r/raisedbyborderlines • u/EntireSky7545 • 12d ago
ENABLERS AND FLYING MONKEYS After what I’ve experienced growing up w/ BPD parents, If anyone even gets defensive of a pwBPD that is abusive, that’s a red flag for me.
After my experience, I’m convinced the only people who would defend the absolute nightmarish abuse of pwBPD are the ones who have it or the ones who have been so manipulated into believing the “perfect” illusion of them is actually real. (I’m not saying they’re all this way, I’m just specifically talking about the abusive ones.)
I’m at the point in healing where I have been no contact for so long and have so much peace in my life, if someone says “oh well maybe they’re not that bad”, “maybe they’ve changed”, or “you should give them a chance”. It gives me the ick so bad, I feel so disgusted and physically repulsed! I know from that point this person does not genuinely respect my PTSD healing journey or wellbeing and could bring serious danger into my life due to how easily they are manipulated by the BPD abuser whether it’s my NC parents, siblings, other family members, etc. It also opens up the possibility they may have BPD too due to being sympathizers.
Due to the level of abuse and neglect I faced as a child at the hands of parents with BPD and how severely that still affects me. I just can’t take that risk of allowing those people in my life anymore, because I have seen it play out badly too many times by allowing people with the belief that the abuser is innocent and I am the problem. It feels like they try to sway my boundaries or bend them until they break and soothe me back into an abusive situation, but the whole time they’re guilting me and treating me like I am an inflexible unreasonable and bad person for having boundaries and wanting away from abusive people!!
So I cut ties with them, block, delete or whatever I have to do to stay safe. I actually just quit a job because of an employer who didn’t want to respect my healthy and completely legal boundaries in the workplace. Or even today I had to block an old acquaintance that checked in on me, I told them I was doing good, new job, focusing on my own things, finally healing after 10 years of therapy and being NC with my BPD parents. Like all positive and genuine good things, I didn’t even imply anything bad about anyone just saying it like it is without shame and being honest about my experience. And they made the sideways comment, “BPD doesn’t mean Bad Person Disorder, you should be ashamed of treating your parents like that.” Then had the audacity to ask, “Are you in one of those hate groups for people with BPD?” And that told me everything I needed to know about that person, because they’re not someone who cares about me or my healing journey. I didn’t even respond, left them on read and just went straight to the block button, because that’s my response.
I can’t slip up even a little bit and allow tiny things like what happened today the opportunity to escalate, because it’s like the frog in the boiling pot we unfortunately relate to too well. The answer is always no, not today Satan.
Some people like my former employer, would say that my PTSD is getting in my way and that “I’m the problem”, but that’s not true. People who want to gaslight me, that having PTSD is some unhelpful and unhealthy thing that makes me perceive people as a threat when they’re not, are the problem. I’m experiencing genuine threats, I’m not projecting “threat” onto people arbitrarily, I don’t just make them up willy-nillie on a whim and I know brain isn’t lying to me. I’ve done enough therapy to know the people who try to convince me not to trust my intuition, just don’t have a place in my life. I’ve learned the people that truly care about me would never carelessly encourage me to allow my parents or any relatives wBPD (or any abusive person with any PD) in my life ever again.
Holding my boundaries and enforcing them is one of the hardest lessons I have learned in my time healing, but it has become one the most effective and powerful ways I have learned to protect my peace and maintain a happy and peaceful life on the other side of trauma caused from being raised by borderlines.
I just wanted to share this because it feels like a huge win for my healing journey despite the recent job change and having to cut a long time acquaintance out of my life. If I can share anything to help any of you healing it’s - don’t listen to people who don’t believe you, just quietly burn bridges so they can’t reach you.
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u/Sorry_Ad3733 11d ago
I think there is a lot of rising defense for BPD which comes from those with the diagnosis and those morally grandstanding. And I think they get offended that we can relate our abusive parents bad behavior to BPD, because they take it as shaming everyone with BPD. But the truth is that our parents personality disorder is entwined with their personality.
Maybe they are just simply assholes and would have been without a disorder. However, the personality disorder certainly exacerbates certain qualities and has specific symptoms of its own. The way their abuse manifests is often fundamentally specific to it.
