The Kebilsphere

Well, here is how I see it. What we call Personality is the sum total of many formative processes. These have typically been described as being an intrinsic part of childhood. Once personality is formed in childhood, moulded in adolescence, and firmed up and cemented in early adulthood, it is essentially a completed entity, not subject to significant change. Of course, how a person behaves and reacts to the world can change later in life, but behaviour is not personality, although it is deeply influenced by it.

Having said this, I had a thought regarding my `Personality Disorder`, and why I have developed one while having a mostly great childhood. It is my contention that my formative years were mostly well balanced and nurturing, but that some things may have happened that did alter my development for the worse. My personality never really crystallized and remained somewhat malleable, in some ways I may not have finished evolving as a person.

I came out of childhood as a highly functional and well put together person, albeit with some subtle differences from `normal`. I would have stayed mostly healthy, with a superimposed depressive disorder, but no personality disorder. It was after I became deeply involved with a particular individual in my life that changes began. I think it was the cumulative and synergistic effects of my mood disorder and the extremes of this relationship that began to re-form what was an already highly malleable personality. In some ways it was like a second childhood, only this time with a parent figure that was extreme in all characteristics, highly addictive, extremely unstable, explosively unpredictable, bitter and resentful. Add to this my own substance abuse and after five years I was very adversely affected.

I think that this explains to a very large part how I could have developed a personality disorder in my late twenties, early thirties. What should have been formed in early adulthood only began to solidify after I was married, and only really crystallized by my thirtieth birthday.

So, hopefully, I can somehow re-forge who I am and how I related to the world and everybody in it. Obviously I don’t expect that to happen overnight, nor for it to develop spontaneously or easily. And I don’t even know if it possible to do this sort of thing intentionally, or whether exposure to an extreme amount of stress or pressure may be needed to disrupt the crystallization and return me to a molten state.