Do flashbacks and knee-jerk reactions affect your work life?

[Sdmfoster]

My mother has BPD - I don't really know if it was diagnosed properly, but my father and one of my mother's supervisors (before privacy laws came in) told me she had BPD. She certainly showed many traits of three types: Witch, Queen and Waif (waif only when someone called her out on her behaviour). She was physically and emotionally abusive to all of the three kids; My oldest sister was an all-good child, my middle was the all-bad child, and I was all-good until I hit the tweens, when I morphed into all-bad (in her head, of course.) What I really was, was a very observant kid - I saw what triggered her rages with my middle sister, I saw what triggered rewards for my oldest, and I made very very sure that mostly what I showed on the surface would not trigger the Witch. As I grew older though, and her behaviour became more erratic and violent, I began to trigger the Witch on purpose, to show her that I had power over her. I did it with a little smile the whole time, which I think terrified her - here was this pre-teen child who could read her like a book, and was losing her fear and in some cases, even laughing at the evil perpetrated to terrorize. I finally called it quits, ran away from home at 16, and went completely no-contact from that time.

It's been 22 years since then. I've gotten married and kept it together for over 20 years, even through severe health problems (DH's - I am now his full-time caregiver, as he progresses further down in his health problems), bought a home and have almost finished paying for it, had a gorgeous, amazing, kind, generous and quirky daughter, foster other children in need, and on top of all of that, have progressed through a mostly successful career, even though I finished high school late and only attended community college. Up until this year, I would have said I was pretty much healed from my childhood.

However, this past year I have been teamed up on a major project with someone who I swear is also BPD. She was put into the lead role on it as I was recovering from stress leave after a crisis with my husband's health. I hadn't worked very closely with this woman before, but once she got labelled the "leader", why, guess who showed up? The Queen. And if I dared to have a different idea or not agree with her completely, the Witch came out. She would be incredibly snarky, talk about me behind my back to co-workers, and complain to my boss that I wasn't engaged and supporting her properly. I tried to respond professionally, but at one point I had enough and defended myself strongly. The Waif then appeared and went crying to our boss. After I was reprimanded, things spiralled downhill. She has run to our boss with every mistake I made, including telling me I was too nice when giving feedback. Some of my "mistakes" have not been mistakes; I just don't agree with her. But she is very good politically - babysitting the boss's children,taking the management team out to lunch quite often recently, etc. So I get painted as the incompetent. It has triggered so many reactions from when I was tiny - I'm terrified of this woman, I feel like no one will ever believe me, and I think I am slowly being forced out of a job that I am truly good at and enjoy just because this BPD Witch has targeted me to be her all-black. Anybody worked with a BPD after having grown up with one? How do you cope? Is there any way for me to keep my job while having to work with this woman, or do I call time and run again?

[Sitara]

I don't know if I have any constructive advice for staying in that situation, but I had to post because I experienced pretty much the same thing.  My last job there was this guy who, I don't know if he had BPD, but he had a lot of the same behaviors.  We butted heads all the time.  It started pretty immediately when I started - for some reason he decided that he didn't like me - and he let me know every day that I showed up for work.  He was supposed to train me, but told me he "didn't need me so go find something else to do."  I'd ask him questions standing right in front of him, speaking clearly, and he'd ignore me - when I pushed the issue he'd claim he couldn't hear me.  Yet he could hear me all the way across the room (working in a very loud environment) having a conversation with someone else.  He'd avoid working with me unless there was no way out of it.  Once he yelled at me out of nowhere for asking a reasonable question, which was witnessed by a couple coworkers.  Afterwards I asked them, "Am I crazy? Did I say or do something wrong?"  So I know it wasn't me.  It got so bad that I went to my supervisor saying I don't want to be friends with this guy, I just want to be able to work professionally.  My supervisor said this guy was a known problem and I knew of several people who had issues with him too.  Apparently this guy admitted to my boss that he did treat me differently than everyone else.  After the talk, he treated me slightly better, but he was still difficult and it was still obvious he wanted me gone. 

Then one day this guy got promoted to being my boss.  I still can't wrap my brain around how someone who has interpersonal and communication issues with 90% of his coworkers gets promoted into a managerial position.  That was the day I knew that I had to look for a new job.  I couldn't trust that someone who very much seemed like he was trying to run me out of work daily would give me honest reviews and raises.

I was very much like you Sdmfoster - had a great career, stellar reviews, got along with my coworkers, until this one person.  In my case, plenty of people believed me, but no one was going to do anything.  I left because the change was permanent, and there was going to be no way for me to be promoted while staying in the same department.  I would have essentially had to change jobs even within the same company to get anywhere.  That had become pretty clear.  This guy now had way too much control over my life and I wasn't okay with that. 

I don't know what advice to give though.  If the change is only temporary and you love you job, is it worth putting up with the situation until the project is over?  Or is it time for you to move on?  Good luck, it's definitely a difficult situation to be in.