Understanding Histrionic Personality Disorder: Navigating Excessive Emotionality and False Accusations

My name is Mike Waddington, and I’m a criminal defense attorney. In this video, I want to talk about a type of person that is likely or at high risk of accusing someone falsely of sexual assault or rape or of child abuse, and it’s someone that suffers from what’s known as histrionic personality disorder.

My name is Michael Waddington. I’m a criminal defense lawyer, and I specialize in defending cases in which people are falsely accused of sex crimes, child abuse, and other serious crimes. Now, in today’s video, I want to talk about histrionic personality disorder, talk a little bit about what it is and how it relates to false allegations of sexual assault.

According to the DSM-5, which is the guidebook for psychologists, psychiatrists diagnosing people with mental illnesses, that’s where all these factors are coming from. I’m not making these up, but this is not anecdotal. Now, by the way, one of these prongs alone is not enough. If you look at the DSM-5, it requires multiple prongs to be observed over a period of time to be able to diagnose someone. But the point of this video is not diagnosing people. It’s just for educating you on red flags and how to avoid people like this, because they can ruin your life, ruin your career, and get you in a lot of trouble.

A person that suffers from histrionic personality disorder is uncomfortable in a situation in which they are not the center of attention. They have to always be doing things, saying things, and be garnering the tension from those around them. Now, a person that suffers from histrionic personality disorder, it’s typically a female, all that doesn’t have to be a female. If you’re in a work setting, think of someone, think of a lady in your work setting that is always causing drama, having sexual relationships with various men within the working environment, or at least trying to get men to fight against each other and women to fight against each other in the work environment. That type of person that I’m talking about may have histrionic personality disorder.

Now, of course, I’m not a doctor, and I’m not diagnosing anyone from this video, but as I go through some of the factors that are used to diagnose people that have this disorder, you’re going to probably start thinking of people in your life that you know that may have this disorder. And I’m going to talk to you about why those people are dangerous. If you are involved with them in a workplace setting or in a relationship, even a one-night stand, it could be detrimental to your future, into your life, if you get involved with people like this. So you have to be careful.

Another key factor that distinguishes people with histrionic personality disorder is a large portion of their interactions have to do with sexual behaviors, seductive behaviors, flirtatious behaviors. I’m not talking standard flirtatious behaviors, two people talking that they’re just mad and smiling and joking with each other. I’m talking about over-the-top sexual innuendos, sexual jokes, uh, even flashing in the workplace, touching.

A lot of guys watching this are probably thinking, what’s the problem with that? We have a woman that I work with or that I meet somewhere who’s overly sexual, who’s all over me, making me feel good, and she wants my attention. What is wrong with that? Well, in and of itself, nothing. This video is about what bad things can happen when you get involved with someone who actually has the disorder. As we go on with the characteristics of a person that has this disorder, you’re going to see why this flirtatiousness and over sexualization can be a problem, especially if you are intimately involved with the person that has this disorder.

The next characteristic is this person that is overly sexual, that has to be the center of attention, has a rapidly deteriorating set of emotions, meaning they can go from hot to cold. They have shallow emotions. They’re calling you their best friend within hours of meeting you. They meet another friend, and they’re telling, they’re planning their next vacation together and telling each other how much they love them and their best friends. And within a matter of an hour or two of meeting them, they’re acting like they’re sincere, but it’s really shallow. It’s not based on any deep friendship. That person satisfies one of the prongs.

So, like I said, one of the problems with someone who’s histrionic is they have shallow emotions, which means that their motions are not really based on a lot of experience with another person. The relationships are very shallow, and they’re very quick to heat up but also quick to flare out, which can be a problem if you’re in a dating relationship with someone like this and they’re vindictive and malicious.

Another characteristic, according to the DSM 5, is that this person consistently, and that’s the key, consistently uses physical appearance, dress, and demeanor to attract this attention. Now, think of someone you might see at the airport that is walking around at five o’clock in the morning to get on a flight to Philadelphia in the middle of winter from Chicago. Okay, it’s cold outside, everyone’s wearing jackets, and this person is wearing literally a bra, a see-through shirt, and a pair of volleyball shorts or Daisy Dukes or something like that, where they’re exposing a lot of their body. If it was a one-time thing and that person did not have any other clothes, so be it. But if it’s, that’s their normal clothing that they wear around, and they want people to look at them.

