I'm Back

[roni-nator]

Hi.  I haven't been on for a while for two reasons.  One, I've been a caregiver under some extreme circumstances, and two, I've been doing pretty good.  The help I got here before helped me to learn enough and rise above things enough that one of the people I was a caregiver for was a family member with diagnosed borderline personality disorder, and our time together while I was caregiving for him was blessed with him getting into counseling and getting the help he needed and getting very stable - and skills I learned here helped me be able to work with him on that once he was ready.  For that I am grateful.  Thank you.

I chose Family Member w/BPD, because many people from my family and culture have BPD and this has really skewed my ability to see borderline people clearly, so until the last few years when I got a lot of help to overcome it I found that I was attracting people with BPD at every turn.  If a neighbor moved into the neighborhood that had diagnosed BPD everyone else would be arguing with them and I'd have them sitting on my porch finding the good in them without the appropriate boundaries and thus would end up getting hurt again.

I doubt many of you remember my story, but I grew up in an environment that had multiple borderlines in it.  My counselor called it a borderline family and borderline culture since family/culture was intertwined where I come from.  I have actually since gotten a book published that is inspired by the stories that led to that type of breakdown in a family/culture.  Since I grew up around that, it seemed so familiar that I attracted person with borderline personality disorder repeatedly - or lets say maybe not attracted them but let them in while people who I loved who hadn't been raised around it saw something was askew and put up the boundaries I didn't have.

Well, my boundaries are stronger (thank you all for the part you played in helping me develop stronger boundaries), but something happened recently that made me not feel shame like I used to feel in the past but made me angry.  I feel that is growth, because this is the first time I've felt angry and knew my anger was justified - don't worry, I will handle my anger appropriately and I do not what handling anger appropriately looks like.  A person in a group I'm in reached out for help because someone who he said was diagnosed with borderline, narcissism and manic depression was harming him and his family greatly.  Due to what I knew, I reached out to him to try to share the information that had helped me.  The next thing I knew someone with borderline personality disorder who was in the group spoke up and told us that we were prejudiced for recognizing that what he was going through was related to these mental disorders.  That led to a near attack where everything I said was discounted by this person with borderline and a person that I now realize is codependent to her.  Since then, I've received a private attack by this borderline person that her codependent ally keeps telling me does not have any behaviors and now the codependent friend has ostracized me.  I used to feel shame when that happened, but now I'm just angry.  I can see why this group has the people with borderline go to another group to get the help they need so that we can talk without that kind of defensive attack coming to us as we talk.  I left the group last night because it is acceptable for the person who opened the original conversation by asking for help in surviving a borderline (not the same borderline who got so defensive) is being harmed by a borderline to post pictures of that borderline online with a laundry list of hate spewed against her and that isn't even offensive to the person in that group who is a borderline, but if I speak up and tell my story or about this group or anything that will bring them help and healing them I'm attackable.  So, I'm choosing the no contact option all the way around with everyone in this situation who acted inappropriately - and I did screen capture everything that was said and let a counselor look at it to make sure I was on track and not just following my own ego or hurt feelings.  It's time to step away.

But, I wanted to come here and talk about it, because even after a few years of caregiving and one of the people I was caregiving for included counseling to help them overcome borderline personality and help me learn coping skills and self care, I am still shocked at the amount of harm that someone with borderline personality can do and how covertly it can sneak up on you.  This group tells us to avoid clickishness and that is exactly what happened here was clickishness that arose to protect a person who got on and admitted she had borderline personality so she could try to confuse the options for help I was trying to give a person who was asking for help surviving another borderline.  Actually, the person who got on and was asking for help with another borderline acted very inappropriately by posting pictures of that borderline and calling her horrible names and that was okay but me sharing my story of healing and offering them the path that helped me to heal was a reason to be hated and ostracized.  I will never cease to be shocked by how covertly it can hit you when you make someone with borderline personality angry.  And, being reminded of that makes me feel like I need just a bit of support getting through this as well as a bit of support to make sure I don't repeat any patterns from my past since being raised around a culture and family with borderlines in it has made it all seem so familiar to me.  I guess I'm a little bit in shock right now.

[Skip]

I left the group last night because it is acceptable for the person who opened the original conversation by asking for help in surviving a borderline (not the same borderline who got so defensive) is being harmed by a borderline to post pictures of that borderline online with a laundry list of hate spewed against her and

that isn't even offensive to the person in that group who is a borderline, but if I speak up and tell my story or about this group or anything that will bring them help and healing them I'm attackable. 

