Yesterday I talked to my friend I reached out to--and it completely escalated. We talked it out and made up--which is good. But reading this
who are just like my dysfunctional family members.
and this
Others really cannot understand our own unique situations...
reminded me of that fight with my friend. I open a new thread about it, because it is too long to embed it in the other thread and a different topic.
It is from this thread:
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=349069.0My intention in reaching out to my friend was to start to get out more from my years of social isolation and talk about my current situation with my brother whose wife has dBPD which I stuggled again with in the last few days.
We have been friends for a very long time, since school, with sometimes less contact, sometimes more. Recently a bit more, but I do think while she "gets" some of the psychological issues I face with my family and myself, having her own share of it in her life, she shows a lack of empathy with some other psychological issues. My friend has adult ADHS (I was told by her it's different from ADHS in children, but I don't know if that's true) and depression and has been in therapy since over a year. She was tested both for ADHS and other disorders including BPD. She was not diagnosed with BPD, only with ADHS, which I agree with. She is a nurse in training currently working at a children's psychiatric facility for 2 months, which she thinks is unhealthy for her and she is keen for the 2 months to end, so that she will go back to school and work in a different station. Her goal is to become a nurse for children. She is single without children.
I don't know if people on this board know about the implications of ADHS, but I noticed when signing up that this is one of the personality disorders asked about in the signing-up form, the other one beside BPD being NPD. So I researched it and found that some but not all symptoms of ADHS and BPD are the same. The same goes for NPD and BPD, which from my knowledge about and experience with NPD I think are maybe even more connected than ADHS and BPD.
I see some but not all symptoms of ADHS and BPD being the same in my SO's son who my SO has 50 % custody of and who struggles with serious ADHS. It is a very triggering experience for me, because his behaviour has the symptoms shared by ADHS and BPD. I have no previous experience with ADHS, only with children without ADHS, which has proven not to be applicable to my SO's son.
I did not see those symptoms in my friend, but rather other ADHS symptoms not typical for BPD, that I find much easier to deal with.
My brother (now pwBPD's enabling husband) was suspected to have ADHS when we were children, his treatment was discontinued or ineffective. He did get a child psychologist for some time, which I never got as a child but would have needed to deal with my loneliness and my mother's death. As a child my brother was sometimes violent, also against me, which was ignored by our father and trivialised when against schoolmates. I see some of the behaviour shared by ADHS and BPD in my brother's current behaviour as an adult, when he behaves similar to his dBPD wife (often) and when he enables her BPD behaviour (always and from the start when they met).
Now that I write it out I realise my brother often getting attention I did not get when we were children may be part of my problem dealing with my SO's ADHS son--it feels similar, I feel I have to shift my attention completely away from me in order to shift it to his son, so I prefer taking care of him from the background in a way he does not necessarily know it's me doing it, e.g. try to improve their parent-son relationship, the child's independence, his room, because I cannot give in to his more aggressive demands.
I was wanting to talk to my friend about what is going on with my brother (enNON) and why I'm struggling with it, but instead after we did talk about it a bit, before really expressing my distress and getting to the core of the topic, we ended up on a different topic that I was uncomfortable talking about at this moment - my SO's ADHS son. I told her my thoughts about something she mentioned (general structure for the child) and I brought up boundaries that I set with his son. That did not sit well with her and I got a painful guilt-trip rant from her (not really detailed or productive, more an overall rage about bad parents, trying is NOT enough, and later an unprovoked side-stab at something I do for myself and that gives me strength) which made me feel she did not accept a boundary I chose as appropriate for the situation, which did not concern her. I told her again and again every situation is different and she does not know the full situation, but she did not listen or change her reaction. Both of us were like a broken record.
I ended up revealing details of the situation to her I was not comfortable revealing--not like this, not when feeling not safe with her current behaviour, I would have liked to say those things in an understanding environment if she had been understanding--to make her understand her assumptions were wrong. I believe only one of those details (which was also not the whole truth, but I left it at that to have my peace) finally appeased her, and she felt sorry for what she had said. Not because she thought the way she had reacted was wrong, but because one detail I told her made her think her opinion was invalid as a whole, which I don't agree with. I believe one can have an opinion, wrong or right, AND at the same time be sensible about other people's feelings, aware only the people IN the situation know it completely, and that it is mainly those people's decision how to deal with it.
Later I asked her if she identified herself with the child and if that was the reason for her rant. She replied no and said the reason for her taking it personally was that she sees children at her work with different psychological issues that their parents cause or don't alleviate. Which apparently she thought I or my SO or both of us do, without her knowing the situation, other than some pieces of information I had given her a while ago, without ever having met the child or seen us with him.
I feel disrespected by her, lured into revealing information I did not want to give and into an unnecessary drama, which left me feeling worn down and emotionally drained yesterday, more so because I needed to rebuild, not the opposite.
After the conversation I think I might be wrong about my friend not showing ADHS symptoms typically shared with BPD--in that conversation I definitely saw some of the behaviours shared by ADHS and BPD in my friend.
Am I overreacting and this is a normal behaviour?
I think it might be the stress of her work combined with her ADHS (low empathy or insensibility towards some sensible topics), her personality and with her personal story (even though she denied it after the fight) and with her tendancy of taking issues with children personally (I know that feeling, I have been there and I feel it with my SO's son--it stems from feeling we ourselves were not protected as a child by those who should have protected us). It is difficult for me to see where her personality "considered normal" ends and where her personality "caused by ADHS" starts.
If anybody here knows about ADHS, is it a symptom typical for ADHS in adults (I was told by my friend it's different from ADHS in children, but I don't know if that's true) to guilt-trip others because of a boundary with others that they don't like? To overstep a boundary that is not theirs to break?
It is a behaviour I know very well from my brother's dBPDwife. To take something that is none of her business (e.g. the relationship between my father and me) and make it about herself (my SIL's relationship with her father), when we were just getting to know her for a few months.
My friend is different than my SIL because I know my friend longer, obviously she can have more opinions about my life than someone I just met. But I thought my friend felt way too entitled for my taste in yesterday's conversation, and thinking back, in other conversations we had in the past too, even if in those it had not as distinctly manifested as in yesterday's, but still upset me.
How should one react to such a behaviour, no matter if it's a person with ADHS, BPD or none of it?
I think I should have been firm and short with my answer. "I do ____ and will keep doing it because I think it is the right thing to do for me and in this situation. I have given it a lot of thought and come to this conclusion. I don't think ___ is true."
Or better, avoided the topic uncomfortable for me by saying "It is not important", when she started to ask me about it, and then changed the topic.
We agreed after the fight that it is not a good topic for us to talk about, but I feel much less comfortable being in contact with her anymore knowing the behaviour I saw. I think to give it a while and then try again, but right now I feel something has changed between us forever.
I told her she should take care of herself, with the stressful job she is doing.
Everybody who made it until here, thank you a lot for bearing with me. It took me a long time to write it all down. Writing and ordering my thoughts also helped me understand them a bit better.