BPD vs Fragile NPD case studies.

Deef

Excerpts from newsletter by Imi Lo, a specialist w/ BPD and also likely in the same spectrum, she combines both western and eastern philosophies.

https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/bpdparent/

THE TRAUMA OF HAVING A PARENT WITH BPD (BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER)

Having a parent with BPD can bring unspeakably painful trauma; Because of their immaturity and instability, they may stop you from separating from them, suppress your emotional expressions, and hamper your development and growth. However, having a parent with BPD does not mean you are destined to the same fate. You absolutely have the strengths and freedom now to free yourself from the cage of control and engulfment, and to reclaim freedom and health.

Does your parent often have exaggerated emotional responses? Could minor incidents set off disproportionate reactions like angry outbursts?

Have you been consciously or unconsciously ‘trained’ from a young age to tip-toe around your parents, or to mind-read what they are thinking, to not provoke an emotional spiral?

Do you feel that your parents vilify you for seeking autonomy? Either explicitly or in a roundabout way, do they make you feel guilty for having to leave home or having an opinion of your own?

Do they often think in black-or-white terms? For example, when something negative happens, do they either blame you and make you the enemy, or they create a scenario where it is ‘you-and-me-against-the-world’?

Have you always had to suppress or hide your thoughts and emotions for the fear of upsetting your parent? Do they always shut down the expression of authentic feelings? Were you ever allowed to be angry, upset, or disappointed at them?

Does your parent appear charming and loving on the outside, and portray a social image that is drastically different from what you see at home?

To have things happen their way, do they use desperate and threatening behaviors such as violence, escalating a tantrum, threatening to hurt or kill themselves?

Do they let irresponsible and reckless, seemingly impulsive behaviors take the place of responsible parenting? Some examples may be excessive drinking, overspending, substance abuse, reckless driving.

…
When you have a parent with BPD, the foundational structure that is required for healthy development is destabilized. Your parent’s hyper-reactivity, rage, and mood swings made focusing on your growth as a young person impossible. Often, the turbulent and imbalanced relationship with your parent continues to affect you well into adulthood.
…
To summarise, having a BPD Parent puts you at risk for the following types of negative behavior/ thinking patterns as an adult. Here are some possible consequences:

You have difficulty trusting other people.

You are drawn to abusive or highly critical people as partners as the pattern feels familiar to you

You are prone to becoming locked in co-dependent relationships

Or, on the flip side, you are highly phobic of dependency of any kind and would rather isolate yourself

You view life as unpredictable and chaotic; you are always waiting for the next disaster to hit and cannot relax.

You are physically hyper-vigilant; your nervous system is always on high alert. You are extremely sensitive to loud noises and sudden changes in the environment.

You often feel depressed and hopeless about life

You always put other people’s needs over your own, and feel unable to be assertive or voice your wants and needs

You feel defective and unlovable on the inside; even when you don’t show it, you always assumed you will be abandoned or let down in the end.

You are crippled by self-doubt and unable to meet your full potential at work.

You are confused about what you want in life, have an unclear career path or vision of the future.

You tend to self-sabotage— when fortune comes to you you immediately feel panicked or guilty, and will therefore unconsciously push them away. This may also manifest as chronic procrastination of important tasks or self-neglect.

A PARENT WITH BPD – FREEING YOURSELF AND RECLAIM YOUR LIFE

Whether or not your parent with BPD is seeking help for their mental health, you can choose to move on from the past and seek a more fulfilling life.

Although we cannot go back in time and change the past, you can still gift yourself with a future of love, authenticity, and freedom. Despite what you may have heard from your parent repeatedly, you are not responsible for their moods and reactions, their disappointments in life, or any grievances they have with their relationships. In contrast to the normative cultural value, you do not owe your parents and it is not your job to satisfy their needs. It should never have been your task to try and heal them, rescue them, or save them from their misery.

The journey of healing could be summed up by these messages:

I did not cause any of these.

I could not have controlled what happened.

I cannot cure their mental illness

It was not my fault that they are dissatisfied.

I am not responsible for their lives

They can survive without me

I do not owe them anything.

Fryek

Ugh… that is depressing how much of that resonates Parent with BPD… most of it.

Deef

Pulling this from a recent journal entry

Teal Swan is a good example of the wounded healer/light worker trap, that possibly many BPD’s fall into quite easily. As they do tend to be artistic, creative, and energy/spirit sensitive.
1m13s

for example the shadow side of my career is that

I’m doing this to stay safe

because for an extrasensory who’s walking through the world
watching every bypass and watching the discrepancy
between what’s authentic about a person and what they actually show you
that’s terrifying it’s basically the whole world becomes a wolf in sheep’s clothing
the more that I can wake people up the safer I am

almost my whole career is motivated by that terror

so it’s not like I look at the shadow side to say
okay I should quit my job today because it’s really just coming from me of trying to stay safe
or I have to somehow make that go away, so that I’m only here because of this reason
it’s that,
in all moments, I have to be aware of where I am relative to the person I’m sitting in front of,
see if I’m sitting in front of them, like, I have to say, if I have to stay safe I have to stay safe,
if that’s there, I have to become aware of it otherwise it’s going to take over
and then the way that I help people is going to be interesting at best.

this ‘have to stay safe’ part that’s going to take over, that is already in control.
She’s helping others driven by her personal agenda, which gets in the way of healing, and she knows this,
likely has done it multiple times, and still can’t help it. Because she’s being a fucking parasite on her clients.

Kudos to her for being aware that she’s driven by this terror of social safety (fear of abandonment reframe?).

But she still feeds off the role of being a healer (with the personal agenda to wake others up so she can feel safer), and really glossed over how she probably viciously abuses and traumatizes people when they trigger her ‘incessant need to be safe’, and to ‘control dominant narrative’.

Deef

A recent wondering about dealing with BPD vs NPD… Being non-reactive/gray-rock might be counter-productive or seen as an escalation with a BPD? while it works with NPD because they’re blind without reactions & starve without supply, so they move onto other sources.

But with BPDs, too much non-reaction might trigger their abandonment terror…

The challenge is that BPDs are great a button pushing, or getting a reaction out of others.
1m21s

If you respond with no reaction, then that might knock them too much off balance. It might be seen as an invitation or challenge to look for more buttons? Or they could trigger others around you, then you’re out numbered.