So, I'm choosing the no contact option all the way around with everyone in this situation who acted inappropriately - and I did screen capture everything that was said and let a counselor look at it to make sure I was on track and not just following my own ego or hurt feelings.  It's time to step away.

Triangulation at its worst 

I am still shocked at the amount of harm that someone with borderline personality can do and how covertly it can sneak up on you.  This group tells us to avoid clickishness and that is exactly what happened here was clickishness that arose to protect a person who got on and admitted she had borderline personality so she could try to confuse the options for help I was trying to give a person who was asking for help surviving another borderline. 

Its really hard when people double team you on something that is out of line.

How did others respond/act?

[roni-nator]

Thank you, Skip.  Others fell silent and stayed out of it, which I think was good.  Even the person who originally posted about the borderline they wanted advice about got silent and just watched.  That was probably good as it didn't make it worse.  One person though did contact me privately and told me that they didn't want to lose contact with me and asked if they could call me from time to time, so I guess they were already aware that things were going on behind my back and I was about to get ostracized.  I told her she can call me at any time.  She also told me she loved me.  Let's just hope that she doesn't succumb to pressure and change her mind on that - time will tell.  Thank you for your response.  It helps me to know if I'm on the right track to healing.  I've been working hard hard hard on my own recovery from codependency and enabling for a long time and that has been made even more difficult by me being a repeated caregiving for almost fifteen years now - just started another caregiving for my father-in-law about two months ago - and one of the people I cared for was a person with BPD who was willing to seek treatment, so sometimes I'm not sure if I'm on the right track or if I've just been able to hide from my low boundaries with borderlines due to me being housebound caregiving and away from people who can prey on me so much.  Your remarks help me realize I am at least growing and recognizing when the behavior is not good better than I used to.  Thank you.

[Skip]

Have you read this article?
https://bpdfamily.com/content/karpman-drama-triangle

The actions of the participants in this type of conflict start off polarized and become increasingly polarized as counter actions are taken. This causes the roles of the victim, rescuer, persecutor  to shift and increase the polarization and conflict.

The victim, for example, may retaliate and punish the persecutor who, in turn, feels like a victim. The rescuer may be attacked for doing too much or too little for the victim or to the persecutor, respectively, and feel like a victim. The new victim may seek out their own rescuer and now a partially overlapping triangle with a fourth person forms.

... .the article goes on to explain that the solution is a well differentiated self.

Does this seem like what is going on?

[roni-nator]

Thank you, Skip.  I just skimmed that right now because I need to get back to the person I'm caregiving for currently, but from what I see I say, yes, I've been in that before, and yes, this is where this would have gone to had I not stepped out.  When it first started I told the person who is seen as the leader of the group (the one who is codependent to the borderline) that I was taking a break from the group.  I thought we were good friends and someone I could trust so I shared with her how I had helped my Dad recover from BPD when I was his caregiver and how I learned enough in that experience that I wasn't going to deny my own experiences to say what other people expected me to say to fit in, and she seemed to understand and she seemed to understand my desire to take a break from the group.  Then other things happened that let me know this hadn't died down while I was taking a break and things were brewing behind my back as often happens with a borderline up to and including a nasty private message from the borderline that I chose to ignore and a loving message from someone who was afraid she'd lose contact with me and then escalating to the leader ostracizing me but still leaving me in the group and that is when I decided that instead of taking a break from the group I was leaving and then I officially left last night.  Had I not taken that action, this is exactly where this was going but I'm stepping out this time before it gets to that point.  I'm not going to live my life this way any more when I recognize it early enough to have a choice.  I will read this in detail when I get back online tonight and will let you know if I have any new insights from a thorough reading.  Thank you so much for your help.  And, thank you for this article that I will read and re-read because I have been deep in the midst of the situation described in this article many times having grown up in a borderline family/culture until I got help for me.  And, I'm pleased that when this current situation started I said that I would not ignore my own experiences and say what was expected of me to fit in, because that shows me that I've healed enough not to be so codependent that I put myself in the midst of this type of situation again.  Sadly though - I know I will always be vulnerable since I grew up in what my counselor calls a borderline culture and thus I probably should be a part of this group ongoing even when I'm so busy with caregiving that I think I don't have time and even when I think things are going good for a while.  I will always be vulnerable to relapsing to my old behavior and I know that, so I must be ever vigilant.  Thank you so much for your help.  I am very grateful.

