BPDFamily.com

Does that exist?

Are there just people who walk around thinking, I want to hurt this other person?

Or is that all coming from a lack of mental health (trauma, childhood issues, psychiatric conditions etc.)

Or something else?

What do you think?

My opinion is yes. I don't believe that all negative behavior & decisions/choices can be explained as due to being mentally ill. If this is so why are there jails? Why aren't all those people in a mental asylum instead?

Everyone feels like being mean to other people sometimes, but it seems to me that most people really make a concentrated effort not to actually do it ... . either out of shame, or, when I dig really deep, fear of rejection/reprisal, I suppose ... . because that's what I feel every time I've lost control and said/done something I knew was mean just to hurt someone else ... . and because, when that happens, I and most people also seem to make a concentrated effort to apologize for whatever they've said/done because they're aware it was unwarranted, unfair, unnecessarily hurtful, and/or otherwise wrong in some way.

I think you're talking about people who don't seem to have that kind of awareness (like sociopaths) ... . as well, maybe, as people who don't seem to have any real ability to control the impulse to act out in ways that hurt others (like pedophiles) ... . and, probably, people who clearly (and, I guess, not surprisingly) seem to possess both of those problems (like pwBPD, IMHO).

What's important is that all of these people behave in ways that are unusual/different from most people. Which is why they're labeled as having some kind of mental illness/disorder. And why interacting with them is so confusing/frightening to the rest of us as well.

I think the choice of words we use to describe interacting with someone like this says a lot about just how confused and afraid they make us. "Mean" and "someone being mean" are the words a child would use, which makes me think that being confronted with this kind of behavior makes us feel like children again - out of our depth, desperately trying to figure out how/why this thing happened, really unsure of how to react/respond, and very afraid of making what we all assume to be another/similar mistake.

The real question is whether or not your inner child is emotionally developed/healthy enough to recognize that there's something really wrong with this person. That there's nothing you can ever say/do to make them be nice to you for very long - no matter how hard you try - or how often it may seem and how ardently they may promise/claim/insist you actually can. That you didn't cause it, have no control over it, and can't cure it. That all you can really do - if you want to stop being hurt/confused/afraid on some level every time you interact with them - is to simply stop interacting with them.

Personally, this has been a really hard pill for me to swallow - as the 2+ years I've spent actively working on it make imminently clear - but I'm getting there.

How about you and your inner child? Sounds like they've been talking to you, trying to get you to help them understand/come to terms with what you've been through. Like whatever you're doing, you've made them feel safe enough to finally start speaking their own emotional truth. Which is really good, I think. A major accomplishment actually. Why this truth though? Just unresolved hurt/confusion/fear processing itself - or is there someone/something happening in your life right now that triggered that memory?