Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotional Abuse

[InThisHouseWeDo]

I want to share some resources (and a little bit of my experience) about being in a relationship with someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder whether the relationship is current or past. My mother, I'm 99% sure, had BPD and I had a relationship for several years with someone who had BPD. Borderline Personality Disorder doesn't seem to be mentioned that often on relationships, but I'll often read posts where it appears like it could be a factor. Not all abusers have BPD and not all people with BPD are abusive to people they are close to, but they frequently are. The advice on relationships can be really brilliant and can be appropriate for people in relationships with someone with BPD, but I want to encourage people in who know/think that they are/were in a relationship with someone with BPD to get some specialist information and support from people who know BPD inside and out in addition to posting here.

Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder is a really good book. It was recommended to me by friend and it was like every single piece of the puzzle clicked into place. My ex partner had tried to explain a lot of the things in the book, but I never really understood them (or so a whole host of other things) until I read it and also the excellent BPDFamily.com message boards, especially this page. The revised edition of I Hate You--Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality is also supposed to be extremely good.

I won't repeat all the excellent advice that's contained in the book(s) and links above, which can be summarised as: 1. You must look after yourself, get help and support, set boundaries, leave if you need to & 2. You didn't cause it, you can't cure it, you can't control it (The 3 C's of Al-anon). You can only change you.

But I do want to advise one thing that isn't often mentioned when discussing people who have been abusive to you and that is to be compassionate. I know that some people will find that a contentious or very upsetting statement, but I believe it helps in getting over the immense hurt and the headfuckery that is BPD. People with Borderline Personality Disorder are in emotional pain all the time. Their awful behaviour is an attempt to cope with or deflect immense pain - that doesn't make it OK and you don't have to put up with it, but it really does help to feel calm and detach when you fully understand what it's like for them and understand that it's not about you, that they didn't ask for this either.

I really hope this helps even one person. Being in a relationship with someone who has BPD is often very isolating and it can feel like no-one could understand the crazy that your life is/was, but getting support from people who know exactly what it is like is an immense relief.

I agree with you about being kind to abusers. However, it's often ill-timed advice in threads here, where the poster's still blaming themselves for the weirdnesses in their life, or in denial. In order to save themselves, most people need to get angry or at least gain a sense of being unfairly treated. Most OPs here are in their predicaments because they're already feeling more compassion (albeit misdirected) for their abuser than they have for themselves.

Many MH professionals these days are using the term 'emotional dysregulation' instead of BPD. I think this is wise. The dysregulation with untreated sufferers can be huge and scary, but it can also be low-key and weird. As you hinted, walking on eggshells is a damn sure sign you're being abused. The first thing to do is get your head round that, not invest yet more of your effort into understanding your abuser.

I've become something of an amateur expert on personality disorders since my last abusive relationship, and with the years of therapy that followed. I have tremendous compassion even for murderous psychopaths - but I'll still keep out of their way if they've got it in for me! I think this journey - the understanding - is best started from a place of safety.

Have you seen Lights House? It's a bugger to navigate, but enlightening. Out Of The Fog is another very good resource.

" be compassionate."

It's more than contentious, it's bloody dangerous. As the PP said, too many people are trapped in abusive relationships precisely because they are compassionate and (incorrectly) think they can fix their abuser.

There's a time for compassion but it's long way after getting out of the abusive relationship and repairing the damage done. The priority has to be to get safe, get DCs safe, engage (if appropriate) in the counselling required to deal with the residual effects of the trauma and generally rebuild confidence, self-esteem and a normal life. Only once all of those things have been done (and that can take a lifetime) is there any scope for compassion. Not before.

Just to clarify:

1. My statement was not about 'abusers', it was about a small subset of people who have a mental illness (which is physiological and biological in origin, it is now thought) and whose behaviour may manifest in ways which are emotionally abusive to their family and partners. Not all people who are abusive have BPD. I was not talking about all abusers, or all cases on MN or even 'most' of the cases on here.

1. The priority in all cases of abuse is for the person (and their children) who is being abused to be safe and to get support. No disagreement there.

