Forever Young
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I am not a psychologist either, but have extensive involvement with the treatment of someone who has BPD and cursory involvement with two others. My understanding is this disorder is one of the most difficult to treat but progress has been made. Step 1: convincing a patient they need help. Does anyone believe Lori would be easy to convince that her problems in life are related to her own reactions and beliefs?
My intent with posting my theories about BPD is less to explain Lori but rather to alert others to what this pathology looks like. Don’t marry someone with BPD! If you do have a relationship with someone who suffers, you are going to need a lot of wisdom and strength to stay mentally safe yourself.
I am still leaning toward Histrionic Personality Disorder, which has been compared to the feminine version of Antisocial Personality Disorder or psychopathy. There can be an overlap between HPD and Borderline PD criteria, but I read that the term Borderline originated because the subject was borderline insane. LV is not borderline insane, she is insane!
Borderlines tend to experience deep and intense emotional outbursts, where as HPDs strike us as more superficial - fake! JMO!
..."it is more characteristically erratic in BPD - the emotionality is not typically planned or intended, but the result of the client feeling like s/he is out of control, or even dissolving. In contrast, the behavior seems more instrumental (i.e., goal directed) in HPD - it is in service of gratifying the need for attention, with more calculation as to the effect the behavior will have on others.
Thus, clients with BPD may be much more likely to experience unintended effects of their behavior, but still be unable to choose more adaptive behavior. My supervisors suspected that our client had HPD because she seemed more in control and calculating in her behavior than one would expect from BPD."
Practice Wisdom: Differentiating Borderline and Histrionic Personalities