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Today is the 5th anniversary of the Anything to Stop the Pain support list. After over 50,000 messages and 600+ members, it is still going strong. The ATSTP list is offered for free to non-BPDs. In honor of this momentous occasion, I will clip a response from me to a list member. Any personal details have been removed. The only thing blog readers need to know is that this man’s wife has been diagnosed with BPD and is asking him for a divorce. We also have a couple of recovered borderlines on this list and they are a valuable resource (as is noted here):
I believe that there is no right or wrong way to approach human emotions – there’s an effective way and an ineffective way and there are shades of grey in between those “polar” opposites. The effective way gets a positive outcome. That positive outcome is typically the return to baseline of the borderline and the establishment of a modicum of trust with others. One of the most important issues with borderlines seems to be the idea that they believe no one understands them (they feel “strange” – I said “broken” in WHINE, but I think that it was [a recovered borderline on the list] who clarified that it’s more like a “not feeling ‘normal’ and ‘fitting in’ feeling”), they can’t trust anyone with their emotions because many people have invalidated their feelings throughout their life and this leads to “silent desperation” and the inability to communicate effectively how they feel. If, through the use of my tools, you are able to gradually establish an environment in which your wife feels that she can safely express her emotions, which will go a long way toward establishing trust.
Secondly, you posted that you feel as through your feelings do not have a forum for airing and validation. Unfortunately for you, your wife sounds like a typical borderline. She is impulsive, she cuts, she abuses substances – especially painkillers. The divorce talk is probably born of either shame (“I will leave you before you leave me”) or of a feeling that she is being judged and/or disrespected (or not appreciated and accepted for whom she feels that she is). That leads to a certain mind-set that essentially makes her believe that, since no one has ever listened to her feelings before, she must dig in and hold on to her feelings as if she is the only person in the world. That is, “if I don’t fight for myself no one will”. This situation makes it difficult for you to express how you feel because she gets the message (even if it is not true): “YOU MADE me feel this way” because she thoroughly believes that about you. The reason she believes that you (and others, not just you) make her feel like she feels is that she is unable to self-regulate and looks to others to regulate her own emotionally states. When [a recovered borderline on the list] said something about her being more worried about what you think of her, she hit the nail on the head, because a borderline (and possibly for biological reasons) has a great deal of internal chaos and the usual strategy (also possibly biological) is to internalize other’s feelings and opinions about her self. It’s odd, yet I think that this dynamic is the one in which all the talk of not respecting boundaries arises. She feels at some level that you are actually a “part” of her, because she requires external validation. When that external validation turns to judgment, she has to cut you out of her mind. Sadly, she will continue to seek others (particularly men) to self-regulate until she can self-regulate.
As for IAAHF (“It’s all about his/her feelings”), one thing that many people read into that is that EVERY interpersonal situation is about her feelings and that she will not EVER be able to empathize with yours. This is neither the intent of IAAHF or the case. Borderlines are really empathetic (really no kidding they can be) but only when they are not on fire internally and emotionally. The intent of IAAHF is to EXPLAIN the “crazy” behavior, not to make a blanket statement about the relationship. When asked “why would she cut herself?” (for example) the answer is IAAHF. She’s in pain and the cutting helps alleviate that pain. Or asked “why is she raging at me over nothing?” (which happened to me the other night, presumably out of the blue). The answer is IAAHF.
Someone forwarded this information to me this morning….
Science, an extraordinarily selective and highly prestigious publication,
includes a report, “The Rupture and Repair of Cooperation in Borderline
Personality Disorder,” by Brooks King-Casas and five collaborators
(including Peter Fonagy) in its August 8th issue. The editors of Science
felt this innovative research was of such potential importance that they
provided almost two full of Science’s limited pages for a commentary, “Trust
Me on This. Borderline personality disorder is associated with abnormal
activity in a brain region associated with monitoring trust in
relationships,” by Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg.
The Brooks King-Casas, et al paper in Science is another indicator of
innovative, significant research with a high potential for traction that can
come from collaborations between an investigator with leading edge methods
and borderline pd investigators, and a reminder of the importance of
reaching out to engage and to fund other investigators for ventures into
borderline pd research. Such engagements and funding represent an important
route to gain more positive attention for borderline pd, to increase the
interest in research concerning the disorder, to open new pathways for
borderline pd research and possibly to grow the number of investigators for
an area of study for which new investigators are vital for maintaining even
a modicum of vigorous research activity.
