Then you haven’t bothered to even read this thread.
As a therapist, I’d have to disagree with this as a blanket statement.
Interventions such as Linehan’s, which provide skills training in self-monitoring/mindfulness, self-soothing, and emotional regulation can be very helpful. In many (if not most) cases, working on issues of associated trauma can be useful as well.
I could be wrong (someone please correct me, if so) but I thought that people with BPD lacked the self-awareness to acknowledge they have it or even accept the diagnosis. I guess some of these people could be working with good professionals and/or it’s now so “cool” to have mental health issues (it sounds bad but I know a few people who will rattle off their diagnoses to anyone who will listen) that people are now embracing the diagnosis. I think that most people with this disorder, or just the symptoms in general, think that everyone else has the problem.
I think my wife has it. That said, I am not a medical professional and can’t diagnose her. I’ve been told by multiple professionals, independent from each other, that based on objective descriptions of her behavior "I can’t diagnose her, but it sounds like your wife has borderline personality disorder.’ And I’ve been given many books on trying to live with loved ones with personality disorder. There have been things that happened that I thought were just so far out there and I would never tell anyone, but then I read BDP support forums and such and people had similar experiences.
It’s not due to a lack of self awareness, it’s more of a “there’s nothing wrong with me” thing. BPD has quite a bit of stigma associated with it. Its somewhat understandable that some might be adverse to such a label.
If someone were to ask me to tell them the story of what it was like to live with a BPD I could tell them two different stories, neither story would resemble the other and it would be hard to believe they came from the same marriage. A lot of our problems had to do with me not knowing how to deal with the disorder. Looking back I can see a lot of things I could and should have done. They will often have needs that need to be met while a normal person might feel certain needs are not being adequately met but can easily work through it.
She had an intense desire to feel needed, she felt like nothing if she wasn’t needed. I didn’t want anyone to think I needed them, I thought being there simply out of love was a greater compliment. They might often cannot comprehend the strong bonds of love and would rather rely on some tangible sense of need to protect their property.
True. But the sex is insane. No pun intended.
People with borderline personality disorder are still people, they have the same feelings and ambitions (albeit a bit more extreme). A diagnosis of BPD is not a lifelong noose around someone’s neck. Or it doesn’t have to be. A big part of DBT is deconstructing those emotions that dictate their lives and learning to recognize them as not real. Admittedly, not an easy task. But that is why the combination of the right patient with the right therapist is essential. A great therapist doesn’t do much good with a patient who is not fully committed to overcoming their issues. And I’ve noticed that it can be a challenge for those with bpd to stay in that fully-committed state of mind.
The most valuable information I’ve learned re interacting with my bpd girlfriend is, once her totally out of proportion reactive behavior begins, to 1. recognize that this is not my gf at this moment. 2. Avoid getting sucked into the extreme behavior (which can include some pretty aggressive and combative (verbally) behavior), knowing that this will be a very short lived explosion. Well, it can be a short lived explosion with the right kind of de-escalating behavior from me. I definitely have responded in the very opposite manner in the past, for sure. And this has led to some of the worst fights I’ve ever had with a partner. But knowing her behavior is genuine on her part (it’s genuinely felt), I am able to keep myself emotionally neutral and just tell her I love her and that I understand why she feels that way. Sometimes I will take the blame for whatever the ‘issue’ is, knowing that in short time she will be her normal self. And by “short time” I mean like 5 minutes. When I’d escalate the situation (by treating it as an actual issue and letting my temper get ignited) that 5 minute meltdown would become a multiple hour fiasco.
It’s not a mood disorder. It’s a personality disorder. Though mood issues are frequently comorbid.
I wasn’t gonna say it but I’ll agree.
I’ll third that.
You know how they say never put your dick in crazy?
There’s a reason you do that at first.
Well for me, the pros far outweighed the cons. 
I’m pretty good at managing crazy.
I think it’s the risk-adverse crowd who embrace that saying. 
And then the make-up sex is why you do it for the next while.
I had an ex who would, I swear, wig out just to have fantastic sex afterwards.
It got tiring, but good god what a ride.
This is awful advice, because people who actually have a diagnosis of BPD are the ones most likely to actually manage it properly, while people with the really uncontrolled for will deny that there is anything majorly wrong with them. I have two close friends who have BPD diagnoses and who manage it well while being in fulfilling relationships, and know another more distantly. Meanwhile the ex- I’ve talked about on here doesn’t admit that she has any major issues, and believed that my saying I thought she had it was a personal attack.
And you should NOT be looking for ‘symptoms of your typical BPD’ as red flags, you should look for bad behavior and break up with them because of the bad behavior. Claiming a mental disorder as the reason instead of the bad behavior contributes to the stigma around mental illness and makes it harder for people to seek treatment and more likely for other people to get caught up in abuse.
Wasn’t actually my experience; it was good at first, but then once we moved in together she mostly lost interest. When she did have interest, it was ‘we need to do exactly what I want right now or I’ll start a fight about it’; outside of the initial mirroring stage, she was self-centered to an almost comical extreme. And she was never interested in doing the fight followed by hot make-up sex routine, and I doubt it would work for me - I would be too emotionally traumatized by the fights (especially the break up - take back cycle) to be able to perform.
We are talking about human beings. I am quite disturbed by the lack of respect in talking about people with mental disorders in this thread; and the obvious hijack of the thread to personal anecdotes.
I beg to disagree.