[roni-nator]

Skip, I just want to come back and thank you for all of the information you shared with me yesterday.  I have read your article you shared and have given it to the people in my family who are seeking healing to increase their understanding.  I also want to share something that was said to me by my counselor.  I actually took my computer in and let her read the message threads that happened online.  After she read them, she looked at me and said that she was proud of me for standing by my experiences and not being led into what someone else wanted me to believe, because I come from an extremist form of Christianity that most especially taught women total submission within a borderline culture and thus I learned at a very early age to agree with everyone for my safety and that has been a hard hard hard thing for me to learn to overcome.  But, that knowledge probably isn't going to help anyone who might read this.  This next part might help some other members though. 

After she said that, she pointed out to me that I had only joined the conversation to try to help someone who said their life was being annihilated by someone diagnosed with borderline, narcissism, and manic depression.  No one said anything to this person about being inappropriate even when they kept coming back every few days and not only slamming the person with BPD they felt was hurting them but also sharing a picture of her and calling her names like a B*#(H and a C*#T - yet no one said one word about that.  Not even the other BPD who jumped all over me for trying to help this person who was so angry at someone with BPD jumped on this person or reminded them that people with BPD were good like she was trying to convince me of.  My counselor also pointed out that several times I said in the discussion, "If you really have overcome it as well as you say you have, then I'm proud of you, take my hat off to you, am really proud of you, etc."  I was chastised for not believing her and doubting her healing when I said If, even though saying if to people I don't know well has been part of my own healing as I used to accept everything everyone said hook, line, and sinker - so I was taught to say if so that I could give people credit without giving it personal knowledge I did not have.  Even after I explained this to them, they continued to come back and tell me how wrong I was for sharing my experiences in a hope that I would help the person who was posting posts of hate against someone with BPD or to help them better understand.  She told me that those two things made her suspect strongly that I was being scapegoated, something she and I had talked about before.  It was okay for someone to spew hate against people with BPD without any consequences even from the offended person with BPD, but that offended person with BPD felt it was okay to twist what I said into whatever she needed it to be to meet whatever her agenda was and expressed it was not okay for me to share my experiences (that included helping a person with BPD heal while I was a caregiver for them) and strategies that worked for me and the person I helped heal.  She reminded me of this article about being scapegoated that she had given me before when I was working to escape my original BPD culture, and she told me to read it again.  Here is the article:  www.glynissherwood.com/12-steps-to-breaking-free-from-being-the-family-scapegoat/

My counselor also told me she saw why she believed I may have held my ground and refused to discount my own experiences.  She was concerned that the offended person with BPD didn't share how she had healed so she could help but instead started arguing that she was a person with BPD and that they didn't have any of the characteristics that long years of recovering from being a victim to the behaviors and helping others from that culture heal from either being victims of or having BPD had taught me.  She said she felt subconsciously I may have seen something familiar in that that my years of healing helped me not to ignore.  My counselor said denying to say one had healed rather than sharing the paths that had helped them to heal was a huge warning sign that she felt I had subconsciously been aware of and that is why I would not let them redefine my experiences for me.  This proved to be true when that person reached out to me afterwards where others couldn't see it in a nasty way.

My counselor also asked me if I'd ever seen any warning sign behavior in these people that I had ignored.  I did not know the person with BPD well or the person who was spewing hate against another BPD well, so I had to say with them not until that day.  The person who was codependent to the BPD - I was able to give her a list of times I saw this person act in an inappropriately aggressive way to people and how I had seen her handle a group split conflict right after I met her in a way that is in some ways similar to what is happening now.  She told me to keep strengthening my radar and not make so many excuses for people - and that is when I decided no contact from here on out with these particular people.  If they would have been my family or something I might have found it worth the effort to use the strategies that help in borderline relationships, but not in this situation.  I chose no contact at that point.

She told me that they were probably going to continue to scream that they were right and I was wrong and say horrible things about me and no matter what I said I was never going to convince them that I was not those things.  She said the only mistake she saw me making was continuing to communicate which is kind of in line with what you said in a previous post that I can't remember exactly the terminology you used but it was something along those lines.  She told me that as soon as I saw that my experiences were not being respected and what I said was being twisted while someone who was truly being hateful to a person with BPD was being ignored that I should have recognized that these were not people I needed to be around and stepped out of the conversation.  She said though that she is proud of me that I chose no contact a few days later and just feel relief that I stepped out of the dance this time before I was caught in someone else's difficult to escape twirl.

I hope by sharing this it might help someone else as it helped me.  Thank you so much, Skip, for what you shared as well.  What you said helped me a lot.  Thank you again.