A friend with borderline personality disorder?

[MillyRad]

I have recently stumbled upon some articles about borderline personality

disorder. They describe the behavior of a friend (our friendship is quite rocky right now, go figure) to an absolute tee. Anyone have experience with this? :/

[carhill]

OP, take a look at this thread, starting with Post #59 and subsequent. Poster Downtown provides some great perspective on borderline.

 

I have more experience with bi-polar and paraphrenia, but have seen some of the 'light-switch' behaviors consistent with borderline in a couple of cases.

 

My best advice is to not dwell on the what and why but rather, if the dynamic doesn't feel healthy to you, to disconnect it and/or engage from a safe distance.

[freestyle]

Milly, I'm dealing with a former friend who ticks a lot of the boxes on the behavioral checklist for BPD.

 

She's still in my life in a way, only because she lives too close for me to avoid her entirely, which would be my preference.

 

So, I've been studying extensively on how to deal with a situation like that.

the bpdfamily.com site has a LOT of good articles and workshops for understanding & dealing with a person with that disorder.I'd recommend checking out the site. It also has a message board/forum, similar to LS here, for people that have to deal with a family member or partner with BPD.I've gained a lot of insight from reading the stories there.

 

I'd share more, but I'm on my way out for the evening right now. I'll revisit your thread again soon, we might be able to compare notes.

 

Is this the male friend you started a thread about, not too long ago? The one who keeps showing up at your gigs, even though you don't want to see him?

[MillyRad]

Mr. Carhill, thank you for the info! I'm doing okay with the distance thing, but still working on not dwelling, but learning more about borderline personality disorder is helping me to convince myself that I'm not crazy and I'm not all of the awful things my friend has worked hard to project onto me.

[MillyRad]

Is this the male friend you started a thread about, not too long ago? The one who keeps showing up at your gigs, even though you don't want to see him?

 

Yep, that's the guy. I'd heard borderline personality disorder mentioned a few times in relation to teens and cutting, but that's it. My friend had been diagnosed about a decade ago as being bipolar, but his troubling behavior seems like a really close match for also being borderline: the push/pull, the hair trigger temper, the need to constantly play the victim, and refusal to seek treatment. Ugh!

 

Thanks for the info. It's good to find out that I'm not crazy and imagining his behavior and that I have a choice in how I let it affect me. And yes, I'd like to compare notes sometime.

[amberq]

The thing is, there's a huge stigma to BPD and i've seen mentioned on numerous occassions that it's a "waste bin diagnosis" and that professionals give it to people who they "find difficult or don't like". It's very difficult not to get caught into the victim mentality when it's quite valid that the illness is misunderstood and there is so much stigma around it.

I find it really difficult to see this post, as i've been diagnosed with BPD and had so many "friends" just cut me off completely for things that most of their other 'normal' friends get away with. Looking back, of course I can see my mistakes but an apology hasn't been enough and it's left me with a desperate hurt which gets brought to new friendships, and so the pattern starts all over again.. the ultimate trigger for BPD behaviour is rejection.

 

If you want to keep this friendship, then read more into the symptoms and talk to your friend. There are plently of books/articles out there that give good advice on having a relationship (not just romantic) with a borderline. Ask them to talk through how they're feeling with you from the perspective of their non-borderline wise self.. for instance, ask that instead of losing their temper with you/attacking you that they write down/think about what they would like to say so that they have some clarity. So that a "piss off" becomes an "i'm feeling really left out" or whatever. Nobody likes to be criticised if it's not constructive, because that's not helpful, it's just unkind. The impulsivity and inability to regulate emotions makes it so easy to just spew out emotion without thinking or control.

I don't know what's going on with this friend of yours. All you've said is that this person fits the criteria for a diagnosis, your relationship is rocky and 'go figure' (like it's 100% down to the disorder?) and has anybody had any experience. I don't have any examples of what's bothering you, so I may be saying all of the wrong things.

But eventually I learned to do the type of thing I mentioned above. And if a friend chose to spent a night out with someone else when i'd already asked them to go somewhere, rather than get spiteful/hurt and tell them not to bother with me at all, I say "look, I was really disappointed that you cancelled our plans. When are you free next? I'm feeling quite lonely and need a friend at the moment". Big difference.

 

Or, if you don't want anything to do with this person, if you can't see the person underneath the borderline, then end the friendship. There's nothing worse than having a 'friend' just waiting for an opportunity for you to **** up so that they can stop talking to you. It's not nice feeling that you're a charity case, someone who people hang out with out of pity.

[Feelin Frisky]

I have. I had a two-year relationship with an otherwise very desirable-looking and frankly, almost sexually ideal woman. I did not know her "complex" was BPD, just that it came out after a while that she had been seeing a psychotherapist and that she had gotten married at 23 and divorced at 25. In the early part of our relationship she made it sound like her ex just up and walked out on her and I thought, man, what kind of idiot must this guy have been. Then I was to find out that she was poison to get along with. And apparently this was known to the family because I saw a portrait her very talented artist brother painted of her as a teen and it totally reflected a troubled person--it was uncanny how he captured her, and put a great deal of painting and thought into each brush stroke.