1. Being compassionate does not mean thinking you can fix someone. It doesn't mean you have to be friendly with them. It doesn't mean staying in the relationship. It doesn't mean you have to continue having them in your life. It doesn't mean excusing their behaviour. It doesn't mean feeling sorry for them. It doesn't mean enabling them. It doesn't mean compensating for their behaviour and continuing to suppress your own boundaries and needs. It doesn't mean not feeling angry that you've been fucked up. I disagree, by the way, that compassion is what keeps people in these situations. What I did mean by being compassionate it is: reaching the point of understanding that the person has a disorder, that there is nothing you can do about it, that you did not do anything to deserve any of it and neither did they. BPD is an awful, awful disorder that causes untold misery for everyone involved, especially the people who have it. I wouldn't wish having it on anyone, would you?

Not at all. But bad behaviour is sometimes just bad behaviour and no victim should feel obliged to be compassionate.

What I also meant by 'being compassionate' is stop fighting with them, stop trying to be logical, stop trying to get them to see things a different way and don't lash out through your own hurt and be unkind or cruel to them yourself. My advice is about a way to detachment and not perpetuating the awful cycle of misery, which by the way, people with BPD are genuinely experiencing as abusive themselves.

But bad behaviour is sometimes just bad behaviour and no victim should feel obliged to be compassionate.
Of course. I completely agree. Like I said, I'm talking about a small group of people with a specific mental illness. I agree that no-one should feel obliged to be compassionate. My advice is partly humanitarian, but mostly because, in my own experience and that of others who have been hurt by people with BPD, it is a way that the victim can feel better and heal.

In my own experience I find it just as easy to move on by thinking someone is an evil person that won't change as I do by thinking they have a disorder they can't help.

In my own experience I find it just as easy to move on by thinking someone is an evil person that won't change as I do by thinking they have a disorder they can't help.
Whatever works, we're all different after all and find different things help

I take it you've experienced a relationship with someone with a BPD diagnosis then? You're surely not disagreeing with the main point of my post which was that people who have might find it particularly useful to get connect with others who understand what they have been have been through more precisely and can offer support that will help their specific situation the most?

I am curious, by the way, Cogito, what you would say to the parents of teenage children with BPD, children who are cutting themselves and wanting to die or to the woman who posted in bereavement a few days ago about her sister who jumped off a building just after being diagnosed. I'm curious what you think the women on this board who have BPD (women more likely than men to have it and 1 in 10 will succeed in killing themselves) when they read what you wrote about evil?

I'm a therapist who specialises in working with emotional dysregulation and I couldn't agree more with you OP. People with BPD have usually suffered major attachment difficulties and emotional/sexual/physical abuse. This means that they often lack interpersonal skills so struggle to get their emotional needs met. They also find it hard to self soothe, usually due to an emotionally invalidating environment growing up.

I am forever pulling posters up on here for talking about people with PD as if they are evil, 'half human freaks' was one comment that particularly stands out all I can say is I'm glad those people don't work in psychology! There is a MASSIVE stigma with BPD, they are probably the most discriminated client group in mental health and the quite frankly offensive attitudes often displayed here sadly reflect this.

However, I can also see what Cog is saying in that if someone is treating you badly/abusing you, you certainly shouldn't have to put up with it just because they may have a disorder. I doubt most of the abusive partners discussed on here do have a PD, borderline, narcissistic, anti social or otherwise. They are mostly just entitled, bullying control freaks.

The resources you linked to are great, I use them a lot. Glad to see someone else on here with a positive attitude towards BPD sufferers

I remember the "half human freaks" comments and in all fairness it was being used to apply to narcissistic personality disorder

Can I just add my tuppence worth: I think there is also a real danger in amateur-disorder-naming.

BPD is surely something that calls out for the involvement of MH professionals.

It is lovely that you are raising awareness, OP. However, I think your post could do with a little more flagging up of the fact that BPD is something that is professionally diagnosed and should be accompanied by professional intervention.

I don't understand where you're coming from, House. For one thing, ten per cent (minimum estimate) isn't a small subset. For another, anybody who chooses to bully the person they share their life with is mentally unsound, diagnosed or not.

Neither cogito nor I have said that emotionally disordered people don't deserve compassion. We've both said that the target of their disordered emotions - the abused partner - needs to get free of the relationship before considering whether to understand more. They aren't obliged to understand it: that's a healing mechanism which suits some ex-partners, not others.

You seemed to agree with your point 2 above, but then continued to be angry. Why so?

