BPD and empathy...or the lack thereof

The last thing I need is more guilt.

For me, I am that monster. I'm so tired of trying to fit in when I thought as a human being that there is no wrong in being who you are. But when you lack those skills that were suppose to be there for you as a child and now you don't know/feel what is right or wrong, society treats you like your an outcast. Honestly, I use to feel empathy but now I feel nothing towards people. You can only be hurt so many times in your life until you realize the truth.

Honestly, when I first read Uprwestsdr's response, I didn't take it as hostile one bit. I just kind of read it as short and sweet and to the point. And honest. I know when I'm in a rage, the last think I feel is any kind of empathy for the person on the receiving end. I usually feel completely justified at that time and it isn't until much later that I feel any shame/guilt/or empathy.

Well, as I said, maybe the OP didn't mean it that way. I don't know. A case could be made on either side of the fence.

I don't think a lack of empathy during a rage episode is what's in question. There's likely not many people with BPD that would contest that rage + empathy = highly implausible. It's the capacity to be (or not) empathetic at other times... that's the ??.

I know for me I have to make an effort at all times to sympathetic and nice. I read a study that this can actually work parts of your brain and lead to being happier long term.

So while it might be initially forced it's like building muscle.

A bonus to forcing yourself to think of others, stops you wallowing about yourself temporarily which in the long run could be beneficial on a few different levels.

I'm trying anyhow

I'd also like to add that I don't think ANYONE who is in the heat of an argument with someone is feeling great empathy for the other person. It's the nature of the moment. Anger triggers feelings of righteousness, resentment, jealousy, and an urge to win in many people, not just people with BPD. I do believe their can be arguments where one person is not engaged with the irrational, angry part of their brain and he/she can be feeling empathy for the person who is losing it, but if both people are sitting in that wild, irrational part of their brain, emoting wildly, then I don't think either one is empathizing with the other person.

I do think that some individuals smolder longer than others before feeling empathy and guilt about what they said or did, and some people are never able to feel empathy or guilt or what was said or done. . . and that includes people with BPD and those who don't have the disorder. I think clumping all people with BPD into category of individuals who lack empathy is pretty simplistic. It is a very individual disorder and is demonstrated very differently in different people. Just my take on things.

all the time

It's not always the case that the "victim" has done nothing wrong. In context if you observe what's going on, the "victim" probably triggered the BPD person in some way which led to an unleashing of transference, displacement, or even projection. It may not seem like they've done anything, but in the BPD's mind, they have. And BPD's generally are highly interpersonally sensitive- actually, let me rephrase that- they are highly sensitive to rejection and abandonment, and tend to view others in terms of risks of rejection or abandonment. When you see the world with those lenses, anything from an offhand comment to displacing emotions onto the BPD because of something that happened earlier in your day... to the BPD, that equals rejection, abandonment, or the beginning of the end- the road that leads to abandonment or rejection. In other words, most people have thick skin while those with BPD often feel skinless. Anything they see, they can personalize and use it to not only process all the rage inside them from childhood, but to enact a retaliation they were unable to enact upon the significant figures who abandoned them.

Often comparisons are made to the neurodevelopment of adolescents. They, too, have difficulty accurately recognizing abandonment, rejection, and human emotion. They often take things personally and see threat where there is none. Very similar to the borderline's brain. And it's a normal human developmental course that allows the person to adapt to an unstable environment full of abandonment and rejection. One thing to recognize about personality disorders and personality formation in general is that if it exists, it is normal. A sociopathic brain develops in response to a sociopathic environment, and so on and so forth. It's a natural course of development given a certain temperament and the right environmental conditions. Look into the Romanian orphan studies, they are fascinating. This is the miracle of the human mind and body. They are adaptation machines.

In my experience, any sense of being "under attack" turns off the empathy department in the human brain. BPD's often see the world as against them and misunderstanding them. But in general, peoples' capacities for empathy fluctuate with the situation, so it's kind of limiting and black-white to say something so general as "BPD's lack empathy". They, like others, have empathy buttons that turn off when feeling like they are cornered. Your average person can see the present moment for what it is, and gauge whether or not it is worth it to retaliate or get defensive. Whereas with the BPD, the present is the past, and the past is the present. And the BPD feels the primal wound.

