point out, you had asked Fuzzy about what she had stated as an opinion about BPD (you had a different take), hence where it seems the conversation led to. It (the conversation leading to misdiagnosis of PTSD and cluster B) is all relevant to the conversation IMO. Maybe not where the OP was going with it though lol.

It’s like the menu in a Chinese restaurant. One from column A and one from column B. They clumped certain PDs together that share some traits and refer to them as a cluster. People with one PD must tend to have traits of those other PDs in the cluster or even fully PDs in the cluster. Research must have shown a high statistic of people having these traits in order to have decided there are clusters.

I have spent a lot of time reading about all the diagnoses and find they mirror each other very much to a very confusing degree making it hard to pin down any diagnosis. They blend together! This is not too settling for one as neurotic as me!

After all my reading and soul searching I don’t know and I don’t care. One little anxiety pill stopped the crying fits! I’m moving through life just fine.

Just to point out then, I never brought up PTSD and neither did Fuzzy. It was simply a question of whether bpd belonged as part of cluster B disorders.
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That makes sense.

Ugh, sorry seesaw I was going to write more in that post but I got interupted and had to step away from my computer.

Ugh, just got interupted now so I can't explain grrrr.

I am sorry I did not have time to elaborate, tried to again and got interupted again. The reason I shared what my therapist told me was that we were discussing cluster B traits and what someone I have been badly affected by may have. The conversation turned into having to be careful about looking up different diagnoses in that it can get confusing for anyone in that they can see certain characteristics that may seem like the person or even themselves for that matter may have one of these traits when that is simply not the case. Then my therapist explained to me that it's not unususal for people to experience another person with ptsd and begin to think that person has one of these disorders when that is simply not the case. He did explain to me that women especially that suffer from PTSD can be misdiagnosed and that when someone actually specializes in working with trauma and ptsd patients he can tell the difference. He said ptsd is a "disorder" and a person struggling with it can show certain reactions that can appear to look like certain "personality" disorders. He talked about where the term "histerical" came from in that it's rooted in "histerectomy" which is the removal of the area of the female that drives her hormones and we all know that women go through different hormonal levels where some women get bad pms symptoms and can get overly emotionally sensitive. He talked about how men especially used "she is too histerical, she is just crazy, she is a loon", in that men found female emotional challenges often what are normal to women very frustrating to understand.

Just interesting how he explained it all to me and how certain labels put on women came from.

I had kind of an inverse experience to the one described by Open Eyes. It was with someone who pretended to have been a member of special forces in vietnam, when he was verifiably across the world in Canada taking photographs for newspapers that were archived locally with his name and date. He said he was on the third to last helicopter out of Saigon, and made up numerous other stories. He also would have flashbacks to terrible scenes of death in vietnam, experiences he had never had. He lied about big and small things but what was most profound was his invented life history. He claimed to be suffering and would pay a therapist lots of money to treat him for conflict related ptsd.

I have never met anyone like him and hope I never do again.

Some people do create things about themselves that are not based on actual facts at all. There have been politicians that have been caught saying they experienced things they simply never experienced. There have even been news reporters that became rather well known that said they experienced things that they never experienced too. These types of behaviors can be engaged by individuals who have these cluster B traits that end up fitting into a personality "disorder".

I have a friend that experienced an individual that engaged in telling her so many lies about himself. He presented himself as a special kind of spy and that he had to move around and be very careful and had to maintain this secrecy. At the same time he was romancing her and he slowly pulled her into thinking he was in love with her and how they would have this very special life together. Unfortunately, when it came to him actually "doing" what he had been promising he ended up deserting her and leaving her totally broken and confused. One would think she made it all up too, however, I knew she was telling the truth because I had actually met this individual myself.

This experience left her in such deep confusion and disbelief that I literally had to listen to her go over all the things she experienced with him, she repeated things and I never told her she was repeating these same things either. I somehow knew she needed to repeat these things in order to finally come to a point where she saw the entire picture of what had really happened to her that left her in such a confused state of disbelief. A victim can actually be accused of being crazy, yet, in reality it was not the victim at all but instead that person was exposed to someone that was really good at gaslighting them and acting a fake persona.

That is pretty close to what happened to me. It precipitated another mental health crisis for me.

I will never tolerate gaslighting again. I didn't know what it was before I got into the relationship. Some people are truly toxic. My ex was also an ex spy... and killed people with his bare hands, and pushed an ex-Nazi out of an airplane when he captured him with an Israeli spy team in South America.

I took me a few years to fully recover from the trauma of that relationship.

I wanted to add that I knew for a long time before the end of our relationship that he was lying to me and inventing his personal history, faking flashbacks and all the rest. I didn't realize how harmful it would end up being to me to get involved in trying to 'manage' him or 'help' him or all the excuses I came up for staying in the relationship, long after I knew better. On his final discard I ended up in a highly codependent frame reference and was devastated. I had to recognize that I could have avoided him altogether if I had paid attention to warning signs on our first date. We went to a Vietnamese restaurant and he broke down in tears recounting some special mission he had been on.

I have seen people do and say some crazy things for attention. I saw a woman literally shave her head and pretend she had cancer for attention, some people are just plain nuts.