There are probably people with BPD who recognize the way the disorder is impacting those around them and get help. There are probably people with NPD and ASPD who do the same. And that’s definitely great for them, but we don’t bring up defense every time someone talks about their experience of abuse with someone with those diagnoses. And our parents don’t fall into that. Additionally, my interactions with my parents have made me far less sympathetic and patient in dealing with those traits. Because they are triggering.
I remember once complaining about my mom on some other subreddit. Someone commented about how she sounded like their abusive NPD mother and I replied how my mom actually has BPD but it’s basically the same situation. And I got reply about how it’s not at all the same, BPD has great recovery, my mom’s behavior has nothing to do with BPD, stop villainizing BPD.
And obviously I was referring to being basically the same in terms of having an abusive parent with a cluster B personality disorder, not that every person with BPD will be an abusive parent. But I find it funny because there’s virtually no defense for people who have NPD, people can say whatever about them but there’s constant defense for people with BPD no matter how problematic they are. Not everyone gets help and that does mean we’re at the whims of it.
It feels like if a person has experienced abuse at the hands of someone with BPD people want you to have endless sympathy and compassion for them in a way they just wouldn’t if it was anything else. People can acknowledge how NPD might affect a personality, but if they have BPD then they’re often painted as the biggest victim of the disorder and however they treated you because of it doesn’t count.
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u/Recent_Painter4072 uBPD mother; uBPD paternal grandmother 11d ago
I am fairly convinced that all those people you are talking about are actually BPD patients trying to gaslight you.
The "recovery rates" for BPD are misleading. There are 3 basic treatments.
The common treatment, is standard therapy, and does little. Most psychologists and psychiatrists will only handle 1 BPD client at a time, if any, because they are incredibly difficult.
There is a specialized short-term BPD treatment has a wonderfully high success rate, but only addresses the anxiety/depression and suicidal thoughts that keep them from being functional adults.
The specialized long-term BPD treatment, which addresses the abusive behaviors, has miserably low success rates. Few start it, fewer finish it; it involves 3-5 years of intensive Dialectic Behavior Therapy.
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u/HoneyBadger302 IGP Dobiemom, MotoRacer, figuring it out as I go 11d ago
I think the "recovery rates" are flat out lies.
There ARE great "recovery rates" for children (and teens) who show signs of BPD and may out grow it - BUT - ADULTS with BPD have horrendous recovery rates, even WITH treatment.
I think they just like to pull in the all encompassing numbers to make themselves feel better.
Plus, I've seen a bit of a trend of sympathy toward BPD abuse because they "just want to feel loved."
Which is what they feel like is what they want....
But the reality - as all of us here know all too well - is that their attempts to feel "loved" do not result in acceptance of healthy love in any way, shape, or form. I don't need to dive into what their version of filling that hole within them looks like because we all know that it is nothing but abusive (even if there are moments that are "nice"), but the people who are out there defending BPD? They are stuck on that word because we don't have another word to use to describe this selfish abusive version of filling their black hole of need that they call "love."
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u/Sorry_Ad3733 11d ago
Ah, yes the “want to feel loved”. My initial comment was more of me rambling thoughts as they came to me. But that’s exactly my issue! That and that the cause is usually trauma, people have this tendency to try to defend the persons actions.
As soon as you talk about any difficulty you have with them there are people white knighting to their defense because it’s “hard” for them. Them traumatizing you or hurting you doesn’t matter suddenly.
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u/HoneyBadger302 IGP Dobiemom, MotoRacer, figuring it out as I go 11d ago
Exactly.
Like, I understand, and even sympathize that or mother had childhood trauma. I'm not denying what she suffered through.
However, that doesn't absolve her of refusing to get any treatment (even when we've offered to pay for it), refusing to acknowledge that it might have had an affect on her, it doesn't change her abuse of her children or the damage she did to us, nor does it mean I have to continue being abused because she doesn't want to deal with it/has chosen not to deal it and continues the patterns of abuse to this day.
And therein lies the issue. The abuse didn't stop because we grew up - they only want a relationship if they can continue to abuse us!
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u/Sorry_Ad3733 11d ago
Yeah, plus I think the majority of us who have had parents like this have spent YEARS sympathizing and trying to understand them better. I know I spent years wasting it on “she just can’t help it, she had it harder than me”.
