What Are Personality Disorders? 10 PD Types + Key Insights

Labels like narcissist and borderline get thrown around in social media and everyday conversations often. But what do these and other personality disorders really mean?

In this post, I offer a grounded overview of personality disorders: what they are, how they’re classified, how they differ from mental illnesses, and how they’re diagnosed using both the DSM and ICD systems. I'll also explain which which disorders fit into Cluster B and what that means.

You’ll learn how these patterns can affect relationships, why they’re so difficult to treat, and what to consider if you're working to understand your own behaviors or are dealing with someone who shows signs of a personality disorder.

What's in This Quick Guide to Personality Disorders

(Disclaimer: This post is not intended to be diagnostic. It is always advisable to seek the help of personal mental health professionals to examine specific situations.)

What is Personality? Definition and Meaning

Let's start by thinking about what personality is. 

Personality is the core of who you are. It shapes what you think, feel, say, and do.

Created by both nature (genetics) and nurture (what happens to you), personality is the unique mix of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that influence how you see the world and respond to it.

The American Psychological Association (APA) definition of personality describes it as including major: 

• Traits 
• Interests
• Drives
• Values
• Self-concept
• Abilities
• Emotional patterns

While personality can evolve through growth and life experiences, many aspects of it tend to remain consistent over time.

What are Personality Disorders?

Personality disorders (PDs) are long-term patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that cause problems in relationships, work, and daily life. These patterns are usually rigid and persistent, showing up across many situations and lasting over time.

People with personality disorders may not see anything wrong with how they behave, even though their behavior is often distressing to others and creates problems in their life.

Signs and symptoms of the various personality disorders are often described by words such as extreme, excessive, or intense. Many of these negative behaviors and attitudes can be found in people without a personality disorder, but with PDs, they tend to be more exaggerated and persistent.

While you may only be aware of the most common personality disorders, like narcissism, borderline, and sociopathy, there are 10 officially recognized in the diagnostic manual used in North America. 

Common Traits Across Personality Disorders

When you're trying to figure out whether someone has a personality disorder, it's vital to look for attitude and behavior patterns over time. 

While each personality disorder has its own unique traits, many of them share a few core features that set them apart from more typical personality quirks or emotional struggles.

Some of the most common patterns across personality disorders include:

Long-standing and pervasive behavior patterns: These traits show up across time and situations—usually beginning by early adulthood. 

Rigid, inflexible thinking: People with PDs often have difficulty adapting to different situations or viewpoints. They tend to see themselves and the world in fixed, black-and-white terms.

Struggles with relationships: Interpersonal conflict, emotional distance, manipulation, or dependency are common.

Distorted self-image: Many people with PDs have unstable, exaggerated, or deflated views of themselves. The distortion varies depending on the specific disorder, but it tends to be deeply rooted and resistant to change.

Blaming others: Rather than reflecting inward, they often blame others or external situations for their difficulties.

Limited insight: Many people with PDs don’t recognize that their patterns are problematic. 

That said, not every personality disorder presents all of these traits. But understanding these shared characteristics can help clarify what makes a personality disorder different from a bad habit or occasional emotional reactivity.

What’s the Difference Between Personality Disorders and Mental Illness?

Mental illness and personality disorders are two distinctly different categories from a psychology diagnosis perspective.

Mental illnesses affect mood (e.g., depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder) or the mechanics of thought processes (e.g., schizophrenia and paranoia). 

Medication has a good chance of helping with mental illness disorders because physical biochemistry—like the production and use of neurotransmitters—is involved. Therapy also has high success rates. 

Personality disorders (PD) are persistent patterns of personality. They are a very big part of who the person is. Their dysfunctional patterns of thinking, emotional response, and behavior usually begin by late adolescence or early adulthood and tend to remain relatively consistent over time.

People with personality disorders have a skewed view of what is happening around them and their part in it.

Their dysfunctional patterns of thinking, emotional response, and behavior usually begin by late adolescence or early adulthood and tend to remain relatively consistent over time.

Unlike many mental illnesses, personality disorders are generally not treated with medication. Therapy with personality-disordered clients can be particularly difficult and have limited results.

