He thinks I am bipolar.

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

Ok, he said yesterday that he thinks I am bipolar because I am so moody.

He refers to himself as bipolar, but I don't think he is. He has BPD and PTSD and perhaps a few other things, but I don't think he is bipolar. If he is, it is not the classic type.

I have some chronic health issues that affect my stamina and when I'm tired my patience is thin. The other morning, my worst time of day, I had a lot of stressful things to do and was running through my morning routine, pretty stressed.  He was silent. He things I will lash out at him. He had an abusive mother and is very sensitive to this. But he looks at me with anger in his eyes and refuses to talk. He is waiting for me to sound on edge--so he can treat me like crap. It was this situation, my stressed morning, that led him to say I am bipolar. Because later in the day I was relaxed and happy.

I am not bipolar, but I do show a range of emotion---happy, stressed, relaxed, frustrated, etc.

Is this accusation from him a  gaslighting thing? I think he convinced his friend that I have "problems". That makes me so angry. Urgh!

[anna58]

Ok, he said yesterday that he thinks I am bipolar because I am so moody.

He refers to himself as bipolar, but I don't think he is. He has BPD and PTSD and perhaps a few other things, but I don't think he is bipolar. If he is, it is not the classic type.

I have some chronic health issues that affect my stamina and when I'm tired my patience is thin. The other morning, my worst time of day, I had a lot of stressful things to do and was running through my morning routine, pretty stressed.  He was silent. He things I will lash out at him. He had an abusive mother and is very sensitive to this. But he looks at me with anger in his eyes and refuses to talk. He is waiting for me to sound on edge--so he can treat me like crap. It was this situation, my stressed morning, that led him to say I am bipolar. Because later in the day I was relaxed and happy.

I am not bipolar, but I do show a range of emotion---happy, stressed, relaxed, frustrated, etc.

Is this accusation from him a  gaslighting thing? I think he convinced his friend that I have "problems". That makes me so angry. Urgh!

[Me-Time]

Mine would lash out at me for the slightest perceived thing that might indicate to her that I was not "connected" to her. Sometimes she would even say I gave her "a look" (which of course meant I was upset with her and therefore, taking it to the extreme as always, would leave her). That would prompt accusations, berating me, telling me what I think and feel until I could take no more. I tried like heck to be calm and always started out that way. But the more calm I was, the harder she pushed. And then when I blew up - that's exactly what she was waiting for. Something to dangle in front of me so she could say, "See how awful you are to me? You are abusive." And this is what she tells others, which leads them to think I am the problem. She admits that she has issues, but she minimizes them and puts the blame on me for why there were problems in the relationship. "If only you had done what I needed things would have been so much better." She's right about that, though. If I had become a rock and allowed her to verbally abuse me for things she makes up in her head, then things might have gotten better. Probably, more likely, is that nothing would have satisfied her. And I would have ended up shriveled in a corner somewhere.

Yep, it's gaslighting.

[vortex of confusion]

The bigger question is, ":)o YOU think you are bipolar?"

Ex used to love to push my buttons. He would do it in such covert ways and would then try to tell me that I was being unreasonable. I am the raging b***h even though he left pretty much all of the parenting and household tasks to me. He would go to sleep at night or during the day and sleep whenever he wanted. I had to be "on" pretty much 24/7. If I was tired or needed help, then I was being unreasonable and demanding. I would ask him to put the kids to bed so I could get some rest. He would go to sleep and the kids would come get me anyway. His defense was, "I can't make the kids stop coming to get you."

He paints me so black with the kids. ":)on't do that or your mom is going to get mad." He is the one that will get mad and snap at the kids if they wake him up, not me. It is so painful to have somebody tell you stuff that you feel is so far from true.

Yeah, I have some problems. I won't pretend that I don't. If he had tried to say something about the problems that I know I have, it would have been easier to take. No, it felt like he would make stuff up on the spur of the moment, especially when I was having a bad day, tired, or just not in the mood to deal with a grown adult bugging me. I have 4 kids and work two part time jobs. I sometimes have down times as do most people.

With ex, he could have whatever ups and downs he wanted. If the kids or I had up or down times, he would latch onto it and be a jerk about it.

