Anyone experienced a BPD ever recovering?

[StayStrongNow]

I was wondering if anyone experienced a BPD ever recovering despite improbable odds to the degree I describe below.

My estranged wife has a mother and sister with BPD, a step dad with NPD and apparently past generations also having these same mental instabilities.

I saw early in my relationship with my soon to be ex that she had an issue with abandonment and what has only come apparent recently (to me 10 years later due to sites like this), this is one of the signs of her having BPD. After tolerating our first few dates with her getting obnoxious and drunk, I told her we were done. That night she slit her wrist. It wasn't attempted suicide, it was cutting, self harm, now I understand it as being the textbook BPD variety. I know this was only self harm because she made sure to call her mother and me before she cut herself.

At the start of my divorce now pushing 2 years from a 10 year marriage, I  sought a therapist/counselor for help. On the 2nd visit she bulldozed in (literally) to try to force it into marriage counseling, but this was just an outlet for further trashing me. Backing up a bit, 3 years ago our 4th child, our beautiful daughter died at 25 months due to a congenital heart defect.  The therapist emphasized my wife as having PTSD primarily and disregarded the many events before. As the therapist put it, "she is charming and very convincing". I know she is a compulsive liar, I know now this is a characteristic of a Borderline. He is still seeing her now but he has only told me she "may have some" Dissociative and Borderline Disorders.  Through my extensive research and seeing and living with empirical evidence, I am convinced I was married to a BPD and once I saw the light recently, I let go and I am staying away. I am now the bad guy as defined in the term "splitting" or "black or white", as I went from being the good guy "Night Watchman" a termed tagged on me by her pastor and "Knight in Shinning Armor" a name quoted in an essay from her praising what a great guy I was from now being all bad and no good.

She will never listen to me, no therapist to my knowledge has dared approached her with the idea of her having BPD, her mother a BPD also who like her daughter, blames me for everything, I see no hope and if possible, highly improbable she will ever improve.

So I'll close with the same question I started with, have you seen someone with BPD seek help and even "recover" although handicapped by a comparable degree of disfunction as described above? I really want to know not for the sake of any reconciliation with her, but has any person seen any good occur from a BPD that changed? Please respond if you have had an experience with this type of "miracle"? I would be very interested in reading a success story.

[letmeout]

I have not heard of anyone 'recovering'. I only know that they get worse as they age because I was married to one for 35 years. It got so bad that it felt like I was in real danger all the time so I divorced him.

[StayStrongNow]

Thank you for your reply letmeout. I greatly appreciate your feedback especially coming with your 35 years experience. I wasn't sure about this condition getting worse with age because of other circumstances in my r/s with my ex but you sort of made me look and realize, my ex has definitely got worse.

These disorders are so hard to work with. I read this site's suggested recommendations of action items needed to be in a relationship with a person with BPD. I honestly just can't do it.

I really have to figure out something because she is the mother of my three young children ages 10, 8, and 6. The ex is going to be in my life for a long time. The idea of her getting worse concerns me. Thank you for informing me of the what to expect of the future.



 

[Meili]

Yes, I have (and am) seeing it.

But, let me qualify it. My x has not been diagnosed BPD, but has many of the traits. She's been in counseling since we split and I have noticed a marked difference in how she treats and responds to me. That being said, she keeps herself at a safe distance from me and others for fear of being hurt again by being intimate with someone. Not a bad plan all-in-all.

[Skip]

The detaching board is probably not the best place to do this survey. We do have families here that have come together to live around this disorder.

Your wife sounds to be pretty high on the spectrum - severe cutting above the age of 30. 

[LilMe]

I agree with Skip. You won't find any success stories on this ':)etaching' board.  But here is a link to the 'Improving' board's success stories.

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=113820.0

[FraFra85]

They are all different. Some traits are common and this defines the disorder. But all other traits and characteristics that they and us have could make more simple/harder to live with them.

From what I read my conclusions are:
- Love as we expect couldn't be possible. If we assume that they are emotionally 3y old in adult bodies we can't expect mature and deep love. Can you teach to 3y old kid to love like an adult? Can someone do that?
- They need strong motivation and commitment and insight skills to watch inside them and to solve and improve and follow long therapy (years) without give up. Few of them are able.
- They need economic resources to stay in therapy for years.
- When they reach some degrees of awareness they could understand that they are with us for wrong reasons and they leave.
- The brain of pwBPD work differently (researchers have seen it with MRI).
- With therapy like DBT some of most problematic traits could reduce or disappear (suicide, self harm, abusive behaviours). But core problems that are connected to personality don't change or change few. Like abandonment fear, instability in r/s.  Behaviours could be changed but personality lot less. Are you able to change main pillars of your personality? Is someone able to do that?
Behaviours could be teached and learned, personality core traits don't change or change few. Can an introvert became extrovert (different from act like an extrovert)? Can a person with emotional instability become a person with emotions stability? And I don't mean only about BPD, think about yourself.

