Feeling set up

[wantmorepeace]

Sibling with ubpd suddenly being nice after a period of excoriation and low contact.  I feel like it could be a precursor to telling me how good they are (as opposed to me).  Overall, I'm better than I've been at other times, but this does have me a little tweaked.  I'm trying to come down and push it aside and felt like writing might help!  Thanks for listening.

[Notwendy]

In a way the "being good" times were more uncomfortable  because of the uncertainty. It seemed that at any time, it could change. When BPD mother was angry and acting out, at least I knew what she was doing in the moment. The nice times were more of an unknown.

[wantmorepeace]

Agreed.

[zachira]

The times when a disordered person is suddenly being nice after regular periods of abuse can sometimes produce more uneasiness than the abusive periods. Healthy people want to see the best in others; we often want to believe the being nice is genuine and the person has changed. With a disordered sibling who we have known since childhood, we are often more than aware that the being nice is more about getting something they want, part of sibling rivalry, than really caring about the sibling they habitually compete with for resources and recognition. 

What can be specifically worrisome, is we don't know what the sibling is up to with their sudden pretend nice behaviors. How much time do we spend wondering what the sibling is up to and what ways can we protect ourselves? We don't want to allow the disordered sibling to rent too much space in our heads.

[PearlsBefore]

One of the things often seen in Borderline Personalities is "haltlose", functionally the inability to place themselves on a timeline - it's the ultimate "living in the moment" mixed with "unable to distinguish past from present from future" - in Europe's ICD-10 they're recognised as much more co-mingled symptoms.

Ultimately this means you'll so frequently see the "I used to be bad BACK THEN, but NOW I am turning over a NEW LEAF and I'm totally fine NOW" - even if they don't realise it's been less than 24 hours since their last egregious action, - and less than 24 hours until their next one perhaps.

It vicariously gives you/me/us anxiety because, especially if you lived it as a child with a BPD mother, "nothing is ever genuine" when dealing with these people - Dr. Christine Lawson references this ties into children often pouring themselves into pets or "simple" peers, because of the chaotic frenzy of the constantly changing "now I'm good", "now I'm bad".

[CC43]

Sibling with ubpd suddenly being nice after a period of excoriation and low contact.

Hi there,

In my experience, this is extremely typical of the BPD push-pull, rage-isolate-reconnect cycle.  Let me guess:  your sibling had a meltdown, where she put you down and/or blamed you, when you did nothing to deserve it.  Even if there were a kernel of truth to what your sibling accused you of, she wildly distorted the fact pattern and made you out to be a villian.  Then she cut contact, possibly to punish you, and also to give you no opportunity to defend yourself.

My guess is that your sibling knows what she did was wrong and feels ashamed about it.  But with the passage of time, she felt compelled to reach out to you again--maybe to ask you to do something for her, maybe to feel less alone, whatever.  A "normal" person would probably apologize and try to make things better.  But your sibling isn't normal; her sense of shame is unbearable.  Besides, she has to maintain her running narrative of feeling victimized, at all costs.  What does she do?  She pretends like nothing happened, in the hopes that you will forget . . . and that you won't mention how she acted poorly, let alone hurt you in the process.  You see, in her world, there's no room for accepting any blame or dealing with other people's feelings.  So she's just pretending right now.

Is she trying to butter you up for something?  Possibly.  But maybe she's just trying to be nice.  Maybe there's a temporary lull in the pressures of her life for the moment.  The pwBPD in my life would seem to be fine whenever she was "in between" obligations, such as on a summer vacation.  Without the burdens of working, school, schedules or much of anything, she was relaxed and not under pressure, and she could actually be nice for a week or two--provided she was allowed to sleep in as late as she wanted, she could do whatever she wanted, and her family provided for her 100%.  But all that could fall apart in an instant, the second she had any responsibilities, didn't get her way, needed money, or found out about good news from a family member which made her writhe with jealousy.  With the pressure of real life, unmet expectations and constant disappointment, she'd act out again.

[Notwendy]

One of the things often seen in Borderline Personalities is "haltlose", functionally the inability to place themselves on a timeline - it's the ultimate "living in the moment" mixed with "unable to distinguish past from present from future" - in Europe's ICD-10 they're recognised as much more co-mingled symptoms.

Ultimately this means you'll so frequently see the "I used to be bad BACK THEN, but NOW I am turning over a NEW LEAF and I'm totally fine NOW" - even if they don't realise it's been less than 24 hours since their last egregious action, - and less than 24 hours until their next one perhaps.

It vicariously gives you/me/us anxiety because, especially if you lived it as a child with a BPD mother, "nothing is ever genuine" when dealing with these people - Dr. Christine Lawson references this ties into children often pouring themselves into pets or "simple" peers, because of the chaotic frenzy of the constantly changing "now I'm good", "now I'm bad".

I didn't know there was an actual term for this. This was common with BPD mother- the "poof all is good now" and we had to just go along with it. If anyone brought up what happened, she'd get angry, dissociate. I think some of the things she did actually did disappear from her memory as if they didn't happen. When she was very dissociated, I think this also had this effect.

I didn't pour myself into pets although I like them. My sense of safety space was school and friends there.

 I just recently saw the MJ movie. The scenes with his father (who was abusive- not BPD)  were difficult to watch. (no spoilers here- his story is known) but he did attach to his animals. Likely they felt safer and more consistent than people to him.

[TelHill]

I never heard haltlose before. I would assume this is love bombing but this perfectly describes the aftermath of lovebombing. I've lived through this with my late dBPD mom. As a child I took it as her turning over a new leaf. She would finally be nice to me like other mothers were to their children. It never happened. I ignored it by reading, listening to music constantly and watching movies on TV.

I am looking forward to the MJ movie. I love the music. I'm interested in seeing how they handled the father's abuse. I read his children called him Joseph and not dad.

I thought of a movie I saw in a college film class which centers on a character who has bpd - Catherine (Jeanne Moreau).  It's an old French movie called Jules and Jim (1962) which gets a lot of love from film critics for it's revolutionary editing techniques. I tried to watch it again recently when trialing the Criterion Channel. It was too much to bear. She displays all the symptoms.
The trailer:
https://www.criterionchannel.com/videos/jules-and-jim-trailer