What Makes Treating Personality Disorders Challenging

Therapy can sometimes help manage the impact of personality disorders and improve functioning, but therapy in PD cases is very challenging for several reasons:

1. People with personality disorders often do not see their behaviors as problematic, so they don't seek therapy and resist it if the subject is broached.
2. Their disordered thinking tends to blame people and circumstances outside themselves for their negative attitudes, emotions, and actions. 
3. If they do enter therapy because a partner or someone else insisted, they may be uninvested or dishonest — just checking a box.
4. If they genuinely want to change, it takes a lot of structured therapy, and they have to remain committed for a long time. 

I have experienced working with personality disordered clients and their partners in all of these situations. When it works, it's because the person stays committed, has curiosity about their disorder, and is willing to learn from setbacks. 

Can You Have Both a Personality Disorder and a Mental Illness?

Yes — it’s entirely possible to have both a personality disorder and a mental illness at the same time. In fact, this kind of overlap (called comorbidity) is fairly common.

For example, someone might have borderline personality disorder and also struggle with major depression or anxiety. 

Having both types of diagnoses can complicate treatment, since the personality disorder may interfere with insight, emotional regulation, or a person’s willingness to seek help—while the mental illness adds another layer of distress or impairment.

List of 10 Official Personality Disorders

Here's the list of personality disorders mentioned in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Some of them can be confused with mental illnesses that have similar names. I'll point those out in brackets.

1. Narcissistic
2. Borderline
3. Antisocial (commonly known as sociopathy or psychopathy)
4. Obsessive-Compulsive (different from the mental illness OCD)
5. Histrionic
6. Paranoid (different from paranoia as a symptom of mental illness)
7. Avoidant
8. Schizotypal (different from Schizophrenia) 
9. Dependent
10. Schizoid (different from Schizophrenia) 

Three Clusters of Personality Disorders

Current editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders group personality disorders into three categories—called clusters—based on shared traits.

Each cluster includes different disorders that have certain characteristics in common, but also have their own defining traits.

Cluster A: Odd/Eccentric

• Paranoid Personality Disorder
• Schizoid Personality Disorder
• Schizotypal Personality Disorder

Cluster B: Dramatic/Emotional/Erratic

• Antisocial Personality Disorder
• Borderline Personality Disorder
• Histrionic Personality Disorder
• Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Cluster C: Anxious/Fearful

• Avoidant Personality Disorder
• Dependent Personality Disorder
• Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (not the same as OCD)

Key Characteristics of the 10 Personality Disorders (By Cluster)

Now that you know how the 10 official personality disorders are grouped into three clusters, let’s take a closer look at each disorder and some of the traits that define them.

Cluster A: Odd or Eccentric

This cluster includes people who tend to appear socially awkward, emotionally distant, or unconventional in behavior or thinking. Others may see them as unusual or hard to connect with.

Paranoid
Distrust of others, suspicion without evidence, hypersensitivity to perceived threats or slights, persistent belief that others are out to harm or deceive them.

Schizoid
Emotional detachment, social withdrawal, little interest in relationships, indifferent to praise or criticism, limited emotional expression.

Schizotypal
Eccentric behavior, odd beliefs or magical thinking, social anxiety, suspiciousness, vague or unusual speech, discomfort with close relationships.

Cluster B: Dramatic, Emotional, or Erratic

This group is known for intense emotions, impulsivity, and unstable relationships. People in this cluster often struggle with self-regulation and may create turmoil in their personal or professional lives.

Antisocial
Disregard for others’ rights, deceitfulness, impulsivity, aggression, lack of remorse, history of rule-breaking or criminal behavior.

Borderline
Emotional instability, intense fear of abandonment, unstable self-image, impulsive behavior, self-harm or suicidal gestures, turbulent relationships.

Histrionic
Attention-seeking, dramatic or theatrical behavior, shallow emotions, strong need for approval, suggestibility, inappropriate seductiveness.

Narcissistic
Inflated sense of self-importance, need for admiration, lack of empathy, entitlement, exaggeration of achievements, sensitivity to criticism.

Cluster C: Anxious or Fearful

This cluster includes people who are overly worried about criticism, rejection, or losing control. Their behaviors are often driven by fear or insecurity.

Avoidant
Social inhibition, fear of rejection or criticism, low self-esteem, avoidance of new activities, strong desire for connection but fear of exposure.

Dependent
Excessive need to be cared for, submissiveness, difficulty making decisions independently, fear of separation, difficulty expressing disagreement.

Obsessive-Compulsive
Preoccupation with order, perfectionism, control, inflexibility, over-focus on rules and details, reluctance to delegate, rigidity in thinking.

