Lately I seem to be seeing lots of mentions of borderline
personality disorder and autistics via social media. One article I saw asks if
we are being misdiagnosed with borderline instead of autism, other times people
have mentioned how we are so often victims of ‘manipulators and abusers’,
categories borderline people fall into. And, of course, there are genuinely
some who are indeed both.
I do believe that autistics might be at higher risk of being
borderline, because of the way we’ve so often been badly treated. But we’re at
even greater risk of being the victims
of borderliners, as I call them, including those who are both autistic and borderline.
Briefly, borderline personality disorder is now defined
as “impairments in personality (self and interpersonal) functioning
and the presence of pathological personality traits.” There are several
criteria that must be met for a diagnosis. I must stress here that we’re not
talking here about isolated incidents, but a consistent pattern of behaviour, over many years or possibly
decades.
A couple of disclaimers here – firstly, before anyone points
it out, I’m well aware that I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist or anything
like that. I have no professional knowledge in this area at all. But if
something walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, excuse
me, but I’ll call it a duck.
Secondly, this is NOT intended as some kind of attack on those
with mental health issues. There seems to be some discussion as to whether
personality disorders actually count
as ‘mental illness’, though they are now generally defined as such. A
crucial difference, however, between personality disorders and other mental
illnesses is that you’re usually aware that you’re depressed, suicidal, etc. People
with personality disorders, by comparison, often won’t acknowledge what they
are. This is a big part of what makes them so damaging to others.
But what I am concerned with here is how often we are their target.
(I’ve focused here on borderliners, but I don’t doubt that much of what I say
applies to other personality disorders too.) When I researched them, my initial
search only turned up websites that talked of borderline as a condition of
‘emotional instability’ and seemed to ooze with sympathy for the ‘sufferers’ of
it. There was little or no mention of what it was like for those around them. It
wasn’t till I typed in ‘I have been a victim of someone with borderline
personality disorder’ that I discovered all their many, many other victims.
Because yes, I have suffered at the hands of borderliners,
and I have seen family and friends suffer too. I didn’t have a name for their
behaviour back then, but they’ve been in my life on and off for decades. The
label is fairly recent, the type is not. Even the book that’s my ‘creativity
bible’, The Artist’s Way by Julia
Cameron, published in the 90s, talks of what she calls ‘crazy-makers’, and the
characteristics are basically those of borderliners.
So, I’ve put together a list of common characteristics of
borderliners so we can recognise them, preferably before they irreparably harm
us.
1) Everything Is About Them. They have to be the centre of attention, at
all costs. They will create (melo)dramas, sulk, throw tantrums, argue or rant
for hours or even days, whatever it takes to make sure your focus is on them. They
will also consistently invade your boundaries and your privacy. It didn’t
matter what I was trying to do, my (now ex!) partner just had to talk to me, even when I was writing and made it very clear
that I didn’t want to be interrupted. In fact, any time my attention strayed from her, she became almost frantic
to get it back. This is often coupled with isolating you from family and former
friends, so that you lose perspective on what’s happening.
Borderliners can also be very controlling. My ex once threw
a huge hissy fit because, in the middle of a ‘discussion’ (ie lecture from
her), I got up and went to the toilet without asking her ‘permission’. How dare
I “just get up and walk away!” Around a borderliner, your life no longer feels like
your own.
2) They Are Never To Blame. The only time they don’t
want attention, is when it comes to accepting blame. Their standard tactics are
to deny and minimise. After I fell out with one borderliner, for instance, she tried
to tell a friend that I’d ‘just misunderstood one little incident’, when in
fact there’d been months of increasingly objectionable behaviour on her part. They
will also deny there is any repetition of their behaviour - “let’s just talk
about this one thing”, my ex would always say, when I tried to point out any
patterns.
Another tactic is ‘reframing’.
If something negative did happen,
it’s always someone else’s fault. On the rare occasion my ex would admit there
was anything ‘wrong’ with her behaviour, she’d insist that it was an ‘only
natural’ reaction to how *I* behaved,
that I ‘drove’ her to it. For years, I tried very, very hard to be ‘better’, so
she in turn would be nice to me. Only when I realised that my behaviour was not
the trigger, was I able to break free.
3) They Have Almost No Self-Awareness. A borderliner,
for instance, will say things like “I’m a very calm person”, when they’ve just
spent hours screaming at you, or claim “I’m not _____ anymore”, when it’s
obvious to everyone around them that they still very much are. They also have (or
pretend to have?) almost zero awareness of the effect of their actions on
others. This is part of the blaming others of course, but it’s more than that.
I’ve had a borderliner tell me, with great concern, how it used to ‘really
upset’ her when her ex used to self-harm, not realising that this same ex had
told me how they only self-harmed after the borderliner had convinced them that
they were worthless. It was as if they can’t comprehend any connection between
how they behave, and how other people react to them.
4) They will use others against you. This is
particularly so if you’ve put yourself out of their reach somehow. Remember
that borderliners are experts at manipulation. There’s a phenomenon called
‘flying monkeys’ where borderliners recruit others to continue their abuse of
you, having convinced them that YOU are the ‘baddie’. You may even have been
one yourself, when you were with them. And while they rarely seem to commit
physical violence themselves, I have seen one incite someone to commit it on a
third party – after several attempts to destroy that party’s personal and
professional reputation.
5) They see all this as normal. Whatever made them
borderline happened so young, and so thoroughly, that they seem unable to
understand just how screwed up they are. I suppose this makes them objects of
pity, but the way I see it, it’s like seeing an unhappy-looking lion in its
cage at the zoo. You may feel sorry for it, but it’s not a good idea to jump
into the cage and pat it on the head - ‘there, there, poor kitty!’ Borderliners
are like the lion – feel sorry for them perhaps, but at a safe distance, or
they will rip you to shreds. They can be helped, yes, but not by just anyone.
It takes truly major therapy - and first they must admit they need it. Wherein
lies the Big Problem – they generally don’t and won’t.
If all this sounds horrendous, believe me, it is. Victims
can take years to win free, and more years to heal, if we ever do. After more
than twenty years, I’m not sure I’ve quite managed yet to ‘un-program’ myself
from the messages my ex implanted in my psyche. And it still didn’t stop me
from being the victim of other borderliners. Thankfully, I recognised the
patterns quicker, and was able to get out faster and limit the damage.
You’ll notice I’ve said ‘she’ when talking about the
borderliners I’ve known. This is because all the ones I’ve known have been
female. Typically, about 70% of those diagnosed borderline are women, but this
may simply reflect society’s expectation of how men and women ‘naturally’
behave, as more recent research finds the same rates of borderline among
men and women in the general population, though the ways it manifests may
differ somewhat.
Similarly, I am aware that borderliners are not all the same.
Some seem more aggressive than others, some treat badly only those closest
while seeming ‘lovely’ to everyone else, while others display the same
behaviour to all. Some even seem to have moments of remorse and acknowledging
their behaviour (my ex would sometimes do this), but the big problem with this
is you can’t trust them to stay that way. What they say today, they will
‘forget’ and deny tomorrow. It’s how they’re built.
There is much more I could say about borderliners, but I think
this post is long enough! My basic message is - be wary. Be very wary. And when
you recognise one, run a mile. And then another, and another. For your own
sake, and the sake of those closest to you. Stay safe, people.
No comments:
Post a Comment