That So-called Stigma

I’ve been criticised for writing about borderliners before. Sometimes the criticism comes from the borderliners themselves, other times it’s from the well-meaning but ultimately misguided who are concerned about what they call the ‘stigma’ of having one.

The problem is that so much of the attitude of many towards borderliners (or those with other Cluster B conditions, for that matter) isn’t due to some vague ‘stigma’, but to them having a reputation. People have suffered at their hands, and learnt to be wary of them, and others have either witnessed this or heard their stories. But try and say so, as I sometimes have, and prepare for a ton of excrement to land on your shoulders. A frequent tactic is to say that you shouldn’t say that people with personality disorders are abusers, manipulators, etc. ‘Address the abuse, not the personality disorder, PDs are no more likely to abuse than anyone else, blah blah blah’, is their line. But this deserves a much closer look.

Borderliners (the PD I know best) typically have the following issues –

1) Fear of abandonment. Not so much an anxiety, as an outright terror. As a child, they may have experienced physical or emotional abandonment, or the threat of it, or the loss of a loved one. Or they were abused and manipulated into believing that they’re so ‘bad’, others will leave them. Whichever, they are ruled by this fear on a very deep level.

2) Poor boundaries. Invariably, their own boundaries were constantly violated as a child, and/or the setting of boundaries were never modelled for them. Thus they have no idea how to set their own, nor can they recognise or respect other people’s boundaries either.

3) Emotional volatility. Anger is the one that tends to come to the surface most, and I’ve sometimes been able to identify a possible borderliner by their frequent and explosive displays of anger. Sometimes this is buried under a layer of ‘niceness’, but dig deep enough, and it’s there. But other emotions will also likely be out of control. I believe that their fears are at the basis of this.

4) Warped attitudes. All the borderliners I’ve known have skewed viewpoints about other people, stemming, it seems, from a twisting of their infant psyches at such a young age that they don’t even realise that they’ve been warped. They seem to assume that ‘everyone’ is ‘like that’, or if they do realise that others aren’t, they try to excuse their behaviour in various ways, rather than confronting the underlying issue. It’s as if they’re too afraid to look at themselves.

So I ask you - what is the likelihood that people with poor boundaries, a terror of abandonment, anger management issues and skewed attitudes about others, have a high likelihood of becoming users, abusers and manipulators? I’d say pretty strong. These emotional states drive them to clutch at those close to them, try to control them, manipulate and dominate them, isolate them from others, and generally do anything to hang on to them. Emotional abuse or manipulation, rather than physical, seems to be predominant, but the latter is not unknown.

Of course, it can often mean that they’re likely to be victims of abuse etc themselves – I’ve seen this even in the same person. They might be petty tyrants in their own homes, but unable to assert limits outside it, or with a more domineering personality. And in theory, there could be borderliners who are not abusive, who have more self-awareness than most, and who work hard on not letting their insecurities and emotional problems spill over onto their loved ones. But – and here’s the kicker – I would not take their word for it, because another frequent problem with borderliners is their expertise with lying or twisting the truth. If this sounds harsh, well, I’ve been manipulated like this before, and paid the price for it. And it’s worth remembering that autistics are far more vulnerable to all kinds of abusers, including those with PDs, because of our naivety and difficulty with reading people’s intentions.

Here are just some examples of what I’ve personally seen –

1) A (probable) borderliner manipulate their partner into an emotional ‘divorce’ from their family, working them up to such a frenzy that they eventually physically attacked another family member.

2) This same person constantly spreading vicious lies and rumours about the partner’s various family members, attempting to damage their personal/professional reputations.

3) Another borderliner do a furious rant at me when I attempted to set boundaries, swearing at me, violating those boundaries again, and then, when I eventually blocked them, attempt to manipulate friends and persuade them that I had just ‘misunderstood’, or that I was ‘afraid’ of them, etc, etc.

4) Same person trying to get round the block by creating new accounts, and messaging me from them with a tirade of abuse and spurious claims, years afterwards.

