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.

A Word About Baby Boomers

Something which lately has begun to make me really mad, is how often baby boomers get blamed for so much by younger generations. It seems they look around, see the world in a mess, realise that many of the world’s leaders are of my generation, and go “oh, it must be all the baby boomers’ fault!”

Ah, no. We didn’t create this world, we inherited it, and blaming us for the state of the world is like blaming someone for the state of a 400-year-old house they’ve been left. Maybe if more of the previous generations were still around, you’d be dumping on them too. But they’re not, so it all – unfairly – lands on us.

So, for the record, let’s look at some of those accusations.

SOCIAL CHANGE. Boomers are often described as ‘entitled’. ‘Confident’ is actually a better word. When we were young, we looked at our parents’ world and found it stodgy, straitlaced and restrictive. We thought we not only could, but should, change the world. It’s no coincidence that a whole heap of fervent social movements cranked into high gear around the time we started coming to young adulthood, everything from feminism to gay rights to black power and indigenous rights. (What? You thought the baby boom was only a white, middle-class, American thing?) And yes, I know that plenty older than us fought too, just as some of us didn’t, but we had the numbers and the youthful fervour to carry things through.

Ever enjoyed a women’s/indigenous/black studies course? Gay and married? Out and proud? A single woman who’s adopted a child or taken out a mortgage, or married and didn’t have to ask your husband for permission to start a business or take out a loan? Used the services of a rape crisis centre, sexual health service, or battered women’s shelter? Pierced a ‘glass ceiling’, or forged a career in a field not traditional for your gender? A stay at home dad? These and many more are things my generation fought for. You’re welcome.

And that struggle, the sheer societal and political inertia, was way more immense than anyone younger than about fifty can now imagine. It wasn’t even the active right-wing push-back of recent years, but rather a total ignoring or just blocking of us, no doubt in the hope that we’d just go away. The sheer energy it took to chip away at this, year after year after year, saw many of our finest burn out. And no, we’re not asking for a medal or anything, but we certainly didn’t expect that forty years later, younger generations would turn around and call us ‘selfish’.

TECHNOLOGY. I recently saw a post sneering about a female baby boomer who was obviously something of a technophobe, and the implication seemed to be that all of us are. Nope. You want technophobes? Look at my parents’ generation, in their 80s and 90s if they’re still alive. And personally, though I’m hardly a genius or geek, if I get my hands on any new tech, I can usually figure out how to use it without much trouble. Several years back, for instance, I sussed out my mother’s new cellphone in about fifteen minutes – by the time she died, she still hadn’t figured out how to even check her texts. She wasn’t alone in this, and I’m not alone in being a baby boomer good with technology either.

And please remember, a lot of this technology was invented or developed by baby boomers. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are or were all boomers, and goodness knows how many of those early technicians, programmers, and other inventors were of our generation too. Quite a few, I should imagine.

ECONOMY. Despite what some think, we didn’t single-handedly create the current destructive economy.  Capitalism has been around for centuries, and the toxic mess that is modern neo-liberalism was dreamt up before boomers were even born. And it was during the 80s, under leaders like Thatcher (UK), Reagan (US), Bob Hawke (Australia) and David Lange and Roger Douglas (NZ) – NONE of whom were boomers – that these policies were put into practise. Plenty of us protested and campaigned against those policies, alas fruitlessly, and now it’s considered ‘business as usual’. NOT. OUR. FAULT.

As for whether some of us are now ‘plundering the world’s economic resources’ to feather our retirement nest, a few might be, but let me assure you, way more of us are in the struggling or desperate classes. And a lot of the most obscenely rich aren’t actually of our age cohort - of the top ten, only Bill Gates (1955), and Bernard Arnault (1949) are definitely boomers. (Jeff Bezos, born in 1964, is only marginally one.) And of those boomers who are ‘plunderers’, they’re not doing it because they’re boomers, but because they’re rich people doing what rich people always do, given the opportunity. Seems like lots of people are just in it for themselves these days, and you can thank those neo-liberals for that.

