What can you tell me about people with Borderline Personality Disorder and how they affect families? What happens when someone has BPD and it’s mixed with depression? What’s the best way to deal with them for their sake and yours?
The person in our family that I suspect is a forty year old female – very bright. She can be totally enchanting. She admits to being depressed and especially to having a lot of guilt, but she won’t get help. I had rather not describe her behavior to you because I don’t want to color your responses.
So if she had BPD in addition to depression, what would it look like? What would be some of the signs?
I know that neither you nor I can diagnose anyone here. I’m just trying to get a little insight. I certainly am not going to confront her. I am going to talk with a professional about the situation next week.
…and I’d think that depression would be an automatic symptom of BPD, based on the symptoms listed. You’d be living on a rollercoaster, acting impulsively (and recklessly) and that’s bound to produce guilt and depression. I’d venture to say the people surrounding a BPD family member would be at their wit’s end with anger and worry and a general feeling of helplessness. I’d guess that life would be pretty close to unmanageable for all parties involved.
Good luck with your pursuit of qualified help for this person. It looks like the diagnosis is a tough one and I’m sure it will be met with resistance.
I assume you can find/have found the DSM-IV definitions by youself, and are just looking for a chance to talk about it a bit.
I am not at all convinced that there is any such animal as “pure” BPD; in practice it seems to travel with other things. I seem to have read once that something on the order of a third of people with depressive disorder also have one of the personality disorders. And this is all pretermiting a discussion of the art/science aspects of classifying the wide range of human behavior not to mention to what extent a specific, correct diagnosis is either possible or desirable in any particular case.
So let’s pretend we already talked about all that, otherwise this is going to be a book.
Or we can do it in little pieces, just as you like.
In general, in mood disorders you see a person cycling through (for example) a depressive mood over a period of time – days or months. With BPD, the emptiness, while it can exist regularly over a long period, tends to last a much shorter period of time – more like an hour or maybe a day or two. So it can come back over time but tends not to be pervasive over that period.
That kind of instability tends to pervade matters in dealing with a person with BPD. Their self image tends to be unstable, their relationships tend to be unstable, their perception of things tends to be unstable. There is this peculiar sense that they are sort of, I dunno, parallel processing between two or three perceptual paradigms rather than actually maintaining them at the same time and being aware of and made uncomfortable by the conflict.
Here’s what I mean: most people can simultaneously maintain two very different notions about somebody else. My spouse is a Really Great Guy, but when it comes to, I dunno, picking up his dirty laundry, he is an Oblivious Big Jerk. I can believe both of those things at the same time. When I encounter his laundry on the floor for the six gazillionth time, those two notions collide and OBJ overrides RGG momentarily. But most of the time I understand that Dearly Beloved is both, and neither, and lots of other things also.
A person diagnosed with BPD looks from the outside as though they really only have the one option at a time, or at most two between which they switch fairly rapidly. The changes can be very fast, without any warning from outside the person, and therefore bewildering. And it appears from the outside as though, after switching the person in question from Good Witch to Bad Witch, they don’t remember that s/he was formerly the Good Witch or sometimes convince themselves that they were just mistaken/deluded/lied to about that Good Witch thing. In general, their thinking tends to be distorted by extremes to an unusual degree.
Drat, I forgot. I think the best way to deal with a person who has, at least, some of the traits of BPD is to be very clear and open about your boundaries. In fact, I don’t know how you can maintain your sanity any other way.
So you have to think about your boundaries and know where they are. And then you have to express them in such a way that they can be heard. This requires a nearly superhuman ability to not feed into the swirling chaos around the other person and also to not justify yourself in any way while the other person is in this state.
For instance, I have said the following: Listen, you cannot call me names. I am not interested in a list of my shortcomings and failures and how much I suck. I understand how much I suck is a problem for you. I am not going to do anything about that. If you continue, I am going to leave the room. If you follow me, I am going to go outside. And if you follow me outside I am going to call the police and let them sort it out.
I have said: I do not think you are bad, I think you are not well. I think you are in pain. I am not going to try to help you. I know that there are people who can help you not be in pain. If you want me to I will try to help you find them. But this conversation is not continuing in this way.
I have said: If you want to talk about solving this problem for the future we can continue talking. If you want to talk about how much I suck, I am leaving now. I am happy about how much I suck, it doesn’t bother me.
My mom has BPD. She was neglected and possibly abused as a child, which I think is not uncommon.
She spends money on a constant stream of materialism. She changes her decor in her house 4 times a year and stores the old ones in cargo containers. She is very preoccupied with money as a filler for the void she feels inside.
For my son’s first Halloween she called me from the store and said, “I just bought him his costume.” It’s MY kid. I will pick out his first Halloween costume. When he was born she wanted to spend the first two weeks at the house. On my first Father’s Day Mom bought cards from my son, when it should have been something fun for my wife to do.
She often promises things she cannot deliver. Once she told me and my brother to start looking for houses because she was giving us each $25k for a down payment. She never consulted her husband, who squashed the idea quickly when he found out. But I had been out looking for a house and financing.
