What actually led you to realizing you had something that needed to be diagnosed?
My OCD was discovered because I would cry irrationally when I was forced not to do things a certain way, like when my parents would take a different route home. But, since BPD requires you to be an adult, I’m less sure.
I have a friend who seems to be really close to BPD, in that she has the classic love/hate dichotomy with nothing in between. And I went to school with someone with BPD. Neither have problems having friendships altogether; they just take breaks and alternate between different groups of friends becoming enemies.
I suppose “high functioning” can be defined as “life not too screwed up”.
I had a roommate in college with BPD. Unlike the OP, she had it pretty bad - lots of self-harm, cutting, etc. though all violence was directed towards herself and not others. In her mid-30’s, after a LOT of therapy, she finally got herself together, went to school, got a doctorate level degree, and not only has built a good life for herself but she’s taking care of her elderly mother and a messed-up sibling.
I think one of the misconceptions with the disorder is that they’re all hopeless or all intolerable people. Yes, they can be, but if they become self-aware enough to realize that a lot of their problems are coming from them rather than being done to them they hold down a job, have friends, a build a pretty normal life in most respects.
For my friend - she’s not a really sociable person. She has friends, but I’m not sure anyone is really close and she’s never had a successful intimate relationship that I’m aware of. I think at one point she simply opted for celibacy and stopped trying. I haven’t heard from her in several years (nothing unusual - as I said, she’s not the most sociable person) but I expect she’s probably still doing OK. Anyhow, I’d describe her as “high functioning” just on the basis of holding down a difficult job, caring for her family, and some successfully small-scale investing on the side.
It was my understanding the main factor in development of BPD is when emotionally sensitive children are abandoned or invalidated in the first 3 years of life. Do you know if this applies to you?
I think the lack of empathy is mostly reserved for relationships that trigger the abandonment pain the BPD person is trying to escape from. In relationships where that is not an issue I would assume a lack of empathy would not be a problem.
No, Borderline people are known for being extremely empathic, but when you mix it with black/white thinking, fear of abandonment, and, y’know, an inability to actually read minds it goes off the rails. So they’re extremely likely to notice subtle hints that you’re unhappy, but oh… you’re unhappy, this must be the WORST THING EVER and OH NO YOU’RE PROBABLY GOING TO LEAVE ME BECAUSE OF YOUR EXTREME UNHAPPINESS HOW CAN I MAKE IT BETTER!? It’s part of why Borderline people tend to be very good at playing people like fiddles. (Self-aware borderline people also have an extra layer of problems in that they recognize that they’re hurting people so it can cause a self-feeding infinite loop of empathic outbursts).
Therapists are challenged by borderline patients because they are so sensitive to other people’s feelings. They are able to pick up on the subtlest cues that other people just can’t see. I used to lurk on a board where borderline patients would discuss their therapy sessions, and it was amazing how sensitive they were to their therapists’ moods and reactions. They were like emotional loggers, detailing every nuance. Which meant that they had almost an infinite number of potential triggers. The therapists couldn’t as much sigh without them concluding the worse. If the therapist reacted in any way that communicated displeasure, they would be suicidally depressed over it. All they could think about was how much their therapists hated them because they failed to smile convincingly enough for a split second during the session.
Since I have the opposite problem, I can’t relate to this at all. I would always want to yell at them that they were delusional when I’d read through those threads. But that’s why they are in therapy–to learn how to not feel and think this way. Me yelling at them wasn’t going to help them get better.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle just miraculously sat up in his grave and asked “And just how do you deduce that, Homes?” :dubious:
Don’t get me wrong… you venting about your personal baggage and issues with people somewhere deep in your past is probably helpful to you, but that this is the OPs exact situation?
I didn’t see Jragon presuming to speak for the OP (who hasn’t answer a single question for some strange reason). It was clear to me that he was speaking in generalities in order to clear up a common misconception about how borderline people think and feel.
One of the cardinal symptoms of BPD is fear of abandonment. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to “deduce” this. It’s in the DSM-IV.
My view on the empathy factor is people with BPD are extremely sensitive to others’ moods and they can pick up on cues that people miss. Where it goes most awry is when they interpret those slight changes in moods to reflect negatively on them.
For instance, I was always the first to pick up on a friend’s sadness, but I would often assume it was because of me. It took me decades to realize I didn’t have to take everyone’s mood changes personally. I wasn’t trying to be a narcissist, I just took everything SO HARD.
I haven’t been officially diagnosed, but then again, therapists, doctors, shrinks, etc are hesitant to tell the patient that they have BPD. And they are also not very fond of treating them.
I think the more successful people with BPD have a strong self-awareness. They can look back at past behaviors and see where they went wrong in their thinking and behaviors.
I am not trying to hijack this thread, but it seems to me that parental neglect and parental emotional abuse plays a big part in how people with BPD form when they are growing up. I don’t know how I would have turned out had I not had a rough childhood, but I honestly believe I was born with a more sensitive temperament that was especially damaged by my troubles with my parents.
More women than men are diagnosed with BPD, but another of my hunches is a lot of abusive men could use the therapy used in the treatment of BPD.
What? “Black-and-white thinking” is called “splitting” and is a characteristic of BPD, as is fear of abandonment. The world health organization characterizes one of the criteria for diagnosis of borderline type of “emotionally unstable personality disorder” (its equivalent of BPD) as “excessive efforts to avoid abandonment;” as well as “liability to become involved in intense and unstable relationships, often leading to emotional crisis;” It’s on the wikipedia page.
Likewise, people with BPD are prone to anxiety and mood disorders, which makes the “feedback loop” cycle common.
This has nothing to do with me airing grievances about people I’ve been with. This was gone over with me when a therapist was thinking of diagnosing me of BPD, but ultimately decided against it. We went over all of these symptoms. I can’t find a cite for the “empathy” thing, it’s definitely not a medically defined criterion, but it was certainly something the therapist mentioned. All I was doing was answering Ambivalid’s claim about a lack of empathy (that’s more characteristic of ASPD or NPD), not speaking for the OP’s specific diagnostic checklist.
You know, the funny thing is I was once really involved in another message board where I found myself really invested in becoming friends with the other members. There was one guy who would make rude remarks about everything I said, and one time I found myself crying because he was being so mean and I didn’t know why. He was pretty much mean to everyone, and although I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t personal, I remained very upset that some random dude felt I was so worthless. I finally realized that I needed to step off the crazy-train and stopped posting and visiting. That’s one thing I like about this place. This is a much bigger place and while I read it daily, I don’t post much.
If you’ve ever known someone with BPD, they can be incredibly good at moulding themselves into the kind of person you’ll respond well to, at least in the very short term. I had a roommate with PBD once, when everyone met her first their repsonse was always “What a lovely woman!”, she could be so warm and friendly and likable, no matter who you were. The trouble was it wasn’t really “her”: it wasn’t that she was faking it, exactly, just that her whole personality seemed to be contingent on what she thought other people wanted, and she couldn’t sustain each role long… It was like there was nothing real underneath.
I’m on my phone and dont know how to post links but not according to Psychology Today, September 27, 2013: "Do people with BPD have empathy?
For a number of reasons, showing empathy is problematic for people with borderline personality disorder. Those with BPD are so caught up in their own emotional tornadoes that your concerns get lost in the chaos."