[thefinalrose]

Mine convinced himself I'm borderline and used that as an excuse to dispose of me. He's a lot like Me-Times's; he was physically, sexually, and extremely emotionally abusive, and when I finally showed him I was angry with him, when I would yell and call him out for it, he'd tell me that I'm the one with all the problems and acting crazy. I tried several times to have a conversation with him, and he was always like "I can't talk to you anymore, you're too crazy/incurably ill". Meanwhile, after researching the crap out of BPD and Cluster B PDs in general, I see how he himself seems to have BPD. It's the only explanation I can find for his behavior, other than thinking that he's right and that I'm the crazy one who caused all the problems (which I know isn't true and I have written evidence) or that he just never cared about me and was using me all the time (which I also can't convince myself is true, because the many times he was not mean to me, his affection seemed very genuine). I honestly believe he has serious emotional problems which he's either unwilling or unable to acknowledge, he either can't or doesn't want to have insight into his own behavior. I for sure have my own problems with depression and PTSD, but I'm not a compulsive liar, I'm not physically or sexually abusive and I've never said anything to hurt him on purpose, never gave the silent treatment, I don't idealize and devalue at the drop of a hat, I don't cheat, and I don't push/pull. All of that was him. It makes a lot of sense now why he never wanted a committed relationship, if he indeed has BPD. A lot of his behaviors actually kind of make sense in the context of being terrified of emotional intimacy/abandonment. An increase in intimacy would always correlate with escalating abuse. Always.

It's very, very difficult for me not to internalize this, because it's believable that I'm "crazy" and have caused all the problems - if we both ignore his behavior. At the end of the day I always despair and lay in bed crying before going to sleep thinking that it really was all my fault and that I deserved it. I feel that no matter what I would have tried to say to him in the end, he would have always twisted it around as more "proof" that I'm crazy, and I think I realize now that the only way to fix the relationship is if he himself does some serious introspection, which he's shown zero interest in doing. I can't make him do it and I can't really do anything to change it. It freaking sucks, but in a way it's also a comforting thought.

[Curiously1]

Yes. I was called bipolar, BPD many many times. And whenever I questioned her behaviour I was called a paranoid schizophrenic and to stop hallucinating. It's like you aren't allowed to show any stress or negative emotions or a range of emotions apart from happiness. I don't think you're even allowed to be happy sometimes depending on how they feel. You might not even be doing anything at all and somehow make up in their minds you have done something to make them feel negative.

All of this is not normal. To me it's all projection and crazymaking. Placing all the crappy feelings onto you when he is unsettled. Looking for evidence that something is wrong with you or what you are doing at the time to feel better about himself.

I went to a therapist to make sure I wasn't going crazy. Even broke up with me one time and told me to get DBT extensive first and she would consider me in the future. She even started making up facts on the spot like by this the age of 25 I will be cured from BPD  Being with my ex did make me start to believe I was just as sick as her or worse.

I agree with vortex of confusion. Do you really think you are what he says you are?
My therapist asked me if anybody else thought all these things about me and I replied no.
She told me, see, the only person who has had a problem with you like that is someone with BPD.
I find that it's the people with personality disorders that call people crazy because we don't think the same way they do! We are not exactly like them therefore we are crazy to them.

[ynwa]

I have been through this all. My experiences range very much along the same lines. They cannot handle their emotions and actions to the point there is NO way it's their fault. 

We begin to react and live through their emotions, totally unaware of our reactions, because we are open to them.  They say "you pushed my buttons, when all along they had been pressing ours"

You might have felt out of control, outside your normal self in a place where that was the only valid response.  So in that moment, yeah you went "crazy"

But give the notion you are bipolar the middle finger.  Seriously, yell it and tell that person to go fish. (Pick any favorite expletive). And not to them, to yourself. Say it out loud.

[stimpy]

And whenever I questioned her behaviour I was called a paranoid schizophrenic

Yes, me too, the exact same. Then after our argument and her diagnosing me as schizophrenic, she congratulated herself on how well she "handled me". 

Back to original post, Bipolar is characterised by mood swings lasting weeks or months, not hours or days. And if you show the normal range of human emotions then that makes you... .human 

As it  happened, my ex diagnosed one of her two daughters as having manic depression and her mother as being mentally ill. Ohh he red flags... .

[anna58]

Thank you to all who shared your stories with me. It helped me to see that I am not the only one going through this.

I think he needs to remain as emotionally steady as possible, because he is so ultra sensitive and trying to avoid falling into a pit of anxiety or despair. So, if I show any emotion, it is upsetting to him and therefore, I am eliciting a strong emotion in him that he doesn't want and doesn't think is normal. It is really his reaction that is abnormal and based in past abuse. Most people can handle if their friend or partner is upset or frustrated or whatever.

