Angry rant about BPD videos

[Deep Blue]

I am angry. I am so freaking angry at some BPD videos online coming from the point of view of The BPD individual. So many of these videos explain how those afflicted with the disorder feel and it paints them as so innocent and as a child just wanting to be loved. Although, I’m sure many will view this as unfair of me, but I truly am angry at how this is presented.

It takes away all personal responsibility from the abuser. In some of these videos, it even says that the best thing that a BPD partner needs when they are splitting is a show of affection to remind them that they are loved. This just so blatantly flies in the face of the emotional damage that their splitting causes onto the non BPD partner. It diminishes the incredibly harmful and painful affect of the words/actions done.

It’s such incomplete and unfair information. They say to shower the BPD individual with love, but the videos don’t say how the BPD individual will perform a final discard, how they will use your insecurities against you, how they will charm and mistreat you and then treat you as if you are garbage the moment they’ve sucked all the marrow out of our bones.

These videos are so harmful to the non’s who watch them! It encourages tolerating toxic behavior and encourages codependent behaviors. It’s so wrong. Regardless of mental illness or not, it’s so wrong to me that these higher budget videos are encouraging the non’s to “not take the hurtful words or actions personally” or to “shower them with love” and stay with them when the BPD is acting out... How can you not take personally cheating, lying, physical and verbal abuse? It’s so f***ed up to encourage a non to become what is effectively a wallflower, purportedly taking the high, noble, loving path, only for the BPD individual to ultimately turn around and perform a viscous discard over and over until they completely destroy the non.

Alright. Rant over. I just couldn’t believe how shameless some of these videos are. So many of them encourage enabling and codependent behavior. It’s really sick and disgusting and totally abusive for not only the non but also the BPD. It’s selfish and lacks empathy. Lacks a true understanding of the damage that splitting causes regardless if it is meant or not.

Deep Blue

[SinisterComplex]

DB your rant is completely valid. I understand how you feel. However, keep in mind in this pussified, censored, everything has to be perfect and PC world that you just have to grow some thick skin and take it as it is no sweat off your balls. Seriously, I am highly educated in human behavior and most of the BPD videos I find to be more for entertainment value as opposed to educational. To be more blunt...some of the youtubers are complete morons and have no business putting out the information they do because it is reckless and most of the time grasping for straws baseless and essentially useless information. Sometimes something useful will pop up, but most of the time its copycat regurgitated BS  . Also keep in mind if you are a very empathetic individual or an empath it will affect you more because of your big heart. While a phenomenal strength it is also a glaring weakness dealing with mentally disordered people or viewing videos from their point of view or reading material based on their point of view. Why? Your reaction is what disordered people want. Keep in mind...it's disordered thinking.

BTW...please continue on this path. Let this S out. This is good. Whenever the bleeding heart routine kick starts in your head pull out the baby powder and smack yourself in the face and put that nonsense to bed. It is ok to be mad. It is part of the healing process. Hey S still sucks I know, but you are surviving and you are getting there one step at a time.

Keep your head up!

#bropound  

Cheers and best wishes!

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[grumpydonut]

Hey Deepblue,

Most sufferers of BPD don't accept any form of responsibility for anything they do, I wouldn't imagine that videos by BPDs would be any different.

Since there is a whole group of psychologists who refuse to treat those suffering from cluster B personalities, I'd make the additional claim that any "qualified" person who suggests BPDs just need additional love in order to have stable relationships do not understand the disorder and shouldn't be talking about it.

One of the pioneers of BPD research was John Gunderson. He said he fell into the field of research because these people "scared him" and he wanted to be better equipped to deal with them.

You can't change what stupid - or malevolent - people post online. You know the truth regarding the disorder, as do the real experts.  Pop psychology is about making money through platitudes and absolving people of personal responsibility.

Imagine you were BPD. What would you want to watch?
a) Someone telling you people just need to love you more, and that you don't need to do anything
b) Someone telling you that you need to commit to dialectical behavioural therapy?

