Is there a relationship between BPD and Co-Dependency?

[ijustwantpeace]

I have come to realize being raised by a BPD mother that I have learned many of her bad behaviors, and have struggled with valuing myself to the point where I care for others even if it hurts me.

I am wondering if this is co-dependent behavior.

It is almost like I am compelled against my own interest to "do the right thing".

[sweetheart]

Hello,

The short answer to your question and example is 'yes' there is a link between BPD and co-dependency.

Here is a link from this forum on co-dependency https://bpdfamily.com/content/codependency-codependent-relationships
I think it will help with the questions you pose.

Can you tell us some more about 'doing the right thing?'

[ijustwantpeace]

Hello,

The short answer to your question and example is 'yes' there is a link between BPD and co-dependency.

Here is a link from this forum on co-dependency https://bpdfamily.com/content/codependency-codependent-relationships
I think it will help with the questions you pose.

Can you tell us some more about 'doing the right thing?'

I think a better term would "compulsive helping".  I feel forced to help others at my own expense.  That is what I meant by do the right thing.  I didn't have the language to describe my behavior, but I am convinced that for me it is a learned behavior / conditioning from having to be a stand-in for my father / psycologist for my mothers' mental and emotional problems.

As I got older I got fired from several jobs and had difficulty in relationships, from offering unsolicited help.  I hope it is not hardwired into me? 

Any tips on how to un-learn this behavior and not try to solve others / the world's problems would be welcome.

I can see clearly that this one thing is holding me back just as much or more than the trauma I got from my disordered mother.

[Fie]

Hello Ijustwantpeace 

Compulsive helping ... .I like the way you were able to describe this !

Yes, I had that, too. Unlike you I never really realized ... until someone said 'I am not a child', when I 'helped' her watch out for cars upon crossing the street. I never realized people could find it annoying !

I have been working on doing it less since then.

You are asking for tips. For me, it helps to ask myself 'Is this my problem ? Or his / hers ?' Oftentimes the answer to this keeps me from 'helping' (rescuing) already. If it doesn't, I sometimes ask the person ':)o you want me to help you ?' Often the answer is no.

I think by eliminating like that, in 90% of the cases were I would have helped before I now find myself not helping.

Someone recently described me as a person who likes to help others. I can't help but wondering how they would have described me before 

[ijustwantpeace]

Hello Ijustwantpeace 

Compulsive helping ... .I like the way you were able to describe this !

Yes, I had that, too. Unlike you I never really realized ... until someone said 'I am not a child', when I 'helped' her watch out for cars upon crossing the street. I never realized people could find it annoying !

I have been working on doing it less since then.

You are asking for tips. For me, it helps to ask myself 'Is this my problem ? Or his / hers ?' Oftentimes the answer to this keeps me from 'helping' (rescuing) already. If it doesn't, I sometimes ask the person ':)o you want me to help you ?' Often the answer is no.

I think by eliminating like that, in 90% of the cases were I would have helped before I now find myself not helping.

Someone recently described me as a person who likes to help others. I can't help but wondering how they would have described me before 

Thanks for the tip Fie.  Moving forward I will ask if others want my help first.  90% reduction seems great!

Still feel a bit selfish just focusing in on my needs.

Also, confused about when it is my duty to help?

[Notwendy]

A key for me about helping is my own feelings. If I am helping, and feeling resentful, or a little bit anxious, it is a signal to me that I am helping too much- giving up too much of myself to help.

Am I doing something for this person that they are capable of doing themselves- or am I keeping them from learning to be capable?

Am I managing my own bad feelings ( by seeing them struggle?) this isn't helping it is managing my feelings, and using them to do so.

Soon, we can begin to see that our "helping" could be hurting by keeping them from gaining skills or managing their feelings, or selfish if it is to manage ours.

The behavior can be identical- it is the issues behind it.

One example is doing something for my mother because I am afraid of her being angry, not because I want to. She likes to manipulate people into doing things she can do herself. Am I feeling manipulated?

I struggle with this because my BPD mother is elderly and needs assistance. The part of me that feels I need to do the right thing tells me I should help her more. However, my father left her enough money to hire people to help her so she has other options. She is abusive to me when I help her and nicer to them. I feel resentful when I help her because she doesn't treat me nicely, and tries to manipulate me. Her helpers are being paid for their work, so it isn't a situation where they are being used. ( I don't want her money but I also don't want to feel used). They also don't have the emotional baggage that we have, and they are professionals with elder care background and I am not.

I had to accept that- I am not the best person to be her helper. I can help some and see her as a daughter, but there are better people to do tasks for her than I am, and also that she can afford it, so she has the means to help herself.

[strength_love]

There certainly is a direct link between B type personalities and co-dependency. I have a NPD/BPD mother and a BPD sister and they are both powerfully manipulative and prey upon people's feelings of concern, kindness and generosity to get what they want from others. They do this by using guilt, shaming, sob stories, personal attacks and in extreme cases, threats to self-harm. Over the years I have learned to put my needs aside in service to others - very much to my own detriment.