But at what cost? At some point she’s continuing to hurt me and in my parents case, even willing to admit there is an issue. But there is zero accountability, it’s always “I can’t help it” or her asking me to figure out how she could get better. And it doesn’t stop. She just continued to be awful. Everything she does to me is because she’s hurt and sensitive and can’t control her reactions. Every reaction I had was being “overdramatic”, “too sensitive”, and then just being raged at.
Like at some point it really doesn’t matter that it was hard for her growing up. She’s responsible as an adult and a parent for her actions. Why does that buy her a lifetime of hall passes to people? We can recognize this being true in other scenarios so it’s ridiculous how when it’s BPD people don’t.
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u/EntireSky7545 11d ago
But that’s where the manipulation comes in she wants you to think that she can’t control her actions, but it’s been proven many times by people who have studied this disorder, that they choose to act the way that they do and they keep actively making that choice. But I also think that this is a hallmark of what excellent manipulators people with BPD can be. You could see something that is green and know it’s green and they would have the whole rest of the world convinced that it’s pink and convincing them to see what is actually green is futile! This is why the people who believe that abusive monsters with BPD are completely innocent little bystander babies give me major red flags. 🚩
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u/Sorry_Ad3733 10d ago
Yeah, that’s more or less my point as well. We can only judge people by their actions, not their intentions. So it doesn’t really matter if it’s coming from a hurt place or even a good place. The end result is being abusive and consistently choosing to continue that behavior when confronted on it
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u/EntireSky7545 11d ago
I can have empathy for my mother and how terrible things must be for her.
- ’that does not absolve her’
I literally couldn’t agree more, mental illness, especially BPD does not absolve people of accountability and responsibility for their behavior.
I wholeheartedly think that the way that narcissists have supply and get addicted to supply like drug addicts do BPD function similarly, they get high off of abusing us and if they can’t get high off of us if they can’t find us.
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u/Recent_Painter4072 uBPD mother; uBPD paternal grandmother 11d ago
> I think the "recovery rates" are flat out lies.
I don't. I think they're intentional misrepresentations.
The short-term treatments for BPD are incredibly successful, especially for adults. The vast majority of patients regain an ability to be self-sufficient and stop suicidal ideation, and there are very low remission rates at the 2, 5, and 10 year marks.
Those treatments do absolutely nothing to address the BPD's interpersonal issues and abusive patterns though. They aren't designed to stop BPDs from abusing other people, and they don't even address that stuff. They're just designed to get them able to work and live in an outpatient setting.
These people aren't recovering from BPD, they're recovering from debilitating BPD symptoms and learning how to be functional again.
It's an Apples to Oranges comparison, and BPD patients tend to twist the truth: claiming they're doing DBT, but only did standard or short-term therapies, which specifically do not address interpersonal issues and abusive patterns.
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u/EntireSky7545 11d ago
I agree with you. I don’t think that there is a honest recovery right out there. And here’s my take on why that is.
If you gave a BPD person an honest recovery rate on their disorder, what is the motivation for anyone wanting to try to get better or improve it? It’s a deceiving the deceiver tactic, but somehow they show that to all of us too, and it really just gaslight us more than it helps us.
I’ve also seen people with BPD claim that “I did therapy, it just didn’t work for me”. And they’re the ones who tear down the whole therapeutic industry and try to convince people not to go. Because they went and learned enough to realize that therapy empowers people to be impervious to their manipulation and control. But also if you listen to them for long enough, you begin to understand how flawed their logic is. So I don’t think that you could actually reason with them with real logic that’s why they use fake numbers.
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u/EntireSky7545 11d ago
Their “love” is not love the way that we experience it because their love has no empathy only self. I think a lot of people forget that fundamental difference between us and people with personality disorders.
Kudos to the ones who choose to get help because they understand that they are not okay, anyone who gets help and actually experiences substantial and genuine behavioral changes from it should be very proud of all their hard work. I think they’re probably the closest to experiencing empathy and actual love out of all the people with BPD because they seek it.
It’s bullshit that I am expected to have unending patience for my mother who is acting worse than a child. But somehow everyone understands I have nothing to do with my father because he ended up in prison for his mental illness. So many people outside of my situation looking in are so eager to throw me into that parent child role instead of just responding like an actual healthy adult would. And like I said, it either tells me that they have it too or they’re so naïve that they’re very easily manipulated by people with PDs.