5) Yet another, ranting at me because I was one of the admins for a group they’d been thrown out of for bad behaviour, even though I wasn’t the one who threw them out. Their attitude was that they were discriminated against for not being ‘eloquent’, with no admission of that behaviour. (How eloquent do you have to be to say ‘sorry, my bad’?) No matter what I said, they just got more and more furious, finally abruptly unfriending and blocking me. I heard afterwards that they were complaining about how ‘oppressed’ they were in that group, and how ‘horribly’ they’d been treated.

6) A borderliner spreading vicious lies about their ex to anyone who would listen, and making them feel so frightened that they moved out of their house for several weeks.

7) Another probable borderliner drive others they’d taken a dislike to, off a piece of land they co-owned with them, so that they didn’t return until the borderliner left permanently. Also visitors to the same land refused to come back while that person was there.

And this list is not even touching on my ex’s behaviours, or the damage she did to me.

Do I feel empathy for those with Borderline Personality Disorder? Most definitely yes. I have a huge amount of empathy for their suffering. They are deeply traumatised individuals, with some very Big Issues to deal with. PTSD is not an uncommon co-occurring condition, as are other mental health issues. And I do know that there’s a problem with public attitudes towards those with mental health issues in general. People with PDs do suffer deeply, I’ve seen this, close up, intimately.

The problem is, firstly, how often they make those around them suffer for it too, and secondly, how reluctant they are to both acknowledge this and to seek out the professional help they need. (Not to mention, of course, the issue of what help they can actually access.)  It’s this, way, way more than my personal history, that impels me to push back when people talk as though their only problem is this ‘stigma’, and that if people could just get past that, everything would be hunky-dory.

Now, theoretically, you could be friends or even partners with a borderliner, and not be their victim. But you will need a strong sense of self, and strong boundaries, which you must be prepared to repeatedly enforce, right from the very beginning (it’s no use trying to do it later, in my experience, they just get mad at you). Things to especially watch out for include criticisms of you which seem to ‘come out of left field’ and startle you because they don’t ‘feel right’, subtle manipulations of or ‘selectiveness’ with the truth, outright lies, attempts to isolate you from others, and criticism of others which somehow always cast themselves as the ‘innocent’ one, and others as ‘mysteriously’ being nasty to them. Don’t put up with it, be firm, and always check the truth with others.

Because they *will* test those boundaries, over and over and over, like the damaged child they are within. And as with a young child, the effort will probably pay off in the end, giving the borderliner in your life a sense of security that they never got when they were young. You will also help them by insisting that they search out the right kind of therapy. The hand-holding, cups-of-tea, patting-them-on-the-back kind of ‘help’ is not actually helpful at all for those with PDs, as it simply encourages them to believe that they’re the ‘wronged’ individual, and they will not find the incentive to change. It’s an individual choice though, whether you are willing to make that effort (and it will be A LOT of effort), and…. I’m not. I’m burnt out from past efforts in this direction, and I just don’t want to go there again. But, you know, your choice.

What is NOT helpful is denying the potential for abusive/manipulative behaviour, making excuses, or complaining about ‘stigma’. I‘ve been on the receiving end of their behaviour, yes, but I’ve also seen others be their victims, heard more stories of those who’ve been their victims, and read up on the disorders and their treatment. So it’s not just a matter of ‘oh, this one borderliner was abusive to me’. If it was, I’d shrug it off. It’s an entire PATTERN of behaviour on the part of MANY borderliners. (It’s worth noting that other Cluster B individuals also have behaviour patterns that are deeply damaging to others. It’s why they end up with diagnoses in the first place. Or did you think that this is ‘just prejudice’ on the part of mental health professionals?)

Yes, I have emotional reactions to the whole issue, and indeed to those with borderline PD themselves. I admit I am not objective or unbiased. After any encounter, with borderliners, or to some extent narcissists, I feel a mix of anger (how dare they do that to me or others), apprehension (not wanting contact in case I fall back into bad old patterns), and disgust (loathing of their tactics, and feeling like I’ve waded through a sewer).

But THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT ANYTHING I SAY ABOUT THEM IS INVALID, especially when I see blatant fallacies being promoted. And yet I’ve had people suggest this. On one occasion, they even took my words and replaced ‘borderliners’ with ‘autistics’, and said ‘see how bad it sounds?’, as though autism and a deep psychological disorder can in any way be compared or equated. But it’s the attempted silencing that really makes me angry. Would they say that a rape victim has nothing worthy to say about rapists in general? Or that a victim of domestic abuse has nothing worth listening to about domestic abusers? Yet they attempted to dismiss what I said on these grounds.

Enough. Do people with personality disorders need understanding? Yes, most definitely. Should we gloss over their bad behaviour because of their traumatic history? No, also most definitely. Enough of the excuses, enough of the ‘stigma’ talk, enough of glossing over the very real issues of their behaviour. I’m not putting up with it anymore, and I refuse to be silenced again.

 

 

BECAUSE I CARE

I know I’ve said that I’d rather not write again about dealing with people with borderline personality disorder. But it seems that I still have some things I need to explain. I’m getting kind of tired of hearing that we mustn’t point out bad behaviour on the part of people with personality disorders, particularly Cluster B ones, because, y’know, it’s ‘demonising’ and ‘stigmatising’ and ‘ableist’ and all.

But it’s not stigmatising to stand up for victims of abuse. It’s not demonising to call out an individual or even a group on their negative behaviour patterns. It’s not ableist to point out that people with personality disorders are a high risk group for both abusing and being abused, precisely because of their disorder.* The very characteristics which cause them to either get a diagnosis, or for others to suspect they rate one, unfortunately predispose them to it. **

Because you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that people who have unstable emotions, a fear of abandonment and poor boundaries (borderline), or massive but frail egos (narcissist), or aggressive tendencies and lack of empathy (anti-social), are going to have problems relating to others. Even the desperate need for attention of those with histrionic, the lesser-known Cluster B disorder, could lay them open to abuse. I’ve also, sadly, seen many with personality disorders be abusive to some, but then get trampled on by others in turn.

But here’s the thing – people with personality disorders are entitled to support – but minimising and excusing bad behaviour is not the right sort of support. It’s no use complaining about being ‘stigmatised’, when it’s your very own behaviour that has created that stigma. People have become wary, and weary, of being victims of manipulation, abuse, angry tirades and distorted world-views. To try to ‘remove the stigma’ without addressing the ROOT CAUSES of it is to simply attempt to silence the victims of that behaviour.

Not to mention that I find it ironic when I get accused of ‘demonising’ by, for instance, someone with a personality disorder trying to bully another person into submission. Or I receive a message from another telling me how they’ve ‘changed so much’ – right in the middle of the kind of truth-twisting rant that proves, um, no, actually they haven’t. This kind of curious double-speak, or just self-dishonesty, leaves me unsure whether to laugh at the irony or just shake my head in weary disbelief.

The other accusation that’s come my way recently is that I’m uncaring and ‘lacking in empathy’ for those who have suffered the trauma/abuse/etc that created these disorders.

So let me make something clear – I very much do care.

I care about the whole world and its pain. I care about those who are abused or raped or tortured, about people dying in horrible wars, about First Nation peoples being deprived of their lands or culture or rights, about how so much of the world’s wealth is being hogged by greedy billionaires, about sexism and racism and classism and ageism and homophobia and transphobia and Islamophobia and anti-Semitism and every other prejudice and ‘ism’ you can name. I’m utterly opposed to oppression and hate of any kind, and want the world to be a much better place.

I know I can’t really heal the entire world, but if I could, I would. I’d put balm on all the wounded spirits, help the faltering, house the homeless, embrace the refugees, pick up those who have fallen… and I’d heal the environment too. I care because that’s who and what I am. Call it a ‘saviour complex’ if you like, or a ‘bleeding heart’, but this is me. It’s my nature to care. I don’t want anyone to feel pain or fear or loss, to suffer abuse or maltreatment of any kind, whether they’re on the spectrum or not, whether they have a personality disorder or not, or whatever else their life entails.

So yes, I care. I may choose not to associate with those of you with personality disorders because of my own past history, but I do care about the trauma you’ve suffered. No-one should have to go through that. No child should be abused, manipulated, neglected, and have their psyches twisted and damaged. It was seeing your pain, in part, that kept me in a relationship for nearly ten years, and more long months in a toxic ‘friendship’. But ultimately, it was the results of that which also drove me away. Because there is only so much an individual can take.