In a world where our numbers mean not only has the economy grown (as it tends to do with a larger population), we’re perhaps more visible, and the wealth of the wealthiest boomers more bloatedly huge, so it seems like we’re everywhere. Plenty of us don’t like them anymore than you do. I for one would gladly see those obscene inequalities disappear.

ENVIRONMENT. FYI, we didn’t single-handedly destroy the environment either. The damage that’s starting to be really visible now, is the result of trends that began long before we were born (think Victorian factories belching smoke, rivers choking with pollution long before World War Two, plastic introduced while we were still babies). Rachel Carson’s seminal book ‘Silent Spring’ was published in **1962**, when even the oldest of us were barely in high school.

To take just one environmental issue as an example – New Zealand has a problem with its old rubbish tips. We have a long coastline, and in the past, local councils have used many pockets of it to dump rubbish in. Just this year, one of these old tips, previously thought safely capped, was washed out during a storm, and the clean-up is still underway months later. And it’s just one of many such former tips around the country which are now threatened by rising sea levels – and most of which date back before we were even born. Get the picture?

I grew up in a world where the height of environmental consciousness was being a ‘tidy Kiwi’ and picking up our litter. A lot of us moved on from there, joining Greenpeace, marching for a nuclear-free zone, some even became back-to-the-land hippies. Speaking strictly for myself (though I know I’m not alone in this), I’ve been ‘reducing, reusing, recycling’, not to mention composting, since long before it got fashionable. I consciously work on ways to further reduce my impact on the planet, as I’m quite sure many others do.

We may not have done as much as younger people would like, but we’ve not been idle either. And though I can’t prove it, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that real efforts to clean up the environment have only begun as we’ve gotten older and at least some of us have gathered power and influence. If those efforts aren’t going to be enough, blame those Victorian factory owners, the 20^th century industrialists, the generations who created those sorry rubbish tips, and everyone who ignored all the warnings as far back as the 60s. The damage is cumulative, and the world has certainly reached a tipping point, but humankind has been ruining the planet for the last two hundred years, there’s no way you can put all the blame on us.

POPULATION. I’ve even seen assertions that we’re also to blame for the falling birth rate in Western countries. (Supposedly, we’re too selfish to have kids. Never mind that many of us, including me, have.) But the birth rate has actually been steadily falling in most of the developed world for over a century, the baby boom was actually just a temporary blip in this. It’s an inevitable process, that as a country becomes more industrialised, religion loses its grip, improved medical care ensures greater infant survival, and people can get their hands on better birth control, family sizes always shrink. It’s worth noting that it was our parents’ generation who were the first to use the Pill, which in many countries was initially for married women only.

CHARACTER. Every time someone of my generation is rude or selfish or whatever, it’s blamed on them being a baby boomer, not just because they’d be a nasty person whichever year they happened to be born in. We’re not perfect, but all the worst traits we display I can see in other generations too. We vary in our politics – yes, the Trumpf is technically a baby boomer (b 1946), but so is Obama (b 1961), and let’s face it, Trump would be an arrogant, narcissistic arsehole whatever generation he was born into. Andrew Wakefield is a boomer, but so is one of his major opponents and critics, Dr Paul Offit, and anti-vaxxers seem to be mainly of childbearing age. And need I point out that it’s not my generation who’ve brought back the Nazis and made them socially acceptable in at least some quarters? Personally, I’m as horrified as any else is by that, as are many of us who grew up when ‘Nazi’ was the worst insult and the ultimate evil.

Being greater in numbers may mean we’re more visible, but we’re still just human. A lot of the things said about us seem to basically boil down to ‘I hate that there are so many of you’, which is of course nothing we can help! And that many of those who did the biggest damage are now gone or going is no excuse for jumping all over us!

I’m hoping I don’t sound apologetic here, because I refuse to apologise for the year I was born in. We are not The Enemy, not some kind of malevolent selfish force hell-bent on using up the world’s resources for itself, and to hell with the future. So please, stop blaming us for everything bad about the world. That’s as ridiculous as blaming everything on millennials. It’s a prejudice, a kind of ‘ism’, and like all such, it’s intended to shame and silence an entire group, and alienate anyone who might take their part. And that’s not on. Quit with the hate. We’re all in this world together, and we all bear the responsibility of making it better.