@Kramer,
BRAVO~!
YOU have done what many others struggle with in the group. YOU have learned that your respective pwBPD has a VERY Serious Cluster B Mental Illness that will affect them for the duration of their life & everyone who is part of their life. I really ... .REALLY commend you on your research into this. I commend you on wanting to find out why she was the way she was, you learned why, and more importantly I believe is that you REALIZED that they were a very broken person. And yes it is part of how you approach your own healing and came to the reality like Harley Quinn says,
That a person suffering from BPD is not a normal healthy individual, and therefore my expecting the type of responses I might get from a normal healthy individual was actually quite nuts on my part. And as Harley Q points out it takes away a lot of the anguish & pain from the NON. BUT ... .now that you know what you do about BPD r/s ... .what have you learned about yourself? What have you learned about you that makes you attracted to this type of person? I believe this is the other side of the NON vs BPD r/s coin. In order to prevent yourself from getting into another BPD r/s you have to know the answers to those questions and a few more.
Thank you for sharing the book ... .it's going to assist a few others in their journey.
In regards to the question that Emotions asked ... .in my research & talking with a Mental Health Clinical Therapist dear friend of mine almost on a daily basis about mental health & her experiences it isn't a black & white question. A person can be diagnosed with a core personality disorder such as BPD but can also have "Comorbidity" personality disorders & or other behaviors. A person can be diagnosed with BPD but also have others personality disorders such as antisocial personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder in varying levels of severity & in any combination.
I believe that one of the things that help people learn about BPD is that it's really and I mean REALLY beyond them to "Fix/repair/manage/help with/ is to realize that even Mental Health Professionals with a lot of initials behind their name can't fix it. As one Doctor friend of mine told me
"these are VERY seriously broken people." MRI & other studies are showing that this to be true.
The one thing that he told me is to work on myself & find out why I was a codependent / rescuer / perfectionist that I was since these are "learned behaviors" and not really a mental illness. I did, I dove into my childhood & learned why I was and then things really started to fall into place even more so to complement what I learned about BPD. Those TWO things have led me to a much better place in my life without dealing with the flying monkey's my past BPD r/s came with. I truly believe that if the NON's in the group would do those TWO things that they would heal much faster & start living their life for themselves & be much happier in life.
J