And I know you better than you think. (From this point on, I’m going to talk only about borderliners, because that’s the condition I’m most familiar with. But those who’ve been closely associated with other personality disorders can perhaps tell a similar story.)

I’ve seen your pain, and how it drives you to lash out. I’ve seen your terror of abandonment that makes you push away the very people you want to hang on to. I’ve seen your bone-deep anger that conceals an even deeper misery. I know that buried somewhere inside you, is a small child who knew something wasn’t right, but who got all kinds of messages that told you otherwise, till you were overwhelmed and lost your sense of self and safety. I’ve seen how you flounder around, trying desperately to compensate for not having a solid psychological base. I’ve seen the abyss within you, even when you were/are too afraid to face it yourself.

And most importantly, I’ve seen that on a very deep level, you’re not happy. It’s not called a ‘disorder’ simply because mental health professionals like to slap labels on you. You are ‘dis-ordered’, your true self compromised when you were so young that you don’t even realise how damaged you are, how dysfunctional your connections to others are, how twisted your basic assumptions about the world/life/other people are. You don’t seem to get just how much your style of personal interaction is neither normal or desirable. Not to mention that you are a high risk group for suicide, or, more likely, simply dying old and bitter and alone.

And that’s the true sadness of your condition, not the so-called ‘stigma’.

But here’s the cruncher – having a personality disorder is not something you simply have to accept. It’s not something to hang an identity on, but a problem that needs to be addressed. It’s not set in stone - though it can be stubborn - and you CAN heal from it. And I want that for you. I want you to be healed. I want you to burrow down into that deep well of long-held sorrow, to root out the pain and trauma, to lance the long-festering wounds in your psyche, to experience psychological ‘disinfecting’ and healing. I wish this for you.

But, rather like an alcoholic, you must first admit there’s a problem, before you can work on it. I assure you that I’m not minimising the difficulties of this path. It will be long and hard, and depending on your location and resources, therapy might be out of your reach. This doesn’t mean that you can’t work on challenging and changing yourself. Taking responsibility for your words and actions, and the results of them on others, is an essential start. Not assuming that those who dare to challenge you are prejudiced, demonising, ableist, don’t understand you or your condition, etc, etc, is also essential. Consider that others might understand you all too well, but that you’re not listening to what they’re trying to tell you. Understand also that just because your BEHAVIOUR is bad, doesn’t mean that we think YOU are bad. You’re simply damaged – but the damage can be healed.

You don’t – you really, really don’t - have to live life at the mercy of your tempestuous emotions, your fear and anger and compulsions. You CAN have a calmer, more stable and fulfilling life and relationships. It IS possible. But you won’t get it by sitting back and complaining about ‘stigma’, without doing the work. Nor will you get it by gathering in PD groups to commiserate about how ‘misunderstood’ you are. I want you to challenge yourself, and others with PDs, to begin the long road to a better life. Because I believe you can do it.

And I want you to be healed.

I want you to be healed. I don’t think I can emphasise this enough.

I want you to be healed. For your sake, and for the sake of those around you.

I want us all to be healed.

I want a better world. For all of us. For everyone.

BECAUSE I CARE.

Never doubt it.

___________________________

*Re ‘disorders’ - it’s true that autism itself has long been considered a ‘disorder’, but we now know it’s not. And something genetic and inborn in us, that’s ultimately simply a different kind of brain, is obviously nothing like emotional damage acquired through traumatic experiences.

**I’m aware that many autistics are misdiagnosed with different personality disorders, probably in all the Clusters. Reading some of the Cluster A descriptions, for instance, is like reading a textbook list of autistic traits. And I know also that those who do have a personality disorder may also may have a second one, or other mental health issues, eg depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc, which can of course complicate things.