[thefinalrose]

So, if I show any emotion, it is upsetting to him and therefore, I am eliciting a strong emotion in him that he doesn't want and doesn't think is normal.

Mine was like this. The very first time I yelled at him, after almost three years of his nonsense, led to the final devaluation and discard. It's like he couldn't handle that he'd done something wrong and I wasn't allowed to be angry or upset with him. He never asked me if he was doing anything to upset me or why I felt the way I did; he always would try to explain away my behavior to me (in other words, to himself) in terms of my depression and PTSD, and therefore my fault. It got to a point where I was honestly afraid of showing any emotion at all, because any time I did, I was being "too intense". Like he wanted an emotionless robot for a partner, not a real person. I began to feel so one-dimensional, like my feelings were so restricted and I began regretting calling him out for his behavior because even if it was unfair to me at least he was still with me and pretended to love me, right?

It's like, once I started showing him I was upset with him, it's like a switch was flipped, and he became a different person, like he completely rewrote the entire narrative of our relationship in his head, even if it didn't make sense and even if I had proof that it wasn't the way he said it was. Then came the discard, via a text that said "Well... .to tell you the truth... .it wouldn't really bother me if I never spoke to you ever again". And then when I got upset about that and told him I was deeply hurt because of that, he said something along the lines of "see, this is exactly why I'm breaking up with you, because you're too intense and stressful for me to handle". For having a very natural emotional reaction and telling him I was hurt? What the heck.

He was the only one allowed to have boundaries. I had serious boundary issues and he plowed through every feeble effort I made to try to build them - physically, emotionally, and sexually. Whenever I would say no to something, it would just make him try harder, to the point I often felt like I didn't have a choice. Imagine someone driving a semi through a glass house and you kind of get the idea. But if I ever messed up and made a mistake and overstepped one of his boundaries? I'd never hear the end of it and it's one of the few reasons he gave for breaking up with me. Because one time he told me to stop talking to him when I was depressed, and apparently I hadn't stopped even though I thought I had (according to him) and therefore "not respecting his boundaries". But let's just go ahead and ignore his physical abuse, sexually aggressive behavior, and the fact that he obsessively asked me personal questions about my depression and wanted to "help" me with it in the first place, shall we?

[stimpy]

Mine was like this. The very first time I yelled at him, after almost three years of his nonsense, led to the final devaluation and discard. It's like he couldn't handle that he'd done something wrong and I wasn't allowed to be angry or upset with him. He never asked me if he was doing anything to upset me or why I felt the way I did; he always would try to explain away my behavior to me (in other words, to himself) in terms of my depression and PTSD, and therefore my fault. It got to a point where I was honestly afraid of showing any emotion at all, because any time I did, I was being "too intense". Like he wanted an emotionless robot for a partner, not a real person. I began to feel so one-dimensional, like my feelings were so restricted and I began regretting calling him out for his behavior because even if it was unfair to me at least he was still with me and pretended to love me, right?

It's like, once I started showing him I was upset with him, it's like a switch was flipped, and he became a different person, like he completely rewrote the entire narrative of our relationship in his head, even if it didn't make sense and even if I had proof that it wasn't the way he said it was. Then came the discard, via a text that said "Well... .to tell you the truth... .it wouldn't really bother me if I never spoke to you ever again". And then when I got upset about that and told him I was deeply hurt because of that, he said something along the lines of "see, this is exactly why I'm breaking up with you, because you're too intense and stressful for me to handle". For having a very natural emotional reaction and telling him I was hurt? What the heck.

He was the only one allowed to have boundaries. I had serious boundary issues and he plowed through every feeble effort I made to try to build them - physically, emotionally, and sexually. Whenever I would say no to something, it would just make him try harder, to the point I often felt like I didn't have a choice. Imagine someone driving a semi through a glass house and you kind of get the idea. But if I ever messed up and made a mistake and overstepped one of his boundaries? I'd never hear the end of it and it's one of the few reasons he gave for breaking up with me. Because one time he told me to stop talking to him when I was depressed, and apparently I hadn't stopped even though I thought I had (according to him) and therefore "not respecting his boundaries". But let's just go ahead and ignore his physical abuse, sexually aggressive behavior, and the fact that he obsessively asked me personal questions about my depression and wanted to "help" me with it in the first place, shall we?