Abstract of August 8th Science paper:
To sustain or repair cooperation during a social exchange, adaptive
creatures must understanding social gestures and the consequences when
shared expectations about fair exchange are violated by accident or intent.
We recruited 55 individuals afflicted with borderline personality disorder
(BPD) to play a multiround economic exchange game with healthy partners.
Behaviorally, individuals with BPD showed a profound incapacity to maintain
cooperation, and were impaired in their ability to repair broken cooperation
on the basis of a quantitative measures of coaxing. Neurally, activity in
the anterior insula, a region known to respond to norm violations across
affective, interoceptive, economic, and social dimensions, strongly
differentiated healthy participants from individuals with BPD. Healthy
subjects showed a strong linear relation between anterior insula response
and both magnitude of monetary offer received from their partner (input) and
the amount of money repaid to their partner (output). In stark contrast,
activity in the anterior insula of BPD participants was related only to the
magnitude of the repayment sent back to their partner (output), not to the
magnitude of offers received (input). These neural and behavioral data
suggest that norms used in perception of social gestures are pathologically
perturbed or missing altogether among individuals with BPD. This
game-theoretic approach to psychopathology may open doors to new ways of
characterizing and studying a range of mental illnesses.
A comment on the title of my book, When Hope is Not Enough. I’ve had several people say the book is perfectly titled and others say they don’t like the title. I decided to title it that because I believe that you need more than love to help someone with BPD and to help yourself. The problem with love is that saying “I love you” to someone with BPD can be invalidating. Saying “I’m proud of you” can be even more invalidating. And saying “You can do it” even more so. Let me explain.
Validation is about the other person’s emotions (the BP). It is not about you and your feelings. The statements of “I love you” or “I’m proud” of you are about you. A person with BP needs to learn that their emotions are normal and that everyone feels that way from time-to-time. If they feel weird or broken, healing cannot begin. In fact, the likelihood of poor (even suicidal) behavior follows those feelings. A simple of expression of your love for them could spiral into a session of self-hate. If you say, “I love you” in response to their poor self-image, a likely reaction (in their minds) is “then you’re stupid, because I don’t love me.” When someone feels like they are not able to cope, telling them they CAN cope breeds mistrust. In other words, if you express positive feelings or “positive mental attitude” statements, they are likely to not trust you, because, on the inside, they believe they CAN’T do it, and you’re not seeing their feelings for what they are.
So, love is NOT enough. What you need is skill. In the book I try to teach the skill (through attitudes and tools) necessary to start the healing – for the BP and for you.
I believe there are several basic motivations to lie when you have BPD. There are also two types of lies: by admission (by telling) and by omission (by not telling). Both types are a problem with someone with BPD. The motivations for telling a lie (or omitting truth) by someone with BPD are as follows:
1. When it is more painful to admit or tell the truth.
2. When she wants the other person to think “better” of her than she thinks of herself.
3. To avoid the judgment of the other person or judgment of herself.
4. When she can’t see the “truth” because of emotional reasoning brought on by the refractory period of the emotion felt. In other words, when feelings = facts.
The first three of these factors play a role in the lies of someone with BPD and they are often inter-related. If the person to whom the lie is told is likely to judge the person with BPD as “bad” or “deficient,” the expectation of disapproval triggers first rejection sensitivity and then shame, because the person with BPD actually feels deep inside that, if she admits the truth, the other person will “find out” that she is a “bad person” and reject her fully. The last motivation is “emotional reasoning.”
I bring up these motivations not to “let liars off the hook” but to point out something: a person with BPD does not live in the same “reality” as you (the Non) do. Your truth is informed by what you see, hear, experience and what you believe about those inputs. A person with BPD is most often informed by her feelings about the experiences. These feelings can be misaligned with the facts and, as Paul Ekman notes in Emotions Revealed, a person overcome with strong emotions “cannot incorporate information that does not fit, maintain or justify the emotion.” In effect the original lies can be motivated by the inability to see information that doesn’t support the feelings. When someone is emotionally dysregulated, she just can’t see the truth if it doesn’t match what she is feeling.
