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I have to thread the needle very carefully on this -- this is obviously very bad and dangerous behavior that endangers other people, sometimes severely. It's very bad, to the point of profound evil.
But I also can't help but feel a real sadness in my heart for people whose internal life is so utterly dichotomous and disintegrated that anything resembling this appears like appropriate behavior for them. I can't imagine the internal anguish this must reflect. That's really what distinguishes BPD from APD: psychopaths will hurt and manipulate you to get what they want from you, and feel nothing, while borderlines will hurt and manipulate you as a part of hurting and manipulating themselves, and feel everything.
It doesn't make their behavior and the damage they do any more justifiable, but I just imagine borderlines as bundles of suffering so radiant in their suffering that the rest of the world gets sucked into their black hole of anguish, a kind of anti-divinity. It's no wonder people are so attracted to what is essentially a dark god! The pervasive feeling of being around a borderline is much like being around a prophet -- everything is extreme, the world is transcendent, and wrong is evil. If you are appreciated by them, you're given a rare gift, a precious pearl of great price. (This is the male equivalent to the "I can fix the abusive husband" meme.) I never dated one, though I certainly wanted to date at least a few before I realized their deep flaws, and for that I am grateful.
Extreme behavior often summons extreme adoration and affiliation, even if temporary, which is almost certainly the evopsych explanation for the existence of all the cluster B personality syndromes (psychopathy, narcissism, histrionic, and borderline). Crucially, the cluster A and C syndromes... are rather less adaptive even at subclinical levels, since they universally include behaviors that actively turn people away even without a "turn" (and avoidant PD sufferers, for instance, believe no one could ever like them, while schizoids don't really like anyone).
I guess what I'm saying is... remember that every extreme behavior has some sort of function, in moderation, and that people with extreme problems like this aren't ontologically different from the rest of us, even if, tragically, the only thing that can often be done for them is to keep them from harming others. My point is to demonstrate the reason why these traits persist and have attraction, while not endorsing the exaggeration as the truth. This is how people are made to feel -- in other words, those around a borderline sufferer are drawn into the cycle of intensity and delusion as much as the individual is. And so both sides are understandable, but in the way that a plane crash is "understandable."
Yeah, I have to agree with the general sentiment that you have the essence of BPD there. My own mental shorthand has been that BPD really epitomizes the proverbial lead role in a cage, but I really like the way you've described it! I'm convinced that my mother is high-functioning BPD and radiant suffering has been my mother's MO for as long as I can remember. And the pearl of great price... also yes. Jeff Foxworthy's old quip, "when mom ain't happy, ain't nobody happy," hit home for my entire family and on the other side, when mom was pleased with us and willing to show it, it was sunshine. The distortions that I've internalized from my childhood are still so prevalent that I still struggle with them frequently. I mean, except for all of these crazy off-the-chain examples mom wasn't that bad! But when I really step back and think about that a little more deeply, I realize that it's really just that mom was usually able to escape or at least mitigate the consequences of her actions.
And FWIW, yeah, I've been drawn to a certain level of intensity in my own relationships as well. While I haven't been attracted to BPD women per se, I'm pretty sure all of my serious partners have had BPD mothers, up to and including my MIL.
The rebrand of BPD as emotional dysregulation syndrome or something similar does a lot of work in capturing the much of the practical matter of the illness.
I think a lot of people also miss that most people with APD aren't true sociopaths and are also rendered miserable by the illness (especially later in life).
...and both seem to be mostly caused by a combination of genetics, trauma, and other shit you aren't in control of.
Man I miss free will.
Yeah, I completely agree, although I think that the "borderline" aspect of BPD conveys important information, namely that the sufferer's emotional distortions can be indistinguishable from psychosis.
And on the genetic front in particular, the evidence from my n=1 family is damn sobering. Maternal grandmother? Check. Maternal aunt that share's my mother's father? Also check. Sister? Check? Her first daughter? Also check. That's 66% of the daughters from mom's immediate family, with the non-BPD aunt having a different father, and 50% of my sister's daughters, with the younger one also having a different father. And none of the men in my immediate family have fathered a daughter.
You aren't wrong but I don't think anybody really knows this these days except for die hard psychodynamicisists and I can't even spell that.
Wish people knew that though, same for "mood swings are not manic episodes." Every fucking doctor needs to know that one.
In any case my understanding of the state of the research is that it is a two hit situation - you mostly need the genetic predisposition AND the environmental stimulus. However as I suspect you know from past convos - cluster-b coping mechanisms from cultural heritage or family dynamics aren't necessarily the true disorder.
Again, I agree on all counts! I actually didn't know that borderline referred to borderline psychosis either, in fact. Initially, I took it to mean that BPD meant that the individual didn't have much of a personality of their own and adapted the personality of their friends a la Single White Female because that was my sister's behavior. And not only do I agree that there's waaaaaaaaaaay too much equivalence between mood swings and bipolar in general, I'd also add that I've heard people at work say that they deliberately diagnosed a BPD client with bipolar to get them access to services that they would otherwise be ineligible to receive because personality disorder.
On the final front, I can't help but wonder if the environmental chaos that surrounds the BPD individual plus the individual genetics just make it that much easier for BPD to emerge from the witches' brew of the home. I know, for instance, that my mother would often go back to her ur-trauma of losing her father at a tender young age, compounded by her mother quickly marrying another man to re-make the family, and I do ultimately believe that there's a lot of truth there in her specific case. Likewise, when my sister and I were young (she would have been 4), mom was in a serious car accident and almost died, so that or perhaps going through with a planned move to another state on the heels of that could have done it for her. Regardless, I can only speculate.