But doing the opposite of just reacting, or countering isn’t gonna work either. Or reacting to every single ostentatious display of vulnerability definitely isn’t gonna work, as then they’re pulling your emotional strings with all the hidden emotional threats.

20s

I’m leaning towards some sort of smoke screen type fake/distorted reaction, to offer some cover, redirect them, or dissipate the trigger attempt…. but that also feels like it can be an excessive energy expenditure… I suppose it’s close to a variation of Agree & Amplify…

Still a theory in progress…. I think I’m getting worn down with recent BPD explorations or merges. or possibly I’m having delayed reaction to deep dives in Feb.

Deef

Modern society is becoming more BPD, and this is a good example of the mood that’s in the air, and festering on social media.

1m14s

cancellation baby that’s what keeps me going

every time i see somebody get cancelled it make me feel good
social movements
i post this infographic, let’s not change the climate, it makes such a big difference

keep posting, keep shaming –> that’s what we all need to do more

keep shaming each other into submission = make the world a better place

Deef Being non-reactive/gray-rock might be counter-productive or seen as an escalation with a BPD?

Okay… I temporarily forgot that narcissists tactics are guilt and blame. While Borderlines are playing in shame bomb, shame spiral and everyone drowns type of territory.

So it’s not about a particular reaction, it’s more the mood and who’s got the spotlight. So in principle you have to throw shade on their spotlight, along with wrestling the spotlight away from them onto you or someone else. And that new spotlight can be on your own humanity (I prefer the I suck, sad baby stone wall) or you could amplify the other direction of how amazing someone else is, or how horrible someone else is. But redirect to other’s might be trickier, redirect to self centered wallowing, that’s easier.

That’s 1-on-1 dynamic, in a group that’s trickier, as they’re playing the whole crowd. Just have to get a few people triggered and chaos starts, then in Claudia’s example, she just dismisses, judges and shuts down any attempts at rationality or reasonableness.

Also these tactics are just to sour the supply, and get them to disengage on their own accord. And they still might do it abruptly with an parting insult. But you save time and limit your exposure.

The other side of whether you can get cooperation or insight from a BPD who’s motive is to dump or evoke shame. That’s harder to gauge. Can they be reasonable? Can they be sincere? They can be flipped into rescue mode if you can act out their shame better than they are feeling. But that’s not really productive either.

This power high isn’t from ego domination & control play that’s more Narcissistic, it’s more about shaming other’s into submission, exile, silence, darkness, etc. But maybe with a more altruistic healing the world type of cover story?

While maybe Narcissist tries to play parent role, vs BPD plays chaotic God role or society enforcer??

Still need to parse out the differences a bit more… but the principle difference of guilt tactics vs shame warfare, that feels like a good accurate distinction. But shame warfare is a fucking mess, and that’s even with my Chinese ‘saving face’ and ‘shame awareness’ skills.

Deef

The uptick of youtube exposure has given me the lovely opportunity for new BPD merges… oh what joy…. NOT…

But I can turn shit into fertilizer.. and I sense I’m getting close to a flowchart/roadmap for a common formula for BPD interactions, attacks, or the shame chicken game they play.

Some earlier observations:

Deef Borderlines are playing in shame bomb, shame spiral and everyone drowns type of territory.

Deef Emotional terrorism might be like shame bomb (despair/suicide/breakdown) chicken. If you cave to the ODV (Ostentatious Displays of Vulnerability) shame threat, then you lose.

So the primary guts of engagement is shame & chaotic.. vs narcissistic style is guilt, blame and very linear.

How’s it start?? how do they get an opening?? What’s the attention hook??

Expose humanity and vulnerability dump with mindfuck of both
a. suffocated invisible unseen
b. over-exposed hyper-visible (naked flashing exhibitionist flair)

Can’t help but pay attention when someone flashes you with their emotional raw nakedness…
But also can’t help but want to fucking breathe and have some of your own space, when another person is crowding you, suffocating your story, and totally running over your psyche…

This is amazing attention hook combo…. what’s a defense against this 1-2 combo???

Deef The challenge is that BPDs are great at button pushing, or getting a reaction out of others.
If you respond with no reaction, then that might knock them too much off balance. It might be seen as an invitation or challenge to look for more buttons?

I don’t have a good counter roadmap just yet, currently still mapping the territory…

But the guts of it, would be to hit them where it hurts… emotional intensity & abandonment.. that will knock them off balance.. but it will also invite chaos & escalation in the short term.

So here’s the 4 layers of a common formula of their attacks…

Shock & Surprise
a. Psychologically suffocate the other until they’re triggered to react or leave
Sow Doubt & Confusion
a. Play Dumb & Innocent (cover) while sowing doubt & confusion through emotional contagion & dumping
b. Make ignorance plea due to own blind spot,
“I genuinely didn’t realize you were drowning in my presence, and that I had my hands around your neck suffocating the life from your body.”
Guilt (Moral high ground posturing) - Aggressive Decency
a. Fixate on other’s trigger & over-reaction then pivot to moral high ground.
b. Claim & make a reasonableness plea (mask for judgment & hatred for your interruption & wanting to grasp for air)
Evoke Shame & dump (suicide/despair, abandonment/exile)
a. Competitive Victimhood - pivot to Victim Plea
b. Ostentatious Display of Vulnerability, signaling of suicide,despair & abandonment
c. Steal & hog the spotlight with Woe as Me pity story (long over-writing monologue of life of loserdom and horrific endless victim)

(masked agenda) to bait you, get you chasing them and to keep you in the game.
“Don’t leave me, I need you… (I’ll make you stay by terrorizing you and sharing hate, judgment and shame onto you.)”

Deef the borderline is primarily concerned with destroying the object through aggressive decency

BPD is interested in feeding off your non-being… your psychological space, emotional containment, sense of self… possibly feeding off your spirit & life force? It’s much different than narcissistic supply, that’s more about attention and a power play…. BPD wants to steal your spirit? soul? life experience?

Not fond of going down the demonizing path for them.. but it’s hard not to do some of this after a fresh BPD emotional merge… I want to purge them out of my mindspace,..
so it takes some aggressive hostility, to counter their fake aggressive decency..

