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Borderline personality disorder: a spurious condition?

journals.sagepub.com

71–80 of 99 posts

Re: Borderline personality disorder: a spurious condition?

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She may have something more, she isnt honest with anyone including therapists so its certainly possible. However, you kinda have to be there but she didn't arrive at owning the town all at once but a series of escalations over years. It all started a few years after we moved in. She started claiming the property line was further back and I corrected her. Unable to admit she was wrong she started going off on me, I le…

That is bad. But again: From the people I know, from the papers I read (yes really), from the videos I watched, it does not sound like BPD to me. BPD-afflicted people are terrified to be abandoned, for one thing. Why would someone who lives that way actively antagonize the people around them? Yes, the emotional feedback loop if not broken out of can make people with untreated BPD show strong emotional reactions (ange…

Did you experience BPD as a romantic partner? It's quite different than being a friend or relative. I can't really do it justice and its a bit long but this talk changed my life (I don't say that lightly and he's fairly entertaining as a speaker): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s1t4CZMUqak&t=55s&pp=ygUtdGhlI...

It answers the antagonize question specifically it's just too much to type out for me now.

To butcher it, they feel great anxiety that you are going to leave and test that assumption by acting out. When you don't leave after they act out, they feel comfortable for a time until the cycle begins anew.

Re: Borderline personality disorder: a spurious condition?

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> filial piety Interesting addition, and not one that a lot of people who had shitty childhoods would say is appropriate to include.

Some of us who had shitty childhoods would agree that filial piety and nurturing caregivers are good things even though we had neither.

Not that not it's not nice to have, but in the particular context of the thread it was presented as a component of how to define what constitutes a functional person. Filial piety, owing respect ones parents, strikes me as quite different from things like being able to clothe and feed oneself, bathe regularly, and do productive work.

Do you think that's a reasonable expectation for everyone?

Re: Borderline personality disorder: a spurious condition?

#73
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting addition Only interesting in ~ 2023. Was a standard addition for millenia...

Yeah, and the idea that you need to have a relationship with and/or respect your parents purely because they produced you has been bad for people for millennia. Getting away from abusive people (if indeed that is the situation with one's parents) is a good thing, and pressure to have such a relationship despite the harm to oneself is a bad thing.

>has been bad for people for millennia

I don't know, it's not like we have some successful high ground as a society...

Re: Borderline personality disorder: a spurious condition?

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has it. You can go on BPD support message boards and read my experience over and over again written by other people. The stories they tell are all nearly identical to one's I've experienced personally. It's shocking how similar the behaviors are between people who have BPD.

It can be fixed, if the person is willing to.

Mind if I ask you if you've got experience in this regard? It's a horrible situation to deal with for family members so I'd love to know how to escape the pain we all feel.

Re: Borderline personality disorder: a spurious condition?

#75
post #24

My mom is BPD, she is a text book case. And I have been in therapy for almost a decade because of her emotional abuse. As many others have said, this paper is definitely beyond absurd.

The paper isn't saying that there isn't a constellation of "symptoms" that the term "BPD" describes, only that there isn't a common "BPD" factor underlying those attributes that can't be better attributed to some combination of better-established, more scientifically-validated disorders. It's not denying your lived experience, it's only challenging the root cause of that experience.

With that in mind, what's "absurd" about the paper? Can you be specific? Did you follow the cites, and find them absurd as well?

Re: Borderline personality disorder: a spurious condition?

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is bad. But again: From the people I know, from the papers I read (yes really), from the videos I watched, it does not sound like BPD to me. BPD-afflicted people are terrified to be abandoned, for one thing. Why would someone who lives that way actively antagonize the people around them? Yes, the emotional feedback loop if not broken out of can make people with untreated BPD show strong emotional reactions (ange…

Did you experience BPD as a romantic partner? It's quite different than being a friend or relative. I can't really do it justice and its a bit long but this talk changed my life (I don't say that lightly and he's fairly entertaining as a speaker): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s1t4CZMUqak&t=55s&pp=ygUtdGhlI... It answers the antagonize question specifically it's just too much to type out for me now. To butcher it, th…

> Did you experience BPD as a romantic partner?

