Turkish
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Gender: 
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Other
Relationship status: "Divorced"/abandoned by SO in Feb 2014; Mother with BPD, PTSD, Depression and Anxiety: RIP in 2021.
Posts: 12167
Dad to my wolf pack
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« Reply #1 on: November 06, 2014, 10:42:29 PM » |
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This is a very complex question. In short, they are not the same thing.
Anyone, however, can exhibit codependent traits. How susceptible is a pwBPD to CD in order to fullfill their emptiness? In Understanding The Borderline Mother, Lawson says that the "all bad" child" is at risk for developing BPD due to being painted black by a borderline parent. That is a great book I encourage everyone to read, even if your parents aren't BPD, but I think Lawson misses many of the subtleies.
My Ex, high functioning, was the all good child, yet she was codependently enmeshed with her family, especially her mother. After we split, we had a long conversation about Parentification, or emotional incest. I think my Ex got it from her mom, and my Ex came to this conclusion. I just gave it a name. It tied in with her being scared of doing the same thing to our kids: making them responsible for her feelings. She wrote in her journal, "I never remember a happy childhood moment, not one!" So she's reliving her teen years now, and has even disengaged from her family a bit, but that's another story.
Growing up in a violent household with a waif-hermit mother with a few BPD traits, and a father whom I am sure is BPD, my Ex was never allowed to express her feelings, or develop a solid sense of self. As a "parent" for her younger siblings, and a confidant for her mother at a very young age, it's understandable that she would develop CD traits. Years after moving out, she still paid "rent" to her parents. She didn't like it--- and there is a cultural component to this which adds to the mix ---, but she felt it was her duty. When I met her, she was basically mothering her two youngest siblings as well. She took value in this, "I take care of people, I do it well," were her words to me in the one conversation about us near the end that I initiated. She didn't want to explore it, so I let the comment go unanswered.
From other things she wrote in her journal, I got that she may see herself not as a whole person, but the roles she played to others: mother, daughter, sister, lover. Defined by attachments. Defined by doing, instead of being.
The two boyfriends before me were "fixer uppers," though she completely idealized the first as being The One. Another journal she abandoned in my house for months after she moved out allowed me to put this together.
When we were just hanging out as friends, kind of dating, but not, she told me, "I like that I feel I can just be myself with you." I don't think the mirroring had started. I remember think, "who else would you be?" Can you see how susceptible a pwBPD could be to being CD by gaing self worth in doing for others? My BPD mother loves to rescue waifs (she rescued me from foster care), and it has caused all sorts of problems with people throughout her life. She may be done with people in her old age, but she still rescues (hoards) animals. It gives her a sense of purpose.
Many of us here have CD traits, though I hear my therapist's words, "true codependency makes itself known in all aspects of life, not just in a relationship where one's Rescuer tendencies may have resulted in one making poor choices." I'm not BPD, and I'm not CD (according to my T whom I argued with), though I did exhibit some of those behaviors in my r/s. I'm a whole person with a solid identity. A pwBPD is not,.which is what I think may make some of them more susceptibly into falling into doing instead of being...
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