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.

AndTheBandPlayedForAnyFucker, sorry to chip in when you asked JaceyBee the question and your question was about mental health issues, but you might find this article interesting. It states that the exact cause for BPD are complex, but that 'most likely' is a combination of genetic, environmental (childhood) and brain abnormality.

Thank you for the link, InThisHouseWeDo.

There's also a strong school of thought that the combination of genetic, environmental and brain abnormality may arise during gestation under some circumstances, when the mother is subject to repeated significant hormonal events such as stress, fear and mood swings. That muddies the water around issues of heritability, but certainly does suggest a child may be "born that way".

Just trying to highlight that nobody actually knows the etiology of mental disorders, with extremely few exceptions. It's misguided, to put it mildly, to suggest there's anything approaching hard science around mental health at present. All we have are observations of people with existing disorders.

Can I butt in, or ask a question please? I have been intrigued and interested by this thread. Only now seen it.

The menhal health board on here is quiet I think most people would agree. Can I ask why some of you who seem to quite knowledgeable about several MH issues, do not post on the MH board.

Perhaps some of you do, under different names. Or perhaps I have not noticed you. Apologies if that is the case.

And am I right in saying that those of you that are MH professionals are not allowed to post over there? Or have I got that wrong?

I'm a serial name changer and I'm ex-BPD (yes, it can be cured).

It was explained to me as a type of PTSD as a result of a "complex childhood" - there's a nice, gentle euphemism for you. I also participated in some global research for BPD where I was subjected to horrible images whilst having a brain MRI - they were looking for things firing differently.

Afaik, around 50% of women struggling with BPD turn to drug addiction and/or prostitution - we are, as someone pointed out - in constant emotional turmoil.

In all my years I've never met a horrible, manipulative BPD - only one drowning in self-loathing and hate. We hurt ourselves.

Blimey, Santiago, it was brave of you to take part in that. Thank you for helping to build knowledge.

Trish, I only tend to post there if someone's in crisis and doesn't seem to be getting much realistic help. I participate in an informal support group online, which can be quite hard-hitting sometimes; focus is on finding ways to deal with stuff. Reading about loads of people's depressed thoughts makes me feel helpless and depressed! I'm not a professional. I don't believe professionals are disallowed there - how could anyone know who is, or who's lying? I imagine it might be the last board they'd want to visit after a day at work though ...

I've joined in a few 'positive thoughts' threads on the Mumsnet board. They're nice :)

Thanks for posting santiago. I'm truly happy to hear you are better and no longer in that pain.

Certainly it can be 'cured'. I don't know the exact stats but a large percentage of BPD sufferers who have undertaken DBT/CAT/Mentalisation etc no longer meet criteria for BPD afterwards. Plus, many people 'grow out' of it around their late 20s - early 30s.

I largely agree with garlic about how problematic it is to talk about aetiology of mh issues, partly because it is almost impossible to distinguish between causation and correlation. For example, someone who has BPD may have an NPD or BPD parent but is that genetics or childhood experiences? No-one really knows why some people develop a PD and others in similar environments don't but imvho, as a psychology/therapy professional I don't subscribe to a medical model. At all. For almost all mh issues. If I were a GP or a psychiatrist I would certainly give a different answer! Although even my psych nurse friend says that if you go onto any acute psych ward you will hear the same stories of abuse/neglect etc over and over, suggesting that even so called 'organic' mh illnesses such as bipolar and schizophrenia have their roots in childhood trauma. Doesn't suit anyone to say that though does it, especially not big pharma! Much easier to chuck meds at people than invest time and money in therapy for them

I have personally never come across someone with BPD who did not have some attachment difficulties in childhood. Often they have been sexually/physically abused (75% I think?) but sometimes it is more insidious and less obvious, e.g. parents favouring sibling or just what we would describe as an 'emotionally invalidating' environment, so cold, detached, emotionally unavailable parent, depressed parent etc so not explicit abuse/neglect but damaging all the same.

Hope that sort of answers your question AndThe! I could waffle on all evening really!

OP this is a bit off topic but just to say thank you for posting those links to books. I have name changed since, but it was me who posted in bereavement about my sister who took her own life less than 2 weeks ago. I feel like reading into her diagnosis might help me gain am understanding of what she went through, so thanks for the useful links.

lastnightopenedmyeyes I'm so sorry I hope you can find the answers you're looking for and that you have the support you need.

Garlic, Jacey house, do you have any links or books about the relationship between stress in pregnancy/early childhood abuse and BPD, and what (if anything) can be done to help children with those experiences restore some of their emotional coherence?

I find the concept of personality disorder difficult. They are descriptions of traits that reach an arbitrary threshold for diagnosis. It's normal to have some of these characteristics.

