Can we be conditioned into believing our own reactions are worse than we thought

[mssalty]

There is a pattern I've witnessed.  SO says something.  I react with a face, sound, breath, or other way that indicates I have a problem.   My SO immediately becomes cold or reacts with anger about how I react.   I immediately feel awful for having the negative thought/emotion/hesitation.   

But something crossed my mind recently.   What if I WASN'T actually having a negative reaction to what was said, but was simply resetting my own mental state (I daydream and get lost in my own mind) to respond to my SO?   What if I'm interpreting the anger and frustration that comes with the immediate reaction to an actually innocent movement/tic/breath floods me with an incorrect timing in my brain for my anger and frustration?   

Does this make any sense?  In other words, could our partner's own classification of our body language, tone, or other cues make us believe that interpretation over what we actually were feeling?   

How do we stop it? 

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[enlighten me]

One problem with pwBPD is that they magnify negativity. They can also misinterpret things as negative or as aimed at them.

For instance if my ex said that someone nearly crashed into her then she was probably expecting me to say "are you alright?" If I said "why what happened" then she may have interpreted it as me doubting her innocence in the incident. This then snowballs into her thinking that I think she was at fault and so she gets mad.

Also if I was thinking about a problem then it would be misinterpreted as me having a problem with her.

[Flexion]

I'd like to hear more about this. Sounds so much like my feelings!  Man, my uBPDw goes off about my body language. PwBPD seem to be the "best" at creating a story to match your body language and their feelings. Most of the time I am not even thinking what she PRESUMES I am thinking.

[Ceruleanblue]

One problem with pwBPD is that they magnify negativity. They can also misinterpret things as negative or as aimed at them.

This is so true! Just the other day, after I had a really bad incident with my 20 year old daughter(we had to leave a movie we'd gone to see, due to her rudeness and acting out), BPDh suggested that while my daughter had acted VERY disrespectful and angry, and he didn't know why she acts that way, that maybe I'm just too sensitive.

I've heard him claim this before, and thought it over, and came to the conclusion that I am NO MORE sensitive than anyone else. In fact, I've had to develop a thicker skin due to living with his BPD, and my kids have some anger issues. If I let every rude comment get to me, they'd have locked me up long ago. I also recalled seeing a poster in a therapist's office stating all the things abusers say, and "you are too sensitive" was top of the list.

I think lots of pwBPD are always looking for the negative, and even when it's not there, they misinterpret things that way. It's frustrating, and I don't know "why" they do it, but it's constant with BPDh. I'd do something NICE, something I was going out of the way to do nice for him or one of his kids, and yet he'd try to find something nefarious or ugly behind the kind gesture. I just don't get that degree of negativity directed towards someone who's never earned your mistrust. Maybe that is just it, they have a general mistrust of others because they certainly can't trust their own emotions?... .

[enlighten me]

Maybe this might give some insight.

www.futurity.org/scans-show-what-makes-a-brain-borderline/

The fact that negative emotions don't get dampened as with us and that the area of the brain that deals with negativity is hyperactive may explain some of this.

Something else that has interested me is facial recognition. It is said that pwBPD can recognise facial emotions very early on. A friend for her job had to do a test where they show 10 pictures of a face. As the pictures progress then the emotion being shown becomes more apparent. Normally we register at 5 or 6. She said a college that she believed was BPD could do it at 2 or 3. She did a psychology degree so her belief that the woman had BPD seemed fair to me.

If this is also the case then any subtle emotion we show will be picked up on. That means even if we have had a bad drive home and are feeling a little frazzled but don't even realise it they will pick up our negativity. This could be where we get the walk through the door into an argument for no reason behaviour.

[TheRealJongoBong]

From Wikipedia on empathy:

People with borderline personality disorder are very good at recognizing emotions in people's faces, suggesting increased empathic capacities.[130][131] It is, therefore, possible that impaired cognitive empathy (the capacity for understanding another person's experience and perspective) may account for borderline personality disorder individuals' tendency for interpersonal dysfunction, while "hyper-emotional empathy"[verification needed] may account for the emotional over-reactivity observed in these individuals.[129] One primary study confirmed that patients with borderline personality disorder were significantly impaired in cognitive empathy, yet there was no sign of impairment in affective empathy.[129]

So yes, it would make a lot of sense that if the pwBPD is negatively oriented to begin with (lots of anger, etc) then they will pick up on a negative facial expression and run off to the races with it. Bad news for me as I have not been smiling much lately.

[MaybeSo]

Does this make any sense?  In other words, could our partner's own classification of our body language, tone, or other cues make us believe that interpretation over what we actually were feeling?  

We know from studies that the amygdala in pwBPD lights-up differently and more dramatically to  facial cues in others than do the amygdalas' in people without BPD.  They tend to read neutral faces as hostile, and then respond accordingly.   So, yes, I think they can read all sorts of facial tics and cues and body language as more negative or hostile than the owner of the face is intending or even experiencing.  

And yes you can become confused.

I think there is certainly the potential to end up questioning oneself and ones real feelings when this happens and it goes awry.  

For example, when this has happened with me and my ex,  in a flash, like in micro seconds... .my mood is often going from happy/neutral... .into a negative state, NOT because I was there originally, but b/c when I can see and hear that he is judging and misinterpreting my face or mood inaccurately ... .then I do quickly at times get flooded with a strong negative feeling of dread, aversion, anger, fear... . And in an instant, like a milisecond... .I AM having a different experience, which I'm sure he can read on my face, too, so now he IS correct, I AM HAVING a negative experience/feeling... and it CAN be confusing about what is true... .b/c this stuff can happen literally in an instant.  This is in a way what projective identification is all about, too.   You have to be a zen master of identifying and keeping in touch with your own internal experience to manage this kind of situation without getting hooked into it and spun... .and stay solidly grounded in yourself.  It's hard to do.  But not impossible.

[waverider]

We have a full range of subconscious emotions, pwBPD simply filter the ones they expect to see and amplify them. Hence these are the ones we are made consciously aware of, and so are led to believe they are dominant.