Apologies for the savagery and harsh judgments… I have weak language skills and suck at the aggressive decency game.. I’m taking the side of shared humanity.

Onnaloves

Deef guilt tactics vs shame warfare, that feels like a good accurate distinction. But shame warfare is a fucking mess, and that’s even with my Chinese ‘saving face’ and ‘shame awareness’ skills.

Lol lol lol amazingly my mother was diffused with anything that was superstition. So when I told her that I had ““the freaky” within me, she didn’t know how to handle that. The freaky is neither emotional nor push pull nor logical. It’s just what I used to enable my mothers sympathy and compassion - that I have no control other than to give into my inner freak. It was neither malevolent, nor challenging, but to her because she felt that I was possessed… she became diffused. And this makes me chuckle quietly inside. Because she listened to superfuckingstition.

Deef

What do you y’all think? Is this quite an accurate over-acting of BPD relationship dynamics? Except they wouldn’t be so explicit and obvious in their demands. Instead it usually is just a gradual escalation. The threats switched to joking niceness is also a common tactic of playing extremes. Cute graphics of the ‘Titty Bomb!’ one she gets called out! lol

5m30s

Emotional terrorism might be like shame bomb (despair/suicide/breakdown) chicken. If you cave to the ODV (Ostentatious Displays of Vulnerability) shame threat, then you lose.

Though… superstition might be an effective counter against a BPD, as they do tend to be more into astrology and other divination/new-age/spirits etc type of world. I’d have to figure out how to reframe some law of attraction type stuff to block and counter their ODV jabs.

Deef

Got this newsletter from Imi Lo’s Eggshell Therapy. This was a nice reminder of theory that primary issue of unresolved trauma and attachment disorder is anxiety. Bowen theory and ACT also have similar assumptions.
Anxiety can be simplified as anticipatory fear, and that cognitive anticipation co-opts the threat detection survival instincts to the point that defenses get in the way of present moment and future living.

Below are excerpts of Imi’s Interview with Dr Jon Frederickson - founder of ISTDP (Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy)

preview clip

5m29s

podcast link & full transcript
https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/podcast-blog/2021/04/02/jonf-2/

Excerpts from transcript -

Jon: Freud was quite active, which is very interesting. And actually two of the members of his early circle came up with an active form of brief therapy, Otto Rank and Sandor Ferenczi. But over time, people adopted a very passive approach and actually misunderstood some of Freud’s ideas. Freud said the patient just had to say what comes to mind. But 1923, he said, “That actually doesn’t work. People can’t keep talking about something that’s troubling. If something’s troubling, they’re going to shift to some other topic.

So we actually have to help him with the defenses that keep them from speaking freely. But people didn’t really quite understand. Freud said and thought, “Well, if we just sit back and let people talk, the magic will happen.” But as many of your listeners know, just sitting and talking while this therapist listens passively, doesn’t always lead to magic.

Imi: No, actually, it can create a lot of anxiety and distress and drop out

Imi: Yeah. I mean, I’ve always loved that dynamic way of thinking. But then the blank screen approach and the authoritarian stance were what I’ve always had issues with.

Jon: Absolutely. We really have no right to ask people to do anything they don’t want to do. We have no right to ask them look at feelings they don’t want to look at. We have no right to take a role of authority our therapist knows best. We always need to find out what the patient wants to work on, what is their will, because the therapy really has to be driven by the patient’s will. Oftentimes, the issue of the patient’s will really gets ignored.

I’d add that will isn’t ego defense driven, or by the false self, super ego. Will is from inner drives, deeper motivations, self-ownership, etc.

… So really making sure that the patient is in the driver’s seat.

Jon: Yeah, because you could even just say, “Yeah, but if I’m in the driver’s seat, you would just get better being a passenger in life.” And then you wouldn’t be the driver of your life.

And then we could just say, “I wonder if something feels risky about saying what you want for yourself in a relationship.” And then say, “I think it does feel risky.” And then we’re on our way.
So in that way, even a problem like an answer like I don’t know isn’t really a problem, it’s an opening. “Oh, this is where you need help.”

This is a softening resistance technique and trying to evoke motivation, get them to join in some ownership.

Jon: So we forget that actually the child uses defenses not only to deal with its own feelings, the child initially uses defenses to protect the parent from feeling that would dis-regulate the parent.

Jon: So in that sense like every defense is actually the child’s act of love.
How much of my feelings do I need to hide so you could love me.
If I turn my anger on myself, can you love me now?
If I send the feelings out of myself and I empty myself, can you accept the absence that’s left?

It’s like, “Oh, you can’t deal with who I am, so how much of me do you need me to remove so you could deal with the false self that’s left.”

ANXIETY MANIFESTATION

Jon: Do you think most therapists neglect to underestimate the role of anxiety?

Imi: Yes, absolutely. Because they really only see it in this diagnostic manner that you suffer from anxiety. But actually it’s present.

Jon: It’s very present. A lot of therapists have great misunderstandings of anxiety. They’ll think that someone says, “I worry a lot.” Well, that would be a thought. So they think of anxieties purely a thought that someone worries a lot or I’m anxious. They’ll hear the thought, but anxiety is actually a biological discharge pattern in the body, and it’s caused by the central nervous system. So if if therapists don’t know how to look at the body and pay attention to the symptoms, they actually won’t be able to assess anxiety adequately.

And here’s a way to think about it. When the baby is is struggling with a parent and is being abused, it’s feeling anger, but it’s feeling anger toward a parent it loves. It’s struggling with mixed feelings and those mixed feelings are triggering tremendous anxiety.

So what happens when our anxiety gets too high due to these mixed feelings, the mind has to split the feelings apart. Then when it splits them apart, then whatever feeling they can’t tolerate inside, they’ll project outside. So oftentimes the patient can’t tolerate their anger inside, they’ll be afraid that someone outside them is angry with them.

Jon: So in projection, when I have an urge in myself that I can’t tolerate myself, I’ll attribute it to someone else. So I might say, “Oh, no. I’m not angry with my boyfriend. I’m afraid he’s angry with me.” It’s not that I want to talk about my problems. I can just see you, my therapist are wanting me to talk about stuff I’m not comfortable talking about.
So when there’s an urge inside that I can’t tolerate inside, I’ll project it outside.
So I might project that you’re angry or a psychotic person will project that they think the government is angry with them.

