[direkat]

So I started seeing a new therapist yesterday...

When describing my childhood to her she said it sounded like my mother was borderline, and I told her I always thought of her as narcissistic, she said the two overlap quite a bit which I do know is true, but then when I said I thought I have BPD she said that people with BPD are not going to seek treatment? That they're unlikely to admit anything is wrong with them? But I thought that was NPD? Or what? Am I completely confused here?

And anyway I DIDN'T get professional help for about 12 years of being 'sick' and then I came for being depressed, not because I thought there was something 'wrong' with ME (although it's pretty apparent now lol)

I guess I really just want to know if I really do have BPD and it's hard to figure it out because I do have Bi-Polar and I know those two can be pretty related... but just....

What's the difference between BPD and NPD?

Do people with BPD seek treatment?

Is my therapist way off the mark here? Am I?

I just want to make the most out of my mental health care so any insight you guys have would be appreciated

[TishaBuv]

I’ve done a few years now of obsessive reading about psychology and other’s posts on here, trying to learn for myself about exactly what you seek. I’ve seen people post here who say they have sought treatment and were diagnosed with either BPD or NPD.

My mother sounds like she has NPD and is histrionic. She would NEVER go to therapy, and would not say there is anything wrong with her. She never turns her anger in toward herself, which I think is a trait of BPD. I do turn it all in toward myself. I did go seeking any therapy that might help me, but none did.

[direkat]

Thank you! That's a good difference I've noticed. For the most part, everything, to me, is my fault, and when it comes to my mom she just blames everyone else for all her problems.

She's almost 60 years old now, and is just now saying to dad "is there something wrong with me? I seem to make everyone angry" which is mind-blowing to me.

[TishaBuv]

Mind blowing that she finally sees that she is making people angry?

My mom is 83 now, and her narcissist ways became worse with age. She won’t call anybody in the family any more, we have to call her, because she says ‘when she calls she just gets into fights with us’— see, not her fault, but ours. And her making everyone only call her because she won’t call us is just her manipulation.

[TishaBuv]

My theory is a narcissistic parent breeds a borderline child.

[direkat]

Originally Posted by TishaBuv

My theory is a narcissistic parent breeds a borderline child.

I like that theory. I mean it sucks but it makes sense lol And yes, mind-blowing that she would ever say that she makes other people angry. Then again, my father is the one that told me about it so he may have been 'translating' it and making it sound better lol but the "is there something wrong with me?" mind-blowing. Again, all from my father, so who knows what she actually said. He was baffled by it as well, though.

[TishaBuv]

Why did you think you have BPD?

I am also the one who posed that to the therapist, not the other way around.

[direkat]

Idk I just have severe abandonment issues, a lot of unhealthy attachment issues, I overshare almost immediately and I practically fall in 'love' with everyone new if they seem 'cool' like if I think i'll like them I just absolutely LOVE them, even platonically, and then if something happens that they prove themselves human the entire illusion is shattered and I think one of two things, depending on what the action was, either I think well they clearly weren't what I thought they were and I stop 'worshipping' them, or if the action hurts me in any way I immediately think it was on purpose and go into "THIS IS AN ABUSER ABORT ABORT HIDE RUNAWAY" mode.

It's really exhausting tbh lol I've worked on it a lot even without therapy, remade some friendships that I had cutoff because they were 'toxic friendships' when really the other person was just being human and I expected them to be perfect, and they've turned out to be really valuable friendships. I just have to constantly remind myself that people are only people, and yes they can hurt you and yes they can help you, but there are no heroes and villains, there is just people.

Like I feel a bit as if my brain is a child's storybook, and there are heroes and there are villains and there are victims (such as myself, and others I see that are like me) and there is no one else. There is nothing else.

IDK if that makes sense, but all of my symptoms, I can't really separate which comes from which, but I'm diagnosed PTSD (likely cPTSD) and 'unspecified bipolar' (pretty sure it's type 1 but I could be wrong)

So like... overlapping symptoms etc etc, wouldn't surprise me if I have all three but I certainly have symptoms of all three and some that seem like they belong to one rather than the other for each one, if that makes sense? But I'm no professional.