I don't trust YT content one iota, as I believe there are many clever people that know exactly how to get people to click their content and continue to view it for the $$$$

[SinisterComplex]

If it is money motivated take it with a grain of salt. And yes Grumpy...you certainly can't fix stupid! BTW...I fell out laughing when you mentioned qualified in quotation marks. You're a clever funny guy. :-D

DB, if you really want to delve into the world of human behavior I highly recommend reading up on the Phineas Gage incident (also very important to Neuroscience), John B. Watson, and Emil Kraepelin. Just some other stuff to help you shift your focus a bit ;-)

Cheers and best wishes!

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[Newdawnnewday]

Hey Deep Blue, hi all,

This is a very interesting thread.

Deep Blue, I believe your anger is not only warranted, but also, a very good indicator of healing. It's as though the part of you that was still "attached" to your ex was now getting some tough love from the part of you that is attached to your freedom and your health !

I believe that one of the obstacles in our healing is the fact that we were manipulated (love-bombed and brainwashed), and that results in us seeing the pwBPD as "all-good" (its the result of our inner splitting, which we probably inherited from childhood) and only remembering, after the break-up, "all the good stuff".

This is a result of the manipulation.

As a consequence, it's a struggle to keep all the negative stuff in mind, especially as we suffer and are diminished in our cognitive abilities, and would rather think of positive things ; but seeing reality as it is is indispensable to get away, stay away, to heal and perhaps also, to never enter that kind of relationship again.

I have found that, as I was making my mind up to leave the relationship, these videos were indeed incredibly detrimental to my understanding of the disorder.

Because I was both "normally" bonded and trauma-bonded already, I was looking for hope, and that kind of information fed into the false hope that what I was dealing with could be amended.

I had to hang on to some "tough love" Youtubers (a few articles here on BPD family also helped).
One is named Mike and the other is AJ Mahari, their Youtube channels especially advocated to leave and stay No Contact, instead of advocating "more love" and being more understanding with the pw/ BPD.

I also read through the descriptions on Quora to convince myself that I was dealing with something extremely dangerous indeed, and not a benign disorder that could be dealt with with "more love".

I believe that these people truly helped me save my life and get out early (even though I have a lot of damage to heal, it is nowhere near what some people have suffered at the hands of their partner w/ BPD).

This was an extremely hard period in my life, although it lasted only a few months, because I was entirely "divided", extremely conflicted, and constantly bombarded with "love" (I was manipulated on a daily basis by the pw/BPD who didn't want me to leave).

As a result, making up my mind to leave proved to be very, very hard. But I decided to trust those who were "telling it like it is", which also meant, to trust : my gut ; and refuse to trust my enamoured heart and the (false) declarations of love of my untreated BPD ex.

Now that I am out, and still struggling with "false positive" memories, I still have to deal with myself with "tough love", and force myself to remember the BAD.

I must say that comparing BPD to NPD and getting some advice from channels dealing specifically with NPD helped.

Although the damage and behaviors are very similar, most of the time, BPDers are regarded as "helpless victims" of a mental disorder, who only want love and can't get it anywhere, who suffer as much if not more than we do (their partners) etc. ; while NPDers as considered to be nasty creatures from hell. Neither is true, but we, the partners and ex-partners of people with BPD, could benefit from a more realistic view of the disorder and those suffering from it, whether when in a relationship with them, looking to get out, or having come out of the relationship and struggling with the false narrative of "poor, poor person w/ BPD" that has already caused us a large part of the damage.

I must say that my ex's vulnerability (given my own propensity of course, to be an unhealthy codependent, willing to fix, save, etc.) was what made me stay for far too long already. He had a way of "tugging at my heartstrings" that kept me stuck in a dead-end relationship for far too long.

This is a well-known manipulation tactic. If it were employed by someone with NPD, people would say "how horrible". But guilt-tripping by BPDs "out of a fear of abandonment" is considered benign. IT IS NOT ! Any manipulation has horrible results, it deprives the person that is manipulated from her freedom of choice !

Time to get that back anyway.

But I just wanted to say : I understand the rant and subscribe to the opinion that such videos aren't innocuous - thankfully there are other sources of information that don't succumb to the PC vision of the damage that a person w/ BPD can inflict on a partner.

Take heart Deep Blue ! Keep on freeing yourself from the PC narrative ! That'll help free yourself on the inside also !

[Cant breathe]

Fully agree with this thread. I won't call it a rant, because you deserve to let it all out.

Frankly, all this "how to help a partner who is splitting" advice is nonsense. Just promotes the concept that people with BPD are victims and that we must help them even as they cause us extreme damage.