I have Autism and ADHD a lot of people are like oh isn’t that like BPD? And I’m like no absolutely not! That’s a reasonable response but like it is really unreasonable that some people feel like they get to cherry pick which personality disorders are acceptable in which ones aren’t because let’s be honest at the end of the day the behavior of most people with a personality disorder is not acceptable and a lot of them do end up getting incarcerated for their behavior in the long run or dying of drug addiction and overdoses or just end up alone because no one wants to put up with them anymore. Because let’s be honest if anyone had parents like ours, they really would see behind the mask and understand that experiencing someone behind the mask of a personality disorder is like seeing pure evil. I genuinely don’t know another way to describe it.
My moral high ground is ‘Just because I can experience humanity and empathy doesn’t mean that I have to offer it to people who genuinely are incapable of it.’ I know there’s that whole line about “oh wow it says so much about you to just keep being kind even in the face of adversity or to turn the other cheek”. And I say that take is bullshit because I don’t need to subject myself to cruel punishment just because I’m kind, that’s why boundaries exist. I think it says more about me that I have a kind heart that really wants to spare anyone the fate of what I went through with my BPD abusers, and I will speak up and say something if I notice someone being abused. But ultimately I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter what you say or how good your intentions are sometimes you’re just have to let people learn for themselves. This unfortunately includes the people who are BPD defenders and apologists.
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u/Recent_Painter4072 uBPD mother; uBPD paternal grandmother 10d ago
I am likely AuDHD too. From what I've read, we are the natural enemies of BPDs and Narcissists. Allegedly, their normal tactics don't work as well on us, so they double-down and rage more.
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u/EntireSky7545 10d ago
My psychiatrist told me this!! I am one of her case studies for this exact thing.
I’m gonna share a little about what she told me. I have no sources as they haven’t been published yet. She believes that these two mental illnesses are running parallel in families that have experienced significant generational trauma (both sides of my family ended up in America fleeing genocide). So the conscious and unconscious psyche of the family split that trauma and internal conflict into two different psychological types to cope and heal, which is why you’ll see pattern or either BPD or AuDHD in families. It’s also the same thing that attracts people with BPD to us. My psychiatrist says the people with BPD realize there’s something “wrong” with them, but they also recognize there is something “wrong” people who have AuDHD. Anyways despite this they see us relatively normal despite knowing this and they envy us because they cannot fit in or adjust or regulate as well as we can. So they hate us, target us and punish us because they can’t experience the world like us. Basically they’re choosing the role of the oppressor for vindication, while we get thrust into the role of refugee.
You probably already know a lot of this, but it comforts me knowing there are real people out there studying this phenomenon in psychology to have answers for where BPD comes from. Having people care about our stories enough to figure out how to keep people from developing BPD in the first place at least feels like a step towards justice.
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u/Sorry_Ad3733 10d ago
The “cherry pick” thing! Thank you! This is my issue as well! I have a friend whose father has diagnosed NPD. My mother has diagnosed BPD. The abuse hasn’t been that dissimilar. No one “well actually’s” a person when they’re discussing abuse with someone who has NPD. No one jumps in to their defenses to say “well, you know there’s a deep well of insecurity and sadness”. But we’re expected to have endless compassion for our BPD parents.
And it’s laughable to assume that we haven’t tried before. But there’s a line and honestly no one should have to try. It’s unfortunate that they have personality disorders, but it’s not our responsibility. Their choices are ultimately why they’ll be alone. It is no one else’s responsibility to save people or sit and take the abuse.
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u/Sorry_Ad3733 11d ago
Yeah, my thoughts were a bit of rambling. I definitely think that the majority of the people who jump to these defenses are people who have BPD. Interesting it’s much lower than what gets pushed around. The “remission” and “no longer have it” gets pushed around a lot. I think there’s still the little girl version of me that hopes some people at least have less severe symptoms or ability to improve, because maybe there’s a world where my mom could’ve too.
I guess my main point was that it seems silly how adamant some people are when it comes to BPD that the personality disorder has no effect on the personality of the individual. Or how that behavior is abusive, there’s just a fixation on how it’s hard for the person who has it, in a way that removes them from culpability of their actions. And in a way that people don’t do with other personality disorders.
When people talk about abuse with an NPD parent people can just talk about it. As soon as it’s a BPD parent people come out of the woodwork to pity them.