I am no longer in contact with my mother, but my sister still does this to this day. She knows how deeply I value compassion, generosity and kindness, and when she wants or needs something from me all she needs to do is act wounded and desolate and that will trigger two mechanisms inside me: 1] my instinct to be a good person and put that goodness into action in the world 2] the fear that's been programmed into me over the years that I will be attacked if I don't do it. If I hold strong boundaries and instead offer to emotionally support her while she does it herself, that's exactly what she will do - attack me by either overtly stating or subtly implying that I am a horrible, selfish, cruel person if I don't do it.

This goes doubly if it's something I need from her. She will utterly invariably manipulate me into doing the thing for her that I needed from her. It's crazy-making.

Part of the difficulty in addressing these issues is that some of the remedies run directly counter to our personalities and instincts. It doesn't come naturally to me to evaluate whether things are reciprocal or whether someone is using me. My default is to believe in the goodness and sincerity of others. It has taken a LOT of work for me to get to a place where I can separate myself and enforce healthy boundaries, and see the signs that I am being exploited by others.

I read one book that helped me a lot. I wouldn't say the book was great - there are so many things I disliked about it. My primary criticism is that the author centers the entire book around his own personal experience with romantic relationships, and this greatly limits his ability to fully explore and expand upon the effectiveness of his theories on a broader scope. I was forced to pick through the text for the meaning I could take from it, and I felt a lot of the potential of his theories was lost in the mire of his own personal experience. Still, the book helped me so maybe it could help others.

It's called The Human Magnet Syndrome by Ross Rosenberg. In it he talks about the dynamics between those whose default behavior is to care for others and those whose default behavior is to seek care from others. He reframes co-dependency as "Self-care Deficit Disorder" which makes it a lot easier to understand. He has a spectrum that he lays out to help people see where they fall in terms of their behavior and the behavior of those they are close to.

Like I said there are some things in the book that really didn't resonate with me and some of it I really found distasteful (for example, his apparent need to demonize those who are on the opposite side of the spectrum from him), but overall I did get a lot out of the book so I can't claim it wasn't useful to me.

I had to accept that- I am not the best person to be her helper.

This is so very well said. I find thinking about it in this way really helps me to let go of my urge to step in. That exchange is harmful to both of us, and she needs to find her own way.

[ijustwantpeace]

Over the last week, things really started to click for me.

I really believe that I have been conditioned to be a sacrificial helper by my mother.  I am no more kind hearted than the next person I am just playing out a script that has been burnt deep into my subconscience.

I wonder if my life would turn around if I stop worrying about helping others and just take care of myself?

[strength_love]

Over the last week, things really started to click for me.

I really believe that I have been conditioned to be a sacrificial helper by my mother.  I am no more kind hearted than the next person I am just playing out a script that has been burnt deep into my subconscience.

I wonder if my life would turn around if I stop worrying about helping others and just take care of myself?

I don't think it's necessarily about being kind-hearted, it's more about whether you are - on the far extremes of the spectrum - the sort of person who is driven by giving love, care and respect to others, or whether you're driven by a one-sided sense of entitlement to receive love, care and respect from others. According to Ross Rosenberg, NPD people will be the receivers and co-dependents (or, as he calls them, Self-love Deficit Disordered people) are almost entirely externally focused on trying to meet other people's needs. Not necessarily out of kindness, but rather because their experience has taught them that their value to others lies in what they can do for others, rather than in their inherent value as a human being.

As with all things in life, most people fall somewhere in the grey areas. A more balanced, healthy individual or relationship will be fairly balanced between giving and receiving. Those who are at the very far extreme ends of the spectrum are acting out rather unhealthy patterns of trying to prove their worth by giving or by trying to fill their emptiness by seeking/expecting.

The kicker is that those who are focused on giving are drawn to those who are focused on receiving, and vice versa. This means that if you are a co-dependent you are often somewhat doomed to being surrounded by people who don't reciprocate your emotional labor until you deal with your co-dependency, because they fill your need to give and do for others. Such relationships tend to be dysfunctional, because one person is giving their all and the other is taking with no intent or effort to reciprocate, but they're also fairly stable as long as those traits remain complimentary.

If one or the other of the people in the relationship shift toward a more balanced, healthy level of sharing love, care and respect the relationship will become de-stabilized until one of two things happens: 1] their partner also shifts toward a more balanced approach or 2] the person who originally changed regresses back to the unhealthy patterns of giving/receiving, thereby restoring the unhealthy exchange.

Anyway, this all according to the self-orientation theory outlined in the book I mentioned. It's very interesting and helpful as a framework for understanding relationship dynamics, particularly ones that are not reciprocal. It helped me to understand why I continually ended up in relationships with people where I over-functioned and the other person under-functioned.