Other Depression & Anxiety Related Illneses > Personality Disorders

BPD resources

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captainkeefy:
My Wife can't except anything I tell her. She adds her own spin on everything using her emotions as apposed to logic. She says I was very aggressive when we first met although from my point of view it was more of a case of me not backing down from her aggressive behaviour. Eventually I stopped arguing back and just started being quiet and more passive aggressive towards her temper. Both these behaviours of mine she sees as me trying to manipulate her. What she can't seem to do is see that I might have be responsible for my behaviour but that's it, I'm not responsible for hers and she doesn't even realise her behaviour was half of the situation. Communication with her is almost impossible if its something that causes an emotional response, it's like poking a stick in a wasps nest. She also sees my recent depression as a form of manipulation, but doesn't take into consideration that I have been put into C.B.T. In front of a psychiatrist and also been put into a specialist PD service. I've probably got all these specialists fooled in her eyes (but not her!) I found my moods are completely different since I stopped accepting responsibility for her emotions and moods and also her dramas. I think I re phrasing what I posted in my last post. I think it would be more constructive to say that I think I see behaviours in my wife that a professional might see as Traits of BPD. I don't think it's fair to use such a sweeping statement really.

I do think that we learn a lot of behaviours from our parents, we mirror them. I think this is why people with BPD mirror others in life because they never built a whole 'self' in childhood this creates the existential vacuum or 'chronic emptiness' that fuels BPD. I think a lot of BPD is about filling that vacuum. D.B.T. Developed for Borderlines is about learning new behaviours, I'd love to develope another type of therapy if I where in a position too. I'd like to teach borderlines to forget about conformism and or totalitarianism and develop the whole 'self'. First off what is that persons meaning in life? What drives them? Then teach them to validate themselves from this. I think this could help with black and white thinking too. I think this would be like teaching a person to re-parent their inner child.

I'm glad that you have found my posts useful. I have also found your posts useful too, this section has been really good for me to explore myself and seek my own validation.

Catbrian:
I love your analogy, “poking a stick in a wasps nest”, that’s excellent.  Sometimes those closest to us are the least sympathetic.  When that happens to be with a partner, sometimes there can be an emotional cloud looming over their sympathy.  I also think, by what you say, Mrs Capt definitely has her own baggage.

I do agree that chronic emptiness could lead to mirroring other people.  This was especially true in my younger days.  Although, I would still say, I always feel like an actor in a play; never fully being myself because that self isn’t completely developed yet.  A particular quote on the MIND website on PD, which rings very true for me, “I feel like a child trying to live in an adult’s world”. 

It’s interesting what you say about learning new behaviours through something like DBT.  My problem with this is that it feels a bit like masking over the problem.  Yes, of course, we might adopt the new behaviours, but the chronic emptiness etc. must still be there.  So, I would generally agree on the need to go back to square one and develop the child within by filling the emptiness.  Although I’m not sure that filling that emptiness is the key to “overcoming” BPD

captainkeefy:
That's basically what I was saying. Develop the inner child, fill the internal emptiness with a long term meaning and then learn the behaviours. I see this as kind of like, instead of plastering over the cracks, going back to the bare brick, repointing the wall 'core beliefs' then putting new fresh and stronger plaster over the bricks 'values' and 'boundaries'

You could start your first session by saying 'when your old and looking back at your life, you'd like to say. "I over came BPD and achieved.....' First add meaning to why they are in therapy, then start the journey inwards.

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