These types of people often get the attention they want, because people are going to look at them if you’re dressed like that. And you’re, and you add that on to the over sexualization and the way they’re acting, again, this is a huge red flag for men. If you meet someone that’s like that, there’s a high risk that that person does suffer from some sort of personality disorder. And if you get involved in that with them, you may not be able to get rid of them, and when you do, you may be at the receiving end of a false allegation or some vindictive allegation.

The next factor is when the person speak, they generally speak in generalized terms. They don’t speak in specific terms. They often tell stories that are very shallow and very basic. And if you start to talk to a person, you asking them, asking them about their, their boss that they said was a creep or a pervert or something like that, and you asked some details behind that, they generally don’t have any reason to say that.

Now that I’m the topic of people that go around calling people, men, creepy, perverts, sickos, predators, pigs, that generally do that, that’s someone you have to be careful with getting involved with, because that same type of person fits within this category, at least one of the prongs. And that type of person is a type that would commonly throw out, oh, he’s a sicko, he just tried to grope me. And they could just be saying that in jest. They could be not thinking. They could just be throwing those words out there, and someone else hears that, and next you know, you’re under investigation for sexual assault.

In my experience, I see this a lot in my cases, where you get someone who’s a histrionic that is at a bar, that’s hanging over a bunch of men, grinding on them, twerking on them, making sexual advances at men, not the other way around. And they often target men that are more shy, that, that are not the life of the party, that aren’t like, uh, players or f-boys, people like that, usually targeting someone that is clean-cut, that gives them the attention they want, that they know they can manipulate.

And when you meet someone like that and they’re talking about how their boss or their friends or their colleagues or their ex-boyfriends or their ex-husband or their current husband is just a creep, a predator, using vague terms like that, be aware that that does satisfy one of the prongs when distinguishing if someone is a border, a histrionic personality disorder sufferer.

Another prong that psychologists and psychiatrists look at to see if someone’s histrionic is whether or not they have exaggerated expressions and features. And often these people that do this are entertaining. They’re funny. They’re telling the story about the guy the night before that felt them up at the bar, that was chasing them around the office. And I’m using these general terms because they’ll tell stories like this, and a lot of dumbass guys will sit there and be like, oh man, I’d kick that guy’s ass, he did that to you. And as they’re sitting there, sitting on your lap, and this woman you just met, you know, rubbing your thigh, telling the story about the creep the night before at the bar that was hitting on them and buying them drinks, you are going to be that guy next time. Trust me, man, they, they do this. These types of people do this all the time, these types being those who suffer from histrionic personality disorder.

They can’t even keep their stories straight a lot of times, because everything to them is exaggerated, sexually, emotionally, and everything about them is entertaining, like a lot of people on these shows like The Bachelorette, The Bachelor, all these dating shows. A lot of them have these personality disorders that I talk about my videos, and that’s what makes the show entertaining. Because a normal person that does not have a personality disorder cannot literally show up at a show, within a matter of hours be promising every one of these people that you love them, and having sex with them with no emotional connection at all, and, and think nothing of it when the guy that they just had sex with is now mad because they had sex with someone else.

And you can’t reason with people with histrionic personality disorder. They have, they have an innate ability to understand that what they’re doing is harmful to people, and a lot of that stems from their desire for attention. They have to be the center of attention. That’s the primary indicator of someone with, with this personality disorder. If they are not the center of attention, then they will go to great lengths to hurt people that are making them not be the center of attention, or that no longer show them an attention, or that deny them the attention they want, and that can often garner them more attention.

Imagine that’s your whole life, getting, getting so attention on social media, constantly having random dudes say that you look hot in your little posts of your butt that you put on Instagram or Snapchat or whatever you’re doing. The minute that dies down, you need something. You need to feed the beast, right? And so sexual allegations, false sexual allegations, are one way to feed that beast and make you a center of attention.

