I have a loved one with BPD. I just read this on Quora and it was so insightful! Wanted to share:
#borderline
#borderlinepersonalitydisorder
#neurodivergent
#relationships
#humans
#psychology
Q: "Why are BPD people so upset with their partners all the time?"
Answer by Brodie Abbott:
First, I want to start by saying that I've been diagnosed with BPD, and personally, I've never had a partner (or friend or other interpersonal relationship) where I was ALWAYS upset with the other person. In fact, the vast majority of the time I don't feel upset with other people at all - I feel upset with myself or something that's happened to me during my day. For me, splitting doesn't seem to occur in the context of my feelings toward another person but how I think THEY feel about ME. That is, I don't really go between feeling like I love someone and then hate them, but I do go between feeling like other people care about me A LOT and then feeling like they don't care about me AT ALL, generally based on how I'm feeling with myself at the time.
But there are definitely times where I've been upset with others, and there are times where I've looked back on some of those moments and put myself in the other person's shoes and can see, in hindsight, how they would think my upset came out of nowhere. But from my side of things, the upset didn't come from nowhere and it seemed logical and obvious why I was upset. So I'll speak from that standpoint to hopefully give some insight.
People with BPD often have an issue where they see negativity where it may not truly exist. Neutral facial expressions, for example, tend to be read as anger or disappointment or aggression by people with BPD. Brain scans have shown that people with BPD have a hyper-alert hippocampus, which is part of the brain that’s partly responsible for signalling when there's danger. So when a minor, possibly innocuous act happens that someone without BPD wouldn't even register, the person with BPD has a brain that starts sending out signals that they are in immediate danger and it activates their fight or flight response. As a general example: a partner says they'll be home at 8:00, but they get held up at work and forget to let the person with BPD know. When the partner doesn't show up at 8 on the dot, the person with BPD feels this means they'll never come home ever again. Now, people with BPD also have a compromised prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for things like rationalization, behaviour control, and other higher cognitive functions. Someone without BPD and with a fully functional prefrontal cortex likely won't spiral out when they're spouse doesn't come home on time. They probably don't even have to talk themselves down at all because their prefrontal cortex takes care of all that automatically. So their brain kind of goes, “Are they leaving me? No, they haven't given any reason to suggest they would. Probably held up in traffic,” and then maybe if they’re significantly late, they’ll start to worry but again, they're likely to worry more about whether an accident or something happened because they have no real reason to assume they're being abandoned, and so they'll just try to call or text or something with a simple, “hey, you're a little late, just checking if you're okay” (which is now how I'd handle the situation after lots of therapy but it definitely wasn't my natural instinct). For the person with BPD, they are constantly worried about abandonment and their prefrontal cortex doesn't activate to tell them to rationalize and looks at facts and not panic and act desperate. Their brain goes, “Oh god, I'm being abandoned. I'm such an awful, terrible, waste of space, and now my partner has realized it and of course they're leaving me. Everyone hates me, I hate myself,” and then they're going to react probably either by sending a slew of desperate, self-loathing, grovelling texts or a bunch of angry texts because their brain has told them to either fight or fawn as a self-protective measure. All of that to say that part of it is that the person with BPD is misinterpreting the meaning of your actions, actions you may not even realize you're doing because they seem insignificant, and they’re feeling hurt and betrayed and defensive. A lot of people with BPD have poor object constancy, so when they perceive you as having hurt them, their brain goes through a sort of dissociative amnesia where it blocks out any memories of anything other than times you hurt them. Another thing to note is recent research has found people with BPD extremely accurate in recognizing emotions in other people, and sometimes will even know what someone is feeling BEFORE the person themselves realize it. So, perhaps, some part of it is the BPD person recognizing a negative emotion (annoyance, resentment, anger, etc.) in their partner and reacting to it without their partner even realizing they were starting to feel that emotion. Some people with BPD might act upset with others as a sort of “test” to see if the person will abandon them (which, naturally, will end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy). Some people with BPD just experience constant anger.
I know this is a difficult concept for people because when someone gets upset with you, it's only natural to take it personally. But realistically, when someone with BPD gets upset with others, it generally isn't about that person. They're often upset with themselves or angry at someone from their past that abused them or at the world in general, and they're projecting it onto others.
As a final note, I want to say that I by no means intend any of this to excuse poor behaviour. It's intended as an explanation for the behaviour and to hopefully provide insight. That said, I do think people need to stop viewing all people with BPD as the same. Based on the diagnostic criteria, there are 256 combinations of symptoms that someone can have to get the diagnosis, and there are four widely accepted subtypes of BPD. Personality disorders, in general, are also diagnosed on a spectrum. Furthermore, even two people who share the same exact symptoms can be markedly different in their overall demeanor.
