How BPD deal with grief?

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

How do people with BPD deal with the  loss of a parent?  My ex lost her dad a year ago (which is when the devaluation started).  She never spoke about him or cried to me about him and whenever I would ask if she was ok and she would rage about how she didn't want to think about it.  It was my bad for asking.  Now we are nc but prior to that she was just like I'm ___ed up and that's life so leave me alone.

[Lisalisa75]

How do people with BPD deal with the  loss of a parent?  My ex lost her dad a year ago (which is when the devaluation started).  She never spoke about him or cried to me about him and whenever I would ask if she was ok and she would rage about how she didn't want to think about it.  It was my bad for asking.  Now we are nc but prior to that she was just like I'm ___ed up and that's life so leave me alone.

[SoMadSoSad]

If its my guess I would say some run, some run and deal with it little by little, and some deal with it and end up going down the rabbit hole.

[Pretty Woman]

Two words:

They don't.

[Duped 1]

My ex once commented to me that I feared losing my parents, pets, etc, and she said the only death she feared was her own. I thought that was extremely strange.

[Dutched]

Of what I experienced, a kind of deep hidden anger of being wronged, being hurt is visible when that ‘beloved one’ dies.
It is as if that coping behaviour, a reaction on being reminded by that hurt, gets activated again.

When exw’s father died, there were no tears, no grief at all.
Asking her how she cooped, it was ‘okay’…

A burden, a cross to carry towards her mom was felt as she said: ‘now I need to be always there for her’.   
Since then also her destructive behaviour became more and more visible. A reaction on her loss? A reaction on her self pity or the weight of her cross? 

To be realistic on that, exw dumped her parents/family at age 18 and refused any contact for almost a decade.
The self-pity was that exw felt sorrow for not being part of her parents life for so long and ‘only’ had them around again for a few years. Is that grief? I don’t know.

A few yrs. ago exw’s brother died (was once dumped too). The one she felt a bond with (at least what exw told me once. Words that weren’t backed up with actions).
As told to me, their was ‘a tear visible’… a tear.
Afterwards no grieve at all and out of social correct behaviour her brothers partner was visited a view times only to support, with words only... .     

Now, on the other hand a ‘different’ grieve.
When my grandmother died, whom exw only knew for a couple of years, exw said ‘this really touches my heart’ and cried.
In her diary exw wrote something like ‘unbelievable what I felt, I don’t even feel that for my parents’…
Who were still split black at that time.

When my mother died, the woman that took her into her house and even saw her as her own daughter, exw cried and cried ‘for days’.
SHE was the one to be supported, not me, the one that lost his mother…
I had a son, the only one that hugged me asked ‘dad how are you doing now that grandma is gone?’

So I don’t know ‘their’ kind of grief.   Even those signals are irrational for us.

[Aesir]

My ex lost her mother 3 year ago and at first she seemed to deal with it normally or the best she could.  Later she started blaming her life's decisions on her mother and on me of course. 

[Pretty Woman]

Dutched, I'd like to elaborate on your post.

It's very interesting to me.

When a mutual friend, not a great friend but an acquaintance through another friend of ours grandson died my ex was an emotional wreck.

She ended up breaking up with me and then told me I was selfish for reaching out during this time as this child had died.

I think her words were, "you selfish B, all you care about is yourself". Here she dumped me for seemingly no reason and I just wanted closure.

We eventually got back together. During this time I found out she was cheating on me with another "friend" of ours, went to a balloon release for this child and had all this memorabilia from his wake around the house.

The kicker: she never met this child. She barely knew the grandmother!

They seem to grieve when they didn't cause the tragedy. It's a bizarre disorder.

[Dutched]

Reading this topic again it seems that pwBPD:

=Desperately forces to give them attention when the SO grieves for losing a beloved one and/or some one very close.
They can’t stand it as a 4yr. old who’s centre of the world is the 4yr. old? 
Feelings of abandoning?

=Seemingly suppresses and/or are even able to switch off emotions (death is death) when they loses a parent / brother / sister.
Until this topic I thought it had to do that exw once split her father/brothers/sisters black.
That at that moment of memories that coping behaviour sets in (the punished / angry child)?

Still can’t get the total concept that exw cried (for days) when my mother died.
They had a good bond, mutual understanding, never had a clash, even talked about emotional matters (what exw never did with her own mom).
So wondering how sincere all was, ‘just’ fulfilling a role and playing a character for a 25 yrs.?

You might be right Pretty Woman
   They seem to grieve when they didn't cause the tragedy

[lovenature]

Hi Lisa

PWBPD feel emotions at an extreme level, many times they can't handle the emotions they feel so they have psychological defences to protect them. I think they hurt from the loss of a parent like we all do, how they process their grief can be confusing to us; considering they are capable of making up their own reality to fit their emotion of the moment it only stands to reason that they can avoid pain that is too much to bear.