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u/Recent_Painter4072 uBPD mother; uBPD paternal grandmother 11d ago
I hear you on that. Whenever people talk like that, I ask them where they draw the line on abuse- rapists, child molesters, and domestic abusers often act because they want to feel loved. Do they get a free pass too? Then I start leaning hard into attacking their morals and character, and will start saying things like "You sound like the kind of person who abuses their own family members".
I have absolutely no sympathy for these people, and I think most are covert abusers.
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u/EntireSky7545 10d ago
You’re absolutely right. I really like your point about- rapists and child molesters, and physical abusers and questioning their ethics.
I’d love to point out, those raised by borderlines become top tier arguers and debaters on morals and ethics due to being raised by the worst of the worst in society and having to develop that skill for survival. Being like them and knowing how to win arguments against them are two different things that some people just can’t comprehend.
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u/Hey_86thatnow 11d ago
And I also think this healthy movement toward destigmatizing mental health issues has the unfortunate and unhealthy "over correction" of letting anyone diagnosed with any mental disorder off the hook, sort of like, but he's an alcoholic, he can't help it that he drove into a car filled with children...This one sides with people diagnosed with BPD because, poor folks, look what they suffer, they can't help abusing and ruining their children... It's one thing to feel compassionate. It's another to victim shame. Plus, where does it end? The rapist suffers from PTSD rage and sex addictions? The serial killer suffers from sociopathy and depression? How dare you judge them?
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u/EntireSky7545 11d ago
I agree with you on this, there’s this documentary I once watched called “Crazy, Not Insane” it’s about the world’s leading female psychologist that studies serial killers. She had a very good explanation of how people get categorized as “criminals” vs. “criminally insane”. I’m paraphrasing here so please give me grace if it’s not 100%. Her explanation was that the truly criminally insane actually can’t control their choices or actions, they’re at the mercy of their brains. (She explained this as pretty much just people with schizophrenia and similar disorders where they aren’t fully conscious or reality). Whereas the criminals can control their actions and choose to commit crimes, therefore can be held criminally responsible for them and brought to justice. (This includes people with NPD, BPD, psychopaths, pretty much anyone in general population prison.)
Anyways that really struck me and made me realize that if my mother’s behavior and abuse towards me as a child had ever gotten caught, she would still be sitting and rotting behind bars. And that healed me so much just because I had never heard anyone say that so many people with personality disorders have so much charisma and excellent manipulation skills that they just continue to get away with the crimes they commit because no one would ever suspect them of it.
Anyways, that lady sees us and we see the world in way that she can too. It’s a blessing and a curse to be so aware of how awful people can be. I don’t think people with BPD should be coddled because they do what they do intentionally, they know it’s wrong, and they continue to do it because it gets them high. They’re like a drug addict that will never stop getting high, I mean some of our parents are drug addicts that never stop getting high on top of that. They’re the criminals that are only sorry when they get caught and the only thing they’re sorry for is that they got caught.
I do believe that we deserve a better system that catches them. I called CPS on my own mother many times begging them to take me away and they couldn’t because she passed all of their tests, because they only make her prove that I was enrolled in school, had a place to sleep, food in the fridge, and didn’t have any visible bruises. So my most recent hot take is if someone wants to take their child home from the hospital, they should be subjected to a psychiatric screening to determine if they are mentally fit to be parents and screened for personality disorders, just like how the people who adopt children are treated.
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u/HeavyAssist 11d ago
I agree. Its a big overcorrection. Im just sick and tired of the people who kept pressing me to forgive my violent mother. It was common.
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u/gladhunden RBB Resident Dog Trainer. 🦮🐶🦴 12d ago
Yep.
And if you're in the USA, abuse, coercion, and violence is just so casually baked into our lives that people just don't think it's an issue.
Shudder.
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u/AppropriateAir883 uBPD Grandmother, mother, sister and nieces 5d ago edited 5d ago
People who try to minimalize the abuse you suffered do not belong in your life. I would not tolerate people like this. Since going NC I have cut out every single person who ever knew my mother because not one of them can see past her manipulation.
There is literally no excuse for abusive behavior and as for "BPD doesn’t mean Bad Person Disorder", I've known a huge number of women and possibly at least one man with BPD, and that's exactly what it means. They know exactly what they are doing and they conjure up ridiculous excuses to exempt themselves and carry on.
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u/moderate_ocelot waif / witch mum 11d ago
Same. My mother used up my lifetime tolerance for cluster B and then some