So imho, if we sum all points above, we also have some skills to stay in this type of r/s with all instruments that this site explain in very low % of cases maybe it's possible to stay with them for all life in a happy way.

[Icanteven]

So I'll close with the same question I started with, have you seen someone with BPD seek help and even "recover" although handicapped by a comparable degree of disfunction as described above?

Per psychology today (and a host of other articles on the Internet), borderlines generally improve with age with or without treatment:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/i-hate-you-dont-leave-me/201308/the-borderline-grows-older-0

Further, patients engaged in DBT (or, apparently, CBT/mindfulness/transference) appear to have significant remission of symptoms given intense, engaged, years-long involvement in therapy:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3158489/

With that said, a couple things I've been told my numerous mental health professionals (as in a dozen+ psychiatrists, psychologists, MSWs) and/or seen in the literature:

1)  Remission != Recovery:  Given therapy, suicide and self-harm behaviors will decline, as will some of the most pernicious effects of the disease.  BUT, despite the very high rate of remission for those who stick with necessary YEARS of therapy, significant social impairment is still present.  In one study I read, 50% suffer from chronic unemployment, to use but one example.  In my personal life, my wife's GAF score was down to 40, and just getting her back to 70 would be a massive accomplishment.  She is low-functioning, so it's a double edged sword:  she's more likely to do therapy (which she is doing), but she's also more likely to be long-term impaired;

2) Therapy isn't a slam dunk, even for those who choose to engage.  Again, in my own experience, I know that my wife has been a problem patient in her hospitalization program, to the point that she's led mini-revolts against the therapists and physicians leading treatment.  She absolutely wants to get better, but it will be a year soon and I can't tell a difference.  I do know that she walked out on our family in the middle of this saga and has been very low contact since, and I know that there are days she seems lucid and days she seems as emotionally dysregulated as ever (on top of her acting-out behaviors).  Finally,  the last conversation we had she told me she felt like she was wasting her time. 

As has been said here and all over the board, no two pwBPDs are the same, and my wife is about as co-morbid as one can get at this point, but she absolutely wants to beat this and there are periods where it is running on a hamster wheel. 

I'll sum it up with this (and this is the piece that finally helped me to loosen my grip and let her go):  my overarching question since this began was "What if she gets better and the woman I fell in love with returns?"  The answer is multifaceted, but in the end, she's not coming back in the form I fell in love with her in, and though as her husband it's my prerogative to hope against hope that she gets well, that's a very, very, very low probability; the almost certain outcome is that she fights this in fits and starts for the rest of her life, and that's one of the more positive outcomes; the more negative outcomes... .

[Skip]

In one study I read, 50% suffer from chronic unemployment, to use but one example.  In my personal life, my wife's GAF score was down to 40... .

40 is significant impairment.
https://www.omh.ny.gov/omhweb/childservice/mrt/global_assessment_functioning.pdf

Not to be pollyanna, but many members partners here are operating above that level and many would not qualify for a clinical diagnosis... .

Additionally, there are many NPD-ish / BPD-ish couplings - the same thing that attracts the couple makes them suffer when the relationship breaks down.

While I agree with most of the comments above (as would the experts - members here are well read), I cringe when we start making universal sweeping "no hope' characterizations as part of our healing/grieving process.

Anyone with NPD-ish or BPD-ish or low self esteem or attachment issues will struggle in relationships. People in these brackets tend to seek/attract.

It's complicated.

[Mutt]

Anyone with NPD-ish or BPD-ish or low self esteem or attachment issues will struggle in relationships. People in these brackets tend to seek/attract.

70% percent of our members are depressed. What is depression? Depression is a mood disorder, we have BiP then we have Anxiety / Panic disorders Major Depressive, PTSD.

[kc sunshine]

This worries me about myself! I guess if the BPD idealization phase would draw the people with NPD traits and then the people with low self esteem or abandonment issues would have trouble leaving the relationship even if it was bad. Though would the person with NPD traits have less trouble leaving once the devaluation phase kicked in?

[Skip]

would the person with NPD traits have less trouble leaving once the devaluation phase kicked in?

Read about narcissistic wounds, narcissistic rage and narcissistic injury - these can be the reaction to being devalued.

[HurtinNW]

We can't diagnose here, and our exes are all different. Mine has many NPD traits, and I think his narcissistic wounds have been devastating to him. Any hint he might be wrong about anything throws him into huge reaction, and sadly this incapability of ever being wrong had led him to a sad place. In his case he has gotten much worse with age. His charm and good looks and NPD traits that worked well when he was younger no longer protect him from his behavior, and he is suffering the consequences.

That said, I think there are some who do get better. I have a longtime friend who I suspect is BPD, with many of the symptoms including cutting, and she has gotten much better the last few years.

But it is important to remember we cannot make anyone get better. They have to choose it. Lots of times when we ask these questions it is because we want to have hope, which is good. What we have to decide is how much the pwBPD can be a part of our lives. Here on the detaching board we are trying to get distance, because our exes cannot be part of our lives.