BPDFamily.com

I wish there was a category for dealing with friends with BPD too, needless to say I have been in relationships with people who have BPD and two of my best friends have BPD.

Can I trust their advice or will it always have some other motive?

That's a good question.

My sister had BPD. My daughter has it. My partner has it and one of my best friends has it. I used to turn to my sister a lot for advice - she was always so certain of her opinions, as is my friend. However, in hindsight I wish I hadn't taken some of their advice. They have a serious mental illness so relationship advice is probably not the soundest. The black and white thinking is a huge problem. If they decide someone is bad, that's it, they have to go. They can't really see he grey areas so much.

My partner always seems to have a hidden agenda and so while I sometimes seek his advice, I rarely take it - often it's coming from his jealousy, paranoia, fears of abandonment, general negative view of the human race or other insecurity.

My take is that they are capable of interesting insights but they often ascribe motives to others based on their own disordered thinking.

hey repetitionqueen 

my answer has a bit of grey to it :). i dont think BPD is necessarily the issue here, just the given person. theres no reason you cant take advice from a pwBPD, unless you think the advice itself is suspect. there are plenty of pwBPD in the mental health field, including therapists; some of them world renowned like marsha linehan. i suspect many of them give fantastic advice. i never much went to my ex for advice, but i know she was perfectly capable of comforting her friends.

hope this helps.

It really depends.  Often, I found that my former friend BPD would just tell me to do what she would do in the situation.  Whenever I was feeling depressed because she had once again told me that she had chosen to stay with her boyfriend, she would tell me to call off work, since that's what she did when she was feeling depressed.  The first time she rejected me, she sent me an article about Tinder, since that's how she met her boyfriend--a week or so after breaking up with her last boyfriend. 

Thank you for all of your responses!

I feel like the advice can really change based on their mood and can definitely project what they would do in the situation. I think if it's a question that involves someone or something they might be jealous of then the answer will most definitely be bias.

However, like once removed said, pwBPD are definitely capable of giving sound advice.

Hey rq, I suggest you avoid taking advice form a pwBPD.  Why not trust your own gut feelings instead?  In my experience, the views of a pwBPD tend to be flawed and at odds with reality, due to their skewed view of the world.  Just my two cents!  LuckyJim

That place is called Staying Board  :)


Generalizing pwBPD with respect to motives is difficult as with all other people too. In the end you are responsible for your actions whether based on their advice, this boards advice or my advice. The real risk with taking advice from pwBPD is that their intense emotions make them quite convincing - whether right or wrong. Be sure to carefully reflect on how b&w the situation really is and maybe seek complementary views.

Short answer from my perspective? No, you can't trust them.

pwBPD have such a propensity to lie and to twist things based on whatever fleeting emotion they're currently feeling, so it's not really a stable source of advice on much of anything. Sure, some pwBPD are experts on certain things but I find, given their ability to lie about pretty much everything, it's just not a trustworthy source.

Agree w/that, anOught, My BPDxW is extremely convincing, with the result that she is able to snow a lot of people, despite her wild exaggerations, misinformation and/or outright lies.  This may sound odd, but sometimes I wonder whether she may believe her own lies.

LuckyJim

Hmm. Maybe I could be reading this wrong. It sounds like intense emotions = dysregulations and that the person is often dysregulated whether right or wrong.

Have I got that wrong?


Many people with BPD are in different fields and can and do excel. Why not take that person's advice regardless if they suffer from mental illness? Everybody has different characteristics, traits, severity along a continuum and are different people with different personalities. It's our choice to follow someone's advice or not.

Is it someone that you can confide in? Do you trust that they do give good advice?

I was reading about how a student had graduated as a psychiatrist and had found himself SI the following week  in an emergency room and couldn't believe how he graduated and found himself there. He felt frustrated that he was great in school and couldn't understand why he found himself in an emergency room because of BPD. How would that feel like to cope with? Is he less trustworthy?

People with BPD can be extremely perceptive,  and good judges of character.  These skills can arise from being brought up in a turbulent family and having to survive on ones wits.

They can smell bull**** a mile off.

But, as some of the other repliers have commented, where the pW BPD has any personal interest in the situation, or where it's 'close to the bone' for them, then their survival instinct will drive them to put their own interests first, before your best interests.

Watch for any heightened emotion in their response, or any jumping immediately to a very definite opinion without appearing to weigh things up objectively.

That's a good description, Svari, and explains why a pwBPD can be so convincing, because their opinions are so definite.  Yet when you step back, you often realize that a pwBPD doesn't weigh things objectively, as you note.  In this sense, you could say that they put up a false front, which is based largely on emotion, not reason.

LuckyJim