I relate to this 100%

It's like they insult you, or do something that hurts you - you show some emotion, react or get upset, then you are blamed for your reaction and it all becomes about you and you being too sensitive or some other bs.

And that is abuse. Your emotions and feelings are being ignored and invalidated and the initial hurt is being compounded because your reaction is then an excuse to blame you and diminish you further. It is horrible.

I was so far in the FOG, that she convinced me that the solution to this was that if she did or said something that hurt me, I was to take time out - likely 24 hours and only come back to her when I had overcome the initial reaction. What happened next, looking back beggars belief. About half an hour after we had agreed this, she started going on about how good two of her previous lovers were in bed. Yes, really. What a thing to do. Like, no boundaries at all, and like she was talking to a lump of wood - like I wasn't even real. Surprise surprise, I didn't really want to hear about all this, and I walked out - saying this is the start of the first 24 hours of time out.

You couldn't make it up. It almost seems funny now, but funny tragic... .

Soon after she sent me a text saying she was the happiest she'd been in her whole life, 2 weeks after that she said she loved me, and 5 days after that she dumped me. And as for the discard text I got, it was very similar to yours thefinalrose, mine was "Ive been thinking, and I don't want to have any more contact with you. Goodbye."

And that was it. I never did any any reasons. It was then that I started Googling about  behaviour patterns, and for the first time in my life, came across what personality disorders are and I started to put two and two together and came up with BPD. Quite a journey.

[thefinalrose]

I relate to this 100%

It's like they insult you, or do something that hurts you - you show some emotion, react or get upset, then you are blamed for your reaction and it all becomes about you and you being too sensitive or some other bs.

And that is abuse. Your emotions and feelings are being ignored and invalidated and the initial hurt is being compounded because your reaction is then an excuse to blame you and diminish you further. It is horrible.

I was so far in the FOG, that she convinced me that the solution to this was that if she did or said something that hurt me, I was to take time out - likely 24 hours and only come back to her when I had overcome the initial reaction. What happened next, looking back beggars belief. About half an hour after we had agreed this, she started going on about how good two of her previous lovers were in bed. Yes, really. What a thing to do. Like, no boundaries at all, and like she was talking to a lump of wood - like I wasn't even real. Surprise surprise, I didn't really want to hear about all this, and I walked out - saying this is the start of the first 24 hours of time out.

You couldn't make it up. It almost seems funny now, but funny tragic... .

Soon after she sent me a text saying she was the happiest she'd been in her whole life, 2 weeks after that she said she loved me, and 5 days after that she dumped me. And as for the discard text I got, it was very similar to yours thefinalrose, mine was "Ive been thinking, and I don't want to have any more contact with you. Goodbye."

And that was it. I never did any any reasons. It was then that I started Googling about  behaviour patterns, and for the first time in my life, came across what personality disorders are and I started to put two and two together and came up with BPD. Quite a journey.

Wow stimpy, that's terrible. Especially the "time out". Seriously? I mean it might sound good in theory but you can't impose that on someone as if they're three years old and being punished. Geez... .

BPD is really the only way I can really make his behavior make anything resembling sense. It's interesting, the similarities I see between his behavior and the stories from other people I read on here.

My ex also flipped between supposedly loving me and then not. Like I visited him one time (the relationship was long distance for a while), and that night he was all over me, kissing me, starry eyed. It was wonderful, actually. Then after I went home, it's like I didn't exist. I didn't hear from him at all for three days. When I finally contacted him and asked to talk about our relationship (we were never formally "together" according to him, even though now I see that yeah, we were, he just didn't want any commitment), he was just like " no, we're just friends". Three months after that he called me up crying and telling me he loves me. Three months after that he discarded me. Mind you, this happened after three years of him constantly being all over me, acting like my best friend, telling me I'm so special and different from anyone he's ever met before, sleeping with me, saying he loves everything about me etc., and then shoving me away from him, ignoring me, saying nasty things, and generally just treating me like not a human.

I've scrutinized my behavior and even though everyone I've spoken to tells me it's him who's disordered, not me, I can't fully believe them. I'm quite a different person from who I was this time last year, due (somewhat) to therapy and (more so) the amount of introspection and work I've done on myself in private. I've gained a lot of insight into my own behavior and, hopefully, his.