Yes. (We broke it off, but for reasons entirely unrelated to BPD. We're still friends. It's not my only experience with BPD.)

> To butcher it, they feel great anxiety that you are going to leave and test that assumption by acting out. When you don't leave after they act out, they feel comfortable for a time until the cycle begins anew.

I agree. Believe me, I am actually very familiar with that. But your storyline still does not fit. Imagining a shifted property line is way more than that, and claiming that she owns the town is straight delusional.

In all the "testing of the assumption that I am going to leave/abandon" them that I underwent, never did anyone come close to spending six months to "prove" a delusional claim. It was all highly emotional spur of the moment stuff. No lies or actual counterfactual realities involved.

Going back to the article you linked, that actually all rings very true to me. But it does not mention either lying, or delusional and counterfactual beliefs at all. If that was a common symptom, why would the article not list it, especially given what a bad symptom it is?

Especially because, for example, the articles on narcissistic or histrionic personality do mention it pretty clearly?

I'm not sure why this is so important to you. You obviously have to deal with someone who has a personality disorder. It's a lot to deal with. Why does it have to be BPD, specifically? Or why can't it be BPD and something else on top of it?

Re: Borderline personality disorder: a spurious condition?

#77
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be fixed, if the person is willing to.

Mind if I ask you if you've got experience in this regard? It's a horrible situation to deal with for family members so I'd love to know how to escape the pain we all feel.

Yes, I have strong experience with that. You can look at my other comments in the thread for a bit more insight, but I'd also gladly help answering any other questions, as much as I can from own my experiences of course.

Note though that the people that were successfully treated (so it seems to me) were willing to be treated. They realized themselves that their emotional response appears different. A large part of it, as I understand it, is to recognize when the emotional feedback loops kick in, and break out of them before it becomes overwhelming, but this requires some introspective capability.

I'm basically trying to say: If a family member absolutely sees nothing wrong with their emotions and behavior, it might be hard.

The people I know that did "recover" (or at least seem to manage very well) realized themselves that their BPD needed to be dealt with. You say "I'd love to know how to escape the pain we all feel" as a family member, but know that for the affected person, it is hell as well. I don't think anybody likes spiraling themselves into overwhelming rage or feelings of abandonment for no good reason.

Re: Borderline personality disorder: a spurious condition?

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am familiar with the symptoms. I still think you deal with an actual narcissist, not with someone with BPD. The symptoms may have some overlap, but it's different. For example, where in that article do you see that people with BPD can be so straight up delusional that they think they "own the town"? Notice that the words "lie" or "lying" do not even appear in the article. In my experience, presenting a BPD-afflicte…

She may have something more, she isnt honest with anyone including therapists so its certainly possible. However, you kinda have to be there but she didn't arrive at owning the town all at once but a series of escalations over years. It all started a few years after we moved in. She started claiming the property line was further back and I corrected her. Unable to admit she was wrong she started going off on me, I le…

> She may have something more, she isnt honest with anyone including therapists so its certainly possible.

That, by the way, sticks out to me a lot. Read the article you linked, and see if you find anything that matches that. Then look at histrionic and narcissistic disorders instead, and see if it matches that.

Re: Borderline personality disorder: a spurious condition?

#79
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say a bit more about the headspace

My wife has it, mainly she is unable to conceptualize that she is wrong and thus never learns from experience. For example she started a lawsuit against the neighbors, that she funnels tens of thousands of dollars toward because she thought the property line was further into their yard than it actually is. She recently told me we own the entire town and made some nonsensical statements to justify that belief. I'm goi…

Omega oof.

Did she develop it the minute after you put it in, or was it a "I can fix her/deal with this" sort of scenario?

Re: Borderline personality disorder: a spurious condition?

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has it, mainly she is unable to conceptualize that she is wrong and thus never learns from experience. For example she started a lawsuit against the neighbors, that she funnels tens of thousands of dollars toward because she thought the property line was further into their yard than it actually is. She recently told me we own the entire town and made some nonsensical statements to justify that belief. I'm goi…

Omega oof. Did she develop it the minute after you put it in, or was it a "I can fix her/deal with this" sort of scenario?

We both were pretty messed up when we met, I got better, so did she somewhat but she didn't keep up.
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