Histrionic Personality Disorder!

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Last night my dad described me as "needy", "attention seeking, and "always needing approval". my dad has also described me as a histrionic many times before.


I typed in these phrases in google and it came up with 'histrionic personality disorder" I will admit that i feel angry sometimes when i don't get attention but when i do get loads of attention i get all shy and kind of push it away but at the same i feel very confident afterwards. when i am not treated well by people my confidence is abnormally low afterwards.


do you think maybe sometimes aspergers is mistaken for histrionic personality disorder? or maybe my symptoms just mimic the condition

I think Aspergers show histrionic symptoms because of 1) the way our amygdalas work or don't work and 2)societal pressures bring out those traits. Specifically, I think we get bullied as children to the point that we become avoidant and hypersensitive to rejection and at the same time very lonely because we want friends. It's a strong societal expectation that people have friends anyway, and we internalize that, making it something that affects our self esteem.

We don't socialize for fear of rejection even though we have the need that everyone else does to socialize. It has a stronger effect on us because we're not used to getting attention or being around other people. These strong emotions dull over time, the more you interact. I haven't been interacting very long myself and I've already noted this to be true.

You shouldn't avoid interactions, but don't put too much stake in them either. They're learning experiences, like everything else. Find someone you can trust to talk over your difficulties with, someone you know won't go out and tell other people and make life more difficult for you. You'll eventually learn that the approval you need is not from other people but from yourself.

I don't have Histrionic Personality but rather I'm DXed with Borderline/Narcisistic mixed personality. My doc said Asperger and the Personality disorder diagnosis often overlap and sometimes people are mistaken to be something they're not.

Also I know a woman whose Dxed with Severe Histrionic Personality disorder. She's a good person but is immature emotionally and very superficial. Not saying she's a bad person, just saying she's rather interesting. She also wears heels every day and dresses like a 16 years old when she's 35 (tho she does look younger).

I really hope for your sake you DON'T have some kind of personality disorder cause the difference between that disorder to asperger is that personality disorder has absolutely NO advantages. It's just something you wish you didn't have and contributes nothing to you but suffering. Asperger is just the way your mind thinks, and it does have advantages like exceptional memory, hyper focus, talents etc etc.

true but personality disorders often get better with age

I don't think there's much overlap between autism and HPD at all. Last year, someone was telling me I had HPD, but looking at it, all I saw were traits that were completely opposite to who I am and how I behave, and people who know me said the same. Not that I reflect all autistic people, but in addition to that, it just seemed somewhat incompatible.

One study I saw that looked for personality disorders in people with autism and ADHD found zero people with autism or autism+ADHD also meeting the criteria for HPD.

Yeah, I don't think there's overlap between those general categories. AS doesn't really lead to attention-seeking.

However, nothing stops an Aspie from having histrionic-like traits, or even the full-blown disorder. If you've studied the personality disorders, you know they are extreme variations of normal-range personality traits. That means that you can have histrionic-like traits without actually having the personality disorder, if they don't cause you or others trouble. So, someone can love getting attention from others without it being a pathological thing. One person I know who is like that is my grandma--whom I love dearly--and who loves inviting people for dinner and being the center of attention because of her wonderful cooking. She likes getting attention, but she doesn't hurt anyone or distress herself getting it; she does it in a healthy way because people really do appreciate her cooking, and she likes to see people enjoy it.

If you like getting attention, that's not necessarily a bad thing. You just have to do it in a way that doesn't hurt anybody. A pretty typical way for a nerdy type of person like many Aspies are is to excel in some way or another, like at school, and having people tell you you're smart. That's not particularly harmful to anybody, just so long as you remember that other people are just as important as you are.

i do sometimes bully my loved ones for attention

Ouch. Yeah, that's a problem. Do you have a psychologist or somebody you can talk to about it, learn how to redirect that into something that isn't going to hurt anybody?

I wouldn't label yourself with anything if I were you--a personality disorder has to be pretty pervasive before you can diagnose it--but bullying others for attention is definitely a problem you should solve. Find out what purpose it fulfills for you, then find another way to fulfill that purpose, one which doesn't hurt anyone.

This probably doesn't mean anything but I did tests on one site that tested for various personality disorders and histronic was one of the ones I scored the lowest in. I did score really high for schizoid.

Mmh, that's normal for Aspies... Schizoid is basically the extreme form of introversion, and Aspies are so likely to be introverted. I score highest on Schizoid too. (Histrionic and Paranoid are my lowest, way below normal. I prefer to stay behind the scenes, and I trust people way too much.)

I took a test like that as well, scored highest for schizoid as well. I forget what the others were.

If you seriously are considering that you may have Histrionic Personality Disorder, you'd better hurry up and get an official diagnosis. Yet another disorder the DSM-V is taking away...

Why don't you guys look at the news, for Domestic Violance increase & what just went on in London Tottenham Court Road. Addiction is going through the roof as well.

source? this is new to me so I'd like more information about it.

I suspect that personality types that used to get diagnosed as Histrionic now get diagnosed as Borderline. It covers a lot of the same traits.

http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/P ... px?rid=18#