Imi: Yeah. That’s what you meant by people interacting with a projection rather than a real person.

Similar to Vaknin’s snapshot, working with an object of other, projecting personal stuff externally.

In projective identification, I’ll act with you in such a way that you actually start to feel angry with me.
So I’ll actually get you to feel something that’s congruent with this projection I attribute to you.

This is projection + higher skill of emotional contagion or dumping.

They have these anxiety problems then they start to split and then they start to dissociate.
So the thing is if you can assess their anxiety a little earlier,
you can keep working with them before they dissociate.
Or if it’s secondary dissociate like they’re back against the wall.

This is a nice framing… starts with anxiety, then splitting (projection/transference), then dissociation/freeze/checkout.
Therefore try to stay with anxiety and splitting. And eventhough a person might appear calm on the outside while their auto-pilot defense mechanism or super-ego kicks in, that self-soothing mechanism is often dissociation, as AI program takes over.

Countering that super-ego AI defense, keeps people in their trigger (anxiety & splitting) - is closer to the affect and self.

But on the surface it looks like more anxiety, fear, and triggering, vs calm of cover-up defenses.

Jon: It has to be done relationally because in a way you’re regulating anxiety, your inviting feelings toward you. You’re constantly letting the patient know you don’t have to protect me from your emotions.

So the patient actually has to experience that they can share forbidden thoughts and feelings with you,
and you will still stay regulated and you won’t ask them to put some thought or feeling away to regulate you.

DEMANDING INNER PARENT

Jon: They won’t be brave enough, but the defenses they’ve used to protect their parents from criticism will come up. Perhaps, they’ll even go to self-attack to protect you from this criticism in which case then you can help them with that.

Imi: Which is what they have done all their lives with their parents. “It’s my fault. It’s me. It’s not you. It’s me that I’m too much, I’m too emotional. My parents have done a fine job.”

Jon: So could this be a critical thought and could that critical thought be making you depressed? Could that critical thought be unfair to you?
So I wonder could we look underneath those critical thoughts and see what feelings are coming up here toward me.
Because my concern is that when you go to these critical thoughts, it’s the way you’re hurting yourself in our relationship.
And naturally, I’m concerned about anything you would do here that would hurt yourself in our relationship.
So could we see what feelings are coming up here with me that would make you hurt yourself this way in our relationship?

Jon: Of course, you’re making indirectly a comment about how they learn to hurt themselves in order to maintain a relationship with a parent. And protect a parent from anger by going to self-blame.

More working with resistance, reframing with concern and lack of attack, along with an invitation and asking permission.

TEMEPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES WITH YOUR PARENTS

Jon: That’s right. And I think a lot of times therapists aren’t taught about the role of temperament, the role of neurocognitive deficits. Here’s another kind of important fact within people who have a borderline personality disorder, a significant percentage have had brain injury. Brain injury will affect all kinds of brain function.

Jon: This is something most people don’t talk about and the role of head injury. When we talk about borderline of course, I think about it from a psychological point of view, but I’m also thinking about temperament. And like we talk about our emails, it’s not just the temperament of the child. If you have a parent who understands the temperament of the child, it’s not a problem, but if you have a parent who really hates a particular temperament, it’s going to be a mess.

If you have a child that’s very shy and if parents are giving the child a hard time, that child is going to really suffer rather than just, “No, she’s shy. She’ll always be shy, but she’ll be able to have a very rich internal life. So on and so forth.”

COUNTERDEPENDENCY AND FANTASY OF OMNIPOTENCE

Jon: Farm our food, the fisherman to fish our fish. Yes, farmer to bring apples, right? So we live in a web of interdependency. There’s no way to avoid that. But when people have had an experience of depending where it led to pain, then oftentimes some people will choose the solution, “Well, I just won’t depend on anything on anyone.” So then in a sense they’re afraid of a future apocalypse, so they try to store up all this food. What they fail to realize is that the trauma they fear in the future already happened in the past.

Jon: People who are preparing for future trauma are displacing into the future, the trauma they already had. They’re trying to prepare for trauma, but it’s too late. The trauma actually already happened. So oftentimes with patients, we have to help them see where the real trauma was so we can help them deal with that, so that the rest of their life doesn’t have to be based on this displacement of trauma throughout life.

Jon: Of course, if we can’t tolerate depending on another, then there’s the wish that we could just depend on ourselves and no one else, which means that I would be omnipotent. The British psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein had a funny way to put it. She says every child suckles on a breast that you’ve got that person who thinks he actually is the breast, so he can suckle on himself, right?

Jon: the only way someone can get loosened up from denial

is it to be reminded of reality that conflicts with their denial.

Jon: my most recent book, Co-Creating Safety really talks a lot about
how to work with fragile people, how to regulate anxiety, because in a way for the fragile patient, they have to feel safe in the body as a first step.

Then you have to deactivate any misperceptions (projections) of the therapist so that the patient can feel safe with you. And then from that safety, then you can go ahead and do the work of therapy.

Imi: Personally, I’ve really learned a lot. I felt like I was getting good supervision and there were points especially when you said the thing about how the thing you dread the most has already happened. I personally struggle with quite a lot of anxiety fantasy like that might happen, that might happen and that really gives me a good perspective on, “Hang on, actually, that may relate to something I’ve already experienced.”

Jon: Exactly. It’s so easy for us to misuse our powers of imagination for the purpose of self-torture. It’s so easy to do.

Anxiety could be framed as imagination gone wrong, and wasted mis-used imagination for ‘self torture’.
Then to to resolve that excess imagination is to bring it to reality and consciousness.

Somehow the hidden beliefs and imaginations have to be ‘triggered’ or brought up into consciousness one way or another, but other people’s reactions have to be different than the expected past scenario, often vastly different and people’s consciousness has to stay in this unfamiliar new response, to sorta break the strength of that past delusion.

Deef

This is a fascinating framing by Vaknin.
Narcissist is obsessed with Being, while a Borderline is obsessed with NOT Being.

