Facial expressions

[473harman]

I just read on another thread but thought it would be good to start as its own topic:

Facial expressions - many with BPD can misread calm facial expressions

But I thought you had to be validating and accepting. Wouldn't that be with a calm face?

It makes sense - whenever I tried to be calm (this was pre validation training) she would never seem to get it until I lost it, and then she would understand that what she was doing was wrong and cry

This has always been a big issue for me, because I can be emotionally reactive, but not slow to baseline

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[enlighten me]

Being calm was seen by my ex wife as me being a challenge. Im not the most expresive of people so was different to her usual exbfs who gushed over her.

With my exgf she also got irritated when I tried to remain calm and it wasnt until I spoke yo a friend who did psycology at university that it made sense. She was telling me of a test they did in her job wherethey were show ten pictures of a face in various stages of an expression. Starting with no expression working to full expression. The normal point where we distinguish the expression is around five or six. She told me of a collegue that she suspected of being BPD who was getting it at two or three. It would seem some pwBPD are hyper vigilant of facial expressions so even if we think we are potraying calm we may not be.

[Skip]

But I thought you had to be validating and accepting. Wouldn't that be with a calm face?

One thing we often overlook is validating a persons emotional temperature.

Think about someone jumping up and down about a pay raise and then responding to them with a overly calm, "that's nice". That gross under-reaction is invalidating.

I want to scream to the highest mountain my love for you!
That's nice. Did you walk the dog?

That car was in my way and I swerved at the last minute, I could have been killed!
That's nice. Did you remember to bring your homework with you?

I placed second in the state finals!
That's nice. Did you brush your teeth?

If someone is strongly reacting to something, its helps to connect to the tone of the conversation. This is not to suggest piling on and fanning the flames... .it is to suggest connecting.

[livednlearned]

I think this is tied to the intensely negative and self-referencing way that many people with BPD interpret social encounters.

She likely feels very sad, very terrible, everything about her is negative, no good, bad. Her reality testing is skewed to bring back results that confirm she is not lovable, not worthy, not good.

So a neutral expression becomes a screen she can project that inner dialog onto, and we are often none the wiser.

With my SO's D19, the reverse is also true. She often masks her emotions so that her face is expressionless. It seems as though she does not want to let on just how intense she is feeling, and may even be disassociating and not aware that she is off in space.

I began to inquire how she was feeling when she seemed checked out, and this (in my interpretation) was also a way to model some "reality testing" (it draws attention to me having my own perspective of her) while letting her know I cared about her emotional state, even when she was actively trying to stuff it.

[PaulaJeanne]

What Skip says here is SO true! How many times I've underreacted and it's caused drama! I'm going to make a note of working on that.