So imagine if you falsely accuse someone of sexual assault or say, oh, that guy groped me at a bar, a guy that you were consensually dancing with. That guy then becomes the villain. Everybody around you is going to come to your rescue as the victim, as the survivor. They’re going to give you the attention that you need and you desire and that you psychologically need. That’s why it’s a disorder, because you can’t control it.

And you will then get prosecutors catering to you, law enforcement catering you, hitting on you. A lot of times, you’ll be able to post on social media about how you’re a victim. You’re able to tell everyone and be invited to places to speak as a victim. That’s even if you’re, I’m talking about someone who’s falsely accusing someone, so you’re not even a real victim, but you’ll take that attention as the survivor, as the victim, and you’ll run with it if you suffer from this type of disorder.

And so a lot of my clients say to me, as we’re on the eve of trial, they’re like, I can’t believe that she would do this. Like, I thought she would drop the case because she knows it’s false. We have all the evidence to prove it’s false. She’s gonna, she’s not gonna show up. I say, well, you’ll be surprised. You’ll be surprised. She will show up. She will show up with an entourage of victim advocates, family, friends, people who are volunteers to help alleged victims, prosecutors, police. The entourage will be there outside the court. The whole court will center around her.

And so whenever you leave, if you’re the defendant, in and out of court, you’ll see all of her entourage. This is a fake victim’s entourage sitting in the audience. The friends will be staring you and your lawyers down. There’ll be some outbursts, probably. Like, it happens a lot of my cases where you have someone who’s clearly a false alleged victim, and they make an outburst in the, in the, in the room. They claim that someone looked at him the wrong way, and on and on. The attention seeking and the drama continues. Then the police get involved again, and I get asked, hey, did your client’s father look at the victim as he walked past her on the street? I’m like, I don’t know.

Another key factor under the DSM-5 is that the, a person with histrionic personality disorder is easily influenced by outside people, opinions, and circumstances. So if someone is telling a story about, oh, the guy at the bar hit on me, and he was all over me on the dance floor, and people hear that, they’re thinking, man, this person is at the bar at the dance floor, and some guy was assaulting them. And they, they talked to the alleged victim, the histrionic victim, and they say, that’s inappropriate. You know, you’re a woman, you don’t, you have the right not to be touched on that dance floor, even though they had nothing to do with it. They were not a witness to anything. They’ll tell you stuff like this, and next thing you know, they’re telling you that you’ve been a victim and you’ve been raped, and the next thing you know, people are involved, like I said before, and they start feeding you lines.

Like, law enforcement is awesome at feeding people information to fit their narrative, feeding people information to become the victim. In a lot of these videos I watch of interviews of the alleged victim, it’s the cop that’s feeding them the narrative about how they were victim, how they were afraid, how they couldn’t resist it. How it’s not even the victim talk, the alleged victim talking. It’s just the cop telling them what they think happened, and the cop, by the way, is not a witness.

So my point is that feeds into the histrionic person, because they are now being told by a person of authority who’s given them attention what really happened. You did nothing wrong. You were just out there on the floor having a good time with your friends. You have the right to drink 12 shots and get on the dance floor and twerk on a guy without him putting his hands under your hips. You’re a woman. This is inappropriate, and we’re gonna do everything we can to help you out. And here’s my personal business card, and here’s the victim advocate, and here’s the lawyer you’re gonna get, and here’s the money you’re gonna get, and then we’re gonna make you a victim. By the way, we don’t call you a victim, we call you a survivor, and you can put that little hashtag survivor on all your posts.

So now every time anyone encounters you on LinkedIn or wherever you are, they’re gonna know that you’re a victim, and they’re gonna treat you a different way, and they’re going to treat you like you’re a survivor, you’re a hero. It ensures that you’re going to get all this attention for the rest of your life. You might even get a dog.

People with histrionic personality disorder that false accused people sexual assault are some of the first ones to go out and get a service dog. They’ll give you a dog that’s trained, so you can now walk everywhere, through the airports, everywhere, with this dog with a little vest. The vest says service dog, and people see the dog, and they think, oh my God, this guy, this guy, this lady was in combat. They’re a hero, they’re a victim, they have something going on. But what they don’t know is the person it suffers from a personality disorder, and the dog is another way for them to get attention. They like having dogs around them and animals around them because it gives them attention from everyone’s around them.