2m34s

he wants to be because he does not exist because he is a void because he is deep space
because throughout his life especially his childhood
he was told that he can be loved only conditionally only if he performs he didn’t form and he was not allowed to separate from the parent he was not allowed to become an individual, separation individuation so there’s no one there so

he wants to be, he’s obsessed with being

and he wants to be so much that he like a vampire subsumes, consumes, extracts, sucks upon other people’s being
he takes away their being, that’s what’s so special about narcissistic abuse
it’s in the abuse of of the victims being, not some aspect.
and so narcissists want to be they are preoccupied with it.
with
borderlines on the other hand their preoccupation is to not be
they’re experts at disappearing, experts vanishing physically mentally
they commit suicide 11 percent of borderlines end up committing suicide
they dissociate a lot forgetting deleting repressing ignoring discontinuity

borderlines are very concerned with not being

i mean they hate themselves they are so so fed up and disgusted with who they are
they just want to not be
so they for example become alcoholics or drug users or engage in practices which negate boundaries breach boundaries

when they come together they trade
the narcissist helps the borderline to not be
how? he ignores her he rejects her he abuses her violating her boundaries
he helps her to not be he doesn’t love her in the proper sense of the world
he abandons her he goes away he helps her to not be

and the borderline helps the narcissists to be
how? by mortifying him
this is the deal they strike –>

i will cause you pain you will love me

Okay.. I can grasp how a Narcissist feeds off other’s being…
I sorta can see how Borderlines feed off other’s NOT being (emptiness)? Or maybe they feed off other’s psychological space, containment, boundaries. That’s the other side of the urge to merge, enmesh, fall into shared fantasy.

So what do codependents feed off of, what are they obsessed over??? Maybe will power? Codependents feed off other’s will? They’re always fixing other’s conflict, impulses, unfiltered emotional expression, etc. Their personal will is often exhausted, so rescuing and fixing others, creates feelings of agency, and maybe it’s feeding off other’s will?

48s

Onnaloves

Ummmmmm I just discovered this:
11m26s

To “qualify” as an inverted narcissist, you must CRAVE to be in a relationship with a narcissist, regardless of any abuse inflicted on you by him/her.
You must ACTIVELY seek relationships with narcissists and ONLY with narcissists, no matter what your (bitter and traumatic) past experience has been. You must feel EMPTY and UNHAPPY in relationships with ANY OTHER kind of person.
Only then, and if you satisfy the other diagnostic criteria of a Dependent Personality Disorder, can you be safely labelled an “inverted narcissist”.

this is me. Perfect fit. Like weirdly perfect fit. I’m not even going to deny I have always been attracted to NPD, but they have to be super smart. I’m not in the least surprised or defensive about any of this.

Onnaloves

Deef Not fond of going down the demonizing path for them.. but it’s hard not to do some of this after a fresh BPD emotional merge… I want to purge them out of my mindspace,..

I get this all the time on my channels. It was overwhelming on my last YouTube channel that got shut down. I can’t tell you the relief I felt, but now it’s starting all over again, so I must use different tactics and I haven’t figured out how not to be an asshole about it - because it’s really draining.

so I feel stung but I shouldn’t be - because I put myself out there, but the intent was mispercieved by their projection. So I have to be more explicit somehow about my intent. Which is hard because I hate them at the same time as need them. Ugh. Can’t find a solution yet

Deef

I rewatched parts of the video and I see that Skaparixplorer was distorting, sorta straw man, red herring, switching sandbox… or his/her flashbacks & projections were getting mixed up with the video..

Deef

Let me try to break down the embedded assumptions and attention re-directions within the comment….

Masterful writing and very tight…. BPD like? Is there going to be any personal responsibility for emotional self regulation in here? or consideration of other perspectives??

Alright I have written and erased a comment several times now

Starting off with personal labor toil, embedded message that implies sincerity? or that it’s very personal to him/her? a ODV Ostentatious Display of Vulnerability????? Because he/she could have just shared the comment without this disclosure of personal effort…

So in that case…. this might be a virtue signal.. Look at me.. I’m writing a comment, with extra care and concern, as I’m advertising that I’ve spent a lot of energy and effort into it…

cause I also don’t want to be rude and I have enjoyed much of this conversation.

Aggressive decency??? (more BPD clues)
and generally when someone starts off with.. I don’t want to … it’s often setup with exactly that message…
I might start doing that, whenever I want to be an asshole, I’ll just start off with a disclaimer.. I don’t want to be an asshole… then I can mind fuck it worse, with an empty compliment after…

Actually… that’s a setup… oh fuck.. that’s good…
Don’t want to be rude, sorta feels like he/she wants to be polite… then add on empty compliment of I’ve enjoyed much of the conversation… BUT the much is a conditional subjective, it leaves it up in the air, what portions are much… and creates an attention hook on the lesser portions that he/she didn’t enjoy….

masterful aggressive decency… looks very decent on the surface.. but very aggressively packed language mastery…

But Damn host,

This is the redirect, attention getter… increase of judgment… and a bit of surprise, I don’t even remember the start or know what the next flow is…

In less than 2 lines, I’m disoriented.. lots of effort was put into this comment, masked polite offer to show fake trust and genuine message, then BAM!!! a But Damn, redirect…. some surprise is coming… and I have no idea what’s next…

Oh… there’s also the excess personal vulnerability disclosures, which sorta sets me up to be responsible for his/her feelings, or at least partially to blame for the energy and effort to write a comment for the video…

So perfect time.. for guess what??? Injunctions & judgments

please work on the level of respect you give to the members of your group,
it’s at times unbearable.

even better, vague target…. very shame inducing…. like when I tried to get Claudia B to specifically state what her complaints were about my facilitation… and she dodged, then indirectly said something like host is responsible for group’s triggers… and then I tried to pin down all the members triggers, and she dodged too…

So… Work on.. level of respect?? wtf does that exactly mean??
Apparently it’s just a shaming statement, of you’re not good enough… and you fucking figure it out…
and if you come back to me, I’ll make it a moving target, that is impossible to reach or know…

So.. with the vague shaming comment.. that opens up curiosity on my part… well.. how exactly?
so he/she delivers with next step…. a list of gripes

Speaking over people,

sound effects,

dismissing what people share or

even putting it down (people’s sharing).