Thanks JaceyBee, it's nice to hear from a therapist with first hand knowledge. I unequivocally agree that no-one should put up with being treated badly no matter what. I wasn't advocating that for a second and I'm glad you did understand what I was saying, again (as you point out), about a small fraction of the cases here.

thecatfromjapan All good points. Maybe I should have made the point about professional diagnosis more clear, but the reason I didn't is probably that it is stressed in all the resources I linked to and I was trying not to write a mammoth essay containing all the stuff that is so much better explained elsewhere.

I'm frequently guilty of amateur-disorder-naming, thecat! Here's my rationale: Emotionally/psychiatrically disordered people follow rigid patterns of thought & behaviour. I'm not making it up; this is the definition of a disordered personality. Relationship abuse follows predictable patterns of feeling & behaviour.

When a poster's describing a pattern of abusive behaviour, and that pattern matches a known disorder, we can then help the poster grasp what's happening to her - and forecast her abuser's actions - by naming the disorder. We can then point her to reliable documents supporting this, which explain why her life seems so weird and may help her decide what to do about it.

In situations where we're trying to help someone understand why her partner acts as he does, a clinical diagnosis doesn't matter. I see why this bandying of names gets up professionals' noses, but surely they can see how the label helps the target sort things out. What would a diagnosis serve, if the disordered partner won't seek treatment? We're not posting to psychiatrists here, we're talking to distressed & confused abuse targets. And the labels are extremely valuable.

Without labels, we'd have to go through the entire cycle of examining the relationship, asking infinite detail of the poster, naming each behaviour in turn and waiting to see whether forecast events happen. Waste of everybody's time & energy, when the psychiatric community has already done that work :)

garlic I'm really baffled by your comment about being angry. I'm not in the slightest bit, nor was I arguing with you. I clarified and expanded on what I originally wrote to make sure my meaning was clear. Specifically, I wanted to get the point across that I wasn't referring to all abusive situations (just a subset) and that I was absolutely not advocating putting up with bad treatment or thinking it was ok.

Misunderstanding, then :) Thanks for clarifying.

I'm one of the women who stayed too long with an abuser with MH/personality problems. He's waiting for assessment, but BPD has already been mentioned by professionals, on top (underneath?) Of his diagnosed PTSD and general entitled twattishnes.

I didn't think I could fix him, but kept hanging on with way too much focus on his MH problems, hoping that his team of professionals would turn him around in time for us to be a 'proper' family. In fact, the professionals did the same: all focussed on him not being able to help who he is, while relying on me to keep the family functioning without ever asking how his abusive, violent behaviour (known to them!) Was affecting me or our children.

I can look at him with compassion in how I would feel reading a case study of someone with his life - and this is what you mean, I think, house. I don't wish him ill, and feel sad about how his problems mean he's possibly losing contact with his children, but I wish I had focussed on compassion with my babies and myself when I saw how unable he is of healthy human relationships. I would have waved a finger in the professionals' faces and run before the DC got hurt.

meiisme I hope you and your DC are recovering now.

It is awfully sad

I hope your ex is able to get some treatment and that it helps. FWIW, my mother is massively improved, like day and night compared to what she was like when I was growing up. As a very small child she would even split me and I bore the brunt of many rages. In the last say 15 years, I have only seen her get dysregulated on two occasions - the one episode lasted only a matter of hours and the next one years later was pretty bad and lasted longer, but I cut contact with her for a few months after it. Since then, and for a long time, she has been stable and normal and like the 'nice' person she always was.

And yes meiisme that is what I meant.

garlicvampire I have p.m.ed you.

Below is an excellent resource for any male friends you have who may be in a relationship with a Borderline or Narcissist Personality wife, girlfriend or partner.

shrink4men.wordpress.com/a-shrink-for-men-index/

The shrink for men lost me at the first link entitled 'Is she a crazy bitch?'

It was notsuch but that doesn't make any difference, they're still people! Bloody unreasonable and difficult people at times maybe but people all the same, and they weren't born that way were they?

I work with NPD too and they are more often than not utterly insecure, lonely and miserable. I am NOT excusing or condoning abusive behaviour, of course I'm not but I still stand by the fact that most abusers are not personality disordered.

JaceyBee,
"...they weren't born that way were they?"

Can you address the question (in your opinion of course) of whether or not the possibility exists of genetic predispositions regarding the potential for an individual to develop mental health issues (including emotional dysregulations)?

Thanks