- human beings in discussion in a non-formal setting (and even at a hanging or a Ph.D. oral, as random examples, anecdotes that in quantity aren’t disproportionate to OP (“hijack”) or are out-of-line (point 3 below) are jim-dandy, usually, to someone in Internet land and are SDGQ OK
- SD posters are, in general, human beings, and in SD “formats”–GQ included–one poster’s silly joke could be sidetracked and extended (the airplane thread is still on track, just a few passengers are sharing a fart joke (maybe because, to continue the metaphor) someone cut one accidentally or even on purpose)
- mental disorders are sort of like sex: a joke may be just another fart joke or brilliant witticism, but be extra careful when someone who has been raped is around when the discussion is about rape or violence (or what have you…)
- Here, in SD, people come and go, including people with or w/o mental disorders, and as far as I know very rarely are they not aware or incapable of recognizing something in it’s larger social norms (well, except for thatweirdposteroverthere with the knife in his hand and the crazy eyes, who God knows should stop reading now)
- Anecdotes are the heart of functioning life, and of therapy, and of finding out what other people and what you (if suffering or not) can muster emotionally and cognitively [see: talk therapy]
- Here’s another anecdote: it, as well as all of others (I leave it others to define “anecdote” when talking about human experience) before and after it, anecdotally, at least, empirically help disprove your claim about this kind of thread and SD.
Here’s another:
I was thinking about this anecdote (real-life event in a discussion of mental disorders which except for thatweirdposteroverthere and perhaps you, marv] are fruitfully engaged in) in the context of this OP on BPD–I actually think about SD threads on the way to the bus) and what is, pace someone above, it’s brethren on the mood disorder axis, Manic-Depression (OK, Bipolar nowadays), particularly the type of dick-in-crazy often seen, and a typical symptom, of manic states.
There, dick-in-crazy becomes crazydick not just for the make-up sex, which is nly one of many real emotional sexual events common enough and recognized as “non-pathological” when it is not a driver of the sex. Sex in mania has no driver but a heroin mania for it, for it, for it(Just to be clear, a BPD sufferer might have no driver for avoiding sex when it is inseparable from anxiety, fear, interpersonal disfunction, and emotional disregulation beyond the gift of Romeo lovers’ swoons.)
The movieFatal Attraction is one of many of good dick-in-crazy portrayals. (By now it should be clear that dick and vagina and in/out are moot, but it’s the crazy that I am distinguishing). But note: the decompensating BPD crazy there who [spoiler alert] eventually started boiling rabbits, kidnapping, and murdering, was Hollywood out of BPD into a different kind of mental illness the definition and process of which only the producers and screenwriters can attest to.
What that character could do–and the “rational” functioning was high enough–was, I’m guessing like TokyoBayer’s ex, with his knowing or unknowing dynamic which maintained the disfunctioning–realized consciously or barely consciously (it is unnecessary to go full Freudian “sub”), either by emotional drive/reward or even cognitively (which perhaps is even scarier) place that “satisfactorily” (in her ummm…fucked up…mind) with all the other emotional and interpersonal engines in her own mind’s normal, non-disordered life she is struggling with (perhaps) unnecessarily (i.e., it’s not part of the normal ebb-and-flow of normal life).
One aspect of normal life is not having so many streams that make up our emotions–for some people sex, or money (the heroin-like spending of which is another manic symptom), or anger, fear, guilt, etc. operate when the engines that move them at “idle” (normal/neutral/daily life) at such a crazy high RPM, with the switch to Drive so hair-trigger (to mix an already mixed metaphor).
Why male-in-female-crazy is so anecdotalizable and commented on that it is even a common expression is not only on the epidemiology of that particular aspect of disregulation (I’m a big time BPD and never played that particular game) but of the way social communication is allowed nowadays all over the male tradition of rueful recognition, as rich as female ones of their own type, and a current Western view of what is part of being human–(recall, including SD posts) and the humanity of all non-normally functioning/ill individuals.
We’re discussing the attributes of human being with BPD. Those attributes aren’t always warm & fuzzy. That doesn’t mean we’re disrespecting those human beings.
Unless we’re all experts here on BPD - and we aren’t - mostly what we have to go on is “what I’ve read” and “what I’ve personally experienced”, i.e. anecdotes. Those anecdotes are not hijacks.
And the sex was, literally, porn. I didn’t think people actually did that stuff. But she did. And then she dumped me, has been through one broken engagement (with matching restraining orders), two other whirlwind romances (one physically abusive), one DUI arrest, and is now (from what I can tell via Facebook) a practicing conspiracy theorist. She’s a whack job. But left me with some incredible memories. And one scar. But it was worth it. [/anecdote]
Speaking of Hollywood, one of the best portrayals of functioning, sort of, BP people (continued comedically but with insight) and in more common and varied circumstances than whateverhernameis in Fatal Attraction, and more accurately, is that of the smart career woman and femme fatale of Michael Scott, Jan Levinson.
The supercut of all her scenes–which would be a nice featurette movie in itself–would be a terrific survey of the life and behavior in BPD from many different person’s (including Jan’s own) of a BPD person.
I have read that 50% of alcoholics are estimated to be borderline personalities. I don’t think this is at all a rare disorder. I am sure the degrees go from one end of the spectrum to the other as well.
We are in “General Questions” which from what I understand warrants factual answers, thats why I pointed out the anecdotes. And yes I am sure we are not all experts, but I would think we would strive in this sub forum to give the best “empirical” answer that we can.