Do they ever find their true self

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

Just curious if people with BPD ever find their true self.  The reason I asked is that my ex of 19 years says that now she is happier than ever (with her new victim), that she has now found her self - who she was meant to be.  That she has quit doing alot of the things we did together and is watching new shows, reading new books, doing new activities, speaking up for herself, not acting like someone she isn't, how she is now with people who love her for her, how she has brand new friends, etc.  Is it really possible that in 9 months - she found out who she really is (I doubt it) - or is it just that this is a new experience for her and she thinks she likes the new person she is?  She seems or acts like she is happier - but will it last? So I'm really wondering - has she found her new self?

[cal644]

Just curious if people with BPD ever find their true self.  The reason I asked is that my ex of 19 years says that now she is happier than ever (with her new victim), that she has now found her self - who she was meant to be.  That she has quit doing alot of the things we did together and is watching new shows, reading new books, doing new activities, speaking up for herself, not acting like someone she isn't, how she is now with people who love her for her, how she has brand new friends, etc.  Is it really possible that in 9 months - she found out who she really is (I doubt it) - or is it just that this is a new experience for her and she thinks she likes the new person she is?  She seems or acts like she is happier - but will it last? So I'm really wondering - has she found her new self?

[recoil]

My guess is she is mirroring the interests of the new relationship.  I'm sure this feels great to her, as all new relationships are filled with excitement.  A person with BPD does not get better without a lot of therapy.  A new "relationship" is not a fix.

[bpdspell]

The answer is an emphatic: No.

Without intensive psychological intervention your ex cannot miraculously "find" herself in 9 months. She is more than likely mirroring her new supply and over exaggerating how well she's doing to make things appear like "you" were the problem. My ex played the "I have a better toy now and its a better fit than you game" as a final parting shot to my ego but surprise surprise the relationship combusted in less than six months.

BPD relationships don't work out. Period. They are mentally ill and eventually their disorder will destroy any progress a relationship makes because quality relationships require vulnerability and intimacy; something they just do not have the capacity to fulfill.

Their is no true self because they don't know who they are on any given day. They are a compartment and a collection of selves. Selves that are highly unstable and selves that aren't grounded in a core identity.

Spell

[Reg]

My ex her next relationship lasted a bit over 3 months.  The new person was so much better or was partially just like me but so much better.  She was an alcoholic borderline, with the worst fears ever.  I stould at the side and applauded her, good for you.  She then became black.  I became white.  She tried to recycle me, talked about the BPD, came in denial due to external influence, I got black again, and has now started recycling the person she cheated me with and the alcoholic borderline. They seem to be white now. 

Reality is that if they get really old, the symptoms diminish it seems but well, by then the life they should have had is as good as over, and many of them end up abandoned by everybody or kill themselves (1 out of 10 in my country).

BPD's can not heal without help, a lot of therapy, empathy and validation.  And they need to be motivated to do so. That's the reality.

[Reg]

Forgot this, there's also no way of healing themselves with on line courses of CBT and other bull on line on the net.  Although some BPD's dare to say they did.  It's curious and sad how much fun they make about themselves in blogs etc, declaring themselves to have been the very best persons with BPD and even more now.  Sad.

[patientandclear]

My take on this is somewhat different.

cal644, I don't think your ex's story reflects finding a "self."  As others wrote, it sounds like she is borrowing a self from a new external source.

But I do, actually, think there's anecdotal evidence of some pwBPD developing a solo sense of self.  It's a hard and painful process.  To understand how hard and painful, it's useful to read The Buddha and the Borderline, in which the author, who is diagnosed & super serious about trying to heal, eventually, barely, gets to the point where she can self-soothe with resorting to a passionate affair or new r/s.  That is an INCREDIBLE achievement.  She still longs for the idea of being loved by someone who really understands her, but when you finish the book, you understand that that it is highly unlikely she will achieve that, because her way of being in relationships is so distorted.  It's as if she doesn't know how to compute stable, steady, genuine love as "love."  It has to be more intense, like mainlining heroin.  A deeper, more real love, she might not even recognize as love -- she has no experience of it.

That book helped me grasp what a mammoth undertaking this "healing" is that we all want the people we love with BPD to engage in -- for them, but also, for us.  Could I do it?  I don't honestly know.

