Personality Disorders
These are formal DSM-5 clinical diagnoses, not descriptive archetypes, not colloquial terms. Only a licensed mental health professional can diagnose a personality disorder, after a comprehensive evaluation. Nothing here is a checklist for labeling a coworker, a boss, a family member, or anyone else. What follows is for recognizing a pattern in behavior you are experiencing, and for understanding it with more precision and more compassion, including compassion for the fact that many of these conditions cause the person living with them real, private suffering. You cannot diagnose someone else. You can still protect yourself.
Cluster B is the DSM-5 grouping for personality disorders marked by dramatic, overly emotional, or unpredictable thinking and behavior. It contains four formal diagnoses: Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. These are real, clinically defined conditions, not personality "types," insults, or labels to hang on a difficult coworker. Each entry below exists so a reader can recognize a pattern of behavior they are experiencing, understand what the clinical literature actually says about it (which is often more nuanced and more compassionate than pop-psychology usage), and build practical self-protection, never to diagnose the person causing them pain.
The two entries below are different from the ten above: neither is a current DSM-5 diagnosis. Both were proposed by psychiatrists who observed a real, recurring pattern in patients and colleagues, and both were ultimately left out of the DSM's main diagnostic list for reasons that are worth understanding rather than glossing over. They are included here because the underlying patterns are real, clinically described, and directly relevant to workplace harm, not because a formal diagnosis exists today.
12 entries in this category.
Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD)
A lifelong armor of distrust, reading threat and betrayal into ordinary words and glances.
Read the entry →
Schizoid Personality Disorder (SPD)
Contentment in solitude so complete that closeness itself feels unnecessary, even unwelcome.
Read the entry →
Schizotypal Personality Disorder (STPD)
Odd beliefs, eccentric habits, and a discomfort with closeness that keeps genuine connection just out of reach.
Read the entry →
Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)
A lifelong disregard for others' rights and rules, marked by deceit, impulsivity, and an absence of remorse.
Read the entry →
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
Intense fear of abandonment and emotional storms that are usually about the sufferer's own pain, not a plot against you.
Read the entry →
Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD)
A persistent need to be the emotional center of every room, expressed through dramatic, attention-pulling behavior.
Read the entry →
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)
A rigid need for admiration and grandiosity paired with a genuine deficit in empathy for others.
Read the entry →
Avoidant Personality Disorder (AvPD)
A pervasive pattern of social inhibition and fear of rejection that keeps someone from taking normal interpersonal risks.
Read the entry →
Dependent Personality Disorder (DPD)
An excessive, anxious need to be cared for that produces clinging, submissive behavior and a deep fear of having to stand alone.
Read the entry →
Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD)
A rigid preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and control that can make someone very difficult to work under, distinct from OCD.
Read the entry →
Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder (PAPD)
A person who agrees out loud and resists in practice, expressing anger through procrastination, "forgetting," and quiet sabotage rather than open disagreement.
Read the entry →
Sadistic Personality Disorder
Cruelty as the reward itself, not a means to money or status, real enjoyment taken in another person's fear, humiliation, or pain.
Read the entry →