In this video we are going to be talking about personality disorders through the lens of spiritual alignment in a spiritually aligned approach. We do not pathologize a client, we see them in their wholeness, and we emphasize process over pathology. And really, we’re working to increase awareness. And so, because of that, students often ask me about my approach to working with somebody with a personality, disorder, and also my viewpoints on personality disorders. Given the fact that the leaning of the work is to not pathologize and to really honor the wholeness of one’s being. And so we’re going to be diving into that more in this video. But before we do, I want to let you know that I wrote a book for you, Align: Living and Loving from the True Self, is a comprehensive map of how to come back home to the truth of who you are, and how to honor this deeply sacred place within yourself, as you connect with the people in your life, and a lion is available on Amazon and Barnes and noble Com. I also created these self-guided alignment cards for you. There are 48 cards in a deck, and each card has a wisdom teaching and a sentence done to support you and living and loving from your true self. And these cards are only available on my website. The spiritually line.com. They’re really wonderful. For your own contemplative practice. You are a clinician or a coach, or work with clients, and also group therapy or parties or intimate relating. Whoever in your life likes to dive deep and really look at themselves could benefit from those cards.
Before I talk about personality disorders. I want to talk about the human condition because somebody who suffers from a personality disorder really is experiencing a degree of what we all experience as part of the human condition. Internally we each have what is known as an ego, and sometimes I use different words interchangeably to Talk about the ego. But ego literally translates to the word I in Latin. And so our ego is our identity. It’s who we think we are and embedded in our ego are conditioned patterns and ideas that we’ve acquired from this life that we’ve lived and the expression of the ego is the personality. And so personality persona literally translates to the word mask. And so the ego, when we are hyper-identified with it, and we move in the way from the ego, we are engaging with the world from our mask, and this mask is covering the truth of who we are, our true self, our essence, our wholeness.
When we are hyper-identified with our ego, we are asleep to the true self. We believe that reality exists in our mind. We believe that truth exists in our mind. We believe that our perception is truth, and that the narratives that we create are an expression of truth. This is part of the human condition. We are either asleep to the true self, hyper-identified with our ego, or we are awake to the true self, being in contact with our essence, allowing the boundless energy of life itself to move through us, vitality moving through alignment with the source that beats our heart, being really present and connected with ourself and with the world around us, and at any moment we can turn off the light of awareness and start becoming identified with our ego, or we can turn on the light of awareness at will, we can turn on the light of awareness and wake up to the truth of who we are, and mindfulness practices other trans personal practices, when we are very consistent, can really give us the skills and the tools to wake up to the truth of who we are at will. When we recognize that we’re asleep we can come back with ease and with grace or clumsily. It really doesn’t matter, because it’s the human condition.
But when somebody has a personality disorder the ego that they are identified with is more destructive to themselves and their relationships, so the habitual ways of thinking and behaving are more contracted around destructive behaviors. And so for a personality to be diagnosed, 2 areas of a person’s life need to be affected, and there are 4 ways to choose these 2 elements from, and one is the person, the way the person thinks about themselves or or others is affected. the way they respond emotionally the way that they relate to them to other people and also controlling behavior. So 2 of these 4 areas are greatly affected. When a person has a personality disorder, and we tend to focus on what’s known as cluster b personality disorders which are antisocial borderline histrionic and narcissistic personality disorders where there is a great emotional volatility and a lot of controlling behaviors present in those cluster b personality disorders. So through the lens of spiritual alignment, the personality disorder is really here for us to become more awake to, more aware of. And when we are doing the work of becoming awake and aware. it’s really important to remember that beneath the patterns of the ego of the personality lives emotional dysregulation. So when we are identified with our ego, beneath that there’s emotional dysregulation, nervous system, dysregulation that we need to feel and experience and move through consciously in order to find our way back to the essence of who we are.
When a person has a personality disorder. and they are hyper-identified with their ego and with their personality patternings.They can easily be convinced by their ego not to wake up to the truth of who they are, because they think that they gain control, they gain belonging, they gain whatever it is that they think they need. By following these patterns, the mind can easily convince them to keep following these patterns and as they do this, the personality disorder believes it’s convincing the person to believe that if other people changed we would be okay. So we need to control them. Express our emotions in this way. And that’s the way we’re going to get what we want, and to keep looking out here rather than looking within and becoming self-responsible, to find our way back to who we truly are.
The hyper identification is really the biggest way that a person keeps themselves from growing and transforming the hyper identification with the ego, and all human beings have this as part of their human condition. The mind thinks that’s what it does. And when we believe those thoughts, we believe that our ego is true, and when we are relating to other people who also believe that our thoughts and our egirl are true, and they collude with those patterns we can get even more lost and entangled and further away from our true self, and the more identified we are with these patterns, the more our life force, energy is distorted.