Different Ways of Diagnosing Personality Disorders Around the World

I've been referring to the way personality disorders are described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM is the go-to manual for mental health professionals in the U.S. and Canada.

Much of the rest of the world uses the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), published by the World Health Organization. 

These two have different approaches to diagnosing personality disorders.

DSM: The U.S. and Canada’s Diagnostic Model 

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), has gone through many revisions since it first appeared in 1952.

We are now on the 5th edition, published in 2013. Actually, to be more precise, the most recent is the 2022 "text revised," DSM-5-TR, which kept the same structure and disorders but updated language, examples, and research references.

The list of 10 personality disorders provided above is the same in both versions of the DSM-5: the original (2013) and the updated DSM-5-TR (2022). 

A significant challenge with the various personality disorders is that there is a lot of overlap. 

While the DSM continues to use the long-standing 10 PD categories, there are ongoing discussions and research into more modern ways to understand and diagnose these conditions.

One newer approach is called the Alternative DSM-5 Model for Personality Disorders, which appears in a special research section (Section III) of the DSM-5 and DSM-5-TR. This model focuses less on fixed categories and more on a trait-based system. It looks at levels of dysfunction and identifies problematic personality traits (like emotional lability, attention-seeking, or hostility) regardless of which “disorder” they fall under.

ICD: The International Model

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) has moved away from listing specific personality disorder types.

Instead, it identifies Personality Disorder based on severity (mild, moderate, or severe) and then highlights prominent traits (e.g., borderline pattern, narcissistic features).

These new models aim to reduce overlap between diagnoses. 

Personality Disorders in Relationships

People with personality disorders often struggle in close relationships — romantic, family, friendships, and work.

Their intense emotional responses, difficulty seeing others’ perspectives, and rigid ways of thinking can lead to repeated conflict, miscommunication, and hurt.

Some may idealize their partner one day and devalue them the next. Others may crave constant attention, control the conversation, blame others for every issue, or struggle with basic cooperation and empathy. In some cases, this behavior can escalate into emotional, verbal, or even physical abuse.

Of course, not every challenging partner has a personality disorder. But when PD traits are present, they tend to create patterns that wear down the relationship over time. Understanding these patterns can help you decide what’s healthy, what can improve, and what may be beyond your control.

Workbook for Personal Growth: Uplevel Life

If you recognize yourself in some of the patterns associated with personality disorders—and you're curious, motivated, or tired of the pain they’ve caused—change is possible. It’s not easy, and it doesn’t happen overnight. But with the right tools, you can build better ways of thinking, relating, and coping.

I created Building Skills to Uplevel Life: Silver Lining Emotional Intelligence Workbook to help people develop emotional awareness, better communication, and resilience. 

It walks you through step-by-step strategies and worksheets that can help improve emotion regulation and strengthen relationships—whether or not you’ve been officially diagnosed with a personality disorder.

The workbook can be used alongside one-on-one or group therapy, or get you started on skill-building if therapy isn't an option for you. 

(Disclaimer: I'm not promising any specific results from the use of my self-help resources, including UpLevel Life. Getting advice from personal professionals is always advised.)

Book for Men Dealing with Personality-Disordered Partners

If you're a man in a relationship with someone who shows signs of a personality disorder, you're not alone, even though it may feel that way.

When a female partner is manipulative, controlling, or volatile, it can be especially hard to recognize and talk about. Stereotypes and stigma often silence men who are struggling in these dysfunctional relationships. 

I wrote Abuse of Men by Women: It Happens, It Hurts, and It's Time to Get Real About It to shed light on the reality that women can, and sometimes do, abuse their partners using any of the 7 forms of abuse—emotional, verbal, financial, spiritual, physical, sexual, or legal.

The book provides support and tools for men who are living with or recovering from being the target of intimate partner abuse from their girlfriend, wife, or ex. It can also help abusive women recognize and challenge their destructive behaviors. 

Learn More About Specific Personality Disorders

If you're interested in learning more about individual disorders, you may find these posts helpful:

• Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD): Signs, Traits, and Relationship Impact
• Narcissistic Personality Disorder: What It Is and How It Harms Relationships
• Borderline Personality Disorder: Emotional Intensity and Instability
• How to Spot a Sociopathic Liar: Traits, Tactics & Red Flags
  

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