As for the bad advice on some videos and other forums, I must admit I fell for it at the start of my journey to freedom. After an extremely cruel discard, I actually believed all that nonsense about how the BPDers need to feel safe and reassured. So I actually wrote him a note telling him I had believed in our relationship and had always been truthful and would always have him in my heart. Told him I loved him.  His response: "I appreciate that." Then he went on to talk about how happy he was with the woman he had dropped me for.

The one thing this cured me of is feeling any sort of compassion for his mental state.

[Newdawnnewday]

Wow Cantbreathe, I can totally relate. I'm glad you had that (sad but freeing) last exchange that allowed you to stop having compassion for his state.

Compassion is a trap ! In these relationships.

We have such "misplaced" compassion already (it is my case anyway) that anything that makes us MORE compassionate towards an abuser is actually, allowing the abuse to continue. So, these videos that misrepresent BPD are in a way enabling abuse by gaslighting unsuspecting partners of people w/ BPD who are looking for real answers and information.

I personally think that if I had been told, he suffers from "NPD", it would have been much easier to get out ! And the damage would have been far less. I was really tricked by my silly and misguided compassion. At least, that was one of the tricks, it perhaps accounts (together with my other wounds and vulnerabilities) for 80 % of the reasons why I stayed in spite of the mounting evidence that something was wrong.

So, anything increasing that unhealthy codependent trait of mine was actually dangerous to me.

Even today, I would much prefer "the truth" about BPD, rather than all the misconceptions I have come across on the internet, which caused me to deepen my empathy towards him, instead of running away faster and shutting down the empathy well.

I'm sure we can't really find "the truth" about a disorder, but I'm certain that there is an abundance of misrepresentation of what BPD really is (unless I'm terribly mistaken, and have only come across one example of a very bad case of BPD).

To this day I still have to fight my go-to response, "poor, poor him" (he has conditioned me to feel that way, thus depriving me of instinctual self-defense mechanisms - I was so busy trying to avoid causing him pain, to this poor poor lamb, that I wasn't checking my own boundaries, if they were being trampled, how was I feeling, was I ok ? everything had become about him, him, him, how could I avoid making him feel so sad, avoid making him feel abandoned, etc).

But of course, that's on me also. How could I have become so absorbed by ONE individual to the extent that I forgot to check with myself how I was doing ? That is on me. That's what I never want to let happen again.

After a full month no-contact, I'm realizing that there are 8 billion people on this planet, there's no way I'm going to let my life be destroyed by 1 when the world is full of treasures yet to be discovered.

Out of the tunnel vision ! Back out into the world.

[Newdawnnewday]

NB : also, to this day, I don't really have a clear idea of what BPD really is !

Is it benign ? Malign ?

Are people w/ BPD benevolent people ? Are they malevolent ?

I have only started to realize that people with BPD tend to manipulate. I researched that idea only three weeks ago, or maybe four, right after I escaped. I remember searching the internet for : "BPD and manipulation".

Until then, I truly felt that, BPD was a disorder which DID NOT include deliberate manipulation.

But it does !

I had to hear that on yet another youtube channel (Tara Palmatier), that people with BPD are "emotionally manipulative people". I had to drill that into my brainwashed head.

Otherwise... I had read "they don't do it on purpose", "it's just that they fear abandonment so much, etc.".

So, it made it all that much hard to bring myself to extricate myself, since I thought "he wasn't doing it on purpose". It caused the inner conflict to stay and stay and stay in place, and I had to HEAR other viewpoints and make THESE my go-to answer to understand that what I was dealing with was extremely dangerous.

So, yes, I think DeepBlue, you're making a good point, underlining how unhelpful these misrepresentations of the disorder are. They're leading us away from truth, and from getting out sooner, and healing sooner also.

[Turkish]

A few years ago, I explored Reddit threads on BPD for parents with BPD and children with parents who had BPD. The parents forum was very angry at the kids, and even suggested that the kids with BPD parents forum should be deleted.

I'm a child of a parent with BPD (and depression and anxiety, all 3 Dx'd).

It is certainly maddening, but this is how pwBPD process the world emotionally. That's not going to change. My ex admitting to having a "sickness" didn't change our r/s, nor did my mother admitting to me that she had BPD.