My own pwBPD is, I think, making progress toward establishing an independent self.  It's a huge project.  In the course of it, he really needs NOT to use me as a crutch (or anyone), and I can practically watch him teaching himself how to care for me and like me, and value and even cherish me, and not turn himself inside out for/about me.  It feels like "less" after idealization.  But it isn't.  It's very healthy, I think.

And very incomplete.  It is going to take years.  He is not in therapy, he is teaching himself new practices -- yoga, self-reliance.  He may just resign himself to being a hermit, I don't know.  But at least, he is teaching himself not to be desperate in the absence of The One, his chosen other person.  Even though that used to be me and it was So Much Fun to be valued in that way, I don't want to go back -- it's not good for him, and probably in the end, not for me, either.

I can watch him trying to figure out where to put me in his new, unfinished, mental/emotional map. Am I "his person?"  If so, how important is that person supposed to be?  What is it supposed to feel like?  When it's good?  When it's bad?  How bad is too bad to fix?  Etc.  All new questions for him.

I don't think it can never happen, in short.  It is clear it is monumentally hard and scary, and rare.  Much as I love  my guy, much as I respect what I think he is doing, a part of me expects it to slide away when he meets someone new or gets a new idea du jour about making sudden earthshaking changes to  his life in order to try to feel better.  Pretty challenging context in which to maintain a r/s of integrity and growth.  I am trying to take the long view & assume that if I'm right about what he is going through, over time, he may become more and more able to reconcile his feelings about his new, more robust self, and his feelings about other people.  But he may not.

[Perfidy]

My uBPDEX told me she had been dumped out of every relationship before me. We lasted almost eight years. She is in a new relationship that she began while I thought we were together. Weird scenario. Never would have suspected that it would turn out this way.

[iluminati]

To answer the question posed by the Op,  well... . There is a song by Drake featuring Lil Wayne called HYFR.  Once you figure out what HYFR stands for,  you will get my answer.  A true self takes years to develop in someone perfectly fine.  When someone has their selfish development arrested,  as it is with Bpd, it is going to take years of therapy and life experience to get right. After a few months,  she is just mirroring.

As to the Buddha and the Borderline,  that when book struck me as bittersweet.  Yes,  she's  asymptomatic,  but she effectively institutionalized herself in that Buddhist monastery  and has a job with a very unusual structure.  It is good that she is alive and living a life she likes,  but 95% of adults would not consider a life that is essentially permanent preteenhood worthwhile. Granted her childhood was stolen from her,  so that life is progress,  but a life where we're permanently stuck on puppy love sounds like a crummy one.

[Lucky Jim]

Hey Cal644, Agree w/Spell: you could say that they have a "fragmented" sense of self that is highly malleable and subject to turbulent waves of emotion.  On the outside, they may seem charming and garrulous, yet on the inside they are a bundle of anxieties and fears, subject to the whims of their impulses.  Not many get to see the wizard behind the curtain, but those who do will find a little child in a grown-up body, with the unstable self of any child, in my view.  Lucky Jim

[cal644]

Thanks for all the comments. It really is hard to hear these things but it helps keep my sanity. I think looking back at our marriage we had a father daughter relationship. I was just too blind to see it at the time. When she told me she didn't know who she was it floored me, I thought how can you not know who you are after being married 19 years. I still find it amazing how they can throw everything away, forget about you, and move on so easily. Especially after 19 great years.

[Scout99]

I just want to express my thankfulness for your sharing here in the thread patianceandclear! Your experience and insight is so valuable to me where I am in my situation with my SO... .

Thank You!

Scout99

[cal644]

Ok - here is another kinda follow up question - if they do find their true self do they like who they find?

[Moonie75]

Ok - here is another kinda follow up question - if they do find their true self do they like who they find?

Well if ya get healthy, what's not to like about yourself?

[ScotisGone74]

I believe that the majority of them just continue to function in their chameleon like method of transforming from one idealization to another.  They can't stop, Why?    Because if they do actually stop they have to unfortunately reflect upon all the damage they ve done and how their lives have taken a wrong turn at some point or another, and all the great, kind people who are no longer in their lives.   Who would really want to look into all that and try to work on some of their own problems While they portray themselves as an absolutely perfect person?  Much easier to just keep hopping from one great, awesome relationship to the the next and blaming everything in the past on someone else.     


Eventually reality catches up with everyone. 

[Moonie75]

   

Eventually reality catches up with everyone.  

Yup,

When they're old & their looks are gone.

When they're old & their kids are gone.

When they're old & their life, is all but gone!