Is this a list of unbearables to who exactly and to what extent?? I’m guessing him/her personally, and then there’s a fuzzy global part… that everyone must also find it the same way??

ohh…. mind fuck… he/she’s doing the same thing to me, that’s being pointed out…. speaking over (BPD overwriting) my perspective or any others, and writing a very clever masked shaming attack, erasing my version of events… and dismissing my sharing, and actively putting it down….

truly amazing…. this video must have really triggered this person… and really bad…

Then he/she jumps to this next line… feels a bit disruptive, but it is part of the context… so it implies that he/she did watch to at least the challenge sparring time…. oh.. opps.. the description says there was a sparring section.. maybe he/she didn’t watch much of the video?

Talk about sparring,
you definitely had me feeling like
I wanted to punch you
(figuratively of course).

This is really cleverly written… Opens with a bridge… sparring… then switches to her feelings (ostentatious display of vulnerability)… then surprise link to violence (aggressive decency)… and the figuratively part, is just being an asshole.. why even bother with that… is that the decency sugar bullshit part?

Ya got some things to work on brother.

Another shaming, but back to super vague… ‘some things’?? is that implying that I’m so fucking broken? but using some as an opposite statement?? can you really deliver vocal tone via written text??? wow… that is fucking amazing…

But you offered interesting points as well,

Opposite flip…. mind fuck… which one is true?? this one, or the prior one…. what can I grasp on??
both are fucking vague…

perfect setup for another judgment or injunction??

perhaps just

This is another great opener for an insult… creates a feeling of simple and easy.. but then follow with some impossible thing… sends a message that the receiver is a fucking idiot for sucking at not being able to do something that’s ‘just’ so simple for most people..

learn how to

also listen,

be respectful and

be more fluid with others,

why put also in front of listen?? ohhhh… it’s tone… implies that don’t listen, or suck at listening.. or busy talking… or busy like him/her giving injunctions onto others?? (god fucking damn BPD emotional contagion and projection, dumping his/her problems onto me with total confidence… damn they’re good at this!)

respectful is a repeat from earlier…. more fluid with others… that’s a bit vague?? and more is a subjective qualifier… more fuzzy injunctions…

Then… look at this amazing close… one word..

humility.

is this a judgment and a pointer in one?? implies that I’m not that.. that’s the judgment…
and then it sorta feels like arguing for high ground… virtue signaling on his/her part??

But that’s a good sharp closing… win the high road, and abandon with a harsh judgment..
perfect…
…..

OK.. let’s go back to my prior roadmap of elements of BPD attacks

Deef
So here’s the 4 layers of a common formula of their attacks…

Shock & Surprise
a. Psychologically suffocate the other until they’re triggered to react or leave

Sow Doubt & Confusion
a. Play Dumb & Innocent (cover) while sowing doubt & confusion through emotional contagion & dumping
b. Make ignorance plea due to own blind spot,
“I genuinely didn’t realize you were drowning in my presence, and that I had my hands around your neck suffocating the life from your body.”

Guilt (Moral high ground posturing) - Aggressive Decency
a. Fixate on other’s trigger & over-reaction then pivot to moral high ground.
b. Claim & make a reasonableness plea (mask for judgment & hatred for your interruption & wanting to grasp for air)

Evoke Shame & dump (suicide/despair, abandonment/exile)
a. Competitive Victimhood - pivot to Victim Plea
b. Ostentatious Display of Vulnerability, signaling of suicide,despair & abandonment
c. Steal & hog the spotlight with Woe as Me pity story (long over-writing monologue of life of loserdom and horrific endless victim)

(masked agenda) to bait you, get you chasing them and to keep you in the game.

Was I surprised and shocked… yes… his/her snapshot was dramatically different than my memory of the experience, eliciting shock and surprise..
Was doubt and confusion sowed… yes… I doubted my memories and performance.. and also confused at what happened, along with what he/she is trying to say with the intentional vagueness and fuzzyness…
Was guilt triggered with moral high ground posturing?? Yes… blalme was all on me… and he/she played moral high ground and virtue signaling, saving and caring for poor pitiful loser victims out there…
Was shame evoked?? yes… lots of ODV… he/she was victim, along with group members who he/she was being spokesperson for…. and he/she hogged the spotlight not with person pity story, but enough with argument of ‘feeling like I wanted to punch you’..

Pretty darn impressive.. to do all 4 of those in just a handful of sentences…
……

This might be the best attack comment so far???
Definitely one of the most clever, hidden, personal and precise…

Other critiques were more on single issues or their distorted projection…
this one was much more complex.. it was a personal attack on character, soul, and being….

Deef

Deef
Revisiting the 4 elements model for BPD attacks, trying to simplify it down to its core

The mindfucks are like weaponized cognitive dissonance. And their ability to put opposite right next to each other is another mental hook.

Deef

This is amazing editing, such harsh cuts and unpredictable, amplifies the paranoia feeling.. and maybe aggressive feel of the editor, splitting scenes so rapidly… angles, perspectives, noise tweaks..

14m07s

Dr. Frank Yeomans explains how accepting – or not accepting – our own aggressive feelings impacts our psychological stance on an individual and societal level.

If we don’t accept – or integrate – our aggression
we can end up in the paranoid-schizoid position, a split world view where everything “bad” comes from outside ourselves.
In contrast there is the depressive position, in which things are more complicated and we acknowledge that we have some “bad” within ourselves as well.

This basic psychological stance exists in the individual and also on the group level, where it impacts what leaders we choose and how we run our society.
Yeomans offers some clinical and historical examples of individuals and groups who operate in the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions.
The current polarization in our world shows the current prevalence of the paranoid-schizoid position, but Yeomans hopes that through education of our young people we can evolve in our understanding and definition of what it means to be “good.”

He probably needs to add some more smoother periods, and also prune it down.. 14m gets long is hard to follow..

But pretty cool that it’s so different..

Deef

With FijiDove I’m just playing more observer case study… It’s Grannon’s forum, and I don’t need to dive into replying to her or managing the group flow.. I’m just trying to get as much benefit during it’s short lived life…

Latest update is she removed the comment from my question and posted a new post with a variation of her last post… That’s more in line… but this is evidence that she’s got a lot of inner mental ghosts she’s just fighting with.. constantly changing posts and editing for what purpose?? abandonment terror.. yes.. and likely shame, trying too much to control her public image..

