Page 6 - Personality disorders and insecure attachment among adolescents
P. 6

Chapter 1: Introduction Looking back on your adolescence, what do you remember? Do you remember this phase in life of transition from childhood to adulthood as one of the happiest in life? Do you remember the excitement of getting older, discovering new things and the sense of possibilities? Do you remember getting along with family and friends and having your first romantic relationship? Do you remember successfully completing an academic degree? Do you remember leaving home and living on your own for the first time? Most people remember their adolescence as a happy phase in life with some temporary mild to moderate problems. When people with a severe personality disorder in adolescence look back on this lifetime, they remember above all severe mental health problems: depression, low self esteem, non-suicidal self injury, suicidal thoughts and actions, interpersonal problems with family, friends, school, work and sometimes criminal justice. Marie of now 22 years old, diagnosed with a personality disorder in adolescence, remembers the following about that time in life: “I feel like I don’t remember much about the time before the treatment. I was 16 years old and every day felt like any other day where I just could not win. I am an avoider, so I did not fight any battles, I only kept losing the opportunity to face myself. I felt like an airport, a train station, in a body. I cannot escape myself, but others were always leaving. I wasn’t suffering from depression, but my personality got stuck up in itself too much. I knew some trauma’s happened to me but that was not the problem, nor the cause. It only made things worse that otherwise would have befallen me. I needed to learn ways to stand up and battle myself and make sure I could feel safe enough to try and win.” And Emma of now 24 years old remembers: “When I approached my 18th birthday I was certain that sooner or later I was going to die because of an overdose, violence or an alcohol or drugs related accident. But I didn`t really care about that. I was this kid who always had a lot of problems, with a family with a lot of problems. I lived in another dimension than the rest of the world. My dimension was troubled and confused like a tangled ball of wool. The inside me was not there, only thinking, not feeling anything. Where my former classmates graduated and where going to university I was responding to ‘my need’ for money to buy alcohol and drugs. I was there in my own little dimension on an bench in a park waiting for the time to pass. And I didn`t care, because that was all there was”. In adolescence, Marie and Emma came in touch with healthcare because of their severe psychiatric problems. Both young women were diagnosed with a personality disorder and insecure attachment, and performed non-suicidal self-injury; problems between which seems great coherence. 2 


































































































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