In effect, she is not really “lying,” but merely pointing out “facts” (or generating them) that support her overwhelming emotion about the situation. The subsequent lies, which are used to “cover up” or support the emotional reasoning, are typically done for one of the first three motivations, particularly the idea that you would think of her as less of a person (and deservedly so) if it was revealed that she lied in the first place. I think there can be some argument about whether deep-down a person with BPD really believes the original lie (or any of those generated by motivation number four) when she exits the prolonged refractory period. My suspicion is that deep down a person with BPD is more concerned with the pain and shame the revelation of the lie will cause her than with repairing, rather than repeating, the lie.
 When Hope is Not EnoughGet the Non-BPD book that is designed for staying and working on the relationship While it is useful to know the motivations behind the lies, it still doesn’t make the lies any less hurtful. Being lied to is a painful and hateful experience for the Non. It destroys trust and personal integrity and leads to suspicion and paranoia. When someone specifically lies to you (by admission) or is secretive (by omission), you end up feeling angry, saddened and disconnected from your loved one with BPD. It is a confusing, embarrassing and painful experience.
Each of the motivations can be removed by:
Number 1: Pain management, distress tolerance (when the pain can’t be removed) and self-soothing
Number 2: Self-acceptance*
Number 3: Self-acceptance and developing the ability to tolerate judgment
Number 4: Emotional modulation
* a quick note on Number 2. I have known at least 3 borderlines rather well in my life. I have also known about 3 more peripherally (and of the 6 – not including my wife – 5 are female). But the 3 that I have known well (2 women and 1 man), ALL of them used motivation #2 to generate seemingly outlandish lies. Sometimes, each of them would have to “own up” to the lies and that was a painful experience I’m sure. I know if I every have to own up to lies, it is painful for me. I can only imagine how painful it is for someone with as much shame as a borderline feels.
 Lying One of the most searched-upon subjects in this blog (and talked about in our ATSTP Google Group) is the subject of lying by someone with BPD. The nons are confused by untruthfulness on the part of someone with BPD and wonder how the person with BPD can have any credibility or trustworthiness when, clearly, they continue to tell bold-faced lies. In my response to a recent poster within the ATSTP group, I recently made a new revelation about truthfulness and lying by someone with BPD.
I have long said that someone will lie when telling to truth would cause more emotional suffering than lying would. However, that statement seems to indicate that there is a level of calculation when the lies arise. It infers that someone, when actually telling the lie, is deciding beforehand whether to tell the truth or not. For people with BPD, feelings = facts. It is not the events that matter to them, but how they feel about these events that truly matter.
So, two things have come to mind for me in this regard. One is that the experience of “reality” is filtered through those feelings and the person with BPD will reflect how they feel about them. If they have strong feelings about what has happened, they will actually experience things in a different manner than those of us who are rational in the face of the same events. It can hardly be called a lie in some ways because it is how they experienced reality. I lsitened to an audio CD on Buddhist a while back and there was a statement made that went like this: An artist doesn’t paint a picture and then put his “style” into the painting. He paints the picture through the lens of his style. That is how he or she sees the world. The same seems to be true for people with BPD and their emotions (rather than style).
The second thing that came to mind is the actual telling of the lie to a particular person. If someone with BPD feels that, by telling the truth, his or her feelings will be invalidated and judged by the other person, they will lie either by admission or by omission. If they don’t feel safe sharing the “truth” (and to them the truth is their feelings, not the events/behaviors themselves), they will not trust the other person with their feelings. In order to get a more truthful report from a person with BPD, one has to learn to listen to the feelings and not judge those feelings – which is extremely invalidating to the person with BPD and at the core of their “personhood” (since their feelings are immediate and strong and block out other more “objective” views of the situation). If you can listen to the feelings and validate those (for feelings are not right or wrong, they just ARE), I suspect you will get much more truth out of a person with BPD. But the truth you will receive is the truth for them, which is, of course, their feelings about an event. Still, once you start actually hearing and validating these, the level of trust accorded to you by the person with BPD will go up measurably.
I actually wrote this message on WTO some time ago. I think I am going to post some of my “Best of” message postings from WTO and from ATSTP lists – after removing any personal information from other posters. I’ve posted so many messages I would be worth it (I think) to share some of that information to the Internet public at large through this blog. So here goes (the Best of #1):
Actually, these communication methods work with anyone, anytime.