Bradford I really admire your tenacity with trying to work an angle on these arguments and I have meant to raise this before which is Vaknin’s angle of Mortification. His view is to Mortify the Narcissist.

I’m a little rusty with his mortification model.. but I recall one 2 step simplification approach he shared…

Any positive compliments/affirmations dismiss and start doing less of that behavior.
Any negative behavior control requests - on surface agree but do more of behaviorally.

Very quickly the narcissist’s snapshot of you will not mesh with your behavior, and causes lots of internal cognitive dissonance… they’ll escalate and eventually leave…

Narcissists are more in your face but I think easier because it’s a simpler attack and goal…
BPD is still a bit of a conundrum… I’ve mapped out their attack formula, but haven’t yet figured out a good stable counter… I’m starting to lean on, you have to use variation of same tactics back at them… and I can intensify sad baby and shame (which would be my easy leverage)

Indeed, you can handle the chaos and the aggression and thats half the problem and its something that I have learned which is “just becuase you can, doesn’t mean that you should”.

In my inner world and family upbringing.. escaping chaos and aggression isn’t a choice on the table.. I hold a lot of that chaos, aggression, pure emptiness as part of my inner self.. Western sense of self has a strong ego structure to navigate through life, but also has strong walls for chaos uncertainty, shame void… my 1st person ego sense of self is a one dimensional extrapolated fawn self that pulls from the environment and others… So typical pointers that work within social norm, I sometimes have to do the total opposite to find some benefit..

Reflecting on the YT troll comment issue…. I was sorting through some papers and revisited my prior scribbles of BPD attack roadmap… and her attacks still fit well into that model:

Deef Revisiting the 4 elements model for BPD attacks, trying to simplify it down to its core
I don’t have a good counter roadmap just yet, currently still mapping the territory…

But the guts of it, would be to hit them where it hurts… emotional intensity & abandonment.. that will knock them off balance.. but it will also invite chaos & escalation in the short term.

So here’s the 4 layers of a common formula of their attacks…

Shock & Surprise
a. Psychologically suffocate the other until they’re triggered to react or leave

Sow Doubt & Confusion
a. Play Dumb & Innocent (cover) while sowing doubt & confusion through emotional contagion & dumping
b. Make ignorance plea due to own blind spot,
“I genuinely didn’t realize you were drowning in my presence, and that I had my hands around your neck suffocating the life from your body.”

Guilt (Moral high ground posturing) - Aggressive Decency
a. Fixate on other’s trigger & over-reaction then pivot to moral high ground.
b. Claim & make a reasonableness plea (mask for judgment & hatred for your interruption & wanting to grasp for air)

Evoke Shame & dump (suicide/despair, abandonment/exile)
a. Competitive Victimhood - pivot to Victim Plea
b. Ostentatious Display of Vulnerability, signaling of suicide,despair & abandonment
c. Steal & hog the spotlight with Woe as Me pity story (long over-writing monologue of life of loserdom and horrific endless victim)

(masked agenda) to bait you, get you chasing them and to keep you in the game.
“Don’t leave me, I need you… (I’ll make you stay by terrorizing you and sharing hate, judgment and shame onto you.)”

4 elements are there: Surprise, Doubt, Moral high ground, dump shame..

Abandonment terror clinging isn’t as high as comments section isn’t a community, it’s more a dumping ground of shadow material and place to play out mind ghosts.. However I could threaten spotlighting her comments as a case study to poke some public shaming sensitivity, and abandonment terror..

So one-on-one BPD attacks has more of an emotional chicken element…. within social media I think it’s more of a battle between moral high ground posturing… who’s gonna fall into the other’s sandbox… I played along with her accusations, assuming some sort of good faith sincerity.. but she’s shown nada… so if I choose to go back, my goal would be to change sandbox and try to get her to take the bait.. of my counter moral high ground posturing… but I can layer in shame and pity (sad baby) energy to try to add extra shock and destabilize her and wake up inner demons..

At the same time.. I can stop the back and forth, as it’s sorta honors her as an equal.. where the truth is she’s invading my house.. and my channel.. and I’m allowed to delete any and all comments, along with banning her… so I might just delete her comments, and then reply a 2nd time with something mysterious and somewhat shaming….

Deef

2 Styles of Cognitive Dissonance

My group style

BPD, Self Help, Therapy, Social Media, Academia, social norm style
40s

Deef

I think this is a nice comparative breakdown.

NPD = Divide & Conquer (Power)
BPD = Divide & Shame (Silence)

Deef

another potential BPD communication style pointer…

52s

i’m quite good at detecting borderline patterns of behavior and
i can pick it up in the first few seconds of a conversation with somebody
and one of the things that i look for is

this weird sense of childish competitiveness, they’re extremely competitive

why because it’s shame, they’re ashamed as a four-year-old,

they’ve lost the game and they need to win that game,
any petty point, literally any fucking dumb thing at all that they can score against you,
they’ll take as a point, and it will slightly reduce the anxiety.

Deef

I think Mark was a very good case study of BPD linguistic skills of dodging responsibility, softening emotions, subtle frame changes.

I added giant text summaries to help viewer stay on track with theme vs getting lost in following his twist and turning narrative.
2m46s

Transcript with commentary:

You can’t convince a borderline to not be a dick!

So that makes you a dick Mark. Are you a dick??
Am i?
Are you a dick?
No.
Ok.

A: Well that’s what’s confusing me, because we haven’t heard how you were a dick.
Like we were trying to ask what your wife’s perspective would have been, before, when you said we’re all fucked up and we need to fix it. What was it that she was experiencing from you??

um you know, all the typical borderline stuff that when we perceive abandonment, we’re manipulative
and we’re always strategizing and trying to um uh turn events in our lives to be something
that always feeds that need for grandiosity.

This answer is dodging by answering back with WE and typical borderline that switches your focus from I to we, and then expands sit to vague group of all borderlines, and then the always pointers indirectly disowns any responsibility to control or change those behaviors.

