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Originally Posted by waiting4
People with BPD don't 'just not care', not feel, or pretend it never happened.......if anything we FEEL TOO MUCH and NEVER forget anything...we will be okay with something and then 2 days later it comes back up to hurt us all over again. There are rapid cyclers (I'm one, and experience the whole cornucopia of emotions hourly) and others who may have days of being 'okay' or depressed, or manic (our version of happy) just before we crash again. This happens for most of us, all day long.
BPD's have been called manipulative but this is a shallow exercise in what we really are because we don't set out to manipulate anyone. If we are hurt, by a slight that most non's would find understandable, we may panic--certain the person who has hurt us will leave us--then we crash and burn...to some nons that is manipulative because their reaction (for the most part, until they get sick of us) is to support, nurture...ensure and endure our perceived tantrums and tears. But we all KNOW they will eventually get sick of us. Everyone does, you see. There are so many relationships we lost just because we held on too much, clung like pathetic burrs on the ankles of those we loved so passionately and were terrified of losing. We are our own worst enemy. But we love intensely, we hurt intensely, and we don't butcher souls...other than perhaps our own.
What you describe sounds much more like either a narcissist or someone with anti-social personality disorder. Both are experts at manipulation, hurt without looking back at 'wreckage', care little if you are in their lives or not, and are perfectly willing to 'suck you back in' at a moments opportunity.
So while I totally understand your question...I wonder if the diagnosis of your mother is correct. Because from what I know (and I'm 55 this year, and had a NPD mother), this is NOT the actions of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder.
I hope this helps, and I"m sorry to hear about how much pain your mother put your thru growing up. If she is really what I think she is, I can relate completely.
Take care  |
Your assessment could be spot on. I have tried several times to get her to seek treatment (in writing - I'm too terrified of her to discuss it face to face) and she responds by telling people how her 'crazy' daughter thinks she's the one who needs help. Either that, or she simply ignores it all together.
10 years ago when I first went into therapy, a couple of sessions into it, my therapist handed me a book called "Understanding the Borderline Mother". The descriptions of the 'fairy tale' types were so uncomfortably familiar, especially the witch, and to some extent, the queen. For the first time I felt validated and had a
word for a pattern of behaviour I had been struggling to understand my whole life.
Since there has never been a formal diagnosis of BPD, I am certainly willing to consider other possibilities. That being said, I have had extensive sessions with two therapists and three psychiatrists (not all at once, obviously) who all told me she probably had BPD, so that's what I went with since I can't ask her ANYTHING without her going off on me.
Thank you so much for your input waiting4.