Remembering is Hard

We have to continually remind ourselves that most of what she does that drives us crazy isn't by choice, exactly.

The really difficult thing about BPD is that BPD sufferers are rational. They think just as clearly and just as well as anyone. And Lauren is a really bright girl. The difference from everyone else is that they have these unbelievably extreme negative emotions. So when she's mad at you, she really hates you, deeply, bitterly, implacably. Add to that a lot of persistent misperceptions about the world (which also come from the emotion disorder) and about her place in it, and what you get is a situation where that intelligence is exercised in deliberately destructive ways.

So she does choose to do the things she does. But she makes those choices in the grip of overpowering emotions that make the choices seem reasonable to her, even though to the rest of us they may be foolish, unbelievably selfish or viciously spiteful.

Another less obvious effect that I've begun to realize is that when she's in the grip of powerful emotions, she assumes everyone else is, too, and filters her perception of their reactions accordingly. It makes sense, actually, if you have a bitter hatred of a person, you're going to interpret everything they do in a very negative light. If they're kind, they're faking, or setting you up. If they're cruel, their true colors are showing.

This all makes borderlines harder to deal with than someone who is outright delusional. In one way it's worse than bipolar disorder too, because while bipolars have radical mood swings, they're basically random. BPD mood swings are intimately connected to what's going on around them (though not always in obvious ways), and that connection makes the behavior seem more... deliberate. Intentional. And it fools people into believing that if they can only do the "right" things, they can avoid the explosion, because the cause and effect are clear, if not what normal people would expect. But it never quite works; no matter what you give the borderline it's never quite enough and the screaming fits and the vicious attacks always come eventually. It gets very hard to continue being understanding.

To that you have to add basically zero sense of "self". A borderline finds it nearly impossible to maintain any sort of consistency, especially in the area of personal integrity or morality. There is no core self to hold onto such values, or at least not a very effective one, mainly because of yet another key characteristic: self-hatred. It's hard to maintain a firm hold on a sense of self when you're convinced that whatever you are is worthless and hateful. That self-opinion is constantly reinforced by all of the crazy things done in the grip of intense emotions, and by the inability to maintain personal integrity and morality. It's a vicious cycle.

The inconstancy, of course, helps drives people away, further feeding the self-hatred and triggering more bouts of crazy emotions and additional series of bad decisions. Another vicious cycle. Or another aspect of the same one.

Anyway, we know all of this. We sometimes forget it. Heck, we often forget it. But we do know it, too well to let us just throw her out the door.