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She does. She goes crazy, saying 'I'm not some mad person'.

Her therapist doesn't help at all by saying 'everyone has BPD at some time or other'. I think she has bad mouthed me so badly that the therapist believes her nonsense.

So why is it that they see red? And can I call it something else like 'emotional dysregulation' to avoid the histrionics?

Here's a post on a PD message forum where the members are discussing some of the alternative names to BPD (Emotional Regulation Disorder or Emotional Intensity Disorder) and what their reactions to those are:

www.healthboards.com/boards/personality-disorder/557125-new-name-borderline-personality-disorder.html

Thanks, I think EID seems sufficiently innocuous, compared to BPD.

My understanding is that people with BPD (pwBPD), or for that matter, anyone who exhibits "splitting" behavior (i.e., black & white thinking) has a very hard time accepting fault or flaws in themselves.

For the same reasons why they will alternate between idealization (painting white) and devaluation (painting black) in others, they will also "split" themselves; that is, they will see themselves ideally or else in a devalued way.

So to tell someone who "splits" that they might have a mental disorder, might trigger them to devalue themselves, which they may choose to rigorously avoid doing (through denial), or else it might trigger them to strongly devalue themselves, leading some towards severe depression.

I doubt that the therapist "believes her nonsense."  I imagine the therapist is trying to help her see her issues as ones that everyone goes through to some degree in the effort to prevent the self devaluation.  The end goal being to help her develop emotional tools to help her find other ways to handle the information besides splitting.

Best wishes, Schwing

Thanks Shwing,

That is interesting to learn. I recognize the invalidation that I have done over the years, in ignorance of what her reality is. I am learning to say things differently and recognize that what she says is not really about me, it's about her.

Re the 'believing her nonsense', she has often quoted (I assume misquoted) her therapist with a few things. One being "I don't often say this to a client but I think you should divorce your husband". Perhaps she's looking for my trigger. She certainly found it with this one.

You are correct to not take on face value anything she quotes as to being her Ts words.

I doubt if her therapist said everyone has BPD at some time or another. You either have it or not. The traits are generally dysfunctional exaggerations of common human traits. So yes we can all feel mild aspects of it at time. But it is not BPD unless it fits the disorder criteria.

Not outright telling someone upfront is common in therapy as it often results in instant denial, especially if they are yet to reach the stage where they have come to the realization they have some form of illness.

She named it today. She called it "fight or flight" as a response to a trigger. Of course it does not begin to explain the disorder, but she recognized it as a dysfunction response to my co-dependence. I think :-)

I'm sure tomorrow she will have 'forgotten', but the fact that she recognized it is a huge step for me and something to celebrate.