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’.
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.