I've actually heard it described two very similar but subtly different ways - the "borderline between psychosis and neurosis" (as in pathology in those gaps) and as "borderline level of functioning" in contrast to psychotic or neurotic level of functioning (hardcore psychodynamics). I don't know which is more true, but the clinical pearl is the same for both - experiences (including negative self-talk) can become so overwhelming they approach the character of delusion and hallucination, but of course the actual effect on the substrate and underlining biology is radically different.
Still, it is a great teaching point lol.
It's useful you point out the "didn't have much personality of their own" because that is a significant feature in the severe cases - you can see them simply not have have preferences or wants in the way a normal and healthy person does.
A tip I've seen good physician diagnosticians lean into is simply "how long do your mood swings last" if they aren't in the 5-7 day range it's unlikely to be Bipolar (I, anyway). Another good rule of thumb is that if you don't have an inpatient stay (and likely an involuntary one at that) then you probably haven't had a manic episode.
But yes diagnosis for purpose of insurance coverage and other things like that does happen.
I'm not an expert on this but I think it's often driven by attachment dynamics - mother/daughter and mother/son relationship are fundamental different as are male patterns of reality and independence exploration.
I do know some thing you can rule of thumb it as APD=male BPD= female with that being the majority of the cases, but I've noticed plenty of men who are really just BPD instead of APD.
Less so the other way around.
The borderline between neurosis and psychosis is the one that I learned and I personally think it's a better fit overall, though "borderline functioning" does fit a lot of BPDs as well. Thinking about it a little more, most of the higher functioning BPDs that I know of have/had some outside support that contributed to their stability, though the drama in their lives was also more manageable and lower stakes as well. Either way, I suspect there are always the go-to delusions that are close at hand, and that level of functioning probably correlates pretty closely to the BPD's level of investment/preoccupation with their personal delusions. Similarly, IME the higher functioning BPDs seem to have more of a core personality, although even in the higher-functioning BPDs that I've known, I have seen them take radical departures from their default personas, which can be pretty wild when a middle-aged person comes off like a teenager that started hanging out with a different crowd!
As for attachment dynamics, that makes a lot of sense, although I would also say that basic gender and hormonal differences play a large part there; I flirted with Behavioralism as a teenager (as one does) but time, newer research, and personal experience have all led me to firmly disbelieve that humans are little blank slates at birth. Sorry, Skinner! And yeah, I also think that there is a significant subset of men that are BPD and misdiagnosed for various reasons, one of which seems blindingly obvious to me, but only on the BPD side. APDs, almost all male, for sure.
Sometimes I get so frustrated with clinicians, just because this dude is male and violent does not mean APD, listen to the rest of the situation yo.
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One of which?
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As someone with a mother who most likely suffers from BPD (Mercifully, she's been pensioned off on VA disability and has embraced the "disabled veteran" identity in middle age, so she's mostly not my problem now.), I think you more or less nailed it. It's hard to describe, but if mom loved you, you were invincible. If she hated you, you were an enemy combatant to be destroyed. If someone else you loved was the object of her ire your only recourse was to stay out of the way.
It's an amusing instead of awful story (There were plenty of those.), but to give an example when I was seven years old right after my parents had divorced my father took me mud riding in his SUV. As a little boy into all things motorized of course I had fun mud riding with dad, but when I came home and expressed that I'd had fun mother took it to mean that I loved dad more than her, and so she kicked me out of her house, threw every belonging of mine out of onto the front yard, called my dad, and told him that he could have me. Of course, it couldn't be that easy. After dad showed up and dutifully packed all my stuff into his car mom changed her mind and there was a fight. Mom won, I stayed with her, and I'll never watching my clothes sway in his his back window as he fishtailed making the turn away from her house. My parents' post divorce "co-parenting" wound up being a 15 year War of the Roses.
I'm not sure it's entirely possible to come out of that experience without a mis calibrated emotional Richter scale. I find myself drawn to emotional intensity and struggle with finding women who don't have that to be...boring (The trick is to find someone who has an intense affect, but is otherwise relatively sane.). I have a sufficiently developed fear response that the actually violent borderline types (Mom was one, but they're a minority relative to the unfixable dysfunctional black holes.) will make me run quickly, but those who are skilled at eliciting care/pity have been a sore spot in my life. I'd be lying if I said with certainty that I wouldn't ruin my life for the right combination of hot/smart/crazy. Being on the right side of it is that good.
Yeah...that's accurate, and yes it's tragic. My last encounter was very brief (about six weeks), a roommate gone wrong. Her life's story was something akin to Jenny from Forrest Gump, sexually abused by father turned sex worker in her teens/twenties turned to drugs/alcohol to being hopelessly burned out by her mid-30s, interested only in drinking herself to death. There's "self-diagnosed on Tumblr", "diagnosed by a mental health professional but working on it", and "would never dare face a mental health professional but gives me all the heebie-jeebies", and she was firmly in the third category. I had the sense to nuke things quickly and got out of it unscathed, but I still think about her sometimes and hope that she found someone whose variety of codependency can deal with her, because she deserves better than what she's gotten/given herself from life. I just couldn't do it without being dragged down into her Hell, and as intoxicating as her affection was it wasn't worth it (could've been hot enough if she took better care of herself, wasn't smart enough to be interesting).
This is called splitting and is one of the main coping mechanisms associated with the illness.
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It's me.
And yeah, they also have to be smart and, to some degree, self aware.
Unfortunately them merely being aware that they're being unreasonable isn't enough to convince them to STOP being unreasonable.
The smart ones tend to be able to create unique coping mechanisms that work until they have a particularly bad episode and then all collapse at once.
At which point they usually shut down all connections in life, job, friends, living situation, move somewhere new and start over to try again "fresh."
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