[PsychoPhil]

I suspect my mom is a mix of narcissist and borderline. She would get inexplicable fits of rage, and then insist to be spoken to respectfully, because she as our mom was so special. Rarely was anything her fault, and to present date, she now turns 80, she says the issue was me being such an uncooperative and difficult child.

I am not properly diagnosed, but all my symptoms point to BPD, so yea, I probably would have been difficult.

My mom claims to not remember the numerous times she beat me, especially not the more severe incidents, she recalls my brother's last lunch as harmonious, when he hanged himself it wasn't anyone's fault but just an accident, and she learnt little from it.

So one would think I should have had a clear idea in my twenties of having mental health issues, coming from such a dysfunctional background, but I didn't. I saw a therapist in my 30s for being depressed, and the whole mess didn't come apparent to me until 2 years ago.

Strange are the ways the BPD mind

[direkat]

Oh man tell me about it, I have literally said things that happened in the past and my mom said 'oh I didn't do that' but the really disturbing thing is, the only repressed memory I've ever had,

Possible trigger:

the one where she swatted me repeatedly on the back of the thighs with the metal end of a flyswatter until red welts came up because I ate a bunch of Flintstone Vitamins, she tells that story almost with pride it seems like, she says 'oh i didn't want to' or whatever but she tells it to everyone and how she got investigated because of it but of course we didn't get taken away because she wasn't an abusive mom she just hit me 'a little too hard' UGH

I DIGRESS, yeah I didn't get mental health help until like 3 weeks before my 28th birthday and I'm 29 now, so it's not been long, I just thought I was a ****** person, didn't think I was sick really, kind of wouldn't admit to myself I had been abused, despite the fact that

Possible trigger:

my brother used to leave marks on me and put his hand down my pants.

So yeah, really weird mind lol

[TishaBuv]

Yes, you both have gone through some traumatic stuff!

My mother also refused to admit scenes happened where she was out of control. She’s just verbally abusive, mostly. There was an epic scene in an airport recently. She just won’t admit it happened. Lol

In fact, now she’s saying she gets into a rage and has venom spewing from her mouth that she doesn’t mean. But, she only fesses up to that because she’s so obviously out of control, she can’t deny it. She has no remorse for it. She says, “I’m a screamer”, and she’s just fine with that. She says her recipients deserve it.

Plus— she even called me stupid for turning my anger on to myself, and that I should let it out to others like she does. She’s much smarter than me and I am stupid.

[ChickenNoodleSoup]

Uh, I have been diagnosed with BPD, while in treatment, and still am in treatment. It's certainly not generally true that they all do not seek treatment. I think there is somewhat of a spectrum. There's people on one end who can deal with a lot of stuff still, can try to better themselves and so on. And then there's the other end with people who won't seek treatment anymore and are generally worse off.

[PsychoPhil]

Originally Posted by TishaBuv

Yes, you both have gone through some traumatic stuff!

My mother also refused to admit scenes happened where she was out of control. She’s just verbally abusive, mostly. There was an epic scene in an airport recently. She just won’t admit it happened. Lol

In fact, now she’s saying she gets into a rage and has venom spewing from her mouth that she doesn’t mean. But, she only fesses up to that because she’s so obviously out of control, she can’t deny it. She has no remorse for it. She says, “I’m a screamer”, and she’s just fine with that. She says her recipients deserve it.

Plus— she even called me stupid for turning my anger on to myself, and that I should let it out to others like she does. She’s much smarter than me and I am stupid.

I can relate to your mom issues LOL. Mine denies the problem just as if she perceives her outbursts as normal, though she is extremely sensitive to disrespect on the receiving end. But that's just on the surface, she knows what she does is wrong.

During one dinner I asked if she didn't already splash out enough venom and expected her to announce I'd be beaten for that afterwards, since I was seated outside her direct reach. To my big surprise there was no such escalation this once and she even slowed down a bit, because what I said was so undeniably true. Or was it that my brother had started self-harming and she was staring like a rabbit at the snake?

I think my borderline mom's denials were an attempt to retain authority in spite of her inappropriate, erratic, disrespectful, in various ways abusive episodes. The claim of intellectual superiority falls into that bracket. She only does what's best, you are just to dumb to realise. A particularly destructive variation of "I hate you - don't leave me!"