They will work in normal communication and during “OZ” – and I am
trying to always be in this mode. It is difficult and takes a ton of
effort, because it is against my normal way or interacting. At first
it will seem really awkward, but, with practice, it becomes easier
and more natural.
I used every one of the methods with my BP-ish (In other words,
emotionally sensitve and ashamed) pre-teen daughter last night.
Here’s the situation (I’ve compressed it slightly because it was
longer than this):
I come home from work and she’s all smiles. Then, she asks me where
I was late the night before (I was at a training group) and I
say “Uh, um (trying to think of the right words) … I was at a
course that I take…”
She says, “You’re lying.” (Because of the “uhs”).
I say, “Why do you say that?”
She says “Because you said ‘um’…”
So, I say “You seem sad and angry about people lying to you. Do you
think that someone lied to you today?” (Acknowledgement, I
recognized her feelings and identified them, not based on what she
said, but how she said it) See, it was not about me or the current
situation.
She says, “When people lie they say ‘uh’ a lot and people lie to me
all the time.”
I say: “Boy, that must make you feel really angry and sad to feel
that people lie to you. (Validation of her feeling) If I thought my
friends were lying to me, I’d feel pretty angry and sad too. Anyone
would feel angry and sad if they felt they couldn’t trust their
friends (Normalization, meaning, it is normal to feel this way when
you perceive that situation).”
[OK, quick aside - you will notice I didn't try to 1) fix it or 2)
deny how she feels. It could be that her friends are not lying to
her at all. In the past, I might have said - "I don't think their
lying to you, you must be wrong..." (invalidating). But that is
poison, because she actually FEELS like they are lying, whether they
are or not. Also, I can't fix her feelings. So, trying to fix it
("I'll have to talk to these kids and ...") is not the answer -
because it is about her FEELINGS, not about what "really" happened.]
She says, “Yeah, I guess so, but it still makes me really angry.”
I say, “Yes, I can see you’re really angry. Maybe you can think of
something to do when you think people are lying to you.”
(redirection, I put the responsibility for feeling back on her and
suggest she come up with a course of action)
So she says, “I guess I could just ignore them.”
And I say, “I guess you could, are there any other things you could
do?”
So, we got no real conclusion. But what this conversation kicked off
was a very open, sharing conversation with her right before bed in
which she shared with me her shame about being lied to (that is,
that she thinks that other people think she is a bad person and that
is why they lie) and many of her feelings (almost all of them
negative BTW). In that conversation, I continued to use those
techniques to acknowledge what she said and validate, normalize and
redirect.
Usually she will just say “I don’t want to talk about it”. So,
by doing this I got my foot in the trust door. BPs don’t trust you
enough to reveal their feelings. Why? Two reasons: 1) the shame is
too great to tell the whole truth, because they think that you’ll
think they are a “bad” person and 2) You have never listened in
the “right” way before, so they don’t feel heard at all. Has your BP
every said “No one understands me” or “You don’t understand me”?
They don’t feel heard/connected to you (or anyone).
A article by a recovering BPD patient:
I’ve tried my hardest to make up for the damage I caused but since the overwhelming theme is that Borderlines never get better, they see it as another attempt at manipulation. At the same time, I don’t feel like I should have to constantly justify myself to others. Although, it seems that’s what is expected of us. I will admit my past behavior showed some pretty nasty stuff, but that’s just it: past not present. In the last few days I’ve seen some rather disturbing things, which has caused me to write this article. I saw an article that was written for those who have, “survived life with a BPD” in which the author referred to Borderline’s as the equivalent of the terrorist’s of 9/11. I found this reference as disgusting and it angers me deeply, that someone that is supposed to be knowledgeable of BPD could say such a thing. We may be deeply troubled people, we may be able to cause damage but we are not terrorists. I’ve also encountered the terms “non bp’s” and “anti bpd” repeatedly. They feel the need to distinguish themselves from us. But I have to ask, why? Is it because they’re afraid someone would see them as BPD? Or is it another way to remind those of us, that suffer from BPD that we aren’t good enough? Well, that remains to be seen.
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