If you are a grandiose borderline. There are grandiose borderlines and there are infantile borderlines and it has to do with IQ, basically. So if you’ve got enough firepower, you create a big grandiose life and you need a lot to feed into that.

And that’s why borderlines many times look like narcissists or have a co-morbidity of narcissism because that’s how it plays out.

This doesn’t add anything to the question, it’s changing sandbox, self soothing as he’s playing teacher role, and also tries to trap audience into curiosity to follow along. BUT he’s also indirectly being grandiose by saying infantile BPD are stupid.

Also the that’s why, and that’s how.. are vague but very confident strong statements of authority. Shutting down or making it very hard to counter or contradict, as it’s stated ‘matter of factly’.

But the problem is that

Clever reframe and redirect. It indirectly sorta says your question & theme is shit, this is a better reframe. But it’s masked by his prior in between lesson on grandiose vs infantile borderlines. So it feels like it flows naturally. It also hooks you into wanting to know what’s coming next.

NOTE secret pronoun switch in progress - notice how he started with we, then you, and now will narrow down more personal you

you build this grandiose life and you’re trying to cover
the fact that you feel like a child, and you really want to be taken care of,
but
you’re proving to yourself and the rest of the world that you really are this person that is acceptable

He’s projecting and somewhat disowning his wounds and issues specifically using YOU, and seeing himself in third person or projected outward 3rd person. It’s also a sympathy plea to the audience’s inner child. To now refocus on the sad baby inside, instead of all the abusive behavior shared earlier.

because
i’ve done this and i’ve achieved that and i have this kind of notoriety
and blah blah blah.

This quick switch from YOU to I’ve might be a masking strategy… to trick the audience that he’s personally owned and shared his vulnerability. But the somehow the I was used to describe grandiose achievements, NOT the needy inner child part.

A: Yeah that makes sense, but like, What did YOU do?

What did I personally do? Yeah.
Uh, all of that, i mean i was an artist, um, i lived the artist’s life!
i was crazy you know, i was just freaking nuts!!

Redirect to main question, and he dodges this time by switching from borderline collective label, to artist label and then ‘artist life’, then throws out crazy & freaking nuts, with cognitive dissonance as his tone was whiney and disconnected.

Deef: But what sort of relational wounds? What does that mean?
M: Oh, are you looking for the ways? Well you know…
Deef: How you interacted with people?
B: Did you split? Did you split? Did you gaslight? Did you do all the nine traits?
Is that what you mean by crazy, because crazy is a broad definition.

Yeah i did a bit of all of it,
but i was high enough functioning to make it look good,
so I was nowhere near as blatant as your normal borderline.

3rd attempt repeating same question but more direct. He dodges again, this time with vague ‘all of it’, but puts a softening qualifier of ‘a bit’… then does grandiose framing again, by comparing himself better than normal borderline, throwing borderlines under the bus, at the same time owning his higher level of borderline??

You can’t convince a borderline to not be a dick!

Is his communication style still being a dick?? he sorta alluded to his wife’s reaction and surprise about him doing this zoom and probably about his whole BPD mentoring gig… I’d guess she doesn’t think he’s recovered or gotten much better.

Bradford

Sounds like a Dick, Answers like a Dick….its a Dick.

At the end of the hour or so of monologiung (it wasnt a conversation - he was talking at us not to us) I was frustrated and exhausted but releived. Ive had these conversations with BPD’s in my life before and it was familiar and I realised that it had nothing to do with me. Trying to connect with them in any meaningful way is like trying to nail jello to a wall.

There was nothing to connect to.

There are no answers because there is no one one home.

He cant own any of his behaviour becuase there is no empathy or self.

And then I felt sad.

Sad for him and his family to have to live like that.

And then sad for me, for trying to have relationships with people like that in the past.

And then I felt liberated.

Deef

Bradford its a Dick

That’s partially why I opened and closed with that meme of Mark… That felt like a very accurate pointer of how to simplify a BPD, they’re always gonna be a DICK at their core.. if they’re emotionally drowning inside, anything goes in relationships. So dick behavior is always on the table.

monologiung

This hogging the microphone, very common… but I’m not satisfied with that pointer, as it gives us little option outside of caving or leaving. The cognitive dissonance and linguistic attention twisting dynamic might be why the monologue is soo exhausting and frustrating.

The verbiage might be intentionally designed to be mentally taxing (mind numbingly), but it’s an emotional distraction and suffocation play under the surface…

There was nothing to connect to.

I think this is both true and false.. we expected more and didn’t get it.. that’s True… But from his side, that’s likely a common BPD way of showing up & connection… (DONT LEAVE ME suffocate emotion & inner child)

In the 2m46s clip, I tried to point out his tiny self disclosures masked in dodging deflections. That’s the extent of how much he could share himself. We naturally felt like backing off or exposing him deeper, because we intuitively sensed that tiny little opening.

And then I felt sad.

I’d also argue that we connected some to his inner sad baby. Emotional contagion (merging) is likely much stronger with BPDs, and that deep despair of inner sad baby likely is immense, just under the surface of tons of toxic shame.. but we see the inverse of toxic shame with his excessive grandiose displays to constantly cover-up his neediness..

CRBLEE (Consistent Realistic Balanced Loving Emotional Engagement) is just reworded abandonment terror with infantile level raw neediness.

I’d say he didn’t deliver on his own holy grail..
He wasn’t balanced.. (constantly splitted black & white, all or nothing extremes, disowned his self) … never emotionally engaged, only intellectually (psychologizing & dismissing mine, kurts & other’s emotional pleas)… Wasn’t realistic, as he was just painting his fantasy of recovering way more than he actual was at. Not loving as he was no where near unconditional love, offered highly conditional love (constant take-away) plus in his own admission of inconsistent empathy.

But.. maybe he was consistent in being a Dick… he got the first part down.. just skipped the rest.. or Frankenstein like threw them like check marks but not fully delivering in an integrative way…

Anyway… I think that 2nd visit video might be an amazing case study, though maybe highly advanced and just pure cognitive dissonance flooding… so it’s worth me revisiting and mining more excerpts, but for now I still need a break from that, to refind myself…

Tagging @NYE as this could be in the Mark thread, but it’s also very useful for BPD vs Fragile NPD thread here.

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