Someone ?cogito? mentioned evil up thread. What is that? We categorise by patterns of thoughts and behaviour - traits. Talk of evil is like talk of witchcraft.

heebiejeebie Yes, I know what you mean. A lot of the traits are present in most people at some time or another to some degree (including me), however the description of BPD behaviour I've witnessed in my ex-partner matches so exactly with (very in-depth) explanation of it in that Walking on Eggshells book, and also matches exactly how he's explained all his feelings that I think it's definitely real and the criteria are a reasonable attempt at getting something workable. I'm not sure the threshold is arbitrary, but if you read just a list of say the DSM diagnostic criteria it could seem that way. But there are lots of people who think DSM and the way PDs are classified is all wrong and needs changing. I don't know the answer really.

Ironically, seeing things as black/white and seeing people as 'all bad' or evil is a hallmark and defining characteristic of BPD!

Thank you JaceyBee, that is helpful.

Lastnightopenedmyeyes, my deepest sympathy for your loss. I hope that your grief will be able to be resolved and that you may have peace and happy memories of your sister in your heart. {{Take care}}

HeebieJeebie I was gonna make the same point - we all have elements of at least one personality disorder, it is after all just an extreme of 'normal' personality traits. Just the high end of a personality spectrum.

I myself am very histrionic, sub-clinical but still very much there. I also have some narcissitic traits, as do most people with healthy self-esteem.

And lastnight - so sorry for your loss. I hope you are able to find some peace.

I agree with your post OP. Also, I agree that being compassionate can also help with moving on. Although as your later posts say, and Cogito's, compassion is not about enabling or putting up with poor behaviour. Or living with it.

I think developing your boundaries and protecting yourself, whilst not needing to hate, is productive.

Not always easy though, IME!

It's normal to have all the characteristics of personality disorders! The difference between a disordered personality and a 'non' is the incapacity to segue naturally between states. In clinical cases, most patients suffer an almost complete absence of some characteristics that 'normal' personalities have. As far as brain imaging has been able to tell, the brain areas associated with the 'missing' qualities are under-developed.

Of course personalities fall along a continuum. When you're talking about something as complex as personality, you might need a dimensional model ... let's think of it like a tree shape. As in a tree, the branches are close together and mutually supportive, then grow out separately. Ms Centred, bang in the middle of the tree, has all forty or so defined personality traits, working in harmony, with a natural ability to bring forward any group of traits according to the situation. There are people clinging dangerously to the very ends of the branches - they have such a preponderance of a single characteristic, and so lack the others, that they probably cannot function at all in the world. Other people, like us, sit somewhere along the branches. If you're fairly close to the trunk - in contact with all the branches and able to move more or less freely between them, you're 'normal'. The ability to flex one's personality is a given - and a requirement - in human life. We're kind of used to people being a bit crap at moving over to the other side of the tree from their usual branch. We make allowances. But ten percent, or thereabouts, are so far along their one particular branch that they can't reach all the others. Social allowances notwithstanding, human life needs everyone to be able to move around the tree, so those stuck on just a few branches find their lives impaired in some ways. (How much they actually care about this varies according to the branch they're on!)

A more elegant image is that of a keyed instrument, like a piano. Ms Centred can gracefully play any tune, picking out the right chords with natural ease, while the most severely dysfunctional characters insistently hit one single note, over and over again.

I had to keep interrupting this post - apologies if somebody's already done it better.

Mei, I haven't bookmarked links on that afaik. The general consensus would be that a stable, secure, loving and nurturing environment in childhood provides the best chance of overcoming genetic or gestational predispositions to psychological disorder. There are cases, though, where the emotional and cultural environment seems to have been ideal but the patient still grew up disordered. There could actually be multiple discrete causes, just as there are for some physical disorders.

Ironically, seeing things as black/white and seeing people as 'all bad' or evil is a hallmark and defining characteristic of BPD!

Indeed, of all the Cluster B disorders. It's a very childlike way of looking at things ... arrested emotional development, anyone?

Garlic, thank you for such an elegant and clear explanation.

meiisme The therapy I underwent (Schema Therapy) involved my psychologist putting me in an almost trance like state to explore a situation in my childhood which was prominent in my memory and obviously traumatic to me. He would have me focus on how I felt as a child and then talk to the child myself, as the adult I am now. It might seem a very "American concept" talking to your inner child, but what it essentially was, was a chance of putting things right. Quite often my adult self would say "come with me, I'm taking you away right now". And then he (the psychologist) would tell me that we're both safe now.

It was basically about correcting those most damaging memories - almost like re-writing history as it were.

Someone was talking about a cure as in fulfilling fewer of the 9 parts of BPD. Initially I had 6/7 I think (I forget now), but when I left therapy I was down to 3.

It's funny, as a "cured" BPD I think I often see more shades of grey than those who've never had mental health problems!

That's really interesting santiago I was only really aware of DBT and MBT as preferred treatment options in the UK. I had seen schema mentioned on one of the forums but didn't really know much about it. I just googled it and may look into it further for myself. I have things I need to sort our from my childhood too. How long did you do it for and did it take a long time for you to feel better? Feel free not to go into it if you'd rather not.

Schema therapy is a type of cognitive therapy but it doesn't have much presence in the NHS as it's long and costly. Did you have to pay for it yourself Santiago?