If you read any of Daniel Goleman's books- I'd suggest Social Intelligence- he goes into detail about the primal wound of abandonment. Evolutionarily speaking, humans were made to socialize and survive in small hunter-gatherer groups. Being left alone or "not a part of the group", in essence being rejected, activates high levels of cortisol and puts the person in survival mode because they need to be hypersensitive and vigilant. Being alone meant being prey for sabretooth tigers and the like, or being a victim to natural disaster. Fast forward to today, much of our behavior hasn't evolved. The pain of separation, rejection, abandonment, and betrayal all strike that nerve that sent the primitive human into survival mode. There's plenty of research on the effects of adoption on the child's personality development and emotional stability later in life. Borderlines and other people with severe abandonment issues have parts of their personalities arrested at the age in which they were abandoned. They learned to be highly defensive, very skeptical of others, and prone to lashing out and punishing those who abandon them. In many cases the wound is so big that they stretch small things such as microexpressions and off tones in the voice to full-on rejection and punish the person. In short, abandonment can make empathic capabilities difficult for anyone, and the borderline personality is an inevitable result of people with sensitive temperaments being abandoned during sensitive periods of neurodevelopment. Hope that adds some understanding.

If anyone is interested, there's plenty of research out there on the pruning process and neural plasticity. There are studies that show that people who have highly defensive personality traits and are in general disagreeable have less mirror neurons than others. Mirror neurons are the way by which people feel primal empathy, that gut feeling of being on the same page as the other (as opposed to cognitive empathy, which is mental calculus that places a person in another's position on an intellectual and non-emotional level). The less mirror neurons, the less empathic the person. The research on psychopathy and narcissism tends to argue that some people's mirror neurons were pruned in response to an environment that made them unnecessary or even dangerous to have. On an optimistic note, neural plasticity also holds that the brain is malleable well into old age. For instance, if you can learn to play guitar at 60, it follows that one can adopt new behaviors and manage emotions better regardless of age. Practice builds new neural connections and eventually this behavior set comes naturally. Fake it till you make it. That's the basis of DBT and other forms of therapy for the personality disordered. However, there are "sensitive periods"- early childhood, adolescence, early young adulthood- where the person engages in rapid neural development and pruning. That's why it's easier to learn a language at a young age. But it's not impossible, and yes personality disorders can lessen with time, responsibility, and new circumstances.

crosstobear - I, for one, don't know the definitions for all the terminology. Would you be willing to provide short situational examples of what each of the 3 things that I bolded in red are? It's easiest for me to grasp some of these things when I have a contextual reference for the definition. If it's not too much trouble - thanks!

Sure.

Let me iterate- these three mechanisms are extremely important for people with personality disorders or people who are in relationships with someone who has a personality disorder. And even if not, it's useful to know them. These play out on a regular basis in human interaction.

Projection is when an individual projects his or her own qualities, motivations, and intentions on another person. Often these qualities and motivations are negative. Actually a good example of projection happened to me last week. I phoned a liaison for my school's internship program and notified her that I found and interviewed at a place that I think would be really good as an internship. She went ballistic and yelled at me because I did this without her knowing. I tried verbal de-escalation and she just continued ranting, and in her rant she accused me of being aggressive with her on the phone. I had to breathe deeply, apologize for any misunderstanding, and state the fact that I did not yell at her or get aggressive. She projected her own feelings, actions, etc. onto me. Often projections serve as justifications. In that situation, she yelled at me, and justified it through projecting her own aggression onto me. It served as a justification for her continued yelling... all while I was just calmly trying to apologize and de-escalate things.

Displacement is when you dump how you feel on one person when it is meant for another. Usually the person it is meant for is unavailable or not present. Like, coming home at work from a rough day and treating your wife like ****. You really wish you can treat your colleague like that, but your wife is available. Or as is the case with many children who have been abused, they often end up torturing/abusing animals to unleash the hate they have for their abusers. I actually had a room mate in college who was an infamous Casanova. He was cheated on and dumped by his high-school sweetheart of several years, and he spent college bedding something like 50 women, telling them all this lovey-dovey romance novel **** and promising them the world, but dumping them like trash after they bought his BS. Displacement can occur at many levels. It's processing an emotion onto a substitute or effigy of the person that it was intended for.

Transference is when you unleash childhood emotions onto someone who you have some sort of relationship with. In therapy, often some clients will experience transference where they begin to feel and treat the therapist like a mother or father. If the person has issues with their parents, he often mirrors that in his relationship with the therapist. I knew a girl whose father abandoned her and she spent her whole life wrecking men emotionally, accusing them falsely, etc. just a bundle of drama. Essentially, you carry baggage and unresolved **** related to significant figures in your early childhood and you treat significant figures in your life right now based on that childhood baggage. What comes first, chicken or egg? Who knows. I think that in some cases an individual may gravitate toward people who share characteristics of their parents who they then re-enact childhood trauma and dynamics with. If the parents were abusive and or neglectful it can get really ugly.