Imagine this. You were walking through the airport, and you’re histrionic, and you have this dog, a nice dog, and everyone’s talking to your dog, asking about the dog, and you tell them you’re in the military, or you were, you were a victim of sexual assault, or whatever your story is. And then not only do you get all the attention from your dog, as everyone’s thanking you for your service, everybody’s telling you that they feel bad for you, you’re a hero, they support you, and they don’t even know you. Okay, this is a common thing.

And I’m saying all of this to remind people that when you get involved with someone like this, they will burn you down. They will destroy your life. They will destroy your family. They don’t care about you. You and the truth and everything that’s happening doesn’t matter. What matters to them is that they are the source of attention. And you may think, that makes no sense to me, how can that be? That’s why it’s a psychiatric disease. It’s considered a psychiatric illness for a reason, because a person that doesn’t suffer from psychiatric problems would not want to get attention over ruining a person’s life. That’s, that’s immoral, it’s unethical, and it’s just wrong. But for someone who suffers from a personality disorder, that’s just, it is what it is. That’s how I get my attention.

And the last factor on the DSM that can help define or identify a person with histrionic personality disorder is they often think relationships are more intimate than they are. So you get someone that has this disorder, and you go on one or two dates with them, or you meet up with them and have sex with them one time from Tinder, and you think it’s a one night stand. They think it’s a one night stand, according to what they tell you. Oh, it’s just the hookup, I do this all the time. But it’s not in their mind, and this is why it’s dangerous.

If you get with someone that’s reasonable and rational, immature, and doesn’t have a mental illness, you can have sex with them consensually and go your separate ways. You move on, they move on. If the person suffers from histrionic personality disorder, they will have sex with you, and then all of a sudden, in their mind, so think of someone who’s mentally ill, they’re seeing you as their future husband, the love of their life. And they’ll often define the relationships to family and friends, and in their mind, with the one-night stands, as much more intimate, much more personal, and much, much more than it is.

So you’ve probably heard of cases, and I’ve done a ton of these, where the person is in a casual relationship with someone, and then the woman finds out that the guy is dating someone else casually, and it turns into a false sexual assault allegation. Or it’s a one-night stand, and the next day the, the one-night stand woman who has histrionic personality disorder sees the guy with another woman, and they lose it, and it, next thing you know, they’re telling their friends, I think I was taken advantage of. I was drinking last night. This guy that I was involved with, he did this, that, and the other to me, and I didn’t really want to do it. And next thing you know, you have a false sexual assault allegation on your hands.

Quickly to recap, if you meet someone that is generally a female, that is overly sexualized, that has to be the center of attention, that is unusually attracted and aggressive to you sexually, who’s wearing clothing that causes them to be the center of attention, that is quickly and overly intimate with you, that has shallow conversations, that broadly describes other people in generalized ways, like a creep, a jerk, or things like that, and that person’s begging you, after just having met them, to have sex with them or take them somewhere, you may be involved with someone who has personality disorder.

And like I said earlier, the problem is, once you get involved with them, they have very shallow emotions, and they’re very, they love to seek attention, and they think things are more intimate than they are, which means these types of people more often than not find themselves in situations where they’re wanting to get more attention or wanting to get revenge. So you mix histrionic with someone who’s vengeful, spiteful, malicious, evil, or has another psychiatric problem, you might not be able to get out of the relationship without it doing severe damage to your mental health, to your freedom if you get charged with the crime, to your career, things of that nature.

I’ve defended hundreds of people accused of sex crimes over the past 21 years, and between histrionic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder, these are the two main factors, I think, that play a role in a woman that will make a false sexual assault allegation. I’ve cross-examined many of these people, and I’m gonna have some videos here in the future on how to question and deal with histrionics and borderlines, because I’ve gotten rather good at it, and spotting them and cross-examining them and exposing them. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re in way over your head.

And so what I recommend you do, if you’re in a relationship like this, is to stop, do more research on it, and to carefully plan and plot out your escape plan, and do it while keeping all the evidence that you have to prove that you in fact were in a consensual relationship with this person, because it may not be enough to get the case dropped if one starts, but it may be necessary when it comes to going to court to prove your innocence.