This summer I am embarking on an expansion in my business. She told me she was selling a piece of property she inherited in Florida and would give me the proceeds. Sh
She said she gets 3 or 4 offers a month on it. However in the 10 weeks since she told me this, no offers have come in… :dubious:
She was sexually promiscuous during her marriage to my father, and I suspect she was dating her current husband (#3) while she was dating husband #2. She then has the nerve to be judgemental to people who are divorced.
I remember during her depressive (read: suicidal) periods her saying :“I just want someone to love me for me…”
Excellent posts! Now, tell me…how are you so well-versed in this sort of thing, and yet not able to help the person? You sound like exactly the person he or she should be talking to!
Perhaps because she’s not a mental health professional and doesn’t have the skills or qualifications to actually help the BPD person directly. As she said, “I’ll help you find help”, but actually being able to help personally is something else, and usually a very bad idea if you’re emotionally involved in some way with the BPD person. Offering support, helping to find professional help, giving encouragement and love…those are all within the capability of a layperson. They’re not enough, however, and I think that’s what Marienee meant.
Well, thank you, you are kind. The gentleman in question is my brother in law. I actually think he is bipolar, but I am not at all certain. Part of the reason I can deal with him is that he is my brother in law and not my brother. So, I have less invested in him and more invested in coming to a workable way of dealing with him. Also, because we did nto grow up together, I came into this relationship with healthy boundaries and I don’t have to unlearn any bad habits in this particular area.
I read a lot about it in trying to understand what could be going on. But I can’t help him; reading a lot does not make me in any way qualified to do so. And besides, I think there is no helping an adult person who does not want help, does not think he needs help, and is not actually a danger to others. (Danger to self is a little greyer here; I think suicide is legal in Holland. Though I am not clear on it, I haven’t been here that long.)
All you can do it seems to me is remain sane yourself. And speak the truth with love.
nota bene, it’s easy to sound sane about it when writing; I am by no means perfect in sticking to my resolution to stay out of his emotional stuff. It’s been a long and harrowing road and I have the feeling it is going to get worse before it gets better.
Now that I’m studying for my doctorate in psychology, it’s become clear that one of my closest high school friends is a borderline personality. I’m not friends with her anymore, but I am friends with her sister and her parents, so I still get to see a lot of the damage she does. (Caveat: she’s not depressed. She is also probably comorbid with narcissistic and paranoid elements.)
The most important thing a person can do to maintain their sanity in dealing with someone with BPD is to be clear about their boundaries. However, having family and friends draw clear boundaries tends to really piss people with BPD off. When I told my friend “Melissa” that she did not have a say in certain matters in my life, she cut me off forever. This has been a great thing for me, frankly, and I was about to do it anyway. But it has seriously hurt her sister and her parents, because if Melissa finds out they’ve had contact with me, she goes into a tirade. And she holds grudges forever.
Melissa’s family has been able to maintain a relationship with her only by never, ever calling her on her crap. They decided keeping the family intact was more important than preserving peace and harmony in the family. Because Melissa would never, ever consider therapy (or even the idea that she has a problem), and because one of her traits is to believe people are either with her or against her, these are their only two (crummy) options.
I’ve not been involved in any cases of borderline personality at a clinical level yet, but from what I hear from my superiors, relationships never get much better than “strained.” Personality disorders have a very low cure rate. People can improve if they want to put in a lot of hard work in therapy. However, many borderline personalities feel that asking them to go to therapy is a betrayal of their trust. They generally truly believe that everyone else has a problem, not them. If your friend is depressed, it may be easier to get her into therapy, if you keep working on her. In my experience, what works best is to say positive things like “Wow, it makes me sad that you are so sad, I hear therapy can really help. Maybe you should try it. Worth a thought.” Rinse and repeat. More negative nagging like, “You really need to go to therapy, I can’t help you with this, you’re not getting better, your life is going down the tubes, etc.” seems to drive people away.
What’s the best way to deal with a BPD person? Stay away, far away.
If that’s not possible, detach with love. Accept the fact that their behavior will be hurtful, manipulative, unreasonable, and sometimes bordering on the insane. And do not take it personally. Enforce your boundaries. Never expect them to change. Carry this message to other people affected by the BPD person where appropriate.
Frankly, it’s easier to be in a relationship with an addict/alcoholic. At least you can go to Al-Anon to learn how to cope from other folks in your same situation. And there’s always a chance that the addict/alcoholic will find recovery.
There is a reason that everyone keeps mentioning the phrase “keep your sanity”
They used to call BPD “folie a deux” because it always seems to occur in pairs of people. The real BPD person could only be distinguished after the two had been separated for a while.
That’s how it was for me with my BPD boyfriend - when I was around him I was literally crazy. My thinking was disordered and my life seemed out of control. After he had to move an hour away and I started spending 4+ days away from him I noticed that my thinking became clearer the longer I stayed away.
Boundaries are essential. BPD are living in a world of fear, and like a drowning victim they will take you down with them.
A good insider’s perspective with bits o’ research thrown in: Here
Your responses certainly make much sense even though I’m trying not to project from them too much.