 

I'm not an expert on the condition--in fact I don't recall looking into it much at all as to how it is defined. It IS however what I'd call what she had. He had no single consistent identity that would accept responsibility for shortfalls or errors but instead was a collection of personality fragments which I think was her way of evading facing anything. It is a dreadful thing to have to deal with if you are a logical person who yourself has the ethic to make sense out of everything and learn from one's mistakes so that they don't happen again. That logic being used against a force completely contrary is what drives the sane person to extremes of anger and frustration. It was impossible to "earn" trust or respect from her. Anything could trigger the appearance of one of these other fragments who all claimed complete innocence. This is was "split personality light". She didn't go all the way to multiple personalities, just fragments within the same personality who would keep changing the rules of decency, trust and affection to always make her faultless. I realized after it was over that there was never any hope in the first place and that I had been exposed to something that damn near destroyed me. It has made me wary ever since and I will bail when I see this kind of trait in someone (and it's more prevalent than you might think).

[Downtown]

OP, take a look at this thread, starting with Post #59 and subsequent. Poster Downtown provides some great perspective on borderline.

Carhill, thanks for the kind words about my posts in Record Producer's thread. Milly, you may also find my posts in the following threads helpful. Rebel's thread is at http://www.loveshack.org/forums/brea...ay#post3398735. Inigo's thread is at http://www.loveshack.org/forums/brea...ng#post2826453. And LoveSunk's thread is at http://www.loveshack.org/forums/brea...on#post3375418.

 

I agree with FreeStyle that BPDfamily.com provides excellent online resources that are targeted to the partners and spouses of BPDers. I also agree with Frisky that, when you are living with a BPDer, it feels like you are dealing with "split personality light" -- i.e., a person who is half way to having a multiple personality disorder. It's not that the BPDer is actually half way to having that disorder but, rather, that it feels that way when you are dealing with them.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Downtown

[MillyRad]

Thanks again for the info! I've been reading a book called "Stop Walking On Eggshells" by Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger. It focuses on how the people who live with those with BPD can modify their own behavior to better deal with those with BPD. It seems pretty compassionate, but also stresses the need to set firm boundaries with BPD folks. I feel a little bit encouraged that there's a name for what's happening and that I can start un-blaming myself for everything that's happened between my friend and I.

 

I'm not sure if my friend and I can ever be close again. I still feel afraid of him. Also, his girlfriend hates my guts. I feel uncomfortable when my friend talks to me because I know she wouldn't approve. I feel afraid that I'm being set up; that he's talking to me because it's a way to passive aggressively exert control over her. I don't know if that makes any sense, but at any rate, I feel unsafe when he tries to talk to me. I think I may lean a bit towards codependent, because I feel so terribly guilty to think that I'm abandoning someone for whom that's their greatest fear, but I also feel that I've been treated as an emotional garbage dump until a girlfriend landed into his life. As soon as she moved to town, I was conspicuously snubbed and excluded from socializing with them and her friends and I totally felt like a used Kleenex.

[freestyle]

Thanks again for the info! I've been reading a book called "Stop Walking On Eggshells" by Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger. It focuses on how the people who live with those with BPD can modify their own behavior to better deal with those with BPD. It seems pretty compassionate, but also stresses the need to set firm boundaries with BPD folks. I feel a little bit encouraged that there's a name for what's happening and that I can start un-blaming myself for everything that's happened between my friend and I.

 

I'm not sure if my friend and I can ever be close again. I still feel afraid of him. Also, his girlfriend hates my guts. I feel uncomfortable when my friend talks to me because I know she wouldn't approve. I feel afraid that I'm being set up; that he's talking to me because it's a way to passive aggressively exert control over her. I don't know if that makes any sense, but at any rate, I feel unsafe when he tries to talk to me. I think I may lean a bit towards codependent, because I feel so terribly guilty to think that I'm abandoning someone for whom that's their greatest fear, but I also feel that I've been treated as an emotional garbage dump until a girlfriend landed into his life. As soon as she moved to town, I was conspicuously snubbed and excluded from socializing with them and her friends and I totally felt like a used Kleenex.

 

I remember that story from your other thread---I'm inclined to believe he was deliberately triangulating you with his gf.Using you to make her jealous, insecure, possibly jumping through higher & higher hoops all the time to make sure she 'wins'.

 

It's not fair to either of you.

 

Incidentally--triangulation is a classic BPD tactic.

[Downtown]

I'm inclined to believe he was deliberately triangulating you with his gf.

Freestyle, thanks for the observation. Very insightful of you to spot what appears to be triangulation. Milly, on this issue, therapist Shari Schreiber offers a simple and rather poetic explanation of its appeal to BPDers:

There's an

old

saying within the psychological community; "A three legged table is more stable than a two legged one." It's tough to

maintain

healthy intimacy or relational stability with people who are personality disordered. Borderline and narcissistic individuals fear attachment/closeness; they may try to manage this concern with triangulation -- which means that a behavior, substance or another person is used to

distract

from any difficult feelings the primary relationship invokes.

For a more technical explanation (about a BPDer using triangulation to attract and then demonize one lover after another), I suggest the article by Humphreys and Eagan at Sanctuary for the Abused: Overcoming Triangulation in Love Relationships.

[freestyle]

I'd like to add, that taking the time to study Karpman's Drama Triangle could also be enlightening.

 

When you step back and observe the dynamics at work from a more neutral, detached vantage point,it makes sense. The roles will switch from Victim, to Rescuer, to Persecutor---often times in a cycle.

 

There are times, however---when one person remains in the Victim position, switching the other two parties back & forth between the Rescuer & Persecutor positions.

 

(it's in that situation that the Victim is actually more powerful than he/she professes to be-- )

Edited February 22, 2012 by freestyle