Because when we are hyper-identified with our ego, we are denying or resisting or ignoring some other aspect of ourselves. We are not vulnerable. We are not emotionally regulated, and we are clinging to these thoughts. And so our life force, energy that moves through the body is more distorted and contracted and twisted, and that that is reflected in our relationships, that distortion and that twistedness is reflected in our relationships. And so when a person is really holding on to the patterns of their personality disorder. Unknowingly, they are causing their relationships in themselves great distress. And so the work here is really about differentiating from the ego, and I believe that this is the work for all of us differentiating from our ego, regulating our nervous system, allowing our vitality, life, force energy to move through us in alignment with the source that beats our heart. Because when we’re looking out here to control the world around us, we aren’t aligned. And remembering the essence of who we are our alignment with source. We’re not our ego and discovering who we are. We are the essence of who we are.
We’re not our ego, but our ego is ours. To love and heal and be with consciously so when we can differentiate from our ego and the thoughts of our ego, we can wrap it with love and awareness, and that love and awareness just to alchemize those thoughts. So when a person has a personality disorder the moment they’re asleep to their true self, those personality patterns come back online. For example, with myself, when I am asleep to my true self, I’m very accommodating. I’m a chameleon, and I don’t really have an opinion, and that’s the way that my personality is conditioned. And it’s one way that I know that I’m asleep to my true self. So when I can see that I can turn on awake awareness at will, and discover what is true inside of myself, and what I need for myself in that moment to come back home to the truth of who I am. When somebody has a personality disorder and they’re asleep to their true self. Those destructive thoughts and behaviors come online quite quickly. And this is why people say that a personality disorder can’t be cured. Essentially, because the personality isn’t going to change. At the age of 10. Our personality is basically developed. And it does. It doesn’t change much throughout our lives. And so it’s very consistent throughout our lives. So it’s not about creating healthier thoughts, healthier behaviors. It’s really about differentiating from the personality regulating the nervous system that is guiding the impulses of the personality and discovering the truth. The vulnerable truth that lives within oneself and becoming a secure base for themselves.
Discovering how to be available for their own experience, so that there’s more clarity of mine, more curiosity, more openness, more heart, more true, embodied power, rather than misuse power, and more discovery about how to be in relationship in a way that is honoring of the true self. And so the other piece of this is that when the personality is developing the patterns that become the habitual ways of being are adaptive at the time that they are developed, so the person has experienced some degree of relational trauma neglect, and a modeling of the caregivers of a similar personality. Trait as well as we. Some in some capacity, come in with our personality. So all of these things put together, create this sort of distorted way of being with oneself and the world around us. And the last thing that I will say about personality disorders, is that the way the ego convinces a person to start focusing on controlling behaviors or emotional volatility, or gas lighting, or something like that, or lacking empathy.
The way that the mind convinces a person to do that is the very thread that needs to be followed, to come back home to oneself. So if if the mind is, wants to. Let’s just say gaslight and create a sense of reality for somebody else. It’s also important for that person who as likely has narcissistic personality disorders to see how they are gaslighting themselves, how they’re not really being clear with reality internally, because that’s just getting projected out. And so once they can see the way they are doing that to themselves. They can regulate the nervous system because that confusion is part of a trauma response that lives within them from earlier in their life that they have unresolved business with and they can regulate their nervous system and come back to a healthy, aware, regulated state, where they are present where they are open. And again, the moment the ego comes online, it will convince them of these distorted thoughts of the personality. And so the work is rigorous. This isn’t me. It’s part of my human I get to heal in love. “This is me. This is who I really am,” and differentiating, so that the thinking that occurs really comes from the true self.
Through the lens of spiritual alignment, we honor a person’s whole mass. We aren’t pathologizing that personality. We see that this is part of the human condition. It was adaptive when it arose, and it is keeping them contracted and keeping them from iving an open-hearted life, where they really experience the deep intimacy that they’re truly longing for and we support them in moving through everything as they come back home to themselves. Every layer that arises on the way back to deeper contact is welcome. It’s valid. We bring loving awareness to it, and we continue to move that old energy so that the new vitality can really occupy our whole energy body.
So those are some thoughts on personality disorders through the lens of spiritual alignment. If you would like to know more about facilitating alignment or working from a spiritually aligned perspective, please check out the spiritually line.com backslash trainings with so many trainings there to support you in empowering your clients and empower you to deepen into alignment as you facilitate alignment of your clients. If you aren’t a therapist or a coach, and you’re wanting to learn more. There’s also many offerings for you on my website. The spiritually line.com backslash offerings. There’s living your alignment and spiritually aligned relationships and a free meditation course also. So thank you so much for listening, and I wish you so much liberation and awareness, and resilience and beauty, as you continue to live in love from your true self.