We can only work on ourselves, upon what's on our courts, what we can own and change.

[grumpydonut]

I had read "they don't do it on purpose", "it's just that they fear abandonment so much, etc."

How they react in the moment is very rarely "on purpose", because they are 0-100 people, which makes them impulsive.

However, when they leave you for someone else, this required a lot of meticulous planning, extravagant lies, and emotional manipulation. That is 100% done "on purpose".

Don't expect to find a person suffering with untreated BPD to take responsibility for anything unless it benefits them in the moment (and, therefore, is insincere).

[Ad Meliora]

One of the pioneers of BPD research was John Gunderson. He said he fell into the field of research because these people "scared him" and he wanted to be better equipped to deal with them.

Amen to this, Grumpy, thanks for putting this up.  Who wasn't afraid of their BPDex at some point in some way?

I spent a year trying to "love" the disordered thinking out of my ex = pointless.
I spent the last couple months trying to  the BPD out of her = equally pointless, but more fun.  
I had no idea she had a disorder though, I thought she was just "an awkward girl" (she self-described) with some problems.

We can only work on ourselves, upon what's on our courts, what we can own and change.--Turkish

Amen to this too, Turkish.

[Skip]

95% of the youtube videos on personality disorders are about naïveté or to tell people what they want to hear. Please be careful.

The problem is on both sides of the relationship. Here is a sampling of some of the "youtubers" mentioned by members here as "experts". All four consider their services to be more informed than clinical experts. All four take issue with the psychology profession and the American Psychological Association DSM. All have rates $100 - $280 an hour.

Here are some revealing videos. What do you think?


Date: 10-2017Minutes: 3:48
God | Shari Schreiber


Date: 12 - 2012Minutes: 6:00
Breathing through your balls  | Elliot Hulse


Date: 5-2018Minutes: 3:55
Narcissists - AJ Mahari


Date: Mar-2015Minutes: 3:37
Video Short | Tara Palamatier
Full video: bpdfamily.com/message_board/msg12539682

[Deep Blue]

95% of the youtube videos on personality disorders are about naïveté or to tell people what they want to hear. Please be careful.

Hey Skip,

I’ve seen videos from some of these individuals. I feel like most of them don’t know what they are talking about, but what do you think about AJ Mahari? Is she legit? I’ve watched a lot of her videos and she doesn’t sound particularly sensationalist or off the mark.

[once removed]

a bpd relationship is a special needs relationship.

if one is to get into such a relationship, they need to understand what they are getting into. all of us have left, or been left, and i think wed all prefer not to get in one again.

i would offer two things, and i dont say this to discount your experience, or mine, or anyones.

1. our experience is not really all that reflective when it comes to people with bpd, generally speaking. since my relationship ended, i have come to know several people with diagnosed bpd, or bpd traits. they are all very different people, and their disorder manifests in many different ways and extents. several of them have never hurt their partners (at least not anything like what you read here, or any more than anyone else). several of them are typically the ones that get hurt. several of them are just moody, highly emotional, and/or depressive types that as friends, are harmless. some are drama queens, some are total train wrecks where you can see a personality disorder a mile away. some are monsters that steamroll anybody that gets close.

in my recovery process, i ultimately unlearned a great deal of what i learned about BPD at the time of my breakup. in fact, a great deal of my time was spent reading the likes of shari schreiber, from the above video. some from tara palamatier, as well.

they are just simply not these walking monsters that are all alike and destroy everyone in their sight. our experience, and our shared experiences can really color and shape our perception. if you want a pretty good representation of what people with bpd are like, this is a great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=967Ckat7f98

having said that, its not a special needs relationship for no reason. people with bpd, for reasons related to the disorder, can be really difficult people (or worse), and yes, they can be very abusive.

