Now that I have learned about Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder and have talked with many other Adult Children of these PD's, I can easily spot when someone I meet is "off." Don't ask me to armchair diagnose them, let's just say they are overly needy, 'bomb dropping' in conversations or showing some other symptom of disordered thinking. These people scare the hell out of me, always have. But now I understand WHY: my brain recognized a pattern to them that was unsafe for me to be around.

Years ago a dental hygienist my children saw had me all twisted up after a cleaning. She was bomb dropping information, little challenges that put me on the spot. I flipped out! I did not understand why I got so angry with this woman. My children told me I was over reacting. But in rolling the tapes back, she clearly was throwing down comments about my children and their teeth that were not normal things to say. Or flat out judgmental crappola. She'd say "I believe that  blah, blah, and Dr. agrees with me." Then when I asked the dentist, he didn't even know what she was talking about!  That was the first time I spotted crazy and knew what I was seeing.