Experience with Therapy that Backfires?

[Intotheforest]

Hi there,
I am wondering if anyone has experience with their PWBPD or uBPD entering into therapy to help them manage the chaos in their lives, not the condition itself, ultimately resulting in a therapist reinforcing their skewed perspectives and outlook?

[Notwendy]

I think this is what happened with my BPD mother. I didn't attend therapy with her so I don't know what was discussed, but it seems she didn't make progress with it.

[Deb]

My dBPD sister has a talent for picking therapists that she can manipulate. None of her children will do therapy with her now. If she can't manipulate the therapist, she quits.

[zachira]

There are many disordered clients who are adept at manipulating therapists. It is common in marital therapy for a narcissist to manipulate the therapist into believing that the other spouse is the problem. A well known trait of many disordered people including those with BPD is to be able to appear normal when in the public eye while being abusive to their close family members and partners in private.

[Intotheforest]

Thanks for these replies. It's such a difficult thing to make sense of as the non-disordered person. Even now I find myself having to ground myself intentionally whenever I have an interaction with her. She has surrounded herself with people who validate and support her, normalizing the chaos she sows and ignoring the patterns. I think one of the hardest things for me in trying to understand her treatment of me through the years has been trusting my experiences and holding her accountable when those around her (and me, in the case of my FOO) look the other way, normalize, and even justify it. It's a wonder any sibling or child comes through it with a solid, clear sense of Self.

[zachira]

In Spanish we say: "Tell me who you hang out with, I will tell you who you are." Certainly one of the most painful and challenging part of being in a highly dysfunctional family are the flying monkeys, the enablers of the behaviors of the most disordered family members. While my parents were alive, I literally spent hundreds of hours listening to my parents bad mouth scapegoated siblings who turned out to be nice people; certainly they were very kind to me. I realized just how disordered my parents were, when my scapegoated aunt took care my siblings and me for a week, while my parents were stuck on the other side of the country. The demeaning tone of my parents' voices when they talked about having to thank my aunt was just heartbreaking. This sort of thing happens over and over again to this day with the golden children doing horrible things still being kept on a pedestal while the scapegoats are put down no matter how generous and kind they are to other family members.

[Deb]

Zachira, this is so true:



People that only know my sister superficially,  describe her as "sweet" and just don't understand how her family can be no contact. That same thing applied to my dNPD brother-in-law. I don't try to explain things to people because unless they've been on the receiving end,  they won't get it. My BIL is gone now, my sister is almost 77. I don't hate my sister.  In fact, I really feel mostly nothing. I feel a little sadness for what could have been if she had gotten treatment. But I don't dwell on it.