2. i, personally, never found a lot of use in a "bpd perspective" video, or forum. none of them are my ex, and none can really speak for my ex. its really just one person sounding off from their own, typically very limited perspective, and give or take self awareness. that doesnt have a lot of value for me unless im getting a very broad sample specifically because i want to know the struggles of someone with BPD.

clinical advice for loving a special needs person like someone with BPD is the opposite of taking their personal responsibility away, or lying down and being a doormat or just taking abusive behavior and disrespect with a smile. that is a very important point i want to stress.

but if you have chosen, with eyes wide open, to enter and remain in a relationship with someone with BPD (none of us here), its important to have realistic expectations of what the relationship can look like, what its limits are, what yours and your partners limits are, and to not contribute to the relationship in a way that makes things worse. i learned those skills here many years after my relationship ended, and i use them with everyone in my life, and theyve made me a better romantic partner, friend, etc. thats not to say i would enter into a relationship with someone with BPD again or that they would have saved my relationship. the honest truth is im not cut out for a bpd partner. my ex and i werent cut out for each other, and thats okay.

[PearlsBefore]

95% of all post-2001 BPD material is derived from the DBT practices developed by Marsha Linehan - which have been shown to be efficacious in the majority of cases (though not all, as I'm probably known for lamenting - as a critic of DBT)...and Marsha Linehan herself has Borderline Personality Disorder.  So it's a cure created by the sick...it definitely tries to absolve people wavering between neurosis and psychosis with violent, manipulative and appalling actions from responsibility, focusing instead on validating their feelings and their "perceived reality" even when it's not legitimate.

Basically I'm saying that it's understandable you feel that way; more and more it may seem we're not only "giving BPDs a pass for attempted murder, child abuse, domestic assault, pedophilia, elder abuse, perjury and many other crimes", but we're actually less able to intervene on their own behalf as well since Mental Illness has, since 2012, become something to celebrate and by which to identify ones self-schema...which is particularly disastrous for pwBPDs obviously.

There is value in DBT from all reports, but often we forget to weigh it against the harm it does on a grander scale when we pretend that these behaviors are anything other than reprehensible and often criminal. But we err on the side of the French proverb, to understand everything is to forgive everything. Because we can trace the root of their problem, we thus say it's not their fault. I do it myself too often.

[Skip]

To keep things in perspective...

Clinicians who treat people with BPD are trying to keep them from killing themselves and trying to get them plugged into society with basic functionality (working, setting a home, having a family). People with clinical levels of BPD often destroy themselves (and there is a lot of collateral damage).

DBT was developed by a person with the disorder who rose to a very high level of functionality. Her methods have been tested in clinical trials by third party experts who have determined efficacy. DBT is the most effective treatment... and its success rate is in the 80%+ for reducing suicide and restoring basic functionality.

Most (not all) of our members here had partners who were subclinical, were generally functional, not seriously suicidal, and possessed BPD traits.

BPD traits will test romantic relationships as everyone here has experienced and people with BPD traits have a higher relationship failure rate than those without - most of the self-sabotaging is fear based.

Most of us brought our own deficits to these relationships and we often immersed in our own needs and didn't realize that we had a special needs partner.  Without that realization and the requisite skills, the relationship spiraled to a painful ending. The signs were all there, if not at first, certainly long before things ended.

Now it is on us to recover, do the postmortem, learn more about human nature, learn our own deficits and fix them, and reshape our lives.

Let's face it, everyone of us has encountered an alcoholic or a mentally ill street person and we knew to step away - we didn't suffer from those encounters. Everyone of us has been offered a free this or free that and we knew there were strings and we knew to step away - we didn't suffer from those encounters.

But when we encountered BPD... the draw was too great... and we went for it.

29% of the US population has a diagnosable mental illness or substance abuse. When you add the layer just below diagnosable, that percentage is much higher. To live we need to function in a society with all of these people. Certainly, some of us are in that 29%.

I suspect many of us were only able to sort out the worst of worst and were oblivious to the rest. Hopefully we will learn this experience and working together her that life requires greater navigation skills - greater emotional intelligence, stronger social awareness.

... giving BPDs a pass for attempted murder, child abuse, domestic assault, pedophilia, elder abuse, perjury and many other crimes

BPD is not a defense for murder, child abuse, domestic assault, pedophilia, elder abuse, perjury... we all know that. We're hurting and sometimes it feels better to say this, and its OK early on in recovery, but we definely want to get to a higher level of understanding in time.

[grumpydonut]

Tara is hilarious. She is so obviously functioning from a place of pure bitterness - and deals with her own issues of narcissism - but she is apparently oblivious to how this shapes her perceptions.

If people are interested in BPD, go to the people who pioneered study in the area! John Gunderson is a good place to start.