More on Borderliners

I’ve written here before about my problems with those with borderline personality disorder. It’s a special kind of hell they can put you through. Yet there seems to be a growing movement to somehow sweep all that under the carpet, and complain about the ‘stigma’ surrounding them. The latest such post I’ve seen even says that ‘if you get abused, don’t blame it on them being a Cluster B personality disorder’. (Apparently, there are heaps of similar YouTube videos too. I don’t dare look.)

The problem with this is that the very roots of their abusive patterns lie in their untreated disorder.

Their personal histories mean that they have almost no concept of boundaries, or of what constitutes a ‘healthy’ relationship, or friendship, or any kind of connection for that matter. (Because of this, they’re almost as likely to be victims of abuse as perpetrators of it, and in fact often switch back and forth between the two states.) Hence, they consider any emotional tactic as okay if it controls the other person, and alleviates their terror of abandonment.

And their victims? Because they’re the ones forgotten in this ‘rehabilitation exercise’, their very existence almost denied by this ‘removal of stigma’. What are their lives like?

Imagine for a moment, that you’ve struggled through years of emotional abuse from your partner. You’ve endured temper tantrums, hissy fits, massive sulks and cold silences that can last for hours or even days. You’ve suffered through long rants about just about everyone you know - your family, friends, etc - effectively isolating you, and making you entirely dependent on them. You’ve been torn apart by the endless and relentless criticism of every aspect of yourself, worn down by the list of your personal ‘failings’, and how everything is Your Fault, and nothing you do is ever good enough.

Eventually you’ve come to believe you’re deficient in every aspect of your personality, worthless and useless, not even a proper human being. You’ve been manipulated so much, gaslighted so much, tossed around so much, that you no longer know what the truth is, about anything, but most of all about yourself. And when you tried to express your feelings about anything, those feelings were discounted, scorned, or just ignored altogether, because they make it plain that only their feelings matter. Everything must centre around them, or there’s hell to pay. So you’ve learnt to repress your real feelings, and tried to keep your partner happy at all costs. You’ve become psychologically beaten down. Self-esteem shredded. Shamed. Silenced. Disappeared.

Eventually, you’ve realised that nothing you do will ever appease or please them, and scraped together just enough self-respect to get out. After a while, your head cleared enough that you slowly realised that you’d been emotionally abused, and a small iota of relief seeped into you. Maybe it wasn’t you, it was them.

And then. Somewhere, somehow, you stumble across a list of characteristics of this thing called ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’. (Or maybe it’s Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the two have very similar characteristics.) And something in your head goes, OMG, tick, tick, tick, tick! That’s THEM! And you realise, no, you’re not crazy, or lazy, or stupid, or worthless. It really WASN’T you! A wave of relief washes over you, and your deep self-hatred begins to lift. Maybe you’re not so worthless after all…

Or perhaps you’ve had to watch helplessly as another such person created havoc, brainwashing and manipulating their spouse, turning them against the spouse’s own family, spreading malicious gossip about other family members behind their backs, running down their personal and even professional reputations, and finally so egging the spouse on, that they commit an act of violence against another family member. They end up effectively divorcing that spouse from their family – which of course, you finally realise, was their objective all along. And you feel sickened by it, and them.

Or you blindly trust a so-called friend, who seems okay to start with, but then begins to increasingly scorn you, disrespect you, boss you around, telling you what to do and even what opinions you should have. Meanwhile, they’re also isolating you, ranting at you for hours running down pretty much everyone else you know, and leaving you increasingly dreading contact with them. And when, eventually, you’ve had enough and decide to set some boundaries with them, they explode. How dare you set limits! Wearied beyond measure, because you’ve been here before, you distance yourself from them, but this doesn’t stop them doing their damndest to run you down to all your friends. You consider yourself lucky to have gotten away from them, but the mere mention of their name makes you feel like you’ve been wading through excrement.

After any, or all, of these experiences, you finally feel like you’re starting to get some clarity, get your life together, your self-respect together… and then. And then. You stumble across a piece like the one I mentioned above. One that talks of abusers like your ex, or your ex-friend or someone else you’ve known, as ‘unfairly maligned’, as ‘victims’ of ‘discrimination’ and ‘stigma’ against the mentally ill. And that people need to ‘accept’ them, even embrace them, as they are. That gosh shucks, they’re just people like anyone else...