Kalhoun, as usual, you come to my rescue. I have copied the material from your link to keep at hand. It is much better than anything that I had found before.
I am the latest target of her “Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper…”
It was completely unexpected. It occured on a weekend in which I had taken pleasure in treating her and her daughter to lunch, manicures, and ten family members to a $500 feast at her favorite restaurant celebrating her receiving her doctorate. The next night she exploded at me over nothing, asked me to leave her house and called me to tell me how selfish and narcissistic I am. (The “nothing” was that I complained that I never see my sixteen year old granddaughter anymore. Yes, I know that is normal for a teenager. I taught teenagers for 20 years.)
My husband learned from her husband later that her anger at me had actually been brewing. But it blind-sided both of us.
She has been known to do this at other family members before – especially if they are people who have married into the family. She also once fired everyone on her staff in one day. (Probably four or five people.)
She has made threads of suicide at least twice, including the past weekend. I did make sure that her husband knew.
She has at least one DUI and she has gained weight in the last five or six years. She is unusually attractive. I would think that her age, weight gain, and hormones may be playing some role in her feelings about herself.
She has had explosive tantrums with her children and feels guilty about that. They are very bright children, but the oldest one is depressive and has OCD which remains untreated because her mother has discouraged it as a sign of weakness.
I thought that she loved me. I love her very much and told her so in a way that I think she knew was sincere before our conversation ended. Her response was that of an angry twelve year old: WHATEVER!
Marienee, your comments about how people with BPD seem to hold only one opinion of a person at a time explains something so well. I was wondering how she could go from the caring person who wanted to make up for the abuse I had experienced in my family of origin – to thinking that I am the most evil person in her life. She can’t see the “shades of gray” in all human beings – even herself.
I have a good book about setting boundaries. Time to pull it out again. I can never trust her again the way I did. I will be fortified. Fortunately, my own counselling has served me well and this did not completely throw me for a loop as I thought that it was going to as it was unfolding.
This happened with her sixteen years ago and my husband and I did not see her or her family for six years. It was very destructive of family life as you can imagine. As it stands now, it affects at least fourteen relationships. There are seven people living in her household and the two of us overhere. We are in our sixties and can’t afford another six years of missing out on family. But she is the matriarch.
Q.N. Jones, your advice seems sound to me. For the first time, I think, I did call her on her crap. She used to intimidate me because she is so pretty and bright and dominate. But at the point where I realized that she was just hurling insults without any foundation and confusing issues, I reached into my Doper bag and told her that she was “ignorant.” I doubt that she had ever been told that in her life. She brought it up again later and told me that I am ignorant of many things. I agreed with her and told her that we all are.
newcrasher and jayjay, thanks! I take it that the need to control is a feature of their personalities. It certainly is in my case.
Doc, that one is now up on my wall. I expect it to get me through lots of times to come. That’s as real as it gets.
It’s going to be will-nigh impossible to maintain the detached objectivity you need to deal with someone you know who has this disorder. For many, “stay away” is as good as it gets.
Lacking the requisite professional training is another problem.
Finally, these types of folks are said to be among the last that would ever seek treatment.
Susan, looking back at my last post, I can see that I sound a little anxious! <snort!>
The link is excellent and I have read all of it and bookmarked it for future reference. It is especially helpful because it is written by someone with BPD. It’s straightforward and gives me a better insight into what is going on inside her head. That helps me to depersonalize it. Sadly, it makes me want to comfort her and I can’t.
The author certainly displays a sense of humor in wanting to rename the disorder:
I know - that was the hardest part for me too. It was a lot easier when I could just think of my ex as a monster. He was raped by an uncle as a child and his family (who all knew) still had this uncle over to christmas dinners, etc. His mom took every opportunity to tell him that he was an accident and that she hated kids. He never had a chance, really.
I felt sorry for him when we were together, too. I used to think that if I could just love him “enough” that he would heal…
A woman who was nearly related to me by marriage was diagnosed BPD by one doctor. She was just out of control much of the time. Her behavior went from normal to criminal to violent to normal to criminal to violent. On and on. She’s been in prison for a few years now and I only hope they are giving her some treatment there. She’s smart. She’s attractive. And she’s so unstable she bends the world around her until it breaks.
jsgoddess, that does bring up the question of how violent they can become. Since they are so impulsive and become so angry, how do you know?
{b]Susan**, I can’t imagine trying to handle someone with BPD at 16!
I think this thread will help to free me from dwelling on it so much. It’s been almost all I have been able to think about since it happened last weekend. I’ve gone over it and over it. This helps to confirm that there wasn’t much that I could have done to prevent it from happening.
These statements, while they certainly don’t rule out BPD by any stretch, certainly reinforces the possibility that she has hormonal issues. You say sixteen years ago she wigged out (which coincides with the birth of the teenager you mentioned). It also sounds like she may be menopausal based on weight gain, etc. I would think that the hormonal issues would amplify the BPD issues to the enth degree.
It’s so sad that a person you care about (and who normally cares about you) could become so lost to the loved ones in her life. I hope the storm subsides and you can embrace her once again.