Someone once said to me that all advice is autobiographical. It sounds like you have had some success with your approach, especially with your daughter.
Are there extenuating circumstances you can think of (that maybe aren't exactly aligned with the analogy you share) that would cause you to modify your advice?
I'm wondering specifically about the difference between feelings and behaviors. How someone behaves when they feel scared can run the gamut.
I also agree that advice is autobiographical, because we can learn from our mistakes or simply repeat them. That's just infinitely harder in the BPD world since its so hard to see our actual mistakes.
With my daughter, things changed when I could finally express forgiveness and a desire to move on. That allowed a basis of trust and at the end of the day, that's what this is all about, isn't it? Someone's unstable and they lose trust in those around them. The wedge either keeps getting bigger or it gets eliminated through forgiveness and love. The only way that happens though is through better communication.
There are always extenuating circumstances- violence, abuse, instability with some very poor choices mixed in. Sometimes it's just too big to come back from. Other times, the trust just can't be reestablished from one side or the other. And if we're being honest, not all of us want to forgive when we're experiencing someone's worst. That's being human and it is an individual decision on how much to give or take.
Specifically about feelings vs behaviors, I think they're always connected...although perhaps in ways that are impossible to see. For instance, with my BPD wife, she accused me of something last year that left me dumbfounded, so I asked her for additional details. It turned out that the source of her feelings was something that happened like 20 years ago. Either she had held onto it all that time, or it magically reappeared when she was down.
It would be so easy to sit here and justify my actions, to explain why she was wrong about the whole thing. But the fact remains that the memory caused her tremendous pain and she was unable to work past it. If I would have spoken to her differently instead of expressing my own viewpoint, maybe we'd be on a different path today. I made a choice though to not lead with empathy and compassion, which is why the relationship ended.
My advice, stop trying to slay the boogyman, probably holds true in most cases regardless of that path someone wishes to take. Arguing generally does not lead to understanding, which we can see in the world all around us since we're divided on hundreds of mostly senseless things. As a society we love to argue and prove that 'we're right' above all-else, which is great if we're talking sports or reality TV. But there are few other places where it serves us well.
While my marriage is over, I can now call my ex wife and have a conversation without all the attached drama spilling over- and I can't imagine how that could be perceived as a bad thing. She has also self-disproven many of her biggest absolute statements (like 'I don't care about her family' or 'I've never loved her'), which I never would have been able to do by simply telling her that. For me, it's relief that the tension is gone. But for her, it's actual healing and that's a great thing too.
She needed to see it and accept it on her own, which feels like a major victory since she still refuses counseling.
I would never tell someone to stay or go, to reconcile or run for the hills. That's a choice each of us has to make on our own, because we all know how difficult of a path it will be at times. Instead, I just want to give people a little bit of hope in how to reset those relationships. It absolutely is possible if we're willing to love in a different way.