And you’re cast right back into it. BAM. Into feeling like the worst of the worst. Into self-hatred, into wondering if you’re a worthless failure, a nobody, a nothing. Again. You’re triggered, again.

Traumatised, again.

Shamed, again.

Silenced, again.

Disappeared. Again.

Because you know you’ll never be able to forgive the harm they’ve done, and you feel sick to your stomach at the thought of ‘embracing’ anyone even remotely like them. Are you a ‘bad person’, you ask yourself? Is your anger, your fear, your loathing and pain a personal failing on your part – again?

NO. It isn’t. Because these ‘stigma removers’ are going about it the wrong way, albeit for the right reasons. The Cluster B disorders are not like other mental illnesses, some even dispute they are truly mental illnesses. They are viewed by professionals, rightly (I’ve seen borderliners complain that mental health staff ‘treat them badly’, which can be translated as ‘they know all my tricks’), as the most difficult disorders to treat – precisely because they so often refuse to face up to themselves, or admit that they’ve done anything wrong. That they are mostly able to function in society, ‘pass for okay’, only adds to that. And increases the likelihood of them doing it all over again, sooner rather than later.

Patting them on the back and saying ‘there, there, it’s okay, we understand you had a rotten childhood, it’s not your fault’, not only scapegoats and re-traumatises their victims, but it doesn’t actually help the borderliner. At all.

They don’t need pats on the head, or more love, or whatever. That, I can tell you from bitter experience, is pure enabling. I tried it, for many, many years. I worked on being ‘supportive’, on being a good listener, on helping them ‘work through their issues’. It didn’t work. Their behaviour only got worse and worse. It wasn’t till I stopped doing all this, that things improved even a little – and I though, wow, I should have done this years ago! But it was really too late, I was done, out of there, gone and gone.

So to those borderline apologists, I say this - NO. They don’t need their ‘stigmas’ removed. Instead, they need to have firm limits set with them. To be told ‘your behaviour is not on, you need help’. And to be made to get that help – specialist help, such as Schema or Internal Family Therapy, not just some poor dupe of a regular counsellor who they can fool into believing that there’s Really Nothing Wrong With Them. Because they are so good at that, often possessing a good deal of personal charm and manipulative ability.

And to the borderliners themselves, I say – if you truly want to be ‘rehabilitated’, get your act together. Both individually and collectively, acknowledge the harm you’ve done – all of it, not just the select bits that don’t make you look so bad. Get serious help of the kind I mention above, and stick at it, for years if necessary, until they say you’re done. It may take years, but it’s worth it. You can be healed. You can have healthy, functional relationships as a result. Do it.

Because I don’t want to keep writing about this. I’d rather be writing on autism and autistics, or working on my next book, or completing any of the many unfinished paintings I’ve got lying around. Hell, I’d rather even be dealing with the ants in my kitchen than talk about this again.

But these posts keep popping up, and someone has to say something. You can dismiss me as ‘full of hate’, or as too ‘damaged’ to be worth listening to, or whatever. I don’t care. If it was only me, if it only happened one time, with one person, I wouldn’t say anything. I’d write my experiences off to bad luck. But it wasn’t only once, and isn’t only me. There are a lot of others out there, still reeling, still suffering in silence, licking their wounds and wondering what’s wrong with them. I speak for them, because someone has to speak up for the victims, and for sure it won’t be the enablers and reputation ‘cleaners’.

PS – I know that many autistics are wrongly diagnosed as borderline before their autism is recognised, my post isn’t about them. I feel for them, it must be a horrible experience. I’m also aware that some ‘anti-borderliner’ websites are written by male survivors of female borderliners who are using it to fuel misogyny. I know this. But it doesn’t cancel out any of what I’m saying.

PPS - I suppose it might be possible to have a decent relationship or a friendship with a borderliner, if you set firm boundaries right from the start, and keep reiterating them. But frankly, I don’t want to have to work that hard. I’d rather associate with people who respect me from the beginning, without having to be pushed into it. People who are restful to be around, not constantly creating drama or discord. I try to be someone who is inclusive and accepting of difference, but there have to be limits, and this is mine.