Before this happened, I didn't even realize he was abusive. Nor did I really believe that my parents were abusive. I'd always been blamed for everything, so I thought there was something intrinsically wrong with me. I used to tell my ex this when we were together, and he just used that as more "proof" that I'm totally crazy. He was totally convinced I'm the one with BPD when he left. I won't deny that I have many symptoms of borderline; there are also many that I don't have. I definitely don't behave the way a BPD person behaves in a relationship or when someone tries to express their feelings. I also want to understand his feelings and perspective, even if he never seemed to want to understand mine. My ex's behavior in the relationship is nearly textbook borderline, though, and in a way it almost does make sense, things I couldn't figure out before that made zero sense at all, like how he'd get nuts (in a really bad way) when I tried to to tell him I love him, how he seemed terrified of commitment, the idealize/devalue behavior pattern, how he'd get so abusive almost every time I was intimate with him. I actually find it really interesting, if not also totally horrific at the same time... .

[stimpy]

Hey thefinalrose,

again, so many similarities... .

So your comment about "commitment" was my experience too. During one of the last intense conversations with my ex, I went out of my way to try and reassure her about "us" and I said that I was "totally committed" to her. Her reply was

"what does that mean"

Again, looking back, you just couldn't make it up.

I understand about the self examination thing, I think many people go through this process. I think something to keep in mind, is that the two key elements of the BPD syndrome

fear abandonment
fear of engulfment

are two fears that pretty much most people have.

It is the intensity of the feeling that is different. For a person with BPD, those fears translate into very intense feelings, way beyond what we would feel and those feelings then become facts in the mind of someone with BPD. So, if the person with BPD feels they're going to be abandoned, then that becomes a fact. And rather than have the other person abandon them, they will do the abandoning first and that gets acted on. And so the sudden discard with no warning.

So we all have those fears and if in a relationship with a BPD person, the OTT behaviours and unpredictability of their behaviour that are directed at us (love bombing or devaluing behaviours or whatever) are so intense that for me I know that it started to trigger those very feelings of engulfment or potential abandonment. So for me, her intensity and unpredictability began to destabilise me and I began to wonder what was going to happen next - was I going to dumped, was she in love with someone else, was she dating someone else, and that is why these relationships are sometimes called "crazy making".

So yes, for a time, I did wonder if I might also have traits of BPD. But now I think it is the entanglement with an emotionally unstable person that is behind this.

And to my mind that is one of the reasons it takes a long time to recover from one of these relationships. We have to come back to ourselves again and for me at least that means being NC. And making sure I have good people in my life, so that I get used again to stability and predictability, with people who are, respectful and kind. 

I get the parent thing too, and now looking back, I actually see my FOO (family of origin) differently to how I used to, and I now understand my people pleasing/rescuer tendancies better than I did. And I now try to consciously remind myself to think carefully before getting too involved with certain people especially if those tenancies start to come into play, and I consciously stop myself from doing what I used to.

Mind you, it's still nice to help people now and again 

[thefinalrose]

Thank you for sharing. 

In my experience, I really started to be afraid he was just using me for intimacy. Unfortunately now I realize he was indeed sexually abusive, although I don't know if he was really trying to hurt me; instead I think maybe he was so terrified of rejection, and why he would continually put me in situations or use force to get me in bed with him sometimes, even if he never forced me into actually doing the things he wanted. Like he would sometimes do pretty much everything he could force me to do before it could be defined as sexual assault. Then I would keep saying no or showing him I'm not interested by physically closing off and he would get angry and sulk and become physically abusive, even long after the fact. Not once did he ever actually ask me if I wanted to be intimate with him. Ever. It was always about what he wanted. He would even try to do this when he already knew I didn't want to. It was weird, like he was 14 and had no idea how to talk about feelings or sex or relationships at all. This man was 25 years old when he discarded me.

As far as commitment, he knows exactly what it is. He even almost always had a girlfriend on the side, and sometimes he'd even talk about her to me (not really in the way your ex talked in depth about hers to you, more just like mention her in passing in a way that seemed kind of like he was hoping I'd start asking about her or like I'd get jealous; I never did). With time I began to feel like his safety net, his security blanket, a comfort object of sorts. Whenever he'd break up with whoever he was with, he wouldn't leave me alone; he'd be all over me all the time, to the point it was almost physically suffocating sometimes. If I tried to get away from him, he physically drag me back, pull me back and hang onto me. It got to a point that he really began to make me nervous. It seems he always has to be with someone or pursuing someone. He says he can be alone, but I seriously doubt that.