BPD and a lack of integrity.

[Couper]

Sometimes the dishonesty seems to stem from a genuine weakness and pathos, like this.  They lie out of desperation to protect their fragile self-image.  It's kinda hard to blame them sometimes, knowing the nature of BPD.  Not to defend it, but you can kinda understand it.

Other times they intentionally lie to manipulate.  Or stretch the truth, draw false equivalences, etc. or misrepresent what was said or done, or ignore the context.  I recall endless circular arguments where BPDxw would go out of her way to claim she wasn't lying... but whatever she was doing it was certainly not honest, or forthright.

I suppose we all do, sometimes, but with BPD these actions are persistent and extreme, and honesty is a rare occurrence. 

I think what I'm going to paste below will apply here.  I have had a copy of it for a long time, but only just this morning did I actually sit down an retype it thinking it might need to be shared with the lawyer at some point.  The original is written in her own hand.  It is not dated, but I think I know when she wrote it and it is in response to me back when I was finally figuring things out (still didn't know what BPD was) and she was essentially confessing to herself.  I'm pretty certain the second and third lines are directed at me.  She would never admit any of this to anyone.  In fact, if confronted with it, she would likely deny that she had even written it.  This is not the only such admission of hers:

I manipulate both consciously and unconsciously.
I recognize now that you are stronger than my ability to manipulate.
You see right thorough what I am doing whether I know it or not.
I manipulate people & situations so I can get sympathy and feel like a victim.
I do this both consciously and unconsciously.
I have been doing this most of my life and not seeing it as such.
I feed my own trust issues this way.
I manipulate or spin situations so I can consciously & unconsciously say, “see, you can’t be trusted because of this”.  
I can take stumbling blocks that could be kicked aside either by putting it out there for honest discussion or dropping it and making it into a mountain.
I manipulate myself – because I am my own idol.
 

[Couper]

I seem to attract only this type of person, so I probably need to just avoid serious relationships in the future.

That is sad and I would hope you could find a way to avoid these pitfalls in the future without giving up on yourself.  If we already have to abandon happiness when trapped in these relationships, we shouldn't have to do so once free to try again.

[Riv3rW0lf]

This thread was a very interesting read, thank you for bringing the subject on.

About integrity, I personnaly define it like Zachira : integrity is... (I am thinking about integer number here for some reasons), to be well rounded and remain pretty much the same, no matter the situation. You are aware of your values, who you are and you display that well integrated person to others. I think, it is possible to lack self awareness, have low self esteem and lack a clear sense of self, and still give the impression of having integrity to others, but I don't think it would be real integrity. I think, to have real integrity, one needs to know themselves and be willing to look within, which is, by my experience, not something someone with BPD is capable of doing. They lack self-awareness, it sometimes feels like they just react to stimuli without self-control.

This morning I woke up with this idea that it often feels like people with BPD use other people's capacity for empathy against them, but they themselves don't really have empathy for others. They use our empathy as a weapon against ourselves. We often hear them say how "I am raw", "I am hyper sensitive, it's like I have no skin", and any real empathetic person will feel bad for them. "They hurt so much, it's not their fault, I need to protect them." And just like that, we also accept to paint them as victim of their illness and we don't expect them to take responsibility, and we are ok with it, because "they hurt so very much... More than us".

But then... Highly sensitive people exist amongst non BPD too, and they don't go around blaming people for their pain, highly sensitive people WITH empathy do not hurt others volontarily, on the contrary... Because they feel so much, they try to mitigate the pain of others to mitigate theirs.

BPD don't have empathy, else, they would, over time, change their pattern of behaviors, but more often than not : they don't and they don't seek treatment. I might be wrong but I think empathy enables an internal iterative process that allows one to modify her own behavior overtime. Having a PD, in a sense, implies a lack of empathy and self-awareness.

And I refuse to believe they hurt "more" than others... They lack the self control and it just looks like they hurt more because they are throwing tanntrums.

My mother always plays with doubts too. She does things and then denies them, making me feel like the crazy one and telling everyone I exaggerate. And if it was ONE thing, ok, maybe, but it is a pattern of behaviors. It simply does not stop. The baits, the lying, the hurting, and then she makes it look like she didn't know what she was doing, or that she just forgot, or didn't see... But I've seen her overanalyse so many things that I know it is impossible she was not trying to hurt me...

Some things she did, I didn't react to, and acted as if she didn't try to hurt me, just said : "ok thank you", and a couple days later, she would say something like : "You know, what I did last time, I think you might have misunderstood, I wasn't trying to hurt you or anything." Almost like she was probing : hey did it work by the way? Did it hurt? And I would answer :" thank you for clarifying your intentions." And then another bait, another hurting action would follow... She was trying to get a reaction out of me, and her telling me, after I didn't react, how I probably didn't understand , goes to show she absolutely knew what she was doing. She was trying to instigate an open fight.

Also, the only time I have seen her stick to a boundary is because she knew, clearly, that if she didn't, I would leave with my children and she would lose access to them. This is the only time I've seen her control herself and stop her hurting behavior on the spot... But you know what this told me : she always could then ... She always could control herself, didnt she? Because she just did... So all this time : she chose to abuse me. She chose to scream at me, she chose to scare little me, she chose to try and break me when I was but a child and still now as an adult, but now she also knows she has less power, and I can fight back, and she doesn't like that very much.

She is not a victim, and for me to remain in contact with her: she will need to go in therapy and change her pattern of behaviors.

Accepting to live with a pwBPD that refuses to seek treatment and take responsibility for their actions is, in a sense, accepting to live with constant abuse.

I recognize she is in pain too, that it all stems from hurt, that she can be genuinely sorry for what she did (most often because what she did led to me pausing contact, else she just doesn't care, only me leaving the relationship will trigger an apology that feels real, and even those are not completely blameless apologies) , but the mentality that she is hurting more than others? It feels wrong, feels like just another manipulation to get me to feel sorry for borderlines.

My truth, and final though is: anyone who can abuse children to the point of children dissociating (I also dissociated a lot growing up because of her behaviors, and she physically hurt me many times too, would shake me up), without changing their behaviors over time MUST lack empathy. I don't see how someone who can abuse children can have empathy.

But then, maybe my mother is on the end of the spectrum too, and I suspect not all BPD are physically violent either with their children. Then again, emotional abuse is still abuse.

For me, they lack integrity, empathy and self-control, and they do NOT feel more nor hurt more than the general population either, this is all a front and our own projections on them and their behaviors.