Great explanations. I'd also add that again, these are things everyone does occasionally, but doing them to the point where you make youself miserable is what makes it a "disorder."

"...the type of empathy the study was referring to was not emotional empathy but cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand what someone else is thinking. This is entirely different from emotional empathy, which is understanding what someone is feeling..."

From tumblr. We can't tell what we're feeling very well a lot of the time. But we are EXTREMELY good at knowing what others are feeling. This is due to detecting their micro-expressions, due to being hyper-vigilant. A lot of people with BPD had abusive childhoods and they had to be on high alert at all times.

I tend to lack empathy, but I have narcissistic and antisocial features so that's probably why. Most other borderlines I know tend to be almost too empathetic if anything...

Totally totally agree with this. This is exactly how it is for me. I am super empathetic in my personal life and empathizing is part of my job. I have told my boyfriend that I think part of why people with emotional sensitivity/BPD empathize so much is that our feelings are so overwhelming we want to protect others from having to feel those huge things. It took me a long time to realize that I feel things so much more intensely than others. That being said, when my abandonment fears or feeling disrespected/neglected kick in I have zero empathy for the person I feel is upsetting me. It's like a switch that gets flipped.

Another sister! Where have you been hiding??

LOL, just been trying to make it through the day/week/year/life! I'm glad I found this place though, posting has been helping me a lot.

Welcome to the forums, there's a lot of support here.

I mostly feel for people too ****ing much

Grrr makes me think of an "ineffective" T IRL

(Haven't read all this thread yet, thanks for posting)

I think these questions can be difficult to answer sometimes because
1. people are different, disordered or not
2. traits and the level of intensity of those traits can be different
3. co morbid disorders can be different
4. I think we also have the ability to detach from our emotions when compared to other personality disorders.

I believe all of those play a factor in our empathy or lack of. This is a good question because I've wondered about the sincerity of our empathy. What's sincere and at what point does that sincerity cross the line into manipulation. I think empathy is sincere when there is no expectation of reciprocation. When we cross that fine line and reciprocation is expected then there's a component of it which is manipulative. I'm not saying genuine empathy doesn't exist in those situations, but I am saying it's not all genuine.

I think this is an area where projection can come into play and that's when we begin to project our values, which are probably dysfunctional leading us to be oversensitive, onto someone else ie. we showed them empathy therefore it's common sense they should show us empathy in return. When our thought process should be, we showed them empathy and there is no expectation in return.

I'm very detached and don't like to feel or express emotions with the exception of anger/hostility. When people are in distress or in need of empathy it makes me uncomfortable because all I'm giving them are words which would be applicable to the situation. I'm basically lying to them because I'm just giving them words with no real emotion attached to them.

Thank you for the links!

I'm not sure they show that people with BPD lack empathy but they certainly show that empathy in someone with BPD looks different / acts differently than in someone without the disorder. Two of the studies looked at different aspects of empathy (cognitive versus emotional) so I don't think it's a clear cut thing.

Sent from my mobile device using Tapatalk.

Certianly not "clear cut" at all. I have BPD, PTSD, GAD & possible but not diagnosed Attatch Disorder; with all that, one would think I lack empathy (if I did, I wouldnt do my job as well as I do) but its the opposite; not only do I have the complete ability to put myself in other's shoes (what empathy is...instead of sympathy) but I also care WAY more for others than I do myself; to my determent and generally end up a doormat and easy to manupulate for those that pick up on the fact that I will drop everything and help someone or feel bad enough for someone to let them completely run over me. Thats happened time amd time again and only now at the age of 35 (in April) learning how to set boundries so that I am not a doormat whom will go to the end of the earth for someone no matter how much it hurts me.

And being in the BPD area of the forum, I see time and time again BPDers having very passoniate empathy for others hurting here.

Therefore my BPD has no effect on my empathy at all, nor have I seen that here from anyone else.

It's the same with me. I've always been easily manipulated by people because I care too much. I was even once coerced into doing things I didn't really want to do by an ex of mine, all because he tried convincing me that he really loved me and needed me again in his life, even though he'd dumped me a year before that and told everyone I was crazy. I didn't end up dating him again in the end, so he got really angry at me and started saying "but you're mature now! why couldn't you have been mature when we dated?" and I was made to feel bad as a result. Even though I knew I had done the right thing in denying his last request, I felt really awful because I knew he had a really hard life and was going through so many things, so the thought kept appearing in my head "Just be with him again. He needs you. He's told you so many times how much he needs you." Ugh.