First post

[Lingard]

Hi. First post. I was brought up by a borderline/narcissist mother and an emotionally absent father. My sister has borderline personality disorder with significant narcissistic traits. I have (had) a best friend who has features of a 'quiet' borderline personality disorder who has recently totally severed our contact after projecting a lot of characteristics on to me that I feel she had herself. I am pretty devastated by this and feeling guilty/questioning my own defects, while at the same time confused about that and wondering ... ah! I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Cheers.

[Riv3rW0lf]

Hi Lingard, and welcome to the forum !

It helps me to remind myself that questioning our own views and defects is not a bad thing... It is a bad thing when we are critical of ourselves, blaming ourselves... But questioning our inner motives is what raises our self-awareness to a point where we can reparent ourselves and become emotionally safe and stable ourselves.

Self-doubt, in my book anyway, is not a bad thing, as long as you are not berating yourself, but rather looking at yourself through the lense of self-compassion.

If you'd like to tell us more, we are here to support you. Writing on here truly has a cathartic effect too as does journaling. Do you keep a journal?

[kells76]

Hey Lingard, welcome  so glad you found us. This is a group that, as you already intuited, gets where you're coming from.

I was brought up by a borderline/narcissist mother and an emotionally absent father. My sister has borderline personality disorder with significant narcissistic traits. I have (had) a best friend who has features of a 'quiet' borderline personality disorder

It can be eye-opening to look around at family, friends, and partners, and to see how much PD history is there. My best friend's mom has significant BPD traits, my DH's mom had many BPD traits in the past, DH's kids' mom has many BPD traits and married DH's former best friend who has strong NPD traits, DH has a couple of sisters with BPD type behaviors... and, well, I guess I'm not ready to talk about my parents yet...

I wonder if our early childhood experiences with disordered behaviors, expectations, and relationships, primed us to subconsciously accept PD type interactions as normal and familiar.

totally severed our contact after projecting a lot of characteristics on to me that I feel she had herself. I am pretty devastated by this and feeling guilty/questioning my own defects, while at the same time confused about that

That's a big loss in your life, regardless of how she behaved at the end. Sounds like a lot got dumped on you, and now you're wondering -- what if any of it's true?

I'm curious if you're seeing a therapist or counselor at all, through this? Relationships of whatever kind (family, friend, romantic, etc) with a pwPD (person with a personality disorder, diagnosed or not) seem to be characterized so often by confusion, lack of clarity, "I never said that", and a general fogginess, that hearing feedback from a trained and neutral third party is incredibly helpful.

One last thought -- as you mentioned your many family members with PD traits, I was curious if you'd seen this workshop on our site yet (on: "Family systems--understanding the narcissistic family"):

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=108970.0

The opening statement of

Many of us feel something was wrong with a particular family, in some cases our own, but we have trouble putting our finger on exactly what. Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman and Robert M. Pressman, the authors of The Narcissistic Family, provide a framework for understanding these "off" family systems even when there may be no obvious issue, such as an alcoholic parent or physical abuse.

made me wonder if you had a similar experience in your family -- "nothing specific" to point to yet a knowledge at some level that something was wrong.

We're looking forward to hearing back from you, whenever works for you;

-kells76

P.S. edited to say: oops, crossposted with Riv3rW0lf -- so glad she is welcoming you, too!

[Couscous]

Hi Linguard,

I can so relate and know exactly what you’re talking about. I think what’s operating here is the false belief that we can cause other people’s feelings and behavior, when in reality we have no control over others.

A few of months ago I had an eye-opening experience. My half-sister flaked and didn’t turn up for my son’s birthday party at the last minute because she had a new love-interest. Initially my reaction was sadness because I realized that she wasn’t someone I was going to be able to rely on, but that this clearly was her issue and had nothing to do with me. This realization brought up a lot of painful feelings for me, and in my weekly therapy session the day after this incident, and I was able to tap into some of those feelings. But somehow over the course of the next few days, I found myself trying to find reasons to blame myself for what had happened, and at my next therapy appointment my T commented on how he noticed that I’d switched from sadness to self-judgement. And then it occurred to me that I would rather experience feelings of shame and defectiveness than feelings of powerlessness, because it gave me the sense of having some amount of control: If I was at fault then I could figure out what I did and possibly be able to fix it.   

But it makes total sense that we would want to avoid sitting with feelings of sadness, grief and powerlessness because those are some very painful feelings indeed. But my goal right now is to just try to dip my toe into those